Graphene-based materials can be obtained using various reducing agents, many of which are dangerous and toxic chemicals, and the obtained graphene-based materials are prone to aggregation, limiting their practical applications. Recently, a research group of Prof. HUANG Qing from the Institute of Intelligent Machines, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS), prepared graphene-based nanozymes through a simple and green preparation method, and verified that it can be used to detect L-cysteine in serum. The study, published in Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation ...

According to the theory of planet formation, rocky bodies such as the Earth were formed by repeating collisions from dusty materials. In this process, a number of Mercury- or Mars-sized planetary embryos, were formed, and eventually these bodies merged together and formed terrestrial planets in our solar system. During the formation of the planetary embryos, the interior of these bodies was likely to be molten due to the heat by radiative-decay elements and a collisional energy of the planetary embryos. At this stage, iron and silicate separate, and form the metallic core and ...

It might seem like a given that mothers take extra risks to protect their children, but have you ever wondered why? A new study led by Kumi Kuroda at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS) in Japan shows that in mice, this and other nurturing behaviors are driven in part by neurons in a small part of the forebrain that contain a protein called the calcitonin receptor. The study was published in Cell Reports. Many simple behaviors, such as eating and drinking, are driven by different parts of the brain's hypothalamus. The new study focused on identifying the part that drives a much more complicated behavior: caring for infants. As Kuroda explains, "we were able to narrow down the brain cells necessary ...

Most prescriptions for the drug buprenorphine, used to treat opioid use disorder, are written by a small number of the health care providers, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Published in the June 1 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study found that half of all patient-months of buprenorphine treatment during 2016 and 2017 were prescribed by just 4.9% of the physicians and other providers who prescribed the drug during the period. "These findings have important implications for efforts to increase buprenorphine access," said Dr. Bradley D. Stein, the study's lead author and a senior physician researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "Our study suggests that targeted efforts to encourage more current prescribers to become high-volume ...

In a recent study, Australian scientists used an original approach to resolve the 3D structure of flaviviruses with an unprecedented level of detail, identifying small molecules known as 'pocket factors' as new therapeutic targets. Flaviviruses infect humans by mosquito or tick bite, with symptoms ranging from fever and myalgia to life-threatening neurological and congenital conditions. Flaviviruses such as dengue, yellow fever and Zika threaten almost a third of the world's population, and new flaviviruses emerge regularly from animal reservoirs with the potential to cause epidemics. ...

A research team led by scientists at Université de Montréal has developed a unique observational tool for assessing children up to 5 years of age who have had a concussion. The work is explained in a study published in the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation. Pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI) is particularly prevalent in toddlers; they're more likely to be injured because they have a lower sense of danger and are still developing physically. But parents and clinicians have trouble detecting symptoms of trauma, given the toddler's limited verbal skills. "A young child will not tell you that they have a headache or feel dizzy," said Dominique Dupont, an UdeM postdoctoral student in neuropsychology and first author of the study. "But assessing post-concussion symptoms ...

PHILADELPHIA--An odor-based test that sniffs out vapors emanating from blood samples was able to distinguish between benign and pancreatic and ovarian cancer cells with up to 95 percent accuracy, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Penn's Perelman School of Medicine. The findings suggest that the Penn-developed tool -- which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to decipher the mixture of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitting off cells in blood plasma samples -- could serve as a non-invasive approach ...

Our lives today are governed by electronics in all shapes and forms. Electronics, in turn, are governed by their batteries. However, the traditional lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), that are widely used in electronic devices, are falling out of favor because researchers are beginning to view lithium metal batteries (LMBs) as a superior alternative due to their remarkably high energy density that exceeds LIBs by an order of magnitude! The key difference lies in the choice of anode material: LIBs use graphite, whereas LMBs use lithium metal. Such a choice, however, comes with its own challenges. Among the most prominent ones is the formation ...

Singapore, 1 June 2021 - The discovery and development of new small-molecule compounds for therapeutic use involves a huge investment of time, effort and resources. Giving a new spin to conventional chemical synthesis, a team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed a way to automate the production of small molecules suitable for pharmaceutical use. The method can potentially be used for molecules that are typically produced via manual processes, thereby reducing the manpower required. The research team that achieved this technological breakthrough was led by Assistant Professor Wu Jie from the NUS Department of Chemistry as well as Associate Professor Saif A. Khan from ...

