#olecular spongeadvancement in storing hydrogen Researchers at the University of Bath have discovered that hydrogen absorbed in specialised carbon nanomaterials can achieve extraordinary storage densities at moderate temperatures and pressures.
The research marks a major development in our understanding of efficient hydrogen storage. It was led by Dr Valeska Ting from University Department of Chemical engineering in conjunction with researchers from Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and collaborators in the USA and Germany.
Sustainable, low-carbon fuel Hydrogen presents a significant opportunity as a sustainable, low-carbon alternative to fossil-based transport fuels.
However, hydrogen is stored typically as a compressed gas in bulky high pressure tanks and these costly storage problems are a barrier to its use as a transport fuel of the future.
found that when hydrogen is stored in materials with optimally-sized subnanometer pores, it is able to be compressed simultaneously
and stored at much higher densities than in conventional tanks. These materials include activated carbons, zeolites, metal-organic framework materials and certain porous polymers
which act as olecular sponges Solid-like behaviour Using inelastic neutron scattering, which is one of the few experimental techniques that can be used to obtain direct information on the state of the hydrogen inside a solid material,
reater understanding of how the nanoscale structure of the storage material can influence gas storage capacities is expected to lead to more accurate evaluation methods for existing porous hydrogen storage materials.
#Graphene-Based Biosensor Could Detect Cancer within Minutes One of the main reasons why treating most cancers is such a difficult task is our inability to detect its presence before it becomes widespread.
many forms of the disease are often completely reversible. The new, graphene-based immunosensor could soon lead to a quantum leap in cancer diagnosis. Image credit:
Alden Chadwick via flickr. com, CC BY 2. 0. In order to help medical professionals combat this deadly affliction,
researchers at Trinity college Dublin are currently developing a highly-efficient biosensor that could pick up even the slightest presence of cancer within the body in mere minutes.
The prototype device, called Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) immunosensor, is a small strip of material based on advanced optical technology,
While the technology has already been proven to be capable of rapidly detecting cholera it took graphene to also make it sensitive to cancer. e showed experimentally that simply the addition of graphene led to a clear increase in the sensor signal, aid Dr. Georg Duesberg,
a researcher involved in the study. his type of sensing platform offers a large variety for medical diagnostics,
since it can be adapted to almost any type of disease markers. ven though the SPR sensor is not the only method scientists are currently developing for cancer screening,
it might just be the most exciting one due to its accuracy and speed while most current techniques require full vials of blood for an accurate diagnosis,
the new-and-improved device could detect malignancies from just a single droplet. ecause of the sensitivity, apart from faster results,
it could more easily detect smaller amounts of biomarkers, thus providing earlier diagnosis and prognosis of conditions such as cancer, said Dr. Andreas Holzinger,
another researcher involved in the study. Although the device is currently in early developmental stages
and still requires a lot of further study, researchers are already hailing it as an important innovation in medical diagnoses.
The sensor has shown yet its value in detecting cholera without error, and, as the authors wrote in the current study,
here is no reason why this method could not be used in any other chemistry or other toxins. he need for further tests notwithstanding, authors of the present study,
#Supersonic Aircraft patented by an Airbus Group Company The European aeronautic defence and space company has patented a revolutionary aircraft that leaves every other supersonic jet far behind.
it puts even the fastest Concorde to shame. The sonic boom created by this aircraft is surprisingly less than that of the Concorde.
The aircraft is equipped with two ramjets under its delta wings, a pair of Turbojets under the front part of the fuselage and a rocket engine at the rear end of the fuselage.
The turbojets are used for propelling the aircraft during taxiing and takeoff. The passengers and the crew are placed in hammocks for improved comfort.
Because of this vertical trajectory, the energy of the supersonic boom is dissipated in all horizontal radial directions
The ram jets are ignited then and the aircraft is propelled horizontally at supersonic speeds. At 4. 5 mach, you can reach from London to NY in 1 hr.
