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Researchers from Skoltech, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, and Uppsala University have predicted the existence of antichiral ferromagnetism, a nontrivial property of some magnetic crystals that opens the door to a variety of new magnetic phenomena. The paper was published in the journal Physical Review B.

Chirality, or handedness, is an extremely important fundamental property of objects in many fields of physics, mathematics, chemistry and biology; a chiral object cannot be superimposed on its mirror image in any way. The simplest chiral objects are human hands, hence the term itself. The opposite of chiral is achiral: a circle or a square are simple achiral objects.

Chirality can be applied to much more complex entities; for instance, competing internal interactions in a magnetic system can lead to the appearance of periodic magnetic textures in the structure that differ from their mirror images—this is called chiral ferromagnetic ordering. Chiral crystals are widely considered promising candidates for magnetic data storage and processing device realization as information can be encoded via their nontrivial magnetic textures.

Circa 2013

Wearable Futures: London designer and researcher Shamees Aden is developing a concept for running shoes that would be 3D-printed from synthetic biological material and could repair themselves overnight.

Shamees Aden’s Protocells trainer would be 3D-printed to the exact size of the user’s foot from a material that would fit like a second skin. It would react to pressure and movement created when running, puffing up to provide extra cushioning where required.

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Credit: Dani Clode. #Neuroscience #Research #Biology #Technology

When plants first ventured onto the land, evolving from freshwater-dwelling algae, more than 500 million years ago, they transformed the planet. By drawing carbon dioxide from the air, they cooled Earth, and by eroding rock surfaces they helped build the soil that now covers so much land.

These changes to the planet’s atmosphere and land surface paved the way for the evolution of the biosphere we know. Land plants make up around 80 percent of Earth’s biomass.

The pioneering plants were small and moss-like, and they had to overcome two big challenges to survive on land: avoiding drying out, and surviving the Sun’s harsh ultraviolet light.

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University of Advancing Technology’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) degree explores the theory and practice of engineering tools that simulate thinking, patterning, and advanced decision behaviors by software systems. With inspiration derived from biology to design, UAT’s Artificial Intelligence program teaches students to build software systems that solve complex problems. Students will work with technologies including voice recognition, simulation agents, machine learning (ML), and the internet of things (IoT).

Students pursuing this specialized computer programming degree develop applications using evolutionary and genetic algorithms, cellular automata, artificial neural networks, agent-based models, and other artificial intelligence methodologies. UAT’s degree in AI covers the fundamentals of general and applied artificial intelligence including core programming languages and platforms used in computer science.

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The Google subsidiary solved a fundamental problem in biology but didn’t promptly share its solution. So a University of Washington team tried to re-create it.

Chameleons have long been a symbol of adaptation because of their ability to adjust their iridophores—a special layer of cells under the skin—to blend in with their surroundings.

In a new study published today in Nature Communications, researchers from South Korea have created a robot chameleon capable of imitating its biological counterpart, paving the way for new artificial camouflage technology.

We combined a machine learning algorithm with knowledge gleaned from hundreds of biological experiments to develop a technique that allows biomedical researchers to figure out the functions of the proteins that turn genes on and off in cells, called transcription factors. This knowledge could make it easier to develop drugs for a wide range of diseases.

Early on during the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists who worked out the genetic code of the RNA molecules of cells in the lungs and intestines found that only a small group of cells in these organs were most vulnerable to being infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. That allowed researchers to focus on blocking the virus’s ability to enter these cells. Our technique could make it easier for researchers to find this kind of information.

The biological knowledge we work with comes from this kind of RNA sequencing, which gives researchers a snapshot of the hundreds of thousands of RNA molecules in a cell as they are being translated into proteins. A widely praised machine learning tool, the Seurat analysis platform, has helped researchers all across the world discover new cell populations in healthy and diseased organs. This machine learning tool processes data from single-cell RNA sequencing without any information ahead of time about how these genes function and relate to each other.

The same process that eliminates replication errors also eliminates antiviral agents delivered by the treatments commonly used to fight other RNA viruses, such as HIV, HCV and Ebola virus, which partially explains why SARS-CoV-2 has proven so difficult to treat, Yang said.

The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has demonstrated a stubborn ability to resist most nucleoside antiviral treatments, but a new study led by an Iowa State University scientist could help to overcome the virus’s defenses.

The study, published recently in the peer-reviewed journal Science, details the structure of a critical enzyme present in SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. This enzyme, known as the proofreading exoribonuclease (or ExoN), removes nucleoside antiviral medications from the virus’s RNA, rendering most nucleoside analogs-based antiviral treatments ineffective. The new study presents the atomic structures of the ExoN enzyme, which could lead to the development of new methods for deactivating the enzyme and opening the door to better treatments for patients suffering from COVID-19.

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