Researchers at the Institute of Natural Products Engineering at TU Dresden have developed an insulating material made from recycled paper for shipping temperature-sensitive foods and medicines. As part of a research and development project, the fundamentals were laid for the production of ecologically sustainable fresh food shipping packaging and thus for an alternative to environmentally harmful Styrofoam and plastic packaging. Thermally insulated packaging keeps shipping goods within a certain temperature range. The packaging provides passive cooling, often with additional coolants,…
Research team confirms a new nuclear property predicted by theory Scientists are able to selectively knockout nucleons and preformed nuclear clusters from atomic nuclei using high-energy proton beams. In an experiment performed at the Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP) in Osaka in Japan, the existence of preformed helium nuclei at the surface of several tin isotopes could be identified in a reaction. The results confirm a theory, which predicts the formation of helium clusters in low-density nuclear matter and…
Researchers have solved the operating mode of the barrel pore protein assembly in the mitochondrial outer membrane Mitochondria are vital for the human body as cellular powerhouses: They possess more than 1,000 different proteins, required for many central metabolic pathways. Disfunction of these lead to severe diseases, especially of the nervous system and the heart. In order to transport proteins and metabolites, mitochondria contain a special group of so-called beta-barrel membrane proteins, which form transport pores in the outer mitochondrial…
Heidelberg astrophysicists study interstellar gas clouds as part of an international cooperation Computer simulations of turbulence in interstellar gas and molecular clouds – simulations so complex they were inconceivable until now – have provided important new insights into the role turbulence plays in the formation of stars. For the first time, the results of the calculations suggest how these turbulent movements transition from the supersonic to the subsonic range. The work was conducted by an international research team led by…
Like a person breaking up a cat fight, the role of catalysts in a chemical reaction is to hurry up the process – and come out of it intact. And, just as not every house in a neighborhood has someone willing to intervene in such a battle, not every part of a catalyst participates in the reaction. But what if one could convince the unengaged parts of a catalyst to get involved? Chemical reactions could occur faster or more efficiently….
Results of fundamental research provide possible basis for the development of drugs active against the pathogen / New class of inhibitors attack papain-like viral protease / Efficacy against SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 in cell cultures While the first vaccines have been developed against the pathogen SARS-CoV-2, studies are still underway to identify effective drugs for treating coronavirus infections. Scientists in Gießen, Mainz, and Würzburg in Germany involved in a fundamental research project have now identified potential starting points that could contribute…
Filariae, slender but sometimes up to 70 centimeters long nematodes, can set up residence in their host quite tenaciously and cause serious infectious diseases in the tropics. The tiny larvae of the worms are usually transmitted from person to person by mosquitoes, which pick up the larvae from the blood or subcutaneous tissue when they bite and deposit them in the vessels or tissues of their next victim. Researchers led by the University of Bonn have now investigated a mechanism…
Acetals are important chemical compounds that are used, for example, in the production of certain medical agents. A new method now makes their synthesis easier and more environmentally friendly. Chemists at the University of Bonn have developed and optimized the sustainable catalytic process. State-of-the-art computer simulations were also used. The reaction is based on a mechanism that frequently occurs in nature, but has rarely been used in chemical synthesis up to now. The results are published in the journal Angewandte…
Liquids are ubiquitous in Nature: from the water that we consume daily to superfluid helium which is a quantum liquid appearing at temperatures as low as only a few degrees above the absolute zero. A common feature of these vastly different liquids is being self-bound in free space in the form of droplets. Understanding from a microscopic perspective how a liquid is formed by adding particles one by one is a significant challenge. Recently, a new type of quantum droplets…
Wireless power transfers in the ocean For drones that can be stationed underwater for the adoption of ICT in mariculture. Associate professor Masaya Tamura, Kousuke Murai (who has completed the first term of his master’s program), and their research team from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Information Engineering at Toyohashi University of Technology have successfully transferred power and data wirelessly through seawater by using a power transmitter/receiver with four layers of ultra-thin, flat electrodes. In the field of wireless…
New probes allow scientists to see four-stranded DNA interacting with molecules inside living human cells, unravelling its role in cellular processes. DNA usually forms the classic double helix shape of two strands wound around each other. While DNA can form some more exotic shapes in test tubes, few are seen in real living cells. However, four-stranded DNA, known as G-quadruplex, has recently been seen forming naturally in human cells. Now, in new research published today in Nature Communications, a team…
In experiments in mouse tissues and human cells, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers say they have found that removing a membrane that lines the back of the eye may improve the success rate for regrowing nerve cells damaged by blinding diseases. The findings are specifically aimed at discovering new ways to reverse vision loss caused by glaucoma and other diseases that affect the optic nerve, the information highway from the eye to the brain. “The idea of restoring vision to someone…
If you want to understand an ecosystem, look at what the species within it eat. In studying food webs — how animals and plants in a community are connected through their dietary preferences — ecologists can piece together how energy flows through an ecosystem and how stable it is to climate change and other disturbances. Studying ancient food webs can help scientists reconstruct communities of species, many long extinct, and even use those insights to figure out how modern-day communities…
Physicists at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered how to locally add electrical charge to an atomically thin graphene device by layering flakes of another thin material, alpha-RuCl3, on top of it. A paper published in the journal Nano Letters describes the charge transfer process in detail. Gaining control of the flow of electrical current through atomically thin materials is important to potential future applications in photovoltaics or computing. “In my field, where we study van der Waals heterostructures…
Computational materials science experts at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory enhanced an algorithm that borrows its approach from the nesting habits of cuckoo birds, reducing the search time for new high-tech alloys from weeks to mere seconds. The scientists are investigating a type of alloys called high-entropy alloys, a novel class of materials that are highly sought after for a host of unusual and potentially beneficial properties. They are lightweight in relation to their strength, fracture-resistant, highly corrosion…
Scientists show ultrasonication is a cost-effective approach to enhance the properties of magnesium diboride superconductors. Superconductivity already has a variety of practical applications, such as medical imaging and levitating transportation like the ever-popular maglev systems. However, to ensure that the benefits of applied superconductors keep spreading further into other technological fields, we need to find ways of not only improving their performance, but also making them more accessible and simpler to fabricate. In this regard, magnesium diboride (MgB2) has attracted…
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