#Physicists discover long-sought entaquarkparticle CERN Large hadron collider announced Tuesday that researchers discovered a remarkable class of particles known as pentaquarks that could reshape scientistsunderstanding about the properties of matter.
Physicists have been searching pentaquarks for almost 50 years, but the research group that made the discovery,
a Syracuse University team funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), wasn specifically looking for them.
According to Syracuse physicist Sheldon Stone, graduate student Nathan Jurik was studying the decay of a different particle
when the pentaquark was detected. e asked a graduate student to examine what we thought was an uninteresting and minor source of background events,
just in case it happened to be a nasty source of experimental noise, Stone told Symmetry Magazine. e did it begrudgingly
but came back with a big smile on his face because there was a huge and unexpected signal.
We told him to forget about what he was working on and focus on this instead. Atoms, and the protons and neutrons that make up their nuclei,
are familiar terms in science. But quarks are even smaller particleshe building blocks of protons, neutrons and other subatomic particles known as baryons.
Baryons, including protons and neutrons, are composed of three quarks. A pentaquark is something different omposite statethat groups four quarks and one antiquark
Studying composite states can give scientists additional insight into the properties of ordinary baryons. enefitting from the large data set provided by the LHC,
and the excellent precision of our detector, we have examined all possibilities for these signals, and conclude that they can only be explained by pentaquark states,
said LHCB physicist Tomasz Skwarnicki of Syracuse University, whose research group was a leader in the analysis. ore precisely the states must be formed of two up quarks, one down quark, one charm quark and one anti-charm quark.
The discovery was made by the CERN Large hadron collider b-quark (LHCB) experiment group one of several ongoing particle physics experiments at the laboratory.
which supports the research through nine awards to scientists from Syracuse University, the University of Maryland College Park,
the Massachusetts institute of technology and the University of Cincinnati working at the Large hadron collider. he pentaquark is not just any new particle,
#Research Team Improves Lithium air batteries For Electric car Industry A research team from Carnegie mellon University and the University of California,
Berkeley, has found that blending together different types of salts in the electrolytes within lithium air batteries can increase the batteriescapacity
Lithium air batteries will soon be a strong competitor to lithium ion batteries, which currently dominate the battery-run electronics market.
Lithium air batteries are especially promising for the electric car industry, as they allow electric car battery packs to be smaller
and more lightweight and could hold more than twice as much energy as lithium ion batteries. Batteries consist of one electrode on either side an anode and a cathode and an electrolyte between them.
Lithium ion batteriescathodes typically contain heavy metal ions like manganese, cobalt or iron, but in lithium air batteries, the much lighter oxygen in a sense acts as the cathode, creating a more efficient design.
Electrolytes consist of a salt and a solvent to dissolve the salt. he electrolytes used in batteries are just like Gatorade electrolytes,
says Venkat Viswanathan, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie mellon. very electrolyte has a solvent and a salt.
So if you take Gatorade, the solvent would be water and the salt would be something like sodium chloride, for instance.
However in a lithium air battery, the solvent is dimethoxyethane and the salt is something like lithium hexafluorophosphate. arlier this year,
a team led by Viswanathan and Assistant professor Bryan Mccloskey from the University of California, Berkeley, published a paper in Nature Chemistry,
which showed that by adding just a little bit of water into the batterieselectrolyte mixture, the researchers were able to make the lithium air batteries last four to five times longer. owever,
adding water is not a perfect solution, because it comes at the cost of being able to recharge the battery,
cautioned Viswanathan, who explained that while water increased the battery capacity, it also catalyzed additional parasitic reactions,
which prevented the batteries from being recharged. Viswanathan, Mccloskey and their colleagues Mechanical engineering Ph d. Student Vikram Pande, Abhishek Khetan, a visiting Ph d. student,
and Colin Burke, a graduate student in Mccloskey lab have published just a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
which addresses the rechargeability problem. The paper, titled nhancing Electrochemical Intermediate Solvation through Electrolyte Anion Selection to Increase Nonaqueous Li-O2 Battery Capacity, explains that salts are the key not solvents
as they previously thought. ur original idea was to add something to the solvent dimethoxyethane,
and so we were intially exploring solvent additives. We found a fundamental problem with the solvent additives:
the compromise to rechargeability. Then, Mccloskey came up with the ingenious idea of changing the salt instead,
Viswanathan said. nstead of using just one salt, we decided to blend salts together. We used two salts:
lithium bis (trifluoromethane) sulfonimide and lithium nitrate. ande adds, y blending salts in the electrolyte solution,
we increased the battery capacity by triggering the so-called solution process without compromising on rechargeability.
