Researchers have designed a low-cost, energy-efficient robotic hand that can grasp a range of objects – and not drop them – using just the movement of its wrist and the feeling in its ‘skin’.   Grasping objects of different sizes, shapes and textures is a problem that is easy for a human, but challenging for a robot. Researchers from the University of Cambridge designed a soft, 3D printed robotic hand that cannot independently move its fingers but can still carry out a range of complex movements. The robot hand was trained to ...

An extreme closeup of feathers from a bird with an uncanny ability to hold water while it flies could inspire the next generation of absorbent materials. With high resolution microscopes and 3D technology, researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology captured an unprecedented view of feathers from the desert-dwelling sandgrouse, showcasing the singular architecture of their feathers and revealing for the first time how they can hold so much water. “It’s super fascinating to see how nature managed to create structures so perfectly efficient to take ...

Time-restricted fasting diets could cause fertility problems according to new research from the University of East Anglia. A new study published today shows that time-restricted fasting affects reproduction differently in male and female zebrafish. Importantly, some of the negative effects on eggs and sperm quality can be seen after the fish returned to their normal levels of food consumption. The research team say that while the study was conducted in fish, their findings highlight the importance of considering not just the effect of fasting on weight and health, but also on fertility. Prof Alexei Maklakov, from UEA’s School of Biological Sciences, said: “Time-restricted ...

Many birds’ feathers are remarkably efficient at shedding water — so much so that “like water off a duck’s back” is a common expression. Much more unusual are the belly feathers of the sandgrouse, especially Namaqua sandgrouse, which absorb and retain water so efficiently the male birds can fly more than 20 kilometers from a distant watering hole back to the nest and still retain enough water in their feathers for the chicks to drink and sustain themselves in the searing deserts ...

A team from the Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan has uncovered new information about how microglia, the resident immune cells in the brain, colonize the brain during the embryonic stage of development. Although erythromyeloid progenitors (EMPs) were previously thought to divide into either microglia or macrophages, the group found that macrophages that enter the brain primordium —the brain in its earliest recognizable stage of development— can become microglia at later stages of development. These findings demonstrate the plasticity of these ...

High levels of the body’s own cannabinoid substances protect against developing addiction in individuals previously exposed to childhood maltreatment, according to a new study from Linköping University in Sweden. The brains of those who had not developed an addiction following childhood maltreatment seem to process emotion-related social signals better. Childhood maltreatment has long been suspected to increase the risk of developing a drug or alcohol addiction later in life. Researchers at Linköping University have previously shown that this risk is three times higher if you have been exposed to childhood maltreatment ...

New research from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute) has found that pregnant women display a strong immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection, comparable to that of non-pregnant women.  Published in JCI Insight, the study looked at the immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 in unvaccinated pregnant and non-pregnant women and found similar levels of antibodies and T and B cell responses, responsible for long-term protection. Lead author of the paper, University of ...

ARLINGTON, Va. (April 12, 2023) — Five medical organizations say it is essential that hospitals establish antimicrobial stewardship programs to prevent Clostridioides difficile (C. difficile) infections. These infections, linked to antibiotic use, cause difficult-to-treat diarrhea, longer hospital stays, and higher costs. C. difficile infections are fatal for more than 12,000 people in the United States each year. Strategies to Prevent Clostridioides difficile Infections in Acute Care Hospitals: 2022 Update, gives evidence-based, ...

LA JOLLA—(April 12, 2023) Brains are like puzzles, requiring many nested and codependent pieces to function well. The brain is divided into areas, each containing many millions of neurons connected across thousands of synapses. These synapses, which enable communication between neurons, depend on even smaller structures: message-sending boutons (swollen bulbs at the branch-like tips of neurons), message-receiving dendrites (complementary branch-like structures for receiving bouton messages), and power-generating mitochondria. To create a cohesive brain, all these pieces must be accounted for. However, in the aging brain, these ...

A new study shows promise for reducing risky drinking among Army National Guard members over the long term, potentially improving their health and readiness to serve. The number of days each month that Guard members said they had been binge-drinking dropped by up to half, according to the new findings by a University of Michigan team published in the journal Addiction. The drop happened over the course of a year among Guard members who did multiple brief online education sessions designed for members of the military, and among those who did an initial online education session followed by supportive ...

WASHINGTON — Throughout the Arctic, fallen trees make their way from forests to the ocean by way of rivers. Those logs can stack up as the river twists and turns, resulting in long-term carbon storage. A new study has mapped the largest known woody deposit, covering 51 square kilometers (20 square miles) of the Mackenzie River Delta in Nunavut, Canada, and calculated that the logs store about 3.4 million tons (about 3.1 million metric tons) of carbon. “To put that in perspective, that’s about two and a half million ...

According to Bening Mayanti's doctoral dissertation at the University of Vaasa, the use of life cycle assessment combined with economic models can help companies to take steps toward the circular economy. – We often hear claims about some solutions being circular, sustainable, or green. Instead of blindly accepting those claims, we should ask justifications, ‘How so?’ says Mayanti, who publicly defended her dissertation on Wednesday, 5 April. Before deciding on circular economy solutions and building supply chains, it is worth doing a careful analysis. ...

A new perspective published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology uncovers a previously unknown biochemical recycling process in animals. The authors review a flurry of recent papers demonstrating that animals extensively recycle biochemical waste to produce novel chemicals that play key roles in biology, from regulating behavior to development and aging. These studies show that the genes previously thought to code for carboxylesterases, enzymes that hydrolyze esters, actually play a pivotal role in assembling a wide range of new metabolites from building blocks generally considered “cellular waste.” Surprisingly, the so-called carboxylesterases were found to contribute ...

