Researchers from Univ. of British Columbia and Drexel University Use Kirigami to Create Tunable Radio Antennas from MXene Nanomaterials. The future of wireless technology — from charging devices to boosting communication signals — relies on the antennas that transmit electromagnetic waves becoming increasingly versatile, durable and easy to manufacture. Researchers at Drexel University and the University of British Columbia believe kirigami, the ancient Japanese art of cutting and folding paper to create intricate three-dimensional designs, could provide a model for…
Temporarily silencing brain regions helped scientists pinpoint where different types of memories originate. How do we distinguish threat from safety? It’s a question important not just in our daily lives, but for human disorders linked with fear of others, such as social anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The microscope image accompanying this press release, from the laboratory of Steven A. Siegelbaum, PhD, at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute, displays a powerful technique scientists used to help us find an answer. The…
Dysfunctional mitochondria disrupt the gut microbiome. Disruptions of mitochondrial functions have a fundamental influence on Crohn’s disease. This connection has now been demonstrated by researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). They showed that defective mitochondria in mice trigger symptoms of chronic intestinal inflammation and influence the microbiome. Typical symptoms of Crohn’s disease include chronic diarrhea, abdominal pain and fever. Although the causes of Crohn’s disease are not yet fully understood, it has been known for some years that…
A team led by physicists Steffen Sahl and Stefan Hell at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen and the MPI for Medical Research in Heidelberg has succeeded in measuring distances within biomolecules using a light microscope, down to 1 nanometer and with Ångström precision. The intra-molecular resolution achieved with MINFLUX microscopy makes it possible to optically record the spatial distances between subunits in macromolecules and thus to detect different conformations of individual proteins in the light…
Researchers from the University of Freiburg have identified the HAN molecule as an important regulator that controls plant growth in conjunction with WOX5. Understanding this mechanism is relevant for breeding more resilient or higher-yielding crops. Plants form new leaves, flowers and roots at the tips of shoots and roots, in specific growth regions known as meristems. These meristems contain stem cells that divide as needed and form new cells that develop into specialised tissue. Using the example of plant roots,…
Research Vessel Polarstern returns to port with new findings and a wealth of data and samples. Sparse sea ice, thousands of datapoints and samples, a surprising number of animals and hydrothermal vents – those are the impressions and outcomes that an international research team is now bringing back from a Polarstern expedition to the Central Arctic. After a four-month-long Arctic season, the Alfred Wegener Institute’s research icebreaker is expected to arrive back in Bremerhaven with the morning high tide on…
ISTA scientists predict—and witness—evolution in a 30-year marine snail experiment. It is 1988. The Koster archipelago, a group of islands off the Swedish west coast near the border with Norway, is hit by a particularly dense bloom of toxic algae, wiping out marine snail populations. But why would anyone care about the fate of a bunch of snails on a three-square-meter rock in the open sea? As it turns out, this event would open up the opportunity to predict and…
Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe the ‘inside-out’ growth of a galaxy in the early universe, only 700 million years after the Big Bang. This galaxy is one hundred times smaller than the Milky Way, but is surprisingly mature for so early in the universe. Like a large city, this galaxy has a dense collection of stars at its core but becomes less dense in the galactic ‘suburbs’. And like a large city, this…
Experimental findings about plasma wave reflection could answer questions about high temperatures. There is a profound mystery in our sun. While the sun’s surface temperature measures around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, its outer atmosphere, known as the solar corona, measures more like 2 million degrees Fahrenheit, about 200 times hotter. This increase in temperature away from the sun is perplexing and has been an unsolved mystery since 1939, when the high temperature of the corona was first identified. In the ensuing…
Scientists visualize and control magnetic domains in quantum antiferromagnets. When something draws us in like a magnet, we take a closer look. When magnets draw in physicists, they take a quantum look. Scientists from Osaka Metropolitan University and the University of Tokyo have successfully used light to visualize tiny magnetic regions, known as magnetic domains, in a specialized quantum material. Moreover, they successfully manipulated these regions by the application of an electric field. Their findings offer new insights into the…
A research team led by researchers at the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has synthesized a new plutonium isotope, plutonium-227. This study was published in Physical Review C. The magic numbers of protons and neutrons, such as 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126, are correlated with shell closures. In past studies, systematic analyses have revealed a persistent weakening of the neutron shell closure of 126 up to uranium, making it fascinating to explore whether…
From brighter TV screens to better medical diagnostics and more efficient solar panels, new Curtin-led research has discovered how to make more molecules stick to the surface of tiny nanocrystals, in a breakthrough that could lead to improvements in everyday technology. Lead author Associate Professor Guohua Jia from Curtin’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences, said the study investigated how the shape of zinc sulfide nanocrystals affected how well molecules, known as ligands, stick to their surface. “Ligands, play an…
Researchers at LMU University Hospital have discovered a new molecular switch that protects against cell death. Programmed cell death protects the body against cancer and other diseases. A team of researchers led by Professor Alexander Bartelt from the Institute for Cardiovascular Prevention (IPEK) has decoded a new mechanism by which oxidative stress influences cell death. The researchers hope this discovery will lead to novel approaches for targeting cancer cells and other diseases. Their findings were recently published in the journal…
The protein GBP1 is a vital component of our body’s natural defence against pathogens. This substance fights against bacteria and parasites by enveloping them in a protein coat, but how the substance manages to do this has remained unknown until now. Researchers from Delft University of Technology have now unravelled how this protein operates. This new knowledge, published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, could aid in the development of medications and therapies for individuals with weakened immune systems. So-called…
DOE tasks a Jefferson Lab team to evaluate whether proton therapy cancer treatments may serve as a safer alternative to treatments using radioactive isotopes. Radiation therapy techniques have been used for more than a century to treat cancers. Physicists in the Radiation Detector and Imaging group and associated with the Biomedical Research & Innovation Center (BRIC) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility have been for several years pursuing radiation therapy technology improvements in collaboration with…
Perovskite Tandem Solar Cells, a new type of solar cell technology, promise highest efficiencies at a low price tag and could revolutionize energy production in space. Together with his collaborators at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin and Technical University of Berlin, Dr. Felix Lang from the University of Potsdam launched the first perovskite tandem solar cells into space to test their performance with extreme radiation levels and temperature cycles. Recently, he successfully received the first data from his experiment. July 9, 2024 was…
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