Bribery in the public healthcare does not solve the problem of poor quality of services, and even exacerbates it, researchers argue. The same can be said about the well-being of patients and their own assessment of health. In other words, bribes in the healthcare do not provide good quality services and do not pay off. Such conclusions were reached by an international team of researchers, including Olga Popova, the article's co-author, an associate professor at the Ural Federal University (UrFU, Russia). Researchers examined survey data on 41,000 citizens from 28 post-communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as ...

Tokyo - Machine learning is the process by which computers adapt their responses without human intervention. This form of artificial intelligence (AI) is now common in everyday tools such as virtual assistants and is being developed for use in areas from medicine to agriculture. A challenge posed by the rapid expansion of machine learning is the high energy demand of the complex computing processes. Researchers from The University of Tokyo have reported the first integration of a mobility-enhanced field-effect transistor (FET) and a ferroelectric capacitor (FE-CAP) to bring the memory system into the proximity of a microprocessor and improve the ...

In the modern day, our interactions with voice-based devices and services continue to increase. In this light, researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology and RIKEN, Japan, have performed a meta-synthesis to understand how we perceive and interact with the voice (and the body) of various machines. Their findings have generated insights into human preferences, and can be used by engineers and designers to develop future vocal technologies. As humans, we primarily communicate vocally and aurally. We convey not just linguistic information, but also the complexities of our emotional states and personalities. Aspects of our voice such as tone, rhythm, and pitch are vital to the way we are perceived. In other words, the way we say things matters. With advances in ...

Magnetic fields are ubiquitous throughout our Milky Way Galaxy and play a crucial role in all dynamics of interstellar medium. However, questions like how Solar-type stars form out of magnetized molecular clouds, whether the role of magnetic fields changes at various scales and densities of molecular clouds, and what factors can change the morphology of magnetic fields in low-mass dense cores still remain unclear. A new study led by Dr. Eswaraiah Chakali from Prof. LI Di's research group at the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) has partially answered these questions. ...

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology develop a 3D functional interposer--the interface between a chip and the package substrate--containing an embedded capacitor. This compact design saves a lot of package area and greatly reduces the wiring length between the chip's terminals and the capacitor, allowing for less noise and power consumption. Their approach paves the way to new semiconductor package structures with greater miniaturization. Electronics started big size-wise but have only grown smaller and more compact over time. Today, even smartphones outperform the bulky computers from the 1980s by orders of magnitude. Unfortunately, ...

Up to three quarters of the biodiversity living on Western Australia's iconic ironstone mountains in the State's Mid West (known as Banded Iron Formations) could be difficult or impossible to return quickly to its previous state after the landscape has been mined, a Curtin University study has found. The research published in Ecology and Evolution, discovered that the plant ecosystems are well-adapted to the characteristics of the region's ancient and nutrient-poor soils - and that the very different features of mined landscapes mean many native species are unlikely to be returned by rehabilitation. Lead researcher Dr Adam Cross ...

One person in 2000 suffers from a microdeletion of chromosome 22 that can lead to the development of psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, in adolescence. In addition to symptoms such as hallucinations or delusions, psychotic disorders also comes with a progressive decline in intelligence quotient (IQ). If current drug treatments are successful in containing psychotic symptoms, nothing can be done to prevent the deterioration of intellectual skills that leads to loss of autonomy. Researchers at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, have discovered that prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) - a class of drugs used to treat anxiety and depression -in late childhood can reduce the deterioration ...

ALS is a very severe neurodegenerative disease in which nerve cells in the spinal cord controlling muscles and movement slowly die. There is no effective treatment and the average life expectancy after being diagnosed with ALS is usually short. Because of this, new knowledge about the disease is urgently needed. Now, researchers from the University of Copenhagen have gained new insights about ALS, by investigating the early development of the disease in a mouse model. "We have found that networks of nerve cells in the spinal cord called inhibitory interneurons lose connection to motor neurons, the nerve ...

