The sudden ballooning also amplified quantum fluctuations into clumps of matter that went on to seed the first stars,
The cosmic microwave background radiation studied by Planck dates from about 380,000 years after the Big bang, by
and neutral atoms of hydrogen and helium were beginning to form from the seething mass of charged plasma.
That transition allowed photons to travel unimpeded through space, in a pattern that carried the echoes of inflation.
Those photons are still out there today as a dim glow of microwaves with a temperature of just 2. 7 kelvin.
The two molecules are receptors for the natural neurotransmitter serotonin #which regulates activities such as sleep,
The molecules lie on the outer membranes of nerve cells; when drugs or neurotransmitters lock into the receptors from outside the cell,
They found that the molecules had very similar structures in the areas where serotonin docks.
Although the difference was a mere 0. 3 nanometres, about the width of three helium atoms,
With further development, the authors say the technology might one day be used for visualisation of the shapes of molecules used in drug development,
Researchers have developed a microscopic device that can detect the ebb and flow of electrons within an alga as it photosynthesizes.
The device is known as a single-electron transistor, and its inventors hope that it could be used to measure the performance of biofuel-producing organisms,
for example#a single electron can switch the transistor on, amplifying a tiny signal into a much larger current in the main circuit.
The first single-electron transistors were built in the late 1980s1, but most require very low temperatures#otherwise, the electrons gather enough energy to tunnel through the semiconductor,
and current leaks through the switch. A handful work at room temperature (by using carbon nanotubes to detect electrons
for example2), but they cannot operate in water#a serious obstacle to using such devices in living organisms.
In 2008, materials scientist Ravi Saraf at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and his colleagues built a room-temperature single-electron transistor using a different approach3.
But if an electron settles on a defective nanoparticle it makes it slightly easier for current to flow,
"That s something really new, says Simon. The cells sit on the surface of the gold#nano particles,
Shining a light on the cells triggers a cascade of biochemical reactions that transfer electrons along a chain of molecules#and switches the transistor on.
The fish's neurons make a protein that fluoresces in response to fluctuations in the concentration of calcium ions,
Researchers have known long that a crucial step in the process is the flow of calcium ions into the synapse area,
The research provides an effective basis for searching for candidate molecules that could be used to treat the condition.
A molecule that can block the progress of Alzheimer disease at a crucial stage in its development has been identified by researchers in a new study,
raising the prospect that more such molecules may now be found. The report shows that a molecular chaperone
a type of molecule that occurs naturally in humans, can play the role of an nhibitorpart-way through the molecular process that is thought to cause Alzheimer,
Specifically, the molecule, called Brichos, sticks to threads made up of malfunctioning proteins, called amyloid fibrils,
By finding a molecule that prevents it from occurring, scientists have moved closer to identifying a substance that could eventually be used to treat the disease.
The discovery was made possible by an overall strategy that could now be applied to find other molecules with similar capabilities,
Without the secondary nucleation process, single molecules would have to misfold and form toxic clusters unaided,
Cohen said. orking closely with our collaborators in Sweden who had developed groundbreaking experimental methods to monitor the process we were able to identify a molecule that produced exactly the results that we were hoping to see in experiments.
The results indicated that the molecule, Brichos, effectively inhibits secondary nucleation. Typically, Brichos functions as a olecular chaperonein humans;
confirming that the molecule had suppressed the chain reaction from secondary nucleation that feeds the catastrophic production of oligomers leading to Alzheimer disease.
and then finding a molecule that performs that function, the research team suggest that they have discovered a strategy that may lead to the identification of other molecules that could have a similar effect. t may not actually be too difficult to find other molecules that do this,
it just that it hasn been clear what to look for until recently, Cohen said. t striking that nature through molecular chaperones has evolved a similar approach to our own by focusing on very specifically inhibiting the key steps leading to Alzheimer.
A good tactic now is to search for other molecules that have this same highly targeted effect
#Tau Associated MAPT Gene Increases Risk for Alzheimer's disease A international team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of California,
San diego School of medicine, has identified the microtubule associated-protein protein tau (MAPT) gene as increasing the risk for developing Alzheimer disease (AD).
the role of the tau-associated MAPT gene is said still unclear Rahul S. Desikan, MD,
and more likely to experience increased brain atrophy than non-carriers. his study demonstrates that tau deposits in the brains of Alzheimer disease subjects are not just a consequence of the disease,
since Alois Alzheimer time that both plaques (with amyloid) and tangles (of tau) are key features of Alzheimer pathology,
Until this year no one had shown convincingly that the MAPT (tau) gene altered the risk of AD and this,
combined with the greater ease of imaging amyloid in life, lead some researchers to postulate that tau changes were secondary to amyloid changes.
