Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 777

Recently, two-dimensional (2D) materials have gained immense attention, as they are promising in various application fields, such as energy storage, thermal management, photodetectors, catalysis, field-effect transistors, and photovoltaic modules. These merits of 2D materials are attributed to their unique structure and properties. Chirality is an intrinsic property of a substance, which means the substance can not overlap with its mirror image. Significant progress has been made in chiral science, for chirality uniquely influences a chiral substance’s performance. With the rapid development of chiral science, it became unveiled that chirality not only exists in chiral organic molecules but can also be induced in 2D inorganic materials and 2D organic-inorganic hybrid materials by breaking the chiral symmetry within their framework to form 2D chiral materials. Compared with 2D materials that do not have chirality, these 2D inorganic chiral materials and 2D organic-inorganic hybrid chiral materials exhibit innovative performance due to chiral symmetry breaking. Nevertheless, at present, only a fraction of work is available which comprehensively sums up the progress of these promising 2D chiral materials. Thus, given their high potential, it is urgent to summarize these newly developed 2D chiral materials comprehensively. In the current study, to feature and highlight their major significance, the recent progress of 2D inorganic materials and 2D organic-inorganic hybrid materials from their chemical composition and categories, application potential associated with their unique properties, and present synthesis strategies to fabricate them along with discussion concerning the development challenges and their bright future were reviewed. This review is anticipated to be instructive and provide a high understanding of advanced functional 2D materials with chirality.

Keywords: Chirality, two-dimensional, inorganic, organic-inorganic hybrid, asymmetric, enantioselective, chiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS), photoelectronic, spintronics.

Read more | >

Dr. Vopson proposes that information has mass and is the fifth state of matter, expanding our current understanding of the universe’s basic building blocks.

Physicist Dr. Melvin Vopson from the University of Portsmouth has proposed an experiment to prove that information is the fifth state of matter, alongside solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. His theory suggests that information possesses mass and is a fundamental component of the universe, similar to DNA in living organisms. The experiment involves using particle-antiparticle collisions to detect and measure this information. If proven correct, this could radically change our understanding of physics, suggesting that information might even be the elusive dark matter that makes up nearly a third of the universe.

After reading the article, a Reddit user gained more than 1.7k upvotes with this comment: “Here’s explanation: When you collide an electron and a positron (an anti-electron) they are completely destroyed, releasing their mass equivalent energy as photons. The information equivalence theory predicts that you aren’t just destroying the mass but also internal information the particle has. If this is true, the annihilation would also release photons equal to the information-energy equivalence.” This article will amaze you by showing how information might be the key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe. Don’t forget to discuss this fascinating theory in the comment section below!

Read more | >

Researchers at Argonne have developed an innovative technique that creates “fingerprints” of different materials that can be read and analyzed by a neural network to yield previously inaccessible information — https://bit.ly/3LCklZw.

The goal of the AI is just to treat the scattering patterns as…

Study shows how materials change as they are stressed and relaxed.

Read more | >

“DNA, RNA and proteins are the key players to regulate all processes in the cells of our body,” Leiden Professor John van Noort explains. “To understand the (mis-)functioning of these molecules, it is essential to uncover how their 3D structure depends on their sequence and for this it is necessary to measure them one molecule at a time. However, single-molecule measurements are laborious and slow, and the number of possible sequence variations is massive.”

Now the team of scientists developed an innovative tool, called SPARXS (Single-molecule Parallel Analysis for Rapid eXploration of Sequence space), that allows for studying millions of DNA molecules simultaneously.

“Traditional techniques that allow one sequence to be probed at a time usually take hours of measurement time per sequence. With SPARXS, we can measure millions of molecules within a day to a week. Without SPARXS, such a measurement would take several years to decades,” says Delft Professor Chirlmin Joo.

Read more | >

CRISPR-Cas systems, defense systems in bacteria, have become a plentiful source of technologies for molecular diagnostics. Researchers at the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI) in Würzburg have expanded this extensive toolbox. Their novel method, called PUMA, enables the detection of RNA with Cas12 nucleases, which naturally target DNA. PUMA promises a wide range of applications and high accuracy.

The team published its results in the journal Nature Communications (“TracrRNA reprogramming enables direct PAM-independent detection of RNA with diverse DNA-targeting Cas12 nucleases”).

Bacteria have developed special defense mechanisms to protect themselves against viruses, which by no means infect only humans. As part of these so-called CRISPR-Cas systems, a CRISPR ribonucleic acid (crRNA), which serves as a “guide RNA,” recognizes regions of a foreign genome, such as viral DNA. The CRISPR-associated (Cas) nuclease, directed by a crRNA, then renders it harmless by cutting it like a pair of scissors.

Read more | >

Researchers worldwide can now create highly realistic brain cortical organoids — essentially miniature artificial brains with functioning neural networks — thanks to a proprietary protocol released this month by researchers at the University of California San Diego.

The new technique, published in Nature Protocols (“Generation of ‘semi-guided’ cortical organoids with complex neural oscillations”), paves the way for scientists to perform more advanced research regarding autism, schizophrenia and other neurological disorders in which the brain’s structure is usually typical, but electrical activity is altered. That’s according to Alysson Muotri, Ph.D., corresponding author and director of the UC San Diego Sanford Stem Cell Institute (SSCI) Integrated Space Stem Cell Orbital Research Center. The SSCI is directed by Dr. Catriona Jamieson, a leading physician-scientist in cancer stem cell biology whose research explores the fundamental question of how space alters cancer progression.

The newly detailed method allows for the creation of tiny replicas of the human brain so realistic that they rival “the complexity of the fetal brain’s neural network,” according to Muotri, who is also a professor in the UC San Diego School of Medicine’s Departments of Pediatrics and Cellular and Molecular Medicine. His brain replicas have already traveled to the International Space Station (ISS), where their activity was studied under conditions of microgravity.

Read more | >