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Laser-wakefield accelerators have led to the development of compact, ultrashort X-ray or gamma-ray sources to deliver peak brilliance, similar to conventional synchrotron sources. However, such sources are withheld by low efficiencies and limited to 107–8 photons per shot in the kiloelectron volt (KeV) to megaelectron volt (MeV) range. In a new report now published on Science Advances, Xing-Long Zhu and a research team in physics and astronomy in China and the U.K., presented a new approach to efficiently produce collimated, ultrabright gamma (γ)-ray beams. The resulting photon energies were tunable for up to gigaelectron volts by focussing a multi-petawatt laser pulse into a 2-stage wakefield accelerator. The high-intensity laser allowed them to efficiently generate a multi-gigaelectron volt electron beam with a high density and charge during the first stage of the experiment. The laser and electron beams entered a high-density plasma region in the second stage thereafter. Using numerical simulations, they demonstrated the production of more than 1012 gamma ray photons per shot with energy conversion efficiency above 10 percent for photons above 1 megaelectron volt (MeV) and achieved a peak brilliance above 1026 photons S-1 mm-2 mrad-2 per 0.1 percent bandwidth at 1 MeV. This research outcome will offer new avenues in both fundamental and applied physics and engineering.

Bright sources of high-energy gamma rays are versatile for broad areas of applications, including fundamental research in astrophysics, particle and nuclear physics, as well as high-resolution imaging. Researchers can improve such applications with compact gamma ray sources with low divergence, short pulse duration, high energy, and high peak brilliance. While widely used synchrotrons and X-ray free electron lasers (XFELS) can deliver X-ray pulses with peak brilliance, they are limited to low photon energies. The size and cost of such research structures can also limit their regular applications. Researchers have therefore rapidly developed compact laser-wakefield accelerators (LWFAs) in the past two decades to offer a radically different approach to drive the acceleration and radiation of high-energy particles on a much smaller scale. Continuous advancements in the field of ultrahigh-power laser technology will enable brilliant high-energy gamma sources.

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Independent.co.uk

Cheese contains a chemical found in addictive drugs, scientists have found.

The team behind the study set out to pin-point why certain foods are more addictive than others.

Using the Yale Food Addiction Scale, designed to measure a person’s dependence on, scientists found that cheese is particularly potent because it contains casein.

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Being able to put someone in a state of suspended animation may be a step closer after scientists found the trigger in mammal brains that can induce hibernation.

Researchers from the University of Tsukuba and Harvard Medical School identified the ‘snooze button’ in mice that triggered naturally occurring temporary hibernation.

This natural sleeping state was also triggered in rats, who do not usually hibernate or go into torbor, according to the Japanese scientists.

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Paris (AFP) — Scientists have developed a human embryo “blueprint” using human stem cells, in a breakthrough that could provide vital insight into the early stages of infant development, new research showed Thursday.

Teams from the University of Cambridge and the Netherlands-based Hubrecht Institute said their model will allow them to observe never-before-seen processes underlying the formation of the human body.

The layout of humans — known as the body plan — happens through a process known as gastrulation, where three distinct layers of cells are formed in the embryo that will later give rise to the body’s three main systems: nervous, musculoskeletal and digestive.

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Paris (AFP) — Scientists have observed the fifth state of matter in space for the first time, offering unprecedented insight that could help solve some of the quantum universe’s most intractable conundrums, research showed Thursday.

Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) — the existence of which was predicted by Albert Einstein and Indian mathematician Satyendra Nath Bose almost a century ago — are formed when atoms of certain elements are cooled to near absolute zero (0 Kelvin, minus 273.15 Celsius).

At this point, the atoms become a single entity with quantum properties, wherein each particle also functions as a wave of matter.

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“The operation is believed to be the first of its kind in the U.S. The patient, a woman in her 20s, had been healthy, but the coronavirus devastated her lungs.”

A young woman whose lungs were destroyed by the coronavirus received a double lung transplant last week at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, the hospital reported on Thursday, the first known lung transplant in the United States for Covid-19.

The 10-hour surgery was more difficult and took several hours longer than most lung transplants because inflammation from the disease had left the woman’s lungs “completely plastered to tissue around them, the heart, the chest wall and diaphragm,” said Dr. Ankit Bharat, the chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of the lung transplant program at Northwestern Medicine, which includes Northwestern Memorial Hospital, in an interview.

