Do firms respond to tougher competition by searching for completely new technological solutions (exploration), or do they work to defend their position by improving current technologies (exploitation)? Competition from increased import penetration generally results in tight profit margins, low prices, and strong efficiency pressures, immediately affecting firms' bottom lines in the form of reduced profits and increased bankruptcy risk. A firm's R&D strategy is one of the fundamental determinants of success or failure when responding to competitive threats. To ensure both short-term performance and long-term survival, firms have two basic R&D options: explore new knowledge or exploit existing knowledge bases. ...

A new study by a team of University of Rochester psychologists and other researchers in the Collaborative Initiative on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (CIFASD) finds that partners of mothers-to-be can directly influence a pregnant woman's likelihood of drinking alcohol and feeling depressed, which affects their babies' development. The study, which appeared in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, highlights the importance of engaging partners in intervention and prevention efforts to help pregnant women avoid drinking alcohol. A baby's prenatal alcohol ...

Nano-sized particles have been engineered in a new way to improve detection of tumors within the body and in biopsy tissue, a research team in Sweden reports. The advance could enable identifying early stage tumors with lower doses of radiation. In order to enhance visual contrast of living tissues, state-of-the-art imaging relies on agents such as fluorescent dyes and biomolecules. Advances in nanoparticle research have expanded the array of promising contrast agents for more targeted diagnostics, and now a research team from KTH Royal Institute of Technology has raised the bar further yet. They are combining optical and X-ray fluorescence contrast agents into a single enhancer for both modes. Muhammet ...

Researchers from Sinai Health have published a study providing an ultra-detailed look at the organization of a living human cell, providing a new tool that can help scientists around the world better understand what happens during disease. The new study, out today in the journal END ...

In the universe's earliest moments, particles existed in an unimaginably hot plasma, whose behaviour was governed by deeply complex webs of interaction between individual particles. Today, researchers can recreate these exotic conditions through high-energy collisions between heavy ions, whose products can tell us much about how hot, strongly-interacting matter behaves. Yet without extensive, highly coordinated collaborations between researchers across many different backgrounds, studies like this simply wouldn't be possible. This Topical Issue of EPJ A draws together a large collection of papers inspired by the theory of hot matter and relativistic heavy-ion collisions (THOR) European Cooperation ...

The myriad processes occurring in biological cells may seem unbelievably complex at first glance. And yet, in principle, they are merely a logical succession of events, and could even be used to form digital circuits. Researchers have now developed a molecular switching circuit made of DNA, which can be used to mechanically alter gels, depending on the pH. DNA-based switching circuits could have applications in soft robotics, say the researchers in their article in Angewandte Chemie. DNA is a long molecule that can be folded and twisted in various ways. It has a backbone and bases that stick out from the backbone and pair up with counterparts in other DNA strands. When a series of these matching pairs comes ...

It's strawberry season in many parts of the U.S, and supermarkets are teeming with these fresh heart-shaped treats. Although the bright red, juicy fruit can grow almost anywhere with lots of sunlight, production in some hot, dry regions is a challenge. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Agricultural Food and Chemistry have identified five cultivars that are best suited for this climate, which could help farmers and consumers get the most fragrant, sweetest berries. Most strawberries commercially grown in the U.S. come from California and Florida. With the expansion of local farmer's markets and people's excitement ...

Aging published "Cdkn1a transcript variant 2 is a marker of aging and cellular senescence" which reported that cellular senescence is a cell fate response characterized by a permanent cell cycle arrest driven primarily the by cell cycle inhibitor and tumor suppressor proteins p16Ink4a and p21Cip1/Waf1. In mice, the p21Cip1/Waf1 encoding locus, Cdkn1a, is known to generate two transcripts that produce identical proteins, but one of these transcript variants is poorly characterized. The authors show that the Cdkn1a transcript variant 2, but not the better-studied variant 1, is selectively elevated during natural aging across multiple mouse tissues. Importantly, mouse cells induced ...

Oncotarget published "A high-content AlphaScreen™ identifies E6-specific small molecule inhibitors as potential therapeutics for HPV+ head and neck squamous cell carcinomas" which reported that the incidence of human papillomavirus-positive head and neck squamous cell carcinoma has increased dramatically over the past decades due to an increase in infection of the oral mucosa by HPV. The etiology of HPV -HNSCC is linked to expression of the HPV oncoprotein, E6, which influences tumor formation, growth and survival. E6 effects this oncogenic phenotype in part through inhibitory ...

