#High-temperature superconductivity in atomically thin films A research group has succeeded in fabricating an atomically thin,
high-temperature superconductor film with a superconducting transition temperature (Tc) of up to 60 K(-213°C). The team also established the method to control/tune the Tc.
This finding not only provides an ideal platform for investigating the mechanism of superconductivity in the two-dimensional system,
but also paves the way for the development of next-generation nanoscale superconducting devices. Arraysuperconductors are regarded as one of the most promising candidates for next-generation advanced electronic devices,
because the unique quantum effects in superconductors are a great advantage in achieving the energy saving
and ultrahigh-speed processing. However the device application of superconductors has long been hindered. The largest obstacle is the necessity of a huge and expensive cooling system with liquid helium, because of the low Tc of conventional superconductors,
which is close to absolute zero (0 K, --273°C)* 1. It has also been a big challenge to realize the high-density integration of superconductors into electronic devices.
In order to overcome these problems, it is definitely necessary to develop a new superconductor with higher-Tc,
that can be fabricated into a thin film. The research team at Tohoku University turned its attention to iron selenide (Fese
which is a member of iron-based superconductors*2 . While the Tc of bulk Fese is only 8 K(-265°C a signature of higher-Tc superconductivity has been suggested in ultrathin film
and its verification has been required urgently. The researchers at first fabricated high-quality, atomically thin Fese films Fig. 1, with thickness of between one monolayer (which corresponds to three-atoms thickness) and twenty monolayers (sixty-atoms thickness),
by using the molecular-beam-epitaxy (MBE) method*3. Then they carefully investigated the electronic structure of grown films by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES)* 4 Fig. 2. In the ARPES measurement,
the researchers observed the opening of a superconducting gap at low temperature*5, which is direct evidence of the emergence of superconductivity in the films.
The researchers found that the Tc estimated from the gap-closing in a monolayer film is surprisingly high (above 60 K),
which is about 8 times higher than the Tc of bulk Fese. While multilayer films do not show superconductivity in the as-grown state,
the researchers have discovered a novel method to deposit alkali atoms onto the films and thereby control the electron density in the film.
By employing this method the researchers have succeeded in converting non-superconducting multilayer Fese films into high-Tc superconductors with Tc as high as 50 K. The present result gives a great impact to both the basic
and applied researches in superconductors. The researchers have shown clearly how the superconductivity is emerged, enhanced and controlled in atomically thin Fese films.
While the Tc achieved in this study (50-60 K) is still lower than that of the cuprate high-Tc superconductors (highest Tc?
135 K) which caused the"high-Tc fever"in the world 30 years ago, it obviously exceeds the record of other"high-Tc superconductors"such as fullerene (C60) superconductors (Tc 33 K) and Mgb2 (Tc 39k),
closely approaching the temperature of liquid nitrogen (77 K). The present report would lead to intensive researches to further increase Tc by changing the number of atomic layers, the amount of doped electrons and the species of substrate.
The present result would also widen the range of both basic and applied researches on superconductivity,
because the Tc of 50-60 K achieved in the present study is high enough to keep the superconducting state by using a closed-cycle-gas-type cooling system without liquid helium.
The present success in fabricating an atomically thin high-temperature superconductor not only provides an ideal platform to investigate the novel two-dimensional superconductivity,
but also opens a route to developing an ultimate superconducting nanodevice consisting of atomic-size electronic parts.
The ultrathin high-Tc superconductor would effectively contribute to the significant downsizing and consequent high-density integration in electric circuits,
leading to the realization of future-generation electronic devices with high energy-saving and ultrahigh-speed operation.
This work was supported by grants from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and Japan's Ministry of Education
Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) E
#Scientists discover a protein that silences the biological clock The ticking of the biological clock drives fluctuations in gene activity
and protein levels that give rise to daily cycles in virtually every aspect of physiology in humans and other animals.
A master clock in the brain, tuned to the daily cycle of light and dark, sends out signals that synchronize the molecular clocks ticking away in almost every cell and tissue of the body.
Disruption of the clock has been associated with a variety of health problems, including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
According to Carrie Partch a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC Santa cruz and corresponding author of the paper, the connection between clock disruption and cancer is still unclear."
