Tracing neural circuits to chemotherapy’s ‘constellation of side effects’. Tim Cope and Nick Housley unravel the neural pathways behind complex sensory and motor side effects of chemotherapy. Severe and persistent disability often undermines the life-saving benefits of cancer treatment. Pain and fatigue — together with sensory, motor, and cognitive disorders — are chief among the constellation of side effects that occur with the platinum-based agents used widely in chemotherapy treatments worldwide. A new study by Georgia Tech researchers in the…
The team of academician GUO Guangcan of University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has made important progress in the research of cold atom super-resolution imaging. The team achieved super-resolution imaging of a single ion in an ion trap system. The results were published in Physical Review Letters. The cold atom system is an ideal experimental platform for studying quantum physics, as well as an important physical system for experimental research on quantum simulation, quantum computing, and quantum precision measurement. One of…
Cranial neural crest cells, or CNCCs, contribute to many more body parts than their humble name suggests. These remarkable stem cells not only form most of the skull and facial skeleton in all vertebrates ranging from fish to humans, but also can generate everything from gills to the cornea. To understand this versatility, scientists from the lab of Gage Crump created a series of atlases over time to understand the molecular decisions by which CNCCs commit to forming specific tissues in developing…
Researchers led by the University of Tsukuba present an improved way to model interactions between matter and light at the atomic scale. Light–matter interactions form the basis of many important technologies, including lasers, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and atomic clocks. However, usual computational approaches for modeling such interactions have limited usefulness and capability. Now, researchers from Japan have developed a technique that overcomes these limitations. In a study published this month in The International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, a…
Resistant to most monoclonal antibodies but neutralized by a booster dose. The Omicron variant was detected for the first time in South Africa in November 2021 and has since spread to many countries. It is expected to become the dominant variant within a few weeks or months. Initial epidemiological studies show that the Omicron variant is more transmissible than the currently dominant virus (the Delta variant). It is capable of spreading to individuals who have received two vaccine doses and…
Enzymatic hydrolysis of planteose: α-Galactosidase is a promising molecular target for root parasitic weed control. Witchweed (Striga spp.) and broomrapes (Orobanche and Phelipanche spp.) are root parasitic weeds that inflict major losses in agriculture globally. Being obligate parasitic flowering plants in nature, they parasitize other autotrophic plants of agricultural importance. The plants are attached to their host by means of haustoria, which transfer nutrients from the host to the parasite. Weeds reduce crop yield by competing for resources (nutrients, water…
It plays a fundamental role in human existence and is a major component of our universe, yet there are still things we don’t understand about water. To address the knowledge gaps, a collaborative team of Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, and Tohoku University investigated electron transport through a single water molecule in a C60 cage. Their findings are published in Nano Letters. Simple systems are often the best starting point for determining complex information. A…
Genetic mechanism found that enables communities of bacterial cells to organize into surprisingly sophisticated segments, revealing a similarity to how plants and animals develop. Over the past several years, research from University of California San Diego biologist Gürol Süel’s laboratory has uncovered a series of remarkable features exhibited by clusters of bacteria that live together in communities known as biofilms. Biofilms are prevalent in the living world, inhabiting sewer pipes, kitchen counters and even the surface of our teeth. A…
Scientists at IST Austria discover a mechanism that helps immune cells to invade tissues. Knowing, when exactly immune cells will try to invade a tumor is difficult. In order to be able to study this cell invasion process in detail, scientists like Professor Daria Siekhaus and her team need something more reliable. That’s why they turn to fruit fly embryos. During the development of these embryos, macrophages, the dominant form of immune cells in the fruit fly, travel from the…
When two sheets of the carbon nanomaterial graphene are stacked together at a particular angle with respect to each other, it gives rise to some fascinating physics. For instance, when this so-called “magic-angle graphene” is cooled to near absolute zero, it suddenly becomes a superconductor, meaning it conducts electricity with zero resistance. Now, a research team from Brown University has found a surprising new phenomenon that can arise in magic-angle graphene. In research published in the journal Science, the team…
Sound waves may pave the way for topological electronic transistors. Topological materials move electrons along their surface and edges without any loss, making them promising materials for dissipationless, high-efficiency electronics. Researchers are especially interested in using these materials as transistors, the backbone of all modern electronics. But there’s a problem: Transistors switch electronic current on and off, but it’s difficult to turn off the dissipationless flow of electrons in topological materials. Now, Harvard University researchers have designed and simulated the…
New research introduces adaptable smart window design that can heat or cool a house. Homeowners know that the type of windows in a house contribute greatly to heating and cooling efficiency. And that’s a big deal—maintaining indoor temperatures consumes great amounts of energy and accounts for 20 to 40 percent of the national energy budgets in developed countries. New research from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Oxford takes energy efficient windows a step further by proposing a…
… conventional vs ultrafast 3D MRI sequences. Automated brain volumetry in memory-impaired patients shows significant differences and systematic biases between conventional and ultrafast 3D T1-weighted MRI sequences. According to an article in ARRS’ American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), brain volume measurements in memory-impaired patients show significant differences and systematic biases between conventional and ultrafast 3D T1-weighted (T1W) MRI sequences. “In patients for whom severe motion artifact precludes use of the conventional sequence, the ultrafast sequence may be useful to enable…
Combination of switches deactivates surplus X chromosome at just the right time. Two X chromosomes are actually one too many. Female mammalian cells hence switch off one of them – but only when the cells start to specialize into tissues. A Berlin research team has now discovered how cells “count” their chromosomes and at the same time sense which stage of development they are in. The cells of female mammals have a dosage problem, because they have twice as many…
Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have developed a color-coded test that quickly signals whether newly developed nanoparticles — ultra small compartments designed to ferry medicines, vaccines and other therapies — deliver their cargo into target cells. Historically, nanoparticles have a very low delivery rate to the cytosol, the inside compartment of cells, releasing only about 1%–2% of their contents. The new testing tool, engineered specifically to test nanoparticles, could advance the search for next-generation biological medicines. The technology builds upon nanoparticles…
Retrons could revolutionize gene editing for research and medicine. Over the past decade, the CRISPR genome-editing system has revolutionized molecular biology, giving scientists the ability to alter genes inside living cells for research or medical applications. Now, researchers at Gladstone Institutes have fine-tuned an additional system for more efficient gene editing, using molecules called retrons. Retrons, the group reported in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, can be optimized for efficiency and used to edit genes in a variety of cell…
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