Unlocking fermentation secrets open the door to new biofuels

(June 24, 2015)  Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have, for the first time, uncovered the complex interdependence and orchestration of metabolic reactions, gene regulation, and environmental cues of clostridial metabolism, providing new insights for advanced biofuel development

“This work advances our fundamental understanding of the complex, system-level process of clostridial acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation,” explained Ting Lu, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Illinois. “Simultaneously, it provides a powerful tool for guiding strain design and protocol optimization, therefore facilitating the development of next-generation biofuels.”

Microbial metabolism is a means by which a microbe uses nutrients and generates energy to live and reproduce. It typically involves complex biochemical processes implemented through the orchestration of metabolic reactions and gene regulation, as well as their interactions with environmental cues. One canonical example is the ABE fermentation by Clostridium acetobutylicum, during which cells convert carbon sources to organic acids that are later re-assimilated to produce solvents as a strategy for cellular survival.

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Silica ‘spiky screws’ could enhance industrial coatings, additive manufacturing

(June 24, 2015)  It took marine sponges millions of years to perfect their spike-like structures, but research mimicking these formations may soon alter how industrial coatings and 3-D printed to additively manufactured objects are produced.

A molecular process developed by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, paves the way for improved silica structure design by introducing microscopic, segmented screw-like spikes that can more effectively bond materials for commercial use.

The study, conducted by Jaswinder Sharma and his colleagues Panos Datskos and David Cullen, has been published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition. Authors said other applications of the screw-like spikes could include coatings for eyeglasses, television screens, commercial transportation and even self-cleaning windows and roofs in rural and urban environments.

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Giving atoms their marching orders

(June 24, 2015)  Chemistry professor Linda Shimizu oversees a series of crowd-pleasing chemistry demonstrations in middle and high schools throughout central South Carolina every year. They are spirited affairs, and her research in the laboratory is just as dynamic — but with a sense of order that really keeps atoms in line.

Shimizu’s lab recently developed a new system for studying gas flow in the most constricted environment possible. She and her co-workers have synthesized tubes so narrow that atoms can only move through them in single file.

Her team builds the tiny tubes by harnessing a process rooted in a molecular kind of self-love. The chemists first synthesize a cyclic organic compound — a molecular doughnut, if you will — that, by design, has an affinity for its own kind. When the molecular doughnuts are dissolved in a solvent and encounter each other in solution, they stack end-to-end like a roll of Life-Savers.

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Sprayable foam that slows bleeding could save lives

(June 24, 2015)  Traumatic injuries, whether from serious car accidents, street violence or military combat, can lead to significant blood loss and death. But using a material derived from crustacean shells, scientists have now developed a foam that can be sprayed onto an open wound to stop the bleeding. They report their successful tests on pigs in the journal ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering.

For some serious injuries to arms and legs, medics can apply pressure to keep bleeding in check. But for major trauma to the torso, particularly when it affects vital organs, compression can make the situation worse. Currently, first responders have no way to stop this kind of bleeding, which is a leading cause of death among young adults and the most common cause of death from combat-related injuries. Srinivasa R. Raghavan, Matthew B. Dowling and colleagues wanted to find a simple way to treat these wounds quickly.

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Three Dimensional Plasmon Antenna Capable of Focusing Light into Few Nanometers

(June 24, 2015)  Professors Myung-Ki Kim and Yong-Hee Lee, both of the Physics Department at KAIST, and their research teams have developed a three dimensional (3D) gap-plasmon antenna which can focus light into a space a few nanometers wide. Their research findings were published in the June 10th issue of Nano Letters.

Focusing light into a point-like space is an active research field with many applications. However, concentrating light into a smaller space than its wavelength is often hindered by diffraction. To tackle this problem, many researchers have utilized the plasmonic phenomenon of a metal where light can be confined to a greater extent by overcoming the diffraction limit.

Many researchers have focused on developing a two dimensional (2D) plasmon antenna and were able to focus a light under 5 nanometers wide. However, this 2D antenna revealed a challenge: the light disperses to the opposite end regardless of how small its beam was focused. To solve this difficulty, a 3D structure had to be employed to maximize the light's intensity.

Adopting the proximal focused-ion-beam milling technology, the KAIST research team developed a 3D four nanometer wide gap-plasmon antenna. By squeezing the photons into a 3D nano space of 4 x 10 x 10 nm3 size, the researchers were able to increase the intensity of light by 400,000 times stronger than that of the incident light. Capitalizing on the enhanced intensity of light within the antenna, they intensified the second-harmonic signal and verified that the light was focused in the nano gap by scanning cathodoluminescent images.

The researchers anticipate that this technology will improve the speed of data transfer and processing up to the level of a terahertz (one trillion times per second) and to enlarge the storage volume per unit area on hard disks by 100 times. In addition, high definition images of submolecule size can be taken with actual light, instead of with an electron microscope, while improving the semiconductor process to a smaller size of few nanometers.

Professor Kim said, “A simple yet ingenious idea has shifted the research paradigm from 2D gap-plasmon antennas to 3D antennas. This technology will see numerous applications including in the field of information technology, data storage, imaging medical science, and semiconductor processes.”

The research was sponsored by the National Research Foundation of Korea.

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Artifical neuron mimicks function of human cells

(June 24, 2015)  Scientists at Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet have managed to build a fully functional neuron by using organic bioelectronics. This artificial neuron contain no ‘living’ parts, but is capable of mimicking the function of a human nerve cell and communicate in the same way as our own neurons do.

Neurons are isolated from each other and communicate with the help of chemical signals, commonly called neurotransmitters or signal substances. Inside a neuron, these chemical signals are converted to an electrical action potential, which travels along the axon of  the neuron until it reaches the end. Here at the synapse, the electrical signal is converted to the release of chemical signals, which via diffusion can relay the signal to the next nerve cell.

To date, the primary technique for neuronal stimulation in human cells is based on electrical stimulation. However, scientists at the Swedish Medical Nanoscience Centre (SMNC) at Karolinska Institutet in collaboration with collegues at Linköping University, have now created an organic bioelectronic device that is capable of receiving chemical signals, which it can then relay to human cells.

“Our artificial neuron is made of conductive polymers and it functions like a human neuron”, says lead investigator Agneta Richter-Dahlfors, professor of cellular microbiology.  “The sensing component of the artificial neuron senses a change in chemical signals in one dish, and translates this into an electrical signal. This electrical signal is next translated into the release of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in a second dish, whose effect on living human cells can be monitored.“

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Towards graphene biosensors

(June 24, 2015)  For the first time, a team of scientists has succeeded in precisely measuring and controlling the thickness of an organic compound that has been bound to a graphene layer. This might enable graphene to be used as a sensitive detector for biological molecules in the future.

Pure carbon occurs in many forms. Besides the classical configurations found in diamonds, graphite, and coal, there are other younger exotic cousins such as graphene. Its structure resembles a honeycomb – a hexagonal mesh with a carbon atom at every corner – that is only a single atomic layer thick. Hence, it is essentially two-dimensional. As a result, graphene is extremely conductive, completely transparent, and quite resilient both chemically and mechanically.

Graphene is not very selective

It has long been known that graphene is also fundamentally suited to detecting traces of organic molecules. This is because the electrical conductivity of graphene drops as soon as foreign molecules bind to it. The problem, though, is that this happens with almost every molecule. Graphene is not very selective, which makes it very difficult to differentiate molecules. Therefore, it cannot be used as a sensor.

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New manufacturing approach slices lithium-ion battery cost in half

Reinventing how these batteries are made also improves their performance and recyclability.

(June 23, 2015)  An advanced manufacturing approach for lithium-ion batteries, developed by researchers at MIT and at a spinoff company called 24M, promises to significantly slash the cost of the most widely used type of rechargeable batteries while also improving their performance and making them easier to recycle.

“We’ve reinvented the process,” says Yet-Ming Chiang, the Kyocera Professor of Ceramics at MIT and a co-founder of 24M (and previously a co-founder of battery company A123). The existing process for manufacturing lithium-ion batteries, he says, has hardly changed in the two decades since the technology was invented, and is inefficient, with more steps and components than are really needed.

The new process is based on a concept developed five years ago by Chiang and colleagues including W. Craig Carter, the POSCO Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. In this so-called “flow battery,” the electrodes are suspensions of tiny particles carried by a liquid and pumped through various compartments of the battery.

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Nanowire implants offer remote-controlled drug delivery

(June 23, 2015)   A team of researchers has created a new implantable drug-delivery system using nanowires that can be wirelessly controlled.

The nanowires respond to an electromagnetic field generated by a separate device, which can be used to control the release of a preloaded drug. The system eliminates tubes and wires required by other implantable devices that can lead to infection and other complications, said team leader Richard Borgens, Purdue University's Mari Hulman George Professor of Applied Neuroscience and director of Purdue's Center for Paralysis Research.