Global supply chains are immense feats of technological and organizational sophistication. They are also, as the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic showed, vulnerable to unexpected developments. Will that change as artificial intelligence becomes a bigger part of supply chains? And what will happen to workers in the process?  MIT Professor Yossi Sheffi explores these topics in a new book, “The Magic Conveyor Belt: AI, Supply Chains, and the Future of Work,” published by MIT’s CTL Media. Sheffi, the Elisha Gray II Professor of Engineering ...

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have developed an online resource to help consumers understand the electric vehicle tax credits available through the Inflation Reduction Act. Located on the Department of Energy’s fueleconomy.gov website, the tool shows eligible vehicle models along with the corresponding federal tax credit. The new clean vehicle tax credit is for purchases of all-electric, plug-in hybrid electric and fuel cell electric vehicles in 2023 and beyond. A separate credit is available for eligible used vehicles purchased in 2023 or after. Information on credits for vehicles purchased before ...

“To our knowledge, this is the first functional study of POLDIP2 in retinal cells to understand its potential role in AMD.” BUFFALO, NY- April 11, 2023 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 6, entitled, “Knockout of AMD-associated gene POLDIP2 reduces mitochondrial superoxide in human retinal pigment epithelial cells.” Genetic and epidemiologic studies have significantly advanced our ...

Every year, norovirus causes hundreds of millions of cases of food poisoning — and the deaths of at least 50,000 children — yet there exists no real way to control it. The virus has proven exceptionally difficult to study in the lab, and scientists have struggled to develop effective vaccines and drugs. A new study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis describes a creative way to make a vaccine against norovirus by piggybacking on the highly effective vaccines for rotavirus, an unrelated virus that also causes diarrhea. The ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – The demand for battery-grade lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and platinum will climb steeply as vehicle electrification speeds up and nations work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through mid-century. This surge in demand will also create a variety of economic and supply-chain problems, according to new Cornell University research published in Nature Communications. In the new paper, senior author Fengqi You, professor in energy systems engineering, and his colleagues examined 48 countries that are committed to playing a strong role in electrifying transportation, including the U.S., China and India. Under ...

As announced today in a press release by biotechnology company Treventis, global pharmaceutical company Takeda has agreed to exclusively license a group of small molecules that target tau – a protein in which misfolding and aggregation are believed to be a cause of Alzheimer’s disease. The molecules were developed by the team at Treventis, building upon the Alzheimer’s & neurodegenerative research expertise of Dr. Donald Weaver’s lab at UHN.  “There are currently no effective drugs out there that target tau in the brain,” says Dr. Donald Weaver, Senior ...

New York, NY (April 11, 2023) – A study led by Mount Sinai researchers Dr. Bin Zhang, the Willard T.C. Johnson Research Professor of Neurogenetics, and Dr. Christian Forst, an Associate Professor in the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, have identified potential novel receptors for SARS-CoV-2 and unveiled their tissue-specific and age-dependent expression. The findings were published on March 23 in the Federation of European Biochemical Societies Letters. The study's multiscale network analysis suggests that SARS-CoV-2 utilizes multiple novel receptors, such as the TYOBP receptor CD300e, to facilitate ...

North Carolina State University researchers have shown that adding a small amount of a chemical used in perfumes – nonanal – to a two-chemical combination of other sex pheromones helped increase the cocktail’s effectiveness in mimicking female fall armyworm “come hither” calls to males.  The findings could eventually help farmers better detect, monitor and control fall armyworm populations, which negatively affect some 350 plant species – including crops like corn and cotton as well as turfgrass and other cultivated grasses.  “Nonanal is emitted ...

Pests and diseases may reduce global wheat yields by over 20%. A study published April 11th in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Sergio Latorre at University College London, UK and colleagues suggest that genomic surveillance may be an effective disease management tool with the ability to trace lineages of emerging crop diseases, and to identify genetic traits for breeding disease-resistant lines. Wheat crops across the globe are threatened by wheat blast, an emerging fungal disease. However, disease-management strategies have been unsuccessful. In order to better understand ...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- A Cornell multidisciplinary research center that studies chronic fatigue syndrome has received a five-year, $9.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease – funding that will enable experts from disparate fields to work together on the mysterious and debilitating condition. The Cornell Center for Enervating Neuroimmune Disease, established in 2017, ultimately seeks to understand the biological ...

New Haven, Conn. — Omicron subvariants of SARS-CoV-2 — the virus behind COVID-19 — have shown an uncanny knack for evading antibodies produced either by vaccines or exposure to earlier versions of the virus, leading to many breakthrough infections. However, in order to sicken people, these viral variants must also avoid “killer” T cells, immune cells that are unleashed when the immune system detects foreign pathogens. A new Yale study published April 10 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals new insights into how these Omicron variants are able to avoid destruction by these T cells. For the study, ...

At a glance Dragana Rogulja is using fruit flies and mice to explore tantalizing questions about sleep. Her research delves into why sleep is necessary for survival, and how the sleeping brain disconnects from the world. Rogulja’s research has identified a critical connection between the brain and the gut. If translated into humans, the results of her work could lead to new ways for improving sleep and reducing damage from sleep deprivation. Sleep is one of the most essential human activities — so essential, in fact, that if we don’t get enough sleep for even one ...