Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

In comparison to other organs, the human brain has the highest energy requirements. Credit: Image courtesy of University of Zurich

They show for the 1st time in the intact mouse brain evidence for an exchange of lactate between different brain cells. With this study they were able to confirm a 20-year old hypothesis. In comparison to other organs, the human brain has the highest energy requirements. A hypothesis from the 1990’s postulates, that a well-orchestrated collaboration between astrocytes and neurons, is the basis of brain energy metabolism.

Astrocytes produce lactate, which flows to neurons to cover their high energy needs. Due to a lack of experimental techniques, it remained unclear whether an exchange of lactate existed between astrocytes and neurons...

An artist’s representation of the nanoparticle removal chip developed by researchers in Professor Michael Heller’s lab at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. An oscillating electric field (purple arcs) separates drug-delivery nanoparticles (yellow spheres) from blood (red spheres) and pulls them towards rings surrounding the chip’s electrodes. The image is featured as the inside cover of the Oct. 14 issue of the journal Small. Credit: Stuart Ibsen and Steven Ibsen.

A new technology that uses an oscillating electric field to easily and quickly isolate drug-delivery nanoparticles from blood has been developed by a team of engineers...

Abiogenesis: blue-green algae in a hot spring, Yellowstone National Park

Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere emerged in whiffs from a kind of blue-green algae in shallow oceans around 2.5 billion years ago, according to new research from Canadian and US scientists. These whiffs of oxygen likely happened in the following 100 million years, changing the levels of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere until enough accumulated to create a permanently oxygenated atmosphere around 2.4 billion years ago – a transition widely known as the Great Oxidation Event.

The team presents new isotopic data showing that a burst of oxygen production by photosynthetic cyanobacteria temporarily increased oxygen concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere...

QA_Cn incorporated in a composite resin system.

Material scientist Andreas Hermann, orthodontist Yijin Ren et al have made a 3D printing substrate which kills bacteria on contact. The first applications will be in dentistry, but other implants may follow.

‘The director of Kolff, who is head of the Orthodontics Department, asked me if I could come up with an antimicrobial dental glue’, Herrmann explains. Kids with braces have small metal blocks glued to their teeth, and these are an ideal breeding ground for the microbes that cause tooth decay. ‘So when I saw all sorts of 3D printed objects for use in dentistry in her office, I said: why not incorporate the antimicrobials in 3D prints?’ The results were published after 2.5 years of work.

In dentistry, it is standard practice to work with ma...