CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- For years, researchers have worked to repurpose excess atmospheric carbon dioxide into new chemicals, fuels and other products traditionally made from hydrocarbons harvested from fossil fuels. The recent push to mitigate the climactic effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has chemists on their toes to find the most efficient means possible. A new study introduces an electrochemical reaction, enhanced by polymers, to improve CO2-to-ethylene conversion efficiency over previous attempts. The results of the study led by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign chemistry ...

Metabolites are organic molecules that take part in or are created during the biochemical reactions constantly taking place in an organism. For the human body, more than 110,000 metabolites have been identified. Metabolites play a role in metabolic syndrome, which is the situation in which several medical conditions occur simultaneously; the conditions include obesity, high blood pressure and high blood sugar. Metabolic syndrome is associated with a higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease, type-2 diabetes and different kinds of cancer. The presence of certain metabolites can be an indicator for particular pathological ...

This most likely explains the augmented response of the immune system and the more severe disease progression. However, certain hypertension-reducing drugs known as ACE inhibitors can have a beneficial effect. They not only lower blood pressure, but also counteract immune hyperactivation. The scientists have now published their findings in the journal Nature Biotechnology. More than one billion people worldwide suffer from high blood pressure, or hypertension. Of the more than 75 million people around the world who have become infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus worldwide so far, more than 16 million also have hypertension. These patients are more likely to become severely ill, which in turn results in an increased ...

NEW YORK, NY (Jan. 11, 2021)--Thousands of different genetic mutations have been implicated in cancer, but a new analysis of almost 10,000 patients found that regardless of the cancer's origin, tumors could be stratified in only 112 subtypes and that, within each subtype, the Master Regulator proteins that control the cancer's transcriptional state were virtually identical, independent of the specific genetic mutations of each patient. The study, published Jan. 11 in Cell, confirms that Master Regulators provide the molecular logic that integrates the effect ...

Philadelphia, January 11, 2021 - Children and adolescents with a family history of suicide attempts have lower executive functioning, shorter attention spans, and poorer language reasoning than those without a family history, according to a new study by researchers from the Lifespan Brain Institute (LiBI) of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania. The study is the largest to date to examine the neurocognitive functioning of youth who have a biological relative who made a suicide attempt. The findings, which were first published online last March, were published in the January 2021 edition of The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Researchers looked at 3,507 youth aged 8 to 21. Of those, ...

Russian researchers have proposed a new method for synthesizing high-quality graphene nanoribbons -- a material with potential for applications in flexible electronics, solar cells, LEDs, lasers, and more. Presented in The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, the original approach to chemical vapor deposition, offers a higher yield at a lower cost, compared with the currently used nanoribbon self-assembly on noble metal substrates. Silicon-based electronics are steadily approaching their limits, and one wonders which material could give our devices the next big push. Graphene, the 2D sheet of carbon atoms, comes to mind but for all its celebrated electronic properties, it does not have what it takes: Unlike silicon, graphene does not have the ability to switch between ...

CHICAGO (January 11, 2021): A new study of liver transplant centers confirms that non-Hispanic white patients get placed on liver transplant waitlists at disproportionately higher rates than non-Hispanic Black patients. However, researchers went a step further as they identified key reasons for that disparity: disproportionate access to private health insurance, travel distance to transplant centers, and a potential lack of knowledge among both practitioners and patients about available options. The study was selected for the 2020 Southern Surgical Association Program and published as an "article in press" on the website of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons in advance of print. "We found that the Black population was underrepresented at the vast majority of centers, ...

All-solid-state batteries are the next-generation batteries that can simultaneously improve the stability and capacity of existing lithium batteries. The use of non-flammable solid cathodes and electrolytes in such batteries considerably reduces the risk of exploding or catching fire under high temperatures or external impact and facilitates high energy density, which is twice that of lithium batteries. All-solid-state batteries are expected to become a game changer in the electric vehicle and energy storage device markets. Despite these advantages, the low ionic conductivity of solid electrolytes combined with their high interfacial resistance and rapid deterioration reduce battery performance and life, thus limiting their commercialization. The ...

