#Novel DNA repair mechanism brings new horizons Researchers from the Lomonosov Moscow State university discovered a new mechanism of DNA repair,
which will help to treat and to prevent diseases in the future. The DNA molecule is chemically unstable giving rise to DNA lesions of different nature.
That is why DNA damage detection, signaling and repair, collectively known as the DNA damage response, are needed.
A group of researchers, lead by Vasily M. Studitsky, professor at the Lomonosov Moscow State university, discovered a new mechanism of DNA repair,
which opens up new perspectives for the treatment and prevention of neurodegenerative diseases. The article describing their discovery is published in AAASFIRST open access online-only journal Science Advances. n higher organisms DNA is bound with proteins in complexes called the nucleosome.
Every 200 base pairs are organized in nucleosomes, consisting of eight histone proteins, which, like the thread on the bobbin, wound double helix of DNA,
which is coiled into two supercoiled loops. Part of the surface of the DNA helix is hidden, because it interacts with histones.
Our entire genome is packed this way, except for the areas, from which the information is being currently read says Vasily M. Studitsky,
who is the leading researcher and the head of the Laboratory of Regulation of Transcription and Replication at the Biological Faculty of the Lomonosov Moscow State university.
The dense packing allows DNA molecule with a length of about two meters to fit into a microscopic cell nucleus
The damage of the DNA, if not repaired, leads to accumulation of mutations, cell death, and to the development of various diseases, including neurodegenerative, e g.
Alzheimer disease. A group of researchers, lead by Vasily M. Studitsky, studied the mechanism of detection of single stranded-dna DNA breaks at
which the connection is lost between nucleotides on one strand in the places where the DNA is associated with histones.
information written in the genetic code, which could be imagined as the manual for its assembly where triples of nucleotides match certain amino acids,
Like a proofreader of a text, RNA polymerase after it is stalled, triggers a cascade of reactions,
although normally DNA wounds around the histone poolvery tightly says Vasily M. Studitsky, he loops form
it anics triggering the cascade of reactions to start DNA epairs During the experiment, special sites,
which are formed during the passage of any enzyme along the DNA when it meets a nucleosome. n terms of applied science discovery of a new mechanism of reparation promises new prospective methods of prevention and treatment of diseases.
We have shown that the formation of loops which stop the polymerase, depends on its contacts with histones.
which in turn will reduce the risk of disease. If these contacts are destabilized, then by using special methods of drug delivery you can program the death of the affected cells Vasily Studitsky concluded,
In order to multiply, viruses have to invade a host cell and copy their genetic information. To do so, viruses encode their own replication machinery
Ebola virus and rabies virus, two of the most lethal pathogens known to humans, belong to an order of RNA VIRUSES that share a common strategy for copying their genomes inside their hosts.
Other relatives include Marburg virus, measles, mumps, respiratory syncytial virus and vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV. Scientists study VSV,
which causes acute disease in livestock but typically does not lead to illness in people,
as a model for viruses that are harmful to humans. Now a team from Harvard Medical school, using electron cryomicroscopy (imaging frozen specimens to reduce damage from electron radiation),
has revealed for the first time the structure of a VSV protein at the atomic level. Called polymerase protein L, it is required for viral replication in this group of RNA VIRUSES.
The findings are published in Cell. e now have a better understanding of how RNA synthesis works for these viruses
said Sean Whelan, HMS professor of microbiology and immunobiology and senior author of the paper. think
if you were trying to develop a viral-specific target to block the replication of one of these viruses,
there are no data on protein L atomic structure. Antiviral targets Antiviral drugs that target polymerase molecules are based in part on knowing their structure.
and herpes and hepatitis C viruses. But for the class of viruses known as nonsegmented negative-strand RNA VIRUSES,
Advances in electron cryomicroscopy encouraged them to try again. A team from Whelan lab, working with a group led by Stephen Harrison, Giovanni Armenise Harvard Professor of Basic Biomedical science at HMS and a Howard hughes medical institute (HHMI) investigator
was able to collect data from their viral samples that gave them much greater resolution.
They also were able to align the images they collected into a three-dimensional model of polymerase protein L. Significant challenge Into the density map obtained from these studies,
the rabies protein will look the same, the other L proteins will look the same,
#Hearing aids have become intelligent The world first wireless hearing aid which can stream sound directly from phones
and adapt to the user surroundings. This is what GN Resound, as the only company in the world, has been able to offer its customers in recent yearswing to research collaboration with DTU, among other things.
The way hearing aids today work is basically that a microphone picks up sound and transmits it to a loadspeaker
The latest hearing aids have a wireless communication feature allowing you to pick up and hear signals from,
for instance, a television. The signals are radio waves in the 2. 4 GHZ frequency band. This is an international frequency band,
which means the hearing aid works anywhere in the world. Before 2010, hearing aids were unable to pick up radio waves directly,
but instead the waves were transmitted to a receiver worn around the neck. 2. 4 GHZ technology
However, this is history thanks to the company GN Resound. At the end of 2009n collaboration with Phd student Søren Helstrup Kvist from DTU Electrical Engineeringhe company further developed the so-called 2. 4 GHZ technology
making hearing aids capable of picking up signals directly by means of antennas. Therefore, there was no need for an external recipient.
As part of the development, the team also began exploring ways to optimize the signal between the antennas in the left and right hearing aids.
This way, the two aids were able to adapt automatically to the surroundings, making manual adjustment a thing of the past.
This marked the beginning of the ear-to-ear technology, which today is one of the main characteristics of GN Resound hearing aids. he ear-to-ear technology focuses on providing enhanced speech intelligibility and a clearer sound image for users,
says Jesper Thaysen, director of the radio department at GN Resound and one of the developers of the technology.
Radio waves creeping over your head Kaj Bjarne Jakobsen is an associate professor at DTU Electrical engineering. He has acted as supervisor for the group of Phd students who,
together with Jesper Thaysen, have developed the antenna technology used in GN Resound ear-to-ear hearing aids today.
The team has produced various types of antenna systems capable of optimizing the so-called creeping radio waves to reduce the loss of sound data transmitted from the right hearing aid to the left.
This however, required a great number of simulations and calculations as waves spread in different ways depending on the shape of the head,
which means that the system must be adapted to the individual user. he system basically functions as a wireless Wi-fi network travelling from ear to ear.
The ear-to ear-technology enables the left and right hearing aids to communicate with each other
we have discovered how radio waves creep over your head, and how this can be optimized to ensure that the hearing aid provides a clear sound image,
says Kaj Bjarne Jakobsen. At DTU, the primary focus was on studying the theoretical and physical aspects of the technology.
They used a mannequin head called SAM (Specific Anthropomorphic Mannequin) to test the antennas. Subsequently, they designed a computer model of the head
which allowed them to study how radio waves travel from ear to ear. fter designing the computer model,
we performed a large number of calculations called genetic algorithms. We then chose the best ones and continued with the calculations
which could sometimes take days. The calculations enabled us to understand how to design the actual antenna to ensure the best possible match for this type of hearing aid,
says Kaj Bjarne Jakobsen. Adapts to the surroundings Today, ear-to-ear is integrated in all new GN Resound hearing aids
and has opened up completely new possibilities for users: f your hearing aids are not communicating, one hearing aid does not nowhow it has been adjusted,
or why it has been adjusted the way it has. By means of ear-to-ear technology, hearing aids automatically synchronize data with each other.
If you, for instance, are in a room with reverberation, the hearing aids communicate to avoid strange sounds occurring in one ear.
They adapt themselves, says Jesper Thaysen. In 2013, GN Resound launched the Resound Linxtm hearing aid,
which was the first hearing aid on the market with integrated ade for iphonetechnology. This technology adds an extra dimension to the aids
allowing you to listen to music and receive phone calls by means of wireless transmission of sound directly to the hearing aid.
The company has launched recently Linx successor, Resound Linx2#,which, according to Jesper Thaysen, is even better at utilizing the technology to improve speech intelligibility,
increase audiological advantages and ensure greater ear comfort. Source: DT e
#Tablet technology to help children with autism Monash University researchers have developed the world first tablet technology designed to assist children with developmental disabilities such as autism and Down syndrome.
The technology aims to help children stay focused, in a bid to facilitate learning and inclusion within the school environment.
The gaming technology developed with Dreamworks contractor Torus Games and Australian Technology Commercialisation firm, Grey Innovation has been tested in a pilot study aimed at determining
whether using the games for 20 minutes five days a week over a five week period leads to improved attention and focus.
It is estimated that around three per cent of Australian children have a developmental disability which reduces their ability to concentrate
Disruption to these processes can lead to difficulties in learning and academic performance, as well as difficulties developing social skills.
