1 million plus cases of influenza in Japan this year. This needs to be investigated as it could cause another major pandemic.
Influenza is on the rise across Japan, with weekly case counts increasing in all 47 prefectures.
The National Institute of Infectious Diseases and other organizations say about 5,000 hospitals and clinics across the country reported seeing 211,049 flu patients in the seven-day period up to December 22.
A mysterious aircraft bearing a triangular tailless design was seen flying over Chengdu in southwestern Sichuan province in broad daylight, flanked by a fifth-generation J-20 fighter jet, according to videos shared on Chinese social media.
While the jet – speculated by observers to feature cutting-edge stealth and endurance capabilities – has yet to be officially identified or named, a provincial newspaper made reference to the aircraft.
Heat management at the nanoscale has long been a cornerstone of advanced technological applications, ranging from high-performance electronics to quantum computing. Addressing this critical challenge, we have been deeply intrigued by the emerging field of thermotronics, which focuses on manipulating heat flux in ways analogous to how electronics control electric energy. Among its most promising advancements are quantum thermal diodes, which enable directional heat control, and quantum thermal transistors, which regulate heat flow with precision.
Thermal diodes, much like their electrical counterparts, provide unidirectional heat transfer, allowing heat to flow in one direction while blocking it in the reverse. We find this capability revolutionary for heat management, as it has the potential to transform numerous fields.
For instance, thermal diodes can significantly improve the cooling of high-performance electronics, where heat dissipation is a major bottleneck. They could also enable more efficient energy harvesting by converting waste heat into usable energy, contributing to sustainability efforts.
Indian astronomers have performed a multiwavelength study of a gamma-ray emitting compact symmetric object known as DA 362. Results of the study, presented in a research paper published December 17 on the pre-print server arXiv, yield more insights into the nature of this enigmatic object.
Compact symmetric objects (CSOs) are young jetted active galactic nuclei (AGN) with an overall projected size below 3,300 light years. Although CSOs are still not well investigated, observations found that they showcase symmetric radio morphologies and are likely to be in the early stages of their evolution with kinematic ages smaller than a few thousand years. To date, only four CSOs have been found to emit gamma-rays.
The newest gamma-ray emitting CSO is DA 362, also known as B2 1413+34. It was initially classified as a blazar candidate of uncertain type, associated with a gamma-ray source designated 4FGL J1416.0+3443.
OpenAI today announced an improved version of its most capable artificial intelligence model to date—one that takes even more time to deliberate over questions—just a day after Google announced its first model of this type.
OpenAI’s new model, called O3, replaces o1, which the company introduced in September. Like o1, the new model spends time ruminating over a problem in order to deliver better answers to questions that require step-by-step logical reasoning. (OpenAI chose to skip the “o2” moniker because it’s already the name of a mobile carrier in the UK.)
“We view this as the beginning of the next phase of AI,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on a livestream Friday. “Where you can use these models to do increasingly complex tasks that require a lot of reasoning.”
A team of researchers at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom has made a significant breakthrough in physics by visualizing the shape of a single photon for the first time. This achievement was facilitated by an innovative computer model that simplifies the complex interaction between light and matter, a major challenge in the fields of physics and quantum mechanics.
Photons, the particles of light, have long captivated scientists. Since their discovery, it has been proven that light behaves both as a wave and a particle, a phenomenon known as wave-particle duality. This concept, which took centuries to be accepted, has been pivotal for the advancement of quantum mechanics, the branch of physics that studies subatomic interactions.
Photons are central to many phenomena, including lighting, telecommunications, and even touchscreen technology. However, despite their significance, the precise nature of their shape remained unknown until this team of researchers discovered a new way to visualize them.
Investigators at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have developed the largest collection of sarcoma patient-derived organoids to date that can help improve the understanding of the disease and better identify therapies that are most likely to work for each individual patient.
The approach, detailed in the journal Cell Stem Cell, uses patients’ own tumor cells that replicate the unique characteristics of a patient’s tumor allowing scientists to quickly screen a large number of drugs in order to identify personalized treatments that can target this rare and diverse group of cancers.
“Sarcoma is a rare and complex disease, which makes conducting clinical trials to identify effective treatments particularly challenging. Some of the rarer subtypes lack standard treatment altogether. Even when multiple therapy options are available, there is often no reliable, data-driven method to determine the best course of action for an individual patient. Choosing the most effective treatment is akin to searching for a needle in a haystack,” said Dr. Alice Soragni, the senior author of the study and assistant professor in the department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “Testing drugs with patient-derived tumor organoids has potential to help predict how a patient may respond to treatment, with the goal of improving patient outcomes for diseases where treatment options are often limited.”
For the first time, researchers used lab-grown organoids created from tumors of individuals with glioblastoma (GBM) to accurately model a patient’s response to CAR T cell therapy in real time. The organoid’s response to therapy mirrored the response of the actual tumor in the patient’s brain. That is, if the tumor-derived organoid shrunk after treatment, so did the patient’s actual tumor, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine, published in Cell Stem Cell.
Lab-grown tumors respond to cell therapy the same as tumors in the patients’ brains, according to researchers at Penn Medicine.
Scientists unveil a cutting-edge nanoparticle platform that supercharges vaccines for stronger, longer-lasting immunity tailored to every age group.
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Discover how probing the components of the half-asteroid, half-comet hybrids reveals that carbon dioxide was present during the solar system’s formation.
