Semiconductor components form the backbone of all kinds of electronic equipment. The speed with which these components can switch currents on and off is one of the critical quantities for describing the power of computers, for example. The fastest silicon-based transistors presently work at clock speeds of a few billions of switching cycles per second – a single switching process thus lasts about one ten-billionth of a second. A research team lead by Ferenc Krausz, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching and head of the Attosecond Physics Lab has successfully demonstrated that, under certain conditions, ultrashort light pulses of extremely high intensity can induce electric currents in otherwise insulating dielectric materials (Nature, AOP, 5 December 2012) and the change in the materials properties can be switched on and off at ten thousand times the speed of conventional electronics....

A common strategy to make vaccines more powerful is to deliver them along with an adjuvant — a compound that stimulates the immune system to produce a stronger response. Researchers from MIT, the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, and other institutions have now designed a new nanoparticle adjuvant that may be more potent than others now in use. Studies in mice showed that it significantly improved antibody production following vaccination against HIV, diphtheria, and influenza....

AAVCOVID technology is unique in the vaccine field in its ability to scale and adapt rapidly. Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), members of Mass General Brigham, today announced progress towards the testing and development of an experimental vaccine called AAVCOVID, a novel gene-based vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The AAVCOVID vaccine program was developed in the laboratory of Luk H. Vandenberghe, PhD, director of the Grousbeck Gene Therapy Center at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School....

A joint group of scientists from Finland, Russia, China, and the USA have demonstrated that temperature difference can be used to entangle pairs of electrons in superconducting structures. The experimental discovery, published in Nature Communications, promises powerful applications in quantum devices, bringing us one step closer towards applications of the second quantum revolution. The team, led by Professor Pertti Hakonen from Aalto University, has shown that the thermoelectric effect provides a new method for producing entangled electrons in a new device....

The new method uses interferometry to capture extremely high-resolution visualizations of millions of molecules moving across viscous gels or a plasma membrane. Ipsita Saha, physics doctoral candidate and lead author of the study, developed a correlation analysis that theoretically explained how the interferometry microscope could distinguish between two types of movement—flow and diffusion—and she and Senior Author Saveez Saffarian verified it experimentally. The method brings us one step closer to visualizing how molecules interact in an actual living cell....

The species belongs to the allosauroids, a group of small to large-bodied, two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs that lived during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Allosaurus jimmadseni, possesses several unique features, among them a short narrow skull with low facial crests extending from the horns in front of the eyes forward to the nose and a relatively narrow back of the skull with a flat surface to the bottom of the skull under the eyes....

Hearing loss and other auditory problems are strongly associated with COVID-19 according to a systematic review of research evidence led by University of Manchester and NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) scientists. Professor Kevin Munro and PhD researcher Ibrahim Almufarrij found 56 studies that identified an association between COVID-19 and auditory and vestibular problems. They pooled data from 24 of the studies to estimate that the prevalence of hearing loss was 7....

Short-term hydroxychloroquine treatment is not associated with lethal heart rhythms in patients with COVID-19 who are risk assessed prior to receiving the drug. That’s the finding of research published today (September 25, 2020) in EP Europace, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).[1] “This was the largest study to assess the risk of dangerous heart rhythms (arrhythmias) in COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine,” said study author Dr. Alessio Gasperetti of Monzino Cardiology Centre, Milan, Italy and University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland....

Sugar and spice are not so nice, at least when it comes to vaping or inhalation. Exposure to e-cigarette flavoring chemicals and liquids can cause significant inflammation to monocytes, a type of white blood cell — and many flavoring compounds are also toxic, with cinnamon, vanilla, and buttery flavors among the worst. That’s the finding of new research published in open-access journal Frontiers in Physiology, which also found that mixing e-cigarette flavors has a much worse effect than exposure to just one....

With the arrival of effective vaccines for the COVID-19 virus, the end of the pandemic is on the horizon but in the short term the virus continues to spread. A timely new study published on December 29, 2020, by PLOS ONE examines the effectiveness of COVID-19 control policies in 40 jurisdictions including countries and U.S. states. Among the conclusions is that significant social costs must be incurred to reduce the growth of the virus below zero....

