NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has peered into the chaos of the Cartwheel Galaxy, revealing new details about star formation and the galaxy’s central black hole. Webb’s powerful infrared gaze produced this detailed image of the Cartwheel and two smaller companion galaxies against a backdrop of many other galaxies. This image provides a new view of how the Cartwheel Galaxy has changed over billions of years. The Cartwheel Galaxy, located about 500 million light-years away in the Sculptor constellation, is…
Researchers study historical developments of the periodic system of chemical elements. In the 1860s, the chemists, Lothar Meyer and Dmitri Mendeleev, independently presented the first periodic system. Since then, the well-known tabular arrangement of the elements has been the guiding principle of chemistry. A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences and the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioinformatics at the University of Leipzig provides computational approaches based on extensive data sets from the Reaxys chemistry…
Innovative medical technology can save lives. Outdated approval processes delay rapid market introduction. To shorten the time from development to certification, the KIMEDS joint project aims to develop an AI-supported safety solution across the entire lifecycle of medical software. The BMBF is funding this three-year project with 1.46 million euros. Cybermedical systems and programmable electronic medical systems (PEMS) are shaping medicine. This development will continue to intensify with increasing digitization up to semi-autonomous or robotic-assisting systems. These medical devices enable…
Researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology – Hans Knöll Institute (Leibniz-HKI) in Jena, Germany have identified an enzyme that is a promising new therapeutic target to combat the dangerous bacterial disease melioidosis. It helps the pathogenic bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei construct a toxic molecule that is critical in the infection process. The results were published in Nature Chemistry. Melioidosis is a life-threatening disease caused by the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei. “Without treatment, the disease is usually…
A super-Earth planet has been found near the habitable zone of a red dwarf star only 37 light-years from the Earth. This is the first discovery by a new instrument on the Subaru Telescope and offers a chance to investigate the possibility of life on planets around nearby stars. With such a successful first result, we can expect that the Subaru Telescope will discover more, potentially even better, candidates for habitable planets around red dwarfs. Red dwarfs, stars smaller than…
Scientists develop a simple, fast, and energy-efficient synthesis method for producing exceptional carbon nano-onions from fish scales. Thanks to their low toxicity, chemical stability, and remarkable electrical and optical properties, carbon-based nanomaterials are finding more and more applications across electronics, energy conversion and storage, catalysis, and biomedicine. Carbon nano-onions (CNOs) are certainly no exception. First reported in 1980, CNOs are nanostructures composed of concentric shells of fullerenes, resembling cages within cages. They offer multiple attractive qualities such as a high…
– further back in time than ever before. A collaboration led by scientists at Nagoya University in Japan has investigated the nature of dark matter surrounding galaxies seen as they were 12 billion years ago, billions of years further back in time than ever before. Their findings, published in Physical Review Letters, offer the tantalizing possibility that the fundamental rules of cosmology may differ when examining the early history of our universe. Seeing something that happened such a long time…
Scientists uncover mechanism that shapes centromere distribution. Since the 1800s, scientists have noted configuration of centromeres, a special chromosomal region that is vital for cell division, in the nucleus. Up until this point, however, the determining mechanisms and the biological significance of centromere distribution were poorly understood. A team led by researchers from the University of Tokyo and their collaborators recently proposed a two-step regulatory mechanism that shapes centromere distribution. Their findings also suggest that centromere configuration in the nucleus…
Genetically modified mouse studies reveal pathways for organ-damaging autoimmune response. A new study shows how mutation of the ADAR1 gene sets off biochemical pathways that produce an autoimmune response that harms the developing brain and other areas of the body. The ADAR gene contains instructions for making proteins used by the immune system. Normally, the body’s immune system fights off pathogens, foreign bodies, and cancers. An RNA-editing enzyme produced by the ADAR1 gene steps in to stop abnormal immune activation…
Wearable electronics, from health and fitness trackers to virtual reality headsets, are part of our everyday lives. But finding ways to continuously power these devices is a challenge. University of Washington researchers have developed an innovative solution: the first-of-its kind flexible, wearable thermoelectric device that converts body heat to electricity. This device is soft and stretchable, yet sturdy and efficient — properties that can be challenging to combine. The team published these findings July 24 in Advanced Energy Materials. “It’s…
Waves of magnetic excitation sweep through this exciting new material whether it’s in superconducting mode or not – another possible clue to how unconventional superconductors carry electric current with no loss. Electrons find each other repulsive. Nothing personal – it’s just that their negative charges repel each other. So getting them to pair up and travel together, like they do in superconducting materials, requires a little nudge. In old-school superconductors, which were discovered in 1911 and conduct electric current with…
Applied neuroscience … How does work affect our daily lives and how does it affect our mental and physical health? How do technical solutions change people and how can devices be made more human-centric? A five-person team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO is investigating these issues. In the NeuroLab, a laboratory for neuroergonomics, scientists are researching concepts and methods for developing intelligent interfaces between technology and humans. The NeuroLab is a test environment for neuroergonomic questions that…
A newly developed polarizer-embedded metalens enables a compact, portable microscope system that efficiently obtains wide-field, noise-free, high-resolution images. The microscope effectively expands human eyesight to microworld. It supports wide applications in scientific research, biomedical diagnosis, industry, and beyond. The ultimate goal is superresolution, yet along the way researchers are working to achieve compact, miniature devices with comprehensive performance for wide field-of-view (FOV), large depth-of-field (DOF), and high throughput. Traditional optical microscopes are based on refractive optical elements, which are usually…
Fatty acids and their derivatives are promising raw materials for manufacturing advanced biofuels, detergents, lubricants, surfactants and so on. Current supply of fatty acids is mainly through extraction from plants, which requires large amounts of arable land. Methanol is an ideal and renewable feedstock for bio-manufacturing. Methanol biotransformation might provide a sustainable route for fatty acid production with independence of arable land and fresh water. Recently, a research group led by Prof. ZHOU Yongjin from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the…
Just add a drop of water. The battery, devised by Gustav Nyström and his team, is made of at least one cell measuring one centimeter squared and consisting of three inks printed onto a rectangular strip of paper. Salt, in this case simply sodium chloride or table salt, is dispersed throughout the strip of paper and one of its shorter ends has been dipped in wax. An ink containing graphite flakes, which acts as the positive end of the battery…
… in patient-derived cells. New technology that can rewrite the genetic code raises hopes for gene therapy. Genetic mutations which cause a debilitating hereditary kidney disease affecting children and young adults have been fixed in patient-derived kidney cells using a potentially game-changing DNA repair-kit. The advance, developed by University of Bristol scientists, is published in Nucleic Acids Research. In this new study, the international team describe how they created a DNA repair vehicle to genetically fix faulty podocin, a common…
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