Seiichi Shirai (1905-1983) was an influential architect whose work has affected the designs of significant architects of the 20th century. Associate Professor Kosuke Hato of the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Shinshu University has studied the work of Shirai and examined why the architect worked extensively on calligraphy. Hato's strategy is to clarify the relationship between the architect and his activity of calligraphy through Shirai's Theory of Tradition. The 1950s in Japan is known as a time when architects actively discussed traditions, and Shirai is a representative example. Hato, in his past article, clarified not only the ...

Is it possible to drive nanoparticles to orbit below the light diffraction limit using a Gaussian beam? A recent joint research project reported in Nature Communications says yes. It is well known that light possesses not only energy but also momentum. When light irradiates an object, momentum is transferred to the object, thus generating light pressure on the object. At the microscopic scale, microparticles and nanoparticles (such as biocells and macromolecules) can be manipulated by the light force. Atoms can be cooled by light pressure to achieve atomic clocks, Bose-Einstein condensation, and so on. In addition to the linear momentum of light being transferable, the angular momentum of light can also be transferred to an object, thus causing object rotation. Since ...

Tissue-engineering scaffolds built around ultrashort peptides provide a new platform for studying bone regeneration in the lab. The peptides developed at KAUST self-assemble into a cartilage-like hydrogel that mimics the natural matrix that underpins bone formation in the body. Its physiologically relevant properties enable this cell-friendly biomaterial to support the growth and development of bone marrow precursor cells. It also enables tubular blood vessels to take shape, which is a critical part of bone health and repair. "Our system is a simple, efficient and robust model that closely resembles the complex architecture of native bone tissue," says Ph.D. student Salwa Alshehri. "Using these peptide-based ...

Thousands of years ago, archaic humans such as Neanderthals and Denisovans went extinct. But before that, they interbred with the ancestors of present-day humans, who still to this day carry genetic mutations from the extinct species. Over 40 percent of the Neanderthal genome is thought to have survived in different present-day humans of non-African descent, but spread out so that any individual genome is only composed of up to two percent Neanderthal material. Some human populations also carry genetic material from Denisovans - a mysterious group of archaic humans that may have lived in Eastern Eurasia and Oceania ...

A study carried out by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) and the Instituto de Saúde Pública of the University of Porto (ISPUP), concludes that exposure to natural spaces during the first COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 was beneficial for the mental health of Spanish and Portuguese citizens. The research shows that, in Portugal, during the first confinement, people who maintained or increased contact with natural public spaces, such as parks and coastal areas, or who could contemplate these spaces from their homes, presented lower levels of stress, psychological distress and psychosomatic symptoms. In Spain, those who maintained or increased contact with private natural ...

"Boomers" and "millennials" who go to church are more likely to trust their neighbours and donate to charity, according to a new study. Religious beliefs and participation help close the gaps in civic participation between millennials and their elders, researchers have found. Experts have measured the social "capital" religion gives people of all ages. They found those in their 20s and 30s were less likely to join groups and associations, and less likely to be religious, but being involved with the church gave them more "religious capital" than older people who also attended services. The study shows boomers often have more social capital than millennials and are more likely to be religious. Religious ...

A faster method for collecting pure malaria parasites from infected mosquitos could accelerate the development of new, more potent malaria vaccines. The new method, developed by a team of researchers led by Imperial College London, enables more parasites to be isolated rapidly with fewer contaminants, which could simultaneously increase both the scalability and efficacy of malaria vaccines. The parasite that causes malaria is becoming increasingly resistant to antimalarial drugs, with the mosquitoes that transmit the disease also increasingly resistant to pesticides. This has created an urgent need for new ways to fight malaria, which is the world's third-most deadly disease in under-fives, with a child dying from malaria every two minutes. Existing ...

Ibaraki, Japan - Severe childhood restrictive cardiomyopathy is a condition that causes the muscles in the walls of the heart to become stiff, so that the heart is unable to fill properly with blood. A mutation in a protein called BAG3 is known to result in restrictive cardiomyopathy, muscle weakness, difficulty taking in enough oxygen, and damage to multiple peripheral nerves, often shortening the patient's lifespan significantly. Until now there has been no successful model for the disease, making it extremely difficult to study. However, researchers in Japan and Germany have now created a mouse model that mimics the human pathology, allowing the disease to be studied more easily. The team's data suggest ...

