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A multi-disciplinary team from the University of Pennsylvania have published in Nature Methods a first-of-its-kind way to isolate RNA from live cells in their natural tissue microenvironment without damaging nearby cells. This allows the researchers to analyze how cell-to-cell chemical connections influence individual cell function and overall protein production.

(Phys.org) —Inventor Nikola Tesla imagined the technology to transmit energy through thin air almost a century ago, but experimental attempts at the feat have so far resulted in cumbersome devices that only work over very small distances. But now, Duke University researchers have demonstrated the feasibility of wireless power transfer using low-frequency magnetic fields over distances much larger than the size of the transmitter and receiver.

Entrepreneurs looking for risk capital to fund growth will need to get to grips with the rise of the angel group, according to the latest research by leading academics into business angel activity. In a joint project undertaken by the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, the growth in the number of managed angel groups signifies a maturing of the angel investment market from a fragmented, anonymous and largely invisible activity in which angels invested on their own or with a few friends to one characterised by formal groups or syndicates of angels investing together

Lithium batteries, with their exceptional ability to store power per a given weight, have been a major focus of research to enable use in everything from portable electronics to electric cars. Now researchers at MIT and Brookhaven National Laboratory have found a whole new avenue for such research: the use of disordered materials, which had generally been considered unsuitable for batteries.

Women are currently underrepresented among speakers at scientific meetings, both in absolute terms and relative to their representation among attendees, but a new study suggests one way to address this deficit. An analysis of 460 scientific symposia to be published in mBio, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology reveals that the inclusion of at least one woman on a convening committee increases the proportion of female speakers by as much as 86% and significantly reduces the likelihood the session would have an all-male list of speakers.

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope (GBT) have discovered a unique stellar system of two white dwarf stars and a superdense neutron star, all packed within a space smaller than Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The closeness of the stars, combined with their nature, has allowed the scientists to make the best measurements yet of the complex gravitational interactions in such a system.

A team of researchers in the Czech Republic has found that dogs can now be added to the list of animals that are able to sense and respond to the Earth’s magnetic field. In their paper published in Frontiers in Zooology, the researchers describe field experiments they conducted that indicated that dogs prefer to defecate while in a North-South stance relative to the Earth’s axis, during times when the magnetic field is calm.

The species historically cited as the most abundant of coral algae that forms rodoliths at the Gulf of California in Mexico is in reality a compound of five different species. This finding was made by Jazmín Hernández Kantun, marine biologist at the Autonomous University of South Baja California (UABCS), resulting in a change of paradigm in the study of the species known as Lithophyllum margaritae.

(Phys.org) —In a maze of blindingly complex reactions that snap oxygen atoms off cellulose or other bio-sources to create energy-dense fuel, the starting molecule’s size has a curious effect. If the oxygen-rich molecule is too short to comfortably stretch to a catalyst’s active site, oxygen atoms are split from its hydrocarbon chain instead of staying together as happens when the molecule can reach across, according to scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Baylor University.

A group of researchers led by Hendrik Bolink of the Institut de Ciència Molecular (ICMol) of the Scientific Park of the University of Valencia has developed a thin film low cost photovoltaic device with high power conversion efficiency. The results of this work, done in collaboration with researchers of École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, were published in the scientific magazine Nature Photonics.