Researchers could not confirm that a feature that supposedly signals the presence of Majorana bound states - the unusual quasiparticles that may become the cornerstone of topological quantum computing - was in fact due to elusive Majorana particles, in full-shell semiconductor/superconductor nanowires. Rather, this feature, known as zero bias conductance peak, can arise from another quantum phenomenon in these hybrid nanowire structures, the authors say. In recent years, intense research has been conducted on nanowire-based semiconductor-superconductor hybrid systems because predictions suggest that a topological superconductor state with Majorana zero modes (MZMs) can be engineered from them. Even though several experiments in such platforms have reported ...

Researchers introduce "sci-Space," a new approach to spatial transcriptomics that can retain single-cell resolution and spatial heterogeneity at scales much larger than previous methods. They used their approach to build single-cell atlases of whole sections of mouse embryos at 14 days of development. Single-cell RNA sequencing methods have led to great advances in understanding how organisms and complex tissues develop. Although cells' spatial organization is central to normal development, homeostasis, and pathophysiology, many single-cell RNA sequencing methods lose valuable contextual spatial information. Those that preserve spatial context between cells can be limited to a specific set of genes and/or ...

A new technique called sci-Space, combined with data from other technologies, could lead to four-dimensional atlases of gene expression across diverse cells during embryonic development of mammals. Such atlases would map how the gene transcripts in individual cells reflect the passage of time, cell lineages, cell migration, and location on the developing embryo. They would also help illuminate the spatial regulation of gene expression. Mammalian embryonic development is a remarkable phenomenon: a fertilized egg divides repeatedly and turns, in a matter of weeks or months, into a complex organism capable of a myriad of physiological processes and composed of a variety ...

Quantum computers promise great advances in many fields - from cryptography to the simulation of protein folding. Yet, which physical system works best to build the underlying quantum bits is still an open question. Unlike regular bits in your computer, these so-called qubits cannot only take the values 0 and 1, but also mixtures of the two. While this potentially makes them very useful, they also become very unstable. One approach to solve this problem bets on topological qubits that encode the information in their spatial arrangement. That could provide a more stable ...

Current rates of plastic emissions globally may trigger effects that we will not be able to reverse, argues a new study by researchers from Sweden, Norway and Germany published on July 2nd in Science. According to the authors, plastic pollution is a global threat, and actions to drastically reduce emissions of plastic to the environment are "the rational policy response". Plastic is found everywhere on the planet: from deserts and mountaintops to deep oceans and Arctic snow. As of 2016, estimates of global emissions of plastic to the world's lakes, rivers and ...

Scientists have long searched in vain for a class of brain cells that could explain the visceral flash of recognition that we feel when we see a very familiar face, like that of our grandmothers. But the proposed "grandmother neuron"--a single cell at the crossroads of sensory perception and memory, capable of prioritizing an important face over the rabble--remained elusive. Now, new research reveals a class of neurons in the brain's temporal pole region that links face perception to long-term memory. It's not quite the apocryphal grandmother neuron--rather than a single ...

The COVID-19 catastrophe in India has resulted in more than 30 million people infected with the virus and nearly 400,000 deaths, though experts are concerned that the figures most likely are much higher. Meanwhile, another public health crisis has emerged along with COVID-19: the widespread misuse of antibiotics. During India's first surge of COVID-19, antibiotic sales soared, suggesting the drugs were used to treat mild and moderate cases of COVID-19, according to research led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Such use is considered inappropriate because antibiotics are only effective against bacterial infections, not viral infections such as COVID-19, and overuse increases the risk ...

Fifteen years ago, UC Santa Barbara electrical and materials professor John Bowers pioneered a method for integrating a laser onto a silicon wafer. The technology has since been widely deployed in combination with other silicon photonics devices to replace the copper-wire interconnects that formerly linked servers at data centers, dramatically increasing energy efficiency -- an important endeavor at a time when data traffic is growing by roughly 25% per year. For several years, the Bowers group has collaborated with the group of Tobias J. Kippenberg at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Direct On-Chip Digital Optical ...

