Injuries to peripheral nerves -- tissues that transmit bioelectrical signals from the brain to the rest of the body ­­-- often result in chronic pain, neurologic disorders, paralysis or disability. Now, researchers have developed a stretchable conductive hydrogel that could someday be used to repair these types of nerves when there's damage. They report their results in ACS Nano.

Injuries in which a peripheral nerve has been completely severed, such as a deep cut from an accident, are difficult to treat. A common strategy, called autologous nerve transplantation, involves removing a section of peripheral nerve from elsewhere in the body and sewing it onto the ends of the severed one. However, the surgery does not always restore function, and multiple follow-up surgeries are sometimes needed. Artificial nerve grafts, in combination with supporting cells, have also been used, but it often takes a long time for nerves to fully recover. Qun-Dong Shen, Chang-Chun Wang, Ze-Zhang Zhu and colleagues wanted to develop an effective, fast-acting treatment that could replace autologous nerve transplantation. For this purpose, they decided to explore conducting hydrogels -- water-swollen, biocompatible polymers that can transmit bioelectrical signals.

The researchers prepared a tough but stretchable conductive hydrogel containing polyaniline and polyacrylamide. The crosslinked polymer had a 3D microporous network that, once implanted, allowed nerve cells to enter and adhere, helping restore lost tissue. The team showed that the material could conduct bioelectrical signals through a damaged sciatic nerve removed from a toad. Then, they implanted the hydrogel into rats with sciatic nerve injuries. Two weeks later, the rats' nerves recovered their bioelectrical properties, and their walking improved compared with untreated rats. Because the electricity-conducting properties of the material improve with irradiation by near-infrared light, which can penetrate tissues, it could be possible to further enhance nerve conduction and recovery in this way, the researchers say.

Brain cells have been found in exceptionally preserved form in the remains of a young man killed in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius almost 2,000 years ago, an Italian study has revealed.

The preserved neuronal structures in vitrified or frozen form were discovered at the archaeological site of Herculaneum, an ancient Roman city engulfed under a hail of volcanic ash after nearby Mount Vesuvius erupted in the year 79.

"The study of vitrified tissue as the one we found at Herculaneum... may save lives in future," study lead author Pier Paolo Petrone, forensic anthropologist at Naples' University Federico II, told AFP in English.

Scientists have created a new "super enzyme" that can break down plastic up to six times faster than their previous enzyme.

A team of researchers that previously re-engineered a plastic-eating enzyme named PETase have now combined it with a second enzyme to speed up the process, according to a press release from the University of Portsmouth.

The super enzyme could have major implications for recycling polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is the most common thermoplastic used in single-use drinks bottles, carpets, and clothing.

Researchers from the University of Iowa have discovered a safe new way to manage blood sugar non-invasively. Exposing diabetic mice to a combination of static electric and magnetic fields for a few hours per day normalizes two major hallmarks of type 2 diabetes, according to new findings published Oct. 6 in Cell Metabolism.

"We've built a remote control to manage diabetes," says Calvin Carter, PhD, one of the study's lead authors and a postdoc in the lab of senior author Val Sheffield, MD, PhD, professor in the Stead Family Department of Pediatrics, Division of Medical Genetics and Genomics, and the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the UI Carver College of Medicine. "Exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) for relatively short periods reduces blood sugar and normalizes the body's response to insulin. The effects are long-lasting, opening the possibility of an EMF therapy that can be applied during sleep to manage diabetes all day."

The unexpected and surprising discovery may have major implications in diabetes care, particularly for patients who find current treatment regimens cumbersome.

The new study indicates that EMFs alter the balance of oxidants and antioxidants in the liver, improving the body's response to insulin. This effect is mediated by small reactive molecules that seem to function as "magnetic antennae."

Magnetic fields are used in various areas of modern physics and engineering, with practical applications ranging from doorbells to maglev trains. Since Nikola Tesla's discoveries in the 19th century, researchers have strived to realize strong magnetic fields in laboratories for fundamental studies and diverse applications, but the magnetic strength of familiar examples are relatively weak. Geomagnetism is 0.3−0.5 gauss (G) and magnetic tomography (MRI) used in hospitals is about 1 tesla (T = 10⁴ G). By contrast, future magnetic fusion and maglev trains will require magnetic fields on the kilotesla (kT = 10⁷ G) order. To date, the highest magnetic fields experimentally observed are on the kT order.

Recently, scientists at Osaka University discovered a novel mechanism called a "microtube implosion," and demonstrated the generation of megatesla (MT = 10¹⁰G) order magnetic fields via particle simulations using a supercomputer. Astonishingly, this is three orders of magnitude higher than what has ever been achieved in a laboratory. Such high magnetic fields are expected only in celestial bodies like neutron stars and black holes.

Irradiating a tiny plastic microtube one-tenth the thickness of a human hair by ultraintense laser pulses produces hot electrons with temperatures of tens of billion of degrees. These hot electrons, along with cold ions, expand into the microtube cavity at velocities approaching the speed of light. Pre-seeding with a kT-order magnetic field causes the imploding charged particles infinitesimally twisted due to Lorenz force. Such a unique cylindrical flow collectively produces unprecedentedly high spin currents of about 10¹⁵ ampere/cm² on the target axis and consequently, generates ultrahigh magnetic fields on the MT order.

The European Union's Earth observation program said Tuesday that the ozone hole over Antarctica has swelled to its largest size and deepest level in at least 15 years, to become among the most notable ever recorded.