The recent association of genetic variation in the MAPT gene with AD risk and the emerging availability of tau imaging are now leading to a recognition that perhaps tau changes are key in the pathophysiologic pathway of AD
This is controlled by balancing the activity of protein umpsthat push protons into endosomes to increase their acidity with that of protein eaks
like NHE9, that remove protons. Rao says: ndosomes are like buckets of water that have to be kept full despite the leaks in them.
they found that elevated levels of NHE9 are associated with resistance to radiation, chemotherapy and poorer prognoses for patients with glioblastomas.
which pump out too many protons (orange), changing the endosomesacidity and slowing their hipping speed.
causing endosomes to leak too many protons and become too alkaline. This slows down the hipping rateof cancer-promoting cargo and leaves them on the cell surface for too long.
Protein complexes, molecules that transport payloads in and out of cells, and other cellular activities are organized all at the nanoscale.
Secondly, the particles can be triggered by an outside magnetic field to produce an electric field when adjacent to individual neurons.
and pollution particles in the sky left behind by jet aircraftctually are signs of a clandestine government effort to modify the weather.
By upping the speed of the laser from a nanosecond to a femtosecond --which is one millionth of one billionth of one second--the researchers have increased the level of safety
#LED Bulbs Offer a Low energy, Wireless Connection This lightbulb could work as your next wireless router.
#'Edible Barcodes'Help Fight Counterfeit Drugs Who knew that the answer to fighting the trillion-dollar global counterfeit drug problem rested in a particle the size of a speck of dust?
At least that what entrepreneur Dr. Hank Wuh is counting on with Trutag Technologies, one of the companies that falls under the larger umbrella of Skai Ventures, the tech-focused venture capital accelerator that he founded.
Within each of the tiny particles is an elaborate nanopore structure think of it as a series of microscopic holes within a thin membrane,
small enough for a single molecule to pass through at a given time. The tags are manufactured n a secret location in the middle of the Pacific
Wuh said the idea of tiny microscopic particles containing data about a drug is farfetched no more than someone 20 years ago saying that a person would have a upercomputer the size of his palm. ut,
Since each molecule in the universe absorbs light at different optical frequencies, an odor has its own unique signature. ather than sniffing out a variety of smells as a dog would,
the laser system uses light to ensethe range of molecules that are present in the sample,
Disease Detection Goes Mobilee now have a robust system to be able to detect the presence and concentrations of molecules in a sample,
but that starting to change with the advent of portable spectrometers that put molecular analysis in the palm of your hand.
Different types of molecules vibrate in unique ways and those vibrations interact with the light to create an optical signature.
the SCIO can tell what molecules are present in a material or substance. The makers of SCIO hope that, by working with developers and pairing the device with software apps,
000 cubic feet of air--42 percent of which is made of carbon particles. One tower alone is capable of cleaning 123 million cubic feet of clean air per day.
Holding up a bag of pollution particles in this video, he explains that it hard to believe that we accept this pollution as waste
The technique incorporates some nickel atoms into the diamond crystal structure, forming what is called an 3 defect center.
but a more refined approach might allow researchers to standardize the size of diamond particles
Another common approach to levitation involves filling an object with iron oxide particles. But that would be toxic to living cells.
They laced the fluid with particles of gadolinium a rare-earth metal that is highly magnetic and sometimes given to patients to increase contrast in an MRI.
The magnetic field is shaped to pull the gadolinium downward so metal particles push the cells upward,
when they engineered mice to lack another immune molecule, suggesting that B2m is part of a pathway that affects the brain. hat this shows is that you can manipulate the blood, rather than the brain, to potentially treat memory problems,
who recently published a scientific paper showing that targeting a separate molecule can lower levels of B2m
#Strange new subatomic particles discovered at atom smasher Exotic subatomic particles made up of five quarks that physicists briefly thought they had discovered back in 2003 now finally appear to be in the bag.
So say physicists working at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, who claim to have found conclusive evidence for the existence of so-called pentaquarks within the debris of high-energy proton collisions.
