Comment

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 15, 2023 at 11:22am

Extremely rare half female, half male bird captured on film

 A striking and extremely rare half female, half male bird has been spotted by a  zoologist.

Sesquicentennial Distinguished Professor Hamish Spencer was holidaying in Colombia when an amateur ornithologist John Murillo pointed out a wild Green Honeycreeper with distinct half green, or female, and half blue, male, plumage.
Many birdwatchers could go their whole lives and not see a bilateral gynandromorph in any species of bird. The phenomenon is extremely rare in birds.

Photographs of the bird make the discovery even more significant as they are "arguably the best of a wild bilateral gynandromorphic bird of any species ever."

A report on the find, only the second recorded example of gynandromorphism in the species in more than 100 years, has been published in the Journal of Field Ornithology.

Professor Spencer says gynandromorphs—animals with both male and female characteristics in a species that usually have separate sexes—are important for our understanding of sex determination and sexual behavior in birds.

The main groups in which the phenomenon has been recorded include animal species that feature strong sexual dimorphism; most often insects, especially butterflies, crustaceans, spiders, and even lizards and rodents.

"This particular example of bilateral gynandromorphy—male one side and female the other—shows that, as in several other species, either side of the bird can be male or female.

The phenomenon arises from an error during female cell division to produce an egg, followed by double-fertilization by two sperm.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 15, 2023 at 8:38am

Nanoparticles amplify potential cancer vaccine power

Researchers have identified minuscule particles that supercharge therapeutic cancer vaccines, which train the immune system to attack tumors. These new lipid nanoparticles—tiny structures made of fat—not only stimulate a two-pronged immune system response that enhances the body's ability to fight cancer but also make vaccines more effective in targeting tumours.

This research marks a pivotal turning point in our understanding of how lipid nanoparticles can be harnessed to optimize anticancer immunity. These findings  unlock new avenues for enhancing the efficacy of RNA-based treatments for cancer and infectious diseases.

Lipid nanoparticles, made famous for their use in delivering messenger RNA in COVID-19 vaccines, have gained attention as carriers in cancer immunotherapy. Previous research focused on optimizing lipid nanoparticles to trigger a strong response by T helper 1 cells, cells that enable the immune system to identify and attack cancerous cells.

Using a new screening method, researchers fine-tuned the composition of lipid nanoparticles to customize and maximize immune-response activation. They identified lipid nanoparticles that generated responses simultaneously using two parallel pathways to present tumor antigens to both Th1 and Th2 cells, another type of helper cell.

The team also combined lipid nanoparticles with "checkpoint inhibitor treatment," a type of cancer immunotherapy drug that helps the immune system recognize and attack cancer cells. These inhibitors block "checkpoints:" molecules on immune cells that either stimulate or inhibit an immune response. Cancer cells sometimes evade these checkpoints and thus go undetected by the immune system. The team's LNPs enhance the therapeutics' ability to reduce tumor size and extend patient survival time.

The researchers say that their study is unique because it demonstrates that lipid nanoparticles can boost both Th1 and Th2 responses, producing coordinated attacks on cancer by multiple immune cell types.

Yining Zhu et al, Screening for lipid nanoparticles that modulate the immune activity of helper T cells towards enhanced antitumour activity, Nature Biomedical Engineering (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41551-023-01131-0

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 15, 2023 at 8:20am

Researchers experimented with ways to charge a quantum battery using optical apparatuses such as lasers, lenses and mirrors, but the way they achieved it necessitated a quantum effect where events are not causally connected the way everyday things are.

Earlier methods to charge a quantum battery involved a series of charging stages one after the other. However, here, the team instead used a novel quantum effect they call indefinite causal order, or ICO. In the classical realm, causality follows a clear path, meaning that if event A leads to event B, then the possibility of B causing A is excluded. However, at the quantum scale, ICO allows both directions of causality to exist in what's known as a quantum superposition, where both can be simultaneously true.

With ICO, researchers demonstrated that the way you charge a battery made up of quantum particles could drastically impact its performance. They saw huge gains in both the energy stored in the system and the thermal efficiency. And somewhat counterintuitively, we discovered the surprising effect of an interaction that's the inverse of what you might expect: A lower-power charger could provide higher energies with greater efficiency than a comparably higher-power charger using the same apparatus.

