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A facile synthesis of two types of pyrrole-fused azacoronene with planar and double-concave π-structures was achieved.The two electron-rich azacoronenes were found to interact with electron-deficient π-electron compounds depending on their three-dimensional structures.Azacoronene with a curved structure was found to be less aromatic than those with a planar one based on macrocyclic π-conjugation.

People with type 2 diabetes tend to have poorer muscle function than others. Now a research team at Lund University in Sweden has discovered that in type 2 diabetes, a specific gene is of great importance for the ability of muscle stem cells to create new mature muscle cells. The findings are published in Nature Communications.

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati say a regulatory protein found in skeletal muscle fiber may play an important role in the body's fight or flight response when encountering stressful situations.

The uncontrolled growth and division of cells can lead to the creation of tumours. The signalling molecule SHP2 is believed to play a crucial role in this process. But the question of how SHP2 becomes activated has never been fully resolved. Understanding the activation mechanism is, however, of fundamental importance for the development of anti-cancer drugs. Massimiliano Anselmi and Jochen Hub have recently managed to solve the twenty-year-old puzzle of SHP2 activation.

New research, led by Durham University and published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, investigates the impacts of potential climate change scenarios on the network of Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) across the Caribbean, and Central and South America.

An biologist from the University of Bonn brought a new octopus species to light from depths of more than 4,000 meters in the North Pacific Ocean. Researchers in Bonn have now published the species description and named the animal "Emperor dumbo" (Grimpoteuthis imperator). Just as unusual as the organism is the researchers' approach: in order to describe the new species, they did not dissect the rare creature, but instead used non-destructive imaging techniques.

Researchers from the Faraday Institution's SOLBAT project have made a significant step in understanding how and why solid-state batteries (SSBs) fail. A paper, published in Nature Materials on 22 April, provides answers to one important piece of the scientific puzzle.

Army and Arizona State University researchers identified a set of approaches to help scientists assess how well autonomous systems and humans communicate.

Newly published papers with data from polls of teens and young adults about COVID prevention show that messaging around their role in protecting others may resonate best in new efforts to promote prevention and vaccination.

In celebration of the 31st anniversary of the launching of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers aimed the renowned observatory at a brilliant "celebrity star," one of the brightest stars seen in our galaxy, surrounded by a glowing halo of gas and dust.

Using data from 164 wild primate populations, the global survey examines the mental abilities that primates, including ourselves, use to know where and when to travel in the most efficient way.

Cardiovascular disease, the most common cause of death, is the result of oxygen deprivation as blood perfusion to affected tissue is prevented. To halt the development of the disease and to promote healing, re-establishment of blood flow is crucial. Researchers at Uppsala University have now discovered that one of the most common immune cells in the human body, macrophages, play an important role in re-establishing and controlling blood flow, something that can be used to develop new drugs.

In the brain, more than a hundred molecular substances act as transmitters that control communication pathways between nerve cells via thousands of different receptor types. In a review article, an international research team discusses how the activation of certain nerve cell receptors affects neuronal networks in the brain. The authors from Bochum, Barcelona and Oxford present concepts to quantify receptor-specific modulations of brain states. They have also developed a computer model that can predict the impact of individual receptor types on brain activity.

Scientists from the Theory Department of the Fritz-Haber Institute in Berlin and Technical University of Munich use machine learning to discover suitable molecular materials. To deal with the myriad of possibilities for candidate molecules, the machine decides for itself which data it needs.

A new, freely available platform helps non-experts use artificial intelligence to analyse microscopy images. The platform has been developed at Åbo Akademi University in Finland and Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Portugal, and will be of big help in research and diagnostics using modern day microscopes.

Networks offer a powerful way to visualize and analyze complex systems. However, many visualizations are limited. Protein interactions in the human body constitute such a complex system that can hardly be visualized. Scientists at CeMM and Max Perutz Labs developed an immersive virtual reality (VR) platform that solves this problem. With the help of VR visualization of protein interactions, it will be possible in the future to better recognize correlations and identify those genetic aberrations that are responsible for rare diseases.

A new study conducted jointly by the University of Liège (Belgium) and the École normale supérieure - PSL (France) shows that heart brain interactions, measured using electroencephalography (EEG), provide a novel diagnostic method for patients with disorders of consciousness. This study is published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Researchers realized efficient frequency conversion in microresonators via a degenerate sum-frequency process, and achieved cross-band frequency conversion and amplification of converted signal through observing the cascaded nonlinear optical effects inside the microresonator.

Dr. Sabrina Coninx from Ruhr-Universität Bochum and Dr. Peter Stilwell from McGill University, Canada, have investigated how philosophical approaches can be used to think in new ways about pain and its management. The researchers advocate not merely reducing chronic pain management to searching and treating underlying physical changes but instead adopting an approach that focuses on the person as a whole. Their work was published online in the journal "Synthese" on 15 April 2021.

Strawberry geranium (Saxifraga stolonifera) has been used in Japan as a herbal medicine to treat wounds and swelling, and continues to be an ingredient in food and cosmetics. Pharmacological studies have shown that extracts of strawberry geranium have antioxidant and antitumor activities. However, the anti-inflammatory effect of strawberry geranium on the skin had not been well characterized.