ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have designed a new class of molten sodium batteries for grid-scale energy storage. The new battery design was shared in a paper published today in the scientific journal Cell Reports Physical Science. Molten sodium batteries have been used for many years to store energy from renewable sources, such as solar panels and wind turbines. However, commercially available molten sodium batteries, called sodium-sulfur batteries, typically operate at 520-660 degrees Fahrenheit. Sandia's new molten sodium-iodide battery operates at a much cooler 230 degrees Fahrenheit instead. "We've been working to bring the operating temperature of molten sodium batteries down as low as physically possible," ...

Scientists have developed a new way to model and map the health of coral reef ecosystems using data collected on the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation's Global Reef Expedition. This innovative method, presented today at the International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS), can determine which natural and anthropogenic factors are most likely to lead to persistently vibrant coral and fish communities. Their findings can help scientists identify the reefs most likely to survive in a changing world. The new models are a first step in being able to produce maps of global coral reef resilience. To create these models, scientist Anna Bakker needed a lot of data on coral reefs from ...

Drugs must be safe not just for the patients; in the case of pregnant patients, drugs must also be safe for the unborn children still in the womb. Therefore, at an early stage in the development of new medicines, candidate substances are tested in the Petri dish on embryonic stem cells from mouse cell lines. This is to avoid that an embryo-damaging effect would only be noticed at a later stage during tests with pregnant mice. However, these cell culture tests are a highly simplified version of what takes place in the uterus. Researchers just add the test material to a culture of embryonic stem cells in a Petri dish, and can identify substances that have a direct adverse effect on embryonic cells. By contrast, in the body of a pregnant woman, active pharmaceutical ...

New Rochelle, NY, July 21, 2021-- Evaluating the efficacy of novel therapies requires the ability to monitor wound progression accurately and reproducibly over time. Researchers have proposed a new scoring system for wound healing in mice based on parameters in each phase of healing, as described in an article in the peer-reviewed journal Stem Cells and Development. Click here to read the article for free through August 21, 2021. The parameters include re-epithelization, epithelial thickness index, keratinization, granulation tissue thickness, remodeling, and the scar elevation index. The parameters can be assessed using either Hematoxylin & Eosin or ...

By José Tadeu Arantes | Agência FAPESP – Gluten is a protein complex found in cereals such as wheat, rye and barley. It is responsible for the elastic texture of dough so that loaves and rolls can be baked into different shapes while remaining flexible and crusty. It also lengthens the shelf life of bread at room temperature, when associated with preservatives. Gluten intolerance, however, has become a global epidemic, and gluten-free products are increasingly popular. The problem is that most of those available on the market are far from corresponding to consumers’ expectations in terms of appearance, aroma, flavor and durability. A research line focusing on ways to enhance gluten-free products is being pursued ...

No one wants bad breath -- not when visiting friends and family, at a job interview, and especially not on a first date. Smelly breath can make things awkward, but it also is a natural warning sign, indicating that serious dental issues are occurring. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Nano have constructed a portable, thumb-sized device that diagnoses bad breath by quickly "sniffing" exhalations for the gas that makes it stinky -- hydrogen sulfide. Because most people can't smell their own breath, they need to ask someone else, which can be embarrassing and awkward. Some devices measure small amounts of stinky hydrogen sulfide, but they require exhaled air to be collected and tested on expensive instruments in a lab, which is not feasible ...

Safe and effective vaccines offer hope for an end to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the possible emergence of vaccine-resistant SARS-CoV-2 variants, as well as novel coronaviruses, make finding treatments that work against all coronaviruses as important as ever. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Proteome Research have analyzed viral proteins across 27 coronavirus species and thousands of samples from COVID-19 patients, identifying highly conserved sequences that could make the best drug targets. Drugs often bind inside "pockets" on proteins that hold the drug snugly, causing it to interfere with the protein's function. Scientists can identify potential drug-binding pockets from the 3D structures of viral proteins. ...

