Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Researchers & bakers combine to plug mineral gap in UK soil linked to fertility & cancer

A consortium of researchers, farmers and a major baker are working together to fill future supermarket shelves with loaves of bread that will arrest the plummeting levels in the UK diet of a mineral that plays a significant role in male fertility and the prevention of some cancers.

The mineral selenium is of particular importance to men with its role in male fertility and in the prevention of prostate cancer but research has also shown that it can help in the prevention of cardiovascular disease, stimulation of immune function, suppression of inflammatory conditions, and even brain function and development.

The UK’s Food Standards Agency recommends that the daily intake for this key mineral should be 60 to 75 microgrammes per person per day - but UK soils contain low levels of selenium. The average selenium intake in the UK is not only far below that figure but has actually steadily declined between 1986 and 1995 as the proportion of home grown grain used in British bread has increased. Currently the average intake of selenium in Britain stands at just 39 microgrammes a day per person. In 2000 the UK ranked second last in a table of 11 European countries for selenium intake.

Peter Dunn | alfa
Further information:
http://www.warwick.ac.uk

Im Focus: Can the immune system be boosted against Staphylococcus aureus by delivery of messenger RNA?

Staphylococcus aureus is a feared pathogen (MRSA, multi-resistant S. aureus) due to frequent resistances against many antibiotics, especially in hospital infections. Researchers at the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut have identified immunological processes that prevent a successful immune response directed against the pathogenic agent. The delivery of bacterial proteins with RNA adjuvant or messenger RNA (mRNA) into immune cells allows the re-direction of the immune response towards an active defense against S. aureus. This could be of significant importance for the development of an effective vaccine. PLOS Pathogens has published these research results online on 25 May 2017.

Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is a bacterium that colonizes by far more than half of the skin and the mucosa of adults, usually without causing infections....

Im Focus: A quantum walk of photons

Physicists from the University of Würzburg are capable of generating identical looking single light particles at the push of a button. Two new studies now demonstrate the potential this method holds.

The quantum computer has fuelled the imagination of scientists for decades: It is based on fundamentally different phenomena than a conventional computer....

Im Focus: Turmoil in sluggish electrons’ existence

An international team of physicists has monitored the scattering behaviour of electrons in a non-conducting material in real-time. Their insights could be beneficial for radiotherapy.

We can refer to electrons in non-conducting materials as ‘sluggish’. Typically, they remain fixed in a location, deep inside an atomic composite. It is hence...

Im Focus: Wafer-thin Magnetic Materials Developed for Future Quantum Technologies

Two-dimensional magnetic structures are regarded as a promising material for new types of data storage, since the magnetic properties of individual molecular building blocks can be investigated and modified. For the first time, researchers have now produced a wafer-thin ferrimagnet, in which molecules with different magnetic centers arrange themselves on a gold surface to form a checkerboard pattern. Scientists at the Swiss Nanoscience Institute at the University of Basel and the Paul Scherrer Institute published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.

Ferrimagnets are composed of two centers which are magnetized at different strengths and point in opposing directions. Two-dimensional, quasi-flat ferrimagnets...

Im Focus: World's thinnest hologram paves path to new 3-D world

Nano-hologram paves way for integration of 3-D holography into everyday electronics

An Australian-Chinese research team has created the world's thinnest hologram, paving the way towards the integration of 3D holography into everyday...