Discovery of new metabolic pathway for stored sugars helps explain how cellular energy is produced and expended in obesity, advancing therapeutic potential. Humans carry around with them, often abundantly so, at least two kinds of fat tissue: white and brown. White fat cells are essentially inert containers for energy stored in the form of a single large, oily droplet. Brown fat cells are more complex, containing multiple, smaller droplets intermixed with dark-colored mitochondria — cellular organelles that give them their…
In a rare glimpse at such an object, astronomers discovered a structure thought to be a “protocluster” of galaxies on its way to developing into a galaxy supercluster. Even galaxies don’t like to be alone. While astronomers have known for a while that galaxies tend to congregate in groups and clusters, the process of going from formation to friend groups has remained an open question in cosmology. In a paper published in the Astronomy & Astrophysics Journal, an international team of astronomers…
Hydrogen from real biogas: TU Graz and the start-up Rouge H2 Engineering have scored a world’s first in producing high-purity hydrogen from biogas directly at a biogas plant using a new chemical looping process. Green hydrogen is seen as a beacon of hope in the energy and mobility revolution, but it is not yet suitable for mass production. There are several reasons for this. Hydrogen is currently produced mainly centrally from fossil raw materials. It then has to be compressed…
“Immortality protein” fires up the cell’s power plants. The aging researchers Prof. Judith Haendeler from the Medical Faculty and the molecular biologist Prof. Joachim Altschmied from the Department of Biology together with their teams have shown for the first time in the cardiovascular system that Telomerase Reverse Transcriptase (TERT) within the mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cells, has a protective function in myocardial infarction. This work, which was performed together with other groups from the University Hospital Düsseldorf and the…
Purely biological: Researchers identify a new kind of pure carbon production by microorganisms. Life on the Earth is based on carbon. Through the course of evolution, living organisms have learned to form and process large numbers of different carbon compounds. Carbon is the cornerstone of most biologically produced organic compounds such as proteins, carbohydrates, fats and DNA. All of these compounds contain, in addition to carbon, many other elements, including hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen. Elemental carbon is formed from organic…
Spontaneous wide-area spreading of oil on water inspires a facile energy-saving route of crafting electrically conductive nanostructures for future sensor/energy devices. Oil and water do not mix, but what happens where oil and water meet? Or where air meets liquid? Unique reactions occur at these interfaces, which a team of researchers based in Japan used to develop the first successful construction of uniform, electrically conductive nanosheets needed for next-generation sensors and energy production technologies. The research collaboration from Osaka Prefecture…
… a fundamental discovery. Scientists at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna have developed a CRISPR-Cas9 screening assay that allows to systematically pinpoint regulators of any gene of interest, including cancer-related genes. Using this approach, they discovered how cells transport their clean-up machinery, the proteasome, into the nucleus to maintain protein balance and get rid of unwanted nuclear proteins. The results of this study are now reported in the journal Nature. At the Research Institute of Molecular…
Oregon State University research has shed new light on the way malignant cells change their shape and migration techniques to invade different types of tissue. The findings, published in Scientific Reports, are a key step toward understanding and preventing cancer metastasis, the internal spreading of the disease that’s responsible for 95% of all cancer deaths. “Through billions of years of evolution, cells have learned a number of distinct ways to migrate,” said OSU biophysicist Bo Sun, who led the study….
The SARS-CoV-2 virus does not infect blood vessels, despite the high risk of blood clots to COVID-19 patients, University of Queensland researchers have found. Dr Emma Gordon and Dr Larisa Labzin from UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience and Dr Kirsty Short from UQ’s School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences pooled their expertise in vascular biology and virology to determine how the virus causes damage to blood vessels. The researchers found that the cardiovascular complications of COVID-19 are triggered by inflammation…
One of the solar energy market’s most promising solar cell materials—perovskite—is also the most frustrating. A research team in Sweden reports a possible solution to the environmental instability of perovskite—an alternative to silicon that’s cheap and highly efficient, yet degrades dramatically when exposed to moisture. The team, from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, developed a new synthetic alloy that increases perovskite cells’ durability while preserving energy conversion performance. The researchers published their findings in Nature’s Communications Materials. “Perovskite…
Road map for organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite semiconductors and devices. Climate change and its consequences are becoming increasingly obvious, and solar cells that convert the sun’s energy into electricity will play a key role in the world’s future energy supply. Common semiconductor materials for solar cells, such as silicon, must be grown via an expensive process to avoid defects within their crystal structure that affect functionality. But metal-halide perovskite semiconductors are emerging as a cheaper, alternative material class, with excellent and…
… through use of pre-existing defects in semiconductor materials. The discovery demonstrates a practical method to overcome current challenges in the manufacture of indium gallium nitride (InGaN) LEDs with considerably higher indium concentration, through the formation of quantum dots that emit long-wavelength light. Researchers from the Low Energy Electronic Systems (LEES) Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) at Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, together with collaborators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), National University of Singapore (NUS) and…
Researchers at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI) have uncovered a surprisingly complex yet precisely ordered map of visual space in area V2 of the cortex. Requiring a discerning eye, mathematical precision, and keen sense of aesthetics, map making is a unique application of both art and science. Though the scale may differ, neuroscientists that study vision are like cartographers of the brain; investigating and mapping how our brain represents and makes sense of what we see in…
Metasurface-tailored spintronic terahertz emitters allow efficient, flexible generation and manipulation of chiral terahertz waves. Terahertz radiation, between infrared and microwave radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum, possesses unique advantages for fundamental studies and practical applications. The ability to generate and manipulate broadband chiral terahertz waves is essential for applications in material imaging, terahertz sensing, and medical diagnosis. It can also open up new possibilities for nonlinear terahertz spectroscopy, as well as coherent control of chiral molecules and magnetic materials, which could…
Two UCSB scientists receive award to partner with Cisco’s new Quantum Research Team. A new collaboration between UC Santa Barbara researchers and Cisco Systems aims to push the boundaries of quantum technologies. Assistant professors Yufei Ding and Galan Moody have received research awards from the technology giant to work with its new Quantum Research Team, which was formed to pursue the research and development required to turn quantum hardware, software and applications into broadly used technologies. “We are pleased to support the research by…
Archaea are often mistaken as bacteria, given that both are small, single-cell organisms. However, archaea are as genetically different from bacteria as humans are from bacteria. While archaea are found in most environments, including the human gut microbiome, relatively little is known about them. An international team of researchers from Germany and Austria, led by Nicholas Youngblut at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany, has compiled the first large scale assessment of archaeal diversity in the…
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