Science Innovations

Posted by: Tarun Kumar Helium, the most parsimonious element that invariably sits with its arms tightly folded and refuses to participate in chemistry, turns out to be surprisingly generous when it is in the right environment, willing to donate not just one but two electrons to neighbouring species. Researchers from Austria and the UK made the surprising discovery by generating for the first time isolated dianions – which are inherently unstable and therefore rare – in nanodroplets of helium. The work opens the way to creating other dianions and also to the wider study of helium as an unlikely electron donor. ‘Dianions are important building blocks in chemistry but are often unstable and difficult to make in isolation because of the strong Coulomb repulsion between the two electrons: bringing an electron to an anion has a very high energy barrier,’ explains Jan Verlet of Durham University in the UK, who was not involved in the research. The t...

Posted by: Tarun Kumar An international team of scientists has made a compound containing iridium in the +9 oxidation state – something that has been predicted by theoretical models but never formed experimentally before. Until now, the highest oxidation state any element was shown to exist at was +8. Iridium, with nine valence electrons, can exist in a variety of oxidation states – the most common under normal conditions are +3 and +4. In 2009, researchers made molecules of IrO – a form of iridium oxide where iridium was formally in the +8 state, with an outer shell electron configuration of 5d . Subsequent theoretical models suggested the last d-orbital electron could be 'removed' to create a stable iridium oxide cation where iridium could be counted as being in the +9 oxidation state. Now, a team led by Mingfei Zhou at Fudan University in China have successfully formed the [IrO ] cation in the gas phase using pulsed-laser vaporisation of an iri...

Posted by: Tarun Kumar Researchers have succeeded in cooling a molecular magnet to below 1K , the first time this has been achieved with a nanomagnet. The finding is important because it demonstrates experimentally that such low temperatures are achievable, opening the possibility of novel refrigeration systems. The work has also shed light on aspects of the nanomagnet’s quantum behaviour. Certain molecular systems exhibit unusual and exotic magnetic behaviour, driven by quantum mechanics, which might one day be harnessed for applications such as quantum computing. One phenomenon of interest is the magnetocaloric effect (MCE), whereby when an applied external magnetic field is removed from a magnetic material, there is a reduction in temperature. Eric McInnes, of the University of Manchester in the UK, and colleagues prepared a molecular cluster containing seven gadolinium centres, with six forming a hexagon and one sitting in the centre. ‘Each gadolini...

Posted by: Tarun Kumar Researchers believe they have confirmed the existence of a new type of chemical bond , first proposed some 30 years ago but never convincingly demonstrated because of the lack of experimental evidence and the relatively poor accuracy of the quantum chemistry methods that prevailed at the time. The new work also shows how substituting isotopes can result in fundamental changes in the nature of chemical bonding. In the early 1980s it was proposed that in certain transition states consisting of a very light atom sandwiched between two heavy ones, the system would be stabilised not by conventional van der Waal’s forces, but by vibrational bonding, with the light atom shuttling between its two neighbours. However, despite several groups searching for such a system none was demonstrated and the hunt fizzled out. Now, Jörn Manz , of the Free University of Berlin and Shanxi University in China, and colleagues believe they have the theoreti...

Posted by: Tarun Kumar Griffith University academics are challenging the foundations of quantum science with a radical new theory based on the existence of, and interactions between, parallel universes. In a paper published in the prestigious journal Physical Review X, Professor Howard Wiseman and Dr Michael Hall from Griffith's Centre for Quantum Dynamics, and Dr Dirk-Andre Deckert from the University of California, take interacting parallel worlds out of the realm of science fiction and into that of hard science. The team proposes that parallel universes really exist, and that they interact. That is, rather than evolving independently, nearby worlds influence one another by a subtle force of repulsion. They show that such an interaction could explain everything that is bizarre about quantum mechanics Quantum theory is needed to explain how the universe works at the microscopic scale, and is believed to apply to all matter. But it is notoriously difficult to ...

Posted by: Tarun Kumar Teleportation is no longer science fiction - thanks to quantum mechanics scientists can teleport information securely from one place to another. The latest episode of Quantum Around You explains how. When most people think about teleportation, they think about someone disappearing in one spot and appearing in another instantly, Star Trek style. While that would be extremely useful, so far scientists haven't found a way to do it. But what they have managed to do is teleport information, and in some ways that’s even cooler. Quantum teleportation, as its known, is a crucial area of research because it’s the only way humans can transmit information completely securely, with no risk of interception. To do this, scientists exploit the special characteristics of quantum entanglement. You may have heard of it before, but the latest episode of University of New South Wales (UNSW) 's Quantum Around You does an amazing job of breaking down t...

Posted by: Tarun Kumar An international team of researchers has developed the fastest network cable in the world. It can transmit 255 terabits per second, which is equivalent to all of the traffic flowing through the Internet at peak time. Right now, the fastest fibre optic line on the market is capable of transmitting 100 gigabits per second (gbps), which converts to 12.5 gigabytes per second (GBps). That’s pretty impressive, but an international team of researchers has decided that it really isn’t enough, and is developing a new fibre optic line that can carry a whopping 2,500 times more data. That means 255 terabits per second (tbps), which works out to be 32 terabytes per second (TBps). In other words, you could transfer 1 GB in 0.003 of a second. "255 tbps is mindbogglingly quick; it’s greater, by far, than the total capacity of every cable - hundreds of glass fibres - currently spanning the Atlantic Ocean,” says Sebastian Anthony at Extreme Tech. "In fac...

Posted by: Tarun Kumar Scientists have figured out how to directly convert human skin cells into the specific type of brain cell that degrades in patients with Huntington’s disease. A number of current medical treatments involve a process in which one type of human cell is converted to another, such as stem cells being converted to skin cells. During this process, there's a stage called the stem cell stage, where the original cells are at risk of converting into multiple types of cells, rather than the single, desired type. But now a team of scientists from Washington University in the US has figured out how to avoid the stem cell stage altogether, and have successfully converted skin cells directly into functioning brain cells. The team produced a specific type of brain cell called a medium spiny neuron. These nerve cells are important for controlling movement of the body and are the main cell type affected in Huntington’s disease. The findings, which are published in t...

Posted by: Deepak Kumar Using just two tablespoons of blood, scientists have managed to grow a brand new blood vessel in a week - revolutionising the method used for creating new tissue with stem cells. Three years ago, a patient who was missing the vein that connects the gastrointestinal tract to the liver received a blood vessel transplant grown from their own stem cells. Shortly after this case, the pioneering transplant was performed again on two young children, but this time, the stem cells were extracted from just two tablespoons of blood instead of from the bone marrow. Until now, stem cells have been extracted from the bone marrow, as it is a rich source of the cells. However, the procedure is invasive and extremely painful. "Drilling in the bone marrow is very painful," said Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson, a professor of Transplantation Biology and lead author of the study, in a press release. "It occurred to me that there must be a way to obtain the cells fro...

Brain barrier opened for first time to treat cancer Posted by: Dr. Deepak Kumar For the first time, doctors have opened and closed the brain's protector – the blood-brain barrier – on demand. The breakthrough will allow drugs to reach diseased areas of the brain that are otherwise out of bounds. Ultimately, it could make it easier to treat conditions such as Alzheimer's and brain cancer. The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is a sheath of cells that wraps around blood vessels (in black) throughout the brain. It protects precious brain tissue from toxins in the bloodstream, but it is a major obstacle for treating brain disorders because it also blocks the passage of drugs. Several teams   have opened the barrier in animals   to sneak drugs through. Now Michael Canney at Paris-based medical start-up CarThera, and his colleagues have managed it in people using an ultrasound brain implant and an injection of microbubbles. When ultrasound waves meet microbubbles in the bloo...

1). For Medicine and Physiology: John O’Keefe, May-Britt Monser and Edvard I. Monser Prize Share - 1/3 The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2014 was divided, one half awarded to John O’Keefe, the other half jointly to May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Monser “for the discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain.” 2). For Physics: Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, Shuji Nakamura Prize Share - 1/3 They were jointly awarded the prize for the invention of "efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources.” 3). For Chemistry: Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell, William E. Moerner Prize Share - 1/3 The Nobel Prize was awarded to them “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy” 4). For Literature: Patrick Modiano The Nobel Prize in Literature 2014 was awarede to Patrick Modiano “for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most u...

New research has found that viruses have a remarkable biological ability - they can transform their DNA from a glassy solid into a fluid-like state to help them infect cells. Although viruses infect our cells with their DNA all the time, it’s a process that scientists have so far struggled to understand - viral DNA is so tightly packed inside its protein shell that, technically, it can barely move. But despite the lack of wiggle room, viruses somehow manage to inject their DNA into host cells at high speed all the time. Now scientists from the US may have found the answer. Two new studies, both led by Alex Evilevitch from Carnegie Mellon University and published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Nature Chemical Biology, show that, when the conditions are right, viruses are capable of covering their frozen and highly pressurised DNA into a liquid that can invade host cells. The breakthrough could help scientists to create new...

Humans, chimpanzees and monkeys share DNA but not gene regulatory mechanisms Posted by: Deepak Kumar Humans share over 90% of their DNA with their primate cousins. The expression or activity patterns of genes differ across species in ways that help explain each species' distinct biology and behavior. DNA factors that contribute to the differences were described on Nov. 6 at the American Society of Human Genetics 2012 meeting in a presentation. Dr. Gilad reported that up to 40% of the differences in the expression or activity patterns of genes between humans, chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys can be explained by regulatory mechanisms that determine whether and how a gene's recipe for a protein is transcribed to the RNA molecule that carries the recipe instructions to the sites in cells where proteins are manufactured. In addition to improving scientific understanding of the uniqueness of humans, studies such as the investigation conducted by Dr. Gilad and colleague...