Nitrate anion from the lithium nitrate salt does the trick by selectively dissolving previously insoluble products without facing the fundamental bottleneck produced by solvent additives. hough this research is an important advancement for lithium air batteries,
the methods the researchers have developed will also be very impactful in other areas of battery research. his research is going to be very important for another big battery technology,
lithium sulfur, and other competitors in the electric vehicle industry, Mccloskey said. he whole idea of selectively making things soluble
or insoluble is really important for most new battery ideas that are out there. ource:
Carnegie mellon Universit s
#The Incredible Shrinking ESR Machine Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have come up with a way to shrink a research instrument generally associated with large machines that make bulk measurements of samples down to a literally pinpoint
-precision probe. The team electron spin resonance (ESR) probe takes a large-scale technique used for decades as a way to explore the overall properties of bulk materials
The new probe is expected to have a broad range of applications in fields ranging from chemistry to semiconductor design
and manufacturing. e are really over the moon about this work, says NIST Jason Campbell. ur new approach brings more than 20,000 times improvement in sensitivity over conventional ESR
and biology research because it can reveal how molecules stick together. It widely utilized in an eclectic collection of fields spanning anthropology, fuel science, physiology and meteorology.
The expiration dates on some foods in the grocery store are determined using ESR as well. For many foods, shelf life can be predicted well by ESR monitoring the broken chemical bonds that occur over time.
it might detect defects on computer chip surfaces or tell us more about the workings of proteins on the surface of cells,
ESR works by combining a magnetic field with microwave energy, which together, get molecular bonds vibrating in telltale ways.
The resonant chamber focuses the microwaves on the sample, just like they would in a microwave oven,
introducing some of the same problems familiar to microwave chefs. SR is quick and convenient in some ways,
but you don have as much control over the spot youe exploring as you might like,
says NIST Jason Campbell. nd you can put anything metallic or conductive into the resonance chamber, meaning it very difficult to look at transistors or other electronic devices.
The NIST team innovation was to forgo the resonant chamber entirely. Instead, they introduce microwave energy by forcing high-frequency current through a microscopic wire,
which acts as a tooth like probe tip that can be moved within a few micrometers of a sample material.
we can imagine seeing atom-sized defects in chips, says Campbell, an electrical engineer whose work often concerns the semiconductor industry. ut wee also excited for the huge number of people who can now use this technique in chemistry and biology.
It a simple, elegant solution to a longstanding problem. l
#HIV uses the immune system own tools to suppress it Canadian research team at the IRCM in Montréal,
This breakthrough was published in the scientific journal PLOS Pathogens and will be presented at the upcoming IAS 2015 conference in Vancouver.
The findings pave the way for future HIV prevention or cure strategies. The study goal was to determine how HIV manages to compromise antiviral responses in the initial period of infection
also called the acute infection stage, during which the virus establishes itself in the body.
The acute infection is considered a critical period in determining the complexity, extent and progression of the disease.
It is also during this stage that HIV establishes latent infection in long-lasting cellular reservoirs.
