Classic computers use binary values (0/1) to perform. By contrast, our brain cells can use more values to operate, making them more energy-efficient than computers. This is why scientists are interested in neuromorphic (brain-like) computing. Physicists from the University of Groningen (the Netherlands) have used a complex oxide to create elements comparable to the neurons and synapses in the brain using spins, a magnetic property of electrons. Their results were published on 18 May in the journal Frontiers in Nanotechnology. Although computers can do straightforward calculations much faster than humans, our brains outperform silicon machines in tasks like object recognition. Furthermore, our brain uses less energy than ...

You can do a lot in four years: go from white to black belt in taekwondo, plant a dwarf apple tree and pick its fruit, see your grandchild off to college and attend her graduation or get your own degree. But the most severe complications of diabetes--from stroke to neuropathy to amputation--can make activities like these difficult or impossible for some people. In a new study, West Virginia University School of Public Health researchers found that taking part in a year-long diabetes-prevention program supports the addition of 4.4 quality-adjusted life-years to participants' average lifespan. "Fatalism can play a major role in community health--like, 'Oh, yeah, my family has diabetes. I'm going to get it eventually,'" said Adam Baus, a research assistant professor ...

Alzheimer's disease shares some key similarities with healthy aging, according to a new mathematical model described today in eLife. The model provides unique insights into the multiscale biological alterations in the elderly and neurodegenerative brain, with important implications for identifying future treatment targets for Alzheimer's disease. Researchers developed their mathematical model using a range of biological data - from 'microscopic' information using gene activity to 'macroscopic' information about the brain's burden of toxic proteins (tau and amyloid), its neuronal function, cerebrovascular flow, metabolism and tissue structure from molecular PET and MRI scans. "In both aging and disease research, most studies ...

A global effort to reduce sulfur and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from ships has researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and other Department of Energy facilities investigating the potential use of marine biofuels. "Biofuels turned out to be very good options because they have zero or very, very low sulfur compared to fossil fuels," said Eric Tan, a senior research engineer at NREL and lead author of a new article published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. His co-authors of "Biofuel Options for Marine Applications: Techno-Economic and Life-Cycle Analyses" are Ling Tao, also from NREL, along with scientists with Argonne National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, ...

NEW YORK, NY (May 18, 2021) - An expert panel convened by the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) and The Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration (AFTD) provides guidance on best practices for the design of early drug trials for Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal degeneration (FTD), and other neurodegenerative dementias. Their guidance was published in the May 18, 2021 issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology ("Value-Generating Exploratory Trials in Neurodegenerative Dementias"). These efficiencies in clinical trials can help to achieve proof of concept more rapidly and at lower costs. The estimated cost of developing ...

More than a year into the pandemic, the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 among racial and ethnic minorities in the US has been well documented. But a new study by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) reveals that previous research has underestimated the true extent of racial disparities in COVID-19 deaths--as well as the extent to which structural racism contributes to these deaths. Published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, the paper is the first to quantify the state-level differences in racial disparities in COVID-19 mortality among Black and White populations, using directly ...

Researchers at Tulane University School of Medicine have developed a highly sensitive blood test that can find traces of the bacteria that causes tuberculosis (TB) in infants a year before they develop the deadly disease, according to a study published in BMC Medicine. Using only a small blood sample, the test detects a protein secreted by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which causes TB infection. It can screen for all forms of TB and rapidly evaluate a patient's response to treatment, said lead study author Tony Hu, PhD, Weatherhead Presidential Chair in Biotechnology Innovation at Tulane University. "This is a breakthrough for infants with tuberculosis because ...

A new cancer vaccine could boost the positive effects of existing immunotherapy drugs, improving the success rate of treatments from 20% to 75% of cases, according to a new study by immunologists from the University of Konstanz. The vaccine, which incorporates a new immunostimulant that is safe for use in humans, was shown to partially eliminate tumours in mice. However, the study further demonstrated that combining the vaccine with an immune checkpoint inhibitor -- an established immunotherapy drug with a 20% success rate overall for patients -- can vastly ...

