Researchers have mapped the physical structure of the nuclear landscape to better understand changes in genomic interactions occurring in cell senescence and aging.

Their findings have allowed them to reconcile the contradictory observations of two current models of aging: cellular senescence of connective tissue cells called fibroblasts and cellular models of an accelerated aging syndrome.

The Universe began about 13.8 billion years ago and evolved from an extremely hot, dense and uniform state to the rich and complex cosmos of galaxies, stars and planets we see today. The key source of information about that history is the Cosmic Microwave Background - CMB - the legacy of light emitted only 380 000 years after the Big Bang.

Astronomers have been searching searching for a particular signature of cosmic ‘inflation’ – a very brief accelerated expansion that, according to current theory, the Universe experienced when it was only the tiniest fraction of a second old. This signature would be seeded by gravitational waves, tiny perturbations in the fabric of space-time, that astronomers believe would have been generated during the inflationary phase. 

Much of the public think malpractice insurance is a big cost of health care and so they rightly think that if there were reasonable checks on lawsuit judgments health care would be affordable without government intervention.

Finding out whether you have been infected with dengue may soon be as easy as spitting into a rapid test kit. The Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) of A*STAR has developed a paper-based disposable device that will allow dengue-specific antibodies to be detected easily from saliva within 20 minutes. This device is currently undergoing further development for commercialization.

News that will disappoint loads of children:

Mitochondria produce ATP, the energy currency of the body. The driver for this process is an electrochemical membrane potential, which is created by a series of proton pumps. These complex, macromolecular machines are collectively known as the respiratory chain. The structure of the largest protein complex in the respiratory chain, that of mitochondrial complex I, has been elucidated by scientists from the Frankfurt "Macromolecular Complexes" cluster of excellence, working together with the University of Freiburg, by X-ray diffraction analysis.

ATLAS sent today to the Cornell arxiv and to the journal JHEP their latest measurement of the top-antitop production asymmetry, and having five free minutes this afternoon I gave a look at the paper, as the measurement is of some interest. The analysis is done generally quite well, but I found out there is one things I do not particularly like in it... It does not affect the result in this case, but the used procedure is error-prone. 

But let's go in order. First I owe you a quick-and-dirty explanation of what is the top asymmetry and why you might care about it.

The process of converting the sun's energy into liquid fuels requires a sophisticated, interrelated series of choices but a solar refinery is especially tricky to map out because the designs involve newly developed or experimental technologies. This makes it difficult to develop realistic plans that are economically viable and energy efficient.

In a paper recently published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, a team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison chemical and biological engineering Professors Christos Maravelias and George Huber outlined a tool to help engineers better gauge the overall yield, efficiency and costs associated with scaling solar-fuel production processes up into large-scale refineries.