Oncotarget published "Molecular characterization of lung squamous cell carcinoma tumors reveals therapeutically relevant alterations" which reported that unlike lung adenocarcinoma patients, there is no FDA-approved targeted-therapy likely to benefit lung squamous cell carcinoma patients. The authors performed survival analyses of lung squamous cell carcinoma patients harboring therapeutically relevant alterations identified by whole exome sequencing and mass spectrometry-based validation across 430 lung squamous tumors. They report a mean of 11.6 mutations/Mb with a characteristic smoking signature along with mutations in TP53, CDKN2A, NFE2L2, FAT1, KMT2C, LRP1B, FGFR1, PTEN and PREX2 among lung squamous cell carcinoma patients of Indian descent. In overall, the data suggests 13.5% ...

When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in North America in March 2020, health care facilities stopped providing all but "essential" care, to reduce infection risks and preserve protective gear known as PPE. That included changes at many centers that provide ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) for severe depression and other conditions, a new survey shows. Because ECT involves anesthesia, so that patients are unconscious when carefully controlled pulses of electricity are delivered to key areas of the brain, it is considered an 'aerosol generating' procedure. That means it poses special risks when a respiratory ...

* ICFO researchers report in Nature on having achieved, for the first time, entanglement of two multimode quantum memories located in different labs separated by 10 meters, and heralded by a photon at the telecommunication wavelength. * The scientists implemented a technique that allowed them to reach a record in the entanglement rate in a system that could be integrated into the fibre communication network, paving the way to operation over long distances. * The results are considered a landmark for quantum communications and a major step forward in the development of quantum repeaters for the future quantum internet. During the 90s, engineers made major advances in the telecom arena spreading out the network to distances beyond the ...

TROY, N.Y. -- Oxygen levels in the world's temperate freshwater lakes are declining rapidly -- faster than in the oceans -- a trend driven largely by climate change that threatens freshwater biodiversity and drinking water quality. Research published today in Nature found that oxygen levels in surveyed lakes across the temperate zone have declined 5.5% at the surface and 18.6% in deep waters since 1980. Meanwhile, in a large subset of mostly nutrient-polluted lakes, surface oxygen levels increased as water temperatures crossed a threshold favoring cyanobacteria, which can create toxins when they flourish in the form of harmful algal blooms. "All complex life depends on oxygen. It's the support system for aquatic food webs. And when you start losing oxygen, you have the potential ...

Chinese researchers realized an elementary link of a quantum repeater based on absorptive quantum memories (QMs) and demonstrated the multiplexed quantum repeater for the first time. On June 2nd?the work is published in Nature. The fundamental task of a quantum network is to distribute quantum entanglement between two remote locations. However, the transmission loss of optical fiber has limited the distance of entanglement distribution to approximately 100 km on the ground. Quantum repeaters can overcome this difficulty by dividing long-distance transmission into several short-distance elementary links. The entanglement of two end nodes of each link is created firstly. Then the entanglement distance is gradually expanded through entanglement swapping between each link. Previously, an ...

HOUSTON - (June 2, 2021) - It's official: Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is the iron man of 2D materials, so resistant to cracking that it defies a century-old theoretical description engineers still use to measure toughness. "What we observed in this material is remarkable," said Rice University's Jun Lou, co-corresponding author of a Nature paper published this week. "Nobody expected to see this in 2D materials. That's why it's so exciting." Lou explains the significance of the discovery by comparing the fracture toughness of h-BN with that of its better-known cousin ...

The study, published in the journal Nature, shows how a drug available on the NHS can boost fitness of healthy stem cells in the gut, making them more resistant to sabotage from mutant stem cells that cause cancer. Researchers in the Netherlands, funded by the UK charity Worldwide Cancer Research, have discovered a way to boost the fitness of healthy cells in the gut to prevent the development of bowel cancer. The findings have led to the initiation of a clinical trial to find out if a commonly used psychiatric drug could be used to prevent bowel cancer in people. The trial will recruit patients with a genetic mutation that means they are virtually 100% certain to develop bowel cancer in their lifetime, unless ...

