Six months after receiving a groundbreaking, experimental new surgery for spina bifida at UTHealth Houston, Nova continues to flourish. 

Wild food systems comprise of a diverse array of naturally occurring foods and medicines that help meet key nutritional and cultural needs for billions of people around the world. In Alaska, wild foods, and the public forests that support them, include a vast assortment of species—some of which may immediately come to mind when you think of a “forest”—such as deer, berries, and mushrooms. Others, like salmon, halibut, and crab, may not immediately come to mind as being forest-related species, but it’s important to think of national forests and their surrounding areas as interconnected landscapes. 

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have provided the first comprehensive analysis of the specific costs of power outages to local customers across the nation. It found that the average yearly cost of major outages topped $67 billion over the past seven years.

The total annual burden on customers rose sharply over that time, with the price tag of major outages climbing to $121 billion in 2024. These power disruptions pose serious risks to public health and safety and drain billions of dollars from the U.S. economy.

Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT, President Young-Kuk Lee) announced that it has officially launched a research equipment training program for Uzbekistan researchers under a grant aid project supported by the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA). The opening ceremony was held on February 23 at KRICT’s Didimdol Plaza, marking the start of the full-scale capacity-building program.

An AI image-generation model that will bring high-quality, private image creation to Lenovo’s upcoming on-device AI has been developed by researchers at the University of Surrey’s Institute for People-Centred AI in collaboration with artificial intelligence company Stability AI. The technology, called Stable Diffusion 3.5 Flash (SD3.5-Flash), enables fast, unlimited text-to-image creation to run directly on consumer devices without relying on cloud connection. 

An international science team used supercomputer simulations to model forest population dynamics of tree diversity in tropical forests. The researchers hope their work will help support forest management efforts and aid in conservation. 

The University of Utah’s StrokeNet is the Mountain West’s only pipeline for cutting-edge stroke trials, ensuring patients in rural and remote areas have access to the latest treatments.

University of Staffordshire students have been on a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ trip to learn about the role of forensics in combating wildlife crime.

 

13 (Hons) Forensic Science and BSc (Hons) Forensic Investigation students travelled to the Wildlife Forensic Academy (WFA) in South Africa, where they received specialised training in wildlife forensics to address crimes such as poaching and illegal animal trading.

 

Through lectures, practical sessions and field trips, the group learned about the current global scale of wildlife crime and how to manage, document and recover evidence from crime scenes. Several students also had the opportunity to work on a real case with the WFA’s Dr Greg Simpson and University lecturer Professor Claire Gwinnett.