New research into the largely unstudied area of heterostructural alloys could lead to greater materials control and in turn better semiconductors, advances in nanotechnology for pharmaceuticals and improved metallic glasses for industrial applications. Heterostructural alloys are blends of compounds made from materials that don’t share the same atom arrangement. Conventional alloys are isostructural, meaning the…

The wide reach of corrosion, a multitrillion-dollar global problem, may someday be narrowed considerably thanks to a new, better approach to predict how metals react with water. Researchers at Oregon State University and the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a new computational method that combines two techniques to make predictions faster, less costly and…

A new cancer-drug delivery system shows the ability to exploit the oxygen-poor areas of solid tumors that make the growths resistant to standard chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Carcinomas that affect the breast, lung, prostate and colon are among the solid-tumor cancers, as are malignancies in the lymphatic system, known as lymphomas, and the much less…

Researchers have discovered one of the reasons why broccoli may be good for your health. They found that sulforaphane, a dietary compound from broccoli that’s known to help prevent prostate cancer, may work through its influence on long, non-coding RNAs. This is another step forward in a compelling new area of study on the underlying…

New research has shown that people with metabolic syndrome need significantly more vitamin E – which could be a serious public health concern, in light of the millions of people who have this condition that’s often related to obesity. A study just published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition also made it clear that conventional tests…

A space-based sensor that can “see” through fog, clouds and darkness has given scientists their first continuous look at the boom-bust cycles that drive polar plankton communities. The decade-long set of images reveals that phytoplankton cycles are more tied to the push-pull relationship between them and their predators than was initially thought, according to a…

After decades of eluding researchers because of chemical instability, key metal-oxide clusters have been isolated in water, a significant advance for growing the clusters with the impeccable control over atoms that’s required to manufacture small features in electronic circuits. Oregon State University chemists created the aqueous cluster formation process. It yielded a polyoxocation of zinc,…

Researchers at Oregon State University have found that a specific detoxification compound, glutathione, helps resist the toxic stresses of everyday life – but its levels decline with age and this sets the stage for a wide range of age-related health problems. A new study, published in the journal Redox Biology, also highlighted a compound – N-acetyl-cysteine,…

Chemists at Oregon State University have discovered that one or more organic compounds in a family that traditionally has been known as pollutants could offer an important advance to make cheap, reliable batteries. Such batteries might be of particular value to store electricity from some clean energy systems. The inability to easily and cheaply store…

Researchers have identified a bizarre, parasitic wasp without wings preserved in 100-million-year-old amber, which seems to borrow parts of its anatomy from a range of other insects but actually belongs to no other family ever identified on Earth. The specimen, which is spectacularly well preserved, probably crawled along the ground at the base of trees…

Researchers have created a new drug delivery system that could improve the effectiveness of an emerging concept in cancer treatment – to dramatically slow and control tumors on a long-term, sustained basis, not necessarily aiming for their complete elimination. The approach, called a “metronomic dosage regimen,” uses significantly lower doses of chemotherapeutic drugs but at…

Engineers at Oregon State University have created a new computer modeling package that people anywhere in the world could use to assess the potential of a stream for small-scale, “run of river” hydropower, an option to produce electricity that’s of special importance in the developing world. The system is easy to use; does not require…

Coral reefs are declining around the world because a combination of factors—overfishing, nutrient pollution, and pathogenic disease—ultimately become deadly in the face of higher ocean temperatures, researchers have concluded. A study published today in Nature Communications, based on one of the largest and longest field experiments done on this topic, suggests that the widespread coral deaths…