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Perovskite nanocrystals hold promise for improving a wide variety of optoelectronic devices—from lasers to light emitting diodes (LEDs) — but problems with their durability still limit the material’s broad commercial use.

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have demonstrated a novel approach aimed at addressing the material’s durability problem: encasing the inside a double-layer protection system made from plastic and silica.

In a study published Nov. 29 in the journal Science Advances, the research team describes a multistep process to produce encased perovskite that exhibit strong resistance to degradation in moist environments.

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Researchers have identified a metal that conducts electricity without conducting heat — an incredibly useful property that defies our current understanding of how conductors work.

The metal, found in 2017, contradicts something called the Wiedemann-Franz Law, which basically states that good conductors of electricity will also be proportionally good conductors of heat, which is why things like motors and appliances get so hot when you use them regularly.

But a team in the US showed this isn’t the case for metallic vanadium dioxide (VO2) — a material that’s already well known for its strange ability to switch from a see-through insulator to a conductive metal at the temperature of 67 degrees Celsius (152 degrees Fahrenheit).

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Human-animal hybrids are set to be developed at the University of Tokyo after the Japanese government recently lifted a ban on the controversial stem-cell research.

Hiromitsu Nakauchi—director for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Tokyo and team leader at Stanford’s Nakauchi Lab—is the first to receive approval for the questionable experiments which will attempt to grow human cells in rat and mouse embryos before being brought to term in a surrogate animal.

Despite many feeling that such studies are the equivalent of playing God, scientists say that the objective is far from sinister. It’s theorized that developing animals with organs constructed from human cells will create organs that can then be used for transplants in humans, cutting the long organ donation waitlists.

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Earth’s magnetic North Pole has drifted so fast that authorities have had to officially redefine the location of the magnetic North Pole. The extreme wandering of the North Pole caused increasing concerns over navigation, especially in high latitudes.

Earth’s magnetic field is known to have wandered and flipped in the geologic past. Earth’s magnetic field is a result of spinning molten iron and nickel 1,800 miles below the surface. As the constant flow of molten metals in the outer core changes over time, it alters the external magnetic field.

What we’ve seen in the past hundred years is that the location of the magnetic North Pole has moved northward. That migration of the magnetic North Pole was switched into overdrive in the past few years, causing the pole to rapidly move. The increased speed with which the magnetic North Pole has moved prompted authorities to officially update its location. The official location of the magnetic poles is specified by the World Magnetic Model, which acts as the basis for navigation, communication, GPS, etc. around the globe.

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This episode will take you through Dr. Aubrey de Grey’s Seven Pillars of aging, the research that he’s currently doing, his opinion on biological age, AGEs and the different sources, and the impact of growth hormone on biological age.

Who is Dr. Aubrey de Grey?

Aubrey de Grey is an English author and biomedical gerontologist. He is the Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation and VP of New Technology Discovery at AgeX Therapeutics, Inc. He is the editor-in-chief of the academic journal Rejuvenation Research, author of The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging and co-author of Ending Aging. He is known for his view that medical technology may enable human beings alive today not to die from age-related causes.

He is also an amateur mathematician who has contributed to the study of the Hadwiger–Nelson problem. His research focuses on whether regenerative medicine can prevent the aging process. He works on the development of what he calls “Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence” (SENS), a collection of proposed techniques to rejuvenate the human body and stop aging.

Continue reading “How to Live Forever with Dr. Aubrey de Grey” | >

A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in China has found that the makeup of the gut microbiome can be a determiner for the efficacy of exercise with prediabetics. In their paper published in the journal Cell Metabolism, the group describes their study of prediabetic volunteers and exercise and what they found.

In the , type 2 diabetes is considered to be preventable in most people—all it takes is a change in diet and an increase in . But things may not be as simple as that as the researchers with this new effort discovered—they found that exercise does not always lead to reductions in .

The study by the team involved asking 29 male prediabetic volunteers to undergo glucose and gut microbe testing. Then the group was divided into two—20 volunteers were asked to undergo an exercise regimen for three months while the other 19 were asked to maintain their normal eating and exercise habits. At the end of the three-month period, all of the volunteers once again underwent glucose and gut microbe metabolic testing.

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