"The clock is disrupted not always in cancer cells, but studies have shown that disrupting circadian rhythms in mice causes tumors to grow faster,
and one of the things the clock does is set restrictions on when cells can divide,
"she said. The new study focused on a protein called PASD1 that Partch's collaborators at the University of Oxford had found was expressed in a broad range of cancer cells,
including melanoma, lung cancer, and breast cancer. It belongs to a group of proteins known as"cancer/testis antigens,
"which are expressed normally in the germ line cells that give rise to sperm and eggs, but are also found in some cancer cells.
Cancer researchers have been interested in these proteins as markers for cancer and as potential targets for therapeutic cancer vaccines."
"For very few of these do we understand the roles they might play in driving cancer,
"Partch said.""Understanding how PASD1 is regulating the circadian clock could open the door to developing new therapies.
We could potentially find ways to disrupt it in those cancers in which it is expressed."
"Beyond its role in cancer, Partch is interested also in understanding the normal role of PASD1
and why it is silencing the clock in the human germ line. The germ line is the only tissue in the body that researchers have found does not have circadian cycles.
A series of experiments in Partch's lab revealed how the protein interacts with the molecular machinery of the biological clock.
Array"This study answers the longstanding question of how Cryptochrome works, and it's something we think we can drug.
Several clock gene mutations have been identified in people with disorders that involve the timing of the biological clock,
causing either advanced sleep syndrome or delayed sleep syndrome. There is also a growing body of evidence showing that environmental changes affecting circadian rhythms
including shift work and jet lag, can have profound effects on human physiology and health.""There are vast consequences to trying to live outside the natural daily cycle,
"Partch said.""We know that clock disruption in general is not a good thing, and we have ongoing studies to explore its role in cancer and other human health problems
#'Highly effective'new biomarker for lung cancer discovered Arrayif the accuracy of this biomarker can be confirmed in a larger trial,
this could lead to the development of a simple blood test that could be used for annual screening.
The authors of the study believe that this blood test would be easier to use, more accurate and less invasive than low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) scans,
the method for lung cancer screening currently recommended by the U s. Preventive Services Task force (USPSTF). Because of its accuracy, it could also better distinguish between benign lung tumors that do not pose a threat
and malignant tumors that have the potential to grow and spread. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in both men and women in the United states. However,
the five-year survival rate increases dramatically if the disease is caught and treated early. According to the American Cancer Society,
if NSCLC is caught in its earliest stage, the five-year survival rate is 49 percent.
However, patients who are diagnosed when the disease has metastasized--meaning that it has spread to other organs--have only about a 1 percent chance of achieving survival after five years.
In 2013 the USPSTF recommended annual screening to patients at least 55 years old who had a history of smoking
and are considered therefore at high risk for developing lung cancer. This method of screening is considered invasive
. associate professor in the Tumor Microenvironment and Metastasis Program at The Wistar Institute and lead author of the study."
"If we can develop a simple blood test that's more accurate than low-dose CT SCANS,
we can detect the cancer earlier with a less expensive, less invasive and more accurate blood test.
"In this study, Huang and his colleagues focused on cancer testis antigens (CTAS), since they are often found in tumor cells that circulate in the blood.
After analyzing 116 different CTAS, the researchers identified the protein AKAP4 as a potential biomarker that could effectively distinguish between patients with and without NSCLC.
The researchers then tested AKAP4 as a biomarker in a pilot cohort that contained 264 blood samples from patients with NSCLC and 135 control samples.
Of the 264 NSCLC samples, 136 samples were from patients who received a stage I diagnosis. The researchers analyzed the effectiveness of the biomarker by looking at the area under the curve (AUC),
a method that calculates the ability of the test to distinguish those with disease from those without it.
An AUC value of 1 means that the test perfectly distinguishes between the patients who have
and don't have a particular disease. In this study, when the researchers compared all 264 of the NSCLC samples with the 135 control samples,
When the researchers looked at only the 136 samples with known stage I disease, the AUC was 0. 9795.
While the researchers noted that the presence of AKAP4 increased with the stage of the disease
AKAP4 was still detectable in the samples with early stage disease.""The results of this study exceeded our expectations,
"AKAP4 appears to be a highly effective biomarker for the detection of non-small cell lung cancer.
Multiple hospitals have agreed to provide blood samples for analysis to Wistar for this next study."
"Qihong and his colleagues have found a target that could result in a more accurate test than any method that's been used to screen for non-small cell lung cancer to date,
"said Dario C. Altieri, M d.,President and CEO of The Wistar Institute and director of Wistar's Cancer Center."
in order to have a meaningful impact on this devastating disease.""This is the second time Wistar has identified a potential method for creating a blood test to screen for lung cancer.
