There’s no need to don uncomfortable smartwatches or chest straps to monitor your heart if your comfy shirt can do a better job.
That’s the idea behind “smart clothing” developed by a Rice University lab, which employed its conductive nanotube thread to weave functionality into regular apparel.
Technion scientists have created a wearable motion sensor capable of identifying movements such as bending and twisting. This smart ‘e-skin’ was produced using a highly stretchable electronic material, which essentially forms an electronic skin capable of recognizing the range of movement human joints normally make, with up to half a degree precision.
This breakthrough is the result of collaborative work between researchers from different fields in the Laboratory for Nanomaterial-Based Devices, headed by Professor Hossam Haick from the Technion Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering. It was recently published in Advanced Materials and was featured on the journal’s cover.
This wearable motion sensor, which senses bending and twisting, can be applied in healthcare and manufacturing.
Scientists recreated the unique chemical conditions found on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, in tiny glass cylinders here on Earth, and the experiment revealed previously unknown features of the moon’s mineral makeup.
Stanford University scientists experimenting with a decades-old, single-use battery architecture have developed of a new version that is not only rechargeable, but offers around six times the capacity of today’s lithium-ion solutions. The breakthrough hinges on the stabilization of volatile chlorine reactions within the device, and could one day provide the basis for high-performance batteries that power smartphones for a week at a time.
The new battery is described as an alkali metal-chlorine battery, and is based on chemistry that first emerged in the 1970s called lithium-thionyl chloride. These batteries are highly regarded for their high energy density, but rely on highly reactive chlorine that makes them unsuitable for anything other than a single use.
In a regular rechargeable battery, the electrons travel from one side to the other during discharging and then are reverted back to their original form as the battery is recharged. In this case, however, the sodium chloride or lithium chloride is converted to chlorine, which is too reactive to be converted back to chloride with any great efficiency.
Mutations are a part of life. Every time a virus replicates, there is a chance that its genetic code won’t be copied accurately. These typos travel inside new virus particles as they leave one body and move on to infect the next. Some of these mutations die out; others survive and circulate widely. Some mutations are harmless; others increase infectivity or allow a virus to better escape the immune system—that’s when public health bodies might deem that strain a variant of concern.
Swaps or deletions of single amino acids can change the shapes of different proteins. Mutations can happen in any of the proteins of SARS-CoV-2, and these may change the virus’s properties. Many of the worrisome mutations are found on the spike protein, as it is the target of antibody treatments and is mimicked by the currently authorized COVID-19 vaccines. Researchers are especially troubled when typos occur in two parts of the spike protein—the N-terminal domain, which is at the beginning of the protein and which some antibodies target, and the receptor-binding domain (RBD), which grabs hold of ACE2 receptors on human cells and starts the process of infection.
To understand how specific mutations affect the structure and function of the spike protein and what those changes mean for treatments and vaccines, C&EN talked to Priyamvada Acharya, Rory Henderson, and Sophie Gobeil at Duke University. With colleagues, these researchers have combined biochemical assays, cryo-electron microscopy, and modeling to show how the mutations seen in the variants of concern work together to change the stability of the spike protein. The spike is a trimer of three identical protein strands folded and interwoven together. Before the virus has infected a cell, the spike takes on two conformations: a down state, in which the RBD is hidden, and an up state, in which the RBD faces out, ready to bind to ACE2. The team found that different mutations can increase binding in different ways. This process, in which similar features are arrived at independently, is called convergent evolution.
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Circa 2004
Electric fertilizer, i. e. exerting electric field on plants during growing season instead of chemical fertilizer, is a kind of physical fertilizer, and the third kind of fertilizer with developmental prospect after inorganic fertilizer and organic fertilizer. For the purpose of studying the changes of physical and chemical properties of soil after exerting electric field, five treatments with different applications of chemical fertilizer were arranged on the black soil in Yushu City of Jilin Province by randomized block method, and electric field was exerted on plants every ten days during the growing season. Through sample analysis the paper arrives at following conclusions: 1) Exerting electric field can make soil’s granular structure increase, bulk density decrease, moisture capacity increase, thus improving the perviousness of soil.
Proteins can communicate through DNA, conducting a long-distance dialogue that serves as a kind of genetic “switch,” according to Weizmann Institute of Science researchers. They found that the binding of proteins to one site of a DNA molecule can physically affect another binding site at a distant location, and that this “peer effect” activates certain genes. This effect had previously been observed in artificial systems, but the Weizmann study is the first to show it takes place in the DNA of living organisms.
A team headed by Dr. Hagen Hofmann of the Chemical and Structural Biology Department made this discovery while studying a peculiar phenomenon in the soil bacteria Bacillus subtilis. A small minority of these bacteria demonstrate a unique skill: an ability to enrich their genomes by taking up bacterial gene segments scattered in the soil around them. This ability depends on a protein called ComK, a transcription factor, which binds to the DNA to activate the genes that make the scavenging possible. However, it was unknown how exactly this activation works.
Devices in the submillimetre range – so-called “nano-supercapacitors” – allow the shrinkage of electronic components to tiny dimensions. However, they are difficult to produce and do not usually incorporate biocompatible materials. Corrosive electrolytes, for example, can quickly discharge themselves in the event of defects and contamination.
So-called “biosupercapacitors” (BSCs) offer a solution. These have two outstanding properties: full biocompatibility, which means they can be used in body fluids such as blood, and compensation for self-discharge behaviours through bio-electrochemical reactions. In other words, they can actually benefit from the body’s own reactions. This is because, in addition to typical charge storage reactions of a supercapacitor, redox enzymatic reactions and living cells naturally present in the blood can increase the performance of a device by 40%.
Shrinking these devices down to submillimetre sizes, while maintaining full biocompatibility, has been enormously challenging. Now, scientists have created a prototype that combines both essential properties.
Studying Novel Plasma Fractions For Age-Related Diseases And Systemic Rejuvenation — Dr. Harold Katcher Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, Yuvan Research Inc.
Dr. Harold Katcher is the Chief Scientific Officer at Yuvan Research Inc., a biotech company exploring the development of novel, young plasma fraction rejuvenation treatments in mammals.
Secretome Derived Regenerative Therapeutics — Dr. Hanadie Yousef Ph.D., Co-Founder & CEO, Juvena Therapeutics
Dr. Hanadie Yousef, Ph.D. is a Scientist, Co-Founder and CEO of Juvena Therapeutics (https://www.juvenatherapeutics.com/), a regenerative medicine company developing protein therapeutics to promote tissue regeneration and increase healthspan, to prevent, reverse, and cure degenerative diseases.