The discovery has filled a big hole"in the theory that describes how matter is built up from the fundamental particles known as quarks,
says Guy Wilkinson, a spokesman at LHCB, one of the four main detectors at the Large hadron collider (LHC),
which was behind the find. That theory, put forward by physicist Murray Gell-Mann in 1964,
describes how the protons and neutrons that make up atomic nuclei are composed themselves of three quarks and how other particles known as mesons are made from pairs of quarks and their antimatter counterparts, antiquarks.
However, Gell-Mann's scheme also pointed to the existence of pentaquarks, made up of four quarks and an antiquark.
The lack of any evidence for such particles over the past 50 years says Wilkinson,
"didn't throw the theory into disrepute but was becoming increasingly troublesome.""To catch the elusive prey,
Wilkinson and colleagues studied the decay of"lambda-b"particles created by protons colliding within LHCB.
They measured the combined energy of two of the decay products proton and a meson known as J/Psi,
which consists of a"charm quark and antiquarknd then totted up how many times they recorded each energy value across the thousands of collisions they studied.
They found that the number of pairings with a certain energy little under five times the mass of the protonas far higher than would be expected by chance.
The researchers concluded that that was the mass of a fleeting"charmonium"pentaquark containing two up quarks, one down quark, one charm quark,
and one anticharm quark. LHCB collected the data back in 2011 and 2012, but Wilkinson's team held back from announcing their discovery to avoid the fate of those who had made the earlier claims of pentaquark sightings.
the LHCB collaboration made use of data showing not only the energy of the particles produced in the CERN collisions but also their directions.
and model output to agree only when they included two charmonium pentaquarks in the lambda-b decay processne having a mass of 4. 45 gigaelectronvolts (Gev) and the other a mass of 4. 38 Gev.
For comparison, a proton weighs in at 0. 94 Gev. The research has been uploaded to the arxiv server
"They appear to have found strong evidence for a'heavy quark'pentaquark state, "says Ken Hicks of Ohio University.
"The LHC started up again in April after a 2-year shutdown to upgrade the machine to operate at higher energies.
whether all five quarks are bound tightly together inside the new particle, or whether instead three quarks group together as they do inside protons
and neutrons and the other two form a separate meson bit like two atoms combining to form a molecule.
Wilkinson says that because pentaquarks might be formed inside collapsing stars, their discovery might tell us more about what stars are composed of
"Now that we know nature allows five quarks to be bound together, it would be very strange indeed
if just this set of quarks is allowed to coexist in this manner, "he says.""There should be many others.
or cathode, where oxygen molecules pick up extra electrons. These oxygen ions then travel through the membrane to the positively charged anode.
There, they react with molecules in the fuel generating water, carbon dioxide, and electricity. The electricity is fed through a circuit where it powers our devices,
and then is returned to the anode. As long fuel as is fed in, the SOFC continues pumping out electricity.
and even work at lower temperatures around 600°C. Unlike conventional SOFCS the BZY membranes allow the flow not of negatively charged oxygen ions toward the anode,
or radioactive labels to pinpoint the virus location in a tissue sample, sometimes have difficulty distinguishing the targetiv RNA and DNAROM surrounding cellular components.
But oligomers are large and somewhat clumsy molecules, and they occasionally bind to cellular components other than the target sequence.
and plants exposed to radiation beyond low Earth orbit. China has partnered also with a Luxembourg-based firm called Luxspace to send a tiny spacecraft called the Manfred Memorial Moon Mission around the moon.
Additional radio signals cause the protons in your body's liquids to resonate with the magnetic field
The pulses make protons in the body spin in a precise way that sends signals that can be interpreted as the location and density of fluid in the bones and muscle.
#Desktop sonic black hole emits Hawking radiation A model black hole that traps sound instead of light has been caught emitting quantum particles thought to be the analogue of the theoretical Hawking radiation.
The effect may be the first time that a lab-based black hole has created Hawking particles in the same way expected from real black holes.
But in 1974 Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge predicted they should emit a faint glow of particles now known as Hawking radiation.
An oddity of quantum theory that says that the vacuum of space is not truly empty
but fizzes with pairs of particles and their antimatter counterparts. Normally these pairs annihilate each other
and becomes observable as Hawking radiation. The glow from real-life black holes would be too faint to see so to confirm Hawking's prediction physicists have built artificial black holes that mimic the event horizon.
of which trapped photons using laser pulses in a fibre optic-cable cable. The team claimed this had produced Hawking radiation
but other researchers questioned whether it used the same physics as a real black hole horizon.
-cold atoms behaves like a single atom. Now the team claims that their black hole has produced just the kind of Hawking radiation expected of a real black hole.
This tells us that the idea of Hawking actually works Steinhauer says. A black hole should really produce Hawking radiation.
The team used one laser to confine the BEC to a narrow tube and another to accelerate some of it faster than the speed of sound.
The horizons create pairs of particles of sound or phonons. One phonon escapes the horizon
Physicists call this effect a black hole laser The Hawking radiation exponentially grows it self-amplifies Steinhauer says.
In the future he hopes to improve his detectors to sense radiation from a single horizon which could help determine
The device zaps water with electricity to release oxygen then a silicon-based chemical mediator dissolved in the water mops up stray protons and electrons.
When the hydrogen is needed putting the mediator in contact with a platinum catalyst allows those electrons
and protons to recombine to make hydrogen gas. The whole process uses a single whack of power and patchy renewable energy will suffice for this says Cronin.
which in turn decays to a stable isotope of iron producing characteristic gamma rays. Nobody had seen directly these gamma rays says Churazov.
Using SN 2014j's gamma rays the team estimated that the mass of nickel-56 that decayed to be about 0. 6 solar masses within the range predicted by models.
That means the status of type IA supernovae as standard candles is secure. But there are still a few different ways for the explosion to happen
From start to finish each run of the experiment lasted only about 20 nanoseconds much faster than the blink of an eye
Because UV radiation can damage DNA that would have made it difficult for any but the most extreme forms of life to survive.
The bacteria received radiation doses far more intense than conditions on early Earth. When the samples were returned to the lab the microbes in the glass discs were dead.
The team's findings provide the first direct evidence that crystal cocoons formed by impacts might have been radiation-proof cradles for early life (International Journal of Astrobiology doi. org/tcs.
and black hole radiation are still not very well understood making it difficult to tell whether the simulation gets them right.
#Sun's fractal surprise could help fusion On earth THE sun has thrown us a fractal surprise.
An unexpected pattern has been glimpsed in the solar wind the turbulent plasma of charged particles that streams from the sun. It offers clues for handling plasmas that roil inside nuclear fusion reactors On earth.
Composed of charged particles such as protons and electrons the solar wind streams from the sun and pervades the solar system.
Its flow is turbulent containing eddies and moving at different speeds in different directions. It was thought that this turbulence was similar to that in a fluid behaving like mixing ocean currents
when the movement of the wind's particles is perpendicular to the sun's magnetic field they resemble a fluid with sections that are smooth interrupted by bursts of violence.
But when the particles move in parallel with the field lines they behave very differently with the turbulence evenly spread like crinkly mountains that extend as far as the eye can see (see diagram.
These create energy in the same way as the sun by fusing a superheated plasma of hydrogen nuclei to form helium.
By adding the fractal behaviour to their plasma models fusion scientists may be able to control turbulence
They may also be able to use turbulence to disrupt high energy plasma blobs that can rip holes in the reactor.
or align the electromagnetic fields of photons they came into contact with in the infant universe.
Those photons which have been travelling through space ever since appear in every direction in the sky as the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation.
But other things apart from gravitational waves such as dust can emit polarised photons. To minimise the chances of this effect causing a false signal the BICEP 2 team pointed their telescope at a patch of sky far away from the Milky way's dusty disc.
Then they used models of the dust in that part of the sky to estimate its effect on the polarisation.
If the aligned dust contains iron the particles'slight vibrations due to their own heat would produce polarised microwave radiation says Mertsch.
if you take the dust into account along with emissions from charged particles in the galaxy
NASA's Cassini spacecraft flew through the geysers and detected water salts and carbon-based molecules.
And Jupiter's strong magnetic field means that intense radiation surrounds the moon which makes it difficult for spacecraft to operate.
so seeing molecules would suggest something is replenishing them hinting at possible biological activity. Europa is sized a good moon
which protects us from the bulk of the solar wind a stream of high-energy particles constantly flowing from the sun
Charged particles can flow along these lines into Earth's atmosphere leading to dazzling auroras as well as geomagnetic storms that can wreak havoc on navigation systems and power grids.