Researchers at the Institute are also currently analyzing more than 600 blood samples to develop a blood test that identifies a 29-gene"signature"that distinguishes patients with NSCLC from those without the disease.
Positive interim data for this test was presented recently at the American Thoracic Society International Conference e
#Revolutionary microbe for biofuel production developed Biofuels pioneer Mascoma LLC and the Department of energy's Bioenergy Science Center have developed a revolutionary strain of yeast that could help significantly accelerate the development of biofuels from nonfood plant matter.
The approach could provide a pathway to eventual expansion of biofuels production beyond the current output limited to ethanol derived from corn.
features fermentation and ethanol yields that set a new standard for conversion of biomass sugars from pretreated corn stover--the non-edible portion of corn crops such as the stalk--converting up to 97 percent
Researchers announced that while conventional yeast leaves more than one-third of the biomass sugars unused in the form of xylose,
and convert sugars from lignocellulosic biomass has accelerated greatly the translation of basic research outcomes to a commercial product,
"Although cellulosic biomass such as corn stover, wheat straw and bagasse (the fibrous remains after sugar is extracted from sugarcane
or heat-loving, bacteria to produce biofuels directly from biomass in a single process o
carboplatin and oxyplatin, have been used to treat cancer for more than 35 years. While they remain among the most prescribed and most potent chemotherapy drugs,
they also cause serious side effects, including kidney damage. Many of the side effects of these drugs occur when the drug settles in healthy tissue.
researchers have created nanoscale delivery systems engineered to make the drug reach and accumulate at the tumor site.
However, tests of these nanodrugs show that only between one and 10 percent of the drugs are delivered to the tumor site
with the majority of the remainder being diverted to the liver and spleen.''The body's immune system, especially the liver and spleen, has been one of the biggest stumbling blocks in developing nanoscale chemotherapy drug delivery systems,
'said Chien Ho, the alumni rofessor of biological sciences at Carnegie mellon.''When the drugs collect in those organs,
they become less available to treat the cancer, and can also cause toxicity.''In the past few years, Ho and his colleagues were developing cellular nanotags to help detect organ rejection,
when Ho noticed that Intralipid, a fat emulsion that is FDA-approved for use as an intravenous nutrition source,
reduced the amount of nanoparticles that were being cleared by the liver and spleen by about 50 percent.
As a result, the nanoparticles remained in the blood stream for longer periods of time.
Ho and his colleagues decided to see if Intralipid had the same effect on platinum-based anticancer nanodrugs.
In the newly published study, the researchers administered a single clinical dose of Intralipid to a rat model.
One hour later, they administered a dose of a platinum-based chemotherapy drug that had been incorporated into a nanoparticle.
Twenty-four hours after the drug was administered, the researchers found that pre-treatment with Intralipid reduced the accumulation of the platinum-based drug by 20.4 percent in the liver, 42.5 percent in the spleen and 31.2 percent in the kidney.
Consequently, in these organs, the toxic side effects of the nanodrug decreased significantly. Furthermore, the researchers found that Intralipid pre-treatment allowed more of the drug to remain available and active in the body for longer periods of time.
After five hours availability of the drug was increased by 18.7 percent, and after 24 hours it was increased by 9. 4 percent.
The researchers believe that this increased availability will allow more of the drug to reach the tumor site,
#Early clinical trial success for new rheumatoid arthritis treatment Arrayrheumatoid arthritis is a disease in which the immune system attacks healthy tissues, particularly in the joints, causing inflammation, pain and deformity.
Professor Thomas said the treatment targeted the underlying cause of rheumatoid arthritis.""Current therapies only treat the symptoms
and slow the progression of the disease, "Professor Thomas said.""We have designed a vaccine-style treatment
or'immunotherapy'specifically for individuals carrying high-risk rheumatoid arthritis genes and specific rheumatoid arthritis antibodies, called anti-CCP."
"This type of rheumatoid arthritis is called'CCP-positive'and accounts for the majority of cases.""Our immune system is made up of specialised cells that move through blood
and tissue, preventing disease and fighting infection by distinguishing between what is the body's own healthy tissue and
what is foreign.""This treatment teaches the patient's immune system to ignore a naturally occurring peptide that is incorrectly identified as'foreign',resulting in the production of CCP antibodies and causing inflammation."
