Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers at Karolinska Institute have developed a novel method using DNA nanoballs to detect pathogens, aiming to simplify nucleic acid testing and revolutionize pathogen detection. The study’s results, published in Science Advances, could pave the way for a straightforward electronic-based test capable of identifying various nucleic acids in diverse scenarios quickly and cheaply.

Principal investigator Vicent Pelechano, an associate professor at Karolinska Institute’s Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, is cautiously optimistic about the technology’s potential to detect an array of pathogenic agents in real world settings.

“The methodology involves combining Molecular Biology (DNA nanoball generation) and electronics (electric impedance-based quantification) to yield a pioneering detection tool,” says Vicent Pelechano.

It is possible to image an object with an induced coherence effect by making use of photon pairs to gain information on the item of interest—without detecting the light probing it. While one photon illuminates the object, its partner alone is detected, thereby preventing the measurements of coincidence events to reveal information of the sought after object. This method can be made resilient to noise, as well.

In a new report published in Science Advances, Jorge Fuenzalida and a team in applied optics, precision engineering and theory communications in Germany experimentally showed how the method can be made resilient to noise. They introduced an imaging-distilled approach based on the interferometric modulation of the signal of interest to generate a high-quality image of an object regardless of the extreme noise levels surpassing the actual signal of interest.

Quantum imaging is a promising field that is emerging with valid advantages when compared to classical protocols. Researchers have demonstrated this method across different scenarios to work in the low-photon flux regime by making use of undetected probing photons for super-resolution imaging.

On Sept. 6, a new satellite left Earth; its mission is to tell us about the motions of hot plasma flows in the universe.

Launched from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan, the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) satellite will detect X-ray wavelengths with unprecedented precision to peer into the hearts of galaxy clusters, reveal the workings of black holes and supernovae, as well as to tell us about the elemental makeup of the universe.

XRISM, pronounced “crism,” is a collaborative mission between the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NASA, with participation by the European Space Agency.

Rob Tillman, CIO of Copy Chief, has 20+ years transforming businesses with a human-centric innovation model deployed across diverse sectors.

In today’s fast-paced digital age, the term “innovation” is frequently thrown around in boardrooms, tech conferences and startup pitches. It’s often hailed as the driving force behind progress and the competitive edge for businesses. But have we ever paused to truly understand what innovation means at its core?

It’s not just about creating groundbreaking technologies or pioneering novel solutions. At its heart, innovation is about empowering humans.

Another excellent paper from Johann G. Danzl’s research group. They develop methods that combine novel negative staining techniques, deep learning, and super-resolution STED microscopy or expansion microscopy to facilitate nanoscale-resolution imaging of brain tissue volumes. They also show semi-automated (and some fully automated) segmentation of neuron morphology and identification of synapses. Very cool work and I’m excited to see how it influences connectomics in the future! #brain #neuroscience #imaging #microscopy #neurotech

Mapping fixed brain samples with extracellular labeling and optical microscopy reveals synaptic connections.

An international research team headed by Johannes Karges, PhD, of the faculty of chemistry and biochemistry at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, has developed nanoparticles that accumulate in cancer cells and eliminate them after being photoactivated. The research team also labeled them in such a way that immune cells learn to eliminate similar cells throughout the body which could even mean undetected metastases can be treated.

The researchers presented their findings in the journal Nature Communications in an article titled, “Theranostic imaging and multimodal photodynamic therapy and immunotherapy using the mTOR signaling pathway.”

“Tumor metastases are considered the leading cause of cancer-associated deaths,” the researchers wrote. “While clinically applied drugs have demonstrated to efficiently remove the primary tumor, metastases remain poorly accessible. To overcome this limitation, herein, the development of a theranostic nanomaterial by incorporating a chromophore for imaging and a photosensitizer for treatment of metastatic tumor sites is presented. The mechanism of action reveals that the nanoparticles are able to intervene by local generation of cellular damage through photodynamic therapy as well as by systemic induction of an immune response by immunotherapy upon inhibition of the mTOR signaling pathway which is of crucial importance for tumor onset, progression, and metastatic spreading.”

Burton joins filmmakers like Wes Anderson in deriding technology that allows A.I. users to render new content using their distinct aesthetics.

Researchers turn to synchrotron imaging of historical and homemade prints to explore possible connections between early printing methods in Korea and Europe.

If you could quickly predict the reactivity of a material in different scenarios using only its atomic-level geometry, you’d hold the golden ticket to finding application-specific catalytic materials. Some methods exist for making these predictions, but they require detailed knowledge about the arrangement of the atoms and are computationally expensive to perform and thus slow to run. Now Evan Miu and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh have developed a method that requires only information about the connectivity of the atoms, is computationally cheap, and is quick to run [1]. Their method accurately predicts how metal oxides interact with hydrogen in a reaction important to energy storage and catalysis.

Miu and the team hypothesized that they could predict a material’s reactivity using a single number that describes the so-called global connectivity of the system’s atoms. A material with a high global connectivity contains atoms that are, on average, bonded to more of their neighbors than does a system with a low value of this parameter. The researchers have used a similar concept to study reactivity for metal catalysts, but not for more complex structures, such as metal oxides.

To test their idea, the researchers examined—in different metal oxides—so-called hydrogen intercalation, a type of redox reaction that alters the host material’s properties. They found that they could use each oxide’s global connectivity to determine the strength of its hydrogen reactivity. The model-determined values for the various hydrogen-binding energies agree with experimental data and took mere seconds to obtain. The tool could thus allow scientists to rapidly develop and optimize novel materials to use in energy-storage applications.