Penn Engineers have cooked up a new way to improve mRNA delivery, developing an optimal “recipe” for ionizable lipids — key ingredients in lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), the molecules behind the COVID-19 vaccines and other innovative therapies. The method, described in Nature Biomedical Engineering, mirrors the iterative process of developing a culinary dish and may lead to safer, more effective mRNA vaccines and therapeutics. Just as a chef perfects a dish by experimenting with flavors and textures, the researchers used an iterative process, testing variations to find the ideal structure ...

The global production of semiconductors is growing rapidly and with it the demand for primary products, especially crystalline silicon. However, its production is very energy-intensive and only half of the raw silicon used is actually utilised. This leads to large quantities of waste. In the Christian Doppler Laboratory for New Semiconductor Materials Based on Functionalized Hydrosilanes, which opened today, a team led by laboratory manager Michael Haas from the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) is carrying out research on alternatives. Funded by the Austrian Ministry of Economics and Labour, the researchers are working with ...

Children’s books are full of animal characters whose antics capture the hearts and inspire the imaginations of their young readers. However, a new study has shown that iconic characters such as Peter Rabbit – or Toad and Ratty from The Wind in the Willows – can also play an important role in children’s psychological development. The research explored the extent to which different non-human characters influence children’s theory of mind skills, which include the ability to read and predict social changes in the environment through tone of voice, choice of words, or facial expression. For ...

The ITER vacuum vessel sectors, manufactured in South Korea, have been successfully delivered to the ITER construction site in Cadarache, France. South Korea was responsible for manufacturing 4 out of the 9 sectors that make up the ITER vacuum vessel. Starting with the delivery of the first sector in 2020, South Korea has now completed all four sectors, fulfilling its commitment to this significant international project. The ITER vacuum vessel is a key component that sustains the ultra-high-temperature plasma required for nuclear fusion reactions by maintaining a high-vacuum environment. This large structure weighs 5,000 tons and consists of 9 sectors and ...

Singapore – The Diagnostics Development Hub (DxD Hub), a national platform hosted by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore, in collaboration with the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Japan, and the A*STAR Bioinformatics Institute (A*STAR BII), has successfully developed Steadfast, an advanced diagnostic kit for detecting the highly pathogenic H5N1 Avian Influenza Virus (AIV). This development marks a significant breakthrough in avian influenza monitoring, reinforcing global efforts in pandemic preparedness.   Steadfast ...

Just as crop-devouring insects evolve to resist pesticides, cancer cells can increase their lethality by developing resistance to treatment. In fact, most deaths from cancer are caused by the evolution of therapeutic resistance. In a new review, Arizona State University researchers, working with colleagues around the world, explore how established agricultural pest management strategies could be adapted to address cancer therapy. The pioneering method opens new possibilities for controlling drug resistance and improving patient survival. The research, which appears in the current issue of the journal Cancer Research, explores 10 pest management principles that could ...

Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Quantum Computing and Toshiba have succeeded in building a quantum computer gate based on a double-transmon coupler (DTC), which had been proposed theoretically as a device that could significantly enhance the fidelity of quantum gates. Using this, they achieved a fidelity of 99.92 percent for a two-qubit device known as a CZ gate and 99.98 percent for a single-qubit gate. This breakthrough, which was carried out as part of the Q-LEAP project, not only boosts the performance ...

Recently, a research group led by Prof. HUANG Chaoqun from the Hefei lnstitutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, developed an innovative dual drift tube ion mobility spectrometry (DDT-IMS) technology. This novel approach has successfully facilitated the rapid detection of both positive and negative ions of four toxic metabolites derived from 2,4,6-Trinitrotoluene (TNT), allowing for the detection of residual metabolites in the human body and providing valuable health warnings.  The research results were published in Talanta. TNT undergoes biodegradation under the influence of fungi and bacteria, producing hazardous metabolites ...