Clare Nullis of the WMO explains that the ozone hole begins to expand every August -at the start of the Antarctic spring- and reaches a peak around October. "The air has been below minus 78 degrees Celsius, and this is the temperature which you need to form stratospheric clouds — and this is quite a complex process," said Nullis at a U.N. briefing. "The ice in these clouds triggers a reaction which then can destroy the ozone. So, it's because of that that we are seeing the big ozone hole this year."

These findings completely contradict the science behind the international accord (the Montreal Protocol) devised to phase out the use of ozone-depleting substances (OSDs). In addition, they also confirm what NASA has been saying for years: that the upper atmosphere is cooling.

OSDs have been on the decline since their peak in 2000 (shown below), and the "hole" growing -to among the largest ever recorded- a full 20 years later shows the correlation between OSDs and ozone is minor, at best.

Emphasis in the original:

On Tue, 6 Oct 2020 at 13:04, Medcomm editorial office <editorial@med-comm.org> wrote:

Good day to you.

We are writing to you in the hope of a retraction for your article published in MedComm

Article ID: MCO220

Title:The world should establish an early warning system for new viral infectious diseases by space‐weather monitoring

Publish Date: 23 July 2020

I hope you had a good weekend. But I KNOW that rapper MC Hammer had a most interesting and intellectually stimulating one. You may wonder how I know that. It's because he spent a good deal of it watching videos about intelligent design and evolution and exchanging tweets about ID with Discovery Institute philosopher of science Stephen Meyer, on one hand, and arch-Darwinist atheist biologist Jerry Coyne on the other. Hammer was more persuaded by Dr. Meyer than by Dr. Coyne. The latter, an emeritus professor at the University of Chicago, was not pleased and tweeted back insults, calling Hammer an "ignoramus." (Coyne later apologized and took down the insulting tweet.)

Hammer, with 3.2 million Twitter followers, was most taken, though, by our mathematician colleague David Berlinski. He tweeted a link to Dr. Berlinski's book The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, and enjoyed a video of what he called a "Fantastic conversation!!!!" among Berlinski, Meyer, Yale's David Gelernter, and host Peter Robinson of Stanford's Hoover Institution. Hammer also tweeted out a wonderful interaction between Berlinski and a pair of interviewers from Rational Religion. Science writer Sheril Kirshenbaum further provoked Coyne by tweeting that "@MCHammer is correct. Science & religion aren't incompatible. They both seek to understand our world."

42,000-foot plumes of ash. 143-mph firenadoes. 1,500-degree heat. These wildfires are a new kind of hell on earth, and scientists are racing to learn its rules.

I - On the windy, hot day of July 26, 2018, as record 113-­degree temperatures baked Redding, California, in the northern Sacramento Valley, Eric Knapp toiled in an air-conditioned government office. After work, he planned to meet his wife and 3-year-old daughter, and some family friends, for dinner. Slender and fair-skinned with a gentle smile, Knapp is a research ecologist for the US Forest Service. He was well aware that, three days earlier, in coastal mountains west of town, a wildfire had started when a trailer got a flat tire and the metal wheel rim scraped the asphalt, sending sparks into dry brush.

Like the vast majority of wildfires, this one, called the Carr Fire, burned initially as a wide but shallow band of flames advancing slowly, like a battalion of infantrymen marching shoulder to shoulder, and left behind charred grass and lightly scorched trees. The Carr Fire was also typical in that it moved according to the dictates of wind, ground slope, and flammable fuels — southeast around a lake, then up a hill, in part because heat rises. Early on that particular morning, the fire had crested a rise above Redding and, with a northwesterly breeze at its back, crawled downhill toward town.

Knapp was finishing up for the day when his friend Talitha Derksen, a wildlife biologist with a daughter close in age to Knapp's own, sent a text saying that her neighborhood might have to be evacuated. One of the agencies tasked with that judgment call, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection — aka CalFire — is one of the world's largest and most effective wildland firefighting organizations. CalFire bases evacuation recommendations on predictions of where, and how quickly, a flame front will move next. That day, the fire appeared likely to reach the floor of the Sacramento Valley at a subdivision called Land Park, about a mile northwest of Derksen's house.

Using a novel technique, scientists working at the Florida State University-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory have found evidence for a quantum spin liquid, a state of matter that is promising as a building block for the quantum computers of tomorrow.

Researchers discovered the exciting behavior while studying the so-called electron spins in the compound ruthenium trichloride. Their findings, published today in the journal Nature Physics , show that electron spins interact across the material, effectively lowering the overall energy. This type of behavior — consistent with a quantum spin liquid — was detected in ruthenium trichloride at high temperatures and in high magnetic fields.

Spin liquids, first theorized in 1973, remain something of a mystery. Despite some materials showing promising signs for this state of matter, it is extremely challenging to definitively confirm its existence. However, there is great interest in them because scientists believe they could be used for the design of smarter materials in a variety of applications, such as quantum computing.

This study provides strong support that ruthenium trichloride is a spin liquid, said physicist Kim Modic, a former graduate student who worked at the MagLab's pulsed field facility and is now an assistant professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria.

"I think this paper provides a fresh perspective on ruthenium trichloride and demonstrates a new way to look for signatures of spin liquids," said Modic, the paper's lead author.

For decades, physicists have extensively studied the charge of an electron, which carries electricity, paving the way for advances in electronics, energy and other areas. But electrons also have a property called spin. Scientists want to also leverage the spin aspect of electrons for technology, but the universal behavior of spins is not yet fully understood.