Post Scientist

Neanderthals are the closest relatives to modern humans. Comparisons with them can therefore provide fascinating insights into what makes present-day humans unique, for example regarding the development of the brain. The neocortex, the largest part of the outer layer of the brain, is unique to mammals and crucial for many cognitive capacities. It expanded dramatically during human evolution in species ancestral to both Neanderthals and modern humans, resulting that both Neanderthals and modern humans having brains of similar sizes. However, almost nothing is known about how modern human and Neanderthal brains may have differed in terms of their development and function.  For more such news & interesting articles or how can it affect in your life subscribe to our   newsletter . Researchers from t...

Microrobotic agents can form swarms of targeted drug delivery for improved imaging analyses. In a new report now published in Science Advances , Junhui Law and a team of researchers in mechanical and industrial engineering, artificial intelligence and biomedical engineering at the University of Toronto and the Shanghai University, China, deviated from the typical process of drug therapy to facilitate swarm embolization. The process is a medical technique used to block blood vessels during treatment for thrombosis and arteriovenous malformations. Magnetic particle swarms offer more precise embolization and can maintain swarm integrity inside a targeted region under fluidic flow conditions. Based on experiments in microfluidic channels, ex vivo tissues and in vivo porcine kidneys, Law and the team validated the efficacy of the proposed strategy for selective embolization.  For more such news & interesting articles or how can it affect in your life subscribe to our ...

A water-activated disposable paper battery is presented in a proof-of-principle study in Scientific Reports . The authors suggest that it could be used to power a wide range of low-power, single-use disposable electronics—such as smart labels for tracking objects, environmental sensors and medical diagnostic devices—and minimize their environmental impact.  For more such news & interesting articles or how can it affect in your life subscribe to our   newsletter . The battery, devised by Gustav Nyström and colleagues, is made of at least one cell measuring one centimeter squared and consisting of three inks printed onto a rectangular strip of paper. Sodium chloride salt is dispersed throughout the strip of paper and one of its shorter ends has been dipped in wax. An ink containing graphite flakes, which acts as the positive end of the batte...

A method known as quantum key distribution has long held the promise of communication security unattainable in conventional cryptography. An international team of scientists has now demonstrated experimentally, for the first time, an approach to quantum key distribution that is based on high-quality quantum entanglement -- offering much broader security guarantees than previous schemes. The art of cryptography is to skillfully transform messages so that they become meaningless to everyone but the intended recipients. Modern cryptographic schemes, such as those underpinning digital commerce, prevent adversaries from illegitimately deciphering messages -- say, credit-card information -- by requiring them to perform mathematical operations that consume a prohibitively large amount of computational power. Starting from the 1980s, however, ingenious theoretical concepts have been introduced in which security does not depend on the eavesdropper's finite...

Scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory used neutron scattering to determine whether a specific material's atomic structure could host a novel state of matter called a spiral spin liquid. By tracking tiny magnetic moments known as "spins" on the honeycomb lattice of a layered iron trichloride magnet, the team found the first 2D system to host a spiral spin liquid. For more such news & interesting articles or how can it affect in your life subscribe to our   newsletter . The discovery provides a test bed for future studies of physics phenomena that may drive next-generation information technologies. These include fractons, or collective quantized vibrations that may prove promising in quantum computing, and skyrmions, or novel magnetic spin textures that could advance high-density data storage. "Materials hosting spiral spin liquids are particularly exciting due to their potential to be used to genera...

MIT scientists have created the first completely digitally manufactured plasma sensors for orbiting spacecraft. These plasma sensors, also known as retarding potential analyzers (RPAs), are used by satellites to determine the chemical composition and ion energy distribution of the atmosphere. The 3D-printed and laser-cut hardware performed as well as state-of-the-art semiconductor plasma sensors that are manufactured in a cleanroom, which makes them expensive and requires weeks of intricate fabrication. By contrast, the 3D-printed sensors can be produced for tens of dollars in a matter of days. Due to their low cost and speedy production, the sensors are ideal for CubeSats. These inexpensive, low-power, and lightweight satellites are often used for communication and environmental monitoring in Earth's upper atmosphere. The researchers developed RPAs using a glass-ceramic material that is more durable than traditional sensor materials like silicon...