Climate change induced yield reductions can be compensated by cultivar adaptation and global production can even be increased. Global agriculture both is one of the major drivers of climate change and strongly affected by it. Rising temperatures are among the main reasons for yield reductions. Therefore, the agricultural sector is faced with the major challenge of adapting to climate change in order to ensure food security in the future. According to a new study carried out by international researchers, the use of locally adapted cultivars can significantly contribute to achieve this goal. The study ...

(Boston)--Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) report the formation of human cells containing a green fluorescent protein or GFP (one of the most important proteins in biology and fluorescence imaging) genetically fused with two interferon stimulated genes (ISGs), namely Viperin and ISG15. This new creation makes these cells highly valuable reagents for reporting innate immune responses to viral infections, including those caused by coronaviruses. These engineered cells, which turn green when treated with interferon, are highly novel because this is the first time a reporter gene (a gene ...

A filter made from polymer nanothreads blew three kinds of commercial masks out of the water by capturing 99.9% of coronavirus aerosols in an experiment. "Our work is the first study to use coronavirus aerosols for evaluating filtration efficiency of face masks and air filters," said corresponding author Yun Shen, a UC Riverside assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering. "Previous studies have used surrogates of saline solution, polystyrene beads, and bacteriophages -- a group of viruses that infect bacteria." The study, led by engineers at UC Riverside and The George Washington University, compared ...

The wild relatives of modern peanut plants have the ability to withstand disease in ways that peanut plants can't. The genetic diversity of these wild relatives means that they can shrug off the diseases that kill farmers' peanut crops, but they also produce tiny nuts that are difficult to harvest because they burrow deep in the soil. Consider it a genetic trade-off: During its evolution, the modern peanut lost its genetic diversity and much of the ability to fight off fungus and viruses, but gained qualities that make peanut so affordable, sustainable and tasty that people all over the world grow and eat them. Modern peanut plants were created 5,000 to ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. - An artificial intelligence (AI) program accurately predicts the risk that lung nodules detected on screening CT will become cancerous, according to a study published in the journal Radiology. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide, with an estimated 1.8 million deaths in 2020, according to the World Health Organization. Low-dose chest CT is used to screen people at a high risk of lung cancer, such as longtime smokers. It has been shown to significantly reduce lung cancer mortality, primarily by helping to detect cancers at an early stage when they are easier to treat successfully. While lung cancer typically shows up as pulmonary nodules on CT images, most nodules are benign ...

Researchers have identified specific influenza targets that could be used to better protect Indigenous people from experiencing severe influenza disease through a universal, T cell-based vaccine. In a collaboration with Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Menzies School of Health Research and CQUniversity, Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute) researchers took a deep-dive look into how the immune system can protect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from severe influenza disease. "We know that some populations are at high risk from severe influenza, and these include Indigenous people ...

Fields of opium poppies once bloomed where the Zurich Opera House underground garage now stands. Through a new analysis of archaeological seeds, researchers at the University of Basel have been able to bolster the hypothesis that prehistoric farmers throughout the Alps participated in domesticating the opium poppy. Although known today primarily as the source of opium and opiates, the poppy is also a valuable food and medicinal plant. Its seeds can be used to make porridge and cooking oil. Unlike all other previously domesticated crops, which are assumed to ...

The research team, led by Academician GUO Guangcan from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, collaborating with LI Bo from Shangrao Normal University and CHEN Jingling from Nankai University, achieved the masking of optical quantum information. The researchers concealed quantum information into non-local quantum entangled states. The study was published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Quantum information masking as one of the new information processing protocol transfers quantum information from a single quantum carrier to the quantum entangled state between multiple carriers avoiding the information ...

Fossils of land animals from South America have been found in the Antilles, but how did these animals get there? According to scientists from the CNRS, l'Université des Antilles, l'Université de Montpellier and d'Université Côte d'Azur, land emerged in this region and then disappeared beneath the waves for millions of years, explaining how some species were able to migrate to the Antilles. This study will be published in June 2021 issue in Earth-Science Reviews. Fossils of land animals from the Antilles, including mammals and amphibians, have their closest relatives in South America. The crossing of the Caribbean Sea from South America was therefore possible, but how? As swimming across the continent ...

