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Blog – Page 4221

Water and wood may one day be all that’s needed to provide electrical power for a household. At a time when energy is a critical issue for many millions of people worldwide, scientists in Sweden have managed to generate electricity with the help of these two renewable resources.

The method reported by researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology focuses on what naturally happens after is placed in water, and the water evaporates. Transpiration, a process in which water moves through a plant, is constantly occurring in nature. And it produces small amounts of , known as bioelectricity.

Yuanyuan Li, assistant professor at the Division of Biocomposites at KTH, says that with some nanoengineering of wood—and pH tuning—small but promising amounts of electricity can now be harvested.

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A simple alloy has claimed the crown for toughest material ever recorded. In a new study, a team led by researchers at Berkeley Lab ran the alloy through a series of tests and discovered not only its incredible toughness, but high strength and ductility that actually improve in colder temperatures, unlike most known materials.

The alloy in question contains chromium, cobalt and nickel (CrCoNi), and it belongs to a class of metals called high entropy alloys (HEAs). Most alloys are made up of one dominant element with smaller amounts of others added in, but HEAs contain equal amounts of each element. This can give them some impressive properties, such as high strength-to-weight ratios, an elastic modulus that rises with the temperature, or ultra strength and ductility.

In previous work, the researchers found that CrCoNi showed high strength and toughness at low temperatures of around −196 °C (−321 °F). For the new study, the team investigated how it would hold up at even colder temperatures of −253 °C (−424 °F), at which helium exists as a liquid. And sure enough, its toughness hit new heights in preventing cracks propagating.

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Earlier research by Dr. Li-Huei Tsai of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and others found that APOE4 might raise Alzheimer’s risk by altering lipid metabolism in certain brain cells. But the underlying details of the process remained unclear.

To build on these findings, the team conducted a multi-pronged study that assessed gene activity of all major cell types in post-mortem human brain tissue from 32 men and women who had one, two, or no copies of the APOE4 gene. Results were published in Nature on November 24, 2022.

The researchers found that APOE4 affected gene expression across all measured cell types. The team then took a closer look at genes related to cholesterol and other lipids. Cholesterol-manufacturing genes were overly expressed, and cholesterol-transporting genes dysregulated, in brain cells called oligodendrocytes with the APOE4 gene. Oligodendrocytes are found in the brain and spinal cord. They make and maintain a fatty substance called myelin that surrounds and insulates long nerve fibers. The abnormalities were more extreme in oligodendrocytes with two copies of APOE4 rather than one.

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The risk of complications in assisted reproduction is higher when two embryos are transferred, instead of one embryo. This has been shown in a study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, which included all births in Sweden 2007–2017.

Fertility treatments using assisted reproduction in Sweden are among the safest in the world regarding risks for the mother and children. A national recommendation to only transfer one embryo in assisted reproduction was introduced in 2003, aiming to decrease the risk of multiple pregnancies and their related complications during and delivery.

In certain cases, two are still transferred in order to increase the chance of pregnancy while the risk of multiple pregnancy remains low. Thus, many of the treatments with double embryo transfer result in single pregnancies. Many patients wish to have two embryos transferred to increase their chances of pregnancy, but there is a lack of data on potential risks with transferring two embryos when the treatment results in the of a single child.

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Cybercrime marketplaces are increasingly selling stolen corporate email addresses for as low as $2 to fill a growing demand by hackers who use them for business email compromise and phishing attacks or initial access to networks.

Analysts at Israeli cyber-intelligence firm KELA have closely followed this trend, reporting at least 225,000 email accounts for sale on underground markets.

The largest webmail shops are Xleet and Lufix, claiming to offer access to over 100k breached corporate email accounts, with prices ranging between $2 and $30, if not more, for highly-desirable organizations.

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