There are currently very few interventions that aim to improve these core attention skills in these children and, more importantly,
Lead researcher, Professor Kim Cornish, from the Monash School of Psychological sciences, said traditional methods, such as IQ TESTS
did not accurately capture the range of cognitive and behavioural problems associated with these disabilities.
According to Professor Cornish, these testing methods also did not isolate which areas needed improvement, or in fact which interventions have made the improvement.
The study conducted a randomised trial of 77 children with developmental disabilities. The intervention group with the tablet technology showed improved:
Core cognitive attention skills (selective and sustained attention. These were maintained for up to three months after the training ceased (longer term testing has yet to be conducted.
Numeracy abilitiesthe new gaming technology developed by Professor Cornish and her team is being commercialised by a spinoff company, Tali Health,
in an effort to raise the funding needed to extend the length of the trials
and to offer it to more children. According to Professor Cornish, while there are literally hundreds of apps available that claim to improve attention, intelligence,
and brainpower, none have been assessed clinically, so ascertaining the true impact that these interventions may have on childhood cognition is impossible. he majority of autism apps focus on social skills training which, while important,
it is the ability to improve cognitive skills alongside behavioural skills that is of utmost importance,
she said. At Monash and previously at Mcgill University in Canada, Professor Cornish has been studying attention delays in children with developmental disorders,
and has published over 100 papers on the use of computer based attention tasks. ur program is grounded in over twenty years of research,
she said. The training program is the first to be tested scientifically using a Randomised Control Trial,
#Crowd-sourced computing reveals how to make better water filters with nanotubes Crowd-sourced computing has helped an international research team including researchers from the University of Sydney discover a new method of improving water filtration systems and water quality.
Nanotube inflitration in actionthe team enlisted more than 150,000 computer volunteers worldwide to conduct the research.
which was able to simulate water flow in carbon nanotubes at very low speeds an activity that would normally require the equivalent of up to 40,000 years of processing power on a single computer.
The research was led by the Center for Nano and Micro Mechanics (CNMM) at Tsinghua University in Beijing
with international partners including researchers from the University of Sydney in Australia. rior to our project,
simulations of water flow in carbon nanotubes could only be carried out under unrealistically high flow-rate conditions says the Director of CNMM, Quanshui Zheng. hanks to World Community Grid,
the Computing for Clean water project was able to expand these simulations to probe flow rates of just a few centimeters per second characteristic of the working conditions of real nanotube-based filters,
a Phd from Tsinghua University, was also a visiting scholar at the University of Sydney working with nanotechnology expert Associate professor Luming Shen on the research.
The pair commenced their work together as members of the Computing for Clean water project five years ago. omputing for Clean water,
who contributed their own computing power to the research, says co-author Associate professor Shen. he volunteers downloaded
and ran the project on their computers. The project results have important implications for desalination
and energy conversion using salinity gradients. They can shed new light on the fundamental processes occurring in the nanoscale biological pores that funnel essential ingredients into cells. e also developed some key data processing methods
which will become essential to analyze the massive data generated by the volunteered computers. y simulating water molecules flowing through nanotubes we have shown how vibrations result in oscillating friction,
leading to enhancements in the rate of water diffusion of more than 300 percent. Ultimately this will help design new carbon nanotube based membranes for water filtration with reduced energy consumption. rowd-sourced computing power was essential to the success of our project.
I believe that crowd-sourced computing will enable more important scientific advances in cancer treatment and clean energy, for example in the future,
he said. Associate professor Shen explains the ongoing research. e plan to explicitly include the effects of defects in carbon nanotubes,
to use alternative methods to apply a pressure drop and to investigate other nanofluidic systems such as boron nitride nanotubes and biological channels. ource:
University of Sydne a
#Bats do it, dolphins do it. Now humans can do it too University of California, Berkeley, physicists have used graphene to build lightweight ultrasonic loudspeakers and microphones,
enabling people to mimic bats or dolphinsability to use sound to communicate and gauge the distance and speed of objects around them.
More practically, the wireless ultrasound devices complement standard radio transmission using electromagnetic waves in areas where radio is impractical,
such as underwater, but with far greater fidelity than current ultrasound or sonar devices. They can also be used to communicate through objects, such as steel,
that electromagnetic waves can penetrate. A canyon or pipistrelle bat a common Northern California species of bat recorded with the new ultrasonic microphone.
Image credit: Wikimediacommonsea mammals and bats use high-frequency sound for echolocation and communication, but humans just haven fully exploited that before, in my opinion,
because the technology has not been said there UC Berkeley physicist Alex Zettl. ntil now, we have not had good wideband ultrasound transmitters or receivers.