WASHINGTON, July 21, 2021 -- As the Summer Olympics draw near, the world will shift its focus to photo finishes and races determined by mere fractions of a second. Obtaining such split-second measurements relies on faultlessly rounding a raw time recorded by a stopwatch or electronic timing system to a submitted time. Researchers at the University of Surrey found certain stopwatches commit rounding errors when converting raw times to final submitted times. In American Journal of Physics, by AIP Publishing, David Faux and Janet Godolphin outline a series of computer simulations based on procedures for converting raw race times for display. Faux was inspired when he encountered ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - Cornell researchers have developed nanostructures that enable record-breaking conversion of laser pulses into high-harmonic generation, paving the way for new scientific tools for high-resolution imaging and studying physical processes that occur at the scale of an attosecond - one quintillionth of a second. High-harmonic generation has long been used to merge photons from a pulsing laser into one, ultrashort photon with much higher energy, producing extreme ultraviolet light and X-rays used for a variety of scientific purposes. Traditionally, gases have been used as sources of harmonics, but a research team led by Gennady Shvets, professor of applied and engineering physics ...

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian in New York have discovered that injecting mice with pulmonary endothelial cells--the cells that line the walls of blood vessels in the lung--can reverse the symptoms of emphysema. The study, which will be published July 21 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM), may lead to new treatments for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), an inflammatory lung disease associated with smoking that is thought to be the third leading cause of death worldwide. Emphysema is one of the characteristic features ...

Wearable devices can detect people's stress, according to new Washington State University research, opening potential new interventions for people with addictions. In a paper published today, July 21, in the END ...

A landmark scientific study involving marine biologists from Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Libya, Italy, Tunisia, the UK, the US and even Malta, documenting instances where native Mediterranean species have preyed upon two highly invasive marine fish - the Pacific red lionfish and the silver-cheeked toadfish - has just been published. Prof. Alan Deidun, coordinator of the Spot the Alien Fish citizen science campaign and resident academic within the Department of Geosciences of the Faculty of Science, is a co-author of such an extensive study. The Pacific red lionfish (Pterois miles) and the silver-cheeked toadfish (Lagocephalus sceleratus) are amongst the most invasive of non-indigenous fish species to enter the Mediterranean in recent years, posing both ecological and socio-economic hazards. ...

SARS-CoV-2 still poses major challenges to mankind. The frequent emergence of mutant forms makes the threat posed by the virus difficult to predict. The SARS-CoV-2 variant B.1.617 circulated in India and gave rise to the Delta variant, B.1.617.2, which is now becoming dominant in many countries. Infection researchers from the German Primate Center (DPZ) - Leibniz Institute for Primate Research in Göttingen have investigated the B.1.617 variant in detail. In cell culture studies, they found that this variant can infect certain lung and intestinal cell lines more efficiently than the original ...

A high proportion of staff working in intensive care units during the COVID-19 pandemic have experienced mental health conditions, according to a new study. In a study of 515 healthcare staff working in intensive care units (ICUs) across seven countries, the researchers found that on average 48 percent of participants showed signs of mental health conditions - depression, insomnia and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Their mental health was assessed using a detailed questionnaire and a clinical scoring system. The team also found a 40 per cent increase in the conditions for those who spent more than six hours in personal protective equipment (PPE) over ...

At low temperatures, certain materials lose their electrical resistance and conduct electricity without any loss - this phenomenon of superconductivity has been known since 1911, but it is still not fully understood. And that is a pity, because finding a material that would still have superconducting properties even at high temperatures would probably trigger a technological revolution. A discovery made at TU Wien (Vienna) could be an important step in this direction: A team of solid-state physicists studied an unusual material - a so-called "strange metal" made of ytterbium, rhodium and silicon. Strange metals show an unusual relationship between electrical resistance and temperature. ...

A protein involved in making cells move offers a clue to how certain types of cancer metastasize and develop into secondary tumours, according to new research from the University of Warwick. Scientists from Warwick Medical School have demonstrated for the first time that levels of this protein can increase and decrease the movement of a cell, including cancer cells - suggesting that they could play a role in the spread of tumours. The study is published today (21 July) in the Journal of Cell Biology and was funded by the Medical Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation. The researchers are investigating a tiny cell component called an Intracellular nanovesicle (INV) which acts like a courier within a cell by transporting cargo to where it ...