"This tool allows us to apply drugs as needed directly to the site of injury, which could have broad medical applications," Borgens said. "The technology is in the early stages of testing, but it is our hope that this could one day be used to deliver drugs directly to spinal cord injuries, ulcerations, deep bone injuries or tumors, and avoid the terrible side effects of systemic treatment with steroids or chemotherapy."

The team tested the drug-delivery system in mice with compression injuries to their spinal cords and administered the corticosteroid dexamethasone. The study measured a molecular marker of inflammation and scar formation in the central nervous system and found that it was reduced after one week of treatment. A paper detailing the results will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Controlled Release and is currently available online.

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Robust new process forms 3D shapes from flat sheets of graphene

(June 23, 2015)  Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a new approach for forming 3D shapes from flat, 2D sheets of graphene, paving the way for future integrated systems of graphene-MEMS hybrid devices and flexible electronics.

“To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to demonstrate graphene integration to a variety of different microstructured geometries, including pyramids, pillars, domes, inverted pyramids, and the 3D integration of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs)/graphene hybrid structures,” explained SungWoo Nam, an assistant professor of mechanical science and engineering at Illinois. “The flexibility and 3D nature of our structures will enable intimate biosensing devices which can be conformed to the shape and characteristics of human skin and other biological systems. The 3D protruding micro-structures can also achieve enhanced sensitivity by maximizing the effective contact area between the sensors and non-flat surfaces.

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Can Heat Be Controlled as Waves?

(June 23, 2015)  A growing interest in thermoelectric materials – which convert waste heat to electricity – and pressure to improve heat transfer from increasingly powerful microelectronic devices have led to improved theoretical and experimental understanding of how heat is transported through nanometer-scale materials.

Recent research has focused on the possibility of using interference effects in phonon waves to control heat transport in materials. Wave interference is already used to control electronic, photonic and acoustic devices. If a similar approach can be used in thermal transport, that could facilitate development of more efficient thermoelectric and nanoelectronic devices, improved thermal barrier coatings, and new materials with ultralow thermal conductivity.

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Sweeping Lasers Snap Together Nanoscale Geometric Grids

New technique developed by Brookhaven Lab scientists rapidly creates multi-layered, self-assembled grids with fully customizable shapes and compositions

(June 23, 2015)  Down at the nanoscale, where objects span just billionths of a meter, the size and shape of a material can often have surprising and powerful electronic and optical effects. Building larger materials that retain subtle nanoscale features is an ongoing challenge that shapes countless emerging technologies.

Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a new technique to rapidly create nano-structured grids for functional materials with unprecedented versatility.

"We can fabricate multi-layer grids composed of different materials in virtually any geometric configuration," said study coauthor and Brookhaven Lab scientist Kevin Yager. "By quickly and independently controlling the nanoscale structure and the composition, we can tailor the performance of these materials. Crucially, the process can be easily adapted for large-scale applications."

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Is salt the key to unlocking the interiors of Neptune and Uranus?

(June 22, 2015)  The interiors of several of our Solar System’s planets and moons are icy, and ice has been found on distant extrasolar planets, as well.  But these bodies aren’t filled with the regular kind of water ice that you avoid on the sidewalk in winter. The ice that’s found inside these objects must exist under extreme pressures and high-temperatures, and potentially contains salty impurities, too.

New research from a team including Carnegie’s Alexander Goncharov focuses on the physics underlying the formation of the types of ice that are stable under the paradoxical-seeming conditions likely to be found in planetary interiors. Their work, published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could challenge current ideas about the physical properties found inside icy planetary bodies.

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Scientists Create Synthetic Membranes That Grow Like Living Cells

(June 22, 2015)  Chemists and biologists at UC San Diego have succeeded in designing and synthesizing an artificial cell membrane capable of sustaining continual growth, just like a living cell.

Their achievement, detailed in a paper published in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, will allow scientists to more accurately replicate the behavior of living cell membranes, which until now have been modeled only by synthetic cell membranes without the ability to add new phospholipids.

“The membranes we created, though completely synthetic, mimic several features of more complex living organisms, such as the ability to adapt their composition in response to environmental cues,” said Neal Devaraj, an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC San Diego who headed the research team, which included scientists from the campus’ BioCircuits Institute.

