Press Releases
08/17/09
08/17/09
Scientists at the Caltech and IBM's Almaden Research Center have developed a new technique to orient and position self-assembled DNA shapes and patterns--or "DNA origami"--on surfaces that are compatible with today's semiconductor manufacturing equipment. These precisely positioned DNA nanostructures, each no more than one one-thousandth the width of a human hair, can serve as scaffolds or miniature circuit boards for the precise assembly of computer-chip components.
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08/12/09
08/12/09
Saturn's moon Titan is dull, weatherwise. Nothing happens for years, making it hard to understand the carved channels that seem to line the surface. Now Titan has finally been caught in the act. Caltech planetary astronomer Mike Brown and his colleagues set a trap for Titan, waited years for it to be tripped, and, finally, nabbed their prey: bright but transient clouds over Titan's tropics, a region where clouds were thought unlikely to form.
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08/11/09
08/11/09
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and their colleagues in 30 laboratories worldwide have released a new set of standards for graphically representing biological information—the biology equivalent of the circuit diagram in electronics. This visual language should make it easier to exchange complex information, so that biological models are depicted more accurately, consistently, and in a more readily understandable way.
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08/17/09
08/06/09
A previously unrecognized player in the process by which gases produced by trees and other plants become aerosols—microscopically small particles in the atmosphere—has been discovered by a research team led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Their research on the creation and effects of these chemicals, called epoxides, is being featured in this week's issue of the journal Science.
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08/04/09
08/04/09
Caltech alumnus Shang-Li “S.L.” Huang and his wife have pledged $1 million to Caltech to endow the Shang-Li and Betty Huang Endowed Graduate Fellowship Fund in Mechanical Engineering.
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08/06/09
07/29/09
Using a combination of theoretical modeling, energy calculations, and field observations, researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have for the first time described a mechanism that explains how some of the ocean's tiniest swimming animals can have a huge impact on large-scale ocean mixing.
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07/21/09
07/21/09
Using devices millionths of a meter in size, physicists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed a technique to determine the mass of a single molecule, in real time.
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07/20/09
07/20/09
Most evolutionary changes happen in tiny increments. But when it comes to traits like the number of wings on an insect, or limbs on a primate, there is no middle ground. How are these sorts of large evolutionary leaps made? According to a team led by scientists at Caltech, such changes may at least sometimes be the result of random fluctuations, or noise (nongenetic variations), working alongside a phenomenon known as partial penetrance.
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07/20/09
07/16/09
Stromatolites are dome- or column-like sedimentary rock structures that are formed in shallow water, layer by layer, over long periods of geologic time. Now, researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have provided evidence that some of the most ancient stromatolites on our planet were built with the help of communities of equally ancient microorganisms.
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07/09/09
07/09/09
Chemists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Scripps Research Institute have developed an innovative technique to create cheap but highly stable chemicals that have the potential to take the place of the antibodies used in many standard medical diagnostic tests.
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