In 2013 James Hone, Wang Fong-Jen Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia Engineering, and colleagues at Columbia demonstrated that they could dramatically improve the performance of graphene—highly conducting two-dimensional (2D) carbon—by encapsulating it in boron nitride (BN), an insulating material with a similar layered structure. In work published this week in the Advance Online Publication on Nature Nanotechnology’s website, researchers at Columbia Engineering, Harvard, Cornell, University of Minnesota, Yonsei University in Korea, Danish Technical University, and the Japanese National Institute of Materials Science have shown that the performance of another 2D material—molybdenum disulfide (MoS2)—can be similarly improved by BN-encapsulation.

University of Texas at El Paso researchers' work challenges the theory that feeder cells provide nutrients to growing stem cells.

Karl A. Gschneidner and fellow scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory have created a new magnetic alloy that is an alternative to traditional rare-earth permanent magnets.

Arizona State University president and professor highlight the importance of research universities at both the big and small picture level.

4-D printing is unfolding as technology that takes 3-D printing to an entirely new level

Engineering researchers at the University of Arkansas have invented a novel electrical power converter system that simultaneously accepts power from a variety of energy sources and converts it for use in the electrical grid system.

With some ingenuity and interdisciplinary help, Nick Kaplinsky’s pipe dream became a reality.

Scientists recreate natural insect repellent.

An international team of researchers has sequenced the nearly complete genome of two Siberian woolly mammoths—revealing the most complete picture to date—including new information about the species’ evolutionary history and the conditions that led to its mass extinction at the end of the Ice Age.

Salk scientists use molecular "scissors" to eliminate mitochondrial mutations in eggs and embryos.

A key protein associated with autism, addiction and depression influences brain connections