Finding reveals potential for spread to humans Reston ebolavirus (RESTV) should be considered a livestock pathogen with potential to affect other mammals, including people, according to National Institutes of Health scientists. The caution comes from a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in which the scientists found that experimental piglets infected with RESTV developed severe respiratory disease and shed the virus from the upper respiratory tract. RESTV can infect humans but is not known to cause…
How stars form in galaxies remains a major open question in astrophysics. A new UZH study sheds new light on this topic with the help of a data-driven re-analysis of observational measurements. The star-formation activity of typical, nearby galaxies is found to scale proportionally with the amount of gas present in these galaxies. This points to the net gas supply from cosmic distances as the main driver of galactic star formation. Stars are born in dense clouds of molecular hydrogen…
New device detects which hand gesture you want to make The device, which combines wearable biosensors with artificial intelligence, could be used to control prosthetics or interact with electronic devices. Imagine typing on a computer without a keyboard, playing a video game without a controller or driving a car without a wheel. That’s one of the goals of a new device developed by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, that can recognize hand gestures based on electrical signals detected…
As Chile and Argentina witnessed the total solar eclipse on Dec. 14, 2020, unbeknownst to skywatchers, a little tiny speck was flying past the Sun — a recently discovered comet. This comet was first spotted in satellite data by Thai amateur astronomer Worachate Boonplod on the NASA-funded Sungrazer Project — a citizen science project that invites anyone to search for and discover new comets in images from the joint European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or…
Researchers from the National Graphene Institute at the University of Manchester and the University of Pennsylvania identify ultra-fast gas flows through atomic-scale apertures in 2D membrane and validate a century-old equation of fluid dynamics. Researchers from the National Graphene Institute at the University of Manchester and the University of Pennsylvania have identified ultra-fast gas flows through the tiniest holes in one-atom-thin membranes, in a study published in Science Advances. The work – alongside another study from Penn on the creation…
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have developed a new family of cathodes with the potential to replace the costly cobalt-based cathodes typically found in today’s lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles and consumer electronics. The new class called NFA, which stands for nickel-, iron- and aluminum-based cathode, is a derivative of lithium nickelate and can be used to make the positive electrode of a lithium-ion battery. These novel cathodes are designed to be fast charging, energy dense, cost effective, and…
Computational simulations performed by the Pantazis group combined with spectroscopic studies led to the discovery of a new catalytic intermediate in water oxidation. One of the greatest ambitions of modern chemistry is to reproduce with synthetic catalysts the remarkable feat of water oxidation performed in nature by photosynthetic organisms. Plants use sunlight to split water into oxygen, protons, and electrons. This is the source of the oxygen that we breathe, while the protons and electrons are used in the enzymatic…
Skyrmions are small magnetic objects that could revolutionize the data storage industry and also enable new computer architectures. However, before they can be utilized in such applications, there are still a number of challenges that need to be overcome. A team of Empa researchers has now succeeded for the first time in producing a tunable multilayer system in which two different types of skyrmions – the future bits for “0” and “1” – can exist at room temperature, as they…
An international team from Germany, Sweden, Russia and the USA, led by scientists from European XFEL, has published the results of an experiment that could provide a blueprint for the analysis of transitions states in atoms and molecules. This would open up new opportunities to gain insights into important processes such as photocatalysis, elementary steps in photosynthesis and radiation damage. It was the very first user experiment carried out at European XFEL’s Small Quantum System (SQS) instrument. The scientists used…
New simulations carried out in part on the ATERUI II supercomputer in Japan have found that the reason ions exist at higher temperatures than electrons in space plasma is because they are better able to absorb energy from compressive turbulent fluctuations in the plasma. These finding have important implications for understanding observations of various astronomical objects such as the images of the accretion disk and shadow of the M87 supermassive black hole captured by the Event Horizon Telescope. In addition…
Research team develops new material system to convert and generate terahertz waves. On the electromagnetic spectrum, terahertz light is located between infrared radiation and microwaves. It holds enormous potential for tomorrow’s technologies: Among other things, it might succeed 5G by enabling extremely fast mobile communications connections and wireless networks. The bottleneck in the transition from gigahertz to terahertz frequencies has been caused by insufficiently efficient sources and converters. A German-Spanish research team with the participation of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR)…
The world is getting warmer and warmer – and many organisms native to lower latitudes or elevations are moving higher. However, novel organisms moving into a new habitat could disturb the ecological balance which has been established over a long period. Plants and herbivores are characterised by long-term co-evolution, shaping both their geographic distribution and the characteristics that they display in their occupied sites. At higher elevations, this is seen in insect herbivores being generally less abundant and plants in…
Researchers of Münster University reveal mechanobiological function of muscle-specific adhesion protein / Study published in “Nature Communications” The ability of cells to sense and respond to their mechanical environment is critical for many cellular processes but the molecular mechanisms underlying cellular mechanosensitivity are still unclear. Researchers at the University of Münster have now discovered how the muscle-specific adhesion molecule metavinculin modulates mechanical force transduction on the molecular level. The research results have just been published in the journal “Nature Communications”….
Large droplets favoring creation of smaller ones Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPIDS) reported their new findings on how precipitating large raindrops, ice particles can favor growth of aerosols to produce new cloud condensation nuclei or ice nucleating particles. The results were recently published in the Geophysical Research Letters. Atmospheric clouds play a crucial role in defining the local weather and global climate. When cloud aerosols grow to a certain size by collecting water, scientists…
The GERmanium Detector Array (GERDA) experiment at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) of INFN, Italy, has reported its final results on the search for the neutrinoless double-beta (0νββ) decay of germanium-76 in the recent issue of Physical Review Letters [1]. No signal has been observed, but all goals of the final phase of the experiment have been achieved. According to the final result of GERDA, the lower limit for the half-life of the neutrinoless double-beta decay (0νββ) of…
Researchers from the Innovation Center Computer Assisted Surgery (ICCAS) at Leipzig University and the National Center for Radiation Research in Oncology (OncoRay) in Dresden have achieved promising results with a new cancer therapy using focused ultrasound (FUS) and ionizing radiation. The results of the research group led by ICCAS director Professor Andreas Melzer have now been published in the journal “CELLS”. SONO-RAY is a collaborative project receiving more than six million euros in funding from the Federal Ministry of Education…
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