For the first time without any chemical treatment, a research team analyses extraterrestrial amino acids and other organic compounds in an English meteorite fall. Meteorites are fragments of asteroids which find their way to Earth as shooting stars and provide information on the origins of our solar system. A team of researchers has examined the so-called Winchcombe meteorite and demonstrated the existence in it of nitrogen compounds such as amino acids and heterocyclic hydrocarbons – without applying any chemical treatment…
Researchers at OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences have embarked on a revolutionary new research study that could improve the detection of a deadly disease — pancreatic cancer — and give patients a chance to live longer, healthier lives. The research focuses on an innovative combination of imaging techniques: a newly created contrast agent that recognizes pancreatic cancer cells, paired with Multispectral Optoacoustic Tomography, or MSOT. Together, the approach can detect pancreatic cancer cells…
The spongelike structure of metal organic frameworks (MOFs) allows these polymers to possibly carry and deliver a range of therapeutic compounds. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Bio Materials treated a chromium-containing MOF with a dose of acetic acid, more concentrated than in vinegar, to expand its pore size and surface area. The puffed-up MOFs held more ibuprofen or chemotherapy drug compared to the original version and had improved performance as a potential drug-delivery vehicle. Taking medications by mouth is…
What happens when you expose tellurite glass to femtosecond laser light? That’s the question that Gözden Torun at the Galatea Lab, in a collaboration with Tokyo Tech scientists, aimed to answer in her thesis work when she made the discovery that may one day turn windows into single material light-harvesting and sensing devices. The results are published in PR Applied. Interested in how the atoms in the tellurite glass would reorganize when exposed to fast pulses of high energy femtosecond…
Humans are attracted to symmetry: in our buildings, our gardens, in our potential partners. For plants, the symmetrical shapes of organs are a matter of survival because the form directly impacts the function. If we can unravel the mechanisms underlying the shapes of leaves, petals, or the complex reproductive parts of plants, then it may be possible to fine tune this physiology to make our crops more sustainable and productive. A challenge is the huge morphological diversity of these shapes…
– builds excitement for Perseverance rover’s samples. Findings reveal eons of environmental changes and offer hope that the rover’s soil and rock samples hold traces of life. If life ever existed on Mars, the Perseverance rover’s verification of lake sediments at the base of the Jezero crater reinforces the hope that traces might be found in the crater. In new research published in the journal Science Advances, a team led by UCLA and The University of Oslo shows that at…
Researchers develop implantable device that can record a collection of individual neurons over months. Recording the activity of large populations of single neurons in the brain over long periods of time is crucial to further our understanding of neural circuits, to enable novel medical device-based therapies and, in the future, for brain–computer interfaces requiring high-resolution electrophysiological information. But today there is a tradeoff between how much high-resolution information an implanted device can measure and how long it can maintain recording…
Wash U researchers amplify neuron signals from insect brain to achieve better chemical sensing performance. Our sensory systems are highly adaptable. A person who cannot see after turning off a light in the night slowly achieves superior power to see even small objects. Women often attain a heightened sense of smell during pregnancy. How can the same sensory system that was underperforming can also exceed the expectation based on its prior performance? Since nature has perfected its sensory systems over…
Study opens up new paradigm in skyrmionics research. Researchers at the University of Augsburg and the University of Vienna have discovered co-existing magnetic skyrmions and antiskyrmions of arbitrary topological charge at room temperature in magnetic Co/Ni multilayer thin films. Their findings have been published in the renowned journal Nature Physics and open up the possibility for a new paradigm in skyrmionics research. The discovery of novel spin objects with arbitrary topological charge promises to contribute to advances in fundamental and…
University of Stuttgart strengthens promising field of research. Quantum computers are regarded as one of the next big sensations in science and industry. What the basic building blocks of technically mature computers, the qubits, will consist of in the future, is still a current research question. Dr. Lorenzo Tesi from the Institute of Physical Chemistry at the University of Stuttgart is investigating molecular spin qubits. The chemical scientist is establishing an Emmy Noether junior research group for the still young…
HKU physicists overcoming optical loss in polariton system with synthetic complex frequency waves. A collaborative research team co-led by Professor Shuang ZHANG, the Interim Head of the Department of Physics, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), along with Professor Qing DAI from National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, China, has introduced a solution to a prevalent issue in the realm of nanophotonics – the study of light at an extremely small scale. Their findings, recently published in the prestigious academic…
It is easy to be optimistic about hydrogen as an ideal fuel. It is much more difficult to come up with a solution to an absolutely fundamental problem: how to store this fuel efficiently? A Swiss-Polish team of experimental and theoretical physicists has found the answer to the question of why previous attempts to use the promising magnesium hydride for this purpose have proved unsatisfactory – and why they may succeed in the future. Hydrogen has long been seen as…
How Gamma Rays Track the Velocity of the Galactic Microquasar SS 433’s Jets and Uncover Highly Efficient Particle Acceleration. The science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke selected his own seven wonders of the world in a BBC television series in 1997. The only astronomical object he included was SS 433. It had attracted attention already in the late 1970s due to its X-ray emission and was later discovered to be at the center of a gas nebula that is dubbed…
For the first time, scientists have engineered an enzyme that can break stubborn man-made bonds between silicon and carbon that exist in widely used chemicals known as siloxanes, or silicones. The discovery is a first step toward rendering the chemicals, which can linger in the environment, biodegradable. “Nature is an amazing chemist, and her repertoire now includes breaking bonds in siloxanes previously thought to evade attack by living organisms,” says Frances Arnold, the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering…
Application of dData assimilation applied to adaptive predictive control. Fusion energy is being developed as a solution to global energy problems. In particular, the magnetic confinement method, in which ultra-high temperature plasma is confined by a magnetic field, is the most advanced and is considered to be the most promising method for fusion reactors. By this method, the plasma is confined in the reactor in a high-temperature, high-density state by a magnetic field, and the energy released by the fusion…
LZH Researches Oxygen-Free Production. In the field of metal processing, dealing with oxidation can be quite challenging. One potential approach involves carrying out production in an environment free from oxygen. The Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V. (LZH) is investigating how this concept can be applied in laser beam brazing and additive manufacturing. Oxygen is a disruptive factor in many production processes within the metalworking industry: Oxide layers formed during metal processing in the presence of oxygen can hinder the joining of…
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