The inhibition of pathological protein-protein interactions is a promising approach for treating a large number of diseases, including many forms of cancer. A team of researchers has now developed a bicyclic peptide that binds to beta-catenin--a protein associated with certain types of tumor. The secret of their success is the cyclic nature and the hairpin shape of the peptide, which mimics a natural protein structure, they report in the journal Angewandte Chemie. Because of the extensive protein regions involved in protein-protein interactions, therapeutic approaches involving small molecules are often unsuccessful. Protein mimetics are alternatives that imitate the spatial structure of binding segments of natural protein binding partners. ...

In a new study from Lund University and the University of Gothenburg, patients were interviewed about their experiences ten years after undergoing obesity surgery. The results show that the effect on eating and weight regulation persisted, whereas other problems, such as feelings of guilt about still not being healthy enough, remained. "This is one of few follow-ups from a patients perspective so long after surgery", says My Engström, researcher in nursing at the University of Gothenburg. 18 patients were interviewed in the study. All of them experienced that their eating habits and appetite were still affected after the operation: their bodies still objected, preventing ...

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is incredible in that it can survive for decades within its human host. It does this by varying its diet to successfully steal nutrients from the human host including immune cells; it is known to acquire and absorb multiple carbon sources from the body during infection. In a paper published in the journal Molecular Systems Biology, Surrey scientists detail how they measure the flow of metabolites or "fluxes" through metabolic pathways when Mycobacterium tuberculosis is consuming some of its favourite nutrients. Measuring these 'fluxes' could help scientists advance new tuberculosis drugs as well as understand why the bacterium survives so long in humans and why current antibiotics are often ineffective. By growing Mycobacterium ...

The multiplexing capability of fluorescence microscopy is severely limited by the broad fluorescence spectral width. Spectral imaging offers potential solutions, yet typical approaches to disperse the local emission spectra notably impede the attainable throughput and place substantial constraints on temporal resolution. Tunable bandpass filters provide a possibility to scan through the emission wavelength in the wide field. However, applying narrow bandpasses to the fluorescence emission results in inefficient use of the scarce signal. In a new paper published in Light: Science & Application, a team of scientists, led by Professor Ke Xu ...

The DNA sequences produced are also called oligonucleotides. These are widely used for disease identification, for the manufacture of oligonucleotide-based drugs, and for several other medical and biotechnological applications.  The high demand for oligonucleotides therefore requires an efficient automated method for their chemical production.This process relies on phosphoramidites, which are chemical compounds that have the disadvantage of being unstable unless stored at the ideal -20 degrees Celsius. Instruments used for DNA synthesis are not able to cool down the phosphoramidites, and consequently it is unavoidable that some of them degrade after being added ...

"We're meant to be crossing over ... but the bridge is broken": 2020 university graduates' experiences of the pandemic in Ireland A new study from Trinity College Dublin investigating the impact of the COVID pandemic on young adults finds that they are vastly more affected than older people, and the reverberations of the disruption to some will last decades. Researchers say this group have paid a high price in the form of foregone opportunities for education, social networks, and labour market integration. The research, involving university graduates in Ireland, is published in YOUNG: ...

A researcher at University of Limerick has developed a low-cost, environmentally friendly sensor that can detect damage in pipelines and could save water as a result. The damage detection sensor uses highly sensitive, eco-friendly crystals that generate an electrical signal in response to a leak. It is the first validation of these biological crystals for real world applications, according to Dr Sarah Guerin, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Physics and the Bernal Institute in UL, who has been developing amino acid crystal devices since 2017. An Irish research collaboration between the Bernal Institute at UL and the Dynamical Systems and Risk Laboratory in University College Dublin has validated ...

In mathematics, simple equations can generate a complex evolution in time and intriguing patterns in space. One famous example of this is the Mandelbrot set, named after the French-American mathematician of Polish origin, Benoit B. Mandelbrot (1924-2010), the most studied fractal. This set is based on a single quadratic equation with only one parameter and one variable. The fascinating fractal patterns of the Mandelbrot set have attracted attention far beyond mathematics. An article by Ralph Andrzejak, entitled "Chimeras confined by fractal boundaries in the complex plane", forms part of a special edition of the journal Chaos in memory of Russian professor Vadim S. Anishchenko, (1943-2020), published on 3 May 2021. Andrzejak is head of the Nonlinear Time Series Analysis Group ...

