Increases in women’s average life expectancy have slowed
Mexico’s staggering homicide rate has taken a toll on the mortality rate for men — and it could be even worse than the statistics indicate, a new study from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health suggests. (more…)
Berkeley Lab Researchers Discover New Rules for Single-Particle Imaging with Light-Emitting Nanocrystals
The term a “brighter future” might be a cliché, but in the case of ultra-small probes for lighting up individual proteins, it is now most appropriate. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered surprising new rules for creating ultra-bright light-emitting crystals that are less than 10 nanometers in diameter. These ultra-tiny but ultra-bright nanoprobes should be a big asset for biological imaging, especially deep-tissue optical imaging of neurons in the brain.
Working at the Molecular Foundry, a DOE national nanoscience center hosted at Berkeley Lab, a multidisciplinary team of researchers led by James Schuck and Bruce Cohen, both with Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division, used advanced single-particle characterization and theoretical modeling to study what are known as “upconverting nanoparticles” or UCNPs. Upconversion is the process by which a molecule absorbs two or more photons at a lower energy and emits them at higher energies. The research team determined that the rules governing the design of UCNP probes for ensembles of molecules do not apply to UCNP probes designed for single-molecules. (more…)
