Delivering an innovative and inclusive experience fit for this historic year, Thunderbird safely recognised the academic accomplishments of its class of 2020 in a technology-enhanced graduation celebration today to close an unprecedented fall semester.

Diatoms are tiny, unicellular creatures, inhabiting oceans, lakes, rivers and soils. Through their respiration, they produce close to a quarter of the oxygen on Earth, nearly as much as the world’s tropical forests. In addition to their ecological success across the planet, they have a number of remarkable properties. Diatoms live in glasslike homes of their own design, visible under magnification in an astonishing and aesthetically beautif...

Long ago, about 400,000 years after the beginning of the universe —the Big Bang — the universe was dark. There were no stars or galaxies, and the universe was filled primarily with neutral hydrogen gas. Then, for the next 50 million-100 million years, gravity slowly pulled the densest regions of gas together until they collapsed in some places to form the first stars.

With smartphones millions of times more powerful than the NASA Apollo computers that sent us to the moon in the 1960s, scientists have been eager to adapt them back here on Earth to better the planet. That's exactly what ASU Biodesign Institute researcher Tony Hu and postdoctoral researcher Dali Sun have recently demonstrated in the fight against infectious diseases.

For the first time, researchers have built a nanolaser that uses only a single molecular layer, placed on a thin silicon beam, which operates at room temperature. The new device, developed by a team of researchers from Arizona State University and Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, could potentially be used to send information between different points on a single computer chip. The lasers also may be useful for other sensing applications in a c...

In new research, Alex Green, a professor at ASU's Biodesign Institute, demonstrates how living cells can be induced to carry out computations in the manner of tiny robots or computers. The results of the study have significant implications for intelligent drug design and smart drug delivery, green energy production, low-cost diagnostic technologies and even the development of futuristic nanomachines capable of hunting down cancer cells or sw...

Arizona State University astronomers Sangeeta Malhotra and James Rhoads, working with international teams in Chile and China, have discovered 23 young galaxies, seen as they were 800 million years after the Big Bang. The results from this sample have been recently published in the Astrophysical Journal. Long ago, about 300,000 years after the beginning of the universe (the Big Bang), the universe was dark.

When Apollo astronauts on the Moon spoke with Mission Control on Earth, there was a noticeable time gap between a statement from Tranquility Base and its immediate acknowledgment from Houston. The gap lasted almost three seconds, or ten times longer than human reaction times would account for. What was happening? The answer is simple: space. The Moon orbits far enough from Earth that light (and radio) take 1.3 seconds each way to travel the ...

Type 2 diabetes, a prolific killer, is on a steep ascent. According to the World Health Organisation, the incidence of the condition has grown dramatically from 108 million cases in 1980 to well over 400 million today. The complex disease occurs when the body's delicate regulation of glucose, a critical metabolite, is disrupted, creating a condition of elevated blood sugar known hyperglycemia. Over time, the condition can damage the heart, blood ...

  Researchers hope to design a new generation of drugs against an array of deadly diseases. The task, however, is costly, arduous and often ineffective. One of the key challenges is understanding a particular class of proteins adorning cell surfaces, which are the targets of the majority of pharmaceutical drugs.

Despite enormous research strides, detection methods for many diseases remain cumbersome and expensive, and often uncover illness only at advanced stages, when patient outcomes can be bleak. One such illness is pancreatic cancer, which may display no obvious symptoms in its early stages, yet can develop aggressively. Indeed, according to the American Cancer Society, a staggering 80% of those stricken with this form of cancer die within 1 year of ...

  A researcher at Arizona State University has discovered how to control multiple robotic drones using the human brain. A controller wears a skull cap outfitted with 128 electrodes wired to a computer. The device records electrical brain activity. If the controller moves a hand or thinks of something, certain areas light up.

DNA may be the blueprint of life, but it's also a molecule made from just a few simple chemical building blocks. Among its properties is the ability to conduct an electrical charge, making one of the hottest areas in engineering a race to develop novel, low-cost nanoelectronic devices. Now, a team led by ASU Biodesign Institute researcher Nongjian (N.J.) Tao and Duke theorist David Beratan has been able to understand and manipulate DNA to more fi...

  Going into space is now within your grasp. A tiny spacecraft being developed at Arizona State University is breaking the barrier of launch cost, making the price of conducting a space mission radically cheaper.

Many technologies used in human societies are beyond the inventive capacities of individuals. Instead, technologies result from a cumulative process where innovations are gradually added across many generations—think from the wheel to modern cars or from early planes to space shuttles. Previous work in the field of cultural evolution suggested that larger and more connected groups should exhibit higher levels of cultural complexity.

In a new study, a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional team of researchers headed by Rolf Halden, director of the Center for Environmental Security at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute, tracks the course of a family of widely used pesticides known as fiproles. These halogenated chemicals have been identified as an emerging contaminant, recently linked to the worldwide die-off of pollinating insects, particularly honeybees.