He said the patient, a woman in her 20s who had no serious underlying medical conditions, was recovering well: “She’s awake, she’s smiling, she FaceTimed with her family.”

Continue reading “Covid-19 Patient Gets Double Lung Transplant, Offering Hope for Others” | >

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals announced Thursday that it’s started the first clinical trial of its experimental coronavirus antibody drug.

The antibody cocktail is being tested in four human populations. Two groups of people will receive the drug to test its effectiveness as a treatment for Covid-19; the other two will receive it as a possible prevention.

“We’ll be hopefully to quickly test the safety and then start understanding the efficacy for four major different settings of this virus challenge,” Regeneron’s chief scientific officer, Dr. George Yancopoulos, said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” Yancopoulos said he thinks that, “if all goes well,” the company could have “definitive data” within a few months on the effectiveness of the antibody cocktail.

“I think there’s a lot of reason for hope,” Yancopoulos said, noting the company’s work on Ebola. But he also stressed the unpredictable nature of science and biology, saying “there’s always reasons to be concerned and to be cautious.” “So we’re going to be moving forward very carefully, hand-in-hand in with the FDA, and we hope sooner rather than later we can get answers that can really make a difference,” he said.

Regeneron is the latest company to begin trials for a potential Covid-19 therapy. Eli Lilly, which began trials of its antibody drug earlier this month, said a treatment could be authorized, if all goes well, for use as early as September. In scientific trials so far, Gilead Sciences’s antiviral remdesivir is the only drug to show some effectiveness in treating the disease. There are more than 7.4 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the world, including over 2 million in the U.S., according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University. More than 417,100 people have died worldwide, with over a quarter of the fatalities in the U.S. Regeneron’s drug is being tested on four distinct types of patients, including “the sickest patients” who are hospitalized and on a ventilator or oxygen support, Yancopoulos said. It’s also being tested to see whether it can prevent high-risk people from contracting the disease, such as health-care workers. The drug, known as REGN-COV2, is a combination of two antibodies. Yancopoulos said Regeneron firmly believes this is the correct approach to treat Covid-19 when using antibodies.

Continue reading “Regeneron sees ‘a lot of reason for hope’ as human testing of its coronavirus drug begins” | >

Recent therapeutic trials of “classical” psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin (from magic mushrooms) or LSD, have reported benefits to wellbeing, depression and anxiety. These effects seem to be linked to a sense of “ego dissolution” — a dissolving of the subjective boundaries between the self and the wider world. However, the neurochemistry behind this effect has been unclear. Now a new paper, published in Neuropsychopharmacology, suggests that changes in brain levels of the neurotransmitter glutamate are key to understanding reports of ego dissolution — and perhaps the therapeutic effects of psychedelics.

Natasha Mason at Maastricht University, the Netherlands, and colleagues recruited 60 participants for their study. All had taken a psychedelic drug before, but not in the three months prior to the study. Half received a placebo and the other half were given a low to moderate dose of psilocybin (0.17 mg/kg of body weight).

The team then used a technique called proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to look at concentrations of glutamate (as well as other neurochemicals) in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the hippocampus — two regions that have been implicated as key to the psychedelic drug experience. The team also looked at patterns of “functional connectivity” within networks of brain regions, a measure of how closely correlated brain activity is across those regions. Six hours after taking the drug or placebo, the participants reported on their subjective experiences using two surveys: The 5 Dimensions of Altered States of Consciousness and the Ego Dissolution Inventory.

As the researchers expected (based on the findings of earlier research), those given the drug reported increased feelings of ego dissolution, as well as altered states of consciousness. They also showed disruptions in the connectivity of particular networks, including the default mode network, which has also been implicated in past work on the effects of psychedelic drugs…

But, for the first time in humans, the team also observed higher levels of glutamate in the mPFC and lower levels in the hippocampus after taking psilocybin — and they linked these changes to different aspects of ego dissolution. Increases in the mPFC were most strongly linked to unpleasant aspects, such as a loss of control over thoughts and decision-making, and also anxiety. Decreases in the hippocampus, meanwhile, were most strongly linked to more positive aspects, such as feelings of unity with the wider world, and of having undergone a spiritual-type experience.

Continue reading “Psilocybin Alters Brain Levels Of The Neurotransmitter Glutamate — And This Could Explain Why Users Experience “Ego Dissolution”” | >