‘Fantastic giant tortoise,’ believed extinct, confirmed alive in the Galápagos

By Liz Fuller-Wright A tortoise from a Galápagos species long believed extinct has been found alive and now confirmed to be a living member of the species. The tortoise, named Fernanda after her Fernandina Island Continue Reading →

Cancer connection

Combining therapeutics with dietarychanges could prove effective against some forms of cancer. Continue Reading →

Climate in crisis

Advances in reclaiming carbon from wastewater, lithium-ion-battery recycling, innovative building materials and new approaches to urban infrastructures are active areas of research at Princeton. Continue Reading →

Conversation spreads droplets more than six feet indoors

researchers have found that ordinary conversation creates a conical, “jet-like” airflow that carries a spray of tiny droplets from a speaker’s mouth across meters of an interior space.
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A small number of wells produce large emissions

A team of Princeton researchers has found that, in one of the biggest gas-producing regions, most of these emissions come from a tiny subset of the wells. Continue Reading →

Finding meaning among the junk

By Kevin McElwee Only about 10 percent of the human genome are actually genes. The other 90 percent? Once called “junk DNA,” researchers now know that this genetic material contains on-off switches that can activate Continue Reading →

Engine of cosmic evolution: Eve Ostriker looks under the hood

By Catherine Zandonella Outside Eve Ostriker’s office door stretches the universe, dotted with orange galaxies against the black backdrop of space. The mural lines the hallway in Princeton’s astrophysical sciences building, where it inspires Ostriker Continue Reading →

Treasure in ancient trash

By Kevin McElwee Thomas Conlan fiddled with a strange, brownish-black rock on his desk. For centuries, people had considered the piece of rubble worthless, but it is priceless to Conlan’s research. The lumpy rock is Continue Reading →

Going quantum to unlock plants’ secrets

By Kevin McElwee When it comes to green living, nobody does it better than plants. When plants convert light into fuel through photosynthesis, not a single particle of light is wasted. If we could unlock Continue Reading →

When driverless ride-hailing services come to a curb near you

By Kevin McElwee When requesting a ride-hailing service, you may soon notice something missing: the driver. Fleets of autonomous electric vehicles could someday replace human-powered ride-sharing. Programming obstacles still stand in the way of this Continue Reading →

Beyond Einstein: Physicists find surprising connections in the cosmos

By Catherine Zandonella Albert Einstein’s desk can still be found on the second floor of Princeton’s physics department. Positioned in front of a floor-to-ceiling blackboard covered with equations, the desk seems to embody the spirit Continue Reading →

Going green: What we can learn from a little alga

By Yasemin Saplakoglu WE ARE CONCERNED, rightly so, about the amount of carbon dioxide accumulating in the Earth’s atmosphere. But to most plants, which use carbon for photosynthesis, the amount we have is not enough. Continue Reading →

Coming home to document a rapidly changing China

By Catherine Zandonella SOCIOLOGIST Yu Xie is the director of Princeton’s Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China, which aims to conduct research on Chinese society through an interdisciplinary approach.  ON A VISIT TO CHINA in Continue Reading →

Princeton project explores past ties to slavery

By Catherine Zandonella “TO BE SOLD AT PUBLIC VENUE on the 19th of August next all the personal effects of Revd. Dr. Samuel Finley, consisting of two Negro women, a Negro man, and three Negro children, Continue Reading →

Let it flow: The ideas, the creativity, the findings, the impacts, the benefits to society

By Yasemin Saplakoglu THE RESEARCHERS in Princeton’s Complex Fluids laboratory are sometimes inspired by a cup of coffee or a permanent marker. Such everyday items may seem like odd subjects of inquiry in a lab Continue Reading →

Lights, camera, action – of genes in development

By Yasemin Saplakoglu MOLECULAR BIOLOGIST MIKE LEVINE likes to recall his childhood when he talks about the reason he came to Princeton. “I grew up near Hollywood and I always loved movies as a kid, so Continue Reading →

Princeton Research Day highlights student and early-career work

Watch the video MORE THAN 150 undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers presented their work at the first Princeton Research Day held May 5, 2016. The event highlighted research from the natural sciences, engineering, social Continue Reading →

Bright future: Princeton researchers unlock the potential of light to perform previously impossible feats

By Bennett McIntosh One hundred years ago, Italian chemist Giacomo Ciamician predicted a future society that would run on sunlight. In a paper presented in 1912 to an international meeting of chemists in New York Continue Reading →

Wild birds: A trip to the market reveals species imperiled

THE SIGHT OF A SOUTHEAST ASIAN BIRD market rivals the din of one for being overwhelming. Thousands of wild-caught birds are packed into cages that hang from eaves and fill market stalls to the ceiling, Continue Reading →

RESILIENT SHORES: After Sandy, climate scientists and architects explore how to co-exist with rising tides

AFTER THE WIND, RAIN AND WAVES of Hurricane Sandy subsided, many of the modest homes in the Chelsea Heights section of Atlantic City, New Jersey, were filled to their windows with murky water. Residents returned Continue Reading →

Computer visions: A selection of research projects in Computer Science

Princeton’s Department of Computer Science has strong groups in theory, networks/systems, graphics/vision, programming languages, security/policy, machine learning, and computational biology. Find out what the researchers have been up to lately in these stories: Armchair victory: Computers Continue Reading →

Wetlands provide solutions for agricultural runoff

A PATCHWORK OF SMALL LAKES, forests and marshes surrounded by farms and suburbs, the Assunpink Wildlife Management Area in central New Jersey is an ideal place to track the effects of agricultural nitrogen runoff on Continue Reading →

Emotional map illuminates an iconic rock song

IN A TYPICAL ROCK SONG, a few chords and a simple rhythm form the foundation for catchy lyrics that carry the listener along for three or four minutes. Expand these elements into a 20-minute song, Continue Reading →

Captured on video: Virus-sized particle trying to enter cell

RESEARCHERS AT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY achieved an unprecedented look at a virus-like particle as it tries to break into and infect a cell. The video reveals the particle zipping around in a rapid, erratic manner until Continue Reading →

The Planet Hunters

From Gáspár Bakos’ desk at Princeton, he can see everything that happens at his telescopes on three continents. He can see wild burros nuzzle at the cables in Chile, warthogs wander by in Namibia, and Continue Reading →

Inventions Bridge the Gap between lab and marketplace

The college experience often involves at least one road trip, but most students do not bring along their faculty adviser. But last spring, two graduate students crammed into a rented Chevy Impala with Professor Mark Continue Reading →