Advanced microscope technology and cutting-edge geological science are giving new perspectives to an old medical mystery: How do kidney stones form, why are some people more susceptible to them and can they be prevented? In a new paper published in the journal Nature Reviews Urology, researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Mayo Clinic and other collaborators described the geological nature of kidney stones, outlined the arc of their formation, established a new classification scheme and suggested possible clinical interventions….

An international research team – with a key contribution by the MPSD and led by DESY researcher Francesca Calegari – has demonstrated that ultrashort laser pulses can be used to protect one of the DNA building blocks against destruction induced by vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) radiation. The research group unveiled that a second laser flash in the infrared spectrum, timed shortly (only a few millionths of billions of a second) after the first VUV flash, prevented the adenine molecule from disintegrating,…

Medical diagnostics algorithm identifies pneumonia in paediatric x-ray images. AI algorithms can support medical personnel in diagnosing illnesses. However, to train these algorithms, a precious good warranting careful protection must be accessed: medical data. A team of researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has developed a technology that ensures that patients’ personal data are protected in the training of algorithms. It is now being used for the first time in an algorithm that identifies pneumonia in paediatric x-ray…

… of induced sputum and BAL in multi-center clinical trials. In a clinical proof-of-concept study, Fraunhofer ITEM researchers were able to demonstrate that chip cytometry can also be used to analyze bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid or induced sputum. This method enables quantitative and even multiple repeated analyses also of the small amounts of morphologically heterogeneous cell populations that are typical of these biological samples. Analysis of the cellular composition of BAL fluid and induced sputum plays an important role in…

 – jellyfish chips, sea cucumber soup and green caviar. The world’s population is growing rapidly, and fertile land, freshwater and fertilizer are becoming scarce. At the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT), scientists are therefore investigating the extent to which the sea holds food resources that have hardly been used to date, and how these can be sustainably exploited. The world’s population is growing rapidly, with around 10 billion people expected to live on the planet in 2050. At…

Songbird Uses Musical Techniques Like Those of Humans. The North American mockingbird is famous for its ability to imitate the song of other birds. But it doesn’t just mimic its kindred species, it actually composes its own songs based on other birds’ melodies. An interdisciplinary research team has now worked out how exactly the mockingbird constructs its imitations. The scientists determined that the birds follow similar musical rules as those found in human music, from Beethoven to Kendrick Lamar. The…

… enabling personalized medicine with wireless charging. Treatment of chronic autoimmune diseases is no longer limited to expensive drugs and undesirable side effects. Neuromodulation has been shown to be effective in treating diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, chronic headaches, asthma or Parkinson’s disease. To ready the technology for widespread clinical application, researchers at Fraunhofer IZM are developing a new generation of microimplants as part of the EU Moore4Medical project. These highly miniaturized devices have a special feature: the implants can…

A critical process in the infection cycle of viruses has been revealed for the first time in dynamic detail using pioneering plant-based technology. Evidence about the process of virus maturation revealed in the research could help us develop new methods for treating viral infections. Maturation plays a critical role for all animal and bacterial viruses and is required to produce infectious virions or particles. Though the outlines of the process have been determined for many groups of viruses, detailed mechanistic…

Dresden and Copenhagen researchers establish human pancreas culture system. The pancreas is a little organ behind the stomach and has two main functions – digestion and blood sugar regulation. How the human pancreas develops has been relatively unexplored for ethical and practical reasons. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden, Germany, the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Biology (DanStem) in Copenhagen, Denmark, and several other international collaborators, including CIC bioGUNE…

Before the huge potential of tiny nanocarriers for highly targeted drug delivery and environmental clean-up can be realized, scientists first need to be able to see them. Currently researchers have to rely on attaching fluorescent dyes or heavy metals to label parts of organic nanocarrier structures for investigation, often changing them in the process. A new technique using chemically-sensitive “soft” X-rays offers a simpler, non-disruptive way of gaining insight into this nano-world. In a study published by Nature Communications, a…

Tracking down species on the go using environmental DNA. Sloughed off skin and bodily fluids are things most people would prefer to avoid. But for marine biologist like Cheryl Lewis Ames, Associate Professor of Applied Marine Biology in the Graduate School of Agricultural Science at Tohoku University (Japan), such remnants of life have become a magical key to detecting the unseen. Any organism living in the ocean will inevitably leave behind traces containing their DNA – environmental DNA (eDNA) –…

Multistep technique uses small invertebrate to detect, count and characterize nanoplastics. If you’ve been to your local beach, you may have noticed the wind tossing around litter such as an empty potato chip bag or a plastic straw. These plastics often make their way into the ocean, affecting not only marine life and the environment but also threatening food safety and human health. Eventually, many of these plastics break down into microscopic sizes, making it hard for scientists to quantify…

Scientists at IST Austria discover how a high-risk gene for developing autism spectrum disorder affects brain development. Study published in Nature Communications. Although many forms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are thought to have genetic causes, the cellular and molecular functions of the identified genes remain unclear. Scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) Austria studied a high-risk gene and discovered its important role during a critical phase of brain development. Within the European Union alone, about three…

Self-propelled particles can condense by turning and moving toward crowded areas. We observe water vapor condensing into liquid droplets on a daily basis, be it as dew drops on leaves or as droplets on the lid of a cooking pot. Since the work of Dutch physicist J.D. van der Waals in the 19th century, condensation has been understood to result from attractive forces between the molecules of a fluid. Now, an international team of researchers has discovered a new mechanism…

When activated, they damage brain development … Since our ancestors infected themselves with retroviruses millions of years ago, we have carried elements of these viruses in our genes – known as human endogenous retroviruses, or HERVs for short. These viral elements have lost their ability to replicate and infect during evolution, but are an integral part of our genetic makeup. In fact, humans possess five times more HERVs in non-coding parts than coding genes. So far, strong focus has been…

Alzheimer’s Disease is the most common form of dementia and is characterised by the build-up of amyloid plaques in the brain. Microglia, the immune sentinels of the brain, are not only responsible for eliminating foreign invaders, but also maintaining brain homeostasis by clearing toxic waste such as the amyloid plaques. However, the role of microglia in Alzheimer’s Disease and its relationship to amyloid plaque accumulation remain unclear. Now, a team of scientists from Duke-NUS Medical School and Monash University have…