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Category: biotech/medical – Page 971

Scientists discover unusual ultrafast motion in layered magnetic materials

A common metal paper clip will stick to a magnet. Scientists classify such iron-containing materials as ferromagnets. A little over a century ago, physicists Albert Einstein and Wander de Haas reported a surprising effect with a ferromagnet. If you suspend an iron cylinder from a wire and expose it to a magnetic field, it will start rotating if you simply reverse the direction of the magnetic field.

“Einstein and de Haas’s experiment is almost like a magic show,” said Haidan Wen, a physicist in the Materials Science and X-ray Science divisions of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. “You can cause a cylinder to rotate without ever touching it.”

In Nature, a team of researchers from Argonne and other U.S. national laboratories and universities now report an analogous yet different effect in an “anti”-ferromagnet. This could have important applications in devices requiring ultra-precise and ultrafast motion control. One example is high-speed nanomotors for biomedical applications, such as use in nanorobots for minimally invasive diagnosis and surgery.

Common blood thinner may double as cancer therapy

Warfarin, a widely used blood thinner, appears to have potent anti-cancer properties, according to a study by Columbia University researchers. The study, conducted in human cells and in mice, found that warfarin stops tumors from interfering with a self-destruct mechanism that cells initiate when they detect mutations or other abnormalities.

“Our findings suggest that , which is already approved by the FDA, could be repurposed to treat a variety of cancers, including pancreatic cancer,” says study leader Wei Gu, Ph.D., the Abraham and Mildred Goldstein Professor of Pathology & Cell Biology (in the Institute for Cancer Genetics) at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

The study is titled “Regulation of VKORC1L1 is critical for p53-mediated tumor suppression through vitamin K metabolism,” and it was published July 18 in Cell Metabolism. Postdoctoral researcher scientists Xin Yang, Ph.D., and Zhe Wang, Ph.D., contributed equally as first authors.

Scientists pave the way to gene control through wearable devices

Scientists claim to have uncovered the “missing link” that could pave the way for wearable electronic devices to control genes.

Wearable devices utilize biosensors to gather an individual’s data, including heart rate, blood pressure, sleep patterns, activity, and temperature, among other metrics.

Wearable electronic devices are playing an increasingly significant role in personalized medicine. However, they’re not yet capable of directly programming gene-based therapies, as explained in an article by a group of researchers from ETH Zurich, a public research university in Zürich, Switzerland.

New gel destroys brain cancer in 100% of treated mice

Johns Hopkins University (JHU) researchers have developed an experimental brain cancer treatment that not only cured 100% of mice that received it, but also trained their immune systems to fight future cancers.

The challenge: Glioblastoma is a rare but aggressive type of brain cancer — only 5% of patients live for more than five years after they’re diagnosed, and the average survival time is just 12–18 months. It is considered the deadliest kind of cancer.

The standard glioblastoma treatment regimen starts with surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible. After that, patients typically undergo chemo or radiation therapy to kill lingering cells.

X-Ray Of A Single Atom Achieved In World First

Thinking of X-rays might trigger memories of broken bones or dental check-ups. But this extremely energetic light can show us more than just our bones: it is also used to study the molecular world, even biochemical reactions in real-time. One issue, though, is that researchers have never been able to study a single atom with X-rays. Until now.

Scientists have been able to characterize a single atom using X-rays. Not only were they able to distinguish the type of atoms they were seeing (there were two different ones), but they also managed to study the chemical behavior these atoms were showing.

“Atoms can be routinely imaged with scanning probe microscopes, but without X-rays, one cannot tell what they are made of. We can now detect exactly the type of a particular atom, one atom-at-a-time, and can simultaneously measure its chemical state,” senior author Professor Saw Wai Hla, from the University of Ohio and the Argonne National Laboratory, said in a statement.

Scientists Uncover a Surprising Link Between Pure Mathematics and Genetics

An interdisciplinary team of mathematicians, engineers, physicists, and medical scientists has discovered a surprising connection between pure mathematics and genetics. This connection sheds light on the structure of neutral mutations and the evolution of organisms.

Number theory, the study of the properties of positive integers, is perhaps the purest form of mathematics. At first sight, it may seem far too abstract to apply to the natural world. In fact, the influential American number theorist Leonard Dickson wrote “Thank God that number theory is unsullied by any application.”

And yet, again and again, number theory finds unexpected applications in science and engineering, from leaf angles that (almost) universally follow the Fibonacci sequence, to modern encryption techniques based on factoring prime numbers. Now, researchers have demonstrated an unexpected link between number theory and evolutionary genetics.

Omicron variant resembles other respiratory viruses, posing challenges for syndromic surveillance

In a recent article published in Scientific Reports, researchers describe the symptom profiles of respiratory viral infections from the Flu Watch Community and the Virus Watch cohort studies to compare the frequency of the range of symptoms experienced during influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), rhinovirus, seasonal coronaviruses (CoVs) infections, and infections from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) wild-type (wt) strain and variants of concerns (VOCs), including Alpha, Delta, Omicron BA1/BA2/BA5.

Study: Symptom profiles of community cases infected by influenza, RSV, rhinovirus, seasonal coronavirus, and SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. Image Credit: KitjaKitja/Shutterstock.com.

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