Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Humans can do plenty, but plants have an ability we don’t: they make energy straight from sunlight, a superpower called photosynthesis. Yet new research shows that scientists are closing that gap.

Osaka Metropolitan University researchers have revealed the 3D structure of an artificial photosynthetic antenna protein complex, known as light-harvesting complex II (LHCII), and demonstrated that the artificial LHCII closely mirrors its natural counterpart. This discovery marks a significant step forward in understanding how plants harvest and manage , paving the way for future innovations in artificial .

The researchers, led by Associate Professor Ritsuko Fujii and then graduate student Soichiro Seki of the Graduate School of Science and Research Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, had their study published in PNAS Nexus.

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Mankind is facing a central challenge: It must manage the transition to a sustainable and carbon dioxide-neutral energy economy.

Hydrogen is considered a promising alternative to fossil fuels. It can be produced from water using electricity. If the electricity comes from , it is called green . But it would be even more sustainable if hydrogen could be produced directly with the energy of sunlight.

In nature, light-driven water splitting takes place during photosynthesis in plants. Plants use a complex molecular apparatus for this, the so-called photosystem II. Mimicking its active center is a promising strategy for realizing the sustainable production of hydrogen. A team led by Professor Frank Würthner at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and the Center for Nanosystems Chemistry at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) is working on this.

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Quantum systems hold the promise of tackling some complex problems faster and more efficiently than classical computers. Despite their potential, so far only a limited number of studies have conclusively demonstrated that quantum computers can outperform classical computers on specific tasks. Most of these studies focused on tasks that involve advanced computations, simulations or optimization, which can be difficult for non-experts to grasp.

Researchers at the University of Oxford and the University of Sevilla recently demonstrated a over a classical scenario on a cooperation task called the odd-cycle game. Their paper, published in Physical Review Letters, shows that a team with can win this game more often than a team without.

“There is a lot of talk about quantum advantage and how will revolutionize entire industries, but if you look closely, in many cases, there is no mathematical proof that classical methods definitely cannot find solutions as efficiently as quantum algorithms,” Peter Drmota, first author of the paper, told Phys.org.

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Twenty-four stroke patients have already used the complete system, consisting of an exoskeleton for the arm and shoulder in combination with FES as part of the ReHyb research project. Half of them were patients at the Schön Klinik Bad Aibling Harthausen, which is leading the study. The researchers also used a computer game that automatically adapts to the individual player’s capabilities. It trains them to grip and move their arms shortly after a stroke by reacting to colored balls flying toward them at varying speeds on a screen. The task is to catch the balls and match them with color-coded boxes.

At the center of TUM Professor Sandra Hirche’s setup is a digital twin that records the individual requirements of each patient and places them in a control loop. Among other things, the researchers have to determine how well each patient can move their arm and hand. In the event of a stroke, for example, paralysis can be caused by damage to the motor area in the brain responsible for movement. However, it is impossible to predict how severely the signals transmitted from the brain to the muscles in the forearm will be impaired after the stroke. “Individual muscle strands in the forearm can be stimulated to the right extent for hands and fingers to move,” says Prof. Hirche, who holds the Chair of Information-Oriented Control at TUM. In addition to information on muscle activity in the forearm, the researchers need to know how strongly the muscles should be stimulated in conjunction with the exoskeleton assistance.

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Growing functional human organs outside the body is a long-sought “holy grail” of organ transplantation medicine that remains elusive. New research from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering brings that quest one big step closer to completion.

A team of scientists created a new method to 3D print vascular networks that consist of interconnected blood vessels possessing a distinct “shell” of smooth muscle cells and endothelial cells surrounding a hollow “core” through which fluid can flow, embedded inside a human cardiac tissue. This vascular architecture closely mimics that of naturally occurring blood vessels and represents significant progress toward being able to manufacture implantable human organs. The achievement is published in Advanced Materials .

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Multiple tumour-agnostic kinase inhibitors have been approved that are clinically effective regardless of tumour location. This Review describes the origins of tumour-agnostic drug development, focusing on small-molecule inhibitors that target kinase pathway aberrations, and discusses the challenges in developing tissue-agnostic agents.

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