A study at Goethe University Frankfurt shows: In intelligent persons, some brain regions interact more closely, while others de-couple themselves. Differences in intelligence have so far mostly been attributed to differences in specific brain regions. However, are smart people’s brains also wired differently to those of less intelligent persons? A new study published by researchers from Goethe University Frankfurt (Germany) supports this assumption. In intelligent persons, certain brain regions are more strongly involved in the flow of information between brain regions, while other brain regions are less engaged. Understanding the foundations of human thought is fascinating for scientists and laypersons alike. Differences in cognitive abilities – and the resulting differences for example in academic success and professional careers – are attributed to a considerable degree to individual differences in intelligence. A study just published in “Scientific Reports” shows that these differences go hand in hand with differences in the patterns of integration among functional modules of the brain. Kirsten Hilger, Christian Fiebach and Ulrike Basten from the Department of Psychology at Goethe University Frankfurt combined functional MRI brain scans from over 300 persons with modern graph theoretical network analysis methods to investigate the neurobiological basis of human intelligence.

Ricercatori di Nano-Cnr e dell'Università di Regensburg hanno elaborato un interruttore ultra veloce per le onde elettroniche, che potrebbe consentire di accelerare enormemente i futuri dispositivi elettronici, aprendo al nuovo campo della plasmonica. Lo studio pubblicato su Nature Nanotechnology

La lucentezza tipica dei metalli è dovuta agli elettroni che si muovono liberamente all'interno del materiale, riflettendo la luce. Illuminando opportunamente il metallo si possono generare delle ‘onde’ sulla superficie di questo ‘mare’ di elettroni, che vengono dette plasmoni di superficie. Quando la luce è concentrata su un punto di pochi nanometri (un nanometro è un milionesimo di millimetro, circa dieci volte il diametro di un atomo), essa genera onde in miniatura che si propagano sulla superficie del materiale in modo circolare. La plasmonica intende sfruttare queste onde per realizzare dispositivi elettronici compatti e ultraveloci: finora tuttavia non si era trovato un modo per accendere e spegnere tali onde rapidamente. Per la prima volta, ricercatori dell'Istituto nanoscienze del Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche (Nano-Cnr) e della Scuola Normale Superiore, in collaborazione con l'Università di Regensburg, hanno dimostrato che è possibile accendere e spegnere con velocità elevatissima onde di elettroni. Un risultato che potrebbe portare a interruttori con velocità di commutazione enormemente maggiori rispetto a quelle dei più avanzati transistor attuali e quindi alla possibilità di costruire dispositivi elettronici ultraveloci. Lo studio è pubblicato su Nature nanotechnology.

Mercury is one of the top 10 chemical concerns for public health according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In more than half of Swedish lakes the mercury levels are so high that eating the fish is a threat to the health of people and wildlife. To make matters worse, the problem seems to have no solution in sight. But new research gives hope: the mercury problem could very well be blowing away in the wind. “Our research shows that Swedish freshwater fish might be on their way to becoming safe to eat in decades with current mercury pollution control measures, rather than in centuries as was previously believed”, says Kevin Bishop, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), one of the researchers in the Swedish-Chinese-Swiss team behind the study. After almost ten years of developing a sensitive technique to measure the movements of mercury gas between the atmosphere and landscape, the research group has published the first annual mass balance of mercury inputs and outputs for a peatland. While it is a major technical accomplishment just to have measured whether mercury gas is going into or out of the peatland 10 times a second for a year, the result of the mass balance is what is really remarkable.

immagine al microscopio ottico Dark –field (100X) di motivi complessi ottenuti attraverso la tecnica di dewetting. Ogni motivo si estende per circa 5 micron.

Un recente studio effettuato da ricercatori dell’Ifn-Cnr in collaborazione con le università di Marsiglia e Dresda ha rivelato come la formazione di goccioline sulla superficie di alcuni materiali a seguito di un riscaldamento possa essere utilizzata per sviluppare tecniche litografiche su larga scala a basso costo. La ricerca, che apre nuove prospettive nel campo della nanoelettonica, è pubblicata su Science Advances

“L’opportunità di creare delle particelle di silicio di piccola taglia con controllo di forma e densità attraverso un processo semplice apre la possibilità di implementare meta-superfici dielettriche, cioè superfici che possono essere sedi di campi elettromagnetici, in maniera semplice, economica e su larga scala”. A parlare è Monica Bollani, ricercatrice presso l’Istituto di fotonica e nanotecnologie del Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche (Ifn-Cnr) di Milano, che insieme al suo gruppo di ricerca ha scoperto, con uno studio pubblicato sulla rivista Science Advances, come manipolare la riflettività del silicio semplicemente variandone la temperatura. “Molti materiali che compongono dispositivi elettronici sono strutturalmente composti da sottili strati posti l’uno sopra l’altro a formare un insieme che a occhio nudo appare omogeneo. Quando vengono scaldati, questi materiali hanno la tendenza a rompersi in piccole goccioline, di dimensione variabile e posizione casuale”, prosegue Bollani. “Fino ad ora questo effetto era stato considerato negativo per la costruzione di dispositivi elettronici e i contatti elettrici al loro interno, ma il nostro studio è partito da questo 'difetto' per arrivare a una nuova scoperta”.

Grande successo per l’Educational Day che apre la manifestazione:

saranno 20mila gli studenti in visita alla Fiera di Roma

Ancora un grande successo di adesioni per l’Educational Day che venerdì 1 dicembre aprirà ufficialmente la quinta edizione di “Maker Faire Rome – The European Edition 4.0”. Sono, infatti, oltre 20mila gli studenti provenienti da tutta Italia che si sono già registrati e che avranno la possibilità di visitare, in anteprima, la più grande manifestazione europea dedicata all’innovazione. Scuole primarie, medie, superiori e centri di formazione professionale entreranno, per prime - dalle 9 alle 13 - negli spazi espositivi della Fiera di Roma: un’invasione pacifica di ragazze e ragazzi, accompagnati da oltre 1.500 professori, che scopriranno così le centinaia di progetti innovativi provenienti da tutto il mondo, con alcune di queste invenzioni nate sui banchi di scuola. Infatti, Maker Faire Rome - promossa dalla Camera di Commercio di Roma e organizzata dalla sua Azienda speciale Innova Camera - da sempre dedica ampio spazio alle idee dei giovani maker: quest’anno sono 55 le scuole selezionate per esporre i propri progetti che hanno partecipato alla “Call for Schools”, realizzata in collaborazione con il Miur.

 L’ipotesi di Giulio Magli del Politecnico di Milano

I primi di novembre 2017 Nature ha pubblicato i risultati del progetto ScanPyramids degli archeologi guidati da Mehdi Tayoubi (Hip Institute, Parigi) e Kunihiro Morishima (Università di Nagoya, Giappone): esiste una “stanza segreta” lunga almeno 30 metri all’interno della Piramide di Cheope. Scoprirne la funzione e il contenuto sarà la sfida più appassionante in assoluto per gli archeologi. Giulio Magli, Direttore del Dipartimento di Matematica e docente di Archeoastronomia del Politecnico di Milano, ha formulato una delle prime ipotesi. “La Piramide di Cheope, costruita attorno al 2550 aC., e' uno dei monumenti piu' grandi e complessi della storia dell'architettura. Le sue camere interne sono accessibili tramite stretti condotti uno dei quali pero', prima di giungere alla camera funeraria, si allarga e si alza mprovvisamente formando la cosiddetta Grande Galleria – spiega Magli - La camera appena scoperta non ha una funzione pratica di "scarico del peso" che grava sopra la Grande Galleria, perchè il tetto della stessa fu gia' costruito con una tecnica a spiovente proprio per questo motivo”. Allora, che cosa significa? “Esiste una possibile interpretazione che e' in ottimo accordo con quanto sappiamo della religione funeraria egizia testimoniata nei Testi delle Piramidi. Nei testi infatti si legge che il faraone, prima di raggiungere le stelle del nord, dovra' passare le "porte del cielo" e sedere sul suo "trono di ferro"- continua. All’interno della Piramide ci sono quattro stretti canali, delle dimensioni di un fazzoletto, diretti verso le stelle. L'aldila' del faraone era infatti, secondo i "Testi delle Piramidi", nel cielo, e in particolare tra le stelle del nord, come l'Orsa e il Drago.

Inflammation processes are responsible for the failure of insulin production in diabetes patients. The patients’ own immune systems can contribute to treatment of this disease: researchers at the University of Basel and University Hospital Basel have found a feedback mechanism that could help maintain insulin production in overweight sufferers, as they report in the journal Immunity. In their study, the Basel-based researchers focused specifically on recently discovered ILC2 immune cells in the pancreas, where, under diabetic conditions, the protein IL33 is activated, among others. This protein stimulates the ILC2 cells, which trigger the release of insulin in overweight individuals using retinoic acid and could therefore be used to inhibit the failure of insulin production. The research conducted by scientists at the Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at University Hospital Basel and the University of Basel’s Department of Biomedicine gives an insight into an inflammatory network that could contribute to the maintenance of insulin production in diabetics. The complex interactions between endocrine cells and immune cells are clearly significant for the maintenance of insulin release.

Antibiotics are commonly used around the world to cure diseases caused by bacteria. But as the World Health Organization and other international bodies have pointed out, the global increase of antibiotic resistance is a rapidly worsening problem. And since antibiotics are also an essential part of modern medicine, as prophylactic treatment during surgeries and cancer therapy, rising resistance of bacteria presents even more of a danger. That's why researchers are busy devising strategies to address this threat to human health – and Université de Montréal is at the forefront of the fight. One of the ways antibiotic resistance genes spread in hospitals and in the environment is that the genes are coded on plasmids that transfer between bacteria. A plasmid is a DNA fragment found in bacteria or yeasts. It carries genes useful for bacteria, especially when these genes encode proteins that can make bacteria resistant to antibiotics.Now a team of scientists at UdeM's Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine has come up with a novel approach to block the transfer of resistance genes. The study by Bastien Casu, Tarun Arya, Benoit Bessette and Christian Baron was published in early November in Scientific Reports.

A library of molecules

The researchers screened a library of small chemical molecules for those that bind to the TraE protein, an essential component of the plasmid transfer machinery. Analysis by X-ray crystallography revealed the exact binding site of these molecules on TraE. Having precise information on the binding site enabled the researchers to design more potent binding molecules that, in the end, reduced the transfer of antibiotic-resistant, gene-carrying plasmids. Baron hopes the strategy can be used to discover more inhibitors of the transfer of resistant genes. "You want to be able to find the 'soft spot' on a protein, and target it and poke it so that the protein cannot function," said Baron, the Faculty of Medicine's vice-dean of research and development. "Other plasmids have similar proteins, some have different proteins, but I think the value of our study on TraE is that by knowing the molecular structure of these proteins we can devise methods to inhibit their function."

Working with IRIC

Building on their encouraging new data, Baron and his colleagues are now working with the medicinal chemists at UdeM's IRIC (Institut de recherche en immunologie et cancérologie) to develop the new molecules into powerful inhibitors of antibiotic resistance gene transfer. Such molecules could one day be applied in clinics in hospitals that are hotbeds of resistance, Baron hopes. Ultimately, reducing the transfer of antibiotic-resistance plasmids could help preserve the potency of antibiotics, contributing to an overall strategy to help improve human health, he added. "The beauty of what we are working on here is that the proteins are very similar to proteins that bacteria use to cause disease. So from what we learned about the TraE protein and about finding its 'soft spot,' we can actually apply this approach to other bacteria that cause diseases. One of those is Helicobacter pylori, which is a gastric pathogen that causes ulcers and stomach cancers. We're working on that one specifically now, but there are many others."

Four years of work

It took the UdeM team four years to arrive at the findings being published now – enough time for antibiotic resistance to grow into an ever-more worrisome global problem. UdeM pediatric physician Joanne Liu, the international president of Doctors Without Borders, has called it "a tsunami," and Baron believes she's not exaggerating. "It's a very good image to use, because we all know it's coming. It's not like a splash in your face every single day, but we all see the tide is rising. "They say that by 2050, 50 million people will die from antibiotic resistant infections," said the Toronto-born, German-raised researcher. "The day when we can't treat infections with antibiotics is coming. Nevertheless, people should have hope. Science will bring new ideas and new solutions to this problem. There's a big mobilization now going on in the world on this issue. I wouldn't say I feel safe, but it's clear we're making progress."

Internal movement in the Achilles tendon is related to the tendon anatomy. The structure of the rat Achilles tendon in the image. Abbreviations: SOL = soleus muscle, LG = lateral gastrocnemius and MG = medial gastrocnemius.

The Achilles tendon is the strongest tendon in the human body. It can bear loads exceeding over 900 kilograms during running. Despite its strength, it is prone to injuries and it is not yet well known what factors predict good or bad recovery from injuries. Studies with the measurement of Achilles tendon forces have proved that loading may not be distributed evenly throughout the entire cross-sectional area of the tendon. This is possible because the Achilles serves as a common tendon for three calf muscles, which all have different properties and functions. The soleus muscle extends and flexes only the ankle joint but the gastrocnemius muscle (medial and lateral heads) also flexes the knee. Due to this, different parts of the Achilles tendon may move in relation to each other. The investigation of movements within the Achilles tendon helps to understand its normal and abnormal function and give insight on research related to tendon injuries.

European researchers have discovered that genetic factors play a role in some cases of tinnitus, particularly in men who have the condition in both ears. “This result is surprising and unexpected as it shows that, unlike the conventional view of tinnitus being driven by environmental factors, there is a genetic influence for bilateral tinnitus which is more pronounced in men,” says Dr Christopher R Cederroth at Karolinska Institutet's Department of Physiology and Pharmacology. Tinnitus is a brain condition that affects around 10 per cent of the population. It causes constant ringing or buzzing in the ears and for some it can be debilitating, leading to insomnia, anxiety, depression and even severe psychiatric problems. There is no cure for tinnitus and the many sub types of the condition make it difficult to treat.