Tech
Milan, 5 March 2020 - An article was published in the journal Advanced Materials, and will appear on the front cover of the March 5th issue, demonstrating a new methodology for generating and manipulating spin waves in nanostructured magnetic materials. This work opens the way to developing nano-processors for extraordinarily quick and energy efficient analog processing of information.
Researchers from the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have made a promising new advance for the lab's high-speed "electron camera" that could allow them to "film" tiny, ultrafast motions of protons and electrons in chemical reactions that have never been seen before. Such "movies" could eventually help scientists design more efficient chemical processes, invent next-generation materials with new properties, develop drugs to fight disease and more.
Recently, an article was published in the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics scientific journal, where the method of digital holography for assessing the parameters of composite materials was described. In particular, materials with ceramic spraying, which significantly increase resistance to temperature influences. And the spraying is carried out by a plasma jet at a very high temperature. After cooling the material, residual stresses arise in it, which can affect its strength characteristics.
High-definition images of minute objects are standard these days including the imaging of bacteria and viruses, and even molecules and individual atoms in extremely fine details. Atomic force microscopy, which involves bringing a vibrating tip into contact with or close to the sample surface, is often used for this purpose. Until now, however, the choice was between fast imaging techniques, which run the risk of destroying sensitive samples, and gentle imaging techniques that take more time.
The application areas of genome-scale metabolic models are widespread, ranging from designing cell factories, investigating cancer metabolism, to analysing how microbes interact within our guts. Hence, the number of publications of manually and automatically generated models has been growing every year. This could be considered solely as a positive matter, but a lot of the data are very difficult for others to reproduce and reuse in different contexts.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - A study of social interactions among vampire bats that felt sick suggests family comes first when illness strikes - and may help explain which social interactions are most likely to contribute to disease transmission.
Most social interactions for bats that felt sick diminished, but vampire bat moms maintained close social connections with their kin. They continued to groom their offspring even if the youngsters seemed sick, and mothers that felt sick also kept grooming their healthy offspring.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Just like humans, dogs are sometimes born with impaired hearing or experience hearing loss as a result of disease, inflammation, aging or exposure to noise. Dog owners and K-9 handlers ought to keep this in mind when adopting or caring for dogs, and when bringing them into noisy environments, says Dr.
Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem demonstrated in mice that intestinal bacteria reprogram DNA activity in cells of the gut mucosa and thus have a considerable impact on the development of the healthy gut. Acute intestinal inflammation induced under experimental conditions led to a huge increase in the activity of inflammation-related and cancer-promoting genes in the mucous membrane cells of microbe-colonized animals.
Bacteria can perceive how many they are. They release and sense signaling molecules that accumulate with increasing cell numbers, which allows them to change their behavior when a certain group size is reached. A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg and Heidelberg University has now been able to show that bacteria might be capable of even more: they could perceive the proportions of different groups of bacteria in their environment.
WILMINGTON, Del. (March 5, 2020) - Researchers with Nemours Children's Health System utilized Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) to more precisely identify genomic characteristics of leukemias in children, the most common childhood cancer. The study, published today in BMC Medical Genomics, identified new genetic structural variants that could be used to assess the presence of minimal residual disease during the course of chemotherapy and help determine response to various therapies.
A drug that is already clinically available for the treatment of nausea and psychosis, called prochlorperazine (PCZ), inhibits the internalization of receptors on the surface of tumor cells, thereby increasing the ability of anticancer antibodies to bind to the receptors and mount more effective immune responses. PCZ enhanced the ability of anticancer antibodies to reduce tumor growth in mice, by temporarily increasing the clustering of a receptor targeted by anticancer antibodies on the surface of tumor cells.
Animals eating plants might seem like an obvious way to suppress fire, and humans are already using the enormous appetites of goats, deer, and cows to reduce the fuel available for potential wildfires. But other animals such as birds, termites, and elephants can also double as ecosystem engineers, naturally reducing or enhancing the chances, spread, or severity of wildfires as they go about their day-to-day grass-chewing, track-making, or nest-building.
Researchers have assembled one of the most comprehensive studies of population genetics ever conducted in the United States, bringing together large-scale genetics data from more than 32,000 participants in the National Geographic Genographic Project. This new view on the US, appearing March 5 in the American Journal of Human Genetics, reveals a remarkable degree of complexity. Beyond offering an intriguing view of the nation's recent history, the findings also have important implications for health and medicine, the researchers say.
A molecular tweak has improved organic solar cell performance, bringing us closer to cheaper, efficient, and more easily manufactured photovoltaics. The new design approach, targeting the molecular backbone of the cell's power-generating layer, was developed by scientists at Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) and published in the journal Chemical Science.
Astronomers have recently raised concerns about the impact of satellite mega-constellations on scientific research. To better understand the effect these constellations could have on astronomical observations, ESO commissioned a scientific study of their impact, focusing on observations with ESO telescopes in the visible and infrared but also considering other observatories.