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Blog – Page 9

A team of scientists at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center (The Institute) has made a landmark discovery that sheds light on how the immune system protects the gut during infection. By studying intestinal worms—also known as helminths—the team, led by Professor Irah King, uncovered a previously unknown immune mechanism that preserves intestinal function in the presence of persistent infection.

Their finding, published in the journal Cell, could pave the way for new treatments for helminth infections, which affect over two billion people worldwide at some point in their lives, as well as for other intestinal diseases.

The results could also help revisit older therapeutic strategies that were previously dismissed due to an incomplete understanding of biological processes.

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Escherichia coli (E. coli) is a common bacterium that lives in the intestines of animals and humans, and it is often used to identify fecal contamination within the environment. E. coli can also easily develop resistance to antibiotics, making it an ideal organism for testing antimicrobial resistance—especially in certain agricultural environments where fecal material is used as manure or wastewater is reused.

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Insights from a new study could help unlock the full potential of a developing form of smaller-scale wind power generation, researchers say.

Engineers from the University of Glasgow have used sophisticated computer simulations of bladeless wind turbines (BWTs) to identify for the first time how future generations of the technology could be built for .

The team’s paper, titled “Performance analysis and geometric optimisation of bladeless wind turbines using wake oscillator model,” is published in Renewable Energy.

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The Higgs boson is the most intriguing and unusual object yet discovered by fundamental science. There is no higher experimental priority for particle physics than building an electron–positron collider to produce it copiously and study it precisely.

Given the importance of energy efficiency and cost effectiveness in the current geopolitical context, this gives unique strategic importance to developing a humble technology called the klystron—a technology that will consume the majority of site power at every major electron–positron collider under consideration, but which has historically only achieved 60% energy efficiency.

The klystron was invented in 1937 by two American brothers, Russell and Sigurd Varian. The Varians wanted to improve aircraft radar systems. At the time, there was a growing need for better high-frequency amplification to detect objects at a distance using radar, a critical technology in the lead-up to World War II.

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Among the tens of thousands of ant species, incredible “intelligent” behaviors like crop culture, animal husbandry, surgery, “piracy,” social distancing, and complex architecture have evolved.

Yet at first sight, the brain of an ant seems hardly capable of such feats: it is about the size of a poppy seed, with only 0.25m to 1m neurons, compared to 86bn for humans.

Now, researchers from Israel and Switzerland have shown how “swarm intelligence” resembling advance planning can nevertheless emerge from the concerted operation of many of these tiny brains. The results are published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has unlocked the depths of interstellar space with unprecedented clarity, offering humanity a high-resolution window into the cosmos. Harnessing this newfound capability, an international team of researchers set out to investigate how polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)—organic molecules and key players in cosmic chemistry—survive the harsh conditions of space and uncover the mechanism behind their resilience.

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