Culture

For millennia, metallurgists have been meticulously tweaking the ingredients of steel to enhance its properties. As a result, several variants of steel exist today; but one type, called martensitic steel, stands out from its steel cousins as stronger and more cost-effective to produce. Hence, martensitic steels naturally lend themselves to applications in the aerospace, automotive and defense industries, among others, where high-strength, lightweight parts need to be manufactured without boosting the cost.

In a paper published in Science Advances, an international team of researchers have examined traits of marine megafauna species to better understand the potential ecological consequences of their extinction under different future scenarios.

Defined as the largest animals in the oceans, with a body mass that exceeds 45kg, examples include sharks, whales, seals and sea turtles.

Abnormal levels of stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol are linked to a variety of mental health disorders, including depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). MIT researchers have now devised a way to remotely control the release of these hormones from the adrenal gland, using magnetic nanoparticles.

This approach could help scientists to learn more about how hormone release influences mental health, and could eventually offer a new way to treat hormone-linked disorders, the researchers say.

MISSOULA - The edge. Every athlete, from the professional to the weekend warrior, strives to obtain that ever-elusive element that leads to victory - sometimes sparing no expense to get there.

A lighter bike, a better training regimen, the newest shoes.

A recently released study from the University of Montana, however, has discovered that common "edge," sports nutrition products, are no more effective at promoting recovery in female athletes as regular, carbohydrate-rich, often less-expensive potato-based foods.

A recently developed system for switching on the activity of genes could improve treatments for a broad range of neurological diseases. Esteban Engel, a researcher in viral neuroengineering in the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, and his team have developed new gene promoters - which act like switches to turn on gene expression - that promise to broaden the ability to deliver large genes and keep them active for long periods of time.

The research was published online this week in the journal Molecular Therapy: Methods & Clinical Development.

A single error in cell division related to the formation of a chromosome bridge can trigger a cascade of mutational events, rapidly generating many of the defining features of cancer genomes, a new study suggests. The findings provide a potential mechanistic explanation for the extreme genomic complexity and chromosomal rearrangements found in certain tumor types. It's been assumed that cancer genomes acquire their complexity gradually, accumulating small-scale changes over time through unavoidable errors during DNA replication.

SINGAPORE, 16 April 2020 - A newly-discovered small protein in mitochondria is essential for energy production, report Duke-NUS researchers and their colleagues in the journal Nature Communications. Zebrafish lacking the small protein, which the scientists named BRAWNIN, have similar features to rare mitochondrial diseases in humans, suggesting further studies of the protein could help explain these conditions and identify possible therapies.