The phenomenon of ICO the team explored could find uses beyond charging a new generation of low-power devices. The underlying principles, including the inverse interaction effect uncovered here, could improve the performance of other tasks involving thermodynamics or processes that involve the transfer of heat. One promising example is solar panels, where heat effects can reduce their efficiency, but ICO could be used to mitigate those and lead to gains in efficiency instead.

Charging Quantum Batteries via Indefinite Causal Order: Theory and Experiment, Physical Review Letters (2023). journals.aps.org/prl/accepted/ … 109d959f76f487564a34

Part 2

**

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 15, 2023 at 8:15am

New way to charge batteries harnesses the power of 'indefinite causal order'

Batteries that exploit quantum phenomena to gain, distribute and store power promise to surpass the abilities and usefulness of conventional chemical batteries in certain low-power applications. For the first time, researchers take advantage of an unintuitive quantum process that disregards the conventional notion of causality to improve the performance of so-called quantum batteries, bringing this future technology a little closer to reality.

There are several upcoming quantum technologies worth paying attention to. One such item is the quantum battery which, though initially puzzling in name, holds unexplored potential for sustainable energy solutions and possible integration into future electric vehicles. Nevertheless, these new devices are poised to find use in various portable and low-power applications, especially when opportunities to recharge are scarce.

At present, quantum batteries only exist as laboratory experiments, and researchers around the world are working on the different aspects that are hoped to one day combine into a fully functioning and practical application. 

Researchers are investigating the best way to charge a quantum battery, and this is where time comes into play. One of the advantages of quantum batteries is that they should be incredibly efficient, but that hinges on the way they are charged.

Current batteries for low-power devices, such as smartphones or sensors, typically use chemicals such as lithium to store charge, whereas a quantum battery uses microscopic particles like arrays of atoms. While chemical batteries are governed by classical laws of physics, microscopic particles are quantum in nature, so we have a chance to explore ways of using them that bend or even break our intuitive notions of what takes place at small scales.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 14, 2023 at 12:28pm

However, these promising results only apply to a very specific type of asthma, the researchers caution. They only tested people who responded well to benralizumab, patients who have severe eosinophilic asthma and don't respond as well to benralizumab likely still require the intensive steroid treatments.

Due to the risks from high steroid doses the Global Initiative for Asthma recommends lowering doses in patients who are responding positively to immune therapies. This research supports that recommendation, however the results may not be the same across all similar treatments.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02284-5/fulltext

Part 2

**

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 14, 2023 at 12:27pm

Landmark Study Shows Antibody Therapy Controls 92% of Severe Asthma Cases

Safer relief for people suffering from severe asthma is a step closer with a large clinical trial finding a monocolonal antibody treatment called benralizumab can radically reduce the need for more dangerous high-dose steroid treatments. Asthma impacts almost 300 million people worldwide, around 5 percent of whom have a severe version of this respiratory disease. They face a horrifying struggle to get enough air on a daily basis, with all the associated chest tightness, coughing, panic, and frequent hospital visits.

Patients with severe asthma rely on inhaling high doses of steroids to keep it under control. They work by reducing the body's inflammation in general, decreasing the production of mucus in the lungs as a consequence.

Yet high levels of steroids come with all sorts of risks, including increased diabetes, fractures, cataracts, and suppression of the adrenal system which helps regulate everything from metabolism to stress through hormones.
What's more, the value of such high doses of steroids in treating severe asthma remains debated. Lower doses have a proportionally larger impact, but patients have little other option than to resort to the riskier amounts when these fail.
The treatment investigated in a phase four clinical trial funded by its producer AstraZeneca, works in a far more targeted way. Benralizumab is a protein antibody that reduces the number of inflammation-causing immune cells called eosinophils, which are produced in abnormal amounts in severe asthma cases.

Benralizumab has been so effective that in the trial of over 200 patients across Europe an incredible 92 percent of them safely reduced the use of inhaled steroids, with more than 60 percent no longer needing them at all.

Almost 90 percent of patients in the steroid reduction group remained exacerbation-free by the end of the trial.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 14, 2023 at 11:42am

Carbon footprints of wars

War is bad for the environment, with toxic chemicals left polluting the soil and water for decades after fighting ceases. Much less obvious are the carbon emissions from armed conflicts and their long-term impacts on the climate.

Some military emissions are not necessarily specific to wartime, but dramatically increase during combat. Among the largest sources are jet fuel for planes and diesel for tanks and naval ships.

