MIT engineers designed an ultrasound wristband that precisely tracks a wearer’s hand movements in real time and communicates the information to a robot or a virtual environment. 

Natural yeasts ferment anything sugary, including fruit, flower nectar and sugar water in a hummingbird feeder. In the first study to analyze the ethanol content of nectar in a range of species, UC Berkeley biologists fought off the birds and bees to collect samples. Nearly all contained ethanol. Hummingbirds can sip up to twice their weight in nectar daily, which could provide a dose equivalent to a standard alcoholic drink for a human.

A team of researchers led by the University of Pittsburgh demonstrated a programmable superconducting diode at the LaAlO3/KTaO3 (LAO/KTO) interface as the result of usiung conductive atomic force microscope (c-AFM) lithography.

A new study shows that contributions from both highly and casually active citizen scientists can be equally valuable and — in some cases — even complement each other.

Insects are cold-blooded, so they cannot survive extreme temperatures. Snow flies, however, remain active in below-freezing weather. New research shows these flies counteract cold with a combination of strategies. Snow flies also are less sensitive to pain associated with extreme cold. Study is the first to sequence the snow fly’s genome.

Penn Engineers have redesigned a key component of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), the delivery vehicles used in mRNA vaccines, to steer mRNA toward lymph nodes while reducing off-target accumulation in the liver. The modified “aroLNPs” delivered at least tenfold less mRNA to the liver than the lipid used in the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, while preserving strong immune responses. The advance could enable more precise, lower-dose vaccines and expand the potential of mRNA therapies for cancer and autoimmune disease.

A new study by UW–Madison geoscientists, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the obliquity cycle — a 40,000-year astronomical cycle tied to changes in Earth’s axial tilt — influenced ocean productivity in subtropical latitudes about 34 million years ago when the Antarctic ice sheet was first expanding.

A new Rice study reports an unusual quantum coherence of phonons in cubic boron arsenide, a semiconductor with promising electronic and thermal properties.

Scientists have sequenced the bristlecone pine genome, which could help unlock the secrets of this tree's exceptionally long life. 

In the earliest phase of creating human proteins, the protein complex NAC performs an essential task by starting the first steps towards folding proteins into their correct three-dimensional structures. This discovery was made by an international research team led by scientists from the Center for Molecular Biology of Heidelberg University. They found that the NAC complex binds to the nascent protein building-blocks formed by the ribosome, i.e., the amino acid chains, and initiates the folding that is essential for functional proteins. According to the scientists, the research results provide not only new findings on protein synthesis but also insights into cellular strategies to avoid incorrect folding, which can lead to serious illnesses.