The flight path of this aircraft technically makes it the highest roller coaster in the world. Let me know in the comments below
how many of you would consider a roller coaster ride while traveling around the world. Patent Information:
#Scientist discovers magnetic material unnecessary to create spin current It doesn happen often that a young scientist makes a significant and unexpected discovery,
What he foundhat you don need a magnetic material to create spin current from insulatorsas important implications for the field of spintronics and the development of high-speed,
low-power electronics that use electron spin rather than charge to carry information. Wu work upends prevailing ideas of how to generate a current of spins. his is a discovery in the true sense
said Anand Bhattacharya, a physicist in Argonne Materials science Division and the Center for Nanoscale Materials (a DOE Office of Science user facility),
who is the project principal investigator. here no prediction of anything like it. Spin is a quantum property of electrons that scientists often compare to a tiny bar magnet that points either por own.
Until now scientists and engineers have relied on shrinking electronics to make them faster, but now increasingly clever methods must be used to sustain the continued progression of electronics technology,
as we reach the limit of how small we can create a transistor. One such method is to separate the flow of electron spin from the flow of electron current
upending the idea that information needs to be carried on wires and instead flowing it through insulators.
scientists have kept typically electrons stationary in a lattice made of an insulating ferromagnetic material, such as yttrium iron garnet (YIG).
Wu set out to build on previous work with spin currents, expanding it to different materials using a new technique he developed.
Wu looked at a layer of ferromagnetic YIG on a substrate of paramagnetic gadolinium gallium garnet (GGG.
They generate no magnetic field, produce no magnons, and there appears to be no way for the spins to communicate with one another.
The next step is to figure out why it does. e don know the way this works
The scientists also want to look for other materials that display this effect. e think that there may be other new physics working here,
In the meantime, said Wu, ee just taken ferromagnetism off its pedestal. In a spintronic device you don have to use a ferromagnet.
You can use either a paramagnetic metal or a paramagnetic insulator to do it now
#Scientists Stretch Electrically Conducting Fibers to New Lengths An international research team based at The University of Texas at Dallas has made electrically conducting fibers that can be stretched reversibly to over 14 times their initial length and
whose electrical conductivity increases 200-fold when stretched. The research team is using the new fibers to make artificial muscles,
as well as capacitors whose energy storage capacity increases about tenfold when the fibers are stretched. Fibers and cables derived from the invention might one day be used as interconnects for super-elastic electronic circuits;
robots and exoskeletons having great reach; morphing aircraft; giant-range strain sensors; failure-free pacemaker leads;
and super-stretchy charger cords for electronic devices. In a study published in the July 24 issue of the journalscience,
the scientists describe how they constructed the fibers by wrapping lighter-than-air, electrically conductive sheets of tiny carbon nanotubes to form a jellyroll-like sheath around a long rubber core.
The new fibers differ from conventional materials in several ways. For example, when conventional fibers are stretched,
the resulting increase in length and decrease in cross-sectional area restricts the flow of electrons through the material.
But even a iantstretch of the new conducting sheath-core fibers causes little change in their electrical resistance
said Dr. Ray Baughman, senior author of the paper and director of the Alan G. Macdiarmid Nanotech Institute at UT Dallas. One key to the performance of the new conducting elastic fibers is the introduction of buckling into the carbon nanotube
sheets. Because the rubber core is stretched along its length as the sheets are being wrapped around it,
when the wrapped rubber relaxes, the carbon nanofibers form a complex buckled structure, which allows for repeated stretching of the fiber. hink of the buckling that occurs
when an accordion is compressed, which makes the inelastic material of the accordion stretchable, said Baughman,
the Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Chemistry at UT Dallas. e make the inelastic carbon nanotube sheaths of our sheath-core fibers super stretchable by modulating large buckles with small buckles,
so that the elongation of both buckle types can contribute to elasticity. These amazing fibers maintain the same electrical resistance,
even when stretched by giant amounts, because electrons can travel over such a hierarchically buckled sheath as easily as they can traverse a straight sheath.
