Date Time
World-first echidna, improved platypus genomes mapped An international team of scientists, including from the University of Sydney, have sequenced monotreme genomes, leading to evolutionary and future medical discoveries.
Credit: Echidna CSI.
The first ever echidna genome and a greatly improved, high-quality platypus genome have been sequenced by an international team of researchers.
The findings, published in Nature, were produced by 40 researchers from Australia, China, Japan, the US, and Denmark, including from the University of Sydney.
University of Sydney lead, Professor Katherine Belov from the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, said that through this research, she and the team “discovered new peptides” in both the platypus and echidna genomes. These peptides have the potential to be developed into novel drugs for humans and other animals due to their potent antimicrobial activities. “Their potential for biomedical applications is so excit
Metal ion sieving using a bioinspired nanochannel membrane
CREDIT
XIN Weiwen
Abstract:
Lithium is an energy-critical element that is considered to be a geopolitically significant resource. However, the supply of lithium may not be enough to meet continuously increasing demand. As a result, scientists are looking for new ways to extract lithium ions.
Bionic idea boosts lithium-ion extraction
Beijing, China | Posted on January 1st, 2021
Ion selective membranes have already been used extensively for water treatment and ion sieving in electrodialysis technology. However, conventional membranes exhibit low and useless Li+ selectivity, making them insufficient for meeting industry requirements.
Chinese scientists have recently made progress in the preparation and application of a bioinspired material that is capable of achieving controlled ion transport and sieving, especially for lithium-ion extraction.
Credit: XIN Weiwen
Lithium is an energy-critical element that is considered to be a geopolitically significant resource. However, the supply of lithium may not be enough to meet continuously increasing demand. As a result, scientists are looking for new ways to extract lithium ions.
Ion selective membranes have already been used extensively for water treatment and ion sieving in electrodialysis technology. However, conventional membranes exhibit low and useless Li
+ selectivity, making them insufficient for meeting industry requirements.
Chinese scientists have recently made progress in the preparation and application of a bioinspired material that is capable of achieving controlled ion transport and sieving, especially for lithium-ion extraction.
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IMAGE: An artist s conception of the most-distant known astrophysical object GN-z11, a galaxy 13.4 billion light-years from Earth depicted with a gamma-ray burst like the one caught by the astronomers that allowed them. view more
Credit: Illustration is courtesy of Jingchuan Yu.
Pasadena, CA New work from an international team of astronomers including Carnegie s Gregory Walth improves our understanding of the most-distant known astrophysical object GN-z11, a galaxy 13.4 billion light-years from Earth.
Formed 400 million years after the Big Bang, GN-z11 was previously determined by space telescope data to be the most-distant object yet discovered. In two newly published
Nature Astronomy papers, a team led by Linhua Jiang at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University took near-infrared spectra using ground-based telescopes that confirmed the galaxy s distance. They also caught an ultraviolet flash associated with a gamma-ray bur