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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 19, 2021 at 10:23am

Visuals increase attention: science explains why

"Look at me!" we might say while attempting to engage  children. It turns out there is a neurochemical explanation for why looking at mom or dad or teacher actually helps kids pay better attention.

in a paper published recently scientists report that norepinephrine, a fundamental chemical for brain performance, is locally regulated in a brain region called the visual cortex.

Norepinephrine is known to be involved in paying attention. A certain amount of this chemical needs to be released for optimum brain performance and ability to pay attention. So, if there is either too much of it or too little of it, it may affect how we process information.

Disease states in which norepinephrine is known to be altered include substance use disorders, Alzheimer's disease, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In some substance use, Alzheimer's and ADHD, the release of norepinephrine is reduced, resulting in lower attention. In other substance use and PTSD, the level is too high.

The team's findings also extend to cells called astrocytes that function as helper cells in the brain and central nervous system.

"When a person makes a movement, such as turning the head to listen to a parent, and that is combined with visual stimulation, then more norepinephrine is released where visual information is processed.

Astrocytes can reliably detect the rate of norepinephrine release. 

They are sensitive to it, in other words. Astrocytes alter their response accordingly, which is expected to change brain performance.

Understanding norepinephrine release, its local regulation and the astrocyte response may represent a mechanism by which one could enhance sensory-specific attention.

Shawn R. Gray et al, Noradrenergic terminal short-term potentiation enables modality-selective integration of sensory input and vigilance state, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abk1378. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abk1378

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-12-visuals-attention-science.ht...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 17, 2021 at 11:11am

Chemical Air Pollution Morphs Into Something Even More Toxic, Study Shows

Remnants of industrial chemicals in the air can potentially transform into new substances more toxic and persistent than the original pollution, according to a global study published recently.

Using samples gathered around the world, the study published in Nature found that these previously unidentified products are present in the atmospheres of 18 big cities around the world. The research proposes a new framework using laboratory tests and computer simulation to predict what chemicals will arise as products interact with the air and how toxic they will be.

They are chemicals that are added to a large variety of materials to delay the onset of fire. 

In a laboratory, scientists observed how these chemicals changed over time when in contact with oxidants in the air and found that they gave rise to 186 different substances.

Comparing these new substances with field samples, researchers  found 19 derived from the five most common flame retardants. None of the 19 had ever been identified in the ambient atmosphere before.

The researchers then used computer simulations to gauge the persistence, toxicity, and bio-accumulation of the derived chemicals.

They discovered that the new chemicals could have longer-lasting impacts on the environment and could be more toxic than their parent chemicals – in some cases 10 times as much.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04134-6

https://www.sciencealert.com/study-suggests-chemical-air-pollution-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 17, 2021 at 11:02am

New Maze-Like Surface Kills Bacteria in 2 Minutes: 120x Faster Than Normal Copper

If dangerous 99.99 percent of bacteria can be killed within 2 minutes? That is exactly this porous copper maze can do!

A newly developed copper surface does the job in just a couple of minutes, though, some 120 times faster than normal copper. The less time the bacteria hang around, of course, the safer that surfaces like door handles and worktops are going to be.

Crucial to the bacteria-killing abilities of the new material is its porous nature, which significantly increases the surface area compared with smooth copper. That means more of the bacteria cells can be attacked at once when they land.

To make this copper as porous as possible, researchers produced an alloy of copper and manganese  atoms, before applying a cheap and scalable "dealloying" technique to remove the manganese atoms.

That left behind a maze-like copper surface full of very small holes for the bacteria to get trapped inside – and it actually makes it harder for bacteria cells to form in the first place.

No special drugs or other treatments are required for the copper material to work, and when water hits the surface, it forms a thin film rather than droplets. That again improves the effectiveness of the copper ions in wiping out bacteria.

These combined effects not only cause structural degradation of bacterial cells, making them more vulnerable to the poisonous copper ions, but also facilitates uptake of copper ions into the bacterial cells.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S014296122100...

https://www.sciencealert.com/new-copper-surface-kills-bacteria-in-2...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 17, 2021 at 10:07am

World's first optical oscilloscope

 A team from UCF has developed the world's first optical oscilloscope, an instrument that is able to measure the electric field of light. The device converts light oscillations into electrical signals, much like hospital monitors convert a patient's heartbeat into electrical oscillation.

Until now, reading the electric field of light has been a challenge because of the high speeds at which light waves oscillates. The most advanced techniques, which power our phone and internet communications, can currently clock electric fields at up to gigahertz frequencies—covering the radio frequency and microwave regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Light waves oscillate at much higher rates, allowing a higher density of information to be transmitted. However, the current tools for measuring light fields could resolve only an average signal associated with a 'pulse' of light, and not the peaks and valleys within the pulse. Measuring those peaks and valleys within a single pulse is important because it is in that space that information can be packed and delivered.

Fiber optic communications have taken advantage of light to make things faster, but we are still functionally limited by the speed of the oscilloscope. This new  optical oscilloscope may be able to increase that speed by a factor of about 10,000.

The research team developed the device and demonstrated its capability for real-time measurement of the electric fields of individual laser pulses. The next step for the team is to see how far they can push the speed limits of the technique.

https://www.ucf.edu/news/ucf-develops-the-worlds-first-optical-osci...

https://researchnews.cc/news/10569/Team-develops-the-world-s-first-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 16, 2021 at 8:20am

How NASA’s Webb Telescope Will Transform Our Place in the Universe

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 16, 2021 at 8:14am

Sodium-based material yields stable alternative to lithium-ion batteries

Researchers have created a new sodium-based battery material that is highly stable, capable of recharging as quickly as a traditional lithium-ion battery and able to pave the way toward delivering more energy than current battery technologies.