Dr. Zunfeng Liu, lead author of the study and a research associate in the Nanotech Institute,
said the structure of the sheath-core fibers as further interesting and important complexity. Buckles form not only along the fiber length
but also around its circumference. hrinking the fiber circumference during fiber stretch causes this second type of reversible hierarchical buckling around its circumference,
even as the buckling in the fiber direction temporarily disappears, Liu said. his novel combination of buckling in two dimensions avoids misalignment of nanotube
and rubber core directions, enabling the electrical resistance of the sheath-core fiber to be insensitive to stretch.
By adding a thin overcoat of rubber to the sheath-core fibers and then another carbon nanotube sheath,
the researchers made strain sensors and artificial muscles in which the buckled nanotube sheaths serve as electrodes
and the thin rubber layer is a dielectric, resulting in a fiber capacitor. These fiber capacitors exhibited a capacitance change of 860 percent
when the fiber was stretched 950 percent. o presently available material-based strain sensor can operate over nearly as large a strain range,
Liu said. Adding twist to these double-sheath fibers resulted in fast, electrically powered torsional
or rotating artificial muscles that could be used to rotate mirrors in optical circuits or pump liquids in miniature devices used for chemical analysis,
said Dr. Carter Haines BS1 Phd5, a research associate in the Nanotech Institute and an author of the paper.
In the laboratory Nan Jiang, a research associate in the Nanotech Institute, demonstrated that the conducting elastomers can be fabricated in diameters ranging from the very small about 150 microns,
or twice the width of a human hair to much larger sizes, depending on the size of the rubber core. ndividual small fibers also can be combined into large bundles
and plied together like yarn or rope, she said. his technology could be well-suited for rapid commercialization,
said Dr. Raquel Ovalle-Robles MS6 Phd8, an author on the paper and chief research and intellectual properties strategist at Lintec of America Nanoscience & Technology Center. he rubber cores used for these sheath-core fibers are inexpensive and readily available,
she said. he only exotic component is the carbon nanotube aerogel sheet used for the fiber sheath.
Last year, UT Dallas licensed to Lintec of America a process Baughman team developed to transform carbon nanotubes into large-scale structures, such as sheets.
Lintec opened its Nanoscience & Technology Center in Richardson, Texas, less than 5 miles from the UT Dallas campus,
to manufacture carbon nanotube aerogel sheets for diverse applications c
#New receptor for controlling blood pressure discovered High blood pressure is a primary risk factor in the development of many cardiovascular diseases.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim have decoded now a new regulatory mechanism,
which could be a factor in the development of hypertension: the physical forces of the flowing blood activate a receptor on the surface of the inner vascular wall.
Through a reaction chain, this ultimately leads to a reduction in blood pressure. A range of factors is known to affect blood pressure.
However, there have been gaps in the research that has been conducted to date on the underlying molecular mechanisms.
A reason for this is that controlling blood pressure is one of the body most complex control functions.
Blood pressure levels are regulated primarily via certain arteries known as resistance vessels. Blood pressure rises when these vessels contract
and decrease in diameter. The opposite is also the case: when the vessels relax, blood pressure drops.
The actual state of tension in the blood vessels is regulated by the muscle cells in the vascular wall.
At the same time, it is not only systemic factors that influence the vessel muscles, there are also local components. t has long been known that the physical shear stresses caused by the flow of blood on the inner layer of the vessel wall,
the endothelial cells, have an effect and as a result decrease the state of tension in the blood vessels,
says Stefan Offermanns, Director of the Pharmacology Department at the Max Planck Institute. Precisely how this happens is known not.
It is possible that so-called mechanoreceptors on the cell surface receive the stimulus and then produce a molecule known as ATP.
At the end of a series of intermediate steps, which up to now have only been understood to a certain extent, the endothelial cells produce nitrogen monoxide.