Urban megaprojects tend to be the antithesis of good urban planning. They have a negative impact on local water systems, deprive local communities of water-related human rights, and their funders and sponsors have little accountability for their impact. These are the findings of the University of Adelaide's Dr Scott Hawken from the School of Architecture and Built Environment who led a review of the impact of urban megaprojects on water justice in South East Asia. "Urban megaprojects have severe implications for environmental processes," said Dr Hawken. "They have a major impact on hydrological systems and during all phases of development affect water security and human ...

China's Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO)--one of the country's key national science and technology infrastructure facilities--has found a dozen ultra-high-energy (UHE) cosmic accelerators within the Milky Way. It has also detected photons with energies exceeding 1 peta-electron-volt (quadrillion electron-volts or PeV), including one at 1.4 PeV. The latter is the highest energy photon ever observed. These findings overturn the traditional understanding of the Milky Way and open up an era of UHE gamma astronomy. These observations will prompt people to rethink the mechanism by which high-energy particles are generated and propagated in the Milky Way, and will encourage people to explore more deeply violent celestial phenomena and their physical processes ...

Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), narrow strips of single-layer graphene, have interesting physical, electrical, thermal, and optical properties because of the interplay between their crystal and electronic structures. These novel characteristics have pushed them to the forefront in the search for ways to advance next-generation nanotechnologies. While bottom-up fabrication techniques now allow the synthesis of a broad range of graphene nanoribbons that feature well-defined edge geometries, widths, and heteroatom incorporations, the question of whether or not structural disorder is present in these atomically precise GNRs, and to what extent, is still subject to debate. The answer to ...

Manufactured in a new process based on crystalline materials, these low-loss mirrors promise to open up completely new application areas, for example in optical respiratory gas analysis for early cancer detection or the detection of greenhouse gases. This work will be published in the current issue of the journal Optica. In 2016 researchers at the LIGO laser interferometer succeeded in the first direct observation of gravitational waves, which had originally been predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916. A significant contribution to the observation of this wave-like propagation of disturbances in space-time, which was rewarded with the Nobel Prize a year later, was provided by the laser mirrors of the kilometer-long interferometer assembly. ...

Spintronics is an emerging technology for manufacturing electronic devices that take advantage of electron spin and its associated magnetic properties, instead of using the electrical charge of an electron, to carry information. Antiferromagnetic materials are attracting attention in spintronics, with the expectation of spin operations with higher stability. Unlike ferromagnetic materials, in which atoms align along the same direction like in the typical refrigerator magnets, magnetic atoms inside antiferromagnets have antiparallel spin alignments that cancel out the net magnetization. Scientists have worked on controlling the alignment of magnetic atoms within antiferromagnetic ...

In today's plants, photorespiration dissipates some of the energy produced by photosynthesis and releases CO2. It begins when the enzyme RuBisCO acts on oxygen instead of carbon dioxide and creates toxic side-products requiring costly recycling reactions. The detoxification process uses up fixed carbon and wastes energy, thus strongly limiting agricultural productivity. Scientists generally pursue two approaches to minimizes the deleterious effects of photorespiration: mimic the carbon concentrating mechanism of C4 plants or introduce new metabolic pathways to bypass the photorespiration. Researchers led by Andreas Weber from Heinrich ...

In a recent research, researchers led by Prof. ZHANG Haimin from the Institute of Solid State Physics of the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) realized the synthesis of Mo single atoms anchored on activated carbon (Mo-SAs/AC) by the formed Mo-Ox bonds. The result was published on Chemical Communications. According to the researchers, this new oxygen-coordinated molybdenum single atom catalyst was proved efficient to electrosynthesis of ammonia. The O-coordinated environment in this study, different from N-coordinated environment reported before, provided the sites to anchor Mo single atoms and form Mo-Ox sites, which could be used as the active centers for the adsorption and activation of N2, resulting in high ...

A new software tool developed by Earlham Institute researchers will help bioinformaticians improve the quality and accuracy of their biological data, and avoid mis-assemblies. The fast, lightweight, user-friendly tool visualises genome assemblies and gene alignments from the latest next generation sequencing technologies. Called Alvis, the new visualisation tool examines mappings between DNA sequence data and reference genome databases. This allows bioinformaticians to more easily analyse their data generated from common genomics tasks and formats by producing efficient, ready-made vector images. First author and post-doctoral scientist at the Earlham Institute Dr Samuel Martin in the Leggett Group, said: "Typically, alignment tools output plain ...