Physical Sciences News

Astronomy & Astrophysics, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Physics, and Mathematics

The Latest

Cell membranes self-assemble

A self-driven reaction can assemble phospholipid membranes like those that enclose cells, a team of chemists at the University of California, San Diego, reports in Angewandte Chemie.

Real-time Readout of Neurochemical Activity

Scientists have created cells with fluorescent dyes that change color in response to specific neurochemicals. By implanting these cells into living mammalian brains, they have shown how neurochemical signaling changes as a food reward drives learning, they report in Nature Methods online October 26.

Physicists Solve Longstanding Puzzle of How Moths Find Distant Mates

Physicists have come up have with a mathematical explanation for moths’ remarkable ability to find mates in the dark hundreds of meters away.

POLARBEAR Detects Curls in the Universe’s Oldest Light

Cosmologists have made the most sensitive and precise measurements yet of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background.

Quantum Design Supports UC San Diego Physics Students with $279,000 Gift

Physics majors at the University of California, San Diego will have the opportunity to gain experience and training on the same high-tech tools that industry researchers use, thanks to contributions from Quantum Design. The San Diego-based technology company—which has strong alumni ties to the campus—is providing in-kind and cash gifts totaling $279,000 to update and modernize lab courses and instructional materials in the department of physics.

Four UC San Diego Teams Win NIH Grants from Obama’s BRAIN Initiative

Four teams of scientists at UC San Diego will receive research grants from the National Institutes of Health that will help lay the groundwork for visualizing the circuits of the brain and how they work, the agency announced at a White House ceremony today.