TROY, N.Y. -- Optoelectronic materials that are capable of converting the energy of light into electricity, and electricity into light, have promising applications as light-emitting, energy-harvesting, and sensing technologies. However, devices made of these materials are often plagued by inefficiency, losing significant useful energy as heat. To break the current limits of efficiency, new principles of light-electricity conversion are needed. For instance, many materials that exhibit efficient optoelectronic properties are constrained by inversion symmetry, a physical property that limits engineers' control of electrons in the material and their options for designing novel or efficient devices. In research published today in Nature ...

With sorghum poised to become an important crop grown by Pennsylvania farmers, Penn State researchers, in a new study, tested more than 150 germplasm lines of the plant for resistance to a fungus likely to hamper its production. Sorghum, a close relative to corn, is valuable for yielding human food, animal feed and biofuels. Perhaps its most notable attribute is that the grain it produces is gluten free. Drought resistant and needing a smaller amount of nutrients than corn to thrive, sorghum seems to be a crop that would do well in the Keystone State's ...

The article 'The RNA Atlas expands the catalog of human non-coding RNAs', published today in Nature Biotechnology, is the result of more than five years of hard work to further unravel the complexity of the human transcriptome. Never before such a comprehensive effort was undertaken to characterize all RNA-molecules in human cells and tissues. RNAs in all shapes and sizes Our transcriptome is - analogous to our genome - the sum of all RNA molecules that are transcribed from the DNA strands that make up our genome. However, there's no 1-on-1 relationship with the latter. Firstly, each cell and tissue hasve a unique transcriptomes, with varying RNA production and compositions, including tissue-specific RNAs. Secondly, ...

Additive manufacturing offers an unprecedented level of design flexibility and expanded functionality, but the quality and process can drastically differ across production machines, according to Hui Yang, a professor of industrial engineering at Penn State. With applications in aerospace, health care and automotive industries with potential for mass customization, additive manufacturing needs quality management. To address this concern, Yang and a team of researchers from Penn State, University of Nebraska--Lincoln and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) proposed the design, development and implementation of a new data-driven methodology for quality control in additive manufacturing. They published their work in the Proceedings ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA--Geothermal energy systems have the potential to power the world and become the leading technology for reducing greenhouse gas emissions if we can drill down far enough into the Earth to access the conditions necessary for economic viability and release the heat beneath our feet. END ...

SAN ANTONIO (June 17, 2021) -- Convalescent plasma therapy was associated with better survival in blood cancer patients hospitalized with COVID-19, especially in sicker patients. The findings by the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium (CCC19) are newly published in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Oncology. The Mays Cancer Center, home to UT Health San Antonio MD Anderson, is part of the CCC19. The international consortium is composed of 124 medical centers and institutions in North and South America that conduct research to learn how COVID-19 affects cancer patients. Dimpy Shah, MD, PhD, is an epidemiologist and assistant professor of population health sciences at The University of Texas Health ...

Forest fires have crept higher up mountains over the past few decades, scorching areas previously too wet to burn, according to researchers from McGill University. As wildfires advance uphill, a staggering 11% of all Western U.S. forests are now at risk. "Climate change and drought conditions in the West are drying out high-elevation forests, making them particularly susceptible to blazes," says lead author Mohammad Reza Alizadeh, a PhD student at McGill University under the supervision of Professor Jan Adamowski. "This creates new dangers for mountain communities, with impacts on downstream water supplies and the plants and wildlife that call these forests home." Climate warming has diminished 'flammability barrier' In ...

If the genome is the recipe of life, base pairs are the individual ingredients listed. These chemical structures form DNA, and every living organism on Earth has just four. The specific arrangements of these four base pairs -- A, T, C, G -- make us who and what we are. So it was a big surprise when Scripps Research scientists revealed in 2014 that they could introduce two new, unnatural base pairs (they called them X and Y for short) into the genetic code of living bacteria in the lab. It was like two never-seen-before ingredients tossed into the recipe, hypothetically expanding the variety of dishes a cell can whip up. Researchers immediately saw the potential applications: With more control and selection, they ...

In a bid to find or refine laboratory research models for cancer that better compare with what happens in living people, Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists report they have developed a new computer-based technique showing that human cancer cells grown in culture dishes are the least genetically similar to their human sources. The finding, they say, should help focus more resources on cancer research models such as genetically engineered mice and 3D balls of human tissue known as "tumoroids" to better evaluate human cancer biology and treatments, and the genetic errors ...