Researchers have created a new nanometer-scale proximity labeling system that targets histidine residues quickly, providing a new chemical tool in protein chemical modification. The results of their research were published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on April 27, 2021. Protein chemical modification, a technology that introduces functions into the chemical structure of proteins through irreversible strong bonds, is used for the creation of protein-based biomaterials and for drug delivery systems. In order to carry out modification, protein labeling is necessary. Proximity labeling is one of those techniques. It labels biomolecules located close to a protein of interest which can then also be marked ...

The photochemistry of the future will spring up human industry without smoke, and bring a brighter civilization based on the utilization of solar energy instead of fossil energy. Photochemistry has been used in controlling many reaction processes, especially for the challenging reactions containing selective C-H activation and C-C coupling in chemical synthesis. It is of great interests that a "dream catalytic reaction" of direct coupling of methanol to ethylene glycol (2CH3OH ? HOCH2CH2OH + H2, denoted as MTEG) could be achieved through the solar energy-driven C-H activation and C-C coupling processes, and this MTEG reaction has not been achieved through thermocatalysis yet. Ethylene glycol (EG) is an important monomer for the manufacture of polymers (e.g., poly(ethylene ...

Spending time outdoors is good for a person's body and soul, but how good is it for the wildlife around us? Outdoor recreation has become a popular activity, especially in the midst of a pandemic, where access to indoor activities might be limited. Long known to have negative behavioural and physiological effects on wildlife, outdoor recreation is one of the biggest threats to protected areas. Human disturbance to animal habitats can lower their survival and reproduction rates, and ultimately shrink populations or eradicate them from areas where they would ...

Researchers have identified the key factors that influence a vital pattern of ocean currents. The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) carries warm water from the tropics northward. Many scientists think that this heat transport makes areas including north-west Europe and the UK warmer than they would otherwise be. Climate models suggest the AMOC is likely to weaken over the coming decades, with widespread implications for regional and global climate. The new study - led by the universities of Exeter and Oxford, and published in Nature Geoscience - pinpoints the causes of monthly and annual AMOC variation and finds a differing picture at two key locations. Observational data came from large ...

The Covid-19 pandemic has introduced us to expressions like 'lockdown', 'isolation' and 'social distancing', which became part of social conduct all over the world. Now it appears that bats also maintain social distancing which might help prevent the spread of contagious diseases in their colonies. In a new study published in Annals of the New York Academy of Science, researchers from Tel Aviv University demonstrate that sick bats, just like ill humans, prefer to stay away from their communities, probably as a means for recovery, and possibly also as a measure for protecting others. The study was conducted by postdoctoral researcher Dr. Kelsey Moreno and PhD candidate Maya Weinberg ...

Methane emissions from North American livestock may be routinely undercounted, a new analysis by researchers at New York University and Johns Hopkins University finds. The work also notes that in developing countries, where animal agriculture is becoming increasingly industrialized, methane emissions could rise more than expected. These assessments are based on a review, appearing in the journal Environmental Research Letters, of eight existing studies. Methane is a global warming gas even more powerful than CO2. Its amount and lifetime in the atmosphere are smaller than CO2, but quantities are still increasing. The United Nations has recently ...

RNA sequencing is a powerful technology for studying cells and diseases. In particular, single-cell RNA sequencing helps uncover the heterogeneity and diversity of our body. This is the central technology of the "Human Cell Atlas" in its quest to map all human cells. However, single-cell RNA sequencing reaches its limits in very large projects, as it is time-consuming and very expensive. To address these challenges, scientists from the research group of Christoph Bock, principal investigator at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and professor at the Medical University of Vienna, developed ...

Researchers at the Biomedicine Institute of Seville (IBiS) have discovered a new mechanism of Alzheimer's disease that disorganises the blood vessels around amyloid plaques, one of the characteristic features of the disease. The study, published in the international journal Nature Communications, was led by the laboratory of Dr. Alberto Pascual, from the Neuronal Maintenance Mechanisms Group at IBiS and was chiefly carried out by María Isabel Álvarez Vergara and Alicia E. Rosales-Nieves. Relevance of the finding Alzheimer's disease is the leading cause of dementia worldwide. In Spain, its incidence is increasing dramatically as the population ages and yet, unfortunately, the origin of the disease is still unknown. The mechanism put forward ...