Ultrasound imaging is a safe and noninvasive window into the body's workings, providing clinicians with live images of a patient's internal organs. To capture these images, trained technicians manipulate ultrasound wands and probes to direct sound waves into the body. These waves reflect back out to produce high-resolution images of a patient's heart, lungs, and other deep organs. Currently, ultrasound imaging requires bulky and specialized equipment available only in hospitals and doctor's offices. But a new design by MIT engineers might make the technology as wearable and accessible as buying Band-Aids at the pharmacy. In a paper appearing today in Science , the engineers present the design for a new ultrasound sticker -- a stamp-sized device that sticks to skin and can provide continuous ultrasound imaging of internal organs for 48 hours. The researchers applied the stickers to volunteers and showed the devices produced live, high-...

Constructing a tiny robot from DNA and using it to study cell processes invisible to the naked eye... You would be forgiven for thinking it is science fiction, but it is in fact the subject of serious research by scientists from Inserm, CNRS and Université de Montpellier at the Structural Biology Center in Montpellier[1]. This highly innovative "nano-robot" should enable closer study of the mechanical forces applied at microscopic levels, which are crucial for many biological and pathological processes. It is described in a new study published in Nature Communications . For more such news & interesting articles or how can it affect in your life subscribe to our   newsletter . Our cells are subject to mechanical forces exerted on a microscopic scale, triggering biological signals essential to many cell processes involved in the normal functioning of our body or in the development of diseases. For example, the feeling of touch is partly co...

A roadmap for the future direction of quantum simulation has been set out in a paper co-authored at the University of Strathclyde. Quantum computers are hugely powerful devices with a capacity for speed and calculation which is well beyond the reach of classical, or binary, computing. Instead of a binary system of zeroes and ones, it operates through superpositions, which may be zeroes, ones or both at the same time. The continuously-evolving development of quantum computing has reached the point of having an advantage over classical computers for an artificial problem. It could have future applications in a wide range of areas. One promising class of problems involves the simulation of quantum systems, with potential applications such as developing materials for batteries, industrial catalysis and nitrogen fixing. The paper, published in Nature , explores near- and medium-term possibilities for quantum simulation on analogue and digital platforms t...

The Advanced WAKEfield Experiment (AWAKE) is a large experiment carried out at CERN that investigates plasma wakefield acceleration. It is the first research effort in this field to use a relativistic proton bunch as a driver of plasma wakefields to accelerate witness electrons to high energies.  For more such news & interesting articles or how can it affect in your life subscribe to our   newsletter . The use of a proton bunch has numerous advantages for plasma acceleration experiments. Most notably, it allows researchers to maintain a large accelerating gradient over long distances, without having to split the accelerator into several different sections. The AWAKE collaboration, the group of researchers involved in the AWAKE experiment, includes more than 100 engineers and physicists from 23 different institutes worldwide. In a recent paper published in Physical Review Lett...

Four billion years ago, the Earth looked very different than it does today, devoid of life and covered by a vast ocean. Over the course of millions of years, in that primordial soup, life emerged. Researchers have long theorized how molecules came together to spark this transition. Now, scientists at Scripps Research have discovered a new set of chemical reactions that use cyanide, ammonia and carbon dioxide—all thought to be common on the early earth—to generate amino acids and nucleic acids, the building blocks of proteins and DNA.  For more such news & interesting articles or how can it affect in your life subscribe to our   newsletter . "We've come up with a new paradigm to explain this shift from prebiotic to biotic chemistry," says Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, Ph.D., an associate professor of chemistry at Scripps Research, and lead author of the new paper, published July 28, 2022 in the journal Nature Chemistry . "We think the kind of reactio...

As the amount of data stored in devices and shared over the internet continuously increases, computer scientists worldwide are trying to devise new approaches to secure communications and protect sensitive information. Some of the most well-established and valuable approaches are cryptographic techniques, which essentially encrypt (i.e., transform) data and texts exchanged between two or more parties, so that only senders and receivers can view it in its original form. Physical unclonable functions (PUFs), devices that exploit "random imperfections" unavoidably introduced during the manufacturing of devices to give physical entities unique "fingerprints" (i.e., trust anchors). In recent years, these devices have proved to be particularly valuable for creating cryptographic keys, which are...

Yet-to-be discovered axions and axion-like particles may be the key to explaining some of the deepest puzzles of our universe, such as dark matter and charge-parity violation in strong interactions. Several recent theories have predicted that the masses of axions probably lie within the well-motivated "axion window" (0.01 meV–1 meV). However, existing laboratory searches and astrophysical observation mostly search for the axions outside the axion window.  For more such news & interesting articles or how can it affect in your life subscribe to our   newsletter . The research team led by Prof. Peng Xinhua from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, collaborating with Prof. Dmitry Budker from Helmholtz Institution in Mainz, used a recently developed spin-based amplifier to constrain hypothetical axions within the axion window, ...