This in turn relaxes the vessel muscles and reduces blood pressure. If this process does not work
or if it does not function correctly, this can cause hypertension. Under the leadership of the Max Planck researchers, a new study has now been shed able to some light on key elements of the mechanism that leads to the release of nitrogen monoxide
and thus to the reduction in blood pressure. fter we had found clues in cell culture experiments that a certain docking site for ATP,
known as the P2y2 receptor, is located in the middle of the regulatory mechanism, we systematically switched off this receptor in mice,
says Offermanns. In fact, the blood pressure in these mice with the inactivated P2y2receptor subsequently increased over the course of a few days. he P2y2receptor attracted to the ATP is the key protein.
It is activated indirectly via the shear stresses of the flowing blood. At the end of the reaction cascade,
whose components we were also able to identify in further experiments, nitrogen monoxide is formed, which relaxes the vessel wall
and reduces blood pressure, explains Offermanns. The scientists in Bad Nauheim believe that the findings from this study,
which are published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, are of major clinical interest. e want to examine the extent to which malfunctions in this key blood pressure regulation principle are responsible for the development of vascular diseases such as hypertension
and atherosclerosis, says Offermanns. Knowledge about this principle could in future be used for the prevention and treatment of hypertension t
#How to make chromosomes from DNA Researchers at the University of Tokyo have discovered a long-overlooked process important for converting a long, string-like DNA molecule into a chromosome.
This finding gives us a better understanding of the mechanism of how cells store safely genetic material, DNA.
Model of condensin function revealed by the present study. Condensin recognizes unwound DNA segments produced by gene expression
and restores them to double-stranded DNA. This function proved to be a prerequisite for making chromosomes from DNA.
DNA molecules are long, string-like polymers storing the genetic information of life and, in a cell, are packed tightly into structures called chromosomes.
Formation of chromosomes in a dividing cell is required for faithful transmission of information in DNA to daughter cells.
The condensin complex is known to play an essential role in assembling chromosomes, but it remains unknown how condensin is involved in folding of DNA molecules.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo, including Assistant professor Takashi Sutani, Professor Katsuhiko Shirahige (Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences) and Ph d student Toyonori Sakata (Graduate school of Agricultural and Life sciences), isolated from cells
and analyzed DNA segments to which condensin binds, and revealed that condensin is associated with single stranded-dna DNA (ssdna)
which is produced by unwinding of the DNA double-helix. By measuring the amount of ssdna using an ssdna binding protein,
they found that ssdna regions existed at expressed genes and were produced by gene expression (or transcription),
and that ssdna amount was increased further in condensin-deficient cells. They also discovered that chromosome segregation defects in mutant cells that showed lowered levels of condensin function were rescued largely by transcription inhibition.
They therefore concluded that ssdna is produced by unwinding of double-stranded DNA during transcription that ssdna is detrimental to assembling chromosomes,
and that condensin restores unwound ssdna segments to double-stranded DNA. t was believed widely that unwound DNA segments return spontaneously to canonical double-helical DNA,
but this study has revealed that restoration of double-stranded DNA is regulated actively and is important for cell survival.
It has demonstrated also for the first time that the presence of ssdna impedes chromosome organization, providing insight into the mechanism of chromosome formation,
says Assistant professor Sutani u
#Discovery: cells unwillingly help adenoviruses Various viruses claim many lives every day and cause other nonlethal infections that can lead to serious complications.
Now scientists at the University of Zurich have found that adenoviruses penetrate the cells with the help of the cells themselves.
Understanding the mechanisms how virus enters the cell is beneficial for development of new antiviral agents.
Adenoviruses cause variety of health problems to humans, such as eye or respiratory infections. Now scientists discovered that natural repair mechanism actually helps virus to penetrate the membrane and cause an infection.
Image credit: Yale Rosen via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2. 0 Adenoviruses cause variety of health problems to humans, such as eye or respiratory infections.
Now scientists discovered that natural repair mechanism actually helps virus to penetrate the membrane and cause an infection.
