Researchers in Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science have developed a method that uses artificial intelligence to augment how cells are studied and could help scientists better understand and eventually treat disease. Images of organ or tissue samples contain millions of cells. And while analyzing these cells in situ is an important part of biological research, such images make it nearly impossible to identify individual cells, determine their function and understand their organization. A technique called spatial transcriptomics brings…
A mathematical model provides new insights into the distribution of genetic information during bacterial cell division. The precise segregation of DNA and the faithful inheritance of plasmids are crucial steps in bacterial cell division. Now, a team of researchers led by Seán Murray at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology has developed a computational simulation that explains a key mechanism of DNA segregation. Their findings pave the way for experimental testing and reveal fundamental biochemical principles relevant to synthetic…
A team of scientists from Ames National Laboratory and Texas A&M University developed a new way to predict metal ductility. This quantum-mechanics-based approach fills a need for an inexpensive, efficient, high-throughput way to predict ductility. The team demonstrated its effectiveness on refractory multi-principal-element alloys. These are materials of interest for use in high-temperature conditions, however, they frequently lack necessary ductility for potential applications in aerospace, fusion reactors, and land-based turbines. Ductility describes how well a material can withstand physical strain…
After a highly lauded research campaign that successfully redesigned a hepatitis C drug into one of the leading drug treatments for COVID-19, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are now turning their drug design approach toward cancer. In their latest study, published in the journal Communications Chemistry, the team used neutrons and x-rays to draw a roadmap of every atom, chemical bond and electrical charge inside a key enzyme that belongs to a metabolic pathway that cancer cells…
…these electromagnetic waves had head-on collisions. A research team at the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) has shown that it is possible to manipulate photons so that they can collide, interacting in new ways as they cross paths. The discovery, detailed in Nature Physics, will allow scientists who develop technologies rooted in electromagnetic wave propagation to make significant advances in telecommunications, optical computing and energy applications. The breakthrough took place in the lab of…
A technique that enables scientists to record gene mutations and patterns of gene activity in individual cells has been extended to cover RNA splicing as well, in a study led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine, the New York Genome Center and the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto. A better understanding of how aberrations in this process affects the development and behavior of cells is critical to understanding cancer and other diseases. RNA splicing refers to the slicing up and reassembling of the…
City of Hope scientists uncover new active regions on cell surface receptor, expanding scope for drug targets to treat heart disease. Finding could lead to a new class of drugs to address cardiovascular side effects of some cancer therapies. FINDINGS Scientists at City of Hope, one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States and a leading research center for diabetes and other life-threatening illnesses, have uncovered new molecular targets on a cell receptor that play…
Rice lab discovers commonly used nanoparticles are cousins of original buckyballs. Rice University chemists have discovered that tiny gold “seed” particles, a key ingredient in one of the most common nanoparticle recipes, are one and the same as gold buckyballs, 32-atom spherical molecules that are cousins of the carbon buckyballs discovered at Rice in 1985. Carbon buckyballs are hollow 60-atom molecules that were co-discovered and named by the late Rice chemist Richard Smalley. He dubbed them “buckminsterfullerenes” because their atomic…
Researchers at the University of Bayreuth, together with partners in China and the USA, have produced an oxide glass with unprecedented toughness. Under high pressures and temperatures, they succeeded in paracrystallizing an aluminosilicate glass: The resulting crystal-like structures cause the glass to withstand very high stresses and are retained under ambient conditions. Paracrystallization thus proves to be a promising process for producing extremely break-resistant glasses. In “Nature Materials”, the researchers present their findings, in which the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY)…
Using a novel approach of precision neuroimaging and high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), neuroscientists and physicists at MPI CBS in Leipzig (Germany) and anatomist Menno Witter from the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience in Trondheim (Norway) have now ventured into the depths of the human memory system. They discovered previously unknown cortical networks and shed light on the anatomical organization of the human memory system. Their findings were recently published in the prestigious journal “Neuron”. How can the amazing…
Chemist at LIKAT Defines Standards for Light-driven CO2 Reduction. The first standardization document for photocatalytic synthesis was created with the significant participation of a chemist at the Rostock Leibniz Institute for Catalysis, LIKAT. Called “DIN SPEC 91 457”, the specification lays down concrete guidelines for a so-called CO2 reduction, which is a reaction in which important basic materials for the chemical industry are produced from CO2 and water (H2O) by means of catalysis. “These guidelines strengthen our global efforts to…
… reveals what drives their first movements. Bringing ultrafast physics to structural biology has revealed the dance of molecular ‘coherence’ in unprecedented clarity. How molecules change when they react to stimuli such as light is fundamental in biology, for example during photosynthesis. Scientists have been working to unravel the workings of these changes in several fields, and by combining two of these, researchers have paved the way for a new era in understanding the reactions of protein molecules fundamental for…
LJI and Augusta University scientists investigate link between “deprogrammed” regulatory T cells and cardiovascular disease. Scientists can finally hunt down a harmful kind of human T cell, thanks to new research led by scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) and the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) at Augusta University. Immune cells called ex-T regulatory cells (exTregs) tend to be rare in the body and, so far, impossible to detect in human samples. The new study gives scientists a…
Over the past decade, scientists have made tremendous progress in generating quantum phenomena in mechanical systems. What seemed impossible only fifteen years ago has now become a reality, as researchers successfully create quantum states in macroscopic mechanical objects. By coupling these mechanical oscillators to light photons – known as “optomechanical systems”-, scientists have been able to cool them down to their lowest energy level close to the quantum limit, “squeeze them” to reduce their vibrations even further, and entangle them…
That the planet Mars had habitable surface environments early in its existence has been firmly established by the scientific community. These environments provided water, energy sources, elements like carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur, as well as critical catalytic transition metals associated with life as we know it. However, whether that potential stimulated further progression towards the independent evolution of life on Mars is unknown. A team of scientists comprised of Juergen Schieber, a Professor in the Department of Earth and…
Megastorms leave marks on Saturn’s atmosphere for centuries. The largest storm in the solar system, a 10,000-mile-wide anticyclone called the Great Red Spot, has decorated Jupiter’s surface for hundreds of years. A new study now shows that Saturn — though much blander and less colorful than Jupiter — also has long-lasting megastorms with impacts deep in the atmosphere that persist for centuries. The study was conducted by astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan, Ann…
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