An algorithm designed by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University's Computational Biology Department and St. Petersburg State University in Russia could help scientists identify unknown molecules. The algorithm, called MolDiscovery, uses mass spectrometry data from molecules to predict the identity of unknown substances, telling scientists early in their research whether they have stumbled on something new or merely rediscovered something already known. This development could save time and money in the search for new naturally occurring products that could be used in medicine. "Scientists waste a lot of time isolating molecules that are already known, essentially rediscovering penicillin," said Hosein Mohimani, an assistant ...

Leesburg, VA, June 17, 2021--According to ARRS' American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), a reduced dose of gadobutrol is non-inferior to 100%-standard dose of gadoterate for contrast-enhanced brain MRI. "A 25% reduced gadobutrol dose demonstrated non-inferior efficacy versus standard dose gadoterate for contrast-enhanced brain MRI," corresponding author Jan Endrikat of Germany's University Medical School of Saarland elaborated, "warranting particular consideration in patients undergoing multiple contrast-enhanced examinations." In this international, prospective, multicenter, open-label, crossover trial (LEADER-75), 141 patients (78 men, 63 women; mean age, 58.5 years) with known or suspected CNS pathology ...

Type 1 diabetes is a disorder in which the immune system inappropriately targets a class of cells in the pancreas known as β cells that produce the hormone insulin, which plays an important role in regulating bloodstream glucose levels and the metabolism of carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins. The loss of insulin causes a range of health problems for people with type 1 diabetes, and patients become dependent on insulin injections for their survival. Even with insulin therapy, people with type 1 diabetes have shortened lifespans and are at an elevated risk of developing myriad complications. Previous studies have identified numerous genetic risk factors for type 1 diabetes. One notable finding is the importance of the HLA region, a part of the human ...

New technologies allow users to do things like race their real bikes against other real people in a virtual world, and a new study outlines what motivates people to use these online platforms. The findings offer insights for future iterations of these technologies - and how to market them. At issue are "mixed-reality sports": augmented reality platforms that incorporate virtual, online elements and real-world athletic endeavors. For example, Zwift is a platform that allows users to ride their real bicycles, but transfers their efforts to a virtual space depicting real-world courses - allowing them to race against other cyclists who are not physically present. "We ...

Medical guidelines help doctors understand the best way to treat health conditions. Surprisingly, many doctors do not adhere to them, and this is a problem, according to a new study by scientists at University of Utah Health and MDGuidelines. People with lower back pain injury miss 11 more days of work in a year when they only receive treatments for lower back pain that are not recommended by medical guidelines compared to people treated according to guidelines. The findings publish in END ...

Light-driven molecular motors have been around for over twenty years. These motors typically take microseconds to nanoseconds for one revolution. Thomas Jansen, associate professor of physics at the University of Groningen, and Master's student Atreya Majumdar have now designed an even faster molecular motor. The new design is driven by light only and can make a full turn in picoseconds, using the power of a single photon. Jansen: 'We have developed a new out-of-the-box design for a motor molecule that is much faster.' The design was published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry ...

When astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope uncovered an oddball galaxy that looked like it didn't have much dark matter, some thought the finding was hard to believe and looked for a simpler explanation. Dark matter, after all, is the invisible glue that makes up the bulk of the universe's matter. All galaxies appear to be dominated by it; in fact, galaxies are thought to form inside immense halos of dark matter. So, finding a galaxy lacking the invisible stuff is an extraordinary claim that challenges conventional wisdom. It would have the potential to upset theories of galaxy formation and evolution. To bolster their original finding, first reported in 2018 ...

The intestinal disease necrotizing enterocolitis is a leading cause of death among premature infants born in the U.S. and across the globe. Characterized by excessive inflammation that can cause tissue decay in the bowels, the disease provides a pathway for infectious and deadly bacteria to enter the bloodstream. Despite four decades of research, effective treatments remain elusive, and mortality rates in babies who develop the disease have remained essentially unchanged, hovering at about 30%. Now, a study led by researchers at Washington University ...

