Tech
A new material that stiffens 1,800-fold when exposed to heat could protect motorcyclists and racecar drivers during accidents.
Hokkaido University researchers have developed a hydrogel that does the opposite of what polymer-based materials, like plastic bottles, normally do: their material hardens when heated and softens when cooled. Their findings, published in the journal Advanced Materials, could lead to the fabrication of protective clothing items for traffic and sports-related accidents.
Researchers in Finland are "training" pieces of plastic to walk under the command of light. The method developed, published December 4 in the journal Matter, is the first time a synthetic actuator "learns" to do new "tricks" based on its past experiences, without computer programming.
Conditioning is a method made famous by Ivan Pavlov's experiments with dogs. Pavlov trained a dog by ringing a bell every time the dog was fed. The dog learned to associate the bell with food, and then drooled when it heard the bell ring, even if it didn't see anything to eat. In an earlier study, researchers at Aalto University and Tampere University succeeded in conditioning a solid gel so that it melted to become liquid under the influence of light alone. Now, the same researchers have taught a liquid crystal polymer to move, and to stick to an object of a given colour.
Nearly six million Americans have heart failure, a leading driver of health care costs in the United States. The "stiff heart" heart failure variant accounts for about half of all cases and the vast majority of such patients take beta-blocker medications despite unclear benefit from their regular use. A new publication in JAMA Network Open links use of beta-blockers to heart failure hospitalizations among those with this common "stiff heart" heart failure subtype.
A recent analysis offers estimates of the changes in incidence of Alzheimer's disease in the United States, confirming previous reports of a declining trend. The analysis, which is published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, also highlights considerable geographic variation in incidence rates across the country.
New research indicates that social media is leading young adolescent girls and boys down a worrying path towards developing body image issues and eating disorder behaviours - even though they are smartphone savvy.
The Australian research, published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders (Wiley), found platforms with a strong focus on image posting and viewing such as Instagram and Snapchat are the most used and the most risky.
The cooperation of two Prague research institutes - Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry and Institute of Microbiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Brno based start-up CF Plus Chemicals, a spin-off of ETH Zurich, has brought a new technology called CF LINK for site-selective bioconjugation of proteins and also their structural characterization. The recently published, patent-pending technology, allows to selectively prepare protein conjugates via their tryptophan residues and perform posttranslational modification of aromatic amino acids.
The small-world property is a property of networks in which, despite a large number of nodes, it is possible to find short communication paths between them.
Discovered in the field of social sciences in the 1960s, the phenomenon known as small-world has fascinated popular culture and science for decades. It arose from the observation that in the world, any two people are connected by a short chain of social ties.
The cover for issue 63 of Oncotarget features Figure 6, "Inverse relationship between ETV7 and SERPINE1 in OSCC," by Salameti, et al.
In this study, the research team investigated NOTCH1 mutations in keratinocyte lines derived from OSCC biopsies that had been subjected to whole exome sequencing.
One line, SJG6, was found to have truncating mutations in both NOTCH1 alleles, resulting in loss of NOTCH1 expression.
Diffractive deep neural network is an optical machine learning framework that blends deep learning with optical diffraction and light-matter interaction to engineer diffractive surfaces that collectively perform optical computation at the speed of light. A diffractive neural network is first designed in a computer using deep learning techniques, followed by the physical fabrication of the designed layers of the neural network using e.g., 3D printing or lithography.
Climate worries go hand in hand with CO2 emissions concerns. Emissions hit an all-time high last year. The CO2 level in the atmosphere may be higher than it's been in 3 million years.
Carbon capture will most likely be necessary to reduce the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. To accomplish that, we need the technology and materials to do the job. Recently a promising and surprising new candidate has emerged.
It is incompletely understood which factors in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) act as a trigger for the immune system to attack the brain and spinal cord. A potential factor is described by a research team in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS. The medical researchers used an animal model to show that the protein Smad7 mobilises immune cells in the intestines which, in turn, trigger inflammation in the central nervous system.
Researchers at the University of Eastern Finland have developed two new cell models that can open up new avenues for ocular drug discovery. The new cell models are continuously growing retinal pigment epithelial cells, which have many benefits over the models currently used by researchers and pharmaceutical companies. The models were developed by Professor Arto Urtti's Ocular Drug Delivery group at the University of Eastern Finland.
Researchers from Tohoku University have discovered a new petit-spot volcano at the oldest section of the Pacific Plate. The research team, led by Associate Professor Naoto Hirano of the Center for Northeast Asian Studies, published their discovery in the in the journal Deep-Sea Research Part I.
A new study from Swansea University has given new insights into how the greenhouse gas methane is being produced in the surface waters of lakes, which should signal a rethink on the global methane cycle.
After carbon dioxide, methane is the second most important carbon-based greenhouse gas and its continuous increase in the atmosphere is a global climate threat.