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Discovery Paves Way for New Kinds of Superconducting Electronics

(June 22, 2015)  Physicists at UC San Diego have developed a new way to control the transport of electrical currents through high-temperature superconductors—materials discovered nearly 30 years ago that lose all resistance to electricity at commercially attainable low temperatures.

Their achievement, detailed in two separate scientific publications, paves the way for the development of sophisticated electronic devices capable of allowing scientists or clinicians to non-invasively measure the tiny magnetic fields in the heart or brain, and improve satellite communications.

“We believe this new approach will have a significant and far-reaching impact in medicine, physics, materials science and satellite communications,” said Robert Dynes, a professor of physics and former Chancellor of UC San Diego. “It will enable the development of a new generation of superconducting electronics covering a wide spectrum, ranging from highly sensitive magnetometers for biomagnetic measurements of the human body to large-scale arrays for wideband satellite communications. In basic science, it is hoped it will contribute to the unravelling of the mysteries of unconventional superconductors and could play a major role in new technologies, such as quantum information science.”

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Iowa State engineers develop micro-tentacles so tiny robots can handle delicate objects

(June 22, 2015)  The tiny tube circled an ant’s thorax, gently trapping the insect and demonstrating the utility of a microrobotic tentacle developed by Iowa State University engineers.

“Most robots use two fingers and to pick things up they have to squeeze,” said Jaeyoun (Jay) Kim, an Iowa State University associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory. “But these tentacles wrap around very gently.”

And that makes them perfect hands and fingers for small robots designed to safely handle delicate objects.

The spiraling microrobotic tentacles are described in a research paper recently published in the journal Scientific Reports. Kim is the lead author. Co-authors are In-Ho Cho, an Iowa State assistant professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering; and Jungwook Paek, who recently earned his Iowa State doctorate in electrical and computer engineering and is moving to post-doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

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Soft core, hard shell – the latest in nanotechnology

(June 22, 2015) Medical science is placing high hopes on nanoparticles as in future they could be used, for example, as a vehicle for targeted drug delivery. In collaboration with an international team of researchers, scientists at the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the University of Marburg have for the first time succeeded in assaying the stability of these particles and their distribution within the body. Their results, which have been published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, show that a lot of research is still needed in this field.

Nanoparticles are the smallest particles capable of reaching virtually all parts of the body. Researchers use various approaches to test ways in which nanoparticles could be used in medicine – for instance, to deliver substances to a specific site in the body such as a tumor. For this purpose, nanoparticles are generally coated with organic materials because their surface quality plays a key role in determining further targets in the body. If they have a water-repellent shell, nanoparticles are quickly identified by the body’s immune system and eliminated.

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With 300 Kilometers per Second to New Electronics

A material with superfast electrons that exhibits extremely large magnetoresistance may be suitable for use in electronic components

(June 22, 2015) It may be significantly easier to design electronic components in future. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids have discovered that the electrical resistance of a compound of niobium and phosphorus increases enormously when the material is exposed to a magnetic field. This giant magnetoresistance, which is responsible for the large storage capacity of modern hard discs, was previously known to occur in some complexly structured materials. Niobium phosphide or a material with similar properties which can be manufactured more easily could offer an alternative. The Max Planck researchers, together with colleagues from the High Field Magnet Laboratories at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf and at the Radboud University in the Netherlands, published the new findings on niobium phosphide in the journal Nature Physics (DOI: 10.1038/nphys3372).

Electronic systems are expected to process and store a steadily increasing amount of data, faster and faster, and in less space. Luckily, physicists discover effects that help engineers to develop better electronic components with surprising regularity, for instance a phenomenon known as giant magnetoresistance. Modern hard discs utilize this phenomenon to significantly alter the resistance of a material by exposing it to a magnetic field. Until now, the computer industry has used various materials stacked on top of each other in a filigree structure to achieve this effect. Now, Max Planck scientists in Dresden have observed a rapid increase in resistance by a factor of 10,000 in a non-complex material, namely niobium phosphide (NbP).

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Discovery about the destructive power of bubbles could lead to new industrial applications

(June 22, 2015)  Virginia Tech engineers have shed light on what happens to a nearby particle when bubbles burst.

Sunghwan Jung, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering and mechanics in the College of Engineering, has discovered new information about a phenomenon called cavitation, the process of bubble formation in a fluid like water.