"A personalised immunotherapy was prepared for each patient by taking a sample of their blood and extracting a particular type of immune cell called dendritic cells."
"The patient's dendritic cells were challenged then with the'foreign'peptide and an immune system modulator."
"Professor Thomas said a single injection of the patient's own immune-modified dendritic cells was found to be safe
clinically-practical vaccine technology that could deliver similar outcomes for patients. Professor Thomas is working on a delivery technology with Dendright Pty Ltd (a Uniquest start-up company) in collaboration Janssen Biotech Inc,
. one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & johnson. If the delivery of this technology proves successful in patients with rheumatoid arthritis,
it could also be applied to other autoimmune diseases such as Type 1 diabetes s
#Drug-induced tissue regeneration demonstrated by scientists A study led by Ellen Heber-Katz, Phd, of the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research (LIMR), part of Main line Health (MLH),
shows that a primordial form of energy production that still exists in mammals can be harnessed to achieve spontaneous tissue regeneration in mice, without the need for added stem cells.
The study findings were reported in the June 3, 2015, issue of Science Translational Medicine, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Key collaborators in the study, which was supported by grants from the National institutes of health, included Yong Zhang, Phd (LIMR), Iossif Strehin, Phd (Allergan),
and Phillip Messersmith, Phd (University of California, Berkeley).""We discovered that the HIF-1a pathway--an oxygen regulatory pathway predominantly used early in evolution
but still used during embryonic development--can act to trigger healthy regrowth of lost or damaged tissue in mice,
a professor at LIMR who heads the Laboratory of Regenerative medicine. The discovery is the latest development in a long investigation sparked by a chance observation in an unusual mouse strain.
Almost 20 years ago, Heber-Katz noticed that the MRL mouse can spontaneously regenerate cartilage and other tissues after injury
making it a rare exception among mammals. Years of subsequent research involving the MRL mouse led Heber-Katz
and colleagues to theorize that the HIF-1a pathway, which helps cells respond to low oxygen conditions,
of which is increased markedly before and after injury in the MRL mouse. Under normal oxygen conditions, HIF-1a is degraded by prolyl hydroxylases (PHDS.
Next, they selected a non-regenerating strain of mice to see what would happen when they experimentally up-regulated (stabilized) HIF-1a levels after an ear hole punch injury.
The mice received three injections of a PHD inhibitor in a slow-release formulation at 5-day intervals.
the drug-treated mice showed a pattern of molecular changes indistinguishable from that observed in MRL mice during regeneration in response to injury, confirming HIF-1a as a central driver of healthy regeneration of lost
their group found that it was possible to achieve healthy tissue regrowth in a mouse model in situ, without the use of stem cells."
"This remarkable work has vast importance in medicine and surgery and spotlights the diverse and important scientific investigations underway at LIMR,"says George Prendergast, Phd, President and CEO of LIMR."
"We are committed to the quest to discover therapies that make healthy tissue regeneration a possibility in humans
#Planarian regeneration model discovered by artificial intelligence Arrayin order to bioengineer complex organs, scientists need to understand the mechanisms by which those shapes are produced normally by the living organism.
However, a significant knowledge gap persists between molecular genetic components identified as being necessary to produce a particular organism shape
shape and orientation, said the paper's senior author, Michael Levin, Ph d.,Vannevar bush professor of biology and director of the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental biology."
"Most regenerative models today derived from genetic experiments are arrow diagrams, showing which gene regulates which other gene.
in order to know what triggers could be applied to such a system to cause regeneration of particular components,
However, no such tools yet exist for mining the fast-growing mountain of published experimental data in regeneration
and developmental biology, said the paper's first author, Daniel Lobo, Ph d, . postdoctoral fellow in the Levin lab. To address this challenge,
Lobo and Levin developed an algorithm that would use evolutionary computation to produce regulatory networks able to"evolve"to accurately predict the results of published laboratory experiments that the researchers entered into a database."
so that the head-tail patterning outcomes of simulated experiments would match the published data, "Lobo said.
Tufts biologists devloped an algorithm that used evolutionary computation to produce regulatory networks able to"evolve"to accurately predict the results of published research on planarian regeneration.
The algorithm compared the resulting shape from the simulation with real published data in the database.
gradually the new networks could explain more experiments in the database comprising most of the known planarian experimental literature regarding head vs. tail regeneration.
