To function and survive, all cells need to sense and respond to invisible physical forces. Being able to detect and measure these forces is thus key to our understanding of life. Still, it remains one of the most complex problems facing current Science. In particular, biologists... click to read more

A long-standing question in art and aesthetics is if there are culturally and temporally transcendent design principles within art and, if so, how the principles evolve over time. Among various design principles, compositional techniques in painting that focus on the spatial arrangement of elements on... click to read more

The earliest examples of preserving human thoughts by applying ink on a flexible and durable material, papyrus, were found in Ancient Egypt at the dawn of recorded history (c. 3200 BCE). Egyptians used black ink for writing body text, while red ink was often used... click to read more

Nature is dynamic and complex. Therefore, creatures generate the most efficiently functioning biological materials. For example, abalone sea creatures have shells that resist attacks by predators to crack them open. Shells combine hard calcium carbonate crystals interleaved with softer layers of viscoelastic proteins. The interlinking... click to read more

Molecules, which are collections of tightly bound atoms, are all around in everyday life. For example, you can read this article because the light impinging on your retina drives a molecule called retinaldehyde to bend into a new 3D structure. This fine-tuning in the molecule's... click to read more