A new way to explore proton’s structure with neutrinos yields first results

One of two magnetic focusing horns used in the beamline at Fermilab that produces intense neutrino beams for MINERvA and other neutrino experiments.
Photo Credit: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab

Physicists used MINERvA, a Fermilab neutrino experiment, to measure the proton’s size and structure using a neutrino-scattering technique.

For the first time, particle physicists have been able to precisely measure the proton’s size and structure using neutrinos. With data gathered from thousands of neutrino-hydrogen scattering events collected by MINERvA, a particle physics experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, physicists have found a new lens for exploring protons. The results were published today in the scientific journal Nature.

This measurement is also important for analyzing data from experiments that aim to measure the properties of neutrinos with great precision, including the future Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, hosted by Fermilab.

“The MINERvA experiment has found a novel way for us to see and understand proton structure, critical both for our understanding of the building blocks of matter and for our ability to interpret results from the flagship DUNE experiment on the horizon,” said Bonnie Fleming, Fermilab deputy director for science and technology.

SwRI investigations reveal more evidence that Mimas is a stealth ocean world

Resized Image using AI by SFLORG
Image Credit: Courtesy of NASA/JPL/SSI/SwRI

When a Southwest Research Institute scientist discovered surprising evidence that Saturn’s smallest, innermost moon could generate the right amount of heat to support a liquid internal ocean, colleagues began studying Mimas’ surface to understand how its interior may have evolved. Numerical simulations of the moon’s Herschel impact basin, the most striking feature on its heavily cratered surface, determined that the basin’s structure and the lack of tectonics on Mimas are compatible with a thinning ice shell and geologically young ocean.

“In the waning days of NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn, the spacecraft identified a curious libration, or oscillation, in Mimas’ rotation, which often points to a geologically active body able to support an internal ocean,” said SwRI’s Dr. Alyssa Rhoden, a specialist in the geophysics of icy satellites, particularly those containing oceans, and the evolution of giant planet satellite systems. She is the second author of a new Geophysical Research Letters paper on the subject. “Mimas seemed like an unlikely candidate, with its icy, heavily cratered surface marked by one giant impact crater that makes the small moon look much like the Death Star from Star Wars. If Mimas has an ocean, it represents a new class of small, ‘stealth’ ocean worlds with surfaces that do not betray the ocean’s existence.”

Soil tainted by air pollution expels carbon

How climate change is fueling itself
Photo Credit: Nöel Puebla

New UC Riverside research suggests nitrogen released by gas-powered machines causes dry soil to let go of carbon and release it back into the atmosphere, where it can contribute to climate change. 

Industrial manufacturing, agricultural practices, and significantly, vehicles, all burn fossil fuels that release nitrogen into the air. As a result, levels of nitrogen in Earth’s atmosphere have tripled since 1850. The research team wanted to understand whether this extra nitrogen is affecting soil’s ability to hold onto carbon and keep it from becoming a greenhouse gas.

“Because nitrogen is used as a fertilizer for plants, we expected additional nitrogen would promote plant growth as well as microbial activity, thereby increasing carbon put into soils,” said Peter Homyak, study co-author and assistant professor in UCR’s Department of Environmental Sciences. 

In dryland soil, the type that covers much of Southern California, this is not what they saw.

Instead, the team found that under certain conditions, extra nitrogen causes dryland soil to acidify and leach calcium. Calcium binds to carbon, and the two elements then leave the soil together. This finding is detailed in the journal Global Change Biology. 

Learning with all your senses: Multimodal enrichment as the optimal learning strategy of the future

Illustration Credit: John Hain

Neuroscientist Katharina von Kriegstein from Technische Universität Dresden and Brian Mathias from the University of Aberdeen have compiled extensive interdisciplinary findings from neuroscience, psychology, computer modelling and education on the topic of "learning" in a recent review article in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences. The results of the interdisciplinary review reveal the mechanisms the brain uses to achieve improved learning outcome by combining multiple senses or movements in learning. This kind of learning outcome applies to a wide variety of domains, such as letter and vocabulary acquisition, reading, mathematics, music, and spatial orientation.