These bubbles eventually collapse under the pressure of the surrounding fluid, sending out pressure waves that can affect anything nearby. For example, shrimp use cavitation bubbles to hunt because the waves can kill small fish.

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Powering desalination with the sun

PhD student Natasha Wright makes water safe to drink for rural, off-grid Indian villages.

(June 22, 2015)  When graduate student Natasha Wright began her PhD program in mechanical engineering, she had no idea how to remove salt from groundwater to make it more palatable, nor had she ever been to India, where this is an ongoing need.

Now, three years and six trips to India later, this is the sole focus of her work.

Wright joined the lab of Amos Winter, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, in 2012. The lab was just getting established, and the aim of Wright’s project was vague at first: Work on water treatment in India, with a possible focus on filtering biological contaminants from groundwater to make it safe to drink.

There are already a number of filters on the market that can do this, and during her second trip to India, Wright interviewed a number of villagers, finding that many of them weren’t using these filters. She became skeptical of how useful it would be to develop yet another device like this.

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Diode a few atoms thick shows surprising quantum effect

(June 20, 2015)  A quantum mechanical transport phenomenon demonstrated for the first time in synthetic, atomically-thin layered material at room temperature could lead to novel nanoelectronic circuits and devices, according to researchers at Penn State and three other U.S. and international universities.

The quantum transport effect, called negative differential resistance (NDR), was observed when a voltage was applied to structures made of one-atom-thick layers of several layered materials known as van der Waals materials. The three-part structures consist of a base of graphene followed by atomic layers of either molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), molybdenum diselenide (MoSe2), or tungsten diselenide (WSe2).

NDR is a phenomenon in which the wave nature of electrons allows them to tunnel through any material with varying resistance. The potential of NDR lies in low voltage electronic circuits that could be operated at high frequency.

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Access to electricity is linked to reduced sleep

(June 20, 2015)  Blame smartphone alerts, constant connectivity and a deluge of media for our society’s sleep deprivation. But the root cause of why we get less sleep now than our ancestors did could come down to a much simpler reason: artificial light.

New research comparing traditional hunter-gatherer living conditions to a more modern setting shows that access to artificial light and electricity has shortened the amount of sleep humans get each night. The research, published online this week in the Journal of Biological Rhythms, is the first study to document this relationship in the field.

“Everything we found feeds what we had predicted from laboratory or intervention studies, where researchers manipulate certain aspects of light exposure. But this is the first time we’ve seen this hold true in a natural setting,” said lead author Horacio de la Iglesia, a University of Washington biology professor.

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First Solar Cell Made of Highly Ordered Molecular Frameworks

 

New Material Based on Metal-organic Frameworks (MOFs) Is Suited for Photovoltaics/Publication in the Journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition

(June 19, 2015)  Researchers at KIT have developed a material suited for photo-voltaics. For the first time, a functioning organic solar cell con-sisting of a single component has been produced on the basis of metal-organic framework compounds (MOFs). The material is highly elastic and might also be used for the flexible coating of clothes and deformable components. This development success is presented on the front page of the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

“We have opened the door to a new room,” says Professor Christof Wöll, Director of KIT Institute of Functional Interfaces (IFG). “This new application of metal-organic framework compounds is the be-ginning only. The end of this development line is far from being reached,” the physicist emphasizes.

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EMBL Scientists solve decades-old cell biology puzzle

Behaviour of clathrin proteins, crucial for endocytosis, is clarified using new imaging techniques

In a nutshell:

*  Clathrin proteins involved in endocytosis form a lattice that can dramatically change its shape

*  Combination of fluorescence microscopy and 3D electron microscopy allows quantitative data to be analysed

** Results offer new understanding of role of clathrin in endocytosis

(June 19, 2015)   Researchers at EMBL Heidelberg have solved a question that has puzzled cell biologists for decades – how does the protein machine that allows cells to swallow up molecules during endocytosis function?

Endocytosis is the process by which cells engulf molecules and draw them inside the cell where they perform different functions. This engulfment involves making dimples in the cell membrane that deepen with time and eventually seal off to make a spherical vesicle inside the cell. Essential to the process is the formation of a lattice-like protein shell on the surface of the vesicle membrane. However, there is still no consensus as to the exact function of this coat. Even for the best understood coat protein, clathrin, opinion has split between two different models.

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Culturing the Connectome

(June 19, 2015)  Mapping the human brain’s network of interconnections, known as the connectome is typically done with help from computational tools because recreating interconnections between different brain regions has been challenging in the lab.  Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) have developed a method to recreate connections between neurons from two different brain areas in a dish. Their findings were published in Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience.