Osaka, Japan - Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common liver disease worldwide and can progress to liver cirrhosis, liver failure or cancer. Currently, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) diagnosis requires an invasive liver biopsy which can lead to procedural complications. Now, researchers at Osaka University working with international collaborators have identified a noninvasive biomarker that can identify patients at risk of NAFLD complications using a simple blood test. Owing to the increasing prevalence of obesity worldwide, ...

The electroreduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) to produce value-added multicarbon compounds is an effective way to cut down CO2 emission. However, the low solubility of CO2 largely limits the application of related technology. Although gas diffusion electrode (GDE) can accelerate the reaction rate, the instability of the catalysts caused by electrolyte flooding hinders further reaction. Recently, inspired by setaria's hydrophobic leaves, Prof. GAO Minrui's team from University of Science and Technology of China developed Cu catalyst composed of sharp needles which possesses high level ...

When animals are hot, they eat less. This potentially fatal phenomenon has been largely overlooked in wild animals, explain researchers from The Australian National University (ANU). According to lead author Dr Kara Youngentob, it means climate change could be contributing to more deaths among Australia's iconic marsupials, like the greater glider, than previously thought. "Hot weather puts all animals off their food. Humans can deal with it fairly well; we usually have plenty of fat reserves and lots of different ...

A destructive pest beetle is edging closer to Australia as biological controls fail, destroying home gardens, plantations and biodiversity as they surge through nearby Pacific islands. University of Queensland researcher Dr Kayvan Etebari has been studying how palm-loving coconut rhinoceros beetles have been accelerating their invasion. "We thought we'd outsmarted them," Dr Etebari said. "In the 1970s, scientists from Australia and elsewhere found that coconut rhinoceros beetles could be controlled with a beetle virus from Malaysia. "This virus stopped the beetle in its tracks and, for the last 50 years or so, it more-or-less stayed put ...

As demand for electricity rises and climate change brings more frequent and extreme storms, residents in rural and suburban communities must have access to the minimal electricity they need to survive a large, long-duration (LLD) power outage. A new study in the journal Risk Analysis compared strategies for providing emergency power to residents in two hypothetical New England communities during such an event. The results suggest that cooperative strategies like sharing a higher capacity generator among multiple homes cost 10 to 40 times less than if each household used its own generator. "Our findings provide impetus for utilities, regulators, ...

Osaka, Japan - A team of scientists headed by SANKEN (The Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research) at Osaka University demonstrated that single virus particles passing through a nanopore could be accurately identified using machine learning. The test platform they created was so sensitive that the coronaviruses responsible for the common cold, SARS, MERS, and COVID could be distinguished from each other. This work may lead to rapid, portable, and accurate screening tests for COVID and other viral diseases. The global coronavirus pandemic has revealed the ...

[Background] In recent years, physical reservoir computing*1), one of the new information processing technologies, has attracted much attention. This is a physical implementation version of reservoir computing, which is a learning method derived from recurrent neural network (RNN)*2) theory. It implements computation by regarding the physical system as a huge RNN, outsourcing the main operations to the dynamics of the physical system that forms the physical reservoir. It has the advantage of obtaining optimization instantaneously with limited computational resources by adjusting linear and static readout weightings between the output and a physical reservoir without requiring optimization of the weightings by back propagation. However, since the information processing capability depends ...

SINGAPORE, 17 June 2021 - New details on the structure and function of a transport protein could help researchers develop drugs for neurological diseases that are better able to cross the blood-brain barrier. The findings were published in the journal Nature by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, Duke-NUS Medical School, Weill Cornell Medicine and colleagues. Omega-3 fatty acids, like docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), are important for brain and eye development. They are derived mainly from dietary sources and converted ...

New research presents over 300 new analyses of bronze objects, raising the total number to 550 in 'the archaeological fingerprint project'. This is roughly two thirds of the entire metal inventory of the early Bronze Age in southern Scandinavia. For the first time, it was possible to map the trade networks for metals and to identify changes in the supply routes, coinciding with other socio-economic changes detectable in the rich metal-dependent societies of Bronze Age southern Scandinavia. The magnificent Bronze Age in southern Scandinavia rose from copper traded from the British Isles and Slovakia 4000 years ago. 500 ...