In January 2013 GPS sensors on the ground mapped electrons in the upper atmosphere and saw a tendril of increased electron density curling away from the north pole indicating that a plume of plasma was veering off towards the sun. At the same time three of NASA's THEMIS spacecraft
which are designed to study solar storms crossed through the magnetic boundary during the event. The craft saw a 100-fold increase in the number of electrons at the boundary
which would probably have been deposited by the plume. For the first time we were able to monitor the entire cycle of this plasma stretching from the atmosphere to the boundary between Earth's magnetic field
Mirin made a nanowire detector that operates at-270 C. This boosted the number of photons it received each second by two orders of magnitude compared with regular detectors.
China's Yutu rover will venture a few kilometres away from its landing site to snap images take stock of minerals with onboard spectrometers and probe below the surface with radar.
Studying the water's isotopes and any organic material it might hold in deep freeze could shed light on where Earth got its water
and human exploration says Paul Spudis of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston Texas. Astronauts could drink moon water extracted from its rocks or use it as radiation shielding.
#Boxy Cubesats get a propulsion boost in new space race Tiny liquid volcanoes that spray beams of charged particles could make space history next year.
made solely of positively or negatively charged ions. In the engine, a reservoir of ionic liquid soaks into a porous, metal chip and forms tiny pools in the pores of spikes on its surface.
so that it is strong enough to pull away ions in a steady beam (see below). The process is self-sustaining.
when ions are emitted, just as tree roots suck in water when vapour escapes the leaves. The result is an array of between 500 and 5000 focussed ion beams that stream from each of the eight chips on the Cubesat when the electric field the strength
of which acts as the engine's throttle is applied. Lozano's team have fired the thrusters in the lab
and carefully shaped magnetic field that stops xenon ions from hitting the engine walls and going to waste.
and radiation conditions at Mars he says. This was a problem for Chandrayaan-1 which discovered water on the lunar surface but died more than a year early
As impacts between icy bodies occur throughout the solar system then complex organic molecules are also very probably widespread.
But extreme UV radiation coming from space is absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere so it is not observable from the ground says Sawai.
But we also know that the sun pumps out a constant stream of charged particles called the solar wind
and pick up the newly charged particles effectively sweeping them away. Earth is protected from the solar wind by a relatively strong global magnetic field
which repels charged particles from the sun explains Nick Schneider of the Laboratory for Atmospheric
Sprint-A will help from afar by looking for the extreme UV radiation generated as the solar wind slams into the upper atmospheres of both Mars
Known as Cubesats each mini satellite packs an array of devices including cameras spectrometers and a Geiger counter into a cube just 10 centimetres to a side.
Choreographed high-power lasers or electron beams can fuse and sculpt metal powders into high-performance machine parts.
At the same time a stream of particles blowing out from the sun the solar wind inflates a bubble of plasma around the solar system called the heliosphere Astronomers have assumed long that the sun's motion through the galaxy squashes
IBEX creates images of the solar system's borders by observing neutral atoms produced when charged particles from the solar wind collide with other charged particles in the outer heliosphere Some of these neutral atoms are bounced back towards us.
They are deflected not by magnetic fields as they travel so neutral atoms faithfully record the point of collision.
Because they travel pretty much straight you can trace them back to where they came from
and paint a picture of the solar system using atoms instead of light Christian says. One surprise is that
if we were to look straight down the length of the tail from front to back we would see particles clustered into four distinct lobes like a four-leaf clover (see image above right).
Two opposing lobes on the vertical plane consist of fast-moving particles while the two lobes on the horizontal plane consist of slower-moving particles (watch a NASA video of the tail in action).
The four lobes might be a reflection of solar activity at the time the particles left the sun says IBEX principal investigator David Mccomas. The particles took a few years to reach the tail
so they were born when the sun was minimally active. Around solar minimum you get slow solar wind around low to mid-latitudes from the sun
. But he expected this would create more of a solid horizontal band of slow particles across the tail not the odd lobes.
At solar maximum the bands of slow and fast particles streaming away from the sun break down so the tail may change its shape
Our own sun and the Earth and all of us are made up of atoms that came out of other stars'stellar winds long ago says Mccomas. There's a big recycling process that occurs
The magnetic field of the heliosphere protects us from the bulk of these galactic high-energy particles. But some manage to impinge on our solar system
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