Many educational approaches assume that integrating complementary sensory and motor information into the learning experience can enhance learning, for example gestures help in learning new vocabulary in foreign language classes. In her recent publication, neuroscientist Katharina von Kriegstein from Technische Universität Dresden and Brian Mathias of the University of Aberdeen summarize these methods under the term "multimodal enrichment." This means enrichment with multiple senses and movement. Numerous current scientific studies prove that multimodal enrichment can enhance learning outcomes. Experiments in classrooms show similar results.

A new tool for examining processes in the cerebellum

The Bochum research team: Bianca Preissing, Lennard Rohr, Ida Siveke and Tatjana Surdin (from left)
Photo Credit: © RUB, Marquard

Light can start a signal cascade in the cerebellum. This also illuminates processes that play an important role in cerebellar diseases.

Processes in the cerebellum are involved in various diseases that affect motor learning. A new tool developed by a Bochum working group helps to investigate this better: a light-activated protein that is coupled with part of an exciting receptor. Thanks to this optogenetic tool, light can activate a signaling pathway in the nerve cells of the cerebellum and observe its effects. So, the group around Dr. Ida Siveke from the working group of Prof. Dr. Stefan Herlitze at the Ruhr University Bochum show that the signal path is involved in cerebellar-controlled motor learning. The researchers report in the iSience journal.

Solid material that 'upconverts' visible light photons to UV light photons could change how we utilize sunlight

Low-intensity visible blue light or lower energy photons being converted into higher energy UV photons using a solid film formed on a round glass substrate, developed by researchers at Tokyo Tech
 Image Credit: Prof. Yoichi Murakami

Ultraviolet (UV) light has higher energy photons than visible light and, thus, has more applications. Tokyo Tech researchers have now developed a brilliant innovation—a solid-state material that can stably and efficiently upconvert sunlight- intensity visible light photons to UV light photons. This photon upconversion (UC) material can utilize visible light to successfully drive reactions that would conventionally need UV light, broadening the spectrum of utility for the former.

The importance of solar power as a renewable energy resource is increasing. Sunlight contains high-energy UV light with a wavelength shorter than 400 nm, which can be broadly used, for example, for photopolymerization to form a resin and activation of photocatalysts to drive reactions that generate green hydrogen or useful hydrocarbons (fuels, sugars, olefins, etc.). The latter of these is often called "artificial photosynthesis." Photocatalytic reaction by UV light to efficiently kill viruses and bacteria is another important application. Unfortunately, only about 4% of terrestrial sunlight falls within the UV range in the electromagnetic spectrum. This leaves a large portion of sunlight spectrum unexploited for these purposes.

FAT4 Gene Mutations Cause Many Abnormalities in the Lymphatic System

A mutation in a gene can disrupt the lymphatic system
Photo Credit: Sangharsh Lohakare

Defects in this gene cause everything in the body to swell - even the brain

Mutations in the FAT4 gene can cause Hennekam syndrome, which is characterized by various abnormalities of the lymphatic system. An international team of scientists from Russia (Ural Federal University), Afghanistan, Pakistan and China used molecular dynamic modeling to demonstrate the pathogenicity of the identified mutations. The data obtained will help to determine the predisposition to diseases associated with FAT4 gene activation. The study was supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation in the framework of the Priority 2030 program and published in the journal Informatics in Medicine Unlocked.

"Hennekam syndrome is a relatively rare (less than 1,000 cases have been reported worldwide) inherited disorder caused by mutations in three different genes - FAT4, ADAMTS3, CCBE1. Abnormalities in the lymphatic system cause everything in the body - including the brain - to swell. This is due to impaired lymphatic transport and, as a result, a large accumulation of protein-rich fluid in the intercellular space. As a result, any affected organ can increase in volume. Signs of this syndrome can also be developmental disorders, strange body deformities, a flat face with swollen eyelids," says Mikhail Bolkov, Senior Researcher at the Department of Immunochemistry at the Ural Federal University and the Institute of Immunology and Physiology, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

How sound waves trigger immune responses to cancer in mice

The 700kHz, 260-element histotripsy ultrasound array transducer used in Prof. Xu’s lab.
Photo Credit: Marcin Szczepanski/Lead Multimedia Storyteller, Michigan Engineering

Technique pioneered at the University of Michigan could improve outcomes for cancer and neurological conditions

When noninvasive sound waves break apart tumors, they trigger an immune response in mice. By breaking down the cell wall “cloak,” the treatment exposes cancer cell markers that had previously been hidden from the body’s defenses, researchers at the University of Michigan have shown.

