Cerebral infarction, commonly known as ischemic stroke, has a high mortality rate and causes severe damage to nervous cells in the brain owing to the loss of oxygen, which results in limiting body movements. Several technologies, including physiotherapy and brain stimulation techniques, are being developed and tested for the rehabilitation of brain nervous cells damaged by a stroke. In particular, low-intensity focused ultrasound is expected to be effective for rehabilitating neurological diseases such as stroke, as it can excite or inhibit nerve cells by delivering mechanical energy with high precision at the desired position, while ultrasound is penetrating the cranium without requiring a surgical operation. Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) announced that the research ...

Why is studying spin properties of one-dimensional quantum nanowires important? Quantum nanowires-which have length but no width or height-provide a unique environment for the formation and detection of a quasiparticle known as a Majorana zero mode. A new UNSW-led study overcomes previous difficulty detecting the Majorana zero mode, and produces a significant improvement in device reproducibility. Potential applications for Majorana zero modes include fault-resistant topological quantum computers, and topological superconductivity. MAJORANA FERMIONS IN 1D WIRES A Majorana fermion is a composite particle that is its own antiparticle. Antimatter explainer: Every fundamental particle has a corresponding antimatter particle, with ...

A KAIST team's mathematical modelling shows that the topographic tiling of cortical maps originates from bottom-up projections from the periphery. Researchers have explained how the regularly structured topographic maps in the visual cortex of the brain could arise spontaneously to efficiently process visual information. This research provides a new framework for understanding functional architectures in the visual cortex during early developmental stages. A KAIST research team led by Professor Se-Bum Paik from the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering has demonstrated that the orthogonal organization of retinal mosaics in the periphery is mirrored onto the primary visual cortex and initiates ...

Overview: Third-year doctoral student Toshiaki Takahashi, associate professor Kazuhiro Takahashi, and their research team from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Information Engineering at Toyohashi University of Technology developed a testing chip using semiconductor micro-machining that can detect volatile gasses in exhaled breath in ppm concentrations at room temperature. A polymer that expands and contracts when gas is absorbed is formed on a flexibly deformable nanosheet, and the amount of deformation that occurs when a target gas is absorbed is measured, allowing gas to be detected at high sensitivity. ...

New research shows that patterns inspired by lobster shells can make 3D printed concrete stronger, to support more complex and creative architectural structures. Digital manufacturing technologies like 3D concrete printing (3DCP) have immense potential to save time, effort and material in construction. They also promise to push the boundaries of architectural innovation, yet technical challenges remain in making 3D printed concrete strong enough for use in more free-form structures. WATCH AND EMBED THE VIDEO: https://youtu.be/mpPAPlst42o In a new experimental study, researchers at RMIT University ...

Pulsed lasers repeatedly emit light for a short period of time as if blinking. They have the advantage of focusing more energy than a continuous wave laser, whose intensity is kept unchanged over time. If digital signals are loaded in a pulsed laser, each pulse can encode one bit of data. In this respect, the higher the repetition rate, the more the amount of data that can be transmitted. However, conventional optical-fiber-based pulsed lasers have typically had a limitation in increasing the number of pulses per second above the MHz level. The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) announced that the research ...

Synthetic cannabidiol, better known as CBD, has been shown for the first time to kill the bacteria responsible for gonorrhoea, meningitis and legionnaires disease. The research collaboration between The University of Queensland and Botanix Pharmaceuticals Limited could lead to the first new class of antibiotics for resistant bacteria in 60 years. The UQ Institute for Molecular Bioscience's Associate Professor Mark Blaskovich said CBD - the main nonpsychoactive component of cannabis - can penetrate and kill a wide range of bacteria including Neisseria gonorrhoeae, which causes ...

'A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step' is a popular adage that talks about the initial thrust required to embark on a task. However, once begun, how do we persevere on the job and not let it fall apart like a New Year resolution? How do we stay motivated? Well, these are not just philosophical deliberations, but compelling science projects for neuroscience aficionados. Scientists have in fact been on the lookout for the neuronal and molecular players which are at the root of governing motivation. Here is a research story from the generous fruit fly that identifies the machinery behind the fly's relentless flying pursuits. Prof. Gaiti Hasan's group, in a recent study, has discovered that the ability of flies to sustain ...

