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Category: engineering – Page 89

Introduction to the themed collection on XNA xeno-nucleic acids

c Department of Chemical Biology, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361,005, China.

The concept of xeno-nucleic acids (XNAs) was first proposed in 2009 in a theoretical paper, referring to additional types of nucleic acids, whose sugar moieties would differ from those in DNA and RNA. However, with the rising popularity of XNAs, the definition of XNAs has been extended to unnatural nucleic acids with chemically modified sugar, nucleobase, or phosphate moieties that are distinct from those found in DNA and RNA. The discovery and engineering of both polymerases and reverse transcriptases to synthesize, replicate and evolve a diverse range of XNAs has attracted significant attention and has enabled the discovery of XNA ligands (aptamers) and XNA catalysts (XNAzymes) as well as the synthesis of XNA nanostructures with potential as novel therapeutics. The field of XNAs continues to grow rapidly towards realizing the potential of XNAs in biotechnology and molecular medicine. This themed issue unites a collection of articles attesting to the rapid progress in the field.

One of the key advantages of XNAs is their generally enhanced resistance to nuclease degradation. This biostability, the affinity and specificity towards a target, and the general lack of immunogenicity of modified nucleic acids are critical for their potential application as therapeutics. Modified sugar moieties such as 2′-modified analogs, conformationally locked analogs, and threose-replaced analogs in particular contribute to the increased biological stability of XNAs against enzymatic degradation. Replacing the phosphodiester linkages with charge-neutral backbones including peptide-like backbones and triazole-linked backbones offers further opportunities to tune the stability, conformation and physicochemical properties of XNAs and enhance the affinity to their targets.

Quantum Leap: Unlocking the Secrets of Complex Molecules With Hybrid Computing

A quantum computational solution for engineering materials. Researchers at Argonne explore the possibility of solving the electronic structures of complex molecules using a quantum computer. If you know the atoms that compose a particular molecule or solid material, the interactions between those atoms can be determined computationally, by solving quantum mechanical equations — at least, if the molecule is small and simple. However, solving these equations, critical for fields from materials engineering to drug design, requires a prohibitively long computational time for complex molecules and materials.

MIT scientists produce ‘ultrastable’ materials using new computing method

The resulting materials could be used for capturing greenhouse gases.

MIT researchers have used a computational model to identify about 10,000 possible metal-organic framework MOF structures that they classify as “ultrastable.” These states make them good candidates for applications such as converting methane gas to methanol.

“When people come up with hypothetical MOF materials, they don’t necessarily know beforehand how stable that material is,” said in a statement published on Tuesday Heather Kulik, an MIT associate professor of chemistry and chemical engineering and the senior author of the study.

The Pursuit Of Better Camouflage Could Lead To An Invisibility Cloak

The invisibility cloak that Harry Potter wears in J. K. Rowling’s books is woven from the hair of a magical creature. But in the real world, the magic of invisibility is not dependent on fantasy, but rather on science and engineering.

Then there is quantum stealth technology that uses colouration patterns to hide objects in plain sight.

There are even camouflage technologies that make something as large as a tank appear to be local foliage, absorbing the characteristics of the organic and inorganic materials found on a battlefield.

As cool as Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility appears to be, current and future materials science discoveries and technological advancements may have it beat.

Cultured meat firm resurrects woolly mammoth in lab-grown meatball

Vow, an Australian cultivated food company that creates meat in a laboratory setting from animal cells, says that it has used advanced molecular engineering to resurrect the woolly mammoth in meatball form, by combining original mammoth DNA with fragments of an African elephant’s DNA.

James Ryall, Vow’s chief science officer, said that the company first identified the mammoth myoglobin, a protein that is key to giving meat its color and taste, and then used publicly available data to identify the DNA sequence in mammoths.

Australian company Vow says it has used advanced molecular engineering to resurrect the woolly mammoth in meatball form.

The new Microsoft Teams is here with big performance improvements and UI changes

Microsoft Teams has been totally overhauled to run faster and have a more simplified interface.

Microsoft is overhauling its Teams app today to make it faster and easier to use. Microsoft Teams has been rebuilt from the ground up, with a new preview available today for businesses to try out this radical rework that has been years in the making.