Optical frequency combs consist of light frequencies made of equidistant laser lines. They have already revolutionized the fields of frequency metrology, timing and spectroscopy. The discovery of ''soliton microcombs'' by Professor Tobias Kippenberg's lab at EPFL in the past decade has enabled frequency combs to be generated on chip. In this scheme, a single-frequency laser is converted into ultra-short pulses called dissipative Kerr solitons. Soliton microcombs are chip-scale frequency combs that are compact, consume low power, and exhibit broad bandwidth. Combined with large spacing of comb "teeth", microcombs are uniquely ...

Conversations between seriously ill people, their families and palliative care specialists lead to better quality-of-life. Understanding what happens during these conversations - and particularly how they vary by cultural, clinical, and situational contexts - is essential to guide healthcare communication improvement efforts. To gain true understanding, new methods to study conversations in large, inclusive, and multi-site epidemiological studies are required. A new computer model offers an automated and valid tool for such large-scale scientific analyses. Research results on this model were published today in PLOS ONE. Developed by a team of computer scientists, clinicians and engineers at the University of Vermont, the approach - called CODYM ...

A study by Stanford University School of Medicine investigators hints that people with COVID-19 may experience milder symptoms if certain cells of their immune systems "remember" previous encounters with seasonal coronaviruses -- the ones that cause about a quarter of the common colds kids get. These immune cells are better equipped to mobilize quickly against SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, if they've already met its gentler cousins, the scientists concluded. The findings may help explain why some people, particularly children, seem much more resilient than others to infection by SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. They also might make it possible ...

Scientists have developed a new technology to detect a wider variety of T cells that recognize coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2. The technology revealed that killer T cells capable of recognizing epitopes conserved across all coronaviruses are much more abundant in COVID-19 patients with mild disease versus those with more severe illness, suggesting a protective role for these broad-affinity T cells. The ability to distinguish T cells based on their affinities to SARS-CoV-2 could help scientists elucidate the disparity in COVID-19 outcomes and determine which COVID-19 patients will or will not exhibit a successful immune response ...

In a new Editorial, Peter Heeger, Christian Larsen, and Dorry Segev discuss recent evidence - including a recent Science Immunology study by Hector Rincon-Arevalo and colleagues - that points to a diminished immune response to COVID-19 vaccines among organ transplant recipients and others on immunosuppressive drug regimens. The authors note that this presents challenges at both the individual and population levels, since current vaccine protocols may not provide adequate protection to immunosuppressed patients - who could, in turn, become reservoirs for new and dangerous variants of the virus. As such, Heeger, Larsen, and Segev argue that developing vaccination strategies for transplant recipients should be a high priority in the next wave of research focused on fighting COVID-19. ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Research by investigators at Mayo Clinic Cancer Center suggests that physicians should screen patients with lung cancer for MET amplification/overexpression before determining a treatment strategy. Their findings are published Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "In our research we found several lung cancer cases that were not responsive to standard chemotherapy," says Zhenkun Lou, Ph.D., a cancer researcher at Mayo Clinic. "Because these lung cancers were positive for PD-L1, a protein that allows some cells ...

A key factor in America's prodigious agricultural output turns out to be something farmers can do little to control: clean air. A new Stanford-led study estimates pollution reductions between 1999 and 2019 contributed to about 20 percent of the increase in corn and soybean yield gains during that period - an amount worth about $5 billion per year. The analysis, published this week in Environmental Research Letters, reveals that four key air pollutants are particularly damaging to crops, and accounted for an average loss of about 5 percent of corn and soybean production over the study period. The findings could help inform technology and policy changes to benefit American agriculture, and underscore the ...

The number of people who live past the age of 100 has been on the rise for decades, up to nearly half a million people worldwide. There are, however, far fewer "supercentenarians," people who live to age 110 or even longer. The oldest living person, Jeanne Calment of France, was 122 when she died in 1997; currently, the world's oldest person is 118-year-old Kane Tanaka of Japan. Such extreme longevity, according to new research by the University of Washington, likely will continue to rise slowly by the end of this century, and estimates show that a lifespan of 125 years, or even 130 years, is possible. "People are fascinated by the extremes of humanity, whether it's going to the moon, how fast someone can run in the Olympics, or even how long someone ...

In Canada, low-income hospital patients under palliative care are less likely to receive medical assistance in dying compared to those who are high income, according to a study published in British Medical Journal Open (BMJ Open). Medical assistance in dying (MAID) is legal and free under Medicare, Canada's universal health care system. Patients with low socioeconomic status (SES), however, generally tend to experience less access to medical care compared to their high SES counterparts. Eldar Shafir, professor of psychology and public affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, along ...

