Science

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'Molecular Velcro' may lead to cost-effective alternatives to natural antibodies: Berkeley Lab researchers take cues from nature in designing a programmable nanomaterial for biosensing

Taking inspiration from the human immune system, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have created a new material that can be programmed to identify an endless variety of molecules. The new material resembles tiny sheets of Velcro, each just one-hundred nanometers across. But instead of securing your sneakers, this molecular Velcro mimics the way natural antibodies recognize viruses and toxins, and could lead to a new class of biosensors.

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Long organic molecules called peptoids self-assemble into a molecular film on the surface of a water solution. As this film gets folded into a nanosheet, segments of the peptoid get pushed out into loops, which eventually decorate the surface of the nanosheet.

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Incurable brain cancer gene is silenced: Gene regulation technology increases survival rates in mice with glioblastoma

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the brain cancer that killed Sen. Edward Kennedy and kills approximately 13,000 Americans a year, is aggressive and incurable. Now a Northwestern University research team is the first to demonstrate delivery of a drug that turns off a critical gene in this complex cancer, increasing survival rates significantly in animals with the deadly disease.

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Researchers combined gold nanoparticles (in yellow) with small interfering RNAs (in green) to knock down an oncogene that is overexpressed in glioblastoma.

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Cassini Swings Above Saturn to Compose a Portrait

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A swing high above Saturn by NASA's Cassini spacecraft revealed this stately view of the golden-hued planet and its main rings. The view is in natural color, as human eyes would have seen it.

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A Ghostly Trio from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope

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http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/news/1577-feature13-08-A-Ghostly-Trio-fro...

內湖道館2021陳鵬程

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Quantum reality more complex than previously thought

Imagine you order a delivery of several glass vases in different colors. Each vase is sent as a separate parcel. What would you think of the courier if the parcels arrive apparently undamaged, yet when you open them, it turns out that all the red vases are intact and all the green ones are smashed to pieces? Physicists from the University of Warsaw and the Gdansk University of Technology have demonstrated that when quantum information is transmitted, nature can be as whimsical as this crazy delivery man.

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Even an individual photon can travel along both arms of the interferometer at the same time. When it is unknown which path it is travelling along, we observe interference and the appearance of interference fringes. A strong signal is visible where the crests of light waves meet, and a weak signal is obtained at the meeting point of the troughs. If it is possible to determine which arm the photon travelled along, following leakage of information from the interferometer, the fringes disappear.

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Super-thin membranes clear the way for chip-sized pumps

The ability to shrink laboratory-scale processes to automated chip-sized systems would revolutionize biotechnology and medicine. For example, inexpensive and highly portable devices that process blood samples to detect biological agents such as anthrax are needed by the U.S. military and for homeland security efforts. One of the challenges of "lab-on-a-chip" technology is the need for miniaturized pumps to move solutions through micro-channels. Electroosmotic pumps (EOPs), devices in which fluids appear to magically move through porous media in the presence of an electric field, are ideal because they can be readily miniaturized. EOPs however, require bulky, external power sources, which defeats the concept of portability. But a super-thin silicon membrane developed at the University of Rochester could now make it possible to drastically shrink the power source, paving the way for diagnostic devices the size of a credit card.

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A microfluidic bioreactors consists of two chambers separated by a nanoporous silicon membrane. It allows for flow-based assays using minimal amounts of reagent. The ultra-thin silicon membrane provides an excellent mimic of biological barrier properties. NOTE: This image combines two exposures in order to capture the brighter and darker parts of the scene, which exceed the dynamic range of the camera sensor. The resulting composite is truer to what the eye actually sees.

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Scientists' new approach improves efficiency of solar cells

An international team of scientists, led by researchers from the Universities of York and St Andrews, has developed a new method to increase the efficiency of solar cells.

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A quasi-random structure to maximise performance of a thin film silicon solar cell.

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Earth from Space: Lands of change

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Lakes and mountains of western Uganda are captured in this Envisat radar image

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NASA's Great Observatories Begin Deepest Ever Probe of the Universe

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These (image above) are NASA Hubble Space Telescope natural-color images of four target galaxy clusters that are part of an ambitious new observing program called The Frontier Fields.

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ZEISS Microscopes used to create images for Art Exhibit at Midway Airport: Art of Science: Images from the Institute for Genomic Biology

An art exhibit at Chicago's Midway Airport features images created by using microscopy equipment by ZEISS. Researchers from the Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) Core Facilities, affiliated with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, used state-of-the-art microscopes for pioneering research to capture images that address significant problems facing humanity related to health, agriculture, energy and the environment.

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