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Blog – Page 5

Research led by the Chiba Cancer Center Research Institute in Japan has discovered a surprising way cancer evades the immune system. It essentially hacks the immune cells, transferring its own faulty mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) into the T-cells meant to attack it.

This sneaky move weakens the immune cells, making them less effective at stopping the tumor. The findings could help explain why some cancer treatments, like immunotherapy, are effective for some patients but not others.

In the study, “Immune evasion through mitochondrial transfer in the ,” published in Nature, the multi-group collaboration looked at how cancer cells interact with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, a type of T-cell that typically fights tumors. The research is also featured in a News and Views piece.

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Anxiety disorders, characterized by an excessive apprehension about real or perceived threats and dysfunctional behaviors aimed at avoiding these threats, are among the most common mental health conditions. Estimates suggest that around 4% of the world’s population, so a few hundred million people, experiences these disorders, which can have debilitating effects, significantly lowering their quality of life.

While there are currently various treatment options for , many existing medications do not prove effective for all individuals. Some neuroscientists worldwide have thus been trying to identify new promising neuro-biological targets for relieving anxiety and anxious behaviors.

Recent studies uncovered an association between anxiety disorders and the impaired functioning of the (BBB), a protective layer comprised of that regulates the flow of substances between the bloodstream and the brain. However, the precise neural mechanisms underpinning the link between BBB dysfunction and anxiety remain elusive.

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A team of international researchers has developed an innovative approach to uncover the secrets of dark matter. In a collaboration between the University of Queensland, Australia, and Germany’s metrology institute (Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, PTB), the team used data from atomic clocks and cavity-stabilized lasers located far apart in space and time to search for forms of dark matter that would have been invisible in previous searches.

This technique will allow the researchers to detect signals from dark matter models that interact universally with all atoms, an achievement that has eluded traditional experiments.

The team analyzed data from a European network of ultra-stable lasers connected by fiber (previously reported in a 2022 article), and from the aboard GPS satellites. By comparing across vast distances, the analysis became sensitive to subtle effects of oscillating dark matter fields that would otherwise cancel out in conventional setups.

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An international team of scientists have discovered that soap could be important to helping our understanding of complex systems in the human body, such as lungs, and improving therapies for conditions such as respiratory distress syndrome.

In the last few years, researchers have found that surfactants—the molecules found in soap—can naturally find its way through a maze using the shortest path, with little penetration into dead ends.

The discovery may sound a little peculiar, but the finding mimics transport processes in complex branching networks found in the human body, such as the lungs. It may hold the key to understanding how liquids, such as certain drugs, travel through these networks, which could help medical scientists find new and more effective therapies.

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Computers also make mistakes. These are usually suppressed by technical measures or detected and corrected during the calculation. In quantum computers, this involves some effort, as no copy can be made of an unknown quantum state. This means that the state cannot be saved multiple times during the calculation and an error cannot be detected by comparing these copies.

Inspired by classical computer science, has developed a different method in which the is distributed across several entangled and stored redundantly in this way. How this is done is defined in so-called correction codes.

In 2022, a team led by Thomas Monz from the Department of Experimental Physics at the University of Innsbruck and Markus Müller from the Department of Quantum Information at RWTH Aachen and the Peter Grünberg Institute at Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany implemented a universal set of operations on fault-tolerant quantum bits, demonstrating how an algorithm can be programmed on a quantum computer so that errors can be corrected efficiently.

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A re-examination of the 2015 Bonin Islands earthquake disproved earlier claims of a record-breaking deep aftershock in the lower mantle, identifying instead 14 aftershocks linked to a metastable olivine wedge in the upper mantle. This finding advances understanding of deep earthquake mechanisms and Earth’s interior dynamics.

A study published in The Seismic Record challenges previous reports about the May 2015 magnitude 7.9 Bonin Islands earthquake sequence. The main earthquake, which ruptured deep near the base of the upper mantle, was not followed by an aftershock extending into the lower mantle to record-breaking depths, as earlier claims suggested.

Hao Zhang of the University of Southern California and colleagues re-analyzed the aftershock sequence and found no evidence of a 751-kilometer-deep aftershock, previously described as the deepest earthquake ever recorded.

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A team of physicists has introduced an innovative error-correction method for quantum computers, enabling them to switch error correction codes on-the-fly to manage complex computations more effectively and with fewer errors.

Error Correction in Quantum Computing

Computers can make mistakes, but in classical systems, these errors are usually detected and corrected using various technical methods. Quantum computers, however, face a unique challenge — quantum states cannot be copied. This limitation means that errors cannot be identified by comparing multiple saved copies, as is done in classical computing.

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Mice, like humans, compete for territory and mates, becoming more confident in their fighting abilities with each victory. Early on, a brain chemical called dopamine.

Dopamine is a crucial neurotransmitter involved in many important functions in the brain, particularly those related to pleasure, reward, motivation, and motor control. It plays a central role in the brain’s reward system, where it helps reinforce rewarding behaviors by increasing pleasure and satisfaction, making it critical for habit formation and addictive behaviors. Dopamine is also vital for regulating movement, and deficiencies in dopamine production are linked to neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. Additionally, dopamine influences various other functions, including mood regulation, learning, and attention, making it a key focus in studies of both mental health and neurodegenerative diseases.

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It’s time to recalibrate the navigation systems on ships, airplanes, as the position of the magnetic North Pole is officially being changed, continuing its shift away from Canada and towards Siberia.

Experts from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the British Geological Survey (BGS) have joined forces – as they do every five years – to produce a new, more accurate World Magnetic Model (WMM).

While the geographical North Pole stays fixed in place (at the very summit of the Earth’s rotational axis), the WMM pinpoints the magnetic North Pole – where Earth’s magnetic field points straight down, a perfectly vertical magnetic field.

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