Lifeboat Foundation

Water is a vital resource, and clean water is a necessity. Texas A&M University researchers have developed a new technique to monitor one of the key processes of purifying water in real time.

Raw water contains microscopic pathogens that are too small to remove during water and wastewater treatment easily. Chemicals are added to form large clumps called flocs, which are easily filtered out. Flocculation is the process used in water treatment to remove suspended particles from the water.

“Coagulant chemicals need to be added to purify drinking water and remove turbidity (cloudiness) and microbes that are too small to be visible to the naked eye,” said Dr. Kuang-An Chang, professor in the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Texas A&M.

The RNA molecule is commonly recognized as messenger between DNA and protein, but it can also be folded into intricate molecular machines. An example of a naturally occurring RNA machine is the ribosome, that functions as a protein factory in all cells.

Inspired by natural RNA machines, researchers at the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center (iNANO) have developed a method called “RNA origami,” which makes it possible to design artificial RNA nanostructures that fold from a single stand of RNA. The method is inspired by the Japanese paper folding art, origami, where a single piece of paper can be folded into a given shape, such as a paper bird.

The research paper in Nature Nanotechnology describes how the RNA origami technique was used to design RNA nanostructures, that were characterized by cryo–electron microscopy (cryo-EM) at the Danish National cryo-EM Facility EMBION. Cryo-EM is a method for determining the 3D structure of biomolecules, which works by freezing the sample so quickly that water does not have time to form ice crystals, which means that frozen biomolecules can be observed more clearly with the electron microscope.

Influenza viruses are becoming increasingly resilient to medicines. For this reason, new active ingredients are needed. Important findings in this regard have been provided by researchers at the University of Münster: for the virus to proliferate, the polymerase of the influenza A virus has to be modified many times through enzymes in the host cells.

The team of researchers was able to produce a comprehensive map of the types of modification. Medicines directed against the enzymes would be resilient to rapid mutations in the virus, thus offering great potential for the future. The study results have now been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Every year, the influenza season presents a challenge to hospitals. Despite having been vaccinated, older people and patients with health problems run a heightened risk of falling prey to a severe bout of influenza. What is especially insidious about influenza viruses is their ability to mutate rapidly, which makes them increasingly resilient to medicines. For this reason, there is an urgent need for new active ingredients in order to be able to continue providing effective treatment for the illness in future.

New insights on how subunits of the influenza virus polymerase co-evolve to ensure efficient viral RNA replication are provided by a study published October 3 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Nadia Naffakh of the Institut Pasteur, and colleagues. As the authors note, the findings could lead to novel strategies for antiviral drug development.

Because of their yearly recurrence and the occasional emergence of pandemics, influenza viruses represent a worldwide major public health threat. Enhancing fundamental knowledge about the influenza RNA–polymerase, which is an enzyme that consists of three subunits (i.e., a heterotrimer) and ensures transcription and replication of the viral genome, is essential to reach the goal of better prevention and treatment of disease.

In the new study, Naffakh and colleagues gained new insights into viral polymerase function. They showed that the polymerase subunits co-evolve to ensure not only optimal inter-subunit cooperation within the heterotrimer, but also proper levels dimerization—the process by which pairs of heterotrimers attach together—which appears to be essential for efficient viral RNA replication. The findings point to influenza polymerase dimerization as a feature that can restrict genetic reassortment, a major evolutionary mechanism in which influenza viruses swap gene segments, and could become an attractive target for antiviral drug development.

Mushrooms are more closely related to animals than plants, said Matt Kasson, an associate professor of mycology at West Virginia University.

The first hypotheses about the relationship between fungi and animals emerged in the 1950s, he said. Scientists were able to test and confirm these suspicions years later.

By Gareth Worthington is a slim book that crams in lots of classic science fiction ideas. Singularities, first contact, and sentient spacecraft to name but three. Of my recent SF reads, Dark Dweller reminds me both of James Smythe and Gareth Powell

What is Dark Dweller?

The novel opens in a future dystopia. In order to run on clean energy, Earth requires Helium. This is acquired, at no small risk, from Jupiter. The companies that run the operations are fabulously wealthy; the people that do the harvesting, not so much. The 12-year journey to and from Jupiter is hard going. You’re in suspended animation for much of it, but that gap messes up your life. But hey, it’s a job.

Chaotic behavior is typically known from large systems: for example, from weather, from asteroids in space that are simultaneously attracted by several large celestial bodies, or from swinging pendulums that are coupled together. On the atomic scale, however, one does normally not encounter chaos—other effects predominate.

Now, for the first time, scientists at TU Wien have been able to detect clear indications of chaos on the nanometer scale—in chemical reactions on tiny rhodium crystals. The results have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

The chemical reaction studied is actually quite simple: with the help of a precious metal catalyst, oxygen reacts with hydrogen to form water, which is also the basic principle of a fuel cell. The reaction rate depends on external conditions (pressure, temperature). Under certain conditions, however, this reaction shows oscillating behavior, even though the external conditions are constant.

A new form of heterostructure of layered two-dimensional (2D) materials may enable quantum computing to overcome key barriers to its widespread application, according to an international team of researchers.

The researchers were led by a team that is part of the Penn State Center for Nanoscale Science (CNS), one of 19 Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSEC) in the United States funded by the National Science Foundation. Their work was published Feb. 13 in Nature Materials.

A regular computer consists of billions of transistors, known as bits, and are governed by binary code (“0” = off and “1” = on). A quantum bit, also known as a qubit, is based on quantum mechanics and can be both a “0” and a “1” at the same time. This is known as superposition and can enable quantum computers to be more powerful than the regular, classical computers.

Prof. Ding Junfeng and his team from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Science, together with Prof. Zhang Genqiang from the University of Science and Technology of China, have achieved band gap optimization and photoelectric response enhancement of carbon nitride in the nitrogen vacancy graphite phase under high pressure.

Their results were published in the journal Physical Review Applied.

Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C₃N₄) has performed well in many fields, such as high-efficiency photocatalytic hydrogen production and water oxidation. However, the wide band gap of 2.7 eV of the original g-C₃N₄ limits its light absorption in the visible region. High pressure technology is an effective strategy to change the properties while remaining composition. Therefore, band gap engineering of g-C₃N₄ by high-pressure technology can significantly enhance its photocatalytic activity and improve its application potential.