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Category: nanotechnology

T cells secrete DNA to boost the immune system’s cancer-fighting ability

Activated immune cells secrete tiny capsules bearing DNA that can enter other immune and tumor cells to stimulate the body’s defense systems, according to a study led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine. The discovery extends the scientific understanding of the immune system, identifies a new strategy for boosting immunity against cancers and potentially offers a new tool for delivering genetic payloads to other cells.

Most animal cells secrete tiny capsules known as extracellular vesicles—nanoscale, membrane-bound particles—whose cargo can include proteins, snippets of DNA and other molecules. In the new study, published April 30 in Cancer Cell, the researchers discovered that vesicles secreted by activated T cells —major weapons of the immune system—carry DNA that enters immune cells and nearby tumor cells to enhance the immune response against the tumor. Preclinical experiments showed that this vesicle-associated DNA could be useful therapeutically, boosting T cell attacks against tumors that otherwise evoke little or no immune response.

“These findings reveal a natural mechanism for treating immunologically silent tumors and other diseases that stem from insufficient immune surveillance,” said study co-senior author Dr. David Lyden, the Stavros S. Niarchos Professor in Pediatric Cardiology and a member of the Gale and Ira Drukier Institute for Children’s Health and the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Deciphering the Nanoscale Architecture of Presynaptic Actin Using a Micropatterned Presynapse-on-Glass Model

Prefrontal cortex encodes behavior states decoupled from motor execution.

By tracking the natural actions of freely moving rats, Välikangas et al. show that prefrontal cortex encodes abstract behavioral states rather than low-level physical aspects of movement. Prefrontal activity anticipates behaviors and operates on slow timescales, suggesting that it represents high-level goals rather than moment-to-moment motor output.

A longstanding quantum roadblock just fell, opening existing fiber networks to ultra-secure light signals

Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have broken a longstanding barrier by managing to send single photons—that can’t be copied or split and thus are secure—in the network of optical fibers we already have. This opens up a broad range of applications relying on secure quantum information. The research is published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Quantum dots are unsurpassed in their ability to generate coherent single photons—single particles of light which cannot be split or copied and therefore are secure for quantum communication. So far, the problem was that the best quantum dots only worked around 930 nm wavelengths, which is far short of the telecommunication-compatible wavelengths starting at 1,260 nm. Only these longer wavelengths can be used to distribute the information-carrying photons and it has so far been restricted to sub-optimal platforms.

Now, scientists have managed to create a new type of quantum dot, which exploits the best of both worlds.

A multifaceted kinase keeps molecular motors in place for faithful cell division

During cell division, faithful chromosome segregation is ensured by the mitotic spindle. van Toorn et al. uncovered that Cdk1-mediated phosphorylation of the dynein-activating adaptor NuMA promotes the timely assembly of dynein/dynactin/NuMA complexes, essential for correct mitotic progression and genome integrity.

A new era for ultrafast photonics: 2D mercury-acetylide frameworks for near-infrared nonlinear optics

In the increasingly digital world, the demand for faster, more efficient and miniaturized optical devices is ever-growing. From high-speed internet and secure quantum communications to advanced medical imaging and precision manufacturing, the backbone of these technologies is light, specifically how we can control and manipulate it at the nanoscale.

Two-dimensional (2D) materials have emerged as a game-changer in this arena, offering unique properties that can be harnessed for ultrafast photonics and nonlinear optical applications.

However, the search for materials that combine stability, tunability and high performance in the near-infrared (NIR) region, a crucial window for telecommunications and sensing, remains a significant challenge.

Levitated nano-ferromagnet confirms a 160-year-old physical prediction

Ferromagnets, such as iron, cobalt, and nickel, are materials with a strong, spontaneous, and permanent magnetic field. Over 150 years ago, the physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell speculated that under specific conditions, non-spinning ferromagnets or electromagnets would behave as gyroscopes, objects that maintain their orientation, typically due to the angular momentum arising from spinning.

Maxwell hypothesized that this unique gyroscopic behavior would arise from the relationship between a ferromagnet’s magnetism and its angular momentum within a specific set-up. While numerous studies tested this prediction, so far it had never been proven experimentally.

