Finding could lead to future treatments for hearing loss Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) have conducted a study that has determined the role that a critical protein plays in the development of hair cells. These hair cells are vital for hearing. Some of these cells amplify sounds that come into the ear, and others transform sound waves into electrical signals that travel to the brain. Ronna Hertzano, MD, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of…
Recent years have witnessed explosive development in electrochemical CO2 reduction into valuable chemicals or fuels. The CO2 electroreduction is considered as a promising route to utilize renewable electricity from intermittent energy, such as solar, winder, geothermal power, etc. Designing high-performance electrocatalysts is pivotal to tune CO2 activation, thus achieving the highly selective CO2 conversion into target products. However, the rational design of electrocatalysts faces severe challenge, because that most of the catalysts would go through dynamic structural evolution under applied…
MPIE scientists publish their recent findings in Advanced Functional Materials Since the discovery of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) 30 years ago, already tons of these are produced each year and find application in different fields, for example in batteries, filter systems, or bicycle frames. Usually, the synthesis of carbon nanotubes takes place at temperatures above 700 °C using pure metal catalysts. But, how to make the synthesis more sustainable and open the way for new application possibilities? Prof. Joohyun Lim and…
Poultry is often contaminated with bacteria. Chlorine treatments in the slaughtering process are only of limited use and are not permitted in the EU. In a new research project, the Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V. (LZH) now plans to combine ultraviolet (UV) laser treatment with the use of bacteriophages for the disinfection. Campylobacter is found almost half of all broilers, and one in five is contaminated with salmonella. To reduce the bacterial load, the scientists at the LZH want to establish…
Lasing – the emission of a collimated light beam of light with a well-defined wavelength (color) and phase – results from a self-organization process, in which a collection of emission centers synchronizes itself to produce identical light particles (photons). A similar self-organized synchronization phenomenon can also lead to the generation of coherent vibrations – a phonon laser, where phonon denotes, in analogy to photons, the quantum particles of sound. Photon lasing was first demonstrated approximately 60 years ago and, coincidentally,…
A research team from the Nanjing Agricultural University, China, and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Germany, showed that isothiocyanates produced by cruciferous plants to fend off pests serve as oviposition cues. The plant defense substances serve as odor signals for females of the diamondback moth to lay their eggs on these plants. The scientists identified two olfactory receptors whose sole function is to detect these defense substances and to guide the moths to the ideal oviposition sites. They…
Despite all recent progress, cancer remains one of the deadliest human diseases. In a new publication that appeared in the journal Cell, researchers from Jürgen Knoblich’s lab at IMBA – Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences – found a very surprising and unexpected connection between the formation of tumors and mitochondria, the power house of the cells, that allows neural stem cells that normally build our brain to become deadly tumor cells. Worldwide, cancer is the…
As a side effect of their metabolism, microorganisms living on methane can also convert ammonia. In the process, they produce nitric oxide (NO), a central molecule in the global nitrogen cycle. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Bremen (DE), and Radboud University, Nijmegen (NL), now discovered the enzyme that produces NO, closing an important gap in our understanding of how methanotrophs deal with rising environmental ammonia concentrations. Some microorganisms, the so-called methanotrophs, make a living by oxidizing…
University of Illinois biophysicists use Frontera supercomputer to study the formation and behavior of biological condensates. The world inside the human cell grew a bit more interesting in recent years as the role of a new biological structure became clearer. It was long believed that most important operations in the cell occur within organelles. “They’re there to do certain functions. For instance, mitochondria generate the energy that everything runs on,” explained Aleksei Aksimentiev, a professor of physics at the University…
Like a comic book come to life, researchers at Stanford University have developed a kind of X-ray vision – only without the X-rays. Working with hardware similar to what enables autonomous cars to “see” the world around them, the researchers enhanced their system with a highly efficient algorithm that can reconstruct three-dimensional hidden scenes based on the movement of individual particles of light, or photons. In tests, detailed in a paper published Sept. 9 in Nature Communications, their system successfully…
Research team led by the University of Göttingen investigates influence of ‘greening measures’ on pollinators About one third of the payments received by farmers are linked to specific “greening measures” to promote biodiversity. The cultivation of nitrogen-fixing legumes is very popular. However, these measures have been criticized because the benefits for biodiversity are unclear. Now a team from the University of Göttingen, the Julius Kühn Institute and the Thuenen Institute in Braunschweig has investigated whether the cultivation of the faba…
The Ob, Yenisei, and Lena rivers flow into the Kara and Laptev seas and account for about half of the total freshwater runoff to the Arctic Ocean. The transport and transformation of freshwater discharge in these seas have a large impact on ice formation, biological productivity, and many other processes in the Arctic. Researchers from Shirshov Institute of Oceanology and MIPT have investigated the spreading of large river plumes — that is, freshened water masses formed as a result of…
Kiel researchers, together with an international team, present a nematode model system as the basis for comprehensive microbiome research All multicellular living beings are colonized by an unimaginably large number of microorganisms and have evolved together with these microbial symbionts from the beginning. The natural microbiome, i.e. the entirety of the bacteria, viruses and fungi that live in and on a body, is of central importance for the entire organism: it supports, for example, the absorption of nutrients, fends off…
For the first time, long-term photogrammetic series document the “life cycle” of a volcano. The analyses shows that volcanoes have a kind of memory. Volcanoes are born and die – and then grow again on their own remains. The decay of a volcano in particular is often accompanied by catastrophic consequences, as was the most recent case for Anak Krakatau in 2018. The flank of the volcano had collapsed sliding into the sea. The resulting tsunami killed several hundred people…
In a joint study, scientists from Jacobs University Bremen, the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) and the University of Bremen have for the first time predicted the vulnerability of tropical coral reef habitats to measurable environmental factors. According to the study, 94 percent of the world’s coral reef habitats must be considered endangered, whereas only six percent of the habitats can be considered as reef refugia, as largely unaffected areas. The study was recently published by the Bremen…
A new revolution in the production of electronic circuits is on the way: Empa researchers are working on electronics that come out of printers. This makes it possible to produce the circuits on all sorts of substrates, such as paper or plastic film – but there are still some hurdles to overcome. Imagine being able to easily print electronics on any surface. Today, this is no longer a utopia: “Printed Electronics” is an emerging techno logy that makes it possible…
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