Just one hour of brain–computer interface use led to clear changes in neuronal patterns, raising hopes of a potential new therapy for stroke victims.
Researchers in Vienna from Ulrich Elling’s laboratory at IMBA—Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences—in collaboration with the Vienna BioCenter Core Facilities have developed a revolutionary CRISPR technology called “CRISPR-Switch,” which enables unprecedented control of the CRISPR technique in both space and time.
CRISPR/Cas9 technology is based on a modified version of a bacterial defense system against bacteriophages. One of the landmark discoveries for this technique in fact was laid in Vienna and published in 2012 in a study co-authored by Emmanuelle Charpentier and VBC Ph.D. student, Krzysztof Chylinski. Due to its power to also edit mammalian genomes, CRISPR/Cas9 has rapidly established itself as the most employed gene editing method in laboratories across the world with huge potential to find its way to the clinics to cure rare disease. Just a week ago, the first success in the treatment of sickle cell anemia was announced.
To control the power of genome editing, several groups have worked on systems to control editing activity. Scientists from the lab of Ulrich Elling at IMBA were now able to gain unprecedented control over sgRNA activity, in a system termed “CRISPR-Switch.” The results are published in the renowned journal Nature Communications.
How fast does your phone charge? And how fast do you want your future smartphone to charge? At the moment, one of the fastest charging technologies has been presented by Xiaomi. Its 100W charging seems to be from another planet. But the smartphone makers are working hard to overcome this technology. Actually, this has its own reasons. We mean, still, there is no technology allowing the manufacturers to bring more power to the same capacity battery. So as the use applications are getting wider, the companies have to solve the power shortage problem. Seems, new technology has been already developed. And if nothing accidental happens, it will appear on future phones quite soon.
PyXie RAT capabilities include keylogging, stealing login credentials and recording videos, warn researchers at BlackBerry Cylance — who also say the trojan can be used to distribute other attacks, including ransomware.
Three physicists have proposed a new solution to one of the deepest mysteries in particle physics: why the Higgs boson has such a tiny mass.
Scientists have theorized about the other side of a black hole for decades. Here’s what they’ve come up with so far.
A new study has called into question the prevailing notion that the universe is “flat.” The stakes of this cosmological debate are huge.
Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have used aligned “metallic” carbon nanotubes to create a device which converts heat to electrical energy (a thermoelectric device) with a higher power output than pure semiconducting carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in random networks. The new device bypasses the troublesome trade-off in semiconductors between conductivity and electrical voltage, significantly outperforming its counterpart. High power thermoelectric devices may pave the way for more efficient use of waste heat, like wearable electronics.
Thermoelectric devices can directly convert heat to electricity. When we think about the amount of wasted heat in our environment like in air conditioning exhausts, vehicle engines or even body heat, it would be revolutionary if we could somehow scavenge this energy back from our surroundings and put it to good use. This goes some way to powering the thought behind wearable electronics and photonics, devices which could be worn on the skin and powered by body heat. Limited applications are already available in the form of body heat powered lights and smartwatches.
The power extracted from a thermoelectric device when a temperature gradient is formed is affected by the conductivity of the device and the Seebeck coefficient, a number indicating how much electrical voltage is generated with a certain difference in temperature. The problem is that there is a trade-off between the Seebeck coefficient and conductivity: the Seebeck coefficient drops when the device is made more conductive. To generate more power, we ideally want to improve both.
Researchers have long known that some genes can cause cancer when overactive, but exactly what happens inside the cell nucleus when the cancer grows has so far remained enigmatic. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have found a new mechanism that renders one canonical driver of cancer overactive. The findings, published in Nature Genetics, create conditions for brand new strategies to fight cancer.
One gene that is called MYC is central for normal cell growth. However, if the gene mutates and/or becomes overactive, it could lead to abnormal cell growth and cancer. It is previously known that so-called super-enhancers, large regions in the DNA that develop near cancer genes, could somehow make the MYC gene overactive.
The current study increases our understanding of how this process takes place by highlighting how environmental cues can conspire with the architecture of the cell nucleus to cause overexpression. With the help of new laboratory techniques and computer models, the researchers show how the activation of the pathway of the signal-molecule WNT charges the super-enhancer with proteins that lures the MYC gene to the cell nucleus pores. The pores are situated on the membrane of the cell nucleus and control the flow of information between the cell nucleus and the cytoplasm.
