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Challenges and Opportunities of Nanomedicines in Clinical Translation https://doi.org/10.15212/bioi-2021-0016Announcing a new article publication for BIO Integration journal. In this article the authors Chunxiong Zheng, Mingqiang Li and Jianxun Ding from Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China and Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Changchun, China discuss the challenges and opportunities of nanomedicines in clinical translation.

There are spiders that eat snakes. Observations of snake-eating spiders have been reported around the world. Two researchers from Basel and the US consolidated and analyzed over 300 reports of this unusual predation strategy.

The prognosis and effective therapies differ based on the type of lung cancer. While it previously took several days to precisely determine the underlying mutation, a research team at the Centre for Protein Diagnostics (PRODI) at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) has been able to reliably perform this determination in just one step using a combination of quantum cascade laser-based infrared microscopy and artificial intelligence.

Want to have a happy relationship? Make sure both partners feel they can decide on issues that are important to them. Objective power measured by income, for example, doesn't seem to play a big role, according to a new study in the "Journal of Social and Personal relationships" by the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the University of Bamberg. Instead, how lovers perceive power dynamics in their relationship is most important for relationship satisfaction.

Metabolic activators were found to reduce recovery time by as many as 3.5 days in patients with mild-to-moderate Covid-19, according to a study published today in Advanced Science.

Blood stem cells make brain tumors more aggressiveFor the first time, scientists from the German Cancer Consortium (DKTK) partner site in Essen/Düsseldorf have discovered stem cells of the hematopoietic system in glioblastomas, the most aggressive form of brain tumor. These hematopoietic stem cells promote division of the cancer cells and at the same time suppress the immune response against the tumor. This surprising discovery might open up new possibilities for developing more effective immunotherapies against these malignant brain tumors.

- A tool developed by the Structural Bioinformatics and Network Biology lab at IRB Barcelona predicts the biological activity of chemical compounds, key information to evaluate their therapeutic potential.- Using artificial neural networks, scientists have inferred experimental data for a million compounds and have developed a package of programs to make estimates for any type of molecule.- The work has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) have designed an eco-friendly protocol for synthesizing gold nanoparticles with optimized morphology for near-infrared light absorption using a biomolecule called B3 peptide. In their paper, they report the synthesis of triangular and circular gold nanoplates and their effectiveness in killing cancer cells by converting the absorbed light into heat, providing useful insights for the development of non-invasive cancer therapy.

An international research team led by HKUST has developed a simple but robust blood test from Chinese patient data for early detection and screening of Alzheimer's disease (AD) for the first time, with an accuracy level of over 96%.

In a new scientific investigation headed by the German Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW), water from African and Mongolian waterholes as well as bloodmeals from Southeast Asian leeches were assessed for the ability to retrieve mammalian viruses without the need to find and catch the mammals. The scientists analysed the samples using high throughput sequencing to identify known viruses as well as viruses new to science.

A naturally occurring peptide in sunflower seeds was synthetically optimised and has now been identified as a potential drug for treating abdominal pain or inflammation (in the gastrointestinal tract, abdominal area and/or internal organs).

An international team of researchers has demonstrated a new concept for the generation of intense extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) radiation by high-harmonic generation (HHG). Its advantage lies in the fact that its footprint is much smaller than currently existing intense XUV lasers. The new scheme is straightforward and could be implemented in many laboratories worldwide, which may boost the research field of ultrafast XUV science. The detailed experimental and theoretical results have been published in Optica.

Neurons in the hippocampus fire during specific moments in time, according to research recently published in JNeurosci. The cells may contribute to memory by encoding information about the time and order of events.

An Australian-Chinese collaboration achieves record-high electron doping in a layered ferromagnet, causing magnetic phase transition--with significant promise for future electronics. Control of magnetism by electric voltage is vital for developing future, low-energy high-speed nano-electronic and spintronic devices, such as spin-orbit torque devices and spin field-effect transistors.

A three-dimensional atlas of the bumblebee brain is now available. It will allow to even better research how nerve cells are interconnected and how they process information.

Development of a new APEX reaction means that large numbers of nanographenes can be easily synthesized using a commercially available hydrocarbon as a template.

Osaka University researchers study the use of nanoparticles to induce crystallization of supercooled aqueous solutions to clathrate hydrates. On the basis of scanning electron microscopy images, they discovered that silver nanoparticles are much more effective compared with palladium or gold. This research may open the way for new latent heat energy storage materials via enhanced supercooling control.

New research using machine learning on images of everyday items is improving the accuracy and speed of detecting respiratory diseases, reducing the need for specialist medical expertise.Edith Cowan University (ECU) researchers trained algorithms on a database of more than 1 million commonplace images and transferred this knowledge to identify characteristics of medical conditions which can be diagnosed with an x-ray.

New type of multifunctional wound dressings feature glowing nanosensors to track and monitor for infection. Harnessing the antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory power of magnesium hydroxide, the smart dressings can also fight bacteria and reduce inflammation to help promote healing.

Slow earthquakes are long-period earthquakes that are not so dangerous alone, but are able to trigger more destructive earthquakes. Their origins lie in tectonic plate boundaries where one plate subsides below another. Though the causal mechanism is already known, there has been a lack of data to accurately model the life cycle of slow earthquakes. For the first time, researchers use deep-sea boreholes to gauge pressures far below the seafloor.