NEWS RELEASES

A new shortcut can help engineers design leak-proof magnetic confinement systems for fusion reactors 10 times as fast as the gold standard method, without sacrificing accuracy. While several other big challenges remain for all magnetic fusion designs, this advance addresses the biggest challenge that’s specific to a type of fusion reactor first proposed in the 1950s, called a stellarator.

By using antibodies from a human donor with a self-induced hyper-immunity to snake venom, scientists have developed the most broadly effective antivenom to date, which is protective against the likes of the black mamba, king cobra, and tiger snakes in mouse trials. Described May 2 in the Cell Press journal Cell, the antivenom combines protective antibodies and a small molecule inhibitor and opens a path toward a universal antiserum.

Scientists at Columbia Engineering have created a machine learning algorithm that can observe the pattern produced by nanocrystals to infer the material’s atomic structure, as described in a new study published in Nature Materials.

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), Caltech, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (which is managed by Caltech), and other collaborating institutions have developed a novel high-energy particle detection instrumentation approach that leverages the power of quantum sensors—devices capable of precisely detecting single particles.

Switchgrass has gripped Midwestern soils for millions of years, but soon, the earthbound prairie grass could fly. New studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign identify economic and environmental considerations that make switchgrass a candidate for sustainable aviation fuel.  

Farmers apply nitrogen fertilizers to crops to boost yields, feeding more people and livestock. But when there’s more fertilizer than the crop can take up, some of the excess can be converted into gaseous forms, including nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that traps nearly 300 times as much heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. About 70% of human-caused nitrous oxide comes from agricultural soils, so it’s vital to find ways to curb those emissions.

In a major breakthrough, a team at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) found a new way to acccelerate plant bioengineering using robots. Researchers deployed a biofoundry – a laboratory integrating robotics, computer-aided design, and informatics – to make genetically engineered plants and used it to boost oil production in plant cells and whole plants. This fast, automated, scalable, high-throughput pipeline for plant bioengineering, or FAST-PB, can help scientists quickly improve valuable plant traits, such as increased oil production or photosynthesis, to build better bioenergy crops.