A new simulator gives nursing students hands-on practice with vital procedures like mechanical ventilation and tracheal suctioning in children. Researchers at Hokkaido University in Japan have created a new training tool to equip nursing students with the skills needed in caring for children who require mechanical ventilation and tracheal suctioning. In a study published in the Journal of Nursing Care & Reports, the team highlighted the simulator's role in addressing the significant increase ...

Recently, a team led by Prof. HUANG Qing from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, successfully used the gas-liquid interface dielectric barrier (DBD) low-temperature plasma (LTP) technology to prepare a series of Cu metal organic framework (MOF) nanozymes.  “These nanozymes have different base ligands and mimic the activity of laccase,” said Prof. HUANG. The team also developed encoded array sensors for intelligent sensing and identification of bioactive components in food.  The relevant research ...

The differences in US health and life expectancy based on where an individual lives, the economic conditions in that location, and their racial and ethnic identity have increased over the last two decades, leading to substantial health disparities that divide the USA into ten mutually exclusive populations, which the study authors term “The ten Americas”. The life expectancy gap—an important indicator of a population’s health— across these ten Americas increased from 12·6 years in 2000 to 20·4 years in 2021, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Between 2000 and 2010 life expectancy increased in nine out of ten Americas, but between 2010 ...

A massive collision of galaxies sparked by one travelling at a scarcely-believable 2 million mph (3.2 million km/h) has been seen in unprecedented detail by one of Earth's most powerful telescopes. The dramatic impact was observed in Stephan's Quintet, a nearby galaxy group made up of five galaxies first sighted almost 150 years ago. It sparked an immensely powerful shock akin to a "sonic boom from a jet fighter" – the likes of which are among the most striking phenomena in the Universe. Stephan's Quintet represents "a galactic crossroad where past collisions between galaxies ...

The intestine maintains a delicate balance in the body, absorbing nutrients and water while maintaining a healthy relationship with the gut microbiome, but this equilibrium is disrupted in parts of the intestine in conditions such as celiac disease, ulcerative colitis, and Crohn’s disease. Scientists don’t fully understand how different regions of the organ resist or adapt to changes in the environment and how that is disrupted in disease. Now, researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital have analyzed the entire mouse intestine, mapping gene expression and cell states and location in the healthy gut and in response to ...

A recent study in JAMA Network Open sheds light on how school attendance influences the spread of infectious diseases, using COVID-19 as a case study. Researchers analyzed the natural age cutoff for kindergarten eligibility in California to compare COVID-19 rates between children old enough to start school and those who were not. This approach, called regression discontinuity, offers a way to rapidly understand the role of schools in disease transmission and evaluate the effectiveness of within-school prevention measures without requiring additional data collection or school closures. The study's findings underscore the complexity of school-based transmission ...

Adolescents who snore frequently were more likely to exhibit behavior problems such as inattention, rule-breaking, and aggression, but they do not have any decline in their cognitive abilities, according to a new study conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM). This is the largest study to date tracking snoring in children from elementary school through their mid-teen years and it provides an important update to parents struggling with what medical measures to take to help manage snoring in their children. The findings were recently published in JAMA ...

MELVILLE, N.Y., Nov. 21, 2024 – Fossils might give a good image of what dinosaurs looked like, but they can also teach scientists what they sounded like. The Parasaurolophus is a duck-billed dinosaur with a unique crest that lived 70 million to 80 million years ago. It stood around 16 feet tall and is estimated to have weighed 6,000 to 8,000 pounds. Hongjun Lin from New York University will present results on the acoustic characteristics of a physical model of the Parasaurolophus’ crest Thursday, Nov. 21, at 4:30 p.m. ET as part of the virtual 187th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, running Nov. 18-22, 2024. “I’ve ...

MEMPHIS, Tennessee – November 21, 2024 St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital today announced the addition of Georgios Skiniotis, PhD, as a faculty member in the Department of Structural Biology. Skiniotis will also develop and lead the newly created Center of Excellence for Structural Cell Biology. In his role as director of the Center of Excellence, Skiniotis will develop a world-class technology center that will advance our understanding of cell biology from the atomic scale to the micron scale, including ...

