SAN ANTONIO — January 22, 2025 —Four small suitcase-sized spacecraft, designed and built by Southwest Research Institute, have made a final Earth-side pit stop at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere, or PUNCH, mission is sharing a ride to space with the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) observatory.

Specific protein receptors in the brain play a vital role in how neurons slow down or stop firing, making them targets for many disorders. Researchers have now constructed a detailed structural map of these receptors in the human brain, revealing how they assemble and how drugs bind to them.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia, the University of Washington, and Johns Hopkins University have identified a new class of quantum states in a custom-engineered graphene structure. Published today in Nature, the study reports the discovery of topological electronic crystals in twisted bilayer–trilayer graphene, a system created by introducing a precise rotational twist between stacked two-dimensional materials.

This newly formed department will establish a community of technology innovators at St. Jude, whose tools and techniques will accelerate scientific discovery and improve the understanding and diagnosis of catastrophic childhood diseases.   

Jilin University-A new study published in the Journal of Science Bulletin proposed an innovative conceptual mechanism known as the “orbital stabilisation effect” for the precise design of novel Sb-based single-atom catalysts (SACs) to achieve high activity and ultra-long durability in the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR).

In a paper published in National Science Review, a bottom-up isoprene emission inventory, including both biogenic and combustion sources, was developed and used to model the contributions of isoprene to secondary organic aerosol formation in China. The results show that emissions of isoprene from combustion sources contributed substantially to ambient secondary organic aerosol, particularly during winter.

Continuing in its mission to elucidate the role of metal nutrients in human biology, the Chang Lab also offers a possible treatment modality in which copper chelation shows promising results in certain lung cancers where cells have two related phenomena: a heightened transcription factor responding to oxidative stress and a diminished level of bioavailable copper. Copper imbalances have long been implicated in cancer cell growth and other disease states.