Metastases can develop in the body even years after apparently successful cancer treatment. They originate from cancer cells that migrated from the original tumor to other organs, and which can lie there inactive for a considerable time. Researchers have now discovered how these "sleeping cells" are kept dormant and how they wake up and form fatal metastases. They have reported their findings in the journal Nature. A tumor can leave behind an ominous legacy in the body: cancer cells can migrate from the tumor to other tissues in the body, where they survive after treatment in a kind of hibernation called dormancy. Currently, cancer medicine relies on monitoring cancer patients ...

Studies on cancer are limited by the threshold at which cellular transformations become clinically detectable. However, the very initial phase on the way to malignancy is histologically invisible, as the process originates from one single cell. In this early phase, a so-called "seeding cell" acquires an initial pro-cancerous mutation, also known as the "first oncogenic hit", while being completely surrounded by normal tissue. To overcome the detection barrier, a team of researchers around IMBA group leader Bon-Kyoung Koo and University of Cambridge group leader Professor Benjamin D. Simons developed a laboratory system to dissect the pre-cancerous steps that remained under the radar ...

A team of researchers led by the University of Cambridge and University of Utrecht examined trends in daily crime counts before and after COVID-19 restrictions were implemented in major metropolitan areas such as Barcelona, Chicago, Sao Paulo, Tel Aviv, Brisbane and London. While both stringency of lockdowns and the resulting crime reductions varied considerably from city to city, the researchers found that most types of crime - with the key exception of homicide - fell significantly in the study sites. Across all 27 cities, daily assaults fell ...

Clinical trials published in high-profile medical journals rarely report on income or other key sociodemographic characteristics of study participants, according to a new study that suggests these gaps may create blind spots when it comes to health care, especially for disadvantaged populations. The study, publishing June 2 in JAMA Network Open, analyzed 10 per cent of 2,351 randomized clinical trials published in New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, The BMJ, The Lancet and Annals of Internal Medicine between Jan. 1, 2014 and July 31, 2020. The most commonly reported sociodemographic variables were sex and gender (in 98.7 per cent of trials) and race/ethnicity (in 48.5 per cent). All other sociodemographic ...

Experts at the Alfred Wegener Institute have, for the first time, experimentally measured the release of iron from the fecal pellets of krill and salps under natural conditions and tested its bioavailability using a natural community of microalgae in the Southern Ocean. In comparison to the fecal pellets of krill, Antarctic phytoplankton can more easily take up the micronutrient iron from those produced by salps. Observations made over the past 20 years show that, as a result of climate change, Antarctic krill are increasingly being supplanted by salps in the Southern Ocean. In the future, salps could more effectively stimulate the fixation of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in Antarctic microalgae than krill, as the team of researchers report ...

Peer reviewed Experimental study / Meta-analysis Animals / Human data Protein disguise could be new target for cancer immunotherapy Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have identified a protein that helps tumours evade the immune system and, in certain types of cancers, is linked to a poorer chance of survival. The protein could become a target for future cancer treatments. A crucial part of the immune system's response to cancer is a group of white blood cells, called CD8+ T-cells, which kill tumour cells. Before they launch their anti-tumour response, these cells must be told who to attack by another immune cell, ...

They studied the extent to which cirrus clouds caused by aircraft occurred during the global hard lockdown between March and May 2020, and compared the values with those during the same period in previous years. The study was led by Johannes Quaas, Professor of Theoretical Meteorology at Leipzig University, and has now been published in the renowned journal "Environmental Research Letters". Cirrus clouds, known for their high, wispy strands, contribute to warming the climate. When cirrus clouds occur naturally, large ice crystals form at an altitude of about 36 kilometres, in turn reflecting sunlight back into space - albeit ...

What drives the feasibility of climate scenarios commonly reviewed by organizations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? And can they actually be achieved in practice? A new systematic framework can help understand what to improve in the next generation of scenarios and explore how to make ambitious emission reductions possible by strengthening enabling conditions. While the IPCC is in the midst of the drafting cycle of the Sixth Assessment Report, whose publication will start in the second half of 2021, there is an ongoing debate ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - Influencing millions of people on social media and being paid handsomely is not as easy as it looks, according to new Cornell University research. Algorithm vagaries are just one of several challenges social media content creators face, according to study author Brooke Erin Duffy, associate professor of communication at Cornell. "I think [our research] is a cautionary tale for aspiring creators as well as the broader public," Duffy said. "The people hoping to work as full-time YouTubers, Instagrammers, and TikTokers are led to believe it's easy and democratic. ...