Işıl, Ç., Gan, T., Ardic, F.O. et al. All-optical image denoising using a diffractive visual processor. Light Sci Appl 13, 43 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-024-01385-6
Algae provide a wide range of nutrients that are beneficial for health, including protein, sterols, and vitamins. Numerous health-promoting characteristics, including antioxidant and anti-proliferative actions in relation to algal phenolic and flavonoid concentrations, have been shown by scientific research 6–9. Produced for both humans and animals, algae and microalgae are often rich sources of fats (especially omega-3 fatty acids and carotenoids), carbohydrates, minerals, enzymes, hormones, and colors 10.
Health benefits supported by science
Algae have been shown to have multiple health benefits, including the ability to combat microbiological infections, hypertension, obesity, and diabetes, owing to their complex nutritional composition. As a result, the market for nutraceuticals generated from algae is growing quickly in the food supplement industry. A major factor in this has also been the idea of algae prebiotics and how they affect the gut microbiota 11.
Some cancer vaccines, such as mRNA-based vaccines, can be personalized and custom-made for each patient. Personalized vaccines—while promising—also have challenges such as cost and long production times. However, a cancer vaccine that could be used as a potential off-the-shelf treatment for certain patients that share specific mutations is an intriguing possibility. The off-the-shelf vaccine could be manufactured in batches and given to patients with minimal delay. It also would be cheaper to produce.
Colorectal and pancreatic cancers—the second and third leading causes of cancer death, respectively—often have mutations in the KRAS protein. Now, a new vaccine shows encouraging early results as a potential off-the-shelf treatment for patients with pancreatic or colorectal cancer, according to a study co-led by researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK).
The vaccine being tested here, ELI-002 2P, is described to enhance “lymph node delivery and immune response using amphiphile modification of G12D and G12R mutant KRAS (mKRAS) peptides (Amph-Peptides-2P) together with CpG oligonucleotide adjuvant (Amph-CpG-7909).”
Seven quantum hardware companies have been awarded multimillion-pound contracts to build a series of quantum testbeds at the National Quantum Computing Centre by March 2025.
Apple CEO Tim Cook today sent out a memo to employees, thanking them for their work on the Apple Vision Pro headset that was introduced today. In the memo, which was shared by Bloomberg, Cook compared the Vision Pro to the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, and said that it is joining Apple’s “pantheon of groundbreaking products” that have both “defined Apple” and “redefined technology as we know it.”
Cook visited Apple Store Fifth Avenue in New York for the Vision Pro launch, and he said it was “incredible” to watch people try out the Vision Pro for the first time and see the “impossible become possible.”
How can melting permafrost influence climate change? This is what a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences hopes to address as a team of researchers from Dartmouth College investigated how permafrost landscapes, which are known for being repositories of organic carbon, could potentially contribute as much carbon to the environment as 35 million cars per year. This study holds the potential to help scientists and policymakers better understand the long-term consequences of climate change across the planet.
“The whole surface of the Earth is in a tug of a war between processes such as hillslopes that smooth the landscape and forces like rivers that carve them up,” said Dr. Joanmarie Del Vecchio, who is a Neukom Postdoctoral Fellow at Dartmouth and lead author of the study.
For the study, the researchers analyzed satellite data on more than 69,000 watersheds between just north of the Tropic of Cancer to the North Pole. For context, the Tropic of Cancer runs through central Mexico and northern Africa. The goal of the study was to ascertain the differences in landscapes between regions with and without permafrost. In the end, the researchers found that permafrost landscapes exhibit fewer rivers than landscapes in warmer climates around the world. They then estimated the amount of carbon that was stored within the permafrost that would be released if the permafrost should melt, which they determined would be between 22 billion and 432 billion tons of carbon between now and the end of the century.
Tokamak fusion plasmas benefit from high pressures but are then susceptible to modes of instability. These magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) modes are macroscopic distortions of the plasma, but certain collective motions of individual particles can provide stabilizing effects opposing them. The presence of a resistive wall slows the mode growth, converting a kink to a resistive wall mode (RWM). A kinetic MHD model includes Maxwell’s equations, ideal MHD constraints, and kinetic effects included through the pressure tensor, calculated with the perturbed drift-kinetic distribution function of the particles. The kinetic stabilizing effects on the RWM arise through resonances between the plasma rotation and particle drift motions: precession, bounce, and transit. A match between particle motions and the mode allows efficient transfer of energy that would otherwise drive the growth of the mode, thus damping the growth. The first approach to calculating RWM stability is to write a set of equations for the complex mode frequency in terms of known quantities and then to solve the system. The “energy principle” approach, which has the advantage of clarity in distinguishing the various stabilizing and destabilizing effects, is to change the force balance equation into an equation in terms of changes of kinetic and potential energies, and then to write a dispersion relation for the mode frequency in terms of those quantities. These methods have been used in various benchmarked codes to calculate kinetic effects on RWM stability. The theory has illuminated the important roles of plasma rotation, energetic particles, and collisions in RWM stability.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological disease that usually leads to permanent disabilities. It affects about 2.9 million people worldwide, and about 15,000 in Switzerland alone. One key feature of the disease is that it causes the patient’s own immune system to attack and destroy the myelin sheaths in the central nervous system.
These protective sheaths insulate the nerve fibers, much like the plastic coating around a copper wire. Myelin sheaths ensure that electrical impulses travel quickly and efficiently from nerve cell to nerve cell. If they are damaged or become thinner, this can lead to irreversible visual, speech and coordination disorders.
So far, however, it hasn’t been possible to visualize the myelin sheaths well enough to reliably diagnose and treat MS. Now researchers at ETH Zurich, led by Markus Weiger and Emily Baadsvik from the Institute for Biomedical Engineering, have developed a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) procedure that maps the condition of the myelin sheaths more accurately than was previously possible. The researchers successfully tested the procedure on healthy people for the first time.
