The joint U.S.-European Solar Orbiter spacecraft had an appointment with Venus this morning, the first in a series of planetary flybys to hone the probe’s orbit on its journey to the sun.
People born without a corpus callosum do not have a bridge between the two cerebral hemispheres. Neuroscientists from UNIGE have shown how the brain manages to adapt.
One in 4000 people is born without a corpus callosum, a brain structure consisting of neural fibers that are used to transfer information from one hemisphere to the other. A quarter of these individuals do not have any symptoms, while the remainder either have low intelligence quotients or suffer from severe cognitive disorders. In a study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, neuroscientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) discovered that when the neuronal fibers that act as a bridge between the hemispheres are missing, the brain reorganizes itself and creates an impressive number of connections inside each hemisphere. These create more intra-hemispheric connections than in a healthy brain, indicating that plasticity mechanisms are involved. It is thought that these mechanisms enable the brain to compensate for the losses by recreating connections to other brain regions using alternative neural pathways.
The corpus callosum develops in utero between the tenth and twentieth week of gestation. Agenesis of the corpus callosum is a congenital brain malformation in which this brain structure fails to develop, resulting in one out of 4000 babies born without a corpus callosum. When it is missing, nothing replaces this structure measuring about ten centimeters, with the exception of cerebrospinal fluid. This means that the information transmitted from one hemisphere to the other can no longer be conveyed by the neuronal projections from the corpus callosum. “Their role in a healthy brain,” begins Vanessa Siffredi, a researcher in UNIGE’s Faculty of Medicine, “is to ensure the functioning of various cognitive and sensorimotor functions.” Surprisingly, 25% of people with this malformation have no visible signs; 50% have average intelligence quotients and learning difficulties; and the remaining 25% suffer from severe cognitive disorders.
Cactus leather! 😃
The quest for vegan leather is a never-ending one, as more and more researchers are focusing on finding alternative materials to real leather and create a cruelty-free world.
Continue reading “Two Men Created ‘Vegan Leather’ From Cactus to Save Animals and the Environment” »
Recording artist Akon has big plans for his upcoming smart city in Senegal. The new $6 billion development is called Akon City and will fulfill the star’s wish to provide a refuge for members of the African Diaspora both near and far. In addition to the 2000-acre resort, condos, and stadium, the metropolis is also planned to run on renewable energy and mainly use Akoin—the singer’s own cryptocurrency. After two years of planning and development, Akon has announced that they are breaking ground in 2021.
Akon believes that Africa, and his home of Senegal especially, is long overdue for economic investment. He is calling the forthcoming locale a “real-life Wakanda” and plans for it include a tech hub and “Senewood” to develop the film industry. Imagery by Bakri & Associates visualizes the unusual and futuristic forms that define the development and complement Akon’s forward-thinking choices.
This massive construction undertaking is geared towards stimulating the local economy and creating jobs for local workers. Many have praised this and are excited for the prospect of Akon City. But there are also some skeptics. Papa Massama Thiaw, a councilor and president of the youth commission for Ngueniene, shared that though many community members are optimistic, there is a lot of uncertainty. “The studies that were done were not in collaboration with the commune of Ngueniene,” he says. He also fears that jobs won’t be equally distributed. “I don’t want us to be just day laborers. We have to be among the managers.”
Researchers in Switzerland have found a new organic light emitting diode (OLED) material that could scale the technology up to inexpensively light entire rooms and homes for the first time. The results come from a new arrangement of copper electrons, CuPCP, that replaces more costly precious metal diodes (PHOLEDs). Let’s have some alphabet soup and learn about OLEDs.
The prospect would effectively double the number of vaccine doses available and allow more people to be vaccinated quickly. But the idea has set off a debate, with experts saying there isn’t enough evidence yet to justify a single dose and people should plan to get two doses.
The push in favor of exploring the idea of a single-dose vaccine crystallized with a recent New York Times op-ed from Michael Mina, an immunologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Zeynep Tufecki, a sociologist who has written extensively on the pandemic.
They called for immediately starting a new clinical trial to study whether one dose of the vaccine is sufficient. They cited data from the trials already conducted for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that showed protection began after the first dose, with as much as around 90 percent efficacy, compared to around 95 percent efficacy after two doses.
The Russian armed forces’ modernization drive is in full swing, with multiple new weapons entering service and mass production in the coming year and beyond. Here’s a look at some of the new hardware.
In 2021, Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces will receive the new RS-28 Sarmat – liquid-fueled, MIRV-equipped heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles that will replace the R-36M2 Voevoda systems.
Hydrogen is a clean energy source that can be produced by splitting water molecules with light. However, it is currently impossible to achieve this on a large scale. In a recent breakthrough, scientists at Tokyo University of Science, Japan, developed a novel method that uses plasma discharge in solution to improve the performance of the photocatalyst in the water-splitting reaction. This opens doors to exploring a number of photocatalysts that can help scale-up this reaction.
The ever-worsening global environmental crisis, coupled with the depletion of fossil fuels, has motivated scientists to look for clean energy sources. Hydrogen (H2) can serve as an eco-friendly fuel, and hydrogen generation has become a hot research topic. While no one has yet found an energy-efficient and affordable way to produce hydrogen on a large scale, progress in this field is steady and various techniques have been proposed.
One such technique involves using light and catalysts (materials that speed up reactions) to split water (H2O) into hydrogen and oxygen. The catalysts have crystalline structures and the ability to separate charges at the interfaces between some of their sides. When light hits the crystal at certain angles, the energy from the light is absorbed into the crystal, causing certain electrons to become free from their original orbits around atoms in the material. As an electron leaves its original place in the crystal, a positively charged vacancy, known as a hole, is created in the structure. Generally, these “excited” states do not last long, and free electrons and holes eventually recombine.
German scientists are researching a method to produce hydrogen using light and photoactive compounds on an organic chemical basis.
Hydrogen is considered to be one of the alternative energy sources of the future. So far, however, the costly and energy-intensive production process has been a major problem with regard to the environmental friendliness of this substance, which is in itself CO2 neutral. For this reason, increasing numbers of scientists around the world are researching other methods of producing hydrogen: from algae, for example. (IO reported). Scientists in Germany at the Friedrich Schiller University, the Leibniz Institute for Photonic Technologies (Leibniz IPHT) and the University of Ulm have taken inspiration from nature for their method of producing hydrogen.
To do so, the team from the “CataLight” Collaborative Research Center at the Universities of Jena and Ulm has combined new organic dyes with non-precious metal catalyst molecules that release gaseous hydrogen in water when irradiated with light. This substitute has shown a remarkable impact in terms of longevity and effect after excitation by visible light, they write in their study, published in Chemistry – A European Journal.
Continue reading “Hydrogen production with artificial photosynthesis and polymers” »
