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Bottleneck in hydrogen distribution jeopardizes billions in clean energy

A study from Edinburgh Business School at Heriot-Watt University found that while hydrogen production, storage and fuel cell technologies are advancing rapidly, the hydrogen distribution infrastructure is developing at half the speed, creating a critical bottleneck that could put billions in clean energy at risk.

The paper “Dynamics of knowledge production: A relational-event analysis of patent citation hazards in hydrogen technologies” was published in Sustainable Futures.

The findings are an important milestone in recognizing that, while other hydrogen technologies improve and costs fall, distribution expenses could take up a large share of hydrogen system budgets, significantly limiting overall efficiency and growth of the hydrogen sector.

UNM Researchers Discover New Master Regulator of Tau, a Protein Implicated in Many Neurodegenerative Diseases

In a surprising discovery, University of New Mexico researchers have found that OTULIN – an enzyme that helps regulate the immune system – also drives the formation of tau, a protein implicated in many neurodegenerative diseases, as well as brain inflammation and aging.

In a study published in the journal Genomic Psychiatry, the researchers reported that when they deactivated OTULIN, either by administering a custom-designed small molecule or knocking out the gene that codes for it, it halted the production of tau and removed it from neurons. The study was conducted on two different types of cells, some derived from a patient who had died from late-onset sporadic Alzheimer’s disease, and the rest from a line of human neuroblastoma cells that are frequently used in neuroscience research.

The discovery opens the door to potential treatments for Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, said Karthikeyan Tangavelou, PhD, a senior scientist in the lab of Kiran Bhaskar, PhD, professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology in the UNM School of Medicine.

Quantum ‘alchemy’ made feasible with excitons

What if you could create new materials just by shining a light at them? To most, this sounds like science fiction or alchemy, but to physicists investigating the burgeoning field of Floquet engineering, this is the goal. With a periodic drive, like light, scientists can “dress up” the electronic structure of any material, altering its fundamental properties—such as turning a simple semiconductor into a superconductor.

While the theory of Floquet physics has been investigated since a bold proposal by Oka and Aoki in 2009, only a handful of experiments within the past decade have managed to demonstrate Floquet effects. And though these experiments show the feasibility of Floquet engineering, the field has been limited by the reliance on light, which requires very high intensities that almost vaporize the material while still only achieving moderate results.

But now, a diverse team of researchers from around the world, co-led by the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) and Stanford University have demonstrated a powerful new alternative approach to Floquet engineering by showing that excitons can produce Floquet effects much more efficiently than light. Their results are now published in Nature Physics.

Self-healing composite can make airplane, automobile and spacecraft components last for centuries

Researchers have created a self-healing composite that is tougher than materials currently used in aircraft wings, turbine blades and other applications—and can repair itself more than 1,000 times. The researchers estimate their self-healing strategy can extend the lifetime of conventional fiber-reinforced composite materials by centuries compared to the current decades-long design-life.

The work is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“This would significantly drive down costs and labor associated with replacing damaged composite components, and reduce the amount of energy consumed and waste produced by many industrial sectors—because they’ll have fewer broken parts to manually inspect, repair or throw away,” says Jason Patrick, corresponding author of the paper and an associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at North Carolina State University.

Copenhagen Researchers state the Universe responds to our Actions Even Retroactively

The copenhagen interpretation & retroactivity. quantum mechanics basics:

Particles exist in a superposition of states until observed.

Measurement “collapses” the wave function into a definite outcome.

Retrocausality Debate:

Some physicists have explored whether quantum events can appear to be influenced by future measurements.

This is sometimes described as the universe “responding retroactively,” but it’s a controversial interpretation, not mainstream science.

Continue reading “Copenhagen Researchers state the Universe responds to our Actions Even Retroactively” | >

Deep Learning in Otolaryngology: A Narrative Review

Deep learning models have achieved diagnostic accuracy rates up to 92% for nasopharyngeal carcinoma and over 95% for otologic pathology, matching expert performance in otolaryngology.

This review summarizes recent deep learning advances in otolaryngology, including diagnostic models with expert-level accuracy for nasopharyngeal carcinoma and otologic pathology.

This narrative review synthesizes recent deep-learning applications and proposes a framework for their integration into otolaryngology.

Machine learning can predict patients’ responses to antidepressants—while disentangling drug and placebo effects

Depression is one of the most widespread mental health disorders worldwide, affecting approximately 4% of the global population. It is characterized by a persistent low mood, disruptions in typical sleeping and/or eating habits, a lack of motivation, a loss of interest in daily activities and unhelpful thought patterns.

There are now various treatments for depression, including psychotherapy-based interventions and different types of antidepressant medications. Identifying the best treatment strategy, however, is not always easy, and many patients try different medications before they find one that works for them.