In a paper published in NANO, a team of researchers from Jiangnan University, China have prepared a convenient sensing platform which can detect microRNA-205 (MiR-205) with high sensitivity and excellent selectivity using TpTta-COF nanosheet and fluorescent oligonucleotide probes. Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a kind of malignant cancer derived from the epithelial cells, which shows an apparent regional aggregation with a high prevalence in Southern China and Southeast Asia. With the ongoing improvement of radiotherapy technology, the therapeutic effect of NPC patients has been increased significantly. However, the easy recurrence and metastasis still cause the poor prognosis of NPC patients. Many researches indicated that ...

RUDN University mathematicians built a model of COVID-19 spreading based on two regression models. The mathematicians divided the countries into three groups, depending on the spreading rate and on the climatic conditions, and found a suitable mathematical approximation for each of them. Based on the model, the mathematicians predicted the subsequent waves. The forecast was accurate in countries where mass vaccination was not introduced. The results are published in Mathematics. The epidemy spreading rate within the country depends, among other things, on the climatic ...

In recent years, significant progress has been made towards the use of high-resolution peripheral computed tomography (HR-pQCT) imaging in research, and new potential for applications in the clinic have emerged, particularly with the advent of second generation devices. A newly published state-of-the-art publication on the use and future directions of HR-PQCT provides a concise overview of current clinical applications as well as valuable guidance on the interpretation of results. Specifically, it gives an overview of: differences and reference data for HR-pQCT variables by age, sex, body composition and race/ethnicity; fracture risk prediction using HR-pQCT, specifically in regard to bone microarchitecture in individuals ...

AURORA, COLORADO, June 16, 2021 -- Foresight Diagnostics, the emerging leader in blood-based lymphoma disease monitoring, announced today that clinical performance of its minimal residual disease (MRD) detection platform in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) will be presented at the 16th International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma (ICML) on June 18-22, 2021. The oral presentation demonstrates the utility of Foresight Diagnostics' proprietary PhasED-Seq technology to improve MRD detection rates in DLBCL patients in low-disease burden settings. "Foresight's MRD testing platform can detect relapsing disease 200 ...

Cancer cells can develop resistance to therapy through both genetic and non-genetic mechanisms. But it is unclear how and why one of these routes to resistance prevails. Understanding this 'choice' by the cancer cells may help us devise better therapeutic strategies. Now, the team of Prof. Jean-Christophe Marine (VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology) shows that the presence of certain stem cells correlates with the development of nongenetic resistance mechanisms. Their study is published in the prestigious journal Cancer Cell. Two routes to resistance Even though cancer therapy has made great strides in the ...

African American mothers continue to have the lowest breastfeeding rates, even as the breastfeeding rates have risen in the U.S. over the past 25 years. Racism is an important barrier to breastfeeding, as examined in Part 2 of a special issue on "Breastfeeding and the Black/African American Experience: Cultural, Sociological, and Health Dimensions Through an Equity Lens," published in the peer-reviewed journal Breastfeeding Medicine. Click here to read the issue now. The special issue is led by Guest Editor Sahira Long, MD, a pediatrician and lactation consultant. Exploring how racism creates barriers to breastfeeding for Black mothers and how Black women resist racism during their quest to breastfeed are Catasha Davis, PhD and Aubrey Van Kirk Villalobos, DrPH, Milken Institute School ...

Since 2005, the guidelines for the care of unconscious cardiac arrest patients have been to cool the body temperature down to 33 degrees Celsius. A large, randomised clinical trial led by Lund University and Region Skåne in Sweden has shown that this treatment does not improve survival. The study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine. "These results will affect the current guidelines", says Niklas Nielsen, researcher at Lund University and consultant in anaesthesiology and intensive care at Helsingborg Hospital, who led the study. In the early 2000s, two studies in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that induced hypothermia in unconscious cardiac arrest patients ...

Conservationists have long warned of the dangers associated with bears becoming habituated to life in urban areas. Yet, it appears the message hasn't gotten through to everyone. News reports continue to cover seemingly similar situations -- a foraging bear enters a neighbourhood, easily finds high-value food and refuses to leave. The story often ends with conservation officers being forced to euthanize the animal for public safety purposes. Now, a new study by sustainability researchers in the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science uses computer modelling to look at the best strategies to reduce human-bear conflict. "It happens all the time, and unfortunately, humans are almost ...