Category Biology/Biotechnology

Scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, have designed a device that harvests sunlight to generate clean hydrogen from seawater and simultaneously degrades hydrazine, a highly toxic contaminant from industrial wastewater.

Inspired by leaves, the device directly captures sunlight and converts it into electricity to drive the reaction without the need for external power sources. The innovation is published in Nature Communications.

Two-in-one green solution
To produce green hydrogen from water, an electric current is passed through water between two electrodes, splitting the water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen—a process known as electrolysis.

In electrolysis, ...

When it comes to priorities in life, oxygen tops the list. Humans can go weeks without food and days without water. Take away the ability to breathe, however, and the clock starts ticking within minutes as the brain begins shutting down. But the life-giving gas does even more heavy lifting than you might think.

The immune system, which battles cancer with the help of specialized fighters, such as T cells, relies on oxygen to mount its attack.

Now, Bouvé College of Health Sciences professor and director of the pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences graduate program Stephen Hatfield and his colleagues are ...

Caffeine may help cells age more slowly by switching on a powerful energy and stress-response system. Scientists found that caffeine activates an ancient cellular energy system involved in stress resistance, DNA repair, and growth. The discovery could help explain caffeine’s links to healthier aging and may point toward new ways to target the same pathway.

Your morning coffee may be doing more than helping you wake up.

Research from Queen Mary University of London suggests that caffeine can activate an ancient cellular energy system involved in growth, stress resistance, and DNA repair...

A new UCLA study has found a connection between how quickly the brain ages and the bacteria and chemical byproducts found in the gut, offering a clue to what drives brain aging long before symptoms appear.

Researchers have long used brain scans to estimate a person’s “brain age,” a measure that can differ from someone’s actual age in years. When a brain looks older than expected on a scan, prior research has linked it to poorer memory, thinking skills and mood. However, most of these studies involved older adults or people with existing brain diseases. Whether this gap between brain age and chronological age means anything in younger, generally healthy people has been unclear.

In a new study published in the journal eBioMedicine, UCLA Health rese...