Tech
Using an array of tiny needles that are almost too small to see, researchers have developed a minimally-invasive technique for sampling a largely-unexplored human bodily fluid that could potentially provide a new source of information for routine clinical monitoring and diagnostic testing.
Living at low gravity affects cells at the genetic level, according to a study of worms in space.
Genetic analysis of Caenorhabditis elegans worms on the International Space Station showed "subtle changes" in about 1,000 genes.
Stronger effects were found in some genes, especially among neurons (nervous system cells).
The study, by the University of Exeter and the NASA GeneLab, aids our understanding of why living organisms - including humans - suffer physical decline in space.
Nanoparticles are promising drug delivery tools, offering the ability to administer drugs directly to a specific part of the body and avoid the awful side effects so often seen with chemotherapeutics.
But there's a problem. Nanoparticles struggle to get past the immune system's first line of defense: proteins in the blood serum that tag potential invaders. Because of this, only about 1 percent of nanoparticles reach their intended target.
In order to record all genetic information of an individual, its genome must be completely decoded. IPK scientists and international partners for barley already succeeded in doing this three years ago (Mascher et al. 2017). But to understand the genetic information of the entire barley species, much more is required. An international team, again led by IPK scientists, has now come a significant step closer to deciphering this so-called pan-genome of barley, as the science magazine Nature reports in today's issue.
WASHINGTON --- Studies of both mice and humans who have traveled into space reveal that critical parts of a cell's energy production machinery, the mitochondria, can be made dysfunctional due to changes in gravity, radiation exposure and other factors, according to investigators at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. These findings are part of an extensive research effort across many scientific disciplines to look at the health effects of travel into space.
Princess Margaret scientists have revealed how stem cells are able to generate new blood cells throughout our life by looking at vast, uncharted regions of our genetic material that hold important clues to subtle biological changes in these cells.
The finding, obtained from studying normal blood, can be used to enhance methods for stem cell transplantation, and may also shed light into processes that occur in cancer cells that allow them to survive chemotherapy and relapse into cancer growth many years after treatment.
Negative effects of shade avoidance syndrome (SAS), where plants reach for more light to overcome shaded conditions, are irreversible and early detection is crucial for sustainable agricultural practices
Study found Raman spectroscopy can detect SAS in plants within a few hours, while conventional methods rely on morphological changes that can take one to three days
New method can be widely applied across various plant species and crops
The future could hold portable and wearable sensors for detecting viruses and bacteria in the surrounding environment. But we're not there yet. Scientists at Tohoku University have been studying materials that can change mechanical into electrical or magnetic energy, and vice versa, for decades. Together with colleagues, they published a review in the journal Advanced Materials about the most recent endeavours into using these materials to fabricate functional biosensors.
An international research group has clarified the action mechanism of incretin-based drugs (*1) in the treatment of diabetes. The research group headed by Professor SEINO Susumu included Researcher Okechi Oduori et al. (Division of Molecular and Metabolic Medicine, Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine), Professor SHIMOMURA Kenju (Fukushima Medical University), Professor Patrik Rorsman (University of Oxford, UK/University of Gothenburg, Sweden), and their teams.
In recent times, the increase in plastic residues has been reasserted as being a major environmental problem. This material, which is present in packaging and day-to-day objects, plays a decisive role in intensive agriculture zones.
A team of scientists has succeeded in visualizing how carbon dioxide (CO2) behaves in an ionic liquid that selectively absorbs CO2. The finding is expected to help develop more efficient methods to capture CO2 in the atmosphere, one of the major factors causing global warming.
Is there a unifying principle underpinning animal locomotion in its rich diversity? A thermodynamic analysis performed by a Skoltech professor and his French collaborators at Université Paris Diderot, Université Paris Saclay, and the Muséum national d'Histoire Naturelle, shows why and how waste minimization prevails on efficiency or power maximization when it comes to free locomotion irrespective of the available mode and gaits. The research is published in the Physical Review Letters.
Researchers at the University of York have created a new modified wheat variety that increases grain production by up to 12%.
Wheat is one of the most important food crops in the world, providing 20% of human calories; with ever increasing global food demand, increasing crop yield is critically important.
Wheat breeders work hard to increase yield to meet global demand, but since the 'green revolution' of the 1960s, the rate of yield increase has been slowing and is currently less than 1% per year.
A team of mathematicians from RUDN University added new symbolic integration functionality to the Sage computerized algebra system. The team implemented ideas and methods suggested by the German mathematician Karl Weierstrass in the 1870s. The results were published in the Journal of Symbolic Computation.
A novel CAR T-cell therapy developed by researchers at UCL and designed to target cancerous tumours, has shown promising early results in children with neuroblastoma, a rare form of childhood cancer.
For this proof-of-principle study, researchers at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute for Child Health (GOS ICH) and the UCL Cancer Institute modified the patient's own T-cells (a type of immune cell), equipping them to recognise and kill neuroblastoma tumour cells.