Tech
AMHERST, Mass. - Cell biologist Thomas Maresca and senior research fellow Vikash Verma at the University of Massachusetts Amherst say they have, for the first time, directly observed and recorded in animal cells a pathway called branching microtubule nucleation, a mechanism in cell division that had been imaged in cellular extracts and plant cells but not directly observed in animal cells. Details appear this month in the Journal of Cell Biology.
WASHINGTON -- Detecting landmines can be a challenging and slow process. Detecting them from a moving vehicle would make the process more speedy, but at the expense of accuracy.
Inspired by octopuses, researchers have developed a structure that senses, computes and responds without any centralized processing - creating a device that is not quite a robot and not quite a computer, but has characteristics of both. The new technology holds promise for use in a variety of applications, from soft robotics to prosthetic devices.
While computers have become smaller and more powerful and supercomputers and parallel computing have become the standard, we are about to hit a wall in energy and miniaturization. Now, Penn State researchers have designed a 2D device that can provide more than yes-or-no answers and could be more brainlike than current computing architectures.
A new nanomaterial developed by scientists at the University of Bath could solve a conundrum faced by scientists probing some of the most promising types of future pharmaceuticals.
Scientists who study the nanoscale - with molecules and materials 10,000 smaller than a pinhead - need to be able to test the way that some molecules twist, known as their chirality, because mirror image molecules with the same structure can have very different properties. For instance one kind of molecule smells of lemons when it twists in one direction, and oranges when twisted the other way.
Researchers from China, France and the USA have evaluated China's success in stemming emissions from its coal-fired power plants (CPPs).
CPPs are one of the main contributors to air pollution in China, and their proliferation over the last 20 years has had significant impacts on air quality and public health.
These impacts led authorities to introduce measures to control emissions from CPPs and reduce their effects.
New research from Cass Business School has found that battery icons on mobile phones shape how people view time and space, and how battery conservation practices define user identities.
The study of London commuters found that respondents viewed their daily trip in terms of the time and distance between charging points for mobile technology.
"People no longer think about their destination being 10 km away or 10 stops on the tube. They think about it being 50 per cent of their battery away," said the study's lead author, Dr Thomas Robinson.
Highlights
There has been a substantial increase in the number of transplants using HCV-infected kidneys across the United States.
Since September 2018, most HCV-infected kidneys were transplanted into patients without the infection.
HCV-infected kidneys function just as well as uninfected kidneys throughout the year after transplantation.
Topological insulators are a game-changing class of materials; charged particles can flow freely on their edges and route themselves around defects, but can't pass through their interiors. This perfect surface conduction holds promise for fast and efficient electronic circuits, though engineers must contend with the fact that the interiors of such materials are effectively wasted space.
A simple epidemiological model accurately captures long-term measles transmission dynamics in London, including major perturbations triggered by historical events. Alexander Becker of Princeton University in New Jersey, U.S., and colleagues present these findings in PLOS Computational Biology.
Life on Earth is amazingly diverse, and exhibits striking geographical global patterns in biodiversity. A pair of companion papers published Sept. 13 in Science reveal that mountain regions -- especially those in the tropics -- are hotspots of extraordinary and baffling richness. Although mountain regions cover only 25% of Earth's land area, they are home to more than 85% of the world's species of amphibians, birds, and mammals, and many of these are found only in mountains.
Amid ongoing uncertainty around the value of the Hubble Constant, uncertainty largely created by issues around measuring distances to objects in the galaxy, scientists who used a new distance technique have derived a different Hubble value, one "somewhat higher than the standard value," as Tamara Davis describes it in a related Perspective.
Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience researchers have overturned the long held view that congenital nystagmus, a condition where eyes make repetitive involuntary movements, is a brain disorder by showing that its cause is actually retinal. Deficits in just a few proteins involved in one of the retina's earliest light-signal processing steps result in the eye sending an erroneous movement signal to the brain rhythmically. Each time the brain receives a movement "pulse" it initiates an eye movement to compensate for the motion signaled.
A woman's bone marrow may determine her ability to start and sustain a pregnancy, report Yale researchers in PLOS Biology. The study shows that when an egg is fertilized, stem cells leave the bone marrow and travel via the bloodstream to the uterus, where they help transform the uterine lining for implantation. If the lining fails to go through this essential transformation, the embryo cannot implant, and the body terminates the pregnancy.
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Human hands are remarkably skilled at manipulating a range of objects. We can pick up an egg or a strawberry without smashing it. We can hammer a nail.
One characteristic that allows us to perform a variety of tasks is the ability to alter the firmness of our grip, and University at Buffalo engineers have developed a two-fingered robotic hand that shares this trait.