Brain
The relief "Adoration of the Shepherds" by the Italian sculptor Giuseppe Torretti is disfigured by lumpy salt crystals. Now, a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart has established that the calcium acetate hemihydrate that makes up these efflorescences bears a similar structure to the protein collagen. The structural characteristics not only help prevent damage of this kind, but have also provided the researchers with interesting new ideas for bioinorganic chemistry.
A group of researchers from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin has discovered a new mechanism of long-lasting pain relief. The cell-signaling protein interleukin-4 induces a specific type of blood cell to produce endogenous opioids at the site of inflammation. The researchers' findings have been published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI) Insight*.
Spiral structure is seen in a variety of natural objects, ranging from plants and animals to tropical cyclones and galaxies. Now researchers at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences have developed a technique to accurately measure the winding arms of spiral galaxies that is so easy, virtually anyone can participate. This new and simple method is currently being applied in a citizen science project, called Spiral Graph, that takes advantage of a person's innate ability to recognize patterns, and ultimately could provide researchers with some insight into how galaxies evolve.
Over the last million years, small variations in Earth's orbit continued to trigger and terminate global glaciations, throughout and after the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, according to a new study, which presents a novel high-resolution record of the last 11 deglaciations. Beyond what was possible using existing less well-dated environmental records, the new precisely dated chronology reveals the persistent influence of obliquity and insolation in pacing Earth's glacial-interglacial cycle.
WASHINGTON -- Using a single lens that is about one-thousandth of an inch thick, researchers have created a camera that does not require focusing. The technology offers considerable benefits over traditional cameras such as the ones in most smartphones, which require multiple lenses to form high-quality, in-focus images.
In research published in Nature, an international research group have ended a fifty-year quest by directly observing a quantum phenomenon known as a Kondo screening cloud. This phenomenon, which is important for many physical phenomena such as high-temperature superconductivity, is essentially a cloud that masks magnetic impurities in a material. It was known to exist but its spatial extension had never been observed, creating controversy over whether such an extension actually existed.
Millions of people worldwide consume water contaminated with levels of arsenic that exceed those recommended by the World Health Organization. This could cause health problems, such as arsenic poisoning, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Microbes in groundwater release arsenic from sediments, and organic matter helps fuel this reaction. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology have discovered that the type of natural organic matter (NOM) influences the rate and level of arsenic release.
Researchers in Japan have discovered S0 → Tn, a previously overlooked electronic transition in photoreactions occurring in heavy-atom-containing molecules exposed to visible light. The study was published online in Angewadte Chemie International Edition on March 9, 2020.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Role models are important for aspiring scientists, but new research suggests that scientists who are known for their hard work -- like Thomas Edison -- are more motivating than scientists who are viewed as naturally brilliant, like Albert Einstein.
In a series of studies, researchers found that young people were more motivated by scientists whose success was associated with effort than those whose success was attributed to innate, exceptional intelligence, even if that scientist was Albert Einstein.
URBANA, Ill. - Cattle feeders choose distillers grains in feedlot diets as an inexpensive alternative to corn and soybean meal. But until now, no one had studied the effects of the common feed ingredient on bull development and fertility. With bull fertility to blame for a significant portion of reproductive failures in cow-calf operations, University of Illinois researchers decided it was worth a look.
A novel technology has been developed for hydrogen production from the process, which involves electron that is produced during the decomposition of biomass such as waste wood. The result produced after biomass decomposition is a high value-added compound, and it is a two-stone technology that improves the efficiency of hydrogen production.
By using an approximate rather than explicit "kernel" function to extract relationships in very large data sets, KAUST researchers have been able to dramatically accelerate the speed of machine learning. The approach promises to greatly improve the speed of artificial intelligence (AI) in the era of big data.
What The Study Did: National survey data and housing assistance records were used to examine whether participation in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development rental assistance programs was associated with childhood asthma outcomes, including ever being diagnosed with asthma, history of asthma attack, and treatment in the emergency department for asthma.
Author: Michel Boudreaux, Ph.D., of the University of Maryland School of Public Health in College Park, is the corresponding author.
Solute carriers (SLCs) represent the largest family of transmembrane transporters in the human genome, with over 400 members arranged into 65 families. They have a key role in determining cellular metabolism and control essential physiological functions, including nutrient uptake, ion transport and waste removal.
HOUSTON -- (March 9, 2020) -- Ultrathin carbon nanotubes crystals could have wonderous uses, like converting waste heat into electricity with near-perfect efficiency, and Rice University engineers have taken a big step toward that goal.
The latest step continues a story that began in 2013, when Rice's Junichiro Kono and his students discovered a breakthrough method for making carbon nanotubes line up in thin films on a filter membrane.