Other sources include weapons and ammunition manufacturing, troop deployment, housing, and feeding armies. Then there is the havoc that militaries cause by dropping bombs, including fires, smoke and rubble from damage to homes and infrastructure—all amounting to a massive "carbon war bootprint".

In order to account for all of this carbon, researchers must begin with basic data surrounding direct "tailpipe" emissions, known as Scope 1 emissions. This is the carbon emitted directly from burning fuel in the engine of a plane, for instance. If we know how much fuel is consumed per kilometre by a certain type of jet plane, we can begin to estimate how much carbon is emitted by a whole fleet of those planes over a certain amount of missions.

Then we have emissions from heating or electricity that are an indirect result of a particular activity—emissions from burning gas to produce electricity to light up an army barracks, for instance. These are Scope 2 emissions.

From there, we can try to account for the complex "long tail" of indirect or embodied emissions, known as Scope 3. These are found in extensive military supply chains and involve carbon emitted by anything from weapons manufacturing to IT and other logistics.

To understand combat emissions better, my colleagues have even proposed a new category, Scope 3 Plus, which includes everything from damage caused by war to post-conflict reconstruction. For example, the emissions involved in rebuilding Gaza or Mariupol in Ukraine will be enormous.

Then there is use of concrete to build walls,  Ammunition and explosives 

https://theconversation.com/how-to-assess-the-carbon-footprint-of-a...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 14, 2023 at 10:08am

Natural gas is actually migrating under permafrost, and could see methane emissions skyrocket if it escapes
Beneath Svalbard's permafrost, millions of cubic meters of methane are trapped—and scientists have now learned that it can migrate beneath the cold seal of the permafrost and escape. A large-scale escape could create a cycle of warming that would send methane emissions skyrocketing: warming thaws the permafrost, causing more gas to escape, allowing more permafrost to thaw and more gas to be released.
Because Svalbard's geological and glacial history is very similar to the rest of the Arctic region, these migrating deposits of methane are likely to be present elsewhere in the Arctic.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. At present, the leakage from below permafrost is very low, but factors such as glacial retreat and permafrost thawing may 'lift the lid' on this in the future.

Thomas Birchall et al, Permafrost Trapped Natural Gas in Svalbard, Norway, Frontiers in Earth Science (2023). DOI: 10.3389/feart.2023.1277027

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 14, 2023 at 10:01am

Newly created ultra-hard material rivals diamond

Scientists have solved a decades-long puzzle and unveiled a near unbreakable substance that could rival diamond as the hardest material on Earth. The research is published in the journal Advanced Materials. Researchers found that when carbon and nitrogen precursors were subjected to extreme heat and pressure, the resulting materials—known as carbon nitrides—were tougher than cubic boron nitride, the second hardest material after diamond.

The breakthrough opens doors for multifunctional materials to be used for industrial purposes including protective coatings for cars and spaceships, high-endurance cutting tools, solar panels and photodetectors, experts say.

Materials researchers have attempted to unlock the potential of carbon nitrides since the 1980s, when scientists first noticed their exceptional properties, including high resistance to heat.

Researchers subjected various forms of carbon nitrogen precursors to pressures of between 70 and 135 gigapascals—around 1 million times our atmospheric pressure—while heating it to temperatures of more than 1,500°C.

To identify the atomic arrangement of the compounds under these conditions, the samples were illuminated by an intense X-ray beam at three particle accelerators—the European Synchrotron Research Facility in France, the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron in Germany and the Advanced Photon Source based in the United States.

Researchers discovered that three carbon nitride compounds were found to have the necessary building blocks for super-hardness.

Remarkably, all three compounds retained their diamond-like qualities when they returned to ambient pressure and temperature conditions.

Further calculations and experiments suggest the new materials contain additional properties including photoluminescence and high energy density, where a large amount of energy can be stored in a small amount of mass.

Researchers say the potential applications of these ultra-incompressible carbon nitrides is vast, potentially positioning them as ultimate engineering materials to rival diamonds.

Dominique Laniel et al, Synthesis of Ultra‐Incompressible and Recoverable Carbon Nitrides Featuring CN4 Tetrahedra, Advanced Materials (2023). DOI: 10.1002/adma.202308030

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 13, 2023 at 11:56am

Read the original article.

**

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• …
• 224
• 225
• 226
• 227
• 228
• …
• 1004
• Next ›
• Page