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DNA and Information combined with science and biotechnology. Can we resurrect the dead?

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Scientists have found that the growth patterns of trees in a forest differ significantly from the way branches expand on an individual tree.

Nature is full of surprising repetitions. In trees, the large branches often look like entire trees, while smaller branches and twigs look like the larger branches they grow from. If seen in isolation, each part of the tree could be mistaken for a miniature version of itself.

It has long been assumed that this property, called fractality, also applies to entire forests but researchers from the University of Bristol have found that this is not the case.

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Think big. Despite its research topic, this could well be the motto of the Graphene Flagship, which was launched in 2013: With an overall budget of one billion Euros, it was Europe’s largest research initiative to date, alongside the Human Brain Flagship, which was launched at the same time.

The same applies to the review article on the effects of graphene and related materials on health and the environment, which Empa researchers Peter Wick and Tina Bürki just published together with 30 international colleagues in the journal ACS Nano; they summarize the findings on the health and ecological risks of graphene materials, the reference list includes almost 500 original publications.

A wealth of knowledge—which also gives the all-clear. “We have investigated the potential acute effects of various graphene and graphene-like materials on the lungs, in the gastrointestinal tract and in the placenta—and no serious acute cell-damaging effects were observed in any of the studies,” says Wick, summarizing the results.

We don’t exactly know why we age; we know what aging looks like —the “symptoms”, so to speak— but the root causes remain foggy. One leading hypothesis is that the changes associated with old age, both external and internal, are a result of accumulating DNA damage. As this damage builds, cellular functions begin to break down and important pathways start going haywire.

One of the most extreme forms of DNA damage is the double-strand break, which happens when a strand of DNA snaps in half, leaving two separate slivers floating around. Left unfixed, these strands can snag at and break chromosomes, leading to diseases like cancer and other disorders. But how the body repairs this kind of wreckage has been a source of mystery. Now, scientists at the Dresden University of Technology have managed to shine a light on the process. Published in Cell, their work offers important new insights that may eventually help treat, and possibly reverse, DNA damage.

A new fusion of materials, each with special electrical properties, has all the components required for a unique type of superconductivity that could provide the basis for more robust quantum computing. The new combination of materials, created by a team led by researchers at Penn State, could also provide a platform to explore physical behaviors similar to those of mysterious, theoretical particles known as chiral Majoranas, which could be another promising component for quantum computing.

The new study was recently published in the journal Science. The work describes how the researchers combined the two magnetic materials in what they called a critical step toward realizing the emergent interfacial superconductivity, which they are currently working toward.

High-speed experiments can help identify lightweight, protective “metamaterials” for spacecraft, vehicles, helmets, or other objects.

An intricate, honeycomb-like structure of struts and beams could withstand a supersonic impact better than a solid slab of the same material. What’s more, the specific structure matters, with some being more resilient to impacts than others.

That’s what MIT engineers are finding in experiments with microscopic metamaterials — materials that are intentionally printed, assembled, or otherwise engineered with microscopic architectures that give the overall material exceptional properties.