Hollow spheres made of MYC proteins open new doors in cancer research. Würzburg scientists have discovered them and report about this breakthrough in the journal “Nature”. MYC genes and their proteins play a central role in the emergence and development of almost all cancers. They drive the uncontrolled growth and altered metabolism of tumour cells. And they help tumours hide from the immune system. MYC proteins also show an activity that was previously unknown – and which is now opening…
Automated reaction path search method predicts accurate stereochemistry of pericyclic reactions using only target molecule structure. Researchers at the Institute for Chemical Reaction Design and Discovery (WPI-ICReDD) have demonstrated the expanded use of a computational method called the Artificial Force Induced Reaction (AFIR) method, predicting pericyclic reactions with accurate stereoselectivity based only on information about the target product molecule. The accurate prediction of a molecule’s stereochemistry—i.e., the 3D arrangement of its constituent atoms—is unprecedented for such an automated reaction path…
Studying an atomic clock on-board a spacecraft inside the orbit of Mercury and very near to the Sun might be the trick to uncovering the nature of dark matter, suggests a new study published in Nature Astronomy. Dark matter makes up more than 80 per cent of mass in the universe, but it has so far evaded detection on Earth, despite decades of experimental efforts. A key component of these searches is an assumption about the local density of dark…
How are galaxies born, and what holds them together? Astronomers assume that dark matter plays an essential role. However, as yet it has not been possible to prove directly that dark matter exists. A research team including Technical University of Munich (TUM) scientists has now measured for the first time the survival rate of antihelium nuclei from the depths of the galaxy – a necessary prerequisite for the indirect search for Dark Matter. Many things point to the existence of…
FQXi-funded project in the Gran Sasso mountains hunts for evidence of violations of the ‘Pauli Exclusion Principle’. For decades physicists have been hunting for a quantum-gravity model that would unify quantum physics, the laws that govern the very small, and gravity. One major obstacle has been the difficulty in testing the predictions of candidate models experimentally. But some of the models predict an effect that can be probed in the lab: a very small violation of a fundamental quantum tenet…
… eluding the immune system. Discovery advances possibility of designing drugs against SARS-CoV-2. The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the SARS CoV-2 virus, continues to threaten populations around the world, after killing over 1 million Americans. In recent weeks, XBB.1.5, the most transmissible variant to date, has started to sweep across the country. One aspect of the novel coronavirus that makes it so infectious and challenging to control is its ability to outwit the body’s innate immune defenses. A new study…
After several years of operation, the STEREO collaboration published the final results of their antineutrino studies. With their data, the researchers excluded hints for the existence of sterile neutrinos, an additional neutrino state expected in many theories. The result which will appear in the January 11 issue of Nature has important implications for many areas of fundamental physics. In modern particle physics all known elementary particles and their interactions are described in the so-called Standard Model of Particle Physics. The…
A research group led by Stefanie Komossa (MPIfR Bonn, Germany) presents new results on the galaxy OJ 287, based on the most dense and longest radio-to-high-energy observations to date with telescopes like the Effelsberg telescope and the Swift Observatory. The results favor a pair of black holes in the center of the galaxy with a smaller mass of 100 million solar masses for the primary black hole. Several outstanding mysteries, including the apparent absence of the latest big outburst of…
Published on Scientific Reports, the robotics prototype takes inspiration from earthworms. It is 45 cm long and weighs 605 grams and it is the first robot build by replicating the morphology and the functioning of real earthworms. Researchers at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT-Italian Institute of Technology) in Genoa has realized a new soft robot inspired by the biology of earthworms,which is able to crawl thanks to soft actuators that elongate or squeeze, when air passes through them or is drawn out….
