365 articles from WEDNESDAY 18.11.2020

Nasa says landing astronauts on moon by 2024 is unlikely

Costs and overruns on key technology have hit schedule of Artemis programme, says report Nasa has said it will be “hard-pressed to land astronauts on the moon by the end of 2024”. The assessment by the agency’s office of inspector general comes in a report dated 12 November and titled 2020 Report on Nasa’s Top Management and Performance Challenges”.Originally, Nasa had been working...

Chromosomes look different than you think

In high school textbooks, human chromosomes are pictured as wonky Xs like two hotdogs jammed together. But those images are far from accurate. "For 90 percent of the time," said Jun-Han Su, "chromosomes don't exist like that."

Study finds opposite-gender mentorships may be more beneficial to female researchers

A new study by researchers at NYU Abu Dhabi examined data representing thousands of mentor-protégé relationships and found that mentorship quality predicted the scientific impact of the papers written by protégés—without their mentors—after their mentorship. Significantly, the researchers also found that increasing the proportion of female mentors was associated not only with a reduction...

Revolutionary CRISPR-based genome editing system treatment destroys cancer cells

Researchers have demonstrated that the CRISPR/Cas9 system is very effective in treating metastatic cancers, a significant step on the way to finding a cure for cancer. The researchers developed a novel lipid nanoparticle-based delivery system that specifically targets cancer cells and destroys them by genetic manipulation. The system, called CRISPR-LNPs, carries a genetic messenger (messenger...

Surprises in 'active' aging

Aging is a process that affects not only living beings. Many materials, like plastics and glasses, also age -- ie they change slowly as their particles try to pack better. Biological materials, such as living tissue, show similar behavior to glasses except that the particles are actual cells with their own propulsion. Researchers used computer simulations to explore the aging behavior of these...

Physicists use computer simulation to investigate aging in living glassy systems

Aging is a process that affects not only living beings. Many materials, like plastics and glasses, also age—i.e. they change slowly over time as their particles try to pack better—and there are already computer models to describe this. Biological materials, such as living tissue, can show similar behavior to glasses except that the particles are actual cells or bacteria which have their own...

Oysters produce 3-D structures organised by physical processes

Scientists from the University of Granada (UGR) have discovered that oysters are capable of producing three-dimensional structures organized by physical (colloidal) processes—the result of which resembles a solid foam—by using a unique technique, similar to that of a 3-D printer. This technique enables them to develop their shell structures sheet-by-sheet, which resolves the problem of limited...

Study finds sexual lineage plays key role in transgenerational plasticity

A new pair of papers published in the Journal of Animal Ecology has shown that sexual lineage matters for how offspring receive adaptations from parents in stickleback fish. Researchers in the Bell lab studied how parents who were exposed to predators passed the behavioral information to their offspring in different ways based on sex.

Algae breathe life into 3D engineered tissues

3D bioprinted algae can be harnessed as a sustainable source of oxygen for human cells in engineered vascularized tissues, researchers report. They embedded the bioprinted photosynthetic algae, along with human liver-derived cells, in a 3D hydrogel matrix to create honeycomb-shaped tissues with lobules, similar to the human liver.

Novel magnetic spray transforms objects into millirobots for biomedical applications

An easy way to make millirobots by coating objects with a glue-like magnetic spray has been developed. Driven by the magnetic field, the coated objects can crawl, walk, or roll on different surfaces. As the magnetic coating is biocompatible and can be disintegrated into powders when needed, this technology demonstrates the potential for biomedical applications, including catheter navigation and...