Around one million individuals worldwide become infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, each year. To replicate and spread the infection, the virus must smuggle its genetic material into the cell nucleus and integrate it into a chromosome. Research teams led by Dirk Görlich at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Science and Thomas Schwartz at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have now discovered that its capsid has evolved into a molecular transporter. As such, it can directly…
EfficientBioAI – New Open-Source Software Makes AI Models Lighter & Greener. Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an indispensable component in the analysis of microscopic data. However, while AI models are becoming better and more complex, the computing power and associated energy consumption are also increasing. Researchers at the Leibniz-Institut für Analytische Wissenschaften (ISAS) and Peking University have therefore created a free compression software that allows scientists to run existing bioimaging AI models faster and with significantly lower energy consumption. The…
Ovarian cancer is often very aggressive and responds poorly to the therapies currently available. A recent study by Goethe University Frankfurt and University Hospital Frankfurt offers hope that this could change in the medium term. The researchers used an mRNA as a therapeutic. With its help, the tumor cells produced a protein again that prevents their own uncontrolled proliferation or induces cell death. The mRNA therapeutic successfully combated cancerous cells and tumors in vitro as well as metastases in mice….
Whether in laser material processing, additive manufacturing and repair processes, laser weed control or the automated design of optical systems: Artificial intelligence has enormous, sometimes disruptive potential in photonics. With around 50 international experts in attendance, the 3rd “AI for Laser Technology Conference” took place at the end of November at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT in Aachen, and clearly showed that the AI-driven transformation is in full swing. “When we design optical systems, our AI implements in…
…paves the way for saving the northern white rhinos from extinction. BioRescue, an international consortium of scientists and conservationists, succeeded in achieving the world’s first pregnancy of a rhinoceros after an embryo transfer. The southern white rhino embryo was produced in vitro from collected egg cells and sperm and transferred into a southern white rhino surrogate mother at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya on September 24, 2023. The BioRescue team confirmed a pregnancy of 70 days with a well-developed…
Help from artificial intelligence (AI) in observing marine mammals is crucial. Computers can count seals from aerial photographs with lightning speed and reliability. Based on their spatial patterns, the tiny dots on the aerial images can even be assigned to one of the two major species of seals in the Wadden Sea. That is shown in the thesis that marine biologist Jeroen Hoekendijk will defend on January 26 in Wageningen. “To better understand if and how marine mammals like seals…
Scientific article “Sub-cycle multidimensional spectroscopy of strongly correlated materials” published in Nature Photonics. An international team of researchers from the European XFEL together with colleagues from the Max-Born Institute in Berlin, Universities of Berlin and Hamburg, The University of Tokyo, the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), the Dutch Radboud University, Imperial College London, and Hamburg Center for Ultrafast Imaging, have presented new ideas for ultrafast multi-dimensional spectroscopy of strongly correlated solids. This work has now…
Certain materials have desirable properties that are hidden, and just as you would use a flashlight to see in the dark, scientists can use light to uncover these properties. Researchers at the University of California San Diego have used an advanced optical technique to learn more about a quantum material called Ta2NiSe5 (TNS). Their work appears in Nature Materials. Materials can be perturbed through different external stimuli, often with changes in temperature or pressure; however, because light is the fastest thing in…
The evolution of the iCub3 avatar system. The fully immersive iCub3 avatar system has been developed by researchers at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia addressing challenges posed by real-world scenario. A paper published in Science Robotics explains the different stages of its development. Over the past four years, the research team at the Artificial and Mechanical Intelligence (AMI) lab at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT-Italian Institute of Technology) in Genova (Italy) has developed advanced avatar technologies, known as the…
A common powerful mutation found in melanoma can push heart muscle cells to multiply in laboratory models of heart tissue. Biomedical engineers at Duke University have demonstrated that one of the most dangerous mutations found in skin cancers might moonlight as a pathway to mending a broken heart. The genetic mutation in the protein BRAF, a part of the MAPK signaling pathway that can promote cell division, is one of the most common and most aggressive found in melanoma patients….
In findings that have implications for potential new HIV therapies, researchers from Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed) used genetic sequencing techniques on the nonhuman primate version of the virus to identify that lymph nodes in the abdomen are the leading source of rebound infection after the first week of stopping antiretroviral treatment. The study regarding simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) was reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine. SIV is very closely related to HIV and is commonly used as a…
UTA study could impact treatments for blood, colorectal and non-small cell lung cancers. A multi-institutional study co-authored by University of Texas at Arlington scientists uncovered a mechanism by which cancer cells prevent the immune system from activating and attacking the cancerous invaders. The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Cell Reports, sheds light on why immunotherapy treatments don’t work for all people or all diseases. For example, certain types of cancers—including colon, pancreatic, prostate and brain cancers—have stubbornly resisted immunotherapy. And…
In January 2024, the third research mission of the German Marine Research Alliance mareXtreme starts with significant participation of GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. As part of the mission, about 150 scientists from 29 research institutions and partner organisations investigate how risk management for extreme marine events and natural hazards can be improved. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the science ministries of the northern German states of Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony and…
At the beginning of November, The New York Times ran the headline, “America is using up its groundwater like there’s no tomorrow.” The journalists from the renowned media outlet had published an investigation into the state of groundwater reserves in the United States. They came to the conclusion that the United States is pumping out too much groundwater. But the US isn’t an isolated case. “The rest of the world is also squandering groundwater like there’s no tomorrow,” says Hansjörg…
Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Early Career Award 2024 goes to Johannes Karges. Dr. Johannes Karges (31), a chemist from Ruhr University Bochum, will be awarded the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Early Career Award 2024, the Scientific Council of the Paul Ehrlich Foundation announced today. The prizewinner discovered how platinum-containing chemotherapeutics accumulate in tumor tissue, and how, from here, they can be activated using either light or ultrasound as triggers. Karges already provided preclinical proof of these methods, whose…
Research team identifies “protective switches” in the protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Over 700 million people were infected and almost seven million died, making SARS-CoV-2 the most devastating pandemic of the 21st century. Vaccines and medication against Covid-19 have been able to mitigate the course of the disease in many people and contain the pandemic. However, the danger of further outbreaks has not been averted. The virus is constantly mutating, which enables it to infect human cells and multiply more…
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