Nanomedicine for Treating Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Schematic summary of the overall flow of the study, showing GlyNPs(BR) library synthesis and characterizations of the constructed GlyNP(BR) library.
Schematic summary of the overall flow of the study, showing GlyNPs(BR) library synthesis and characterizations of the constructed GlyNP(BR) library. 

Anti-inflammatory nanoparticles mimic glycocalyx. Chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, is on the rise worldwide. The benefits of current medications are limited by problematic side effects. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, a South Korean research team has now introduced a new method of treatment. It is based on nanoparticles that mimic a special carbohydrate layer (glycocalyx) located on inflamed bowel cells, and which trigger anti-inflammatory effects in the diseased sites in the intestine.

Stomach cramps and severe diarrhea, often accompanied by significant weight loss, are some o...

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Giant Swirling Waves at Edge of Jupiter’s Magnetosphere

Graph of KHI at Jupiter showing swirling waves
UCAR/Zhang, et.al. An SwRI-led team identified intermittent evidence of Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, giant swirling waves, at the boundary between Jupiter’s magnetosphere and the solar wind that fills interplanetary space, modeled here by University Corporation for Atmospheric Research scientists in a 2017 GRL paper.

Waves produced by Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities transfer energy in the solar system. A team led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) has found that NASA’s Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter frequently encounters giant swirling waves at the boundary between the solar wind and Jupiter’s magnetosphere...

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Researchers introduce Transparent Optical Imager with Near-Infrared Sensitivity and Touchless Interface

A transparent optical imager with near-infrared sensitivity and a touchless interface
a, Schematic of a large-area, 16 × 16 visually transparent NIR-sensitive OPD array (imager) that is placed in front of a laptop display. b, Schematic of the touchless user interface demo using NIR-emitting penlight. c, Photograph of the touchless user interface demo using NIR-emitting penlight. d, Schematic of a large-area, 16 × 16 visually transparent NIR-sensitive OPD array (imager) with integrated NIR LEDs that is placed in front of a laptop display. e, Schematic of the touchless user interface demo using gesture recognition of reflected NIR light. f, Photograph of the touchless user interface demo using gesture recognition of reflected NIR light. Credit: Nature Electronics (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41928-023-00970-8

Most existing devices are operated via the sense of touch,...

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Hubble views a Galactic Monster

A cluster of elliptical galaxies, visible as a dense crowd of oval shapes, each glowing orange around a bright core. Various other galaxies are dotted all around, a few being small spirals. A bright star with four long spikes stands out at the right.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a monster in the making in this observation of the exceptional galaxy cluster eMACS J1353.7+4329, which lies about eight billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici. This collection of at least two galaxy clusters is in the process of merging together to create a cosmic monster, a single gargantuan cluster acting as a gravitational lens.

Gravitational lensing is a dramatic example of Einstein’s general theory of relativity in action. A celestial body such as a galaxy cluster is sufficiently massive to distort spacetime, which causes the path of light around the object to be visibly bent as if by a vast lens...

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