Researchers at Stanford University, Lehigh University, the University of Texas at Austin and other institutes explored the potential of machine learning techniques, computational models that can identify patterns in data, for predicting the responses of individual patients to two different antidepressants and to a placebo (i.e., a pill that contains no active chemicals).

X-ray observations reveal hidden disturbances in galaxy cluster Abell 3571

Using the Einstein Probe (EP), astronomers from China and Germany have observed a nearby galaxy cluster known as Abell 3571. Results of the observational campaign, published January 8 on the arXiv pre-print server, provide more insights into the X-ray properties and structure of this cluster.

Galaxy clusters contain up to thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity. They generally form as a result of mergers and grow by accreting sub-clusters. Therefore, they could serve as excellent laboratories for studying galaxy evolution and cosmology.

Abell 3,571, or A3571, is a rich galaxy cluster in the Shapley Supercluster, at a redshift of 0.039. It has a radius of about 5.5 million light years and its mass is estimated to be 910 trillion solar masses. The brightest cluster galaxy (BCG) of Abell 3,571 is MCG–05–33–002, which exhibits a pronounced north-south elongation.

Systematic identification of single transcription factor perturbations that drive cellular and tissue rejuvenation

Significance.

Cellular rejuvenation through transcriptional reprogramming has emerged as exciting approach to counter aging. However, to date, only a few of rejuvenating transcription factor (TF) perturbations have been identified. In this work, we developed a discovery platform to systematically identify single TF perturbations that drive cellular and tissue rejuvenation. Using a classical model of human fibroblast aging, we identified more than a dozen candidate TF perturbations and validated four of them (E2F3, EZH2, STAT3, ZFX) through cellular/molecular phenotyping. At the tissue level, we demonstrate that overexpression of EZH2 alone is sufficient to rejuvenate the liver in aged mice, significantly reducing fibrosis and steatosis, and improving glucose tolerance. Our work expanded the list of candidate rejuvenating TFs for future translation. Abstract.

Cellular rejuvenation through transcriptional reprogramming is an exciting approach to counter aging. Using a fibroblast-based model of human cell aging and Perturb-seq screening, we developed a systematic approach to identify single transcription factor (TF) perturbations that promote rejuvenation without dedifferentiation. Overexpressing E2F3 or EZH2, and repressing STAT3 or ZFX, reversed cellular hallmarks of aging—increasing proliferation, proteostasis, and mitochondrial activity, while decreasing senescence. EZH2 overexpression in vivo rejuvenated livers in aged mice, reversing aging-associated gene expression profiles, decreasing steatosis and fibrosis, and improving glucose tolerance. Mechanistically, single TF perturbations led to convergent downstream transcriptional programs conserved in different aging and rejuvenation models. These results suggest a shared set of molecular requirements for cellular and tissue rejuvenation across species. Sign up for PNAS alerts.

Get alerts for new articles, or get an alert when an article is cited. Cellular rejuvenation through transcriptional reprogramming is an exciting approach to counter aging and bring cells back to a healthy state. In both cell and animal aging models, there has been significant recent progress in rejuvenation research. Systemic factors identified in young blood through models such as heterochronic parabiosis (in which the circulatory systems of a young and aged animal are joined) rejuvenate various peripheral tissues and cognitive function in the brain (1–4). Partial reprogramming at the cellular level with the Yamanaka factors (four stem cell transcription factors) reverses cellular and tissue-level aging markers and can extend lifespan in old mice (5–8). These discoveries support the notion that transcriptional reprogramming is a powerful approach to improving the health of cells and tissues, and one day could be used as an approach for human therapeutics. However, to date, only a couple of rejuvenating transcription factor (TF) perturbations have been identified (9, 10) and most of them require the overexpression of TFs. We hypothesized that there are multiple other TF perturbations which could reset cells and tissues back to a healthier or younger state—rejuvenating them. Identifying complementary rejuvenating strategies is important as it will increase the chance of successful future translation. We developed a high-throughput platform, the Transcriptional Rejuvenation Discovery Platform (TRDP), which combines computational analysis of TF binding motifs and target predictions (Materials and Methods), global gene expression data of old and young cell states, and experimental genetic perturbations to identify which TF can restore overall gene expression and cell phenotypes to a younger, healthier state. We developed TRDP to be applicable to any cell type, and in both aging and disease settings, with the only requirements being baseline comparison of gene expression data comparing the older/diseased state to the younger/healthier state and the ability to perform genetic perturbations. To model aging in vitro as a validation of our approach, we used the canonical aging model of passaged fibroblasts (11, 12). We tested 400 TF perturbations via our screen and validated reversal of key cellular aging hallmarks in late passage human fibroblasts for four top TFs: E2F3, EZH2, STAT3, and ZFX. Moreover, EZH2 overexpression in vivo rejuvenated livers in aged mice—reversing aging-associated global gene expression profiles, significantly reducing steatosis and fibrosis, and improving glucose tolerance. These findings point to a conserved set of molecular requirements for cellular and tissue rejuvenation.

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