Your food intake patterns are partly under genetic control, according to the latest research from researchers at King's College London, published today in the journal Twin Research and Human Genetics. Researchers can study the quality of an individual's typical diet by using a type of analysis called 'dietary indices'. Researchers use dietary indices to understand what foods someone eats and the nutrients provided, compared with recommended guidelines. The team analysed food questionnaire responses from 2,590 twins, using nine commonly used dietary indices. The researchers studied the degree of similarity among identical twins - who share 100% of their genes - compared with non-identical twins, who share 50% of their genes. The team found that identical twin pairs ...

The design, testing, and validation of the Illinois RapidVent emergency ventilator has been published in the journal Plos One. The article, "Emergency Ventilator for COVID-19," by University of Illinois Urbana researchers, is the first of its kind to report such details about an emergency ventilator that was designed, prototyped, and tested at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. "This article reports the development and testing of the RapidVent emergency ventilator," said William King, professor at The Grainger College of Engineering and Carle Illinois College of Medicine, and leader of the RapidVent ...

Previously controversial values of the energy gap of a van der Waals material -- chromium tribromide -- were reported based on various optical measurements. A University of Wyoming faculty member and his research team used scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy measurements that clearly reveal a much smaller energy gap value and resolved the controversy. "Our results settled a long controversy on one important material property -- the energy gap of the material," says TeYu Chien, an associate professor in the UW Department of Physics and Astronomy. "Our scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy measurements clearly revealed that the energy gap is around 0.3 electron volt (eV), which is much smaller than those measured by optical ...

Nearly every galaxy hosts a monster at its center -- a supermassive black hole millions to billions times the size of the Sun. While there's still much to learn about these objects, many scientists believe they are crucial to the formation and structure of galaxies. What's more, some of these black holes are particularly active, whipping up stars, dust and gas into glowing accretion disks emitting powerful radiation into the cosmos as they consume matter around them. These quasars are some of the most distant objects that astronomers can see, and there is now a new record for the farthest one ever observed. A team of scientists, led by former UC Santa Barbara ...

What's the relationship between money and well-being? "It's one of the most studied questions in my field," says Matthew Killingsworth, a senior fellow at Penn's Wharton School who studies human happiness. "I'm very curious about it. Other scientists are curious about it. Laypeople are curious about it. It's something everyone is navigating all the time." To answer this question, Killingsworth collected 1.7 million data points from more than 33,000 participants who provided in-the-moment snapshots of their feelings during daily life. In a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Killingsworth confirms that money does influence happiness and, contrary to previous influential research on the subject suggesting that this plateaus above ...

'What goes in, must come out' is a familiar refrain. It is especially pertinent to the challenges facing UBC researchers who are investigating methods to remove chemicals and pharmaceuticals from public water systems. Cleaning products, organic dyes and pharmaceuticals are finding their ways into water bodies with wide-ranging negative implications to health and the environment, explains Dr. Mohammad Arjmand, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at UBC Okanagan. And while pharmaceuticals like a chemotherapy drug called methotrexate can be highly effective ...

The team led by Professor Rolf Heumann, Senior Researcher for Molecular Neurobiochemistry at RUB, is hoping that this will allow the effects of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's to be alleviated over the long term. The results of the work were published on 31 December 2020 in the journal Scientific Reports. Neurites do not know the way Restoring brain function following an injury or due to neurodegenerative diseases remains an unresolved problem in neuroscience and medicine. Regeneration in the central nervous system is only possible to a very limited ...

Durable, high-performing perovskite solar cells also require durable, high-performing charge-transporting layers. Scientists have developed the first organic hole transporter that does not need a dopant to attain high charge mobility and stability. According to the study published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, this novel hole-transporting layer outperforms reference materials and protects the perovskite organic cell from air humidity. In perovskite solar cells, the perovskite light absorption layer is sandwiched between two charge-transporting layers, which collect the generated holes and electrons and transport them to the electrodes. These charge transportation ...

ATLANTA - JANUARY 19, 2021 - Despite increases in overall suicide rates in the United States during the past two decades, cancer-related suicides declined by 2.8% per year, according to a new study by the American Cancer Society. The study, appearing in JNCI: The Journal of the National Cancer Institute, found that the largest declines in cancer-related suicide rates were among high-risk populations, suggesting an evolving role of psycho-oncology and palliative and hospice care for cancer patients and survivors during this period. To examine the trends in cancer-related suicides compared to overall suicides in the U.S., investigators led by Xuesong Han, PhD, calculated average annual percentage change of suicide rates stratified by risk factors including ...