Classical molecular sieve membranes, with 3D microparticles and 2D nanosheets as primary building blocks, are promising in chemical separation. Separation within such membranes relies on molecular movement and transport though their intrinsic or artificial nanopores. Since the weak connections by nature between the neighboring "bricks" usually result in intercrystalline gaps in membranes, the prevailing selectivity for classical molecular sieve membranes is moderate. Recently, a research group led by Prof. YANG Weishen and Dr. BAN Yujie from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) proposed ...

Professors at Ural Federal University (UrFU, Russia) Sergey Shcheklein and Aleksey Dubinin have developed a technology for generating energy for an electric car engine using methanol. An article describing the technology was published in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy. "We pour methanol into the fuel tank. An air converter, which processes methanol into a gas mixture, is installed directly inside the vehicle. A mixture or synthesis gas, consisting of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, is formed in a small volume, which is necessary for the current operation of an electric vehicle engine," said Sergey Shcheklein, head ...

According to the latest cosmological models, large spiral galaxies such as the Milky Way grew by absorbing smaller galaxies, by a sort of galactic cannibalism. Evidence for this is given by very large structures, the tidal stellar streams, which are observed around them, which are the remains of these satellite galaxies. But the full histories of the majority of these cases are hard to study, because these flows of stars are very faint, and only the remains of the most recent mergers have been detected. A study led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), with the participation of the Instituto de Astrofísica ...

Pregnancy-induced diabetes, also known as gestational diabetes, is a common metabolic complication of pregnancy. The disorder carries a significant risk of adverse obstetric outcome. Additionally, it is associated with a high risk of recurrence, progression to maternal type 2 diabetes as well as an elevated risk of obesity in foetuses exposed to hyperglycaemia during gestation. The mechanisms causing gestational diabetes are complex and incompletely understood. The disorder has a strong underlying genetic element that interacts with lifestyle factors and the physiologic changes accompanying pregnancy to alter maternal glucose regulation. A team of researchers from the Faculty ...

The tiny organisms living in soil may have a greater effect on the yield and pest and disease resistance of crop plants grown in that soil than previously known. Researchers at North Carolina State University and the University of Kansas have shown that soil microbes - microscopic organisms like viruses, bacteria and fungi found throughout nature - play a role in the phenomenon of heterosis or "hybrid vigor," the superior performance of crossed plant lines, or hybrids, over inbred plant lines. Hybrids are often used by farmers for agricultural production due their superior crop yields. Research into hybrid vigor has generally highlighted the roles of genetic ...

BOSTON - A new study by research, quality improvement and health equity experts at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in The American Journal of Managed Care lays out the challenges of achieving equity for diverse patients in communication at hospital discharge. A survey of 224 recently discharged patients was conducted in five languages just before the COVID-19 pandemic and highlighted challenges, including limited understanding of medications; lack of available professional medical interpreters and translated patient instructions at discharge; and worries about support for at home after hospitalization. Major findings include: Overall, one in four patients were alone at discharge, without a family member ...

In the context of meditation practice, meditators can experience a state of "pure awareness" or "pure consciousness", in which they perceive consciousness itself. This state can be experienced in various ways, but evidently incorporates specific sensations as well as non-specific accompanying perceptions, feelings, and thoughts. These are just some of the findings of the most extensive survey of meditators ever conducted on the experience of pure consciousness. The findings of the survey recently have been published in PLOS ONE. The study was conducted by Professor Thomas Metzinger from the Department of Philosophy at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and Dr. Alex Gamma from the Psychiatric ...

TORONTO, ON - Researchers at the University of Toronto have developed an innovative tool to aid in the investigation of how we perceive and remember visual experiences. The new tool, referred to as a "scene wheel," will help researchers study how accurately we construct mental representations of visual experiences for later retrieval -- for example, how well an eyewitness recalls details of a crime or accident. "We know that eyewitness testimony is not reliable," says Gaeun Son. "With the new scene wheel, we can start to characterize the specific nature of those memory failures." Son is a PhD student in the Faculty of Arts & Science's Department of Psychology and lead ...

A new study from Oregon State University found that infants born within 3 kilometers of oil and natural gas drilling facilities in Texas had slightly lower birthweights than those born before drilling began in their vicinity. The study, published today in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found that the type of drilling or resource being extracted did not change the result. "Most studies to date focus exclusively on unconventional natural gas drilling, or fracking. That particular process is a small subset of the oil and natural gas industry. ...