Graphical abstract. Credit: Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B: Biology (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.jphotobiol.2022.112551 Researchers at Queen's University Belfast have developed a plastic film that can kill viruses that land on its surface with room light. The self-sterilizing film is the first of its kind—it is low cost to produce, can be readily scaled and could be [...]
Nanotechnology that accelerates the transition of stem cells into bone could advance regenerative medicine. A nanotechnology platform developed by KAUST scientists could lead to new treatments for degenerative bone diseases. The system takes advantage of tiny iron wires that bend in response to magnetic fields. Bone-forming stem cells grown on a mesh of these [...]
Are sprays the future of COVID-19 vaccines? That’s the hope of dozens of research groups and companies working on new kinds of inoculation. Rather than relying on injections, these use sprays or drops administered through the nose or mouth that aim to improve protection against the virus SARS-CoV-2. This week, an inhaled version of [...]
Is the coronavirus on its way out? You might think so. New, updated booster shots are being rolled out to better protect against the variants circulating now. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has dropped COVID-19 quarantine and distancing recommendations. And more people have thrown off their masks and returned to pre-pandemic [...]
Scientists have discovered two bacteria with great antibiotic potential in a river in Chile. A scientist works with a microscope in a lab on August 12, 2020, in Lima, Peru. Scientists recently discovered two bacteria with great antibiotic potential in a river in Chile.© Raul Sifuentes/Getty Images The breakthrough comes as the search for new [...]
The primary function of personal protection equipment (PPE), including facemasks and gloves, is to filter out nanoparticulate aerosols, which are present in the air. PPE is widely used in medical research, law enforcement, healthcare, and military applications. Conventional PPEs can only filter nanoparticles whose size is above 300 nm and fails to block harmful [...]
What goes on inside planets like Neptune and Uranus? To find out, an international team headed by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), the University of Rostock and France's École Polytechnique conducted a novel experiment. They fired a laser at a thin film of simple PET plastic and investigated what happened using intensive laser flashes. One [...]
Among men diagnosed with COVID-19, those with low testosterone levels are more likely to become seriously ill and end up in the hospital than men with normal levels of the hormone, according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Saint Louis University School of Medicine. The [...]
Although combining radiation therapy (RT) with immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) could activate an in situ vaccine effect, RT limits the tumor antigen presentation and cannot overcome suppressive mechanisms in the tumor microenvironment (TME), limiting the vaccine effect. An article published in the journal Nature Communications presented a solution to overcome the above challenges by developing PIC multifunctional nanoparticles [...]
A joint research team led by Prof. Wang Hui, Prof. Zhang Xin and Prof. Qian Junchao from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has proposed a new kind of near-infrared-triggered nanozyme based on iron oxide nanocrystals embedded in N-doped carbon nanosheets (IONCNs), which is promising for [...]