Imaging spectroscopy can help predict water stress in wild blueberry barrens, according to a University of Maine-led study. The technology involves measuring the light reflected off of objects depicted in images captured by drones, satellites and other remote sensing technology to classify and gather pertinent information about the objects. According to researchers, it can precisely measure light across dozens, if not hundreds, of bands of colors. The reflectance spectra can depict nutrient levels, chlorophyll content and other indicators of health for various crops, according to researchers. Scientists from UMaine, the Schoodic Institute and Wyman's, one of the world's largest purveyors of wild blueberries and ...

More than 80 percent of people around the world consider themselves to be religious or spiritual. But research on the neuroscience of spirituality and religiosity has been sparse. Previous studies have used functional neuroimaging, in which an individual undergoes a brain scan while performing a task to see what areas of the brain light up. But these correlative studies have given a spotty and often inconsistent picture of spirituality. A new study led by investigators at Brigham and Women's Hospital takes a new approach to mapping spirituality and religiosity and finds that spiritual acceptance can be localized to a specific brain circuit. This brain circuit is centered in the periaqueductal gray (PAG), a brainstem region that has been implicated ...

Over the last two decades, biomaterials research has made significant progress, transitioning from traditional biomaterials to biomaterials with controlled structure and dynamic functionality. A number of building blocks have been explored for developing biomaterials by self-assembly, but SAPs have garnered special attention due to their tunability and potential use in various applications such as tissue engineering, wound healing, and vaccinations. Despite these benefits, the SAP-based approach is less explored in the intracellular context. Fortunately, a team of scientists from the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), led by Assistant Prof. Takayuki Miki, have reported a de novo peptide, Y15, that ...

Boulder, Colo., USA: The Geological Society of America regularly publishes articles online ahead of print. GSA Bulletin topics include multiple articles about the dynamics of China and Tibet; the end-Permian terrestrial extinction paradigm in South Africa; prehistoric lava flows from the urban district of Catania (Etna volcano, Italy); the debated origins of granite, and "a tale of two Tweefonteins." You can find these articles at https://bulletin.geoscienceworld.org/content/early/recent . Authigenic berthierine and incipient chloritization in shallowly ...

Most babies born prematurely or with health problems are quickly whisked away to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) where they might require assisted heating devices to regulate their temperature. A University of Houston College of Nursing researcher is reporting that the traditional use of cloth blankets and towels during peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC) placement may hinder heat transfer from the assisted heating mechanisms, increasing the risk for neonatal hypothermia. In Advances in Neonatal Care, Huong (Kelle) Phan, clinical assistant professor, reports that a plastic drape lowers the incidence of hypothermia. "The use of the plastic drape is a quality improvement to reduce the hypothermia rate in very low birth-weight ...

WILMINGTON, Del. (June 29, 2021) - A new report finds that 509,025 (9.17%) public high school students in 24 states experienced homelessness in spring 2019 -- three times the number recognized by the states' education agencies. This under-recognition creates gaps in funding and services needed by this vulnerable population. Researchers from Nemours Children's Health and the University of Pennsylvania analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for public schools across 24 states and 12 school districts. During spring 2019, more than 9% of public high school students experienced homelessness during a 30-day period in the 24 states. The rate was even higher in the 12 school ...

New research published today in the journal Blood Advances finds that certain factors, such as a history of severe pain episodes and coexisting organ conditions, increase the risk of severe COVID-19 illness, including hospitalization, in individuals living with sickle cell disease (SCD). According to researchers, the study results underscore the need for COVID-19 risk reduction strategies and vaccination for this medically vulnerable population. SCD is the most common inherited red blood cell disorder in the United States, affecting an estimated 100,000 people. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, SCD affects one out of ...

Understanding how viral infection occurs can provide important clues for researchers to develop strategies to prevent viral transmission and develop effective therapeutic agents and vaccines. SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19, enters the host cells through interaction between the virus's spike protein and the extracellular receptor binding domain of ACE2. The viral entry into the cells is completed by various proteases, which allow the viral and cell membranes to fuse together. While it is known that the upper respiratory tract becomes compromised in the early infection, the exact types of the cells that the virus infects at the earliest stage have not yet been identified. Led by Director ...