A team of scientists led by Prof. Patrik Verstreken (VIB-KU Leuven) has identified a new genetic mutation that may cause a form of early-onset Parkinsonism. The mutation, located in a gene called SGIP1, was discovered in an Arab family with a history of Parkinson’s symptoms that began at a young age. The study reveals that this mutation affects how brain cells communicate, providing new insights into the disease’s development and potential treatment strategies. A genetic clue to Parkinsonism Parkinsonism is…
Researchers at the University of Regensburg in collaboration with IBM Research Europe – Zurich have found a way to access excited states of single molecules and determine their energies. A very fundamental property of atoms and molecules are the energies, at which electrons can be added to or removed from the compound. This is decisive for many chemical reactions, in which electrons are exchanged. However, it is not only of fundamental interest: Organic compounds are promising candidates for advanced solar…
How to balance the piezoelectric coefficient and carrier concentration of material for ultrahigh piezocatalysis? Piezocatalysis, which is able to convert natural mechanical energy into electrochemical energy, is considered a promising green and sustainable technology. The efficiency is limited by factors such as the piezoelectric properties of the material, the carrier concentration and mobility, and the number of reactive sites. Low carrier concentration will limit the applicability of the material as a piezoelectric catalyst; however, high carrier concentration may affect the…
New perspectives for the development of catalysis: Chemnitz University of Technology’s Chair of Inorganic Chemistry has succeeded in synthesizing a spectacular gallium compound in the laboratory. Catalysts play an important role in the manufacture of many products that we encounter in everyday life – for example in cars for exhaust gas purification or in the chemical industry in the production of fertilizers. Catalysts ensure that these reactions take place with low energy consumption and with as few side reactions as…
MED6-189 is effective against drug-sensitive and drug-resistant strains of human malaria parasites. In 2022, nearly 619,000 global deaths due to malaria were caused by Plasmodium falciparum, the most virulent, prevalent, and deadly human malaria parasite. For decades, the parasite’s resistance to all antimalarial drugs has posed a big challenge for researchers working to stop the spread of the disease. A team led by scientists at UC Riverside, UC Irvine, and Yale School of Medicine has now designed a new drug against…
Heidelberg researchers identify biological mechanism that protects against, but can also trigger, errors in the genome. Certain developmental signals shape not only the human embryo but also play a significant role in maintaining our genetic blueprints. They prevent alterations in the genome, known as mosaicism. An international research team led by scientists of the Centre for Organismal Studies of Heidelberg University made this discovery in investigations using stem cells. The underlying biological mechanism helps the DNA to produce an identical…
Nanomembrane allows efficient sieving of ions from liquids. Filters play an important role in many areas of life – from coffee filters to the purification of liquids. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have now produced a filter made of a novel, mussel-like material. The filter, which is only around 20 millionths of a millimeter thick, is able to filter ions and molecules with high efficiency. Everyone knows it from their childhood days in the sandpit: sand…
An “invisible forest” of phytoplankton is thriving in part of our warming ocean, new research shows. Phytoplankton are tiny drifting organisms that do about half of the planet’s “primary production” (forming living cells by photosynthesis). The new study, by the University of Exeter, examined phytoplankton at the ocean surface and the “subsurface” – a distinct layer of water beneath – to see how climate variability is affecting them. Published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the findings show these two…
Meandering conduction channels and the tunable nature of quantized charge transport. Topological protection provides unprecedented robustness of physical phenomena against all kinds of perturbations; but in doing so, it exercises topological censorship by hiding all kinds of interesting and important microscopic information. Recent experiments have collected microscopic information precisely of the kind hidden by such topological censorship. The work by Douçot, Kovrizhin, and Moessner provides a detailed microscopic theory that goes beyond such topological censorship. It not only identifies an…
The discovery of a stable single-electron covalent bond between two carbon atoms validates a century-old theory. Covalent bonds, in which two atoms are bound together by sharing a pair of electrons, form the scaffolding that underpins the majority of organic compounds. In 1931, the Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling suggested that covalent bonds made from just a single, unpaired electron could exist, but these single-electron bonds would likely be much weaker than a standard covalent bond involving a pair of electrons….
Manganese is earth-abundant and cheap. A new process could help make it a contender to replace nickel and cobalt in batteries. Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries are growing in adoption, used in devices like smartphones and laptops, electric vehicles, and energy storage systems. But supplies of nickel and cobalt commonly used in the cathodes of these batteries are limited. New research led by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) opens up a potential low-cost, safe alternative in manganese,…
A new study shows Mars’ early thick atmosphere could be locked up in the planet’s clay surface. Mars wasn’t always the cold desert we see today. There’s increasing evidence that water once flowed on the Red Planet’s surface, billions of years ago. And if there was water, there must also have been a thick atmosphere to keep that water from freezing. But sometime around 3.5 billion years ago, the water dried up, and the air, once heavy with carbon dioxide,…
For the first time in Germany: Heart Center of the UMG uses new procedure for cardiac arrhythmias. The Optrell mapping catheter, which allows precise imaging of the heart, was used for the first time in Germany at the Heart Center of the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG). The catheter measures the electrical activity and structure of the heart while it is in place and creates a kind of “map”. The areas in the heart that cause problems can thus be…
Almost everyone knows about HIV. Fewer people know about its relative, HTLV-1. However, HTLV-1 can cause serious illnesses, including cancer. To develop ways to combat this virus, understanding its structure is essential. Martin Obr and Florian Schur from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and US colleagues now show the virus in close-up in a new paper, published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. Martin Obr is on edge, anxiously waiting for his train to the airport. A…
The global production of plastic has increased to such an extent that plastics have become ubiquitous in our environment. Plastic of various sizes are also found on the German North Sea and Baltic Sea coasts. In the citizen science project “Microplastic Detectives”, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, together with citizens, have now collected samples from beaches along the entire German coast to be analyzed for microplastics. The resulting dataset is the first to be large enough to make reliable…
Despite its importance for mathematics, the neuronal basis of the number zero in the human brain was previously unknown. Researchers from the University Hospital Bonn (UKB), the University of Bonn and the University of Tübingen have now discovered that individual nerve cells in the medial temporal lobe recognize zero as a numerical value and not as a separate category “nothing”. The results have now been published in the journal “Current Biology”. The concept of the number zero has been central…
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