News

January 17, 2018

New C-BRIC center will tackle brain-inspired computing

Purdue University will lead a new national center to develop brain-inspired computing for intelligent autonomous systems such as drones and personal robots capable of operating without human intervention.

The Center for Brain-inspired Computing Enabling Autonomous Intelligence, or C-BRIC, is a five-year project

Read More

January 16, 2018

Study: Hormone keys plant growth or stress tolerance, but not both

Plants that grow well tend to be sensitive to heat and drought, and plants that can handle those stresses often have stunted growth. A Purdue University plant scientist has found the switch that creates that antagonism, opening opportunities to develop plants that exhibit both characteristics.

Read More

January 10, 2018

Study uncovers distinctions in major crop genome evolutions

Damon Lisch, associate professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, and Jianxin Ma, professor in the Department of Agronomy, studied tthe ways in which genomes duplicate – creating multiple copies of genes – and how those genomes change over time.

Read More

January 10, 2018

Babies stir up clouds of bio-gunk when they crawl

When babies crawl, their movement across floors, especially carpeted surfaces, kicks up high levels of dirt, skin cells, bacteria, pollen, and fungal spores, a new study has found. The infants inhale a dose of bio bits in their lungs that is four times (per kilogram of body mass) what an adult would breathe walking across the same floor.

As alarming as that sounds, lead researcher Brandon Boor of Purdue University is quick to add that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Read More

December 18, 2017

Fruit fly breakthrough may help human blindness research

For decades, scientists have known that blue light will make fruit flies go blind, but it wasn’t clear why. Now, a Purdue University study has found how this light kills cells in the flies’ eyes, and that could prove a useful model for understanding human ocular diseases such as macular degeneration.

Read More