Personalised coaching through a smartphone platform can help women improve their lifestyle behaviours in the period before and shortly after they become pregnant, a new study has shown. The biggest reduction in behaviours that pose risks to pregnancy were seen in overweight women. The findings, published in the journal Reproductive Biomedicine Online, show that digital healthcare could be a cost-effective way to deliver tailored advice to women who experience difficulties in pregnancy, which the NHS does not have the resources to provide. In this study, led by the University of Southampton, 262 women who were planning pregnancies and had either experienced difficulties in conceiving or recurrent miscarriages signed ...

June 17, 2021 - Nutley, NJ - Tiny genetic markers, circulating in the blood, have shown great promise in diagnosing and treating disease. Yet identifying and harvesting these extracellular vesicles (EVs) have been a major challenge for science. Now a laboratory at the Hackensack Meridian Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI) has discovered a highly sensitive methodology that can efficiently find and harness EVs - particularly exosomes and the micro RNAs they carry. These could be crucial clues to identifying diseases such as cancer early on in its development. The scientists have now unveiled the Extracellular Vesicle Capture by AnTibody of CHoice and 1 Enzymatic Release, or EV-CATCHER, in the Journal of Extracellular Vesicles. "We are establishing the threshold ...

TAMPA, Fla. (June 17, 2021) - Tests that analyze biomarkers are used during cancer management to guide treatment and provide information about patient prognosis. These tests are often performed on tissue biopsy samples that require invasive procedures and can lead to significant side effects. In a new article published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, Moffitt Cancer Center researchers show that PET/CT images can be used to measure levels of the PD-L1 biomarker of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients in a non-invasive manner and, in turn, predict a patient's response to therapy. ...

As pandemic restrictions begin to loosen around the country and summer temperatures rise, more people will be moving about on public rideshare electric scooters. With that comes this warning: Ride with safety. A Henry Ford Health System study published in The Laryngoscope, shows that head and neck injuries caused by use of e-scooters have been on the rise since rideshare systems were introduced to the public in late 2017. Kathleen Yaremchuk, M.D., Chair of the Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery and the study's senior author, said that a review of emergency visits in the last three years showed e-scooter injuries have increased significantly with many related to head and neck injuries. "Since e-scooters became a popular form of ...

In the Name of Racial Justice: Why Bioethics Should Care about Environmental Toxins Keisha Ray Facilities that emit hazardous toxins, such as toxic landfills, oil refineries, and chemical plants, are disproportionately located in predominantly Black, Latinx, and Indigenous neighborhoods. Environmental injustices like these threaten just distribution of health itself. Facilities that emit environmental toxins wrongly make people's race, ethnicity, income, and neighborhood essential to who is allowed to breathe clean air and drink clean water, and thus, who is allowed to be healthy. This ...

A large, retrospective, multicenter study involving Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis indicates that convalescent plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients can dramatically improve likelihood of survival among blood cancer patients hospitalized with the virus. The therapy involves transfusing plasma -- the pale yellow liquid in blood that is rich in antibodies -- from people who have recovered from COVID-19 into patients who have leukemia, lymphoma or other blood cancers and are hospitalized with the viral infection. The goal is to accelerate their disease-fighting response. Cancer patients may be at a higher risk of death related to COVID-19 because of their weakened immune systems. The data, collected as part ...

A new article, published as a Perspective in the journal Conservation Science and Practice, introduces a rapid assessment framework that can be used as a guide to make conservation and nature-based solutions more robust to future climate. Climate change poses risks to conservation efforts, if practitioners assume a future climate similar to the past or present. For example, more frequent and intense disturbances, such as wildfire or drought-induced tree mortality, can threaten projects that are designed to enhance habitat for forest-dependent species and sequester carbon. Overlooking such climate-related risks can result in failed conservation investments and negative outcomes for people, biodiversity, and ecosystem integrity as well as lead to carbon-sink reversal. Drawing ...

The Black Sea is an unusual body of water: below a depth of 150 metres the dissolved oxygen concentration sinks to around zero, meaning that higher life forms such as plants and animals cannot exist in these areas. At the same time, this semi-enclosed sea stores comparatively large amounts of organic carbon. A team of researchers led by Dr Gonzalo V. Gomez-Saez and Dr Jutta Niggemann from the University of Oldenburg's Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM) has now presented a new hypothesis as to why organic compounds accumulate in the depths of the Black Sea - and other oxygen-depleted waters in the scientific journal Science Advances. The researchers posit that reactions with hydrogen sulfide play an important role in stabilizing ...