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Blog – Page 1935

Adding what seems like too many protons to a nucleus can increase one measure of its stability.

Understanding the causes of nuclear instability is essential for studies of the astrophysical processes that create new elements. The key determinant of a nucleus’s stability is the ratio of the number of neutrons to the number of protons it contains. For many heavy nuclei, if this ratio is far from 1.5, the nucleus is unstable. But even a nucleus with a ratio well below 1.5 (a “proton-rich” nucleus) can gain stability from another effect—having a “magic” number of protons or neutrons. Now researchers have shown that such stability can increase for a proton-rich nucleus as more protons are added in [1]. The results support the idea of an “island of stability”—potentially stable nuclei having combinations of proton and neutron numbers much different from those that are known.

According to experiments on proton-rich nuclei that contain around 126 neutrons, a magic number, the magic-number-induced stability fades as more protons are added. That’s because the higher proton number eventually renders the nucleus unstable. To see if the same behavior occurs for nuclei that contain around 82 neutrons, another magic number, Huabin Yang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and his colleagues studied osmium-160. This nucleus contains 84 neutrons and 76 protons, more protons than any other 84-neutron nucleus.

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ESA’s Euclid mission was launched in July 2023 and has already sent home test images showing that its instruments are ready to go. Now, the space telescope begins mapping huge swaths of the sky, focusing on an area for 70 minutes at a time. Throughout its 6-year mission, it will complete 40,000 of these ‘pointings’, eventually observing 1.5 billion galaxies in the sky. Astronomers will use this map to measure how dark matter and dark energy have changed over time.

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An innovative new chip uses light for fast, efficient AI computations, promising a leap in processing speeds and privacy.

Penn Engineers have developed a new chip that uses light waves, rather than electricity, to perform the complex math essential to training AI. The chip has the potential to radically accelerate the processing speed of computers while also reducing their energy consumption.

The silicon-photonic (SiPh) chip’s design is the first to bring together Benjamin Franklin Medal Laureate and H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor Nader Engheta’s pioneering research in manipulating materials at the nanoscale to perform mathematical computations using light — the fastest possible means of communication — with the SiPh platform, which uses silicon, the cheap, abundant element used to mass-produce computer chips.

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CRISPR/Cas systems have undergone tremendous advancement in the past decade. These precise genome editing tools have applications ranging from transgenic crop development to gene therapy and beyond. And with their recent development of CRISPR-COPIES, researchers at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) are further improving CRISPR’s versatility and ease of use.

“CRISPR-COPIES is a tool that can quickly identify appropriate chromosomal integration sites for genetic engineering in any organism,” said Huimin Zhao, CABBI Conversion Theme Leader and Steven L. Miller Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE) at the University of Illinois. “It will accelerate our work in the metabolic engineering of non-model yeasts for cost-effective production of chemicals and biofuels.”

Gene editing has revolutionized scientists’ capabilities in understanding and manipulating genetic information. This form of genetic engineering allows researchers to introduce new traits into an organism, such as resistance to pests or the ability to produce a valuable biochemical.

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In a study published in Nature Nanotechnology, scientists from Delft University of Technology present a new technique to identify proteins. Proteins carry out essential functions in our cells, while playing a crucial role in diseases like cancer and COVID-19 infection. The researchers identify proteins by reading out the fingerprint, and comparing the fingerprint to patterns from a database.

Using this new technology, the researchers can identify individual, intact, full-length proteins, preserving all its information. This can shed light on the mechanisms behind many different diseases and allows earlier diagnosis.

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Scientists from medical tech company Fluicell have partnered with clinical R&D firm Cellectricon and the Swedish Karolinska Institutet university to 3D bioprint neural cells into complex patterns.

Using the microfluidic printheads featured on Fluicell’s Biopixlar platform, the researchers were able to accurately arrange rat brain cells within 3D structures, without damaging their viability. The resulting cerebral tissues could be used to model the progress of neurological diseases, or to test the efficacy of related drugs.

“We’ve been using Biopixlar to develop protocols for the printing of different neuronal cells types, and we are very pleased with its performance,” said Mattias Karlsson, CEO of Cellectricon. “This exciting technology has the potential to open completely new avenues for in-vitro modeling of a wide range of central and PNS-related diseases.”

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