Researchers from OIST's Brain Mechanism for Behaviour Unit, Neurobiology Research Unit, and Physics and Biology Unit collaborated on this study. The study used neurons from embryos of mice. The first connections between different brain compartments develop at the embryonic stage.

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Carrying a Table Together with a Robot

In the EU joint project CogIMon, robots are learning to observe, adjust their force, and react

(June 19, 2015)  From a robot’s perspective, humans are normally a nuisance: when robots and humans have to work together, it often leads to problems. Researchers on CogIMon, a new project starting at Bielefeld University, want to teach robots how to interact with humans and work together to accomplish tasks. CogIMon stands for “cognitive compliant interaction in motion.” This research group is working on humanoid as well as industrial robots. The project is coordinated by Professor Dr. Jochen Steil of CoR-Lab, the research institution on cognition and robotics at Bielefeld University. Together with six other international partners, the joint project will run from 2015–2018 and is funded with 7 million Euros from Horizon 2020, a framework programme for research and innovation of the European Union.

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Researchers find a potential target for the treatment of type 2 diabetes

Deletion of S6K1 confers increased insulin sensitivity in mice: A potential target for the treatment of type 2 diabetes?

(June 18, 2015)  Currently, there are more than 350 million type 2 diabetics and according to the World Health Organization (WHO) by 2030 it will be the 7th leading cause of death worldwide.

The hallmark of type 2 diabetes is insulin resistance, which is initially compensated for by an increase in beta cell size (responsible for producing insulin). However, the beta cells of such patients will eventually collapse and die, leading to full blown type 2 diabetes.

Researchers from the Laboratory of Cancer Metabolism at IDIBELL, led by Sara Kozma, have shown in animal models that inhibition of S6K1 protein may be a potential treatment for type 2 diabetes.

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Cataract culprits

UD researchers identify genes linked to cataract formation

(June18, 2015)  When cataracts encroach on the eyes, the only effective remedy is to surgically replace the eyes' lenses with synthetic substitutes.

But what if scientists found a way to delay or prevent cataracts from forming in the first place?

Researchers at the University of Delaware may have found such an opportunity by identifying the prime suspects in the formation of cataracts – deficiency of two genes that encode regulatory proteins.

When those two genes are unable to do their work, the lenses of the eyes become cloudy and develop cataracts, no aging process or damaging exposure to radiation required.

Cataracts, the leading cause of blindness, can have a genetic basis.

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Biomedical breakthrough: Carbon nanoparticles you can make at home

(June 18, 2015) Researchers have found an easy way to produce carbon nanoparticles that are small enough to evade the body’s immune system, reflect light in the near-infrared range for easy detection, and carry payloads of pharmaceutical drugs to targeted tissues.

Unlike other methods of making carbon nanoparticles – which require expensive equipment and purification processes that can take days – the new approach generates the particles in a few hours and uses only a handful of ingredients, including store-bought molasses.

The researchers, led by University of Illinois bioengineering professors Dipanjan Pan and Rohit Bhargava, report their findings in the journal Small.

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Scientists film shock waves in diamond

X-ray laser opens up new avenues of research in material science

(June 18, 2015)  Researchers have used ultra-short pulses of X-rays to film shock waves in diamonds. The study headed by DESY scientists opens up new possibilities for studying the properties of materials. Thanks to the extremely bright and short X-ray flashes, the researchers were able to follow the rapid, dynamic changes taking place in the shock wave with a high spatial as well as a high temporal resolution. The team around DESY physicist Prof. Christian Schroer is presenting its results in the journal Scientific Reports. “With our experiment we are venturing into new scientific terrain,” says the first author of the scientific paper, Dr. Andreas Schropp of DESY. “We have managed for the first time to use X-ray imaging to quantitatively determine the local properties and the dynamic changes of matter under extreme conditions.”

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Brain receptor found to significantly affect cocaine addiction

Discovery of new neural pathway may lead to preventing relapses in addicts

(June 18, 2015)  Researchers at the University at Buffalo have discovered a previously unknown neural pathway that can regulate changes made in the brain due to cocaine use, providing new insight into the molecular basis of cocaine addiction. 