Intelligent materials, the latest revolution in the field of materials science, can adapt their properties depending on changes in their surroundings. They can be used in everything from self-healing mobile phone screens, to shape-shifting aeroplane wings, and targeted drug delivery. Delivering drugs to a specific target inside the body using intelligent materials is particularly important for diseases like cancer, as the smart material only releases the drug payload when it detects the presence of a cancer cell, leaving the healthy cells unharmed. Now, researchers from the Centre ...

Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute and the Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis have designed a drug-like compound which effectively blocks a critical step in the malaria parasite life cycle and are working to develop this compound into a potential first of its kind malaria treatment. While drugs and mosquito control have reduced levels of malaria over recent decades, the parasite still kills over 400,000 people every year, infecting many more. Worryingly, it has now developed resistance to many existing antimalarial drugs, meaning new treatments that work in different ways are urgently needed. In their research, published in PNAS, the scientists developed a set of compounds designed to stop the parasite being able to burst out of red ...

Multiple sclerosis, or MS for short, manifests itself slightly differently in each person - which is why some call it "the disease of a thousand faces." Arguably the worst manifestation of MS is its chronic progressive form. Unlike the more common relapsing-remitting variant (RRMS), in which sufferers are often symptom-free for months or even years, patients with the primary progressive form of the disease (PPMS) see their condition steadily deteriorate with no remissions. Poorly insulated neurons die off Today's therapeutic approaches are based on the assumption that the immune system is making a mistake and waging an inappropriate attack on the layer of myelin that surrounds and insulates the nerve cells' long, ...

AdaptiFont has recently been presented at CHI, the leading Conference on Human Factors in Computing. Language is without doubt the most pervasive medium for exchanging knowledge between humans. However, spoken language or abstract text need to be made visible in order to be read, be it in print or on screen. How does the way a text looks affect its readability, that is, how it is being read, processed, and understood? A team at TU Darmstadt's Centre for Cognitive Science investigated this question at the intersection of perceptual science, cognitive ...

A giant mosasaur from the end of the Cretaceous period in Morocco that could have reached up to eight metres long is the third new species to be described from the region in less than a year, bringing the total number of species up to at least 13. The high diversity of the fauna shows how mosasaurs, giant marine lizards related to snakes and Komodo dragons, thrived in the final million years of the Cretaceous period before they, and most of all species on Earth, were wiped out by the impact of a giant asteroid 66 million years ago. The new species, named Pluridens serpentis, had long, slender jaws with over a hundred sharp, ...

Modern vaccines such as those against Sars-CoV-2 use tiny lipid spheres to transport genetic information into cells and let the body build up an immune defense against the virus. A team of scientists from Erlangen, Dresden, and London has now developed a completely new method to very efficiently deliver not only genes but also drugs and other substances into cells. The researchers from the Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin (MPZPM) in Erlangen, the Technical University of Dresden, and The Institute of Cancer Research in London have named the method Progressive Mechanoporation and have now published it in the scientific journal "Lab on a Chip". They have also filed a patent. Ruchi Goswami and Alena Uvizl were part of a team of scientists led by Salvatore Girardo (Erlangen) ...

An enzyme could make a dream come true for the energy industry: It can efficiently produce hydrogen using electricity and can also generate electricity from hydrogen. The enzyme is protected by embedding it in a polymer. An international research team with significant participation of scientists from Technical University of Munich (TUM) has presented the system in the renowned science journal Nature Catalysis. Fuel cells turn hydrogen into electricity, while electrolysers use electricity to split water to produce hydrogen. Both need the rare and thus expensive precious metal platinum as a catalyst. Nature has created a different solution: Enzymes, referred to as hydrogenases. ...

Experts in virtual reality locomotion have developed a new resource that analyses all the different possibilities of locomotion currently available. Moving around in a virtual reality world can be very different to walking or employing a vehicle in the real world and new approaches and techniques are continually being developed to meet the challenges of different applications. Called Locomotion Vault, the project was developed by researchers at the Universities of Birmingham, Copenhagen, and Microsoft Research. It aims to provide a central, freely-available ...

A study published in the journal Scientific Reports reveals the genetic structure of the land snail Xerocrassa montserratensis and it provides new scientific tools for the improvement of the conservation of this endemic and threatened species in Catalonia. This land mollusc, identified in the late 19th century in the Montserrat mountain, has a reduced geographical distribution limited to the province of Barcelona, and it is a protected species in the area of the natural parks of Montserrat and Sant Llorenç del Munt i l'Obac. The study is led by the lecturer Marta Pascual, from the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute of the University of Barcelona ...

