Researchers at the University of California San Diego and Case Western Reserve University have taken a step toward that goal. They discovered that a biological nanoparticle—a plant virus—is capable of delivering pesticide molecules deeper below the ground, to places that are normally beyond their reach.

The work could help farmers better manage difficult pests, like parasitic nematodes that wreak havoc on plant roots deep in the soil, with less pesticide. The work is published May 20 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

A relatively simple process could help turn the tide of climate change while also turning a healthy profit. That’s one of the hopeful visions outlined in a new Stanford-led paper that highlights a seemingly counterintuitive solution: converting one greenhouse gas into another.

The study, published in Nature Sustainability on May 20, describes a potential process for converting the extremely potent greenhouse gas methane into carbon dioxide, which is a much less potent driver of global warming. The idea of intentionally releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere may seem surprising, but the authors argue that swapping methane for carbon dioxide is a significant net benefit for the climate.

Several years ago, MIT neuroscientists showed that they could dramatically reduce the amyloid plaques seen in mice with Alzheimer’s disease simply by exposing the animals to light flickering at a specific frequency.

In a new study, the researchers have found that this treatment has widespread effects at the cellular level, and it helps not just neurons but also immune cells called microglia. Overall, these effects reduce inflammation, enhance synaptic function, and protect against cell death, in mice that are genetically programmed to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

“It seems that neurodegeneration is largely prevented,” says Li-Huei Tsai, the director of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the senior author of the study.

Most human cells have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Any deviation from this number can be fatal for cells, and several genetic disorders, such as Down syndrome, are caused by abnormal numbers of chromosomes.

For decades, biologists have also known that cancer cells often have too few or too many copies of some chromosomes, a state known as aneuploidy. In a new study of prostate cancer, researchers have found that higher levels of aneuploidy lead to much greater lethality risk among patients.

The findings suggest a possible way to more accurately predict patients’ prognosis, and could be used to alert doctors which patients might need to be treated more aggressively, says Angelika Amon, the Kathleen and Curtis Marble Professor in Cancer Research in the Department of Biology and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.

Many mutations in DNA that contribute to disease are not in actual genes but instead lie in the 99% of the genome once considered “junk.” Even though scientists have recently come to understand that these vast stretches of DNA do in fact play critical roles, deciphering these effects on a wide scale has been impossible until now.

Using artificial intelligence, a Princeton University-led team has decoded the functional impact of such mutations in people with autism. The researchers believe this powerful method is generally applicable to discovering such genetic contributions to any disease.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) affects an estimated one in 59 people in the United States, causing a variety of difficulties with social communication and repetitive behavior. Many factors, including genetic and environmental effects, are believed to influence symptoms, and there are no approved treatments. Now, using mouse models, Caltech researchers have discovered that gut bacteria directly contribute to autism-like behaviors in mice.

The work was done primarily in the laboratory of Sarkis Mazmanian, Luis B. and Nelly Soux Professor of Microbiology and Heritage Medical Research Institute (HMRI) Investigator. A paper describing the research appears online in the journal Cell on May 30.

UCLA bioengineers and their colleagues have developed a new type of insulin that could help prevent hypoglycemia in people who use the drug to manage diabetes.

The treatment is being evaluated for potential clinical trials and, if successful, could change diabetes care. The study  was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Insulin is a hormone naturally produced in the pancreas. It helps the body regulate glucose, which is consumed through food and provides the body with energy.

Chemical electricity is how we move, think, and remember.

And increasingly, as technology miniaturises and computer power multiplies, it’s how we are treating chronic illness.

Since the fully implantable pacemaker was developed in the 1950s to keep a patient’s heart beating in rhythm using electrical impulses, engineers have now gone on to develop devices that can be implanted directly in the brain, under the scalp, or even inside blood vessels to treat diseases and disorders like Parkinson’s and epilepsy, as well as mental illnesses and paralysis.

Blood diseases such as leukemia and lymphoma are currently treated with bone marrow transplants — a transfer of blood stem cells from a healthy person to a patient in need. But the demand for patient-matched blood stem cells far exceeds their availability, and many patients go without. To bypass the need for donations, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers are using zebrafish and human cells to determine how to grow blood stem cells in a laboratory dish.

Whether it’s humans or zebrafish, a major player driving embryonic and blood cell development is the Wnt family of molecules. These molecules tell cells what to do by docking on Frizzled receptors, which sit on cell surfaces like antennae.

