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Category: biological – Page 5

Scalable method creates self-healing, stretchable transistors and circuits

Recent technological advances have enabled the development of a wide range of increasingly sophisticated wearable and implantable devices, which can be used to monitor physiological signals or intervene with high precision in therapeutically targeted regions of the body. As these devices, particularly implantable ones, are typically designed to remain in changing biological environments for long periods of time, they should be biocompatible and capable of fixing themselves after they are damaged.

Researchers at Sungkyunkwan University, the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) and other institutes in South Korea recently devised a new method to fabricate self-healing and stretchable electronic components that could be integrated into these devices. Their approach, outlined in a paper published in Nature Electronics, enables the scalable and reconfigurable assembly of self-healing and stretchable transistors into highly performing integrated systems.

“Since the mid-2000s, the development of flexible and has significantly revolutionized research fields such as artificial electronic skin and soft implantable bioelectronics,” Donghee Son, senior author of the paper, told Tech Xplore.

Squid study sparks interdisciplinary insight into the physics of growth

Often, physics can be used to make sense of the natural world, whether it’s understanding gravitational effects on ocean tides or using powerful physics tools, like microscopes, to examine the inner workings of the cell. But increasingly, scientists are looking at biological systems to spark new insights in physics. By studying squid skin, researchers have identified the first biological instance of a physical phenomenon called “hyperdisorder,” bringing new understanding into how growth can affect physics.

Published in Physical Review X, an interdisciplinary team from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) studied the effect of growth on pattern development within squid skin cells.

By combining experimental imaging methods with theoretical modeling, they found new insights into the unusual arrangement of these cells, and created a general model of hyperdisorder applicable to a wide variety of growing systems.

Terahertz calorimetry captures thermodynamics of protein and water interactions at picosecond resolution

Researchers from Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, have developed a new method that allows them to visualize the contribution of the interaction between water and proteins for the first time with extreme temporal resolution. Terahertz (THz) calorimetry makes it possible to quantify changes of fundamental thermodynamic magnitudes, such as solvation entropy and enthalpy in relation to biological processes in real time.

Scientists Create Biodegradable Plastic Alternative That’s Literally Alive

Swiss scientists have created a new plastic-like material that’s flexible, biodegradable, and even edible. The secret? It’s still alive.

The material, which was created by a team from Empa in Switzerland, manages to balance biodegradability with toughness and versatility – a feat that is far from easy in materials science.

The researchers processed fibers from the mycelium (the root-like part) of the split-gill mushroom (Schizophyllum commune) into a liquid mixture, without actually killing them off or destroying their natural biological functions.

How the fight-or-flight response resets on a molecular level

Being cut off in traffic, giving a presentation or missing a meal can all trigger a suite of physiological changes that allow the body to react swiftly to stress or starvation. Critical to this “fight-or-flight” or stress response is a molecular cycle that results in the activation of protein kinase A (PKA), a protein involved in everything from metabolism to memory formation. Now, a study by researchers at Penn State has revealed how this cycle resets between stressful events, so the body is prepared to take on new challenges.

The details of this reset mechanism, uncovered through a combination of imaging, structural and biochemical techniques, are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

“Some of the early changes in the fight-or-flight response include the release of hormones, like adrenaline from stress or glucagon from starvation,” said Ganesh Anand, associate professor of chemistry and of biochemistry and in the Penn State Eberly College of Science and lead author of the paper.