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Holographic Dark Energy: A New Model for Understanding the Universe’s Expansion

Following the accelerated expansion discovery of the Universe, scientists introduced dark energy concepts, which faced issues like the cosmological constant problem.

Researchers at IKBFU developed a holographic dark energy model based on quantum gravity, which views the Universe as a hologram. This model, initially unstable, was refined to treat dark energy as perturbations, stabilizing it. It is now being tested against observational data for accuracy.

Discovery of Accelerated Universe Expansion.

Glow in the dark gemstones show the jewellery industry that laboratory-grown crystals can shine bright

For the last three years,…

A UWE Bristol researcher hopes to revolutionise the jewellery industry and its supply chains with the creation of unique gemstone and jewellery designs with ground-breaking properties — including the world’s first single stone glow-in-the-dark manmade crystal.

For the last three years, award-winning jewellery designer Sofie Boons, who’s a Crafts Council Research Fellow at the university’s Centre for Print Research (CFPR), has been undertaking tests on the viability, limitations and use of innovative and experimentally grown crystals in the production of contemporary jewellery.

Working in collaboration with Swiss company BREVALOR Sarl and using their new material ‘BRG’, Sofie has successfully facetted a single stone out of the material – offering jewellery designers a crystal which is not only brilliant when seen in daylight, but illuminates when seen in the dark.

Chronic stimulation desensitizes β2‐adrenergic receptor responses in natural killer cells

Adrenergic receptors (ARs) are preferentially expressed by innate lymphocytes such as natural killer (NK) cells.

Here, we study the effect of epinephrine-mediated stimulation of the β2-adrenergic receptor (β2AR) on the function of human NK cells.

β2-Adrenergic receptor stimulation inhibits NK cell activation. (A) β2-Adrenergic receptor expression analysis of PBMCs by flow cytometry (n = 8). Subsets were assigned according to the following markers: B cells (CD19+), NK cells (CD56+, CD3−), CD56 dim (CD56dim, CD3−), CD56 bright (CD56bright, CD3−), NK-T cells (CD56+, CD3+), T cells (CD3+), and monocytes (FSC/SSC). (B) Representative β2-adrenergic receptor (β2AR) expression histograms of freshly isolated or cultured NK cells. © IFNγ secretion of fresh NK cells (top) or cultured NK cells (bottom). NK cells were pretreated with epinephrine ± propranolol (each 1 µM) and stimulated for 5 h by plate-bound antibodies as indicated. Supernatant was analyzed by IFNγ ELISA (mean, n = 3). (D) Degranulation of fresh NK cells (top) or cultured NK cells (bottom) was analyzed by CD107a expression. NK cells were pretreated and stimulated (3 h) like in ©, (mean, n = 3). Statistical analysis in © and (D) was performed using two-way ANOVA test, **** p < 0.0001; *** p < 0.001; ** p < 0.01; control set to 100%).