Image credit: Yale Rosen via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2. 0 Understanding mechanisms of adenoviruses is extremely important.
They cause numerous diseases, such as eye or respiratory infections, but they are used also in sciences adenoviruses are used widely in gene therapy.
Scientists found out that cells unwillingly provide lipids, which help virus penetrate the cell. Lipids are used normally to repair damaged membranes.
Intact membrane is essential for cell to function properly, but it may be damaged in a variety of situations.
Such damage sometimes results in small pores, which lead to loss of valuable substances from the cell.
Cells have necessary tools and materials to repair such damage lipids are sent to the site of the damage.
However adenoviruses, as now team of scientists from the University of Zurich have discovered, use this natural repair mechanism to cause infections.
Adenoviruses create small pores in the surfaces of the cell membrane as well. However, they are too small for the virus to get inside,
but are large enough for the cell to recognize the damage as a threat and to activate repair mechanism.
And this mechanism is used by adenovirus to trigger the infection. In the repair process ceramide lipids are formed,
which enable the virus to enter the cell more rapidly. Such lipids are essential to repair the cell to prevent its death after small mechanical damage.
However they cause the membrane to bend and endosomes (small bubbles of lipids and proteins) to form.
Endosomes engulf extracellular material, such as nutrients, but also viruses. And so adenovirus increases the size of the lesion in the membrane,
and can leave the endosome before the endosome becomes a lysosome and degrades the virus
which is surprising as lipids have important roles in biology, but these roles are difficult to identify The researchers have identified a connection between the formation of a membrane pore by the virus and a cellular repair mechanism.
which is part of the explanation for the high infection efficiency of the adenoviruses. Scientists also managed to identify a new inhibitor against the adenoviruses,
New knowledge should also help with using adenoviruses in vaccination and gene therapy e
#Scientists discover first NA ambulanceu of T researchers have discovered how severely damaged DNA is transported within a cell
It a discovery that could unlock secrets into how cancer operates a disease that two in five Canadians will develop in their lifetime. cientists knew that severely injured DNA was taken to specialized ospitalsin the cell to be repaired,
a Professor in the Faculty of medicine Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology. ee now discovered the DNA mbulanceand the road it takes. ekhail discovered this DNA ambulance,
Mekhail team also found that the DNA hospital, also known as the nuclear pore complex, repairs damaged DNA inaccurately.
because DNA contains the instructions for all our genetic information. While the repaired DNA can still replicate,
it has irregular cell instructions a scenario that could cause cancer. his process allows cells to survive an injury,
but at a great cost, said Mekhail. he cell has compromised a genome, but it stable
The tracking showed that this DNA ambulance is damaged necessary for DNA to efficiently change location within the nucleus. ancer often occurs
when our chromosomes break and are said misrepaired Durocher. his work teaches us that the location of the break within the cell nucleus has a big impact on the efficiency of repair. he implications of the research could extend to a large number of developmental
and disease settings. he processes wee studying are fundamental to the basic survival of a cell,
said graduate student and first author Daniel Chung. lmost every aspect of disease can be linked to problems with DNA. ow Mekhail team is searching for more DNA ambulances
and roads while conducting a study to see what role they might play in causing cancer. e expect that this may allow us to identify targets for a new class of anticancer drugs.?
Scientists have been searching for this DNA ambulance for a long time and now we suspect there may be said more than one
Mekhail. t exciting because it a whole new area of research. ource: Eurekaler i
#New technology helps personalized medicine by enabling epigenomic analysis with a mere 100 cells A new technology that will dramatically enhance investigations of epigenomes, the machinery that turns on and off genes and a very prominent field of study in diseases such as
stem cell differentiation, inflammation and cancer, is reported on today in the research journal Nature Methods.
The examination of epigenomes requires mapping DNA interactions with a certain protein in the entire genome.
This epigenomic characterization potentially allows medical doctors to create personalized treatment of diseases by understanding the state of a patient,
making the forecast, and tuning the treatment strategy accordingly. However, such tests require a huge number of cells.