Arraythe researchers ultimately applied the algorithm to a combined experimental dataset of 16 key planarian regeneration experiments to determine
After 42 hours, the algorithm returned the discovered regulatory network, which correctly predicted all 16 experiments in the dataset.
and is the first regenerative model discovered by artificial intelligence, "said Levin. Lobo and Levin are trained both in computer science
and bring an unusual perspective to the field of developmental biology. Levin majored in computer science and biology at Tufts before earning his Ph d. in genetics.
Lobo earned a Ph d. in the field before joining the Levin lab. The paper represents a successful application of the growing field of"robot science
"--which Levin says can help human researchers by doing much more than crunch enormous datasets quickly."
"While the artificial intelligence in this project did have to do a whole lot of computations, the outcome is a theory of
what the worm is doing, and coming up with theories of what's going on in nature is pretty much the most creative, intuitive aspect of the scientist's job,
All this suggests to me that artificial intelligence can help with every aspect of science, not only data mining but also inference of meaning of the data."
"This work was supported with funding from the National Science Foundation grant EF-1124651, National institutes of health grant GM078484, USAMRMC grant W81xwh-10-2-0058,
and the Mathers Foundation. Computation used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by NSF grant OCI-1053575,
and a cluster computer awarded by Silicon Mechanics s
#Your viral infection history in a single drop of blood With Virscan, scientists can run a single test to determine which viruses have infected an individual,
rather than limiting their analysis to particular viruses. That unbiased approach could uncover unexpected factors affecting individual patients'health,
and also expands opportunities to analyze and compare viral infections in large populations. The comprehensive analysis can be performed for about $25 per blood sample.
Stephen Elledge, an HHMI investigator at Brigham and Women's Hospital, led the development of Virscan."
"We've developed a screening methodology to basically look back in time in people's blood sera
"Arrayvirscan works by screening the blood for antibodies against any of the 206 species of viruses known to infect humans.
The immune system ramps up production of pathogen-specific antibodies when it encounters a virus for the first time,
and it can continue to produce those antibodies for years or decades after it clears an infection.
That means Virscan not only identifies viral infections that the immune system is actively fighting, but also provides a history of an individual's past infections.
To develop the new test, Elledge and his colleagues synthesized more than 93,000 short pieces of DNA encoding different segments of viral proteins.
They introduced those pieces of DNA into bacteria-infecting viruses called bacteriophage. Each bacteriophage manufactured one of the protein segments--known as a peptide
000 known strains of human viruses. Antibodies in the blood find their viral targets by recognizing unique features known as epitopes that are embedded in proteins on the virus surface.
Antiviral antibodies in the blood find and bind to their target epitopes within the displayed peptides.
The scientists then retrieve the antibodies and wash away everything except for the few bacteriophage that cling to them.
they can identify which viral protein pieces were grabbed onto by antibodies in the blood sample. That tells the scientists which viruses a person's immune system has encountered previously,
either through infection or through vaccination. Elledge estimates it would take about 2-3 days to process 100 samples,
including HIV and hepatitis C."It turns out that it works really well,""Elledge says."
"Elledge and his colleagues used Virscan to analyze the antibodies in 569 people from four countries,
examining about 100 million potential antibody/epitope interactions. They found that on average, each person had antibodies to ten different species of viruses. As expected,
antibodies against certain viruses were common among adults but not in children, suggesting that children had not yet been exposed to those viruses. Individuals residing South africa, Peru,
and Thailand, tended to have antibodies against more viruses than people in the United states. The researchers also found that people infected with HIV had antibodies against many more viruses than did people without HIV.
Elledge says the team was surprised to find that antibody responses against specific viruses were surprisingly similar between individuals
with different people's antibodies recognizing identical amino acids in the viral peptides.""In this paper alone we identified more antibody/peptide interactions to viral proteins than had been identified in the previous history of all viral exploration,
"he says. The surprising reproducibility of those interactions allowed the team to refine their analysis
and improve the sensitivity of Virscan, and Elledge says the method will continue to improve as his team analyzes more samples.
Their findings on viral epitopes may also have important implications for vaccine design. Elledge says the approach his team has developed is limited not to antiviral antibodies.
His own lab is also using it to look for antibodies that attack a body's own tissue in certain autoimmune diseases that are associated with cancer.
A similar approach could also be used to screen for antibodies against other types of pathogens s
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