“Addiction is a life-long affliction manifested by episodes of relapse, despite prolonged abstinence,” says Amy Gancarz, PhD, lead author of the study, which was published on June 1 in an Advance Online Publication in Nature Neuroscience. “There is a need to more fully understand the long-term molecular changes in the brain involved in drug craving and relapse.”

Gancarz, a former postdoctoral associate with the UB Research Institute on Addictions (RIA), worked on the study under the direction of senior author David Dietz, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology in UB’s School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Dietz is also a faculty member in UB’s Neuroscience Program and an affiliated scientist with RIA.

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Google DeepMind Teaches Artificial Intelligence Machines to Read

The best way for AI machines to learn is by feeding them huge data sets of annotated examples, and the Daily Mail has unwittingly created one.

(June 18, 2015)  A revolution in artificial intelligence is currently sweeping through computer science. The technique is called deep learning and it’s affecting everything from facial and voice to fashion and economics.

But one area that has not yet benefitted is natural language processing—the ability to read a document and then answer questions about it. That’s partly because deep learning machines must first learn their trade from vast databases that are carefully annotated for the purpose. However, these simply do not exist in sufficient size to be useful.

Today, that changes thanks to the work of Karl Moritz Hermann at Google DeepMind in London and a few pals. These guys say the special way that the Daily Mail and CNN write online news articles allows them to be used in this way. And the sheer volume of articles available online creates for the first time, a database that computers can use to learn and then answer related about. In other words, DeepMind is using Daily Mail and CNN articles to teach computers to read.

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Dietary Trans Fat Linked to Worse Memory

(June 17, 2015)  Higher consumption of dietary trans fatty acids (dTFA), commonly used in processed foods to improve taste, texture and durability, has been linked to worsened memory function in men 45 years old and younger, according to a University of California, San Diego School of Medicine study published online on June 17 in PLOS ONE.

Researchers evaluated data from 1,018 men and women who were asked to complete a dietary survey and memory test involving word recall. On average, men aged 45 and younger recalled 86 words; however, for each additional gram of trans fats consumed daily, performance dropped by 0.76 words. This translates to an expected 12 fewer words recalled by young men with dTFA intake levels matching the highest observed in the study, compared to otherwise similar men consuming no trans fats.

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Researchers Discover First Sensor of Earth’s Magnetic Field in an Animal

(June 17, 2015)  A team of scientists and engineers at The University of Texas at Austin has identified the first sensor of the Earth’s magnetic field in an animal, finding in the brain of a tiny worm a big clue to a long-held mystery about how animals’ internal compasses work.

Animals as diverse as migrating geese, sea turtles and wolves are known to navigate using the Earth's magnetic field. But until now, no one has pinpointed quite how they do it. The sensor, found in worms called C. elegans, is a microscopic structure at the end of a neuron that other animals probably share, given similarities in brain structure across species. The sensor looks like a nano-scale TV antenna, and the worms use it to navigate underground.

"Chances are that the same molecules will be used by cuter animals like butterflies and birds," said Jon Pierce-Shimomura, assistant professor of neuroscience in the College of Natural Sciences and member of the research team. "This gives us a first foothold in understanding magnetosensation in other animals."

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A New Look at Surface Chemistry

Technique for Studying the Atomic Structure of Material Surfaces Holds Promise for Catalysis, Corrosion and Other Critical Reactions

(June 17, 2015)  For the first time in the long and vaunted history of scanning electron microscopy, the unique atomic structure at the surface of a material has been resolved. This landmark in scientific imaging was made possible by a new analytic technique developed by a multi-institutional team of researchers, including scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

“We’ve developed a reasonably direct method for determining the atomic structure of a surface that also addresses the very challenging problem of buried interfaces,” says Jim Ciston, a staff scientist with the National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM) at the Molecular Foundry, a DOE Office of Science User Facility. “Although surface atoms represent a minuscule fraction of the total number of atoms in a material, these atoms drive a large portion of the material’s chemical interactions with its environment.”

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Aalto University researchers predicted existence of new quantum matter theoretically

(June 17, 2015)  The results are important in the search for new quantum states and possible use in future electronics applications.

Aalto University researchers have succeeded to predict, in theory, that superconducting surfaces can become topological superconductors when magnetic iron atoms are deposited on the surface in a regular pattern. They used the latest mathematical and physical models to predict the existence of a topological superconducting state on metallic superconducting surfaces and thin films. The results were recently published in the Physics Review Letters science journal.

The work examines the properties of superconductors in low temperatures. The results are important in the search for new quantum states and possible use in future electronics applications.

