Rethinking how drugs are administered: Scientists develop promising fabrication process for microneedle arrays capable of administering protein-based drugs subcutaneously without damaging the skin. The painful feeling of receiving an injection through a hypodermic needle or with the unpleasant sensation of swallowing a large pill is a globally familiar sensation. But what if a revolutionary and gentler way of administering drugs was in the works? For over two decades, researchers have been investigating various types of microneedles as a minimally invasive…
In an article published in the prestigious journal Science Advances, researchers* from Politecnico di Torino and National Institute of Metrological Research (INRiM) have proposed an innovative approach, based on quantum technologies, to check if a production process conforms to a reference or if it a “defective” one. An effective monitoring of the production processes is fundamental both for the safety of the released products and the economic efficiency of the process itself. Conformity tests are often performed with measurements on…
Findings from a new study could point the way to new treatments for blood diseases including cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma. Scientists have found a way to prove that biochemical signals sent from cell to cell play an important role in determining how those cells develop. The study from researchers at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences was published in the journal Development on Dec. 22. A little background: All cells within the body begin as…
While working with helium nanodroplets, scientists at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, have come across a surprising phenomenon: When the ultracold droplets hit a hard surface, they behave like drops of water. Ions with which they were previously doped thus remain protected on impact and are not neutralized. At the Department of Ion Physics and Applied Physics of the University of Innsbruck, Paul Scheier’s research group has been using helium nanodroplets to study ions with methods of mass spectrometry for…
A levitating vehicle might someday explore the moon, asteroids, and other airless planetary surfaces. Aerospace engineers at MIT are testing a new concept for a hovering rover that levitates by harnessing the moon’s natural charge. Because they lack an atmosphere, the moon and other airless bodies such as asteroids can build up an electric field through direct exposure to the sun and surrounding plasma. On the moon, this surface charge is strong enough to levitate dust more than 1 meter…
Researchers from The University of Tsukuba grow a germanium thin film on a flexible polyimide substrate, resulting in a material with the highest hole mobility reported to date. Technologists envisage an electronically interconnected future that will depend on cheap, lightweight, flexible devices. Efforts to optimize the semiconductor materials needed for these electronic devices are therefore necessary. Researchers from the University of Tsukuba have reported a record-breaking germanium (Ge) thin film on a plastic substrate that offers flexibility without compromising performance….
Researchers have developed a method to stabilise a promising material known as perovskite for cheap solar cells, without compromising its near-perfect performance. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, used an organic molecule as a ‘template’ to guide perovskite films into the desired phase as they form. Their results are reported in the journal Science. Perovskite materials offer a cheaper alternative to silicon for producing optoelectronic devices such as solar cells and LEDs. There are many different perovskites, resulting from…
Spartans joined an international team to create an isotope of magnesium that’s never been seen before. In collaboration with an international team of researchers, Michigan State University has helped create the world’s lightest version, or isotope, of magnesium to date. Forged at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at MSU, or NSCL, this isotope is so unstable, it falls apart before scientists can measure it directly. Yet this isotope that isn’t keen on existing can help researchers better understand how the…
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a powerful new tool that monitors the electrical activity inside heart cells, using tiny “pop-up” sensors that poke into cells without damaging them. The device directly measures the movement and speed of electrical signals traveling within a single heart cell—a first—as well as between multiple heart cells. It is also the first to measure these signals inside the cells of 3D tissues. The device, published Dec. 23 in the journal…
A “game changing” new telescope will be blasted into space tonight to embark on a lonely 1.5-million-kilometre orbit around the Sun to provide a clearer view of the ever-expanding universe. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the largest telescope ever to be launched into space and will be used by University of Queensland researchers to observe asteroids and newborn planets, as well as black holes in distant galaxies. UQ astrophysicist Dr Benjamin Pope said he’s excited by the capabilities…
They are at the forefront in the fight against viruses, bacteria, and malignant cells: the T cells of our immune system. But the older we get, the fewer of them our body produces. Thus, how long we remain healthy also depends on how long the T cells survive. Researchers at the University of Basel have now uncovered a previously unknown signaling pathway essential for T cell viability. Like human beings, every cell in our body tries to ward off death…
Puzzling result forces physicists to rethink ‘spin-triplet’ superconductivity. A Rice University-led study is forcing physicists to rethink superconductivity in uranium ditelluride, an A-list material in the worldwide race to create fault-tolerant quantum computers. Uranium ditelluride crystals are believed to host a rare “spin-triplet” form of superconductivity, but puzzling experimental results published this week in Nature have upended the leading explanation of how the state of matter could arise in the material. Neutron-scattering experiments by physicists from Rice, Oak Ridge National…
AI presents a roadmap to define new materials for any need, with implications in green energy and waste reduction. Scientists and institutions dedicate more resources each year to the discovery of novel materials to fuel the world. As natural resources diminish and the demand for higher value and advanced performance products grows, researchers have increasingly looked to nanomaterials. Nanoparticles have already found their way into applications ranging from energy storage and conversion to quantum computing and therapeutics. But given the…
An international study shows which factors determine the speed limit for quantum computations. Which factors determine how fast a quantum computer can perform its calculations? Physicists at the University of Bonn and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have devised an elegant experiment to answer this question. The results of the study are published in the journal Science Advances. Quantum computers are highly sophisticated machines that rely on the principles of quantum mechanics to process information. This should enable…
The more than 70 sunless worlds are each roughly the mass of Jupiter. Using observations and archival data from several of NSF’s NOIRLab’s observatories, together with observations from telescopes around the world and in orbit, astronomers have discovered at least 70 new free-floating planets — planets that wander through space without a parent star — in a nearby region of the Milky Way. This is the largest sample of such planets found in a single group and it nearly doubles…
The Matterhorn appears as an immovable, massive mountain that has towered over the landscape near Zermatt for thousands of years. A study just published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2021.117295) now shows that this impression is wrong. An international research team has proven that the Matterhorn is instead constantly in motion, swaying gently back and forth about once every two seconds. This subtle vibration with normally imperceptible amplitudes is stimulated by seismic energy in the Earth originating from…
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