Manchester, United Kingdom. Discovering that graphene is superpermeable with respect to water, scientists now have a material that directly addresses the design of filtration, separation or barrier membranes — and for the selective removal of water — all of which are implicated in cell biology and organ generation.

Arlington, VA, USA. States reduced per-student funding for major public research universities by a fifth during the past decade, according to a new report from the National Science Board (NSB).

Meantime, foreign competitors invested heavily to challenge the once dominant global position of the United States in science, innovation, and higher education.

Cambridge, MA, USA. Cognitive scientists at MIT have developed a new take on why human language has so many words with multiple meanings, claiming that ambiguity actually makes language more efficient.

By allowing for the reuse of short, efficient sounds, listeners can easily disambiguate with the help of context.

Vienna, Austria. While the Heisenberg uncertainty principle has proven valid since it was published in 1927, new results published in the journal Nature Physics suggest the basic arguments have to be revisited.

The principle is arguably one of the most famous foundations of quantum physics, saying that not all properties of a quantum particle can be measured with unlimited accuracy.

Houston, TX, USA. Using common carbon fiber, scientists have discovered a one-step chemical process that is markedly simpler than established techniques for making graphene quantum dots, tiny specks of matter with properties expected to prove useful in biomedical, electronic, and optical applications.

The work was performed in the Rice University laboratory of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan, in collaboration with colleagues in China, India, Japan and the Texas Medical Center.