This Review summarizes current evidence regarding risk factors, diagnosis, and treatment of testicular cancer, particularly germ cell tumors, in adults and adolescents.
— Kreiner, et al.
In this article, the authors review the current understanding of obesity-related kidney disease and focus on the intertwined cardiometabolic abnormalities, which, in addition to obesity and diabetes, include risk factors such as hypertension, dyslipidemia, and systemic inflammation.
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Obesity is a serious chronic disease and an independent risk factor for the new onset and progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD). CKD prevalence is expected to increase, at least partly due to the continuous rise in the prevalence of obesity. The concept of obesity-related kidney disease (OKD) has been introduced to describe the still incompletely understood interplay between obesity, CKD, and other cardiometabolic conditions, including risk factors for OKD and cardiovascular disease, such as diabetes and hypertension. Current therapeutics target obesity and CKD individually. Non-pharmacological interventions play a major part, but the efficacy and clinical applicability of lifestyle changes and metabolic surgery remain debatable, because the strategies do not benefit everyone, and it remains questionable whether lifestyle changes can be sustained in the long term.
When we observe distant celestial objects, there is a possible catch: Is that star I am observing really as reddish as it appears? Or does the star merely look reddish, since its light has had to travel through a cloud of cosmic dust to reach our telescope?
For accurate observations, astronomers need to know the amount of dust between them and their distant targets. Not only does dust make objects appear reddish (“reddening”), it also makes them appear fainter than they really are (“extinction”). It’s like we are looking out into space through a dirty window. Now, two astronomers have published a 3D map that documents the properties of dust all around us in unprecedented detail, helping us make sense of what we observe.
The research is published in the journal Science.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers have developed a CRISPR-based diagnostic tool capable of detecting bloodstream infections in minutes without the need for nucleic acid amplification. The CRISPR-Cascade assay achieves attomolar sensitivity and incorporates an OR-gated logic function to identify multiple pathogens simultaneously through DNA from pathogens associated with bloodstream infections.
Bloodstream infections require rapid identification to prevent complications, yet standard diagnostic methods rely on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and isothermal amplification techniques that have built-in processing times. CRISPR-based detection tools such as SHERLOCK and DETECTR have improved specificity but continue to depend on amplification, limiting their turnaround time and practicality in clinical settings.
In the study, “Amplification-free, OR-gated CRISPR-Cascade reaction for pathogen detection in blood samples,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers conducted a laboratory-based investigation to determine whether a CRISPR-driven feedback loop could detect pathogenic DNA at ultra-low concentrations without amplification.
UCLA doctoral student Yilin Wong noticed that some tiny dots had appeared on one of her samples, which had been accidentally left out overnight. The layered sample consisted of a germanium wafer topped with evaporated metal films in contact with a drop of water. On a whim, she looked at the dots under a microscope and couldn’t believe her eyes. Beautiful spiral patterns had been etched into the germanium surface by a chemical reaction.
Wong’s curiosity led her on a journey to discover what no one had seen before: Hundreds of near-identical spiral patterns can spontaneously form on a centimeter square germanium chip. Moreover, small changes in experiment parameters, such as the thickness of the metal film, generated different patterns, including Archimedean spirals, logarithmic spirals, lotus flower shapes, radially symmetric patterns and more.
The discovery, published in Physical Review Materials, occurred fortuitously when Wong made a small mistake while attempting to bind DNA to the metal film.
Researchers have advanced a decades-old challenge in the field of organic semiconductors, opening new possibilities for the future of electronics. The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge and the Eindhoven University of Technology, have created an organic semiconductor that forces electrons to move in a spiral pattern, which could improve the efficiency of OLED displays in television and smartphone screens, or power next-generation computing technologies such as spintronics and quantum computing.
The semiconductor they developed emits circularly polarized light—meaning the light carries information about the ‘handedness’ of electrons. The internal structure of most inorganic semiconductors, like silicon, is symmetrical, meaning electrons move through them without any preferred direction.
However, in nature, molecules often have a chiral (left-or right-handed) structure: like human hands, chiral molecules are mirror images of one another. Chirality plays an important role in biological processes like DNA formation, but it is a difficult phenomenon to harness and control in electronics.
Physics has a problem—their key models of quantum theory and the theory of relativity do not fit together. Now, Dr. Wolfgang Wieland from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) is developing an approach that reconciles the two theories in a problematic area. A recently published paper that was published in Classical and Quantum Gravity gives hope that this could work.
There are four fundamental forces in the universe: gravity, electromagnetism, the weak and the strong interaction. While general relativity describes gravity, quantum theory deals with the other three forces. This creates a problem: “As early as the 1930s, it was recognized that the two theories do not fit together,” explains Dr. Wieland, who leads a Heisenberg project on this topic at the Chair of Quantum Gravity at FAU.
Usually, this has no major consequences: general relativity is mainly used to calculate the behavior of large masses in the universe. Quantum theory, on the other hand, focuses on the world of the very smallest things. However, to better understand key phenomena such as the Big Bang or black holes, a model is needed that unites both concepts—quantum gravity. General relativity states that all matter in a black hole is united at one tiny point. It is therefore important to understand how gigantic gravitational forces act in the microcosm, although this is where the laws of quantum mechanics actually apply.
Instantly turning a material from opaque to transparent, or from a conductor to an insulator, is no longer the stuff of science fiction. For several years now, scientists have been using lasers to control the properties of matter at extremely fast rates: during one optical cycle of a light wave. But because these changes occur on the timescale of attoseconds—one-billionth of one-billionth of a second—figuring out how they unfold is extremely difficult.
In a new study published in Nature Photonics, Prof. Nirit Dudovich’s team from the Weizmann Institute of Science presents an innovative method of tracking these rapid material changes. This advance in attosecond science, the study of the fastest phenomena in nature, could have a wide variety of future applications, paving the way for ultrafast communications and computing.
If you have ever seen a rainbow, you’ve seen a practical demonstration of how light slows down and is refracted when it passes through matter, in this case, raindrops. Sunlight is composed of a broad spectrum of colors, each of which experiences a different delay as it passes through the droplets. These differences cause the colors to become separated, producing a radiant rainbow.
Using the Multi-frequency High Field Electron Spin Resonance Spectrometer at the Steady-State High Magnetic Field Facility (SHMFF), researchers observed the first-ever Bose–Einstein condensation (BEC) of a two-magnon bound state in a magnetic material. The facility is in the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and includes a research team from Southern University of Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, Renmin University of China, and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization.
This discovery was published in Nature Materials.
BEC is a fascinating quantum phenomenon where particles, typically bosons, condense into a single collective state at ultra-low temperatures. While this effect has been seen in cold atoms, it had never been observed in a magnetic system until now.
Researchers from Tsinghua University, the Beijing Institute of Technology, the University of Wollongong (Australia), and the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have achieved an ultrahigh electrostrain of 1.9% in (K, Na)NbO3 (KNN) lead-free piezoelectric ceramics.
The breakthrough, facilitated by the electron spin resonance (ESR) spectrometer at the Steady High Magnetic Field Experimental Facility (SHMFF), marks a significant advancement in piezoelectric material performance.
The findings are published in Nature Materials.