Source of Human Heartbeat Revealed in 3D

Scan of a heart. Credit: The University of Manchester

Scan of a heart.
Credit: The University of Manchester

Pioneering study is set to help surgeons repair hearts without damaging precious tissue. A team of scientists from Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), The University of Manchester, Aarhus University and Newcastle University, have developed a way of producing 3D data to show the cardiac conduction system in unprecedented detail.

The new data in this study gives them a much more accurate framework than previously available for computer models of the heartbeat and should improve our ability to make sense of troublesome heart rhythms like atrial fibrillation that affects 1.4 million people in the UK. The data reveals exactly where the cardiac conduction system is in a normal heart...

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Lightweight Catalyst for Artificial Photosynthesis

Lightweight Catalyst for Artificial Photosynthesis - Carbonitride aerogels mediate the photocatalytic conversion of water

Carbon Nitride Aerogels for the Photoredox Conversion of Water. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2017; DOI: 10.1002/anie.201705926 © Wiley-VCH

Carbonitride aerogels mediate the photocatalytic conversion of water. Nanochemistry meets macrostructures: Chinese scientists report the synthesis of a macroscopic aerogel from carbonitride nanomaterials which is an excellent catalyst for the water-splitting reaction under visible-light irradiation. The study published in the journal Angewandte Chemie adds new opportunities to the material properties of melamine-derived carbonitrides.

Melamine can be polymerized with formaldehyde to give a highly durable and light resin, but it can also condensed to form nanostructures of carbonitride materials...

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First observation of the hyperfine splitting in antihydrogen

Antimatter research laboratory. Credit: Professor Niels Madsern

Antimatter research laboratory. Credit: Professor Niels Madsern

 
Swansea University scientists at CERN have again made a landmark finding, taking them one step closer to answering the question of why matter exists and illuminating the mysteries of the Big Bang and the birth of the Universe. The physicists from the University’s College of Science, working with an international collaborative team at CERN, describe the first observation of spectral line shapes in antihydrogen, the antimatter equivalent of hydrogen.
 
Professor Mike Charlton said: “The existence of antimatter is well established in physics, and it is buried deep in the heart of some of the most successful theories ever developed...
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Twilight Observations Reveal Huge Storm on Neptune

Images of Neptune taken during twilight observing revealed an extremely large bright storm system near Neptune's equator (labeled 'cloud complex' in the upper figure), a region where astronomers have never seen a bright cloud. The center of the storm complex is ~9,000 km across, about 3/4 the size of Earth, or 1/3 of Neptune's radius. The storm brightened considerably between June 26 and July 2, as noted in the logarithmic scale of the images taken on July 2. Credit: N. Molter/I. De Pater, UC Berkeley & C. Alvarez, W. M. Keck Observatory

Images of Neptune taken during twilight observing revealed an extremely large bright storm system near Neptune’s equator (labeled ‘cloud complex’ in the upper figure), a region where astronomers have never seen a bright cloud. The center of the storm complex is ~9,000 km across, about 3/4 the size of Earth, or 1/3 of Neptune’s radius. The storm brightened considerably between June 26 and July 2, as noted in the logarithmic scale of the images taken on July 2.
Credit: N. Molter/I. De Pater, UC Berkeley & C. Alvarez, W. M. Keck Observatory

Striking images of a storm system nearly the size of Earth have astronomers doing a double-take after pinpointing its location near Neptune’s equator, a region where no bright cloud has been seen before...

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