Tech

Pure, bright, quantum colours. Argonne National Laboratory (https://www.flickr.com/photos/argonne/5218967216)

By Laurence Murphy, University of Salford

A team of researchers have developed a new levitation device that can hover a tiny object with more control than any instrument that has come before. It can levitate polystyrene particles by reflecting sound waves from a source above off a concave reflector below. Changing the orientation of the reflector allow the hovering particle to be moved around.

A new study reports on a hypothetical methodology to solve "the counting problem," which is key to understanding how proteins group and perform their vital functions within the human body.

Researchers have developed a safe and effective skin patch to deliver a drug that enhances the healing of diabetes-related ulcers. The patch, which they tested in mice, may also serve as a way to prevent ulcer formation.

With drug-resistant bacteria on the rise, even common infections that were easily controlled for decades -- such as pneumonia or urinary tract infections -- are proving trickier to treat with standard antibiotics.

New drugs are desperately needed, but so are ways to maximize the effective lifespan of these drugs.

To accomplish that, Duke University researchers used software they developed to predict a constantly-evolving infectious bacterium's countermoves to one of these new drugs ahead of time, before the drug is even tested on patients.

A clinical trial that combined stereotactic body radiation therapy with a specific chemotherapy regimen more than doubled survival rates for certain stage 4 lung cancer patients, UT Southwestern Medical Center cancer researchers report.

Women with atypical hyperplasia of the breast have a higher risk of developing breast cancer than previously thought, a study has found.

Researchers have identified a new strategy for treating an inherited form of dementia after attempting to turn stem cells derived from patients into the neurons most affected by the disease. In patient-derived stem cells carrying a mutation predisposing them to frontotemporal dementia, which accounts for about half of dementia cases before the age of 60, the scientists found a target-able defect that prevents normal neurodevelopment. These stem cells partially return to normal when the defect is corrected.

In the global nuclear power market, China has the most extensive plans for nuclear development.

Lindsey Vonn. Derrick Rose. Tom Brady and Mickey Mantle are all known in different sports but they shared a common problem: They have all fallen victim to the dreaded pop of the knee.

Looking for life on other planets is not straightforward. It relies on chemical detection which might be limited or even completely irrelevant to alien biology. A new study says motion is the way to go because motion is a trait of all life, and can be used to identify microorganisms without any need of chemical foreknowledge.

In the race to design a universal quantum computer, a special kind of diamond defect called a nitrogen vacancy (NV) center could play a big role. Nitrogen vacancy centers consist of a nitrogen atom and a vacant site that together replace two adjacent carbon atoms in diamond crystal. The defects can record or store quantum information and transmit it in the form of light, but the weak signal is hard to identify, extract and transmit unless it is intensified.

Scientists have created primordial germ cells - cells that will go on to become egg and sperm - using human embryonic stem cells. Although this had already been done using rodent stem cells, the study, published today in the journal Cell, is the first time this has been achieved efficiently using human stem cells.

Millions of Twitter users are constantly reporting where they are and what they are doing. With this information, two Spanish computer science experts suggest using geolocalized tweets for urban planning and land use. They have already done it in Manhattan, Madrid and London and have been able to identify, for example, nightlife areas of these large cities.

Your next pair of yoga pants could be made out of corn or, more precisely, from dextrose derived from corn, part of a 20 year effort toward consumer goods that are being produced from plants rather than petroleum-based materials. But a complete transition to a biobased economy won't be easy, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN).