Tech
As people binge watch TV shows and movies during this period of physical distancing, they may find themselves eerily drawn to fictional villains, from Voldemort and Vader to Maleficent and Moriarty. Rather than being seduced by the so-called dark side, the allure of evil characters has a reassuringly scientific explanation.
According to new research published in the journal Psychological Science, people may find fictional villains surprisingly likeable when they share similarities with the viewer or reader.
Using just electrostatic charge, common microparticles can spontaneously organize themselves into highly ordered crystalline materials--the equivalent of table salt or opals, according to a new study led by New York University chemists and published in Nature.
"Our research shines new light on self-assembly processes that could be used to manufacture new functional materials," said Stefano Sacanna, associate professor of chemistry at NYU and the study's senior author.
Many cells in the inner lining of the uterus carry 'cancer-driving' mutations that frequently arise early in life, report scientists from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the University of Cambridge and their collaborators. The research team conducted whole-genome sequencing of healthy human endometrium, providing a comprehensive overview of the rates and patterns of DNA changes in this tissue.
The work, published today (22 April 2020) in Nature, provides insights into the earliest stages of uterine cancer development.
Scientists of Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) in partnership with colleagues from ITMO University, and universities in Germany, Japan, and Australia, have developed a method for precise, fast and high-quality laser processing of halide perovskites (CH3NH3PbI3), promising light-emitting materials for solar energy, optical electronics, and metamaterials. Structured by very short laser pulses (femtosecond laser) perovskites turned out to be functional nanoelements marked by unprecedented quality. A related article is published in Small.
Galaxies grow large by eating their smaller neighbours, new research reveals.
Exactly how massive galaxies attain their size is poorly understood, not least because they swell over billions of years. But now a combination of observation and modelling from researchers led by Dr Anshu Gupta from Australia's ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) has provided a vital clue.
In humans (as well as all other organisms) genes encode proteins, which in turn regulate all the different specific cellular functions of the body. The genetic information found in our DNA is first converted into messenger RNA (mRNA) by a process called transcription. The mRNA acts as a template as it is read by intracellular organelles called ribosomes, which then create (or translate) the appropriate protein from the correct amino acid components. miRNAs are short noncoding RNAs that do not make any protein.
Hurricanes moving slowly over an area can cause more damage than faster-moving storms, because the longer a storm lingers, the more time it has to pound an area with storm winds and drop huge volumes of rain, leading to flooding. The extraordinary damage caused by storms like Dorian (2019), Florence (2018) and Harvey (2017) prompted Princeton's Gan Zhang to wonder whether global climate change will make these slow-moving storms more common.
In everyday life, our tissues, for example skin and muscle, are stretched, pulled and compressed without causing damage to the cells or the DNA. A team of researchers led by Sara Wickström from the Max Planck Institute for the Biology of Ageing and the CECAD Cluster of Excellence at the University of Cologne and the Helsinki Institute for Life Sciences at the University of Helsinki has now discovered that cells protect themselves from such stress by not only deforming the cell nuclei, but also softening the genetic material itself.
Tejas Patil, MD, is a medical oncologist. Lisa Ferrigno, MD, MPH, FACS, is a trauma surgeon. Working with lung cancer patients at University of Colorado Cancer Center, they both, independently, noticed something strange: A small percentage of patients taking high doses of the drug osimertinib (Tagrisso) were developing a rare twist in the right side of their colon, a condition called cecal volvulus.
Everyone who has used the YouTube video platform has already had the feeling: the successive recommendations generated by the site's algorithm sometimes "confine" us in a bubble of similar content. Camille Roth, a CNRS researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch - Franco-German Research Centre for the Social Sciences (CNRS/MEAE/MESRI/BMBF), and his colleagues Antoine Mazières and Telmo Menezes, have studied this phenomenon by exploring recommendations from a thousand videos on different subjects, thereby running through half a million recommendations.
Kanazawa, Japan - Concrete is the most widely used building material in the world and consequently is being continuously developed to fulfill modern-day requirements. Efforts to improve concrete strength have led to reports of porosity-free concrete (PFC), the hardest concrete tested to date. Some of the basic properties of PFC have already been explored, and now a team including Kanazawa University has probed the impact response of this innovative material. Their findings are published in International Journal of Civil Engineering.
DURHAM, N.C. -- Researchers from Duke University have devised a method for estimating the air quality over a small patch of land using nothing but satellite imagery and weather conditions. Such information could help researchers identify hidden hotspots of dangerous pollution, greatly improve studies of pollution on human health, or potentially tease out the effects of unpredictable events on air quality, such as the breakout of an airborne global pandemic.
The results appear online in the journal Atmospheric Environment.
"The results of this vaccine trial are also important and promising with regard to the development of a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus," explains Prof. Marylyn Addo, Head of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the UKE and scientist at the DZIF. "The development of the MERS vaccine provides a basis upon which we at the DZIF can rapidly develop a vaccine against the new coronavirus."
ITHACA, N.Y. - Cornell University researchers who build nanoscale electronics have developed microsensors so tiny, they can fit 30,000 on one side of a penny. They are equipped with an integrated circuit, solar cells and light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that enable them to harness light for power and communication. And because they are mass fabricated, with up to 1 million sitting on an 8-inch wafer, each device costs a fraction of that same penny.
Home- and center-based child care providers are not required by most states or U.S. territories to inform parents when guns are stored on the premises, according to a new study from researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.