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Blog – Page 137

In their ongoing efforts to push the boundaries of quantum possibilities, physicists in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis have created a new type of “time crystal,” a novel phase of matter that defies common perceptions of motion and time.

The WashU research team includes Kater Murch, the Charles M. Hohenberg Professor of Physics, Chong Zu, an assistant professor of physics, and Zu’s graduate students Guanghui He, Ruotian “Reginald” Gong, Changyu Yao, and Zhongyuan Liu. Bingtian Ye from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University’s Norman Yao are also authors of the research, which has been published in the journal Physical Review X.

Zu, He, and Ye spoke about their achievement and the implications of catching time in a crystal.

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In a groundbreaking moment for cancer, Chinese researchers turned the immune response provoked by organ transplants to fight the leading cause of death worldwide.

According to Columbia University’s Department of Surgery, 10–20% of patients who undergo transplant surgery will experience at least one rejection. However, researchers in China ingeniously turned that negative into a positive by directing that powerful impulse to attack cancer cells.

Called a “tumor-to-pork” strategy, a new study published in Cell earlier this year demonstrated immense success in engineering a virus that tricked the human body into believing that cancer cells were pig tissue, according to the South China Morning Post, thereby triggering a hyperacute inflammatory response. The virus began attacking the tumor with a staggering 90% success rate, to the point of curing a patient with advanced cervical cancer.

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Quantum physics just took a leap from theory to reality! Empa researchers have, for the first time, successfully built a long-theorized one-dimensional alternating Heisenberg model using synthetic nanographenes.

By precisely shaping these tiny carbon structures, they’ve unlocked new ways to manipulate quantum states, confirming century-old predictions. This breakthrough could be a stepping stone toward real-world quantum technologies, from ultra-fast computing to unbreakable encryption.

Recreating a Century-Old Quantum Model.

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A strange energy source at the center of the Milky WayThe Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System and is part of the Local Group of galaxies. It is a barred spiral galaxy that contains an estimated 100–400 billion stars and has a diameter between 150,000 and 200,000 light-years. The name “Milky Way” comes from the appearance of the galaxy from Earth as a faint band of light that stretches across the night sky, resembling spilled milk. tabindex=0 Milky Way may be a new type of dark matter.

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The activity of microglia is fundamental for the regulation of numerous physiological processes including brain development, synaptic plasticity, and neurogenesis, and its deviation from homeostasis can lead to pathological conditions, including numerous neurodegenerative disorders. Carnosine is a naturally occurring molecule with well-characterized antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities, able to modulate the response and polarization of immune cells and ameliorate their cellular energy metabolism. The better understanding of microglia characteristics under basal physiological conditions, as well as the possible modulation of the mechanisms related to its response to environmental challenges and/or pro-inflammatory/pro-oxidant stimuli, are of utmost importance for the development of therapeutic strategies.

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The landmark advance builds on a 2013 study by the team, published in Science, which described the construction of the first GRO. In that study, the researchers demonstrated new solutions for safeguarding genetically engineered organisms and for producing new classes of synthetic proteins and biomaterials with “unnatural,” or human-created, chemistries.

Ochre is a major step toward creating a non-redundant genetic code in E. coli, specifically, which is ideally suited to produce synthetic proteins containing multiple, different synthetic amino acids.

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In the following paper, the authors aimed to compare the social cognition profiles of individuals with cerebellar neurodegenerative disorders, autism, bipolar disorder type 2, or healthy subjects using a battery of social tests requiring different degrees of prediction processing.

📝 — Olivito, et al.

Full text is available 👇

Social prediction is a key feature of social cognition (SC), a function in which the modulating role of the cerebellum is recognized. Accordingly, cerebellar alterations are reported in cerebellar pathologies, neurodevelopmental disorders, and psychiatric conditions that show SC deficits. Nevertheless, to date, no study has directly compared populations representative of these three conditions with respect to SC and cerebellar alterations. Therefore, the present exploratory study aimed to compare the SC profiles of individuals with cerebellar neurodegenerative disorders (CB), autism (ASD), bipolar disorder type 2 (BD2), or healthy subjects (HS) using a battery of social tests requiring different degrees of prediction processing. The patterns of cerebellar gray matter (GM) alterations were compared among the groups using voxel-based morphometry.

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📝 — Ching, et al.

Full text is available 👇

The spike protein (S-protein) is a crucial part of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), with its many domains responsible for binding, fusion, and host cell entry. In this review we use the density functional theory (DFT) calculations to analyze the atomic-scale interactions and investigate the consequences of mutations in S-protein domains. We specifically describe the key amino acids and functions of each domain, which are essential for structural stability as well as recognition and fusion processes with the host cell; in addition, we speculate on how mutations affect these properties.

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