With advancing age, millions of people live with multiple conditions — sometimes referred to as multimorbidity. Furthermore, the proportion of people affected in this way is expected to rise over the next decades. However, medical education and training, clinical guidelines, healthcare delivery, and research have evolved to focus on one disease at a time. This problem is recognized by the Academy of Medical Sciences and the UK Chief Medical Officer (CMO), which have set out a challenge of investigating which diseases co-occur in the same individuals and why....

“I think this will be a very practical solution to hair regeneration,” says Xudong Wang, a professor of materials science and engineering at UW–Madison. Wang and colleagues published a description of the technology in the journal ACS Nano. Based on devices that gather energy from a body’s day-to-day motion, the hair-growth technology stimulates the skin with gentle, low-frequency electric pulses, which coax dormant follicles to reactivate hair production. The devices don’t cause hair follicles to sprout anew in smooth skin....

Such a superconducting material, carrying electricity without any energy loss due to resistance, would revolutionize energy efficiency in a broad range of consumer and industrial applications. The scientists conducted neutron scattering experiments at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory on samples of zirconium vanadium hydride at atmospheric pressure and at temperatures from -450 degrees Fahrenheit (5 K) to as high as -10 degrees Fahrenheit (250 K) — much higher than the temperatures where superconductivity is expected to occur in these conditions....

The scientists published their findings in three papers in preprints on arXiv. This material could provide a boon for quantum physicists and electronic device makers. Theorists proposed the existence of such materials in 2005 and hoped to study the quantum effects that should emerge from such materials, and explore applications in low-power electronics as well as quantum computing. But topological insulators have proven difficult to make. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, reported seeing remarkably fast-moving electrons on the surface of SmB6 crystals, which is a sign of a superb surface conductor....

Fossils of a tiny sea creature that died more than half a billion years ago may compel a science textbook rewrite of how brains evolved. A new study provides the first detailed description of Cardiodictyon catenulum, a wormlike animal preserved in rocks in China’s southern Yunnan province. Measuring barely half an inch (less than 1.5 centimeters) long and initially discovered in 1984, the fossil had hidden a crucial secret until now: a delicately preserved nervous system, including a brain....

University of Chicago scientists have discovered a way to create a material that can be made like a plastic, but conducts electricity more like a metal. The research shows how to make a kind of material in which the molecular fragments are jumbled and disordered, but can still conduct electricity extremely well. It was published on October 26 in the journal Nature. This goes against all of the rules we know about conductivity—to a scientist, it’s kind of like seeing a car driving on water and still going 70 mph....

Light makes some materials conductive in a previously unforeseen way. In common silicon solar cells, electrons flow when the sun shines. However, scientists at the Stuttgart-based Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research have now come up with a surprise: in a special perovskite, another material used for solar cells, light not only releases electrons, but also electrically charged atoms, known as ions. Moreover, this novel photoeffect is extremely large....

The European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft escorted comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on its journey around the sun from August 2014 – September 2016, dropping a probe and eventually crashing onto its surface. When the comet is close enough to the sun the ice on its surface ‘sublimes’ – transforms from solid to gas – forming a gas atmosphere called a coma. Analysis of the coma by instruments on Rosetta revealed that it contained not only water, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide, as anticipated, but also molecular oxygen....

Nanomachines could take over a variety of tasks in future. Some day they may be able to perform medical precision work in the human body or help analyze pathogens and pollutants in mobile laboratories. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart have now presented a possible component which could be used to specifically move and control such a machine. They have developed a nanoplasmonic system in the form of a pair of scissors that they can open using UV light....

An international team of scientists have identified candidate resistance genes that could protect ash trees from the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB), a deadly pest that is expected to kill billions of trees worldwide. In the new study, published recently in Nature Ecology & Evolution, researchers from Queen Mary University of London and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, sequenced the genomes of 22 species of ash tree (Fraxinus) from around the world and used this information to analyze how the different species are related to each other....