In their latest study, published May 20, 2019 by Nature Cell Biology, the team was surprised to discover that when one particular Wnt signaling molecule, Wnt9a, is received by blood stem cells, three different molecules are involved. Scientist had previously thought there were only two.

BU neuroscientist shows that stimulating different parts of the brain can dial up or down a specific memory’s emotional oomph

What if scientists could manipulate your brain so that a traumatic memory lost its emotional power over your psyche? Steve Ramirez (CAS’10), a Boston University neuroscientist fascinated by memory, believes that a small structure in the brain could hold the keys to future therapeutic techniques for treating depression, anxiety, and PTSD, someday allowing clinicians to enhance positive memories or suppress negative ones.

Polymers are usually the go-to material for thermal insulation. Think of a silicone oven mitt, or a Styrofoam coffee cup, both manufactured from polymer materials that are excellent at trapping heat.

Now MIT engineers have flipped the picture of the standard polymer insulator, by fabricating thin polymer films that conduct heat — an ability normally associated with metals. In experiments, they found the films, which are thinner than plastic wrap, conduct heat better than ceramics and many metals, including steel.

MIT researchers have designed a way to generate, at room temperature, more single photons for carrying quantum information. The design, they say, holds promise for the development of practical quantum computers.

Quantum emitters generate photons that can be detected one at a time. Consumer quantum computers and devices could potentially leverage certain properties of those photons as quantum bits (“qubits”) to execute computations. While classical computers process and store information in bits of either 0s or 1s, qubits can be 0 and 1 simultaneously. That means quantum computers could potentially solve problems that are intractable for classical computers.

Baking soda, table salt, and detergent are surprisingly effective ingredients for cooking up carbon nanotubes, researchers at MIT have found.

In a study published this week in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the team reports that sodium-containing compounds found in common household ingredients are able to catalyze the growth of carbon nanotubes, or CNTs, at much lower temperatures than traditional catalysts require.

The researchers say that sodium may make it possible for carbon nanotubes to be grown on a host of lower-temperature materials, such as polymers, which normally melt under the high temperatures needed for traditional CNT growth

Wearing a sensor-packed glove while handling a variety of objects, MIT researchers have compiled a massive dataset that enables an AI system to recognize objects through touch alone. The information could be leveraged to help robots identify and manipulate objects, and may aid in prosthetics design.

The researchers developed a low-cost knitted glove, called “scalable tactile glove” (STAG), equipped with about 550 tiny sensors across nearly the entire hand. Each sensor captures pressure signals as humans interact with objects in various ways. A neural network processes the signals to “learn” a dataset of pressure-signal patterns related to specific objects. Then, the system uses that dataset to classify the objects and predict their weights by feel alone, with no visual input needed.

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) demonstrated a laser that can emit microwaves wirelessly, modulate them, and receive external radio frequency signals.

“The research opens the door to new types of hybrid electronic-photonic devices and is the first step toward ultra-high-speed Wi-Fi,” said Federico Capasso, the Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering at SEAS and senior author of the study.

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a wearable patch that could provide personalized cooling and heating at home, work, or on the go. The soft, stretchy patch cools or warms a user’s skin to a comfortable temperature and keeps it there as the ambient temperature changes. It is powered by a flexible, stretchable battery pack and can be embedded in clothing. Researchers say wearing it could help save energy on air conditioning and heating.

The work is published May 17 in the journal Science Advances.

Researchers have built a more efficient, more reliable potassium-oxygen battery, a step toward a potential solution for energy storage on the nation’s power grid and longer-lasting batteries in cell phones and laptops.

In a study published in the journal Batteries and Supercaps, researchers from The Ohio State University detailed their findings centering around the construction of the battery’s cathode, which stores the energy produced by a chemical reaction in a metal-oxygen or metal-air battery. The finding, the researchers say, could make renewable energy sources like solar and wind more viable options for the power grid through cheaper, more efficient energy storage.

A 5,000-year-old toy still enjoyed by kids today has inspired an inexpensive, hand-powered scientific tool that could not only impact how field biologists conduct their research but also allow high-school students and others with limited resources to realize their own state-of-the-art experiments. 

The device, a portable centrifuge for preparing scientific samples including DNA, is reported May 21 in the journal PLOS Biology. The co-first author of the paper is Gaurav Byagathvalli, a senior at Lambert High School in Georgia. His colleagues are M. Saad Bhamla, an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology; Soham Sinha, a Georgia Tech undergraduate; Janet Standeven, Byagathvalli’s biology teacher at Lambert; and Aaron F. Pomerantz, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley.