During cell division, a ring forms around the cell equator, which contracts to divide the cell into two daughter cells. Together with researchers from Heidelberg, Dresden, Tübingen and Harvard, Professor Jan Kierfeld and Lukas Weise from the Department of Physics at TU Dortmund University have succeeded for the first time in synthesizing such a contractile ring with the help of DNA nanotechnology and to uncover its contraction mechanism. The results have been published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications. In…
ARPA-H awards Columbia researchers nearly $39M to develop a living knee replacement. Columbia biomedical engineers are collaborating with orthopedic surgeons to build a living replacement knee to be tested in clinical trials within five years. A team of researchers from Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) and Columbia Engineering has been awarded up to a $38.95 million contract from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to build a living knee replacement from biomaterials and human stem cells, including a patient’s own cells. ARPA-H is…
Organophosphorus flame retardants are a possible alternative to brominated flame retardants. However, comparative life cycle studies on this type of flame retardant are still lacking. The Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Energy and Safety Technology UMSICHT has now investigated the environmental impact of organophosphorus flame retardants compared to brominated flame retardants in plastic components such as charging plugs for electric cars or USB-C connectors for the first time in a comparative life cycle assessment commissioned by Clariant. Brominated flame retardants are…
Researchers at the University of Leeds and Lancaster University in the UK have identified a new potential target for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease – PDE4B. Alzheimer’s disease is the leading cause of dementia and disability in old age. As the number of people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease is on the increase, new treatments are urgently needed to improve the quality of life for people living with the disease. PDE4B is an enzyme inside cells that breaks down a molecule…
With help from a large language model, MIT engineers enabled robots to self-correct after missteps and carry on with their chores. From wiping up spills to serving up food, robots are being taught to carry out increasingly complicated household tasks. Many such home-bot trainees are learning through imitation; they are programmed to copy the motions that a human physically guides them through. It turns out that robots are excellent mimics. But unless engineers also program them to adjust to every…
Stanford materials engineers have 3D printed tens of thousands of hard-to-manufacture nanoparticles long predicted to yield promising new materials that change form in an instant. In nanomaterials, shape is destiny. That is, the geometry of the particle in the material defines the physical characteristics of the resulting material. “A crystal made of nano-ball bearings will arrange themselves differently than a crystal made of nano-dice and these arrangements will produce very different physical properties,” said Wendy Gu, an assistant professor of…
With a new experimental technique… The behavior of granular materials has been difficult to visualize, but a new method reveals their internal forces in 3D detail. Granular materials, those made up of individual pieces, whether grains of sand or coffee beans or pebbles, are the most abundant form of solid matter on Earth. The way these materials move and react to external forces can determine when landslides or earthquakes happen, as well as more mundane events such as how cereal…
Researchers have successfully transformed CO2 into methanol by shining sunlight on single atoms of copper deposited on a light-activated material, a discovery that paves the way for creating new green fuels. An international team of researchers from the University of Nottingham’s School of Chemistry, University of Birmingham, University of Queensland and University of Ulm have designed a material, made up of copper anchored on nanocrystalline carbon nitride. The copper atoms are nested within the nanocrystalline structure, which allows electrons to move from…
Entropy, the amount of molecular disorder, is produced in several systems but cannot be measured directly. An equation developed by researchers at Chalmers University of Technology and Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, now sheds new light on how entropy is produced on a very short time scale in laser excited materials. “New computational models give us new research opportunities. Extending thermodynamics for ultrashort excitations will provide novel insights into how materials function on the nanoscale,” says Matthias Geilhufe, Assistant Professor at…
A breakthrough in catalysis research leads to a new wall paint that cleans itself when exposed to sunlight and chemically breaks down air pollutants. Typically, beautiful white wall paint does not stay beautiful and white forever. Often, various substances from the air accumulate on its surface. This can be a desired effect because it makes the air cleaner for a while – but over time, the colour changes and needs to be renewed. Qaisar Maqbool and Günther Rupprechter. Credit: TU…
First global study of coastal seas as carbon dioxide reservoirs possible. Coastal seas form a complex transition zone between the two largest CO2 sinks in the global carbon cycle: land and ocean. Ocean researchers have now succeeded for the first time in investigating the role of the coastal ocean in a seamless model representation. The team led by Dr. Moritz Mathis from the Cluster of Excellence for Climate Research CLICCS at Universität Hamburg and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon was able to…
It is important for water management to understand how drought spreads. In a new study, researchers from the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF show that in every third case, atmospheric drought is followed by low water levels. More rarely does drought have a negative impact on groundwater. With climate change, extreme climate events such as longer dry spells are becoming more frequent. This can have a negative impact on water management, for example in agriculture. If a…
Research on protein evolution reveals new starting points for the rapid and targeted development of future drugs. Many important medicines, such as antibiotics and anticancer drugs, are derived from natural products from Bacteria. The enzyme complexes that produce these active ingredients have a modular design that makes them ideal tools for synthetic biology. By exploring protein evolution, a team led by Helge Bode from the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany, has found new “fusion sites” that…
A new study shows how the chemical properties of RNA molecules could have facilitated the emergence of complex life. How was complex life able to develop on the inhospitable early Earth? At the beginning there must have been ribonucleic acid (RNA) to carry the first genetic information. To build up complexity in their sequences, these biomolecules need to release water. On the early Earth, which was largely covered in seawater, that was not so easy to do. In a paper…
Scientists have taken a major step towards developing a blood test that could identify millions of people who spread tuberculosis unknowingly. A breakthrough study has discovered a group of biological markers that are found in high levels among infectious patients. The researchers hope the findings will pave the way for a simple test that can diagnose and stop the spread of the estimated 10 million cases annually. Tuberculosis, or TB, is the world’s deadliest infectious disease and kills more than…
The ice-encrusted oceans of some of the moons orbiting Saturn and Jupiter are leading candidates in the search for extraterrestrial life. A new lab-based study led by the University of Washington in Seattle and the Freie Universität Berlin shows that individual ice grains ejected from these planetary bodies may contain enough material for instruments headed there in the fall to detect signs of life, if such life exists. “For the first time we have shown that even a tiny fraction…
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