The technique developed at Michigan, known as histotripsy, offers a two-prong approach to attacking cancers: the physical destruction of tumors via sound waves and the kickstarting of the body’s immune response. It could potentially offer medical professionals a treatment option for patients without the harmful side effects of radiation and chemotherapy.

Until now, researchers didn’t understand how histotripsy was activating the immune system. A study from last spring showed that histotripsy breaks down liver tumors in rats, leading to the complete disappearance of the tumor even when sound waves are applied to only 50% to 75% of the mass. The immune response also prevented further spread, with no evidence of recurrence or metastases in more than 80% of the animals.

Astronomers reveal new map of dark matter, mass in universe

Victor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope, left, at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile houses the camera used by the Dark Energy Survey.
Image Credit: Dark Energy Survey

For decades, cosmologists have mapped the distribution of mass in the universe, both visible material and the mysterious dark matter, in an effort to improve our understanding of these fundamental building blocks. Astronomer Eric Baxter from the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy co-authored new research that traces the mass distribution in the universe in three dimensions. The updated analysis was published in Physical Review D.

Baxter and his University of Chicago collaborators, Chihway Chang and Yuuki Omori, compiled data using two different sky surveying methods. This new analysis shows that there is six times as much dark matter in the universe compared to matter that is visible—a finding that was already well-known. However, the team also found that the matter is not as clumpy as previously expected when compared to the current best model of the universe.

The researchers claim the findings could add to a growing body of evidence that there may be something missing from the existing standard model of the universe.

Common heart medicine is linked to a reduced risk of committing violent crimes

Yasmina Molero.
Photo Credit: Niklas Faye-Wevle Samuelson

Beta blockers, commonly used to treat heart disease and high blood pressure, can be linked to a reduced risk of committing violent crimes. It shows a new registry study from Karolinska Institutet and the University of Oxford published in the journal PLOS Medicine.

Beta blockers lower blood pressure by blocking the effect of hormones like adrenaline. The medicine is used to treat a variety of conditions including high blood pressure, cardiovascular events, heart failure and anxiety. It has also been suggested to work for clinical depression and aggression, but some studies have found a link to increased suicidal tendencies and the results are contradictory.

In the current study, the researchers investigated the relationship between beta blockers and hospitalization for mental illness, suicidal tendencies, suicide and reports of violent crime. They studied 1.4 million individuals in Sweden and compared periods with and without beta blockers in the same individual over an eight-year period (2006-2013). In this way, the researchers were able to control factors that can affect relationships, such as genetics or disease history.

Periods of medication were associated with a 13 percent lower risk of being charged with violent crime. Since it is an observational study, conclusions about causation should be interpreted with caution.

One way to deal with aggression

- If the results are confirmed in other studies, including randomized controlled trials, beta blocks may be considered as a way to manage aggression in individuals with psychiatric diagnoses, say Yasmina Molero, researchers at Department of Clinical Neuroscience and Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Karolinska Institutet.

Use of beta-blockers was also linked to eight percent lower risk of hospitalization due to mental illness and eight percent increased risk of being treated for suicidal tendencies or dying in suicide. However, these relationships were inconsistent.

- The risk of hospitalization and suicidal tendencies varied depending on psychiatric diagnosis and previous mental health problems, but also on the severity and type of heart problems that the beta blockers were used to treat. This indicates that there are no links between beta blockers and these outcomes, says Yasmina Molero.

Heart problems are associated with depression

Previous research has linked serious heart events to an increased risk of depression and suicide. This may indicate that the mental disorders and other disabilities associated with serious heart problems, rather than the treatment with beta blockers, increase the risk of serious mental illness, according to the researchers.

Funding: The study was funded by the Wellcome Trust, Forte, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Karolinska Institutet's funds. Co-author Henrik Larsson has received grants from Shire Pharmaceuticals, Medice Speaker Fees, Shire / Takeda Pharmaceuticals and Evolan Pharma as well as sponsorship for a conference on adhd from Shire / Takeda Pharmaceuticals, all outside the current study.

Published in journal: PLOS Medicine

Source/Credit: Karolinska Institutet

Reference Number: ns013123_02

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