Researchers at the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnology IFN-CNR and the Bruno Kessler Foundation recently observed the effect predicted by Maxwell in a non-spinning and levitated ferromagnetic sphere. Their observations, presented in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, could open new exciting possibilities for the development of quantum technologies and for the collection of highly precise measurements.

Breakthrough Crystal Lets Scientists “Write” Nanoscale Patterns With Light

A team of scientists has uncovered a crystal that can be reshaped and programmed using ordinary light, opening a new path for building optical technology.

Researchers at the XPANCEO Emerging Technologies Research Center, working alongside Nobel Laureate Prof. Konstantin Novoselov (University of Manchester and the National University of Singapore), have identified unusual optical behavior in arsenic trisulfide (As2S3), a crystalline van der Waals semiconductor. Their work shows that this material can be permanently altered by light and even shaped at the nanoscale using simple continuous-wave (CW) light. This approach eliminates the need for expensive cleanroom lithography or advanced femtosecond laser systems.

Understanding Refractive Index and Photorefractivity.

Using Moon Regolith to Build Lunar Habitats

“Our results show that you can take a material that is inherently challenging and convert it into something structurally beneficial,” said Dr. Denizhan Yavas. [ https://www.labroots.com/trending/space/30488/using-moon-reg…habitats-2](https://www.labroots.com/trending/space/30488/using-moon-reg…habitats-2)

How can lunar dust (officially called regolith) be used to build future habitats on the Moon? This is what a recent study published in Advanced Engineering Materials hopes to address as a pair of researchers investigated how a novel technique for how lunar regolith could strengthen advanced composite materials. This study has the potential to help reduce the cost of shipping building materials to the Moon for future habitats by using available resources.

For the study, the researchers used lunar regolith simulant, a common substitute for lunar regolith since the latter is in low supply, to examine whether it could be used as a reinforcer for a common aerospace building material called polymer composites. The motivation for this study came from previous lunar regolith research that explored repelling lunar dust using nanoscale polymer surfaces. This is because lunar dust is highly abrasive, as the Apollo astronauts found out, and repelling it could prove beneficial for future astronauts.

Now, the researchers aspired to exploit this abrasiveness to their benefit for developing next generation building material on the Moon. In the end, the researchers found the lunar regolith simulant strengthened both the impact resistance and toughness of the polymers between 30 to 40 percent. Both attributes will be crucial to maintaining lunar habitats due to the Moon’s much harsher environment than Earth, specifically regarding micrometeorite strikes and solar radiation.

Extreme stability in ultrafast nanomagnetism aids the development of faster data storage

For the first time, researchers have mapped how the boundaries of magnetic nanostructures behave on extremely short timescales. The work of physicist Johan Mentink of Radboud University shows that these boundaries are much more stable than previously thought. This insight will aid the development of future ultra-fast and compact data storage.

Every magnet consists of tiny magnets, known as spins. When a material is magnetic, these spins all point in the same direction. Using ultra-short laser pulses, the spins in magnetic materials can change direction in a very short time. This so-called ultrafast nanomagnetism is important for, for example, hard drives, on which information is stored using magnetic bits. To make this storage faster and smaller, it is essential to understand exactly what happens at the nanoscale.

Using a new imaging technique capable of tracking processes down to the nanometer and femtosecond scale, Mentink and colleagues have researched the behavior of domain boundaries—thin walls of about 1 nanometer that separate magnetic domains. Multiple spins pointing in the same direction form a domain.

Engineered internal architecture of core-shell lipid nanoparticles promotes efficient mRNA endosomal release

Li et al. show that putting gold nanoparticles inside of LNPs causes marked improvements in endosomal escape efficiency, describe a likely mechanism, and test their complexes with two therapeutic contexts in mice. A simple innovation which could greatly enhance LNP delivery!

Lipid Nanoparticles (LNPs) effectively deliver mRNA to cells but suffer have low levels of endosomal release. Here the authors report on core-shell LNPs with ionizable lipid–coated gold nanoparticle cores with enhanced pH-responsive membrane disruption, endosomal escape, and cytosolic mRNA delivery improving therapeutic efficiency.

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