These viral reservoirs, which harbour the virus out of sight from the immune system and antiviral drugs, represent the primary barrier to a cure. n important component in this process is a group of proteins collectively called type 1 Interferons,
which are the immune system first line of defence against viral infections and are known to have a beneficial role in the early stages of HIV infection,
says Dr. Cohen, Director of the Human Retrovirology research unit at the IRCM. he problem is that HIV has developed mechanisms to suppress the Interferon response and, until now,
little was known about how this was achieved. Most of the Interferon is produced by a very small population of immune cells called pdcs (plasmacytoid dendritic cells), responsible for providing immediate defence against infections.
PDCS patrol the body to detect invaders and, when they recognize the presence of a pathogen,
they secrete Interferon. The Interferon then triggers a large array of defence mechanisms in nearby cells, creating an antiviral state that prevents the dissemination and
ultimately, the expansion of the virus. hen pdcs encounter HIV-infected cells, the production of Interferon is regulated by a protein located on the infected cell surface called BST2,
and leads to persistent infection, adds Dr. Bego. e found that HIV, through Vpu, takes advantage of the role played by BST2 by maintaining its ability to activate ILT7 and limit the production of Interferon,
all the while counteracting its direct antiviral activity on HIV production. he hope for a definitive cure
and an effective vaccine has been frustrated by HIV endless propensity to subvert the host defences and persist in small populations of long-lasting reservoirs despite antiretroviral therapy,
describes Dr. Cohen, who also leads Cancure, a team of leading Canadian researchers working towards an HIV cure. ur findings can provide tools to enhance antiviral responses during the early stages of infection.
By blocking Vpu action, we could prevent early viral expansion and dissemination, while also allowing pdcs to trigger effective antiviral responses.
We believe that such interventions during primary infection have the potential to limit the establishment and complexity of viral reservoirs,
a condition that seems required to achieve a sustained HIV remission. he discovery by Drs.
which explains how the virus can be held down or wiped out during early periods of infection,
this new study will advance research for an HIV cure. t
#Futuristic brain probe allows for wireless control of neurons Scientists used soft materials to create a brain implant a tenth the width of a human hair that can wirelessly control neurons with lights and drugs.
minimally invasive device for controlling brain cells with drugs and lighta study showed that scientists can wirelessly determine the path a mouse walks with a press of a button.
Researchers at the Washington University School of medicine, St louis, and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, created a remote controlled,
next-generation tissue implant that allows neuroscientists to inject drugs and shine lights on neurons deep inside the brains of mice.
Its development was funded partially by the National institutes of health. t unplugs a world of possibilities for scientists to learn how brain circuits work in a more natural setting. said Michael R. Bruchas, Ph d.,associate professor of anesthesiology and neurobiology at Washington University School of medicine and a senior author
The Bruchas lab studies circuits that control a variety of disorders including stress, depression, addiction, and pain.
Typically, scientists who study these circuits have to choose between injecting drugs through bulky metal tubes
Both options require surgery that can damage parts of the brain and introduce experimental conditions that hinder animalsnatural movements.
Jae-Woong Jeong, Ph d.,a bioengineer formerly at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, worked with Jordan G. Mccall, Ph d.,a graduate student in the Bruchas lab,
to construct a remote controlled, optofluidic implant. The device is made out of soft materials that are a tenth the diameter of a human hair
and lights. e used powerful nanomanufacturing strategies to fabricate an implant that lets us penetrate deep inside the brain with minimal damage,
said John A. Rogers, Ph d.,professor of materials science and engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a senior author. ltra-miniaturized devices like this have tremendous potential for science and medicine. ith a thickness of 80 micrometers and a width of 500 micrometers,
the optofluidic implant is thinner than the metal tubes, or cannulas, scientists typically use to inject drugs.
When the scientists compared the implant with a typical cannula they found that the implant damaged
In some experiments, they showed that they could precisely map circuits by using the implant to inject viruses that label cells with genetic dyes.
when they made mice that have light-sensitive VTA neurons stay on one side of a cage by commanding the implant to shine laser pulses on the cells.