These new devices are a technology opportunity. peakers and microphones both use diaphragms, typically made of paper or plastic,
that vibrate to produce or detect sound, respectively. The diaphragms in the new devices are graphene sheets a mere one atom thick that have the right combination of stiffness
strength and light weight to respond to frequencies ranging from subsonic (below 20 hertz) to ultrasonic (above 20 kilohertz.
Humans can hear from 20 hertz up to 20,000 hertz, whereas bats hear only in the kilohertz range, from 9 to 200 kilohertz.
The grapheme loudspeakers and microphones operate from well below 20 hertz to over 500 kilohertz.
Graphene consists of carbon atoms laid out in a hexagonal, chicken-wire arrangement, which creates a tough,
or more years. here a lot of talk about using graphene in electronics and small nanoscale devices, but theye all a ways away, said Zettl,
and a member of the Kavli Energy Nanosciences Institute, operated jointly by UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab. he microphone and loudspeaker are some of the closest devices to commercial viability,
because wee worked out how to make the graphene and mount it, and it easy to scale up. ettl,
UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Qin Zhou and colleagues describe their graphene microphone and ultrasonic radio in a paper appearing online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
and since then has been developing the electronic circuitry to build a microphone with a similar graphene diaphragm.
called graphene (black mesh), provides the vibrating diaphragm for both an ultrasonic microphone and loudspeaker.
Image credit: UC Berkeleyone big advantage of graphene is that the atom-thick sheet is so lightweight that it responds immediately to an electronic pulse, unlike today piezoelectric microphones and speakers.
This comes in handy when using ultrasonic transmitters and receivers to transmit large amounts of information through many different frequency channels simultaneously,
or to measure distance, as in sonar applications. ecause our membrane is so light, it has an extremely wide frequency response
and is able to generate sharp pulses and measure distance much more accurately than traditional methods,
converting over 99 percent of the energy driving the device into sound, whereas today conventional loudspeakers and headphones convert only 8 percent into sound.
Zettl anticipates that in the future, communications devices like cellphones will utilize not only electromagnetic waves radio but also acoustic or ultrasonic sound,
which can be highly directional and long-range. raphene is a magical material; it hits all the sweet spots for a communications device,
Bat chirps When Zhou told his wife, Jinglin Zheng, about the ultrasound microphone, she suggested he try to capture the sound of bats chirping at frequencies too high for humans to hear.
So they hauled the microphone to a park in Livermore and turned it on. When they slowed down the recording to one-tenth normal speed,
converting the high frequencies to an audio range humans can hear, they were amazed at the quality
Bat expert Michael Yartsev, a newly hired UC Berkeley assistant professor of bioengineering and member of the Helen wills said Neuroscience Institute
, hese new microphones will be incredibly valuable for studying auditory signals at high frequencies, such as the ones used by bats.
and will permit a detailed study of the auditory pulses that are used by bats. ettl noted that audiophiles would also appreciate the graphene loudspeakers and headphones,
#Protein Suggests a New Strategy to Thwart Infection The newfound ability of a protein of the intestines
and the cells of bacterial invaders could underpin new strategies to fight infections. Writing this week (July 6, 2015) in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular biology,
a team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Laura Kiessling describes the knack of a human protein known as intelectin to distinguish between our cells
and those of the disease-causing microbes that invade our bodies. his has the potential to change the game in terms of how we combat microbes,
In addition to Kiessling lab, groups in the labs of UW-Madison bacteriology Professor Katrina Forest, Scripps Research Institute cell and molecular biology Professor James Paulson,
and Emory University biochemistry Professor Richard Cummings contributed to the study. Intelectin is not new to science, Kiessling notes,
but its ability to selectively identify many different kinds of pathogens and distinguish those cells from human cells was unknown. he protein is upregulated with infection,
explains Kiessling, nd while no one has shown yet that it is an antimicrobial protein, there are multiple lines of evidence that suggest it is.
the places most likely to be entry points for microbial pathogens. Intelectin performs its surveillance role through its ability to selectively recognize the carbohydrate molecules that reside on the surface of cells.
including sheep, mice frogs, eels, fish and even sea squirts, suggesting it has been conserved through evolutionary history.
In humans, for example, less than 35 chemical building blocks are used to make the cell surface molecules. In bacteria, nature deploys more than 700 chemical building blocks to make glycans.
