The effectiveness of many potentially powerful treatments including drug therapy, gene therapy and cancer chemotherapy is often reduced because it can be difficult to target the treatment exactly where it will be most effective. One of the problems is that it is frequently difficult for drugs, as well as DNA and other biological molecules, to pass through the membranes of the targeted cells. Electroporation (EP), which involves the application of electrical pulses directly to the tissue to be treated
Using the equations of quantum mechanics, which normally govern the bizarre physics that occurs at tiny atomic scales, has enabled geophysicists to answer a much larger-scale question – what the Earth`s core is made from. At the Condensed Matter physics conference on Tuesday 9 April, part of the Institute of Physics Congress in Brighton, Prof Mike Gillan and Dr Dario Alfe from University College London will describe how their research has revealed not only the likely composition of the Earth`s core,
New research on steroid hormone action in the human colon and kidney could pave the way for novel therapeutic targets for the treatment of hypertension and diarrhoea.
Prof Brian Harvey at University College Cork has been studying how the hormones oestrogen and aldosterone produce rapid changes in the transport of salt and water through human intestines and kidneys. Human beings have two main organs that regulate the body’s salt and water balance (effectively blood pressure) – the kidney and
Scientists have discovered that plant leaves activate defence mechanisms against plant eating insects within twenty seconds of an insect walking across them. Dr Alan Bown will be presenting the results of his footsteps research at the Society for Experimental Biology conference on Tuesday 9 April.
Dr Bown and colleagues studied the effects of insects traipsing across leaves, observing the chemical responses in the leaves over time. Ten seconds after larvae had crawled across the leaves, supe
Ticks spread a greater variety of diseases than any other blood-feeding creature, including mosquitoes. Now scientists are developing vaccines that prevent ticks from digesting the blood of their animal or human victim, according to research presented today (Monday 08 April 2002) at the spring meeting of the Society for General Microbiology at the University of Warwick.
“A new solution to controlling tick-borne diseases is to develop vaccines against the ticks and not the microbes that cause
Protein packaging may enhance MRI contrast.
Images of body tissues and organs could soon be brighter and sharper thanks to a technique developed by Italian chemists. They have made the chemical contrast agents used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) produce a stronger signal by trapping them in protein cages just 12 millionths of a millimetre (nanometres) or so widesup> 1 .
Such improvements increase the contrast of the images, so they should reveal more detailed
In October 2022, astronomers were stunned by what was quickly dubbed the BOAT — the brightest-of-all-time gamma-ray burst (GRB). Now an international science team reports that data from NASA’s Fermi…
A research team led by Prof Ursula Wurstbauer from the Institute of Physics at the University of Münster has investigated how electrons in two-dimensional crystals can be collectively excited and…
Federal funding will allow University of Rochester scientists and their European collaborators to study the feasibility of coherent light sources beyond x-rays. Since the laser was invented in the 1960s,…
Zirconium combined with silicon nitride enhances the conversion of propane — present in natural gas — needed to create in-demand plastic, polypropylene. Polypropylene is a common type of plastic found…
Researchers combined single-molecule experiments, molecular dynamics simulations and quantum mechanics to validate the findings published in PNAS. What puts the electronic pep in peptides? A folded structure, according to a…
By identifying mechanisms unique to leukaemia-causing cells, a French-Swiss team has discovered a new way to fight the disease. Acute myeloid leukaemia is one of the deadliest cancers. Leukaemic stem…
Distinctive processes could provide hints on how to use next-generation materials. A rose by any other name is a rose, but what of a crystal? Osaka Metropolitan University-led researchers have…
… pointing the way to future wireless communication channels. It is a scene many of us are familiar with: You’re working on your laptop at the local coffee shop with…
Next-generation soft robotics and wearable technologies could sport foam-based fluidic circuits. When picturing next-generation wearables and robotics, the foam filling in your couch cushions is likely not the first thing…
… developed through international scientific collaboration. In a scientific breakthrough, an international research team from Germany’s Forschungszentrum Jülich and Korea’s IBS Center for Quantum Nanoscience (QNS) developed a quantum sensor…
Linguist from Chemnitz University of Technology and computer science graduate from LMU Munich have developed a free web application that enables colourful, intuitive text analyses for research, for teaching or…
Researchers at QuTech developed somersaulting spin qubits for universal quantum logic. Researchers at QuTech developed somersaulting spin qubits for universal quantum logic. This achievement may enable efficient control of large…