For about a decade, scientists and engineers have been developing sodium batteries, which replace both lithium and cobalt used in current lithium-ion batteries with cheaper, more environmentally friendly sodium. Unfortunately, in earlier sodium batteries, a component called the anode would tend to grow needle-like filaments called dendrites that can cause the battery to electrically short and even catch fire or explode.

Typically, the faster you charge, the more of these dendrites you grow. So if you suppress dendrite growth, you can charge and discharge faster, because all of a sudden it's safe.

 Yixian Wang et al, A Sodium–Antimony–Telluride Intermetallic Allows Sodium‐Metal Cycling at 100% Depth of Discharge and as an Anode‐Free Metal Battery, Advanced Materials (2021). DOI: 10.1002/adma.202106005

In one of two recent sodium battery advances from UT Austin, the new material solves the dendrite problem and recharges as quickly as a lithium-ion battery. The team published their results in the journal Advanced Materials.

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-12-sodium-based-material-yields-st...

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 16, 2021 at 7:56am

Using AI to Navigate Flow

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 14, 2021 at 11:47am

A longer-lasting COVID vaccine

Researchers have identified rare, naturally occurring T cells that are capable of targeting a protein found in SARS-CoV-2 and a range of other coronaviruses.

The findings suggest that a component of this protein, called viral polymerase, could potentially be added to COVID-19 vaccines to create a longer-lasting immune response and increase protection against new variants of the virus.

Most COVID-19 vaccines use part of the spike protein found on the surface of the virus to prompt the immune system to produce antibodies. However, newer variants — such as delta and omicron — carry mutations to the spike protein, which can make them less recognizable to the immune cells and antibodies stimulated by vaccination. Researchers say that a new generation of vaccines will likely be needed to create a more robust and wide-ranging immune response capable of beating back current variants and those that may arise in the future.

One way to accomplish this is by adding a fragment of a different viral protein to vaccines — one that is less prone to mutations than the spike protein and that will activate the immune system’s T cells. T cells are equipped with molecular receptors on their surfaces that recognize foreign protein fragments called antigens. When a T cell encounters an antigen its receptor recognizes, it self-replicates and produces additional immune cells, some of which target and kill infected cells immediately and others which remain in the body for decades to fight that same infection should it ever return.

The researchers focused on the viral polymerase protein, which is found not only in SARS-CoV-2 but in other coronaviruses, including those that cause SARS, MERS and the common cold. Viral polymerases serve as engines that coronaviruses use to make copies of themselves, enabling infection to spread. Unlike the spike protein, viral polymerases are unlikely to change or mutate, even as viruses evolve.

To determine whether or not the human immune system has T cell receptors capable of recognizing viral polymerase, the researchers exposed blood samples from healthy human donors (collected prior to the COVID-19 pandemic) to the viral polymerase antigen. They found that certain T cell receptors did, in fact, recognize the polymerase. They then used a method they developed called CLInt-Seq to genetically sequence these receptors. Next, the researchers engineered T cells to carry these polymerase-targeting receptors, which enabled them to study the receptors’ ability to recognize and kill SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses.

The study was published online in the journal Cell Reports.

https://researchnews.cc/news/10477/A-longer-lasting-COVID-vaccine--...

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 14, 2021 at 10:48am

Testing Mars Sample Return

Teams across multiple NASA centers and the European Space Agency are working together to prepare a set of missions that would return the samples being collected by the Mars Perseverance rover safely back to Earth. This video features some of that prototype testing underway for the proposed Sample Retrieval Lander, Mars Ascent Vehicle launch systems, and the Earth Entry System. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 14, 2021 at 10:17am

New resistance-busting antibiotic combination could extend the use of 'last-resort' antibiotics

Scientists have discovered a new potential treatment that has the ability to reverse antibiotic resistance in bacteria that cause conditions such as sepsis, pneumonia, and urinary tract infections.

Carbapenems, such as meropenem, are a group of vital often 'last-resort' antibiotics used to treat serious, multi-drug resistant infections when other antibiotics, such as penicillin, have failed. But some bacteria have found a way to survive treatment with carbapenems, by producing enzymes called metallo-beta-lactamases (MBLs) that break down the carbapenem antibiotics, stopping them from working.

Highly collaborative research, conducted by scientists from the Ineos Oxford Institute (IOI) for Antimicrobial Research at the University of Oxford and several institutions across Europe, found that the new class of enzyme blockers, called indole carboxylates, can stop MBL resistance enzymes working leaving the antibiotic free to attack and kill bacteria such as E. coli in the lab and in infections in mice.

The researchers first screened hundreds of thousands of chemicals to see which would attach tightly to MBLs to stop them working, and which didn't react with any human proteins, leading to the discovery of the indole carboxylates as promising new candidates. Using a process called crystallography to zoom in to take a closer look at how they work, the researchers found these potential drugs attach to MBLs in a completely different way to any other drugs—they imitate the interaction of the antibiotic with the MBLs. This clever Trojan Horse trick allows these potential drugs to be highly effective against a very wide range of MBL-producing superbugs.

Jürgen Brem, Imitation of β-lactam binding enables -spectrum metallo-β-lactamase inhibitors, Nature Chemistry (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41557-021-00831-x. www.nature.com/articles/s41557-021-00831-x

https://phys.org/news/2021-12-resistance-busting-antibiotic-combina...

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