University of Tennessee Assistant Professor Joshua Baccile has been awarded a Maximizing Investigators’ Research (MIRA) award from the NIH. The MIRA grant, unlike many other grants, is awarded to support a researcher’s collective vision for their lab. Baccile’s lab is focused on investigating the role of five-carbon metabolism in the human body, which could impact long-term health.

A team at Nagoya University in Japan has revealed new insights into the motion of massive stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a small galaxy neighboring the Milky Way. Their findings suggest that the gravitational pull of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the SMC’s larger companion, may be tearing the smaller one apart. This discovery reveals a new pattern in the motion of these stars that could transform our understanding of galaxy evolution and interactions.

A new study in Engineering shows that a biomass-based carbon aerogel named BCA-600 can be used in solar-driven photothermal conversion technology. It can efficiently dehydrate oily sludge and purify oily water, while also having the potential to reduce carbