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University of Cincinnati professor Andrew Steckl, working with researchers from Johns Hopkins University, developed a new treatment for glioblastoma multiforme, or GBM, an aggressive form of brain cancer. Steckl’s Nanoelectronics Laboratory applied an industrial fabrication process called coaxial electrospinning to form drug-containing membranes. The treatment is implanted directly into the part of the brain where the tumor is surgically removed. The study was published in Nature Scientific Reports on November 29, 2019....

While the mysterious dark matter and dark energy make up about 25 and 70 percent of our cosmos respectively, the ordinary matter that makes up everything we see – from stars and galaxies to planets and people – amounts to only about five percent. But even this five percent turns out to be hard to track down. The total amount of ordinary matter, which astronomers refer to as baryons, can be estimated from observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background, which is the most ancient light in the history of the Universe, dating back to only about 380,000 years after the Big Bang....

This newly released image from the European Southern Observatory shows the globular cluster NGC 6553. This spectacular starry field of view shows the globular cluster NGC 6553 which is located approximately 19,000 light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius. In this field, astronomers discovered a mysterious microlensing event. Microlensing is a form of gravitational lensing in which the light from a background source is bent by the gravitational field of a foreground object, creating an amplified image of the background object....

The team, which included Yale’s Pincelli Hull, made the discovery by examining microscopic fish teeth preserved in sediments buried deep in the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Elizabeth Sibert of Harvard led the research, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. “What most people don’t realize is that there is a huge number of fossils that capture changes across important events in the past, such as mass extinctions, but we often lack the technology to rapidly pull information from fossils,” Hull explained....

The Large Hadron Collider Beauty (LHCb) collaboration has observed a type of four-quark particle never seen before. The discovery, presented at a recent seminar at CERN and described in a newly paper published is likely to be the first of a previously undiscovered class of particles never before seen by physicists. The finding will help physicists better understand quarks, a type of elementary particle which is a fundamental building block of all matter....

They have pulled together a manifesto, published in the journal Nature, pushing for models to be used appropriately — without political bias or overestimating with “magic numbers.” “COVID-19 has really put modeling into the spotlight and there have been very effective simple models such as flattening the curve, that everyone can understand,” Professor Gabriele Bammer, from The Australian National University (ANU), said. “In Australia we are mostly doing well, but the world needs a uniform set of standards for computer modeling....

The pulsar lies in the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy that orbits our Milky Way and is located 163,000 light-years away. The Tarantula Nebula is the largest, most active and most complex star-formation region in our galactic neighborhood. It was identified as a bright source of gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light, early in the Fermi mission. Astronomers initially attributed this glow to collisions of subatomic particles accelerated in the shock waves produced by supernova explosions....

Scientists from the MINOS experiment at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have revealed the world’s most precise measurement of a key parameter that governs the transformation of one type of neutrino to another. The results confirm that neutrinos and their antimatter counterparts, antineutrinos, have similar masses as predicted by most commonly accepted theories that explain how the subatomic world works. MINOS caused a jolt in the physics world in 2010 when it announced that a measurement of this parameter, called delta m squared, showed a surprisingly large difference between the masses of neutrinos and antineutrinos....

Fragile X syndrome is caused by mutations in the FMR1 gene on the X chromosome, which prevent the gene’s expression. This absence of the FMR1-encoded protein during brain development has been shown to cause the overexcitability in neurons associated with the syndrome. Now, for the first time, researchers at Whitehead Institute have restored activity to the fragile X syndrome gene in affected neurons using a modified CRISPR/Cas9 system they developed that removes the methylation — the molecular tags that keep the mutant gene shut off — suggesting that this method may prove to be a useful paradigm for targeting diseases caused by abnormal methylation....

CubeSats are miniaturized satellites based on standardized 10 cm boxes. Sunstorm is a ‘2-unit’ CubeSat, hosting an innovative solar X-ray spectrometer called the X-ray Flux Monitor for CubeSats (XFM-CS). A Finnish team led by the ISAWARE company developed the miniaturized XFM-CS instrument. Its function is to detect the X-ray pulses produced by solar flares – explosive releases of magnetic energy seen as enormous flashes on the Sun’s surface. These give rise in turn to space weather, threatening satellites and terrestrial power and communications networks, even aircraft on polar flights....

The presence of fat-laden cells in the lung could assist with diagnosis and understanding the cause of the disease. Doctors have identified a previously unrecognized characteristic of the vaping-related respiratory illness that has been emerging in clusters across the U.S. in recent months. Within the lungs of these patients are large immune cells containing numerous oily droplets, called lipid-laden macrophages. The finding may allow doctors to definitively diagnose the nascent syndrome more quickly and provide the right treatment sooner....

Microbiologists at the Max Planck Institutes in Marburg and Bremen have discovered a new metabolic process in the ocean. Ranging from molecular structures of individual genes and detection of their global distribution, their results give insight into the pathway process and its degradation products and thus provide valuable information for future calculations of the oceans carbon dioxide balance. Charles Darwin suspected something in the “clear blue water” of the ocean that was even smaller than the protozoa he could see under the microscope....

Radio astronomy gives us a unique view of the cosmos. Astronomers capture faint radio light and through computer software assemble their data into images we can understand. (For example, see ALMA Sheds Light on the Mystery of Missing Massive Galaxies.) Likewise, the human body is studied in part through medical images. Techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) capture data about the inside of our bodies without invasive surgery, and this data is used to create images useful to doctors and scientists....

The body of research that stems from the SARS epidemic is giving researchers a lot more tools and understanding on how to tackle other coronaviruses. There is little evidence yet that this new virus poses any major public health threat, however authorities worldwide are not being complacent. Respiratory viruses can cause pandemics, and this particular strain has already caused serious diseases. The diagnostic tests will be able to answer whether the two initial cases are related or isolated events....

Researchers at the Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials of the University of Maryland have developed a new type of hot electron bolometer, a sensitive detector of infrared light, that can be used in a huge range of applications from detection of chemical and biochemical weapons from a distance and use in security imaging technologies such as airport body scanners, to chemical analysis in the laboratory and studying the structure of the universe through improved telescopes....

In an effort to circumvent this limitation, researchers are engineering metallic nano-antennas that concentrate light into a tiny volume to dramatically enhance any signal coming from the same nanoscale region. Nano-antennas are the backbone of nanoplasmonics, a field that is profoundly impacting biosensing, photochemistry, solar energy harvesting, and photonics. Now, researchers at EPFL led by Professor Christophe Galland at the School of Basic Sciences have discovered that when shining green laser light on a gold nano-antenna, its intensity is locally enhanced to a point that it “knocks” gold atoms out of their equilibrium positions, all the time maintaining the integrity of the overall structure....

Some drugs for these diseases dissolve in water. This means that transporting them through the intestines, which receive what we drink and eat, is not feasible. Consequently, these drugs cannot be effectively administered orally, by swallowing medicine through the mouth. However, UCR scientists have created a chemical “tag” that can be added to these drugs, which would them to enter blood circulation via the intestines. In a new paper that was recently published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the researchers detail how they found the tag and demonstrate its effectiveness....

Weighing this record-setting neutron star, which tops the charts at 2.35 solar masses (the mass of our sun), helps astronomers understand the weird quantum state of matter inside these extremely dense objects. If they get much heavier than that, neutron stars collapse entirely and disappear as a black hole. “We know roughly how matter behaves at nuclear densities, like in the nucleus of a uranium atom,” said Alex Filippenko, Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley....

With more than 1,000 sensors, or pixels, NIST’s camera may be useful in future space-based telescopes searching for chemical signs of life on other planets, and in new instruments designed to search for the elusive “dark matter” believed to constitute most of the “stuff” in the universe. Described in Optics Express, the camera consists of sensors made from superconducting nanowires, which can detect single photons. They are among the best photon counters in terms of speed, efficiency, and range of color sensitivity....

A new study led by NIMS researchers reveals that, in solid electrolytes, a Si anode composed only of commercial Si nanoparticles prepared by spray deposition – the method is a cost-effective, atmospheric technique – exhibits excellent electrode performance, which has previously been observed only for film electrodes prepared by evaporation processes. This new result therefore suggests that a low-cost and large-scale production of high-capacity anodes for use in all-solid-state Li batteries is possible....