Dr. Anwesha Sanyal holds up two vials with HIV-infected cells that she is preparing for Pitt Public Health’s TZA test. The yellow indicates more stimulated HIV infected cells. Credit: Image courtesy of University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences

Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health announced in Nature Medicine that they’ve created a test sensitive enough to detect “hidden” HIV, and yet is faster, less labor-intensive and less expensive than the current “gold standard” test. The new Pitt test also revealed that the amount of virus lurking dormant in people who appear to be nearly cured of HIV is about 70-fold larger than previous estimates.

HIV spreads by infecting CD4+ T cells that plays a major role in protecting the body from infection...

Sustained firing patterns occur selectively in PRH cells

An internationtal team has identified a new type of neuron which might play a vital role in humans’ ability to navigate their environments. The discovery is an important step towards understanding how the brain codes navigation behaviour at larger scales and could potentially open up new treatment strategies for people with impaired topographical orientation like Alzheimer’s patients.

Research shows that the precise mechanism for navigation includes hippocampal place cells, which increase or decrease in electrical activity depending on one’s location. However, when making their daily commute, people don’t need very detailed representations of which houses they pass in which order...

Exploiting biased reptation for continuous flow preparative DNA fractionation in a versatile microfluidic platform. Microsystems & Nanoengineering, 2017; 3: 17001 DOI: 10.1038/micronano.2017.1

University of Twente researchers in The Netherlands developed a glass microchip for ultrafast separation and purification of DNA fragments. The chip, moreover, is easy to produce and cheap. The new chip is capable of fractionating DNA fragments within just a few minutes, while conventional approaches take hours. The chip does this in high resolution and also purifies the fragments; it removes the other salts in the DNA sample. Tiny amounts of DNA, like in medical diagnostics or in forensics, will be sufficient...

Electron microscopy images of perovskite quantum dots embedded in the protective alumina matrix, and a photograph of the same film stable in water. Credit: © R. Buonsanti/EPFL

EPFL scientists have built a new type of inorganic nanocomposite that makes perovskite quantum dot exceptionally stable against air exposure, sunlight, heat, and water. Quantum dots are nanometer-size, semiconducting materials whose tiny size gives them unique optical properties. Much effort has been put in building quantum dots from perovskites, which already show much promise for solar panels, LEDs and laser technologies.

The new approach to stabilize the perovskite quantum dots was developed in the lab of Raffaella Buonsanti at EPFL Valais Wallis...