In all of the experiments, the mice were about three feet away from the command antenna. his is the kind of revolutionary tool development that neuroscientists need to map out brain circuit activity
t in line with the goals of the NIH BRAIN INITIATIVE. he researchers fabricated the implant using semiconductor computer chip manufacturing techniques.
and has four microscale inorganic light-emitting diodes. They installed an expandable material at the bottom of the drug reservoirs to control delivery.
who is now an assistant professor of electrical, computer, and energy engineering at University of Colorado Boulder. e tried to engineer the implant to meet some of neurosciences greatest unmet needs. n the study,
the scientists provide detailed instructions for manufacturing the implant. tool is only good if it used,
said Dr. Bruchas. e believe an open, crowdsourcing approach to neuroscience is a great way to understand normal and healthy brain circuitry. ource
On this website, doctors can, together with the patient, easily calculate the odds of recurrence of the disease.
More and more women in The netherlands have to face breast cancer. Due to early detection and better treatment more and more of them are cured.
however, is that the group of women who have to regularly be checked for recurrence of the disease is growing.
Up until 2012, women who were cured of breast cancer were checked every year for recurrence of the disease.
Since 2012 the oncological guidelines prescribe that doctors have to choose an individualized approach, where the risk of recurrence of the disease in a specific patient has to determine the follow-up course of action.
In practice this doesn happen, because doctors simply do not know the ecurrence riskin individual patients.
Odds of recurrenceresearchers of the University of Twente have developed therefore a system, a so-called nomogram, that doctors can use together with patients to simply calculate the odds of recurrence of the disease themselves, on the basis of the age of the patient, the information on the original tumour and the treatment used.
The system gives the odds of recurrence of the disease per year, including the uncertainty of the prediction.
To develop their system the researchers used the information of almost 40,000 breast cancer patients from The netherlands Cancer Registry (NKR, Nederlandse Kankerregistratie), a unique database in which all information about the occurrence,
survival and deaths of all instances of cancer in The netherlands have been registered since 1989. Follow-upwith this system
doctors have a tool they can use to help determine the best way to set up the follow-up for individual patients.
The University of Twente will now get to work on providing doctors with concrete recommendations for planning subsequent check-ups.
For patients with a very low risk, for example, it not necessary to get a check-up every year,
while others might have to get their check-up more often. According to Joost Klaase, surgeon at the Medical Spectrum Twente (MST) and involved with the research, the medical world has need a for the system. he nomogram for risk of breast cancer recurrence gives us a tool to create a tailor-made follow-up for breast cancer patients:
patients with a low risk of recurrence by far the largest group can be checked less often. ource:
University of Twent e
#Plankzooka Larval Sampler May Revolutionize Deep ocean Research Scientists have conducted successfully the first high-volume collection of plankton,
Scientists and engineers from Duke university, the University of Oregon and Woods hole oceanographic institution (WHOI) deployed the new sampler nicknamed Plankzooka for its uncanny resemblance to two bazooka rocket launchers on July 9 during a research expedition aboard the RV Atlantis
through a net system housed within two carbon fiber composite tubes. art of the beauty of its design is that planktonic organisms are filtered gently so they remain intact for scientific analysis,
said Cindy Van Dover, director of the Duke university Marine Laboratory. On its maiden voyage, the Syprid sampler was carried by the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Sentry to a depth of more than 2,
150 meters where pressures exceed a bone-crushing 3150 psi and drove a precise sampling pattern for more than eight hours just above a natural methane seep.
but all plankton in the deep ocean, said Van Dover. e can now pick and choose where we sample,
#Xenotransplantation of MSC Sheets Attenuates Left Ventricular Remodeling Xenotransplantation of Bone marrow-Derived Human Mesenchymal Stem Cell Sheets Attenuates Left Ventricular Remodeling in a Porcine Ischemic Cardiomyopathy Model.