Just like on Earth, water on other planets, satellites, and even comets comes in a variety of forms depending on multiple factors such as pressure and temperature. Aside from the gaseous, liquid, and solid states we are accustomed to, water can form a different type of crystalline solid called clathrate hydrate. Although they look similar to ice, clathrate hydrates have actually small water-based cages in which smaller molecules are trapped. These trapped "guest" molecules are essential for preserving the crystalline structure of clathrate hydrates, which would otherwise "collapse" into regular ice or water. Clathrate hydrates play a crucial role in the evolution of a planet or satellite's ...

Washington, DC - January 19, 2021 - Viral genome sequencing of wastewater can detect new SARS-CoV-2 variants before they are detected by local clinical sequencing, according to a new study reported in mBio, an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The ability to track SARS-CoV-2 mutations in wastewater could be particularly useful for tracking new variants, like the B.1.17 strain that is now widespread in the U.K. and has already been introduced in the U.S. "SARS CoV-2 virus is excreted by individuals that are infected by COVID -19and the fecal waste ends up in the wastewater systems. By sampling wastewater, we can get information on infections for a whole population. Some wastewater systems serve several thousand people. ...

A small pilot study suggests that early administration of ivermectin can reduce viral loads and symptom duration in patients with mild COVID-19, which in turn could help reduce viral transmission. The study, which is part of the SAINT project and has been led by the University of Navarra Clinic and the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), an institution supported by the "la Caixa" Foundation, warrants further exploration in larger clinical trials. The findings of the pilot study have been published in EClinicalMedicine, a clinical journal published by The Lancet. We ...

A new study from North Carolina State University shows that the inflammation caused by Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) infection gives the pathogen a two-fold advantage: by both creating an inhospitable environment for competing bacteria and providing nutrients that enable C. diff to thrive. C. diff is a bacterium that causes diarrhea, often with severe or even fatal consequences. As part of its growth cycle, C. diff produces two toxins which cause inflammation and damage the lining of the gut. "C. diff thrives when other microbes in the gut are absent - which is why it is more prevalent following antibiotic ...

As the air continues to dry and temperatures drop, the yearly battle against dry hands and skin has officially begun. New research from Northwestern University has found new evidence deep within the skin about the mechanisms controlling skin repair and renewal. Skin's barrier function gives it the unique ability to fight winter woes and retain water for our bodies. The outer layer of the skin, the epidermis, is constantly turning over to replace dead or damaged cells, creating new cells to reinforce the barrier function and heal damage. The gene regulatory mechanisms that control epidermis turnover remain incompletely understood. "Every month we're covered with a new layer of epidermis," said Northwestern's Xiaomin Bao, who led the study. "The next question is what does that process ...

The United States incarcerates more residents than any other country, however there is limited research that examines how people view such punishment, and whether views about punishment change with development. Previous research on this topic raises two very different possibilities: 1) children are typically more optimistic than adults, making them more likely to report that people's moral character improves following punishment, and 2) children are more likely than adults to report that others' characteristics - including moral traits - are unchangeable, making them less likely than adults to report that punishment affects moral growth. Researchers probed these contrasting possibilities further in two studies exploring children's and adults' views about the impact of ...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, parents have been faced with challenging circumstances to balance work, household, care of children and support of distance learning for school-age children without help from their regular support systems such as schools, childcare, and often other family members as well. A new longitudinal study in Germany examined day-to-day parenting behavior during the restrictions and closures caused by the pandemic from the end of March until the end of April 2020. Research showed that autonomy-supportive parenting (offering meaningful choices when possible) contributed to positive well-being for both children and parents. The findings were published in a Child Development article ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. (Jan. 19, 2021) - A look at RNA tells us what our genes are telling our cells to do, and scientists say looking directly at the RNA of brain tumor cells appears to provide objective, efficient evidence to better classify a tumor and the most effective treatments. Gliomas are the most common brain tumor type in adults, they have a wide range of possible outcomes and three subtypes, from the generally more treatable astrocytomas and oligodendrogliomas to the typically more lethal glioblastomas. Medical College of Georgia scientists report in the journal Scientific Reports that their method, which produces what is ...