Discovery of two novel classes of natural products with activity against RNA viruses. The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically demonstrated that the development of effective agents against viral pathogens is of great importance for global health. Although effective vaccines are available for many viral diseases, there is an urgent need for new and effective therapeutic treatments. At the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), the team led by Prof Rolf Müller is researching novel active substances for the treatment of…
… going green in the field of soft robotics. Artificial muscles are a progressing technology that could one day enable robots to function like living organisms. Such muscles open up new possibilities for how robots can shape the world around us; from assistive wearable devices that can redefine our physical abilities at old age, to rescue robots that can navigate rubble in search of the missing. But just because artificial muscles can have a strong societal impact during use, doesn’t…
Reversible logic gates designed for large scale integer factorization. Large numbers can only be factorized with a great deal of computational effort. Physicists at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, led by Wolfgang Lechner are now providing a blueprint for a new type of quantum computer to solve the factorization problem, which is a cornerstone of modern cryptography. Today’s computers are based on microprocessors that execute so-called gates. A gate can, for example, be an AND operation, i.e. an operation that…
… that can traverse difficult landscapes. Centipedes are known for their wiggly walk. With tens to hundreds of legs, they can traverse any terrain without stopping. “When you see a scurrying centipede, you’re basically seeing an animal that inhabits a world that is very different than our world of movement,” said Daniel Goldman, the Dunn Family Professor in the School of Physics. “Our movement is largely dominated by inertia. If I swing my leg, I land on my foot and…
…to accelerate development of new antivirals and drug discovery. This breakthrough has the potential to get drugs to people faster in the next crisis and bring treatments for urgent, life-threatening illnesses within reach. In a new study, researchers from IBM, Oxford University and Diamond Light Source show that IBM’s AI Model, MoLFormer, can generate antiviral molecules for multiple target virus proteins, including SARS-CoV-2, that can accelerate the drug discovery process.. The results, are laid out in a new paper in Science Advances, and…
How polarization patterns enable new technology. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers have developed a novel method for underwater geolocalization using deep neural networks that have been trained on 10 million polarization-sensitive images collected from locations around the world. This new study, led by electrical and computer engineering professor Viktor Gruev, along with computer science professor David Forsyth, enables underwater geolocalization using only optical data while providing a tool for tethered-free underwater navigation. These findings were recently published in the journal eLight. “We…
Earth’s earliest history still holds mysteries for geologists, and ancient craters could provide some answers — scientists are racing against time to find them. Earth’s oldest craters could give scientists critical information about the structure of the early Earth and the composition of bodies in the solar system as well as help to interpret crater records on other planets. But geologists can’t find them, and they might never be able to, according to a new study. The study was published…
Groups report evidence that the cosmos is filled with a background of gravitational waves likely due to mergers of supermassive black hole binaries. The universe is humming with gravitational radiation — a very low-frequency rumble that rhythmically stretches and compresses spacetime and the matter embedded in it. That is the conclusion of several groups of researchers from around the world who simultaneously published a slew of journal articles in June describing more than 15 years of observations of millisecond pulsars within…
Research cruise with the METEOR starts. Expedition investigates hydrothermal systems in different water depths for the first time. Deep-sea hydrothermal vents, also often called black smokers because of their characteristic appearance, are a hotspot of life. The vents are often the only source of food, which is why symbioses between animals and microorganisms form here. Hydrothermal systems also exist in shallower waters. Food scarcity is not prevalent because of the availability of light and the associated possibility of photosynthesis, and…
A team led by scientists at UW–Madison has exploited those limitations of chemical combinations to write a cookbook with hundreds of recipes that have the potential to give rise to life. Life on a faraway planet — if it’s out there — might not look anything like life on Earth. But there are only so many chemical ingredients in the universe’s pantry, and only so many ways to mix them. A team led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison…
Hydrogels used to cultivate vascular sprouting from mouse lung tissue provide new insight. Using a new recipe for growing blood vessels from living lung tissue in the lab, a University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science research team has developed an analytical tool that could lead to a cure for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, or IPF, a lung-destroying disease. Fibrosis is chronic scarring of tissue and it can strike nearly every system in the body. According to the National…
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