Bone marrow-derived autologous human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCS) are one of the most promising cell sources for cell therapy to treat heart failure.
and enhanced the efficacy of cell therapy. We hypothesized that the transplantation of MSC sheets may be a feasible, safe,
and effective treatment for ischemic cardiomyopathy (ICM). METHODS AND RESULTS: Human MSCS acquired from bone marrow were positive for CD73, CD90,
These were transplanted successfully over the infarct myocardium of porcine ICM models induced by placing an ameroid constrictor on the left anterior descending coronary artery without any procedural-related complications (MSC group=6:
Premature ventricular contractions were detected rarely by Holter electrocardiogram (ECG) in the MSC group in the first week after transplantation.
On echocardiography, the cardiac performance of the MSC group was significantly better than that of the sham group at 8 weeks after transplantation.
On histological examination 8 weeks after transplantation, left ventricular (LV) remodeling was attenuated significantly compared with the sham group (cardiomyocyte size and interstitial fibrosis were measured.
Immunohistochemistry of the von Willebrand factor showed that the vascular density in the infarct border area was significantly greater in the MSC group than the sham group.
Expression of angiogenesis-related factors in the infarct border area of the MSC group was significantly greater than that of the sham group,
as measured by real-time polymerase chain reaction. CONCLUSIONS: Bone marrow-derived MSC sheets improved cardiac function and attenuated LV remodeling in ICM without major complications,
Property of nonstick pans improves solar cell efficiency The same quality that buffers a raincoat against downpours
or a pan against sticky foods can also boost the performance of solar cells, according to a new study from UNL engineers.
Published July 20 in the journal Nature Communications, the study showed that constructing a type of organic solar cell on a on-wettingplastic surface made it 1. 5 times more efficient at converting sunlight to electricity.
faster and easier to produce than those made from only a single crystal. Yet single-crystal cells have boasted traditionally better efficiency
partly because they feature far fewer grains fragments akin to microscopic puzzle pieces. The barriers between these grains reduce cell efficiency by trapping
which ideally produce electric current by migrating in opposite directions following their separation by photon-carrying sunlight.
Though grain size is limited typically to the thickness of a solar cell, Huang team found that a non-wetting surface allowed it to fabricate grains up to eight times larger than the cell is thick.
a Susan J. Rosowski associate professor of mechanical and materials engineering. hen you have two small grains merge into a larger grain,
Using non-wetting surfaces as fabrication sites might also lead to improvements in other technology, the study reported,
possibly in the form of faster transistors and more sensitive photodetectors. hen it comes to electronic properties,
#New Technique to Synthesize Nanostructured Nanowires IBM scientist Frances Ross (left) with Brookhaven Lab scientists Dong Su (center) and Eric Stach in the Center for Functional Nanomaterials.
and tailor complex structures at the nanoscale, developed by an international collaboration led by the University of Cambridge
and IBM, opens opportunities to tailor properties and functionalities of materials for a wide range of semiconductor device applications.
The researchers have developed a method for growing combinations of different materials in a needle-shaped crystal called a nanowire.
Nanowires are small structures, only a few billionths of a metre in diameter. Semiconductors can be grown into nanowires
and the result is a useful building block for electrical, optical, and energy harvesting devices. The researchers have found out how to grow smaller crystals within the nanowire,
forming a structure like a crystal rod with an embedded array of gems. Details of the new method are published in the journal Nature Materials.
Electron microscope images showing the formation of a nickel silicide nanoparticle (colored yellow) in a silicon nanowire.
Credit: Stephan Hofmannhe key to building functional nanoscale devices is to control materials and their interfaces at the atomic level, said Dr. Stephan Hofmann of the Department of Engineering,
one of the paper senior authors. ee developed a method of engineering inclusions of different materials
so that we can make complex structures in a very precise way. anowires are grown often through a process called Vapour-Liquid-Solid (VLS) synthesis,
where a tiny catalytic droplet is used to seed and feed the nanowire, so that it self-assembles one atomic layer at a time.
VLS allows a high degree of control over the resulting nanowire: composition, diameter, growth direction, branching,
kinking and crystal structure can be controlled by tuning the self-assembly conditions. As nanowires become better controlled,
new applications become possible. The technique that Hofmann and his colleagues from Cambridge and IBM developed can be thought of as an expansion of the concept that underlies conventional VLS growth.
