Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation [to 23 April 2016]
https://www.moore.org/news

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April 21, 2016
Architecture of DNA gatekeeper solved
Moore Foundation grantees at Caltech have produced the most detailed map yet of the massive protein machine that controls access to the DNA-containing heart of the cell.

In a new study, a team led by André Hoelz reports the successful mapping of the structure of the symmetric core of the nuclear pore complex (NPC), a cellular gatekeeper that determines what molecules can enter and exit the nucleus, where a cell’s genetic information is stored…
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April 21, 2016
This Earth Day, let’s celebrate experimentation in environmental grantmaking
Aileen Lee, J.D., incoming chief program officer for the environmental conservation program at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
As we near the forty-sixth anniversary of Earth Day, let’s all take a moment to celebrate the diversity and breadth of approaches to conserving this special planet we call home. Like so many other organizations in the conservation field, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation grapples with the question of how to make sure — while there is time — Earth and its vital ecosystems flourish long into the future.

When Gordon and Betty Moore established the foundation in late 2000, they asked us to find ways for humans and other species to share the limited resources of our small but amazing planet. Fifteen years in, we’ve been both encouraged and humbled by how much our grantees and others working alongside them have accomplished — whether it’s conserving wild salmon ecosystems across the North Pacific, the long-term health of the Amazon basin, or North America’s marine environments.

As much progress as we have made, however, we also recognize that we need to scale and accelerate these gains…
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April 20, 2016
Unveiling an elusive state of superconductors
Foundation grantees at Cornell University have produced the first direct evidence of “Cooper pairs”– coupled electrons that can carry electricity with zero resistance, or behave as a wave whose density varies across space.

Now, EPiQS investigator and physicist J.C. Séamus Davis and colleagues at Max-Planck Institute CPMS in Dresden, Germany have unveiled direct evidence of a Cooper pair density wave state in a high-temperature superconductor.

The team used a scanning tunneling microscope to scan the surface of a high-temperature superconductor. By briefly lowering the tip of the microscope probe to touch the surface and pick up a flake of the superconducting material, Cooper pairs could then tunnel between the superconductor surface and the tip…