A bridge in Utah helps animals and humans live better alongside each other. 😃
UTAH (WJW) — A wildlife crossing, built just for animals, is being called a success in Utah.
Modern microscopes used for biological imaging are expensive, are located in specialized laboratories and require highly qualified staff. To research novel, creative approaches to address urgent scientific issues—for example in the fight against infectious diseases such as COVID-19—is thus primarily reserved for scientists at well-equipped research institutions in rich countries. A young research team from the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology (Leibniz IPHT) in Jena, the Friedrich Schiller University and Jena University Hospital wants to change this: The researchers have developed an optical toolbox to build microscopes for a few hundred euros that deliver high-resolution images comparable to commercial microscopes that cost a hundred to a thousand times more. With open-source blueprints, components from the 3D printer and smartphone camera, the UC2 (You. See. Too.) modular system can be combined specifically in the way the research question requires—from long-term observation of living organisms in the incubator to a toolbox for optics education. The research team presents its development on November 25, 2020 in the renowned journal Nature Communications.
The basic building block of the UC2 system is a simple 3D printable cube with an edge length of 5 centimeters, which can host a variety of components such as lenses, LEDs or cameras. Several such cubes are plugged on a magnetic raster base plate. Cleverly arranged, the modules thus result in a powerful optical instrument. An optical concept according to which focal planes of adjacent lenses coincide is the basis for most of the complex optical setups such as modern microscopes. With the UC2 toolbox, the research team of Ph.D. students at the lab of Prof. Dr. Rainer Heintzmann, Leibniz IPHT and Friedrich Schiller University Jena, shows how this inherently modular process can be understood intuitively in hands-on-experiments. In this way, UC2 also provides users without technical training with an optical tool that they can use, modify and expand—depending on what they are researching.
The United Arab Emirates’ first foray beyond Earth’s orbit is going so smoothly that the nation’s Hope Mars spacecraft will tackle some bonus observations before it reaches its destination, mission leaders have announced.
Three physicists in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, together with their colleagues from the Southern University of Science and Technology and Sun Yat-sen University in China, have successfully modified a semiconductor to create a superconductor.
Professor and Department Head Hanno Weitering, Associate Professor Steve Johnston, and PhD candidate Tyler Smith were part of the team that made the breakthrough in fundamental research, which may lead to unforeseen advancements in technology.
Semiconductors are electrical insulators but conduct electrical currents under special circumstances. They are an essential component in many of the electronic circuits used in everyday items including mobile phones, digital cameras, televisions, and computers.
RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) are critical effectors of gene expression, and as such their malfunction underlies the origin of many diseases. RBPs can recognize hundreds of transcripts and form extensive regulatory networks that help to maintain cell homeostasis. System-wide unbiased identification of RBPs has increased the number of recognized RBPs into the four-digit range and revealed new paradigms: from the prevalence of structurally disordered RNA-binding regions with roles in the formation of membraneless organelles to unsuspected and potentially pervasive connections between intermediary metabolism and RNA regulation. Together with an increasingly detailed understanding of molecular mechanisms of RBP function, these insights are facilitating the development of new therapies to treat malignancies. Here, we provide an overview of RBPs involved in human genetic disorders, both Mendelian and somatic, and discuss emerging aspects in the field with emphasis on molecular mechanisms of disease and therapeutic interventions.
An international team of scientist from the United States, the United Kingdom and Taiwan has developed the world’s smallest memristor. Their results appear in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
In the new work, the researchers reduced the size even further, shrinking the cross section area down to just a single square nanometer.
Scholars have a nifty way of alerting colleagues to lengthy treatises that they find simply not worth their time to read.
They tag such documents “tl;dr”—too long, didn’t read.
It’s kind of a 21st century spin on the 420-year-old notion Shakespeare’s Polonius relayed to the king and queen in “Hamlet”: “Brevity,” he suggested, “is the soul of wit.”
Adagrasib demonstrated an acceptable safety profile and promising clinical activity in pretreated patients with non-small cell lung cancer, colorectal cancer, and other solid tumors with a KRAS G12C mutation.
Styrofoam has been nicknamed “public enemy No. 6” because it’s more likely to be landfilled or washed into the ocean than recycled. But three Canadian startups are launching technology that aims to make discarded polystyrene containers, packaging and products a resource that everyone wants to recycle.
