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Blog – Page 23

Fifty years since its discovery, scientists have finally worked out how a molecular machine found in mitochondria allows us to make the fuel we need from sugars, a process vital to all life on Earth.

Scientists at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge, have worked out the structure of this machine and shown how it operates like the lock on a canal to transport pyruvate—a molecule generated in the body from the breakdown of sugars—into our mitochondria.

Known as the mitochondrial pyruvate carrier, this was first proposed to exist in 1971, but it has taken until now for scientists to visualize its structure at the using cryo-electron microscopy, a technique used to magnify an image of an object to around 165,000 times its real size. Details are published in Science Advances.

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Red roses, the symbol of love, were likely yellow in the past, indicates a large genomic analysis by researchers from Beijing Forestry University, China. Roses of all colors, including white, red, pink, and peach, belong to the genus Rosa, which is a member of the Rosaceae family.

Reconstructing the ancestral traits through genomic analysis revealed that all the roads trace back to a —a single-petal flower with yellow color and seven leaflets.

The findings are published in Nature Plants.

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Compared to other animal species, humans can plan and execute highly sophisticated motor tasks, including the ability to write complex characters using their hands. While many past studies have tried to better understand the neural underpinnings of handwriting and other complex human motor capabilities, these have not yet been fully elucidated.

Past studies showed that the motor cortex plays a crucial role in the human ability to translate intentions into actions. Yet the processes via which it enables the execution of precise and sequential movements, such as those associated with handwriting, are poorly understood.

Researchers at Zhejiang University in China recently carried out a study aimed at further exploring the role of the human motor cortex in the encoding of intricate handwriting, such as Chinese characters. Their findings, published in Nature Human Behavior, suggest that this encoding unfolds via a sequence of stable neural states.

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Colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) are tiny semiconductor particles that are just a few nanometers in size, which are synthesized in a liquid solution (i.e., colloid). These single-crystal particles, created by breaking down bulk materials via chemical and physical processes, have proved to be promising for the development of photovoltaic (PV) technologies.

Quantum dot-based PVs could have various advantages, including a tunable bandgap, greater flexibility and solution processing. However, quantum dot-based developed so far have been found to have significant limitations, including lower efficiencies than conventional silicon-based cells and high manufacturing costs, due to the expensive processes required to synthesize conductive CQD films.

Researchers at Soochow University in China, the University of Electro-Communications in Japan and other institutes worldwide recently introduced a new method that could potentially help to improve the efficiencies of quantum-dot based photovoltaics, while also lowering their manufacturing costs. Their proposed approach, outlined in a paper published in Nature Energy, entails the engineering of lead sulfide (PbS) CQD inks used to print films for solar cells.

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AI models often rely on “spurious correlations,” making decisions based on unimportant and potentially misleading information. Researchers have now discovered these learned spurious correlations can be traced to a very small subset of the training data and have demonstrated a technique that overcomes the problem. The work has been published on the arXiv preprint server.

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At the Seismological Society of America’s Annual Meeting, researchers posed a seemingly simple question: how wide are faults?

Using data compiled from single earthquakes across the world, Christie Rowe of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno and Alex Hatem of the U.S. Geological Survey sought a more comprehensive answer, one that considers both surface and deep traces of seismic rupture and creep.

By compiling observations of recent earthquakes, Rowe and Hatem conclude that from Turkey to California, it’s not just a single strand of a but quite often a branching network of fault strands involved in an , making the fault zone hundreds of meters wide.

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An international research team led by Mayukh Kumar Ray, Mingxuan Fu, and Satoru Nakatsuji from the University of Tokyo, along with Collin Broholm from Johns Hopkins University, has discovered the anomalous Hall effect in a collinear antiferromagnet.

More strikingly, the anomalous Hall effect emerges from a non-Fermi liquid state, in which electrons do not interact according to conventional models. The discovery not only challenges the textbook framework for interpreting the anomalous Hall effect but also widens the range of antiferromagnets useful for information technologies.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.

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Researchers have uncovered the 3D structure of RBP3, a key protein in vision, revealing how it transports retinoids and fatty acids and how its dysfunction may lead to retinal diseases. Proteins play a critical role in the human body, acting as essential structural and functional components of ce

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A study by Baylor University and Dell Medical School reveals a surprising link between technology use and a reduced risk of dementia in older adults. As the first generation to grow up with digital technology enters an age where dementia risk becomes more relevant, researchers are asking an impor

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NASA and partners are building the first quantum gravity sensor for space, a breakthrough instrument that uses ultra-cold atoms to detect tiny shifts in Earth’s gravity from orbit. With potential applications ranging from mapping hidden aquifers to exploring distant planets, this compact, highly

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