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Visualizing cells after editing specific genes can help scientists learn new details about the function of those genes. But using microscopy to do this at scale can be challenging, particularly when studying thousands of genes at a time.

Now, researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, along with collaborators at Calico Life Sciences, have developed an approach that brings the power of microscopy imaging to genome-scale CRISPR screens in a scalable way.

PERISCOPE—which stands for perturbation effect readout in situ via single-cell optical phenotyping—combines two technologies developed by Broad scientists: Cell Painting, which can capture images and key measures of subcellular compartments at scale, and Optical Pooled Screening, which “barcodes” cells and uses CRISPR to systematically turn off individual genes to study their function in those cells.

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Through his research, the physician believes there are clues hinting at our reality being a simulation, an has even suggested that mutations are not random — which would debunk the theory of evolution.

The abstract of Vopson’s study read: The simulation hypothesis is a philosophical theory, in which the entire universe and our objective reality are just simulated constructs.

Despite the lack of evidence, this idea is gaining traction in scientific circles as well as in the entertainment industry.

Continue reading “Physicist believes he’s found clues we’re living in a simulation after studying virus” | >

📝 — Kim, et al.

The goal of the present study was to identify potential pivotal molecules with implications for novel and efficacious treatment options for pancreatic cancer, a disease with limited treatments available and notorious for its aggressive nature.

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Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive forms of cancer and is the seventh leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) accounts for over 90% of pancreatic cancers. Most pancreatic cancers are recalcitrant to radiation, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy, highlighting the urgent need for novel treatment options for this deadly disease. To this end, we screened a library of kinase inhibitors in the PDAC cell lines PANC-1 and BxPC-3 and identified two highly potent molecules: Aurora kinase inhibitor AT 9,283 (AT) and EGFR kinase inhibitor WZ 3,146 (WZ). Both AT and WZ exhibited a dose-dependent inhibition of viability in both cell lines.

Continue reading “Multifaceted Effects of Kinase Inhibitors on Pancreatic Cancer Cells Reveals Pivotal Entities with Therapeutic Implications” | >

The first trial of an Australian-developed technology has detected mysterious objects by sifting through signals from space like sand on a beach.

Astronomers and engineers at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, developed the specialized system, CRACO, for their ASKAP radio telescope to rapidly detect mysterious and other space phenomena.

The new has now been put to the test by researchers led by the Curtin University node of the International Center for Radio Astronomy (ICRAR) in Western Australia.

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Chinese astronomers have investigated quasar candidates from the DESI Legacy Surveys (DESI-LS) photometry catalog. As a result, they detected 19 strongly-lensed, dual and projected quasars. The finding was reported in a paper published Jan. 15 on the arXiv pre-print server.

Quasars, or quasi-stellar objects (QSOs), are (AGN) of very high luminosity powered by (SMBHs), emitting electromagnetic radiation observable in radio, infrared, visible, ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths. They are among the brightest and most distant objects in the known universe, and serve as fundamental tools for numerous studies in astrophysics as well as cosmology.

Two observed with a small separation can be, in some cases, lensed quasars—where the light from a single quasar is bent, resulting in two images of the same quasar. More often, such objects are dual quasars, which means that they are at similar redshift and physically interacting. However, the most common scenario is projected quasars—coincidentally appearing very close to each other along the line of sight, but actually at different redshifts.

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Interactions between atoms and light rule the behavior of our physical world, but at the same time, can be extremely complex. Understanding and harnessing them is one of the major challenges for the development of quantum technologies.

To understand light-mediated interactions between atoms, it is common to isolate only two atomic levels, a ground level and an excited level, and view the atoms as tiny antennas with two poles that talk to each other. So, when an atom in a crystal lattice array is prepared in the , it relaxes back to the after some time by emitting a photon.

The emitted photon does not necessarily escape from the array, but instead, it can become absorbed by another ground-state atom, which then gets excited. Such an exchange of excitations, also referred to as dipole-dipole interaction, is key for making atoms interact, even when they cannot bump into each other.

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Yale physicists have discovered a sophisticated, previously unknown set of “modes” within the human ear that put important constraints on how the ear amplifies faint sounds, tolerates noisy blasts, and discerns a stunning range of sound frequencies in between.

By applying existing mathematical models to a generic mock-up of a cochlea—a spiral-shaped organ in the inner ear—the researchers have revealed a new layer of cochlear complexity. The findings, which appear in PRX Life, offer fresh insight into the remarkable capacity and accuracy of human hearing.

“We set out to understand how the ear can tune itself to detect faint sounds without becoming unstable and responding even in the absence of external sounds,” said Benjamin Machta, an assistant professor of physics in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Science and co-senior author of the new study. “But in getting to the bottom of this we stumbled onto a new set of low frequency mechanical modes that the cochlea likely supports.”

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Southwest Research Institute partnered with the Carnegie Institution for Science to perform laboratory experiments to better understand how Saturn’s moon Titan can maintain its unique nitrogen-rich atmosphere. Titan is the second largest moon in our solar system and the only one that has a significant atmosphere.

“While just 40% the diameter of the Earth, Titan has an atmosphere 1.5 times as dense as the Earth’s, even with a lower gravity,” said SwRI’s Dr. Kelly Miller, lead author of a paper about these findings published in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. “Walking on the surface of Titan would feel a bit like scuba diving.”

The origin, age, and evolution of this atmosphere, which is roughly 95% nitrogen and 5% methane, has puzzled scientists since it was discovered in 1944.

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