The researchers use the catalytic droplet not only to grow the nanowire, but also to form new materials within it.
These tiny crystals form in the liquid, but later attach to the nanowire and then become embedded as the nanowire is grown further.
This catalyst mediated docking process can elf-optimiseto create highly perfect interfaces for the embedded crystals.
To unravel the complexities of this process the research team used two customised electron microscopes, one at IBM TJ Watson Research center and a second at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
This allowed them to record high-speed movies of the nanowire growth as it happens atom-by-atom.
The researchers found that using the catalyst as a ixing bowl with the order and amount of each ingredient programmed into a desired recipe,
resulted in complex structures consisting of nanowires with embedded nanoscale crystals, or quantum dots, of controlled size and position. he technique allows two different materials to be incorporated into the same nanowire,
even if the lattice structures of the two crystals don perfectly match, said Hofmann. t a flexible platform that can be used for different technologies. ossible applications for this technique range from atomically perfect buried interconnects to single-electron transistors, high-density memories, light emission, semiconductor lasers,
and tunnel diodes, along with the capability to engineer three-dimensional device structures. his process has enabled us to understand the behaviour of nanoscale materials in unprecedented detail,
and that knowledge can now be applied to other processes, said Hofmann. Source: BN o
#RNA insecticide could target specific pests A novel insecticide targets a specific gene in a pest,
killing only that bug species on crops and avoiding collateral damage to beneficial insects caused by today pesticides.
Though the technology is still in its infancy, a Cornell study published online in Pest Management Science describes how the RNA-based insecticide can be effective for at least 28 days
when sprayed on a leaf, a finding that dispels previous concerns that the genetic material would quickly degrade in rain and sunlight.
The proof-of-principle study aimed to answer whether an RNA-insecticide spray would be stable enough to use in agriculture.
The researchers matched double-stranded (ds) RNA to an actin gene in Colorado potato beetle a leading potato pest that inflicts $100 million per year in costs to North american farmers and also damages tomato and other plants.
Actin genes produce actin proteins that are essential for many cellular functions and prevalent in eukaryotic cells,
and were used in this study to test how stable the ds RNA would be in the field.
Once applied on leaves, the ds actin-RNA insecticide was highly effective on potato beetles that ate the leaves. he major problem with conventional insecticides is they affect non-target organisms,
said Jeff Scott, a Cornell entomology professor and a co-author of the study along with Keri San miguel,
the manager in Scott lab. his is an insecticide that is based on a specific gene. Thus, you might be able to kill only that specific insect,
and that would be a phenomenal breakthrough in pest control. RNA, ribonucleic acid, is present in all living cells.
Mainly, it acts as a messenger carrying instructions from DNA for controlling the synthesis of proteins.
For the last two decades researchers have employed a process called RNA interference, where double stranded-rna RNA is tailored to match a gene sequence,
such that once injected into a cell it hunts out and destroys the transcripts of a specific gene.
Geneticists have used the technique to silence specific genes examine what functions are lost and hence learn that gene purpose.
The idea for crop protection was born out of this technology. As part of the study, Scott and San miguel put a film of ds RNA on plate glass
and exposed it to ultraviolet light, which is found in the sun rays and breaks down many materials.
and the stalk is placed in solution with RNA insecticide, and potato beetles ate that leaf, mortality occurred but it wasn as high.
the RNA did not transfer internally to other leaves. Before such an insecticide is ready for market,
it needs more work, Scott said. For example, the cost of making RNA insecticide is currently much higher than conventional insecticides.
Also for the insecticide to work, insects need to eat the leaf, which means the spray will not affect insects that don eat leaves, such as houseflies,
or those that suck sap, such as aphids. Also, some insects are unaffected simply, perhaps due to gut enzymes that break down the ds RNA. he technology is really at its infancy,
said Scott. t may take some tweaking but its potential to be specific is going to be hard to beat. t
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