“The new Teams is faster, simpler, and more flexible than ever before,” says Sumi Singh, CVP of engineering for Microsoft Teams, in an interview with The Verge. “We’ve made tremendous strides in performance and usability. The new Teams is 2x faster while using 50 percent fewer resources.”

The new Microsoft Teams isn’t all about looks and performance, though. Microsoft is also adding in some very useful improvements. If you’ve ever had issues switching between different Microsoft Teams accounts in your organization, the new client has an improved method to let you see all of your accounts and notifications in a single drop-down menu. You won’t have to log out of accounts and switch tenants to get access to different Teams instances.

If you’re used to meetings with raised hands even after someone has asked a question, Microsoft is now improving this experience by automatically lowering hands after the person has spoken. Whiteboard is also getting the ability to paste Loop components to make the canvas even more collaborative. AI-powered video filters are also coming to Microsoft Teams, with a number of animated frames and the ability to change your video’s hue in presentations.

Dr. Annie Kritcher, Ph.D. — National Ignition Facility — LLNL — Tapping The Power Of The Stars

Tapping The Power Of The Stars — Dr. Andrea Kritcher Ph.D., Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy.

Dr. Andrea (Annie) Kritcher, Ph.D. is a nuclear engineer and physicist who works at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (https://www.llnl.gov/). She is the design lead of the HYBRID-E capsule technology within Lawrence Livermore’s Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) program, and is a member of the ICF leadership team and lead designer for shot N210808, at their National Ignition Facility, a recent experiment that heralded a significant step towards a fusion break-even target. She was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2022.

Dr. Kritcher was first employed at Lawrence Livermore as a summer intern in 2004, as an LLNL Lawrence Scholar during her time at UC Berkeley, where she earned a master’s degree and doctorate in nuclear engineering, and as a Lawrence postdoctoral fellow in 2009 following completion of her Ph.D. During her postdoctoral appointment she explored using X-rays to measure the properties of warm and hot dense matter (plasma), and measuring how nuclei interact with dense plasma.

In 2012, Dr. Kritcher became a member of scientific staff and now serves as team lead for integrated implosion modeling and is a group leader within the design physics division at LLNL.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federally funded research and development center in Livermore, California, United States. Originally established in 1952, the laboratory now is sponsored by the United States Department of Energy. Its principal responsibility is ensuring the safety, security and reliability of the nation’s nuclear weapons through the application of advanced science, engineering, and technology. The laboratory also applies its special expertise and multidisciplinary capabilities towards preventing the proliferation and use of weapons of mass destruction, bolstering homeland security, and solving other nationally important problems, including energy and environmental needs, scientific research and outreach, and economic competitiveness.

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Civil Space

Johns Hopkins APL’s Civil Space Mission Area makes critical contributions to NASA and international missions to meet the challenges of space science, engineering, and exploration.

Since the dawn of the Space Age, APL has pushed the frontiers of space science, engineering and exploration. We captured the first picture of Earth from space, invented navigation by satellite, dispatched spacecraft across the solar system from our Sun to Pluto and beyond, and successfully conducted the world’s first full-scale planetary defense test mission.

We continue to shape the future by providing our nation with innovative and low-cost solutions to its space challenges. Our work includes conducting research and space exploration; development and application of space science, engineering, and technology; and production of one-of-a-kind spacecraft, instruments, and subsystems.

Big improvements to brain-computer interface

When people suffer spinal cord injuries and lose mobility in their limbs, it’s a neural signal processing problem. The brain can still send clear electrical impulses and the limbs can still receive them, but the signal gets lost in the damaged spinal cord.

The Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering (CSNE)—a collaboration of San Diego State University with the University of Washington (UW) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)—is working on an implantable brain chip that can record neural electrical signals and transmit them to receivers in the limb, bypassing the damage and restoring movement. Recently, these researchers described in a study published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports a critical improvement to the technology that could make it more durable, last longer in the body and transmit clearer, stronger signals.

The technology, known as a brain-computer interface, records and transmits signals through electrodes, which are tiny pieces of material that read signals from brain chemicals known as neurotransmitters. By recording brain signals at the moment a person intends to make some movement, the interface learns the relevant electrical signal pattern and can transmit that pattern to the limb’s nerves, or even to a prosthetic limb, restoring mobility and motor function.