MELVILLE, N.Y., Nov. 21, 2024 – Speech-to-text programs are becoming more popular for everyday tasks like hands-free dictation, helping people who are visually impaired, and transcribing speech for those who are hard of hearing. These tools have many uses, and researcher Bożena Kostek from Gdańsk University of Technology is exploring how STT can be better used in the medical field. By studying how clear speech affects STT accuracy, she hopes to improve its usefulness for health care professionals. “Automating note-taking for patient data ...

MELVILLE, N.Y., Nov. 21, 2024 – In the winter of 2022-2023, nearly a dozen whales died off the coast of New Jersey, near the sites of several proposed wind farms. Their deaths prompted concern that related survey work being conducted in the area somehow contributed to their deaths. Michael Stocker of Ocean Conservation Research will present his work Thursday, Nov. 21, at 3:29 p.m. ET in a session dedicated to examining the circumstances surrounding these whale deaths, as part of the virtual 187th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, running Nov. 18-22, 2024. In pursuit of clean energy goals and to ...

Nature is pretty good at designing proteins. Scientists are even better. But artificial intelligence holds the promise of improving proteins many times over. Medical applications for such “designer proteins” range from creating more precise antibodies for treating autoimmune conditions or cancers to more effective vaccines against viruses. Applications may extend beyond medicine to, for example, growing better crops that could be more nutritious or absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Investigators from Mass General Brigham and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) tool known as EVOLVEpro that may represent a ...

BATON ROUGE – A team of researchers led by Pennington Biomedical Research Center’s Dr. Florina Corpodean confirmed through a data analysis that metabolic and bariatric surgery is largely safe and effective for patients who are experiencing severe obesity. In the recent study “BMI ≥ 70: A Multi-Center Institutional Experience of the Safety and Efficacy of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Intervention,” published in Obesity Surgery: The Journal of Metabolic Surgery and Allied Care, researchers affirmed ...

Highlights: Researchers from Michigan State University are the first to measure the brain activity of people who had never been to a specific city and then use this brain activity to predict other people’s actual visits to places around that city. This offers potential applications for urban planning and design that addresses the well-being of residents and visitors. For this study, researchers used principles from the budding field of neurourbanism, which involves measuring the human brain to predict and understand the influence of urban environments on behavior. The study’s findings suggest that the neural activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex — a key region ...

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, named an eight-member team drawn from Australian and American institutions as the winner of the 2024 ACM Gordon Bell Prize for the project, “Breaking the Million-Electron and 1 EFLOP/s Barriers: Biomolecular-Scale Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics Using MP2 Potentials.” The members of the team are Ryan Stocks, Jorge L. Galvez Vallejo, Fiona C.Y. Yu, Calum Snowdon, Elise Palethorpe (all of Australian National University); Jakub Kurzak (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.); Dmytro Bykov (Oakridge National ...

Marking a bold step in its transformation into a global research powerhouse, NYU Tandon School of Engineering welcomes Jeffrey Hubbell, a world-renowned chemical engineer and member of four National Academies, to spearhead an ambitious agenda integrating engineering, the sciences, and medicine, to advance healthcare innovation. As part of this vision, Hubbell will lead a new cross-institutional initiative to translate scientific discoveries into pioneering treatments. A collaboration led out of NYU Tandon and Langone Health, the initiative will include unprecedented investments in new faculty, state-of-the-art new facilities, ...

Link to Google Drive folder containing images (caption and credit information below): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1r5eJr78OdIYV0la1pBvRx-ksu9hsNqcw?usp=sharing   Post-embargo link to release: https://www.washington.edu/news/2024/11/21/whale-ship-collisions/   FROM: James Urton University of Washington 206-543-2580 jurton@uw.edu   (Note: researcher contact information at the end)   Embargoed by Science For public release at 2 p.m. U.S. Eastern Standard Time (11 a.m. Pacific Standard Time) ...