Experiments with ultrashort laser pulses support the idea that quantum interactions between molecules help plants, algae, and some bacteria efficiently gather light to fuel their growth - but that's about it. Key details of nature's vital light-harvesting mechanisms remain obscure, and the exact role that quantum physics may play in understanding them is more subtle than was once thought.

Overworked patent offices are struggling to keep up with the rapid explosion in information and technology that genetic sequences represent. An international project may have a solution - a free and open public resource that will bring transparency to the murky and contentious world of gene patenting.

"Apparently, many patent offices have no way of tracking genetic sequences disclosed in patents and currently do not provide them in machine-searchable format," said principal author Professor Osmat Jefferson, a Queensland University of Technology academic who leads an international team analysing biological patents for the open-access web resource, The Lens.

Almost 90 percent of children and adults with a highly aggressive form of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) showed no evidence of cancer after receiving a personalized cell therapy that reprograms a patient's immune system.

In pilot studies of bio-engineered T cells that attack leukemia, 24 of 27 patients (89%) experienced complete responses within 28 days after treatment. In all, 27 patients received the treatment - 22 children treated at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and five adults treated at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Experimental techniques and computer simulations have determined a new way of predicting how water dissolves crystalline structures like those found in natural stone and cement. 

In a new study, the team shows that their method is more efficient at predicting the dissolution rates of crystalline structures in water than previous methods. The research could have wide-ranging impacts in diverse areas, including water quality and planning, environmental sustainability, corrosion resistance and cement construction. 

Microscopy is the universal diagnostic method for detection of most globally important parasitic infections.

But it's not cheap. Methods developed in well-equipped laboratories are not available at the basic levels of the health care system due to lack of resources. Researchers at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland, FIMM, University of Helsinki and Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, have now shown that novel techniques for high-resolution imaging and image transfer over data networks may be utilized to solve these diagnostic problems. 

The majority of all violent crime in Sweden is committed by a small number of people and they have a definable demographic - personality disorders, substance abuse problems and almost all males (92%) who early in life develop violent criminality and begin with a large number of non-violent crimes. 

In their paper, the scholars at Sahlgrenska Academy examined 2.5 million people in Swedish criminal and population registers
and matched all convictions for violent crime in Sweden between 1973 and 2004 with nation-wide population register for those born between 1958 to 1980 (2.5 million).