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Vanderbilt researchers have developed a new nanoparticle that can more get drugs inside cells to boost the immune system and fight diseases such as cancer.

The research is led by John Wilson, associate professor of chemical and and , as well as a corresponding author on the paper about the research that was recently published in the journal Nanoscale.

Wilson, who is Principal Investigator of the Immunoengineering Lab at Vanderbilt and a Chancellor Faculty Fellow, and his team created a polymeric nanoparticle that can penetrate cell membranes and get drugs into the cytosol—or liquid—inside cells.

We now have a standard model of cosmology, the current version of the Big Bang theory. Although it has proved very successful, its consequences are staggering. We know only 5% of the content of the universe, which is normal matter. The remaining 95% is made up of two exotic entities that have never been produced in the laboratory and whose physical nature is still unknown.

These are , which accounts for 25% of the content of the cosmos, and dark energy, which contributes 70%. In the standard model of cosmology, dark energy is the energy of empty space, and its density remains constant throughout the .

According to this theory, propagated in the very early universe. In those early stages, the universe had an enormous temperature and density. The pressure in this initial gas tried to push the particles that formed it apart, while gravity tried to pull them together, and the competition between the two forces created sound waves that propagated from the beginning of the universe until about 400,000 years after the Big Bang.

Gene regulation in animals depends chiefly on enhancers, yet the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. This Review discusses enhancer–promoter interactions and transcription activation, focusing on how enhancer–promoter selectivity is achieved and on recent technical advances that may provide new insights into transcription activation.

The miniaturization of spectrometers to a submillimeter-scale footprint opens opportunities for applications in hyperspectral imaging and lab-on-a-chip systems. Here, the authors report a high-performance single-pixel photodetector spectrometer based on the III-V semiconductor p-graded-n junction, featuring a voltage-tunable optical response.

Whether matter could engender cogitation was a very divisive topic of early modern reflection. In his polemic with Descartes, Gassendi appeared to endorse a ‘materialistic’ understanding of cognition. Two objections by Gassendi were particularly relevant to this claim: he challenged the distinction between imagination and intellect, and argued that animal and human cognition only differed quantitatively. Since the intellect was traditionally seen as immaterial, while the imagination was understood as a bodily faculty, these claims appeared to entail a naturalized image of the human soul, and the potential that matter could generate cogitation. Here, I argue that Gassendi’s claims were not only a result of his polemical vein against Descartes; rather, they were part of an intellectual agenda that Gassendi had been pursuing since the early 1620s. I then analyse Gassendi’s change of perspective in Animadversiones (1649) and Syntagma philosophicum (1658), where Gassendi presented arguments for the immateriality of the intellect and its true distinction from the imagination. I argue that Gassendi’s early objections against Descartes provided him with material to revise his own position on these subjects. I then show some of the implications of such a change of heart. Lastly, I address some hypotheses of its cause.

Whether matter in general, and vital matter in particular, could engender cogitation was a much-discussed and divisive topic of early modern reflection. Crucial to this debate was the issue of the distinction between animal and human thinking faculties. Generally, both men and animals were believed to possess imagination or phantasy—a faculty that was seen as depending on the body. Conversely, only men could perform higher thinking by virtue of their possession of the intellect; in turn, this was commonly identified with an operation of the immaterial soul. However, early modern authors sometimes downplayed these distinctions, for instance by presenting a purely materialistic explanation of the soul and of its functions. In doing so, they brought attention, whether explicitly or implicitly, to the ability of vital matter to generate cognition.