The red smoke of a flare on a roadway warns motorists to be cautious, but the anthraquinone dyes currently used to produce this smoke are thought to be harmful to human health. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering have identified a less toxic, “greener” alternative — an organic dye called pigment red 254 (PR254). It also forms a red-colored smoke cloud more effectively than current dyes, the researchers say. Commercialized in 1986, diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) dyes are used…

The brain has the ability to modify the contacts between neurons. Among other things, that is how it prevents brain activity from getting out of control. Researchers from the University of Bonn, together with a team from Australia, have identified a mechanism that plays an important role in this. In cultured cells, this mechanism alters the synaptic coupling of neurons and thus stimulus transmission and processing. If it is disrupted, diseases such as epilepsy, schizophrenia or autism may be the…

Improved efficiency of wireless energy transfer of ultrasonic waves by triboelectric power generation. Ultrasonic waves have applications in wireless charging of batteries underwater or in body-implanted electronic devices. As population ages and with the advancements in medical technology, the number of patients using implanted electronic devices, such as artificial pacemakers and defibrillators, is increasing worldwide. Currently, the batteries of body-implanted devices are replaced by an incision surgery, which may lead to health complications. Accordingly, a new charging technique by wireless…

In chemistry, there are structures that are particularly stable, such as the so-called “benzene ring” consisting of six interconnected carbon atoms. Such rings form the structural basis for graphite and graphene, but they also occur in many dyes – such as the jeans dye indigo and in many drugs such as aspirin. When chemists wanted to build such rings in a targeted manner, they used so-called coupling reactions, which usually bear the name of their inventors: for example, the Diels-Alder…

Have you ever wondered if bacteria make distinctive sounds? If we could listen to bacteria, we would be able to know whether they are alive or not. When bacteria are killed using an antibiotic, those sounds would stop – unless of course the bacteria are resistant to the antibiotic. This is exactly what a team of researchers from TU Delft , led by dr. Farbod Alijani, now have managed to do: they captured low-level noise of a single bacterium using…

Researcheres tested the nanoparticles on human immune cells cultured in vitro and found that the chiral nanoparticles induced production of substances associated with an immune response even in the absence of an antigen. Vaccines can be made over 25% more effective by adding left-handed chiral gold nanoparticles as adjuvants, according to a study by an international collaboration in which Brazilian researchers took part. An article reporting the results is published in Nature. Three research groups collaborated on the study, one affiliated with…

Breathing, seeing, hearing – the family of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) is involved in a variety of physiological processes and is also the cause of diverse diseases. As has now been discovered by a team of scientists led by Professor Ines Liebscher from Leipzig University, some members of the GPCR family respond to mechanical stimuli. In collaboration with Chinese research groups, they have achieved another milestone on the way to understanding the mechanism by which this receptor class is activated….

Sponges in coral reefs, less flashy than their coral neighbors but important to the overall health of reefs, are among the earliest animals on the planet. New research from the University of New Hampshire examines coral reef ecosystems with a novel approach to understanding the complex evolution of sponges and the microbes that live in symbiosis with them. With this “genomic time machine,” researchers can predict aspects of reef and ocean ecosystems through hundreds of millions of years of dramatic…

Deuterium, the heavy brother of hydrogen, is considered a promising material of the future – because of its wide range of applications: in science, for energy generation, or in the production of pharmaceuticals. However, the extraction of deuterium from its natural isotope mixture has so far been complex and expensive. With a porous material developed at the Technische Universität Dresden, this could soon be done more efficiently and cost-effectively. The new method has now been published in the scientific journal…

… to better understand and treat spinal cord injury. A research team led by scientists from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has developed an innovative technology for in vivo imaging of the important biological processes involved in the injury and repair of spinal cords, paving the way for a better understanding of the pathology and potential treatment of spinal cord injury (SCI). A tight bundle of neural cells (neurons and glia) and nerve pathways (axons), the…

A novel algorithm delivers superresolution images 80 times faster than the current standard imaging method for structured illumination microscopy. Superresolution structured illumination microscopy (SR-SIM) is an outstanding method for visualizing the subcellular dynamics in living cells. SR-SIM can achieve rapid, optically sectioned (OS), superresolution (SR) observation with hundreds to thousands of time points, which are the number of superresolution frames for continuous imaging. However, the reconstruction algorithm for OS-SR-SIM imposes a significant computing burden, due to a complex workflow and…

Scripps Research scientists make fundamental advance in understanding salivary gland biology. Scientists at Scripps Research and the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research have discovered a special type of cell that resides in salivary glands and is likely crucial for oral health. As the researchers described in Cell Reports on April 12, 2022, the new type of salivary gland cell called “ionocyte” that works to maintain healthy concentrations of charged molecules—ions—of potassium, calcium, chlorine, and other electrolytes in saliva….

Milling rice to separate the grain from the husks produces about 100 million tons of rice husk waste globally each year. Scientists searching for a scalable method to fabricate quantum dots have developed a way to recycle rice husks to create the first silicon quantum dot (QD) LED light. Their new method transforms agricultural waste into state-of-the-art light-emitting diodes in a low-cost, environmentally friendly way. The research team from the Natural Science Center for Basic Research and Development, Hiroshima University,…

First-of-its-kind survival predictor detects patterns in heart MRIs invisible to the naked eye. A new artificial intelligence-based approach can predict, significantly more accurately than a doctor, if and when a patient could die of cardiac arrest. The technology, built on raw images of patient’s diseased hearts and patient backgrounds, stands to revolutionize clinical decision making and increase survival from sudden and lethal cardiac arrhythmias, one of medicine’s deadliest and most puzzling conditions. The work, led by Johns Hopkins University researchers,…

With any highly infectious disease, time can be a killer. It is crucial to get a test result for a pathogen quickly, lest someone continue in their daily lives infecting others. And delays in testing have undoubtedly exacerbated the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the most accurate COVID-19 test often takes 24 hours or longer to return results from a lab. At-home test kits offer results in minutes but are far less accurate or sensitive. Researchers at the University of Florida, however,…

‘We analysed the genomic profile of over one million cells from 1,000 people to identify a fingerprint linking genetic markers to diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, type 1 diabetes, spondylitis, inflammatory bowel disease, and Crohn’s disease,’ says Professor Joseph Powell, joint lead author at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. ‘We were able to do this using single cell sequencing, a new technology that allows us to detect subtle changes in individual cells,’ he says. The discovery…