Newly discovered molecule can aid leukaemia and lymphoma treatments Posted by: Deepak Kumar A new type of molecule has been discovered and it can be used to dramatically increase the production of umbilical cord stem cells, which are used to treat blood-related diseases such as leukaemia, myeloma and lymphoma. Scientists at the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC) at the Université de Montréal in Canada have discovered a new molecule that can be used to multiply stem cells in umbilical cord blood. Once they’re cut from newborn children, umbilical cords are an excellent source of blood that’s rich in hematopoietic stem cells. Hematopoietic stem cells are a special type of stem cell that give rise to all the other types of blood cells, which are harvested and transplanted into patients to treat number of blood-related diseases such as leukaemia, myeloma and lymphoma. Umbilical cord ...

Our brains can make decisions while we're sleeping Posted by: Deepak Kumar Your brain doesn’t shut down when you go to sleep, in fact, a recent study has shown that it remains quietly active, and can process information to help you make decisions, just like when you're awake. A new study led by senior research scientist Sid Kouider and PhD student Thomas Andrillon at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris in France has investigated how active our brains are when we’re asleep, and the results could have implications for the Holy Grail of humanity's quest to become ever-smarter - learning in our sleep. Previous studies have shown that rather than switching off from our environment when we sleep, our brains ‘keep one eye open’, so they can catch important information that's relevent to us. This means we’re more likely to wake up when we hear someone say our names, or when our alarms go off in the morning, than to the less-pressing sounds of an ally cat scratc...

New molecule found in space connotes life origins Posted by: Tarun Kumar Hunting from a distance of 27,000 light years, astronomers have discovered an unusual carbon-based molecule -- one with a branched structure -- contained within a giant gas cloud in interstellar space. Like finding a molecular needle in a cosmic haystack, astronomers have detected radio waves emitted by isopropyl cyanide. The discovery suggests that the complex molecules needed for life may have their origins in interstellar space. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, known as the ALMA Observatory, a group of radio telescopes funded partially through the National Science Foundation, researchers studied the gaseous star-forming region Sagittarius B2. Astronomers from Cornell, the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and the University of Cologne (Germany) describe their discovery in the journal Science (Sept. 26.) Organic molecules usually found in these star-forming regions cons...

RCas9: A programmable RNA editing tool Posted by: Tarun Kumar   A powerful scientific tool for editing the DNA instructions in a genome can now also be applied to RNA, the molecule that translates DNA's genetic instructions into the production of proteins. A team of researchers with Berkeley Lab and the University of California (UC) Berkeley has demonstrated a means by which the CRISPR/Cas9 protein complex can be programmed to recognize and cleave RNA at sequence-specific target sites. This finding has the potential to transform the study of RNA function by paving the way for direct RNA transcript detection, analysis and manipulation. Schematic shows how RNA-guided Cas9 working with PAMmer can target ssRNA for programmable, sequence-specific cleavage. Led by Jennifer Doudna, biochemist and leading authority on the CRISPR/Cas9 complex, the Berkeley team showed how the Cas9 enzyme can work with short DNA sequences known as "PAM," for protospacer adjacent motif, t...

Powerful tool for genetic engineering Posted by: Deepak Kumar Viruses cannot only cause illnesses in humans, they also infect bacteria. Those protect themselves with a kind of 'immune system' which -- simply put -- consists of specific sequences in the genetic material of the bacteria and a suitable enzyme. It detects foreign DNA, which may originate from a virus, cuts it up and thus makes the invaders harmless. Scientists from the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig have now shown that the dual-RNA guided enzyme Cas9, which is involved in the process, has developed independently in various strains of bacteria. This enhances the potential of exploiting the bacterial immune system for genome engineering. Even though it has only been discovered in recent years the immune system with the cryptic name 'CRISPR-Cas' has been attracting attention of geneticists and biotechnologists as it is a promising tool for genetic engineering. CRISPR...

Precise gene editing in monkeys paves the way for valuable human disease models Posted by: Tarun Kumar A Monkeys are important for modeling diseases because of their close similarities to humans, but pa st efforts to precisely modify genes in primates have failed. In a study published by Cell Press January 30th in the journal Cell, researchers achieved precise gene modification in monkeys for the first time using an efficient and reliable approach known as the CRISPR/Cas9 system. The study opens promising new avenues for the development of more effective treatments for a range of human diseases. "Our study shows that the CRISPR/Cas9 system enables simultaneous disruption of two target genes in one step without producing off-target mutations," says study author Jiahao Sha of Nanjing Medical University. "Considering that many human diseases are caused by genetic abnormalities, targeted genetic modification in monkeys is invaluable for the generation of human...

Puzzling question in bacterial immune system answered Posted by: Deepak Kumar A central question has been answered regarding a protein that plays an essential role in the bacterial immune system and is fast becoming a valuable tool for genetic engineering. A team of researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have determined how the bacterial enzyme known as Cas9, guided by RNA, is able to identify and degrade foreign DNA during viral infections, as well as induce site-specific genetic changes in animal and plant cells. Through a combination of single-molecule imaging and bulk biochemical experiments, the research team has shown that the genome-editing ability of Cas9 is made possible by the presence of short DNA sequences known as "PAM," for protospacer adjacent motif. "Our results reveal two major functions of the PAM that explain why it is so critical to the ability of Cas9 to target...