Tech
- In a world-first, engineers at Monash University in Australia have developed a diagnostic that can help deliver urgent treatment to people at risk of dying from rapid blood loss.
- This simple, cheap and portable diagnostic measures fibrinogen concentration in blood. Fibrinogen is needed for clotting and stops people bleeding to death from traumatic injury and major surgery.
- The diagnostic can be performed using a fresh whole blood sample, not just plasma, and can be performed in under four minutes.
The freezing of water is one of the most common processes. However, understanding the microstructure of ice and its hydrogen-bonding networks has been a challenge.
The low-energy structure of water octamer is predicted to be nominally cubic, with eight tri-coordinated water molecules at the eight corners of the cube. Such tri-coordinated water molecules have been identified at the surface of ice.
Only a few gas-phase studies have been achieved for experimental characterization of water octamer, and two nearly isoenergetic structures with D2d and S4 symmetry are found.
One of the biggest challenges in making hydrogen production clean and cheap has been finding an alternative catalyst necessary for the chemical reaction that produces the gas, one that is much cheaper and abundant than the very expensive and rare platinum that is currently used. Researchers in Korea have now found a way to 'snip' into tiny nanoribbons a cheap and plentiful substance that fits the bill, boosting its catalytic efficiency to at least that of platinum.
Tohoku University researchers have revealed more details about omnidirectional photoluminescence (ODPL) spectroscopy - a method for probing semiconducting crystals with light to detect defects and impurities.
"Our findings confirm the accuracy of ODPL measurements and show the possibility to measure optical absorption of crystals by the ODPL method, making the process much easier," says Tohoku University materials scientist Kazunobu Kojima.
A popular narrative holds that social media network Twitter influenced the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections by helping Republican candidate Donald Trump spread partisan content and misinformation. In a recent interview with CBS News, Trump himself stated he "would not be here without social media."
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Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers report that new experiments with genetically engineered mice have found clear connections among a range of autism types and abnormalities in brain cells whose chemical output forges platonic (non-sexual) feelings of love and sociability.
The findings, the researchers say, could eventually fuel the development of autism therapies that target disease symptoms spurred on by abnormalities in parvocellular oxytocin neurons, which are brain cells in the hypothalamus of mammals.
New microcarrier, or particle used in bioreactor-based cell manufacturing, offers significantly higher harvest of cells grown with over 90% harvest rate compared to 50-60% rate seen in current standards
Homogenous microcarrier dimensions facilitate uniform environmental conditions for controlling consistent cell numbers per microcarrier
Facilitates expansion of mesenchymal stromal cells used to treat various ailments such as heart attacks, bone defects and immune system rejection of cell therapies
In 2009, the European Union's Renewable Energy Directive (EU RED) established goals to produce more energy from renewable sources, triggering exponential growth in the solid biomass trade. By 2018, the EU was trading over 18 million tons of wood pellets, with a third imported from the southeastern United States.
Researchers from Skoltech and their US colleagues have designed a new machine learning-based approach for detecting atrial fibrillation drivers, small patches of the heart muscle that are hypothesized to cause this most common type of cardiac arrhythmia. This approach may lead to more efficient targeted medical interventions to treat the condition that is estimated to affect more than 33 million people worldwide, according to the American Heart Association. The recent paper was published in the journal Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology.
Foxes are considered to be particularly adaptable and suited to life in large cities. A team of scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) in cooperation with the Berlin-Brandenburg State Laboratory has now deciphered an important aspect of these adaptations. Using stable isotope analysis, they showed that individual red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) have a much narrower diet than might be expected from their omnivorous habits.
For over a century, scientists have been puzzled by the electrification of water when it is brought in contact with water-repellent or "hydrophobic" materials, such as paraffin wax, oils, air bubbles and perfluorinated membranes and sheets. Underlying mechanisms remain hotly debated. Now, a team of KAUST engineers has untangled the roles of water, hydrophobicity and environmental factors in this process. This fundamental contribution could support development of better devices for microfluidics and nanofluidics and for generating clean energy.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Vestal Grove in the Somme Prairie Grove forest preserve in Cook County, Illinois, looks nothing like the scrubby, buckthorn-choked tangle that confronted restoration ecologists 37 years ago. Thanks to the efforts of a dedicated team that focused on rooting up invasive plants and periodically burning, seeding native plants and culling deer, the forest again resembles its ancient self, researchers report in the journal PLOS ONE.
Anti-NMDAR encephalitis is an autoimmune brain illness that is often mistaken by a psychiatric disorder since it causes psychoses and other behaviour alterations. Despite having these similarities, the illness does not respond to common antipsychotic treatments.
During photosynthesis, plants take in CO2 from the environment and, with the help of sunlight, convert it into energy-rich sugars. CO2 uptake is regulated via the opening and closing of small pores on the leaf known as stomata. However, when stomata are open, water is lost from the plant through transpiration. Therefore, a balance must be struck between water loss and CO2 uptake. In C3 photosynthesis, the stomata open during the day when sunlight is available.