Top Science: new antimicrobials, and applying Physics to finance

Here are some of the most interesting research works from the field of science that were in the news over the last week

New antimicrobials

Published in Nature

Two new synthetic compounds that can kill methicillin-resistant S. aureus(MRSA), have been created. MRSA, a bacteria that causes many infections in humans, is multi-drug resistant and current antibiotics are not able to kill it. The two new compounds, which were able to destroy both thriving and dormant MRSA, could soon become a new class of antimicrobials for the treatment of difficult-to-cure infections.

The two new compounds were able to destroy both thriving and dormant MRSA

 

Hide even from infrared cameras

Published in Science

A new coating that can hide objects from infrared cameras has been developed. The researchers behind the project say that it can be used to camouflage troops or even sprayed on emergency shelters. Made of aluminium, plastic, and sticky tape, the material can change its infrared reflectivity in response to an external force, thus hiding it from tools like thermal-vision cameras that sense infrared wavelengths.

Hiding pain with hunger

Published in Cell

Researchers studied the nerve signals corresponding to hunger and different pain in mice

 

A new study has shown how hunger can suppress certain types of pain. Researchers studied the nerve signals corresponding to hunger and different pain in mice, and found that hunger suppresses inflammatory pain but leaves responses to acute pain intact. This might be helpful for mice to search for food in spite of pain. This study can also help decode the competing nerve signals of pain and hunger, which are two crucial factors of survival for any species.

AI makes chemicals

Published in Nature

Recently, an AI entity called “AlphaGo” defeated humans in a complex Chinese board game called 'GO'. Scientists have now reported that this software, which uses multiple deep-learning networks, can be used to plan tough and complex chemical syntheses in organic chemistry called retrosynthesis. Computer-aided retrosynthesis was done using the Monte Carlo tree search heuristic and AI which were trained on all reactions ever published in organic chemistry.

The Chinese board game ‘Go’ is complex with more configurations possible than there are atoms in the universe.

 

Physics in finance

Published in Physical Review Letters

The ups and downs in the financial markets can be compared to the Brownian motion, the random movement of particles in a fluid. Physicists now report that the market trend can be studied by applying the kinetic theory approach used to study particles in physics.