Tech
An interdisciplinary team of bio-engineers and economists from KU Leuven has mapped out how wood could replace petroleum in the chemical industry. They not only looked at the technological requirements, but also whether that scenario would be financially viable. A shift from petroleum to wood would lead to a reduction in CO2 emissions, the researchers state in Science.
Researchers at Texas Heart Institute (THI) and UCLA crossed a significant milestone in the development of wirelessly powered, leadless pacemakers. In an article in the Nature Research journal Scientific Reports, the team used their innovative pacing system to reveal the ability to provide synchronized biventricular pacing to a human-sized heart in a preclinical research model.
ATHENS, Ohio (Feb. 13, 2020) - Researchers at Ohio University have published a new study in collaboration with Ugandan scientists, cautioning that humans place endangered mountain gorillas at risk of disease transmission during tourism encounters.
UNIVERSITY PARK, PA -Potatoes are often equated with refined grains due to their carbohydrate content. Yet, potatoes contain fiber, resistant starch, and key micronutrients that Americans need more of in their diet. A randomized crossover study that included 50 generally healthy adults directly compared the nutrient quality and impact on cardiometabolic risk factors of non-fried potatoes to refined grains. The study was conducted by researchers at Penn State and was recently published in the British Journal of Nutrition.
What The Study Did: This small trial examined the feasibility and effectiveness of injecting cells with regenerative properties that are from a patient's fat tissue into scarred vocal cords of patients who had difficulty speaking.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
Authors: Alexia Mattei, M.D., of La Conception University Hospital in Marseille, France, is the corresponding author.
(doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2019.4328)
Heat transport in deep Earth controls its thermal evolution. Determination of the thermal conductivity of the lower mantle is one of the central issues for a better understanding of deep Earth phenomena, such as the style of mantle convection, the evolution of the magnetic field, and inner core growth. However, it is poorly understood because deep mantle pressure and temperature conditions are quite difficult to replicate for laboratory experiments.
A co-author from Kazan University, Professor, Corresponding Member of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, Chair of the Department of Astronomy and Space Geodesy Ilfan Bikmaev, explains how the new system was found.
Electrons are interesting particles that can modify their behavior according to their condition of existence. For instance, in a phenomenon called the Mott-transition, electrons begin to interact differently with their neighbors and surroundings in a material. Normally, the electrons in a material have low levels of interaction with each other and therefore, move freely enough for the material to conduct electricity (and the material shows metallic properties).
Organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells have attracted considerable research interest because of advantages of lightweight, flexibility and low-cost solution processing. With the development of organic photoactive materials, especially the new-emerging non-fullerene electron acceptors (NFAs), OPV cells have yielded power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of over 16% in recent years. However, these devices were usually fabricated by spin-coating method at small areas below 0.1 cm2 in laboratories, which are not suitable for future upscale productions.
Parkinson's disease is a long-term (chronic) neurological condition that affects around 12,000 people in Ireland and between 7 and 10 million people worldwide. The disease affects the way the brain co-ordinates body movements like walking and talking, but cognitive abilities are also affected.
There is currently no cure for the disease, but researchers at Trinity have recently published findings of a study which may lead to better treatments for this debilitating illness. The paper has been published in the international Cell Press journal Structure.
The exponential growth in computer processing power seen over the past 60 years may soon come to a halt. Complex systems such as those used in weather forecast, for example, require high computing capacities, but the costs for running supercomputers to process large quantities of data can become a limiting factor. Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany and Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Lugano in Switzerland have recently unveiled an algorithm that can solve complex problems with remarkable facility - even on a personal computer.
Materials with both a high density and a large surface area are required in many applications, typically for energy storage under a limited space. However, they are hard to obtain by using conventional strategies. In the previous study, Quan-Hong Yang et al. reported that graphene oxide (GO) can be used to produce a porous carbon material with a high density of 1.58 g cm-3 from hydrogel by evaporation-induced drying. However, the shrinkage of hydrogels is not yet clearly illustrated and there is still no full understanding of how the capillary forces work.
Chemical reactions are determined at their most fundamental level by their respective electronic structure and dynamics. Steered by a stimulus such as light irradiation, electrons rearrange themselves in liquids or solids. This process takes only a few hundred attoseconds, whereby one attosecond is the billionth part of a billionth of a second. Electrons are sensitive to external fields, so researchers can easily control them by irradiating the electrons with light pulses.
Astrocytes are neural cells with many important functions in the nervous system. The inflammation of these cells occurs in brain infections and neurodegenerative disorders, a process called astrogliosis.
(Millbrook, NY) Tropical forests are allies in the fight against climate change. Growing trees absorb carbon emissions and store them as woody biomass. As a result, reforestation of land once cleared for logging, mining, and agriculture is seen as a powerful tool for locking up large amounts of carbon emissions throughout the South American tropics.
But new research published in Nature Communications shows that the ability of tropical forests to lock up carbon depends upon a group of trees that possess a unique talent - the ability to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere.