Thursday 13 June 2019

Identification of protective antibodies may be key to effective malaria vaccine

Researchers from the University of Oxford, along with partners from five institutions around the world, have identified the human antibodies that prevent the malaria parasite from entering blood cells, which may be key to creating a highly effective malaria vaccination. The results of the study were published today in the journal Cell.

* This article was originally published here

Holistic view of planning energy self-sufficient communities

Sustainable communities supplied by local renewable energy production are beginning to be established in the U.S. By using energy-efficient buildings and distributing means of energy generation, such as solar panels, throughout buildings in these districts, the communities manage to produce enough energy for their local needs—achieving a yearly net zero energy (NZE) balance.

* This article was originally published here

Researchers learned how to better combat muscle loss during space flights

A new study from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has further documented how muscles are affected by reduced gravity conditions during space flight missions and uncovered how exercise and hormone treatments can be tailored to minimize muscle loss for individual space travelers. The findings are available in PLOS One.

* This article was originally published here

Taking a city's pulse with movable sensors

Suppose you have 10 taxis in Manhattan. What portion of the borough's streets do they cover in a typical day?

* This article was originally published here

PoseRBPF: A new particle filter for 6D object pose tracking

Researchers at NVIDIA, University of Washington, Stanford University, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have recently developed a Rao-Blackwellized particle filter for 6-D pose tracking, called PoseRBPF. The approach can effectively estimate the 3-D translation of an object and its full distribution over the 3-D rotation. The paper describing this filter, pre-published on arXiv, will be presented at the upcoming Robotics Science and Systems Conference in Freiburg, Germany.

* This article was originally published here

Determining risk of recurrence in triple-negative breast cancer

A personalized prognosis for patients diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer was the goal of a new study by Katherine Varley, Ph.D., researcher at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) and assistant professor of oncological sciences at the University of Utah.

* This article was originally published here

Second patient dies of Ebola in Uganda: health official

A 50-year-old woman who tested positive for Ebola in Uganda has died, a health ministry official told AFP Thursday, the second fatality since the virus spread from neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

* This article was originally published here

Researchers create uniform-shape polymer nanocrystals

A team of researchers from the University of Konstanz has demonstrated a new aqueous polymerization procedure for generating polymer nanoparticles with a single chain and uniform shape, which, by contrast to previous methods, involves high particle concentrations. A corresponding paper titled "Uniform shape monodisperse single chain nanocrystals by living aqueous catalytic polymerization" is set for publication in Nature Communications.

* This article was originally published here

Jupiter-like exoplanets found in sweet spot in most planetary systems

As planets form in the swirling gas and dust around young stars, there seems to be a sweet spot where most of the large, Jupiter-like gas giants congregate, centered around the orbit where Jupiter sits today in our own solar system.

* This article was originally published here