New strategy is less expensive, less energy intensive than current industrial processes. Northwestern University chemists have taken inspiration from plants to revolutionize the way an important industrial chemical is made. In a first for the field, the Northwestern team used light and water to convert acetylene into ethylene, a widely used, highly valuable chemical that is a key ingredient in plastics. While this conversion typically requires high temperatures and pressures, flammable hydrogen and expensive metals to drive the reaction, Northwestern’s…
Genetic and clinical research reveals new type of macular dystrophy, a cause of central vision loss. Researchers from the National Eye Institute (NEI) have identified a new disease that affects the macula, a small part of the light-sensing retina needed for sharp, central vision. Scientists report their findings on the novel macular dystrophy, which is yet to be named, in JAMA Ophthalmology. NEI is part of the National Institutes of Health. Macular dystrophies are disorders that usually cause central visual…
Researchers used bacteria-eating viruses to treat 20 complex, antibiotic-resistant lung infections, resulting in no adverse reactions and more than half of treated patients experiencing favorable clinical outcomes. An international team of researchers, led by scientists at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and the University of Pittsburgh, report promising results from the largest case series yet of patients treated with bacteriophage therapy for antibiotic-resistant infections. The findings published in the June 9, 2022 online issue of Clinical Infectious…
In the lead-up to the release of Webb’s first full-color images and spectroscopic data on July 12, the Webb team is now in the last phase of commissioning the science instruments. The first two instrument modes, NIRCam imaging and NIRISS imaging, have been declared ready for science; watch the “Where is Webb” page as the team works their way through the other 15 instrument modes. After commissioning is finished, the fun – and discoveries – will start: implementing the hundreds of peer-reviewed science programs that have…
Paramagnetic encoding of molecules. Today we commonly encounter contactless RFID chips in a number of products, but can similar technology be implemented at the molecular level? The answer is yes. The principle of molecular encoding conceived by Miloslav Polášek and his team at IOCB Prague represents a novel method on the frontier of chemistry and modern technologies. Their paper on paramagnetic encoding of molecules was recently published in the journal Nature Communications. The new principle of molecular encoding and prototype…
The chemical precursors of present-day biomolecules could have formed not only in the deep sea at hydrothermal vents, but also in warm ponds on the Earth’s surface. The chemical reactions that may have occurred in this “primordial soup” have now been reproduced in experiments by an international team led by researchers of Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany. They even found that one of the nucleobases, which represent the code of our genetic material, could have originated from the surface of…
The Fraunhofer IPMS-developed EMSA5-FS processor core for functional safety based on the open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture is supported by another important debug tool. With the integration into the toolsets of the leading manufacturer of microprocessor development tools Lauterbach, nu-merous debug functions are now available for the 32-bit RISC-V core. The EMSA5-FS is the first fault-tolerant embedded RISC-V processor core according to functional safety and was awarded the Product of the Year 2022 in the automotive sector by the trade…
Eichstätt geographers survey mountainscape to come to light as glaciers melt away. How thick is the remaining layer of glacial ice in the Alps? And what is going on underneath that cover of ice? A research team of the Geography Department at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Inolstadt (KU) is taking a look at what happens when glaciers melt – and thereby identifies potential danger zones. Climate change has caused glacier ice worldwide to melt at an ever faster pace. The…
First successful treatment of severe pulmonary hypertension. Hannover Medical School doctors successfully treat three-year-old girl / Publication in “Nature Cardiovascular Research. Clinical researchers at Hannover Medical School (MHH) have succeeded for the first time worldwide in stopping the usually fatal course of the disease in severe pulmonary hypertension thanks to a novel therapeutic approach. A three-year-old girl suffering from so-called pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) was treated for six months a total of five times with mesenchymal stem cell products obtained…
A phenomenon that directly proves the existence of quark mass has been observed for the first time in extremely energetic collisions of lead nuclei. A team of physicists working on the ALICE detector at the Large Hadron Collider can boast this spectacular achievement – the observation of the dead cone effect. The objects that make up our physical everyday life can have many different properties. Among these, a fundamental role is played by mass. Despite being so fundamental, mass has…
In a joint experimental-theoretical study, physicists at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK), together with collaborators from RIKEN, Japan, investigated the magnetic properties of the isotope helium-3. For the first time, the electronic and nuclear g-factors of the 3He+ ion were measured directly with a relative precision of 10–10. The electron-nucleus magnetic interaction (zero-field hyperfine splitting) was measured with an accuracy improved by two orders of magnitude. The g-factor of the bare 3He nucleus was determined via an…
Combining heavy-ion experiments, astrophysical observations, and nuclear theory. Throughout the Universe, neutron stars are born in supernova explosions that mark the end of the life of massive stars. Sometimes neutron stars are bound in binary systems and will eventually collide with each other. These high-energy, astrophysical phenomena feature such extreme conditions that they produce most of the heavy elements, such as silver and gold. Consequently, neutron stars and their collisions are unique laboratories to study the properties of matter at…
Results may offer new insight into properties of quark-gluon plasma (QGP)—the hot mix of fundamental nuclear-matter building blocks that filled the early universe. Scientists studying particle collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) have revealed how certain particle-jets lose energy as they traverse the unique form of nuclear matter created in these collisions. The results, published in Physical Review C, should help them learn about key “transport properties” of this hot particle soup, known as a quark-gluon plasma (QGP). “By…
Materials that contain the axial Higgs mode could serve as quantum sensors to evaluate other quantum systems and help answer persistent questions in particle physics. An interdisciplinary team led by Boston College physicists has discovered a new particle – or previously undetectable quantum excitation – known as the axial Higgs mode, a magnetic relative of the mass-defining Higgs Boson particle, the team reports in the online edition of the journal Nature. The detection a decade ago of the long-sought Higgs…
Faster diagnosis could help limit deadly outbreaks. A new tool can quickly and reliably identify the presence of Ebola virus in blood samples, according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and colleagues at other institutions. The technology, which uses so-called optical microring resonators, potentially could be developed into a rapid diagnostic test for the deadly Ebola virus disease, which kills up to 89% of infected people. Since it was discovered in 1976,…
… offer new picture of how electrons behave. Princeton scientists have discovered a new quantum state of matter and in the process are rewriting our understanding of the nature of metallic materials. A recent experiment detailed in the journal Nature is challenging our picture of how electrons behave in quantum materials. Using stacked layers of a material called tungsten ditelluride, researchers have observed electrons in two-dimensions behaving as if they were in a single dimension — and in the process…
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