This immense increase in diversity can make accurate detection difficult. uman intelectin just recognizes a small portion of the glycan,
which are needed urgently as many pathogens have become resistant to the antibiotics now most commonly used to treat infection e
#Omnidirectional free space wireless charging developed Mobile devices, such as smartphones and laptops, have become indispensable portable items in modern life,
but one big challenge remains to fully enjoying these devices: keeping their batteries charged. A group of researchers at KAIST has developed a wireless-power transfer (WPT) technology that allows mobile devices to be charged at any location and in any direction,
even if the devices are away from the power source, just as Wi-fi works for Internet connections. With this technology,
so long as mobile users stay in a designated area where the charging is available, e g.,, the Wi-Power zone, the device, without being tethered to a charger,
will pick up power automatically, as needed. The research team led by Professor Chun T. Rim of the Nuclear
and Quantum Engineering Department at KAIST has made great strides in WPT development. Their WPT system is capable of charging multiple mobile devices concurrently and with unprecedented freedom in any direction,
even while holding the devices in midair or a half meter away from the power source,
which is a transmitter. The research result was published in the June 2015 on-line issue of IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics,
which is entitled ix Degrees of Freedom Mobile Inductive Power Transfer by Crossed Dipole Tx (Transmitter) and Rx (Receiver) Coils.
Professor Rim team has showcased successfully the technology on July 7, 2015 at a lab on KAIST campus. They used high-frequency magnetic materials in a dipole coil structure to build a thin,
flat transmitter (Tx) system shaped in a rectangle with a size of 1m2. Either 30 smartphones with a power capacity of one watt each or 5 laptops with 2. 4 watts each can be simultaneously
and wirelessly charged at a 50 cm distance from the transmitter with six degrees of freedom, regardless of the devicesthree-axes positions and directions.
This means that the device can receive power all around the transmitter in three-dimensional space.
The maximum power transfer efficiency for the laptops was 34%.%The researchers said that to fabricate plane Tx
and Rx coils with the six-degree-of-freedom characteristic was a bottleneck of WPT for mobile applications.
Dipole Coil Resonance System (DCRS) The research team used the Dipole Coil Resonance System (DCRS) to induce magnetic fields,
which was developed by the team in 2014 for inductive power transfer over an extended distance.
The DCRS is composed of two (transmitting and receiving) magnetic dipole coils, placed in parallel, with each coil having a ferrite core
and connected with a resonant capacitor. Comparing to a conventional loop coil, the dipole coil is very compact
and has a less dimension. Therefore a crossed dipole structure has 2-dimension rather than 3-dimension of a crossed loop coil structure.
The DCRS has a great advantage to transfer power even when the resonance frequency changes in the range of 1%(Q factor is below 100).
The ferrite cores are designed optimally to reduce the core volume by half, and their ability to transfer power is unaffected nearly by human bodies or surrounding metal objects,
making DCRS ideal to transmit wireless power in emergency situations. In a test conducted in 2014,
Professor Rim succeeded in transferring 209 watts of power wirelessly to the distance of five meters.
See KAIST press release on DCRS for details. Greater Flexibility and Safer Charging The research team rearranged the two dipole coils from a parallel position to cross them
in order to generate rotating magnetic fields, which was embedded in the Tx flat platform. This has made it possible for mobile devices to receive power from any direction.
Although wireless-power technology has been applied to smartphones, it could not offer any substantial advantages over traditional wired charging
because the devices still require close contact with the transmitter, a charging pad. To use the devices freely and safely
including in public spaces, the WPT technology should provide mobile users with six degrees of freedom at a distance.
Until now, all wireless-charging technologies have had difficulties with the problem of short charging distance, mostly less than 10 cm,
as well as charging conditions that the devices should be placed in a fixed position. For example, the Galaxy S6 could only be charged wirelessly in a fixed position,
having one degree of freedom. The degree of freedom represents mobile devicesfreedom of movement in three-dimensional space. In addition, the DCRS works at a low magnetic field environment.
Based on the magnetic flux shielding technology developed by the research team the level of magnetic flux is below the safety level of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) guideline (27 T) for general public exposure to electromagnetic field (EMF.
Professor Rim said, ur transmitter system is safe for humans and compatible with other electronic devices.
We have solved three major issues of short charging distance, the dependence on charging directions, and plane coil structures of both Tx and Rx,
which have blocked the commercialization of WPT. Currently, the research team and KAIST spin-off company, TESLAS, Inc.,have been conducting pilot projects to apply DCRS in various places such as cafes and offices e
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