Tech
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Scientists peering into the beating heart have solved a decades-old, fundamental mystery about how the heart works. The revelation could herald the development of new treatments for heart diseases -- the leading cause of death worldwide.
Researchers from Eastern Virginia Medical School, Florida State University and the University of Virginia have observed a tiny muscle filament during a crucial stage in a beating heart for the first time. The research was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Metal-insulator transition (MIT) driven by many-body interactions is an important phenomenon in condensed matter physics. Exotic phases always emerge around the metal-insulator transition points where quantum fluctuations arise from a competition among spin, charge, orbital, and lattice degrees of freedom. Two-dimensional (2D) materials are a large class of materials. Their simple structure, low dimensionality, and highly tunable carrier density make them an ideal platform for exploring exotic phases.
Stuttgart - A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) in Germany, from Seoul National University in Korea and from the Harvard University in the US, successfully developed a predictive model and closed-loop controller of a soft robotic fish, designed to actively adjust its undulation amplitude to changing flow conditions and other external disturbances.
THz waves have a plethora of applications ranging from biomedical and medical examinations, imaging, environment monitoring, to wireless communications, because of the abundant spectral information, low photon energy, strong penetrability, and shorter wavelength. THz waves with technological advances not only determined by the high-efficiency sources and detectors but also decided by a variety of the high-quality THz components/functional devices.
Distributed optical fiber sensing (DOFS) is currently a mature technology that allows "transforming" a conventional fiber optic into a continuous array of individual sensors, which are distributed along its length. Between the panoply of techniques developed in the field of DOFS, those based on phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry (ΦOTDR) have gained a great deal of attention, mainly due to their ability to measure strain and temperature perturbations in real time.
Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are changing the lighting and display industry and have obtained significant advances than traditional lighting sources. The traditional materials LEDs, e.g., III-V semiconductor LEDs, organic LEDs (OLEDs) and quantum-dot LEDs (QLEDs), have achieved great success and gradually realized commercialization, but still face some challenges. The OLEDs have the low carrier transport capability and exciton recombination, which would hinder the improvement of brightness.
By comparing the genetic diversity of butterflies in North America, researchers reporting in the journal iScience on March 23 found that the array of different evolutionary distinct groups of butterflies is particularly high in the deserts of Mexico and the southwestern United States. This may be an outcome of actively changing conditions in the Desert Southwest and more generally in the western portion of the continent.
Philadelphia, March 23, 2021 - Researchers from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have discovered that a widely used nutritional supplement may significantly reduce the risk of fatal strokes caused by a rare genetic disorder. Additionally, the findings suggest that the supplement could be used to both block precipitation of and break up the formation of amyloid plaque deposits, a common feature found in serious forms of dementia. The findings were published online today by the journal Nature Communications.
Algorithms inspired by social networks reveal lifecycle of substorms, a key element of space weather
Evolution of auroral substorms revealed by physicists at University of Warwick using the same methods that link people through social media
'If you like this magnetometer, you might like this one too:' historical data from magnetometers used to match them with 'like-minded friends' during 41 substorms
Shows that a single coherent electrical current, that accompanies the Northern Lights during substorms, covers most of the Earth's night-side at high latitudes
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, have developed a novel type of thermometer that can simply and quickly measure temperatures during quantum calculations with extremely high accuracy. The breakthrough provides a benchmarking tool for quantum computing of great value - and opens up for experiments in the exciting field of quantum thermodynamics.
An international group of scientists from India and Russia has created edible food films for packaging fruits, vegetables, poultry, meat, and seafood. Films consist of natural ingredients, they are safe for health and the environment. In addition, films are water-soluble and dissolve by almost 90% in 24 hours. Description of the research and results of experiments are published in the Journal of Food Engineering.
Recently, a published study in Science Advances assessed the contribution of pollinators to international market flows and showed that biodiversity conservation is essential to sustain global consumption patterns. This study results from the work of an interdisciplinary team that integrated researchers across the fields of economics, ecology, environmental sciences and social sciences.
Of the many perplexing questions surrounding SARS CoV-2, a mysterious new pathogen that has killed an estimated 2.6 million people worldwide, perhaps the most insistent is this: why does the illness seem to strike in such a haphazard way, sometimes sparing the 100 year old grandmother, while killing healthy young men and women in the prime of life?
A NIMS research team devised a new thermoelectric generation mechanism with a hybrid structure composed of thermoelectric and magnetic materials. The team then actually fabricated this structure and observed the record-high thermopower appearing in the direction perpendicular to a temperature gradient (i.e., transverse thermoelectric generation). These results may offer insights into new mechanisms and structural designs applicable to the development of versatile energy harvesting technologies and highly sensitive heat flux sensors.
Through an analysis of cellular components (cell fractions) from malignant ascites (fluid buildup in the abdomen caused by gastric cancer), a research collaboration based in Kumamoto University (Japan) has demonstrated that cellular senescence of cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) play an important role in the peritoneal dissemination of gastric cancer foci (cells different from surrounding cells).