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Cellulose from wood can be printed in 3D

(June 17, 2015)  A group of researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have managed to print and dry three-dimensional objects made entirely by cellulose for the first time with the help of a 3D-bioprinter. They also added carbon nanotubes to create electrically conductive material. The effect is that cellulose and other raw material based on wood will be able to compete with fossil-based plastics and metals in the on-going additive manufacturing revolution, which started with the introduction of the 3D-printer.

3D printing is a form of additive manufacturing that is predicted to revolutionise the manufacturing industry. The precision of the technology makes it possible to manufacture a whole new range of objects and it presents several advantages compared to older production techniques. The freedom of design is great, the lead time is short, and no material goes to waste.

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How the Brain Learns to Distinguish Between What Is Important and What Is not

(June 17, 2015)  Traffic lights, neon-lit advertisements, a jungle of road signs. When learning to drive, it is often very difficult to distinguish between important and irrelevant information. How the brain learns the importance of certain images over others is being investigated by Prof. Sonja Hofer at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel. In a recently published study in “Neuron”, the neuroscientist and her team show that learning the relevance of images considerably modifies neuronal networks in the brain. These changes might help our brain to process and classify the overload of stimuli in our environment more effectively.

How we perceive our environment greatly depends on what we have previously seen and learnt. For example, expert drivers do not need to think twice about the meaning of different road signs and are experienced in assessing traffic situations. They can filter out relevant information from a flood of other irrelevant stimuli and thus react quickly. In contrast, beginners need much longer to process the new information. Prof. Sonja Hofer’s team at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel and University College London addressed the question of how processing of sensory stimuli is optimized in the brain through learning.

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Novel battery uses light to produce power

(June 17, 2015)  To move the world toward sustainability, scientists are continuing to explore and improve ways to tap the vast power of sunlight to make fuels and generate electricity. Now they have come up with a brand-new way to use light — solar or artificial — to drive battery power safely. Their “photo battery,” reported in ACS’ The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, uses light and titanium nitride for the anode.

Metal-ion batteries such as those based on lithium ions run most of our gadgets. But they take a long time to charge. They can also overheat and catch fire if they’re defective or damaged. These problems are often related to the unstable material used for the anode, the negative side of the battery. Musthafa Ottakam Thotiyl and colleagues wanted to address these flaws in a unique way.

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Scaling up nanoscale water-driven energy conversion into evaporation-driven engines and generators

Abstract

(June 16, 2015) Evaporation is a ubiquitous phenomenon in the natural environment and a dominant form of energy transfer in the Earth’s climate. Engineered systems rarely, if ever, use evaporation as a source of energy, despite myriad examples of such adaptations in the biological world. Here, we report evaporation-driven engines that can power common tasks like locomotion and electricity generation. These engines start and run autonomously when placed at air–water interfaces. They generate rotary and piston-like linear motion using specially designed, biologically based artificial muscles responsive to moisture fluctuations. Using these engines, we demonstrate an electricity generator that rests on water while harvesting its evaporation to power a light source, and a miniature car (weighing 0.1 kg) that moves forward as the water in the car evaporates. Evaporation-driven engines may find applications in powering robotic systems, sensors, devices and machinery that function in the natural environment.

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Einstein saves the quantum cat

Relativity theory also applicable in other research areas

(June 16, 2015)  Einstein’s theory of time and space will celebrate its 100th anniversary this year. Even today it captures the imagination of scientists. In an international collaboration, researchers from the Universities of Vienna (Časlav Brukner), Harvard (Igor Pikovski) and Queensland have now discovered that this world-famous theory can explain yet another puzzling phenomenon: the transition from quantum behavior to our classical, everyday world. Their results are published in the journal "Nature Physics".

In 1915 Albert Einstein formulated the theory of general relativity which fundamentally changed our understanding of gravity. He explained gravity as the manifestation of the curvature of space and time. Einstein’s theory predicts that the flow of time is altered by mass. This effect, known as "gravitational time dilation", causes time to be slowed down near a massive object. It affects everything and everybody; in fact, people working on the ground floor will age slower than their colleagues a floor above, by about 10 nanoseconds in one year. This tiny effect has actually been confirmed in many experiments with very precise clocks. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Vienna, Harvard University and the University of Queensland have discovered that the slowing down of time can explain another perplexing phenomenon: the transition from quantum behavior to our classical, everyday world.

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