Classical thermodynamics was born in the first half of the nineteenth century as a response to the industrial revolution’s need for optimised machines, engines and motors. It focused on calculating such quantities as useful work, dissipated energy and efficiency. According to the second law of thermodynamics, mechanical energy can be completely converted into thermal energy but thermal energy cannot be completely converted into mechanical e...

Microglia are the primary immune cells of the central nervous system, with functions similar to those of white blood cells, especially in actively defending the brain and spinal cord. The results of collaborative research by Brazilian and Dutch scientists on the main genes expressed by human microglia have just been published in Nature Neuroscience.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a rapidly progressing neurodegenerative disease that affects motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. “About 90% of patients survive for three to five years following diagnosis,” said Marcondes Cavalcante França, Jr., Head of the Neuromuscular Disease Division of the University of Campinas’s Medical School (FCM-UNICAMP) in São Paulo State, Brazil. Marcondes and his tea...

Of all things that contemporary science is capable of observing in the universe, nothing outperforms the human brain or can even be compared to it in terms of functionality, plasticity and efficiency. The brain is a massively parallel processor of information, consuming an amount of energy on the order of a femtojoules (10-15 J) per synaptic event. As a comparison, an ordinary 100 W bulb consumes one hundred quadrillion times more energy per seco...

A new method for real-time monitoring of magnetic nanoparticles in organs such as the liver has been described by Brazilian researchers in the journal Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine. As the authors explain, this type of nanoparticle has been tested in animal models for the diagnosis and treatment of several diseases, including cancer. Future possibilities for its use include as a drug carrier or as a contrast agent in nuc...

A team of Brazilian scientists may have come up with a practical way of killing off resistant bacteria by targeting them with toxic silver-silica nanoparticles coated with an antibiotic. Since antibiotics don’t have the full punch to eliminate bacteria resistant to them, the researchers instead used the antibiotic ampicillin as a mechanism to deliver the killer nanoparticles to the pathogens.

A biosensor developed by researchers at the LNNano in Campinas, São Paulo State, Brazil, detects molecules associated with neurodegenerative diseases and some types of cancer. The device is basically a single-layer, organic, nanometer-scale transistor on a glass slide. It contains the reduced form of the peptide glutathione (GSH), which reacts in a specific way when it comes into contact with the enzyme glutathione S-transferase (GST), lin...