At one point, the study of in vivo genome-wide protein-DNA interactions and chromatin modifications required approximately 10 million cells for an individual test.
For well more than a decade, Chang Lu, a professor of chemical engineering at Virginia Tech, has worked on the development of tools to effectively analyze living cells with the long-term goal of gaining a better understanding of a range of diseases.
Lu and his students develop small microfluidic devices with micrometer features for examining molecular events inside cells.
The latest breakthrough comes from Lu collaboration with Kai Tan at the University of Iowa, a systems biologist and associate professor of internal medicine.
along with a seed grant from Virginia Tech Institute for Critical Technology and Applied science, funded this work. he use of a packed bed of beads for Chip allowed us to collect the chromatin fragments with a very high efficiency.
The entire MOWCHIP process takes about 90 minutes as opposed to many hours that conventional Chip assays took.
and progenitor cells isolated from the fetal liver of a mouse in Tan lab. As Tan explained,
the team plans to use this technology to study other epigenomic changes involved in inflammation and cancer in the near future.
The innovative approach may lead to more effective therapies with fewer side effects, particularly for diseases such as cancer, heart disease and neurodegenerative disorders.
GPCR drugs that selectively modulate one pathway are preferred often as they can have better therapeutic benefits with fewer undesirable side effects than non-selective drugs. rrestin
and the yang of regulating GPCR function, said H. Eric Xu, from Van Andel Research Institute, Grand Rapids, Michigan,
interaction and function of each of these groups of proteins is vital to developing effective therapies.
telling the cells about their environment and conveying information from nearby cells. Cell surface receptors are excellent therapeutic targets due to their location on the surface of the cell,
making them more accessible to drug treatment. Given their central roles in cellular communication, GPCRS are major targets in the development of new therapies
and account for about 40 percent of current drug targets. Researchers have been trying to determine the structure of a GPCR with arrestin for more than two decades,
who was part of the research team. n this work we were able to trap rhodopsin in its active state through binding one of its partner proteins, arrestin,
and provides an excellent guide for developing new drugs with fewer side effects. esearchers at the Center for Applied Structural Discovery helped to pioneer a new technique called femtosecond crystallography,
and that are so short that the biomolecule structure is imaged before it is destroyed. This capability allowed the team to create the three-dimensional image of the arrestin-rhodopsin complex at an atomic level a much higher resolution than is possible with conventional X-ray technologyfemtosecond X-ray pulses are almost unfathomably brief.
The time difference between one femtosecond and a second is the same as the difference between a second and 32 million years. his is an important step forward in understanding how human vision works at the molecular level,
Contributions from ASU researchers included crystallization and biophysical characterization of the rhodopsin-arrestin constructs and crystals, X-ray data collection and evaluation,
as well as development of the devices that deliver the stream of nanocrystals. The work is based on a team effort of ASU faculty Wei Liu
Petra Fromme, Raimund Fromme, John Spence and Uwe Weierstall, with their teams of researchers and students, including:
researchers Nadia Zatsepin and Stella Lisova from the Department of physics as well as the graduate students Shibom Basu, Jesse Coe, Chelsie Conrad and Shatabdi Roy-Chowdhury from the Department of chemistry and Biochemistry,
and Daniel James and Dingjie Wang from the Department of physics. In the future, the researchers hope to study the signaling protein arrestin with other GPCRS that are involved in heart disease
and cancer as well as to use this structure to screen for drug compounds that are designed to treat these diseases with far fewer side effects,
which will have a dramatic impact on human health. here are a number of other GPCRS that are critical to many of the processes in our bodies,
and when they become dysfunctional it can lead to devastating diseases such as cancer, said Wei Liu,
assistant professor in the Department of chemistry and Biochemistry and member of the Center for Applied Structural Discovery. his study provides important clues about how we can improve human health
and make important progress in the fight against cancer and other incurable human diseases. a
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