Skeletal muscles make a tremendous variety of actions stabilizing the body in different positions. Despite their endurance during daily activities, they can undergo several mild injuries caused by sport, accidental overstretching, or sudden overtwisting. Luckily mild injuries can be quickly healed; however, when a large part of muscles is damaged or resected surgically, the full recovery can be impossible. Muscle regeneration is challenging, but the development of innovative biocompatible materials tackles that problem. Recently, a multinational team of scientists led by dr. Marco Costantini from ...

Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B Volume 11, Issue 4 Publishes https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/acta-pharmaceutica-sinica-b/vol/11/issue/4 Special Issue: The Biological Fate of Drug Nanocarriers This special issue includes seven review and nine research articles from some leading scientists in the field that further the discussion on subtopics of in vivo fate of drug nanocarriers. Guest Editors: Wei Wu, Professor, Department of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmacy, Fudan University, Shanghai, China; Tonglei Li, Professor, Department of Industrial & Physical Pharmacy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA; Ying Zheng, Professor, State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine, Institute of Chinese Medical Sciences, University of Macau, Macau, China. The Journal ...

How to predict the sound produced by a tonewood block once carved into the shape of a violin plate? What is the best shape for the best sound? Artificial Intelligence offer answers to these questions. These are the conclusions that researchers of the Musical Acoustics Lab of Politecnico di Milano presented in a study that was recently published in Scientific Reports. In the article "A Data-Driven Approach to Violinmaking" the Chilean physicist and luthier Sebastian Gonzalez (post-doc researcher) and the professional mandolin player Davide Salvi (PhD student) show how a simple and effective neural network is able to predict the vibrational be-havior of violin plates. This prediction is obtained from a limited set of geometric and mechanical ...

The Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) has helped Gaia achieve millimagnitude (mmag) precision in photometry, according to a study led by researchers from National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) and Beijing Normal University (BNU). Their study was published in The Astrophysical Journal. If you look at the sky on a clear, starry night, you may notice that Aldebran is relatively red and Rigel is blue. Why? The answer stems from their intrinsic physical properties. Precisely measuring magnitudes ...

The polar vortex is a large area of upper-atmosphere cyclonic air circulation surrounding both poles. It is bounded by the polar jet stream and its associated cold air is usually confined to the polar regions. Within the Antarctic circle, and southern polar vortex, ozone quantities are the lowest, globally. A research published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, led by Dr. LUO Yuhan, corresponding author and Associate Professor at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS), suggests that the polar vortex plays a key role in Antarctic stratospheric ozone depletion. "The atmosphere over Antarctica is controlled by a strong ...

May 1, 2021 - Rheumatologists in Hong Kong joined hands to develop a set of consensus statements on COVID-19 vaccination for local adult patients with autoimmune rheumatic diseases. These timely statements would serve to be a guide for rheumatologists, other specialists, family physicians, specialty nurses, and the public regarding COVID-19 vaccination for patients with rheumatic diseases. Vaccination against SAR-CoV-2 is a new campaign and a high immunization rate is believed to be the key to end the pandemic. Currently, there are two COVID-19 vaccines available in Hong Kong--the inactivated virus vaccine CoronaVac® ...

Parks played an important role for people seeking respite from the toll of social isolation during the pandemic, and according to new research from Drexel University, they did so without increasing the spread of COVID-19. The study looked at how people used 22 parks in Philadelphia and New York during the height of the pandemic and it found no strong correlation between park use and the number of confirmed cases in surrounding neighborhoods. Published in the Journal of Extreme Events, Drexel's study "Urban Park Usage During the COVID-19 Pandemic" surveyed park visitors over a three-month period from May to July 2020 at small and mid-size parks in New York and Philadelphia. And it compared park usage numbers ...

An essential preliminary to building and construction or resource extraction is studying the geological structure of the site. One of steps of this process is geophysical investigation. This provides a continuous overview of the geological horizons rather than just data on points: boreholes. The standard methods of geophysics help successfully solve this problem in comparatively simple conditions. Yet the classical direct current methods may lead to serious inaccuracy if we have to investigate geologically complex structures with thin layers of sandy and clayey soils. Among the most popular methods ...