The design and development of novel materials with superior properties demands a comprehensive analysis of their atomic and electronic structures. Electron energy parameters such as ionization potential (IP), the energy needed to remove an electron from the valence band maximum, and electron affinity (EA), the amount of energy released upon the attachment of an electron to the conduction band minimum, reveal important information about the electronic band structure of surfaces of semiconductors, insulators, and dielectrics. The accurate ...

Scientists have discovered that a type of fat accumulates as tissue ages and that this accumulation can be reversed through exercise. Researchers from Amsterdam UMC, together with colleagues from Maastricht UMC+, analysed both mice and human tissue before and after exercise allowing them to draw this conclusion. The results are published today in Nature Aging.   "The idea that we could reverse aging is something that was long considered science fiction, but these findings do allow us to understand a lot more about the ...

In October 2022, an international team of researchers, including Northwestern University astrophysicists, observed the brightest gamma-ray burst (GRB) ever recorded, GRB 221009A. Now, a Northwestern-led team has confirmed that the phenomenon responsible for the historic burst — dubbed the B.O.A.T. (“brightest of all time”) — is the collapse and subsequent explosion of a massive star. The team discovered the explosion, or supernova, using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).  While this discovery solves one mystery, another mystery deepens.  The researchers ...

An international research team led by a researcher from the University of Vienna has for the first time directly detected stellar winds from three Sun-like stars by recording the X-ray emission from their astrospheres, and placed constraints on the mass loss rate of the stars via their stellar winds. The study is currently published in Nature Astronomy. Astrospheres, stellar analogues of the heliosphere that surrounds our solar system, are very hot plasma bubbles blown by stellar winds into the interstellar medium, a space filled with gas and dust. The ...

Whether by way of Attenborough, Disney or National Geographic, the iconic scene is familiar to many. The ground trembles and clouds of dust swirl as enormous hordes of large animals thunder across the African savanna, cross rivers en masse and are picked off by lions, hyena and crocodiles. The annual migration of 1.3 million wildebeest through Tanzania’s Serengeti and Kenya’s Masai Mara attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists, and the phenomenon has put the Serengeti on UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites. Besides its majestic sight, the migration of this emblematic species ...

A Dartmouth-led study suggests that people who frequently consume seafood may face an increased risk of exposure to PFAS, the family of ubiquitous and resilient human-made toxins known as "forever chemicals." The findings stress the need for more stringent public health guidelines that establish the amount of seafood people can safely consume to limit their exposure to perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, the researchers report in the journal Exposure and Health. This need is especially urgent for coastal regions such as New England where a legacy of industry and PFAS pollution bumps up against a cultural predilection for fish, the authors write. "Our recommendation ...

Embargoed until 8:30 a.m. Friday, 12 April, 2024 Central European Summer Time or GMT +2 12 April, 2024, Prague, Czech Republic—Re-perfusing the lungs of an organ donor after the heart has irreversibly stopped beating with a technique called normothermic regional perfusion (TA-NRP) could potentially increase the number of patients receiving lung transplants, according to researchers at the Annual Meeting and Scientific Sessions of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) in Prague.   TA-NRP uses a machine to pass blood through a donor’s abdomen and chest after the heart has irreversibly stopped beating (called ...

Retention ponds and wetlands constructed as part of major road schemes can reduce the quantities of tyre particles entering the aquatic environment by an average of 75%, new research has shown. The study analysed samples collected alongside some of the busiest routes in South West England and the Midlands, many used by more than 100,000 vehicles each day. Tyre particles were discovered in each of the 70 samples taken, confirming the findings of previous research which has shown them to pose a considerable ...

Softer tumours fuel more aggressive spread of triple-negative breast cancer Researchers have discovered how the mechanical properties of tumours can prime cancer cells to better survive their spread to other organs. A metabolic ‘survival switch’ controlled by the stiffness of triple-negative breast tumours can significantly influence how successfully their cancerous cells spread to other organs, according to new findings from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. The study in cell and ...

It's interesting to hear about the research led by Minyi Guo that was published in Frontiers of Computer Science on 12 Mar 2024. It seems like they are addressing the challenge of reducing storage overhead in blockchain systems while maintaining data consistency and tolerating malicious nodes. In traditional blockchain networks, full replication is used, where each node stores a complete copy of all blocks, and data consistency is maintained through a consensus protocol. However, this approach can be storage-intensive, especially as the blockchain grows over time. To address ...

Erhai Lake, covering 252 km2, located in Yunnan Province, is one of the seven largest freshwater lakes in China. However, over the last three decades, the lake has suffered pollution episodes. In order to solve this problem, the local government has taken many protective measures. These measures have achieved some results in the environmental protection of Erhai Lake, but also caused significant socioeconomic impact. The tension between environmental preservation and economic stability in Erhai has even been termed the ‘Erhai dilemma’. The ‘Erhai dilemma’ is representative of those of other lakes in Yunnan Province ...

Assessing the function of forest ecosystems requires a deep understanding of the mechanisms of soil nitrogen mineralization. A recent study conducted by a team of researchers has shed light on how soil N-cycling genes drive soil nitrogen mineralization during afforestation. The findings, published in the prestigious journal Soil Ecology Letters, provide valuable insights into the relationship between soil microbial communities, functional genes, and the rate of soil nitrogen mineralization.   The researchers collected soil samples from a chronosequence of Robinia pseudoacacia L (RP14, RP20, RP30, and RP45) at different stages of afforestation, along with a sloped farmland (FL) as ...

Kyoto, Japan -- Mother Nature is an artist, but her craft of creating animal faces requires more than a paintbrush and palette. Such highly complex shapes originate from their respective transient neural crest cells.  These embryonic pluripotent cells within the facial primordium—the early development form—may be necessary for forming proper facial structures. However, analyzing the molecular mechanisms in such early stages of development poses many technical challenges. Now, a group of Kyoto University researchers have produced neural crest cell-rich ...

WASHINGTON (April 11, 2024) – Vosoritide’s first global phase 2 study showed an average increased growth rate of 1.8 cm per year in children with hypochondroplasia, a genetic cause of short stature in children, according to researchers from Children’s National Hospital. “This is the first medicine that has been developed to specifically target the pathway involved in hypochondroplasia,” says Andrew Dauber, M.D., chief of Endocrinology at Children’s National. “These findings will help inform future studies of vosoritide for addressing growth disorders.”  This clinical trial ...

Inside the brains of people with psychosis, two key systems are malfunctioning: a "filter" that directs attention toward important external events and internal thoughts, and a "predictor" composed of pathways that anticipate rewards. Dysfunction of these systems makes it difficult to know what’s real, manifesting as hallucinations and delusions. The findings come from a Stanford Medicine-led study, publishing April 11 in Molecular Psychiatry, that used brain scan data from children, teens and young adults with psychosis. The results confirm ...

Megan Reiter, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University, has won a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award to investigate the influence of neighboring stars on the formation of planets. The research funded by Reiter’s five-year, $951,446 NSF grant will shed light on a phenomenon that could significantly impact our understanding of how planets are born. “By exploring the intricate interplay between stars, planets and their environments, we hope to clarify the key forces that shape planet formation,” Reiter said. Observations show planets form in the ...

Join the International Society of Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) to celebrate Earth Day on 22 April 2024 by diving into the science of conservation, where the potential of stem cells is harnessed to foster a more sustainable and biodiverse future. This enlightening webinar co-hosted by Ashlee Hutchinson and Jun Wu will spotlight the revolutionary intersection of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), embryo models and genome engineering technologies with the noble cause of species preservation. As our planet faces unprecedented biodiversity loss, this program will unveil how cutting-edge scientific advancements offer a lifeline for endangered species, ...

NORMAN, OKLA. – Hanping Ding, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Oklahoma, has been awarded a $3.1 million grant from the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office in the Department of Energy through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to further research in clean hydrogen production. The funding is part of a $750 million effort in President Biden’s Investing in American agenda. The money from the Department of Energy will go to 52 projects across 24 states to position the United States as a global leader in the clean hydrogen industry. The combined outcomes of the 52 projects should allow the ...

Professor dr. Linda Amaral-Zettler, Research Leader at NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research and the Chair in Marine Microbiology at the University of Amsterdam has been awarded a prestigious Advanced ERC-grant by the European Commission today. Amaral-Zettler receives almost 3,5 million euros for her research into biodegradation in the marine environment. “Biodegradable sounds really nice”, she admits. “But before we repeat the mistakes we’ve made with fossil-fuel-based plastics back in the last millenium, we really want to understand how these materials interact with marine life and how long they last in the environment.” “Biodegradable ...

We depend on our cells being able to divide and multiply, whether it’s to replace sunburnt skin or replenish our blood supply and recover from injury. Chromosomes, which carry all of our genetic instructions, must be copied in a complete way during cell division. Telomeres, which cap the ends of chromosomes, play a critical role in this cell-renewal process—with a direct bearing on health and disease. The enzyme telomerase plays a key role in maintaining the length of telomeres as chromosomes replicate during ...

Modern biology textbooks assert that only bacteria can take nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it into a form that is usable for life. Plants that fix nitrogen, such as legumes, do so by harboring symbiotic bacteria in root nodules. But a recent discovery upends that rule.  In two recent papers, an international team of scientists describe the first known nitrogen-fixing organelle within a eukaryotic cell. The organelle is the fourth example in history of primary endosymbiosis — the process by which a prokaryotic cell is engulfed by a eukaryotic cell and evolves beyond symbiosis into an organelle. “It’s very rare that organelles ...

Reston, VA—PET/MRI can improve diagnostic accuracy for prostate cancer patients and help avoid unnecessary biopsies, according to new research published in the April issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. By applying the PRIMARY scoring system to PET/MRI results, researchers found that more than 80 percent of unnecessary biopsies could be avoided at the expense of missing one in eight clinically significant prostate cancer cases. The Prostate Imaging Reporting and Data System (PI-RADS) is a five-point ...

The concept of “One Health” – which emphasizes the relationship between human, animal, plant and environmental health – has been gaining ground in scientific discussions in recent years. Brazilian and North American researchers developing research using this approach presented their work on Tuesday (April 9th), in Chicago (United States), during FAPESP Week Illinois. One of the panelists was Eduardo Esteban Bustamante, a professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He talked about behavioral interventions that have been tested to promote physical activity and healthy eating – practices that, according to the researcher, ...

AMHERST, Mass. – A team of computer scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst working on two different problems—how to quickly detect damaged buildings in crisis zones and how to accurately estimate the size of bird flocks—recently announced an AI framework that can do both. The framework, called DISCount, blends the speed and massive data-crunching power of artificial intelligence with the reliability of human analysis to quickly deliver reliable estimates that can quickly pinpoint and count specific features from very large collections ...

PRESS RELEASE Chicago, IL and Philadelphia, PA, USA, April 11, 2024: The Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) and The GOG Foundation, Inc. (GOG-F) Launch BRIDGES 2.0 Research Initiative with support from the Foundation for Women’s Cancer (FWC).  After a successful inaugural year, the SGO and the GOG-F join forces to collaborate, and proudly announce the launch of an expanded two-year clinical trial education program supported by the FWC.  This important career and clinical trial development initiative aims to cultivate the next generation of investigators in gynecologic oncology and will focus on clinical and translational research ...