Landslides are recurrent geological phenomena on Earth that cause heavy casualties and property losses annually. While teleseismic receiver functions have been widely used for crust-mantle structure analysis, they have rarely been employed for inverting shallow structures, mainly because of their lower sensitivity due to Earth’s attenuation of high-frequency waves. Now researchers have pioneered the use of the high-frequency receiver functions of local earthquakes to invert the Poisson’s ratios and shear-wave velocities of the Quaternary Xishancun landslide. Situated in the town…
Researchers at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI) have developed a new imaging technique capable of visualizing the dynamically changing structure of dendritic spines with unprecedented resolution. For most, the relentless snapping of camera shutters is an all too familiar sound associated with trips and vacations. When venturing to a new place, travelers everywhere are constantly on the search for that picture-perfect, Instagram worthy shot. Persevering through many takes, amateur photographers fight blurred backgrounds, closed eyes, and photo-bombing…
A project to unite seismic data analysis and modeling with supercomputing power may help answer some of the biggest questions about the Earth’s seismic activity. A University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute researcher will lead the four-year, multi-institution project. The Seismic Computational Platform for Empowering Discovery, or SCOPED, project involves five universities: UAF, University of Washington, Columbia University, University of Texas and the Colorado School of Mines. UAF associate professor of geophysics Carl Tape is the principal investigator on the…
The findings confirm theoretical predictions that certain metallic specimens could support an electron-phonon liquid phase. A team of researchers from Boston College has created a new metallic specimen where the motion of electrons flows in the same way water flows in a pipe — fundamentally changing from particle-like to fluid-like dynamics, the team reports in Nature Communications. Working with colleagues from the University of Texas at Dallas and Florida State University, Boston College Assistant Professor of Physics Fazel Tafti found…
Scientists from the MPI for Medical Research and colleagues have engineered synthetic exosomes that regulate cellular signaling during wound closure. The synthetic structures resemble naturally occurring extracellular vesicles (EV) that play a fundamental role in communication between cells. The scientist uncovered key mechanisms to regulate and aid wound healing and the formation of new blood vessels. Inspired by the function of their natural blue prints, the scientists successfully demonstrate for the first time that fully-synthetic exosomes with therapeutic functionality can…
A new method for generating quantum-entangled photon pairs employs nonlinear metasurfaces to enhance and tailor photon emissions—an important step towards creating miniaturized quantum devices for everyday applications. Quantum nanophotonics is an active research field with emerging applications that range from quantum computing to imaging and telecommunications. This has motivated scientists and engineers to develop sources for entangled photons that can be integrated into nano-scale photonic circuits. Practical application of nanoscale devices requires a high photon-pair generation rate, room-temperature operation, and…
Meeting society’s growing energy needs has become a daunting challenge for humanity. Demands for energy are expected to nearly double by the year 2050, while the effects of climate change, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, are already wreaking havoc in the form of droughts, wildfires, floods and other disasters. Gary Moore, a researcher at the Biodesign Center for Applied Structural Discovery, thinks chemistry will play a vital role in the development of clean solutions to the world’s mounting energy…
There’s nothing like the smell of freshly brewed coffee in the morning. But how does one measure that smell? There’s no energy in a smell to help estimate how potent the coffee might be. Instead, it’s the gases emitted from brewed coffee that contribute to the invigorating scent. The human nose captures those gases in a way that Nosang Vincent Myung, the Bernard Keating Crawford Professor of Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, is working to duplicate in a device with sensors….
… wakes solid tumors to respond to therapy. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy, which uses engineered T cells to treat certain types of cancers, has often been a challenging approach to treating solid tumors. CAR T cells need to recognize a specific target on cancer cells to kill them. However, cancer cells do not always have the target, or they find ways to hide the target and stay invisible to CAR T cell attack. A new study from…
A surprise result for solid state physicists hints at an unusual electron behavior. While studying the behavior of electrons in iron-based superconducting materials, researchers at the University of Tokyo observed a strange signal relating to the way electrons are arranged. The signal implies a new arrangement of electrons the researchers call a nematicity wave, and they hope to collaborate with theoretical physicists to better understand it. The nematicity wave could help researchers understand the way electrons interact with each other…
Astronomers have found dramatic evidence that a black hole or neutron star spiraled its way into the core of a companion star and caused that companion to explode as a supernova. The astronomers were tipped off by data from the Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS), a multi-year project using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). “Theorists had predicted that this could happen, but this is the first time we’ve actually seen such an event,”…
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces have developed a sustainable and “smart photocatalyst”. The special feature: as a so-called smart material, it can distinguish between the colors of light (blue, red and green) and, in response, enables a specific chemical reaction programmed into it. “Our smart photocatalyst functions as a traffic guide who opens one specific pathway in response to light of specific color,” says Dr. Yevheniia Markushyna, first author of the paper. Photocatalysts are special…
Nanocontainers transport active ingredients directly to their target. Using nanoparticles, a Jena research team implemented the targeted transport of an active ingredient into liver tissue. The particles were functionalized with a dye that is specifically absorbed by liver cells, and they carried an inhibitor of the signal protein PI3Kinase γ, which contributes to the development of liver failure in sepsis. However, outside liver cells, the signal protein is involved in pathogen reduction; this desired immune activity remained unhindered. This novel…
The cichlids of Lake Tanganyika in Africa are highly diverse – including with regard to sex chromosomes. These have changed extremely frequently in the course of the evolution of these fish and, depending on the species, can be of the type XY or ZW. This has been reported by a research team from the University of Basel and the Research Museum Koenig in Bonn in the scientific journal Science Advances. Based on the biology lessons back in our schooldays, we…
Scientists from the Department of Genetics at the Institute of Biology at Leipzig University’s Faculty of Life Sciences, together with colleagues from Harvard University, Brandeis University and the University of Cambridge, have published a study on how the brain senses temperature. Using Drosophila larvae, the international team of scientists discovered for the first time the mechanism of how information about temperature changes is received and how this affects behaviour. “Most animals have a preferred temperature – what’s called an optimum….
A Department of Energy-funded project between Argonne and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign explores coupling magnetism and microwaves for quantum discoveries. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has recently funded both DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana (UIUC) in a new project related to quantum information science. The Argonne team will bring to the project its expertise in coupling superconducting and magnetic systems. The UIUC team will contribute its world-class capabilities for developing new magnetic materials for quantum systems….
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