Insilico Medicine (“Insilico”), a clinical stage, end-to-end artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, held the launch ceremony for Life Star – a 6th generation Intelligent Robotics Drug Discovery Laboratory – in Suzhou BioBAY Industrial Park on Dec. 29. The fully automated AI-powered robotics laboratory performs target discovery, compound screening, precision medicine development, and translational research. The lab will allow Insilico to further accelerate its end-to-end drug discovery and optimize the success rate of its drug development as it moves its novel therapeutics…
MASPEX will analyze gases around Jupiter moon to understand its potential habitability. A groundbreaking new mass spectrometer designed and built by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has been delivered for integration onto NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft. Scheduled to launch in 2024 and arrive in the Jovian system by 2030, Europa Clipper will conduct a detailed science investigation of the moon Europa and study whether it could harbor conditions suitable for life. The MAss Spectrometer for Planetary EXploration (MASPEX) instrument will be one…
Assistant Professor David Rounce of Civil and Environmental Engineering led an international effort to produce new projections of glacier mass loss through the century under different emissions scenarios. The projections were aggregated into global temperature change scenarios to support adaptation and mitigation discussions, such as those at the recent United Nations Conference of Parties (COP 27). His work showed that the world could lose as much as 41 percent of its total glacier mass this century—or as little as 26…
Component of bacterial immune defense paralyzes infected cells and could advance molecular biology diagnostics. It is an unexpected discovery by scientists at the Helmholtz Institute Würzburg in cooperation with Benson Hill, Inc. (Missouri) and Utah State University in the U.S.: They have found a nuclease, which they dubbed Cas12a2, that represents an entirely new type of CRISPR immune defense. Unlike any other previously known nuclease of the CRISPR-Cas immune system, the source of “gene scissors”, Cas12a2 destroys DNA to shut…
Global warming is partly due to the vast amount of carbon dioxide that we release, mostly from power generation and industrial processes, such as making steel and cement. For a while now, chemical engineers have been exploring carbon capture, a process that can separate carbon dioxide and store it in ways that keep it out of the atmosphere. This is done in dedicated carbon-capture plants, whose chemical process involves amines, compounds that are already used to capture carbon dioxide from…
A team from Nagoya University in Japan has observed, for the first time, the energy transferring from resonant electrons to whistler-mode waves in space. Their findings offer direct evidence of previously theorized efficient growth, as predicted by the non-linear growth theory of waves. This should improve our understanding of not only space plasma physics but also space weather, a phenomenon that affects satellites. When people imagine outer space, they often envision it as a perfect vacuum. In fact, this impression…
Researchers discover that electrons play a surprising role in heat transfer between layers of semiconductors, with implications for next-generation electronic devices. As semiconductor devices become ever smaller, researchers are exploring two-dimensional (2D) materials for potential applications in transistors and optoelectronics. Controlling the flow of electricity and heat through these materials is key to their functionality, but first we need to understand the details of those behaviors at atomic scales. Now, researchers have discovered that electrons play a surprising role in…
Bladderwrack in the Baltic Sea emits significant amounts of methane, which, to some extent, can offset the uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide by these algae. This is shown by a new study from Askö Laboratory, where the fluxes of greenhouse gases between surface waters and the atmosphere were measured continuously over several seasons. “It was a bit surprising that methane was emitted from the bladderwrack, since this algae grows on hard substrates and not on soft sediments, where methane is…
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst use the body to harvest waste energy to power wearable devices. While you may be just starting to reap the advantages of 5G wireless technology, researchers throughout the world are already working hard on the future: 6G. One of the most promising breakthroughs in 6G telecommunications is the possibility of Visible Light Communication (VLC), which is like a wireless version of fiberoptics, using flashes of light to transmit information. Now, a team of…
Adding charge acceptors can slow electron transfer in some light-activated materials. Chemists from Rice University and the University of Texas at Austin discovered more isn’t always better when it comes to packing charge-acceptor molecules on the surface of semiconducting nanocrystals. The combination of organic and inorganic components in hybrid nanomaterials can be tailored to capture, detect, convert or control light in unique ways. Interest in these materials is high, and the pace of scientific publication about them has grown more…
Salk researchers find that neural networks responsible for spatial perception change in a nonlinear manner and may have implications for neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease. Young children sometimes believe that the moon is following them, or that they can reach out and touch it. It appears to be much closer than is proportional to its true distance. As we move about our daily lives, we tend to think that we navigate space in a linear way. But Salk scientists have…
As anyone who drinks their coffee with milk knows, it’s much easier to mix liquids together than to separate them. In fact, the second law of thermodynamics would seem to dictate that a mixture would never be able to separate again if there are no attractive forces between similar particles. However, investigators from the Institute of Industrial Science at The University of Tokyo showed the mechanism by which a mixture of actively spinning particles, such as bacteria, in a fluid…
A new method can produce a hundredfold increase in light emissions from a type of electron-photon coupling, which is key to electron microscopes and other technologies. The way electrons interact with photons of light is a key part of many modern technologies, from lasers to solar panels to LEDs. But the interaction is inherently a weak one because of a major mismatch in scale: A wavelength of visible light is about 1,000 times larger than an electron, so the way…
Salk researchers find that timing calorie intake synchronizes circadian rhythms across multiple systems in mice. Numerous studies have shown health benefits of time-restricted eating including increase in life span in laboratory studies, making practices like intermittent fasting a hot topic in the wellness industry. However, exactly how it affects the body on the molecular level, and how those changes interact across multiple organ systems, has not been well understood. Now, Salk scientists show in mice how time-restricted eating influences gene…
Researchers hope that ionocaloric cooling could someday help replace refrigerants with high global warming potential and provide safe, efficient cooling and heating for homes. Adding salt to a road before a winter storm changes when ice will form. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have applied this basic concept to develop a new method of heating and cooling. The technique, which they have named “ionocaloric cooling,” is described in a paper published Dec. 23…
Researchers uncover how embryonic cells sense their mechanical environment to collectively form tissues. Building tissues and organs is one of the most complex and important tasks that cells must accomplish during embryogenesis. Individual cells do not make these decisions; rather, building tissue is a collective task that requires cells to constantly communicate with each other. Different communication methods exist, including chemical cues, similar to a cell’s sense of smell, and also mechanical cues, the cell’s sense of touch. Researchers in…
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