Two proposals for missions led by the University of Leicester receive £500,000 funding from UK Space Agency. How the Sun influences the atmosphere, space weather and habitability of a planet, as well as the space between the stars, could be investigated by two proposed UK space missions, led by the University of Leicester. A total of nearly £500,000 funding has been granted by the UK Space Agency to two teams based at Space Park Leicester, the University of Leicester’s £100…
GPU Cluster for Generative AI & Machine Learning. The Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) today announced it is investing in a state-of-the-art cluster of over 100 NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs to enhance its computing infrastructure and scale up machine learning for academic research. The latest-generation GPU cluster specializes in training large language models for generative AI and machine learning. The Institute-funded, multi-million investment helps accelerate AI research in the public sphere at scale and consolidates ISTA as…
Around half of the human genome is composed of DNA fragments originating from ancient viruses. These “transposable elements” (TEs) are now known to play various roles in modulating gene expression and disease development. Now, an international team led by KAUST researchers has shown that a common transposable element called LINE-1 RNA plays a positive role in triggering bone repair, with potential applications in treating osteoporosis and many other diseases[1]. “Once termed ‘junk DNA,’ scientists thought that TEs were irrelevant or…
New study details how large-scale, cost-effective use of high-temperature superconducting wire is another step closer to reality. Our energy future may depend on high-temperature superconducting (HTS) wires. This technology’s ability to carry electricity without resistance at temperatures higher than those required by traditional superconductors could revolutionize the electric grid and even enable commercial nuclear fusion. Yet these large-scale applications won’t happen until HTS wires can be fabricated at a price-performance metric equal to that of the plain copper wire sold…
New printing method creates branching vessels in heart tissue that replicate the structure of human vasculature in vitro. Growing functional human organs outside the body is a long-sought “holy grail” of organ transplantation medicine that remains elusive. New research from Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) brings that quest one big step closer to completion. A team of scientists created a new method to 3D print vascular networks that consist…
Researchers have demonstrated a technique for creating sensors that can function both in air and underwater. The approach paves the way for “amphibious” sensors with applications ranging from wildlife monitoring to biomedical applications. The new findings are focused on strain sensors, which measure deformation – meaning they can be used to measure how things stretch, bend and move. “For example, there is interest in creating strain sensors that can be used in biomedical applications – such as sensors that can…
Findings can be used to accelerate the creation of female stem cell lines in mice and boost efforts in medical research, drug testing, and regenerative therapies. Researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) have discovered a treatment which accelerates the production and quality of pluripotent stem cells in mice. This discovery that has the potential to improve disease modelling and drug testing for individuals with two X chromosomes; women, transgender men or men with an extra X chromosome in…
Researchers have developed an inexpensive bandage that uses an electric field to promote healing in chronic wounds. In animal testing, wounds that were treated with these electric bandages healed 30% faster than wounds treated with conventional bandages. Chronic wounds are open wounds that heal slowly, if they heal at all. For example, sores that occur in some patients with diabetes are chronic wounds. These wounds are particularly problematic because they often recur after treatment and significantly increase the risk of…
Device uses sound waves to gather blood pressure data from blood vessels, monitoring the response with ultrasound. Solving a decades-old problem, a multidisciplinary team of Caltech researchers has figured out a method to noninvasively and continually measure blood pressure anywhere on the body with next to no disruption to the patient. A device based on the new technique holds the promise to enable better vital-sign monitoring at home, in hospitals, and possibly even in remote locations where resources are limited….
Organofluorine compounds — sometimes called ‘forever chemicals’ — are increasingly turning up in our drinking water, oceans and even human blood, posing a potential threat to the environment and human health. Now, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a way to fingerprint them, which could help authorities trace them to their source when they end up in aquifers, waterways or soil. The technique involves passing samples through a strong magnetic field then reading the burst of…
Researchers at Michigan State University have discovered two proteins that work together to determine the fate of cells in plants facing certain stresses. Ironically, a key discovery in this finding, published recently in Nature Communications, was made right as the project’s leader was getting ready to destress. A Michigan State University researcher carefully plates Arabidopsis seeds, which consists of placing seeds in water and dropping them one at a time onto a plate with a growth substrate. Once the seeds sprout,…
Team discovers Magnon-phonon Fermi resonance in an antiferromagnet. Soon, data storage centers are expected to consume almost 10 percent of the world’s energy generation. This increase is, among other things, due to intrinsic limitations of the materials used – ferromagnets. Consequently, this problem has ignited a quest for faster and more energy efficient materials. One of the most encouraging pathways are antiferromagnets – materials that not only promise more robust and 1.000 times faster read and write operations but also…
Gold does not readily lend itself to being turned into long, thin threads. But researchers at Linköping University in Sweden have now managed to create gold nanowires and develop soft electrodes that can be connected to the nervous system. The electrodes are soft as nerves, stretchable and electrically conductive, and are projected to last for a long time in the body. Some people have a “heart of gold”, so why not “nerves of gold”? In the future, it may be…
New approach for the production of resource-saving and durable catalysts benefits from varying interactions between noble metals and different carrier materials. The Objective: Best Possible Catalytic Performance Noble-metal catalysts are used in many processes in the chemical industry. A reduction of the amount of noble metal required for their production is an important contribution to a sustainable resource use. “Our approach will significantly improve the catalyst stability and ensure the formation of active noble-metal clusters even with a very low…
… advances understanding of processes applicable to brain-like computing. Charge density waves have applications in next-generation and energy-efficient computing. Today’s supercomputers consume vast amounts of energy, equivalent to the power usage of thousands of homes. In response, researchers are developing a more energy-efficient form of next-generation supercomputing that leverages artificial neural networks. These networks mimic the processes of neurons, the basic unit in the human brain. This mimicry could be achieved through the charge density waves that occur in certain materials. Charge density…
A team of researchers from the lab of Prof. Stein Aerts (VIB-KU Leuven) presents Nova-ST, a new spatial transcriptomics technique that promises to transform gene expression profiling in tissue samples. Nova-ST will make large-scale, high-resolution spatial tissue analysis more accessible and affordable, offering significant benefits for researchers. The research was published in Cell Reports Methods. Transcriptomics is the study of gene expression in a cell or a population of cells, but it usually does not include spatial information about where…
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