Special Issue: Tumor Microenvironment and Drug Delivery Guest Editors: Huile Gao, West China School of Pharmacy, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China; Zhiqing Pang, Fudan University, Shanghai, China and Wei He, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, China The Journal of the Institute of Materia Medica, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the Chinese Pharmaceutical Association, Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B (APSB) is a monthly journal, in English, which publishes significant original research articles, rapid communications and high quality reviews of recent advances in all areas of pharmaceutical sciences -- including pharmacology, pharmaceutics, medicinal chemistry, natural products, ...

The Journal of the Institute of Materia Medica, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the Chinese Pharmaceutical Association, Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B (APSB) is a monthly journal, in English, which publishes significant original research articles, rapid communications and high quality reviews of recent advances in all areas of pharmaceutical sciences -- including pharmacology, pharmaceutics, medicinal chemistry, natural products, pharmacognosy, pharmaceutical analysis and pharmacokinetics. Featured papers in this issue are: Berberine diminishes cancer cell PD-L1 expression and facilitates antitumor immunity via inhibiting the deubiquitination activity of CSN5 by authors Yang Liu, Xiaojia Liu, Na Zhang, Mingxiao Yin, Jingwen Dong, Qingxuan ...

"The findings provide an increased understanding of how the virus gets through the stomach and intestinal system. Continued research can provide answers to whether this property can also be used to create vaccines that ride 'free rides' and thus be given in edible form instead of as syringes," says Lars-Anders Carlson, researcher at Umeå University. The virus that the researchers have studied is a so-called enteric adenovirus. It has recently been clarified that enteric adenoviruses are one of the most important factors behind diarrhea among infants, and they are estimated to kill more than 50,000 children under the age of five each year, ...

Researchers from Trinity College Dublin have discovered a key mechanism underlying bacterial skin colonisation in atopic dermatitis, which affects millions around the globe. Atopic dermatitis (AD, also called commonly eczema) is the most common chronic inflammatory skin disorder in children, affecting 15-20% of people in childhood. During disease flares, patients experience painful inflamed skin lesions accompanied by intense itch and recurrent skin infection. The bacterium Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) thrives on skin affected by AD, increasing inflammation and worsening AD symptoms. Although a small number of therapies are available at present for patients with moderate ...

Leading research at Newcastle University has been used to shape how dentistry can be carried out safely during the Covid-19 pandemic by mitigating the risks of dental aerosols. It is well known that coronavirus can spread in airborne particles, moving around rooms to infect people, and this has been a major consideration when looking into patient and clinician safety. Research, published in the Journal of Dentistry, has led the way in helping shape national clinical guidance for the profession to work effectively under extremely challenging circumstances. The findings have been used by the Dental Schools' Council, Association of Dental Hospitals and the Scottish Dental Clinical Effectiveness ...

Micro-CT scanning and digital reconstructions have been used to compare the skulls of the Tasmanian tiger (thylacine) and wolf across their early development and into adulthood, establishing that not only did the thylacine resemble the wolf as adults, but also as newborns and juveniles. "Remarkably, the Tasmanian tiger pups were more similar to wolf pups than to other closely related marsupials," Professor Andrew Pask from the University of Melbourne said. The collaborative study with Flinders University and Museums Victoria complement earlier findings that thylacine and wolf have evolved ...

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are already an integral part of our everyday lives online. For example, search engines such as Google use intelligent ranking algorithms and video streaming services such as Netflix use machine learning to personalize movie recommendations. As the demands for AI online continue to grow, so does the need to speed up AI performance and find ways to reduce its energy consumption. Now a University of Washington-led team has come up with a system that could help: an optical computing core prototype that uses phase-change material. This system is fast, energy efficient and capable of accelerating ...

Topological materials are characterised by unique electronic and physical properties that are determined by the underlying topology of their electronic systems. Scientists from the Max Planck Institutes for Microstructure Physics (Halle) and for Chemical Physics of Solids (Dresden) have now discovered that (TaSe4)2I is the first material in which a charge density wave induces a phase transition between the semimetal to insulator state. An international team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics, Halle (Saale), the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids ...

Delivery of genetic molecules such as mRNA into cells is vital with important applications such as vaccine development. Various agents have been developed for mRNA delivery. However, conventional mRNA nanocarriers mainly focus on their physical interaction with mRNA molecules, or protection / delivery of mRNA, such as adjusting physical properties of nanocarriers to control binding with mRNA or cellular uptake. Moreover, effective mRNA delivery in hard-to-transfect APCs remains a challenge. The hard-to-transfect nature in APCs is partly attributed to the suppressed mRNA translation associated with the intrinsic high intracellular glutathione (GSH) level. Thus, ...

Photorespiration is a highly energy consuming process in plants that leads to the release of previously fixed CO2. Thus, engineering this metabolic process is a key approach for improvement of crop yield and for meeting the challenge of ever-rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Researchers led by Tobias Erb from the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany, have now succeeded in engineering the TaCo pathway, a synthetic photorespiratory bypass. This new-to-nature metabolic connection opens up new possibilities of CO2 fixation ...

With the rapid development of smart portable electronics and electric vehicles, the consumption of lithium resource will increase dramatically and the cost of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) may increase significantly in the future. In addition, the shortage (0.0017 wt% in the earth's crust) and uneven crustal distribution of lithium also limit its further development and application. As potassium (2.7 wt% in the earth's crust) have properties similar to lithium and abundant reserves. Therefore, as an alternative to LIBs, potassium ion batteries (PIBs) have become the focus of research. Potassium (2.92 V vs. ...

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, led by Nikolaos Koutsouleris, combined psychiatric assessments with machine-learning models that analyse clinical and biological data. Although psychiatrists make very accurate predictions about positive disease outcomes, they might underestimate the frequency of adverse cases that lead to relapses. The algorithmic pattern recognition helps physicians to better predict the course of disease. The results of the study show that it is the combination of artificial and human intelligence that optimizes the prediction ...

The spiky structure that erupts from the smooth surface of a ferrofluid when a magnet is brought close can be predicted more accurately than previously thought. KAUST researchers have shown that computational algorithms can calculate the ferrofluid's bristling response to a magnet by simulating only the liquid's surface layer. Ferrofluids are liquid suspensions of iron-based particles that behave like a regular fluid, but once a magnet is present, the ferrofluid rapidly shape-shifts to form spikes that align with the magnetic field. Originally developed by NASA, ferrofluids have numerous uses ranging from advanced electronics to nanomedicine and have the potential for even broader use, if their magnetic responses could be predicted more accurately. Dominik Michels and ...

Co-culture: stimulate the metabolic potential and explore the molecular diversity of natural products from microorganisms Announcing a new publication for Marine Life Science & Technology journal. In this review article the authors Xiao-Yue Peng, Jin-Tao Wu, Chang?Lun Shao, Zhi-Yong Li, Min Chen and Chang-Yun Wang from the Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, China, Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Qingdao, China and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China consider the metabolic potential and molecular diversity of natural products from microorganisms. Microbial secondary metabolites have long ...

Announcing a new publication for Marine Life Science & Technology journal. In this review article the authors Caiwen Li, Meng Li and Qian Huang from Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, China consider the impact of the parasitic dinoflagellate Hematodinium on aquaculture of marine crustaceans in China. Hematodinium is a type of parasitic dinoflagellate that infects marine crustaceans globally. The parasite lives mainly in the hemolymph or hemocoels of affected hosts, and results in mortalities due to malfunction or loss of functions of major organs. In recent years, the parasite has developed into an emerging epidemic pathogen not only affecting wild populations of economically valuable marine crustaceans ...

Good news for those who need a cuppa to start the day. Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have created new probiotic coffee and tea drinks that are packed with gut-friendly live probiotics. Supervised by Associate Professor Liu Shao Quan from the Department of Food Science and Technology at the NUS Faculty of Science, the two doctoral students who worked on these two new beverages assert that their drinks have a great taste, and can be stored chilled or at room temperature for more than 14 weeks without compromising on their probiotic viability. Traditional probiotic carriers like yoghurts and cultured milks are dairy-based products. The rise in veganism, along with common health issues like lactose intolerance, high ...

Today's electronic devices strive for new form factors - to make them foldable, stretchable, and deformable. To produce such devices that are highly stretchable or deformable, it is necessary to develop electrodes and circuit lines whose electrical properties can withstand harsh deformation or mechanical damage. To this, POSTECH-Yonsei University joint research team has recently developed liquid metal ink to accelerate printed electronic devices that can be changed into any shape. Professor Unyong Jeong and Dr. Selvaraj Veerapandian of POSTECH's Department of Materials Science and Engineering, with Professor Aloysius Soon and Dr. Woosun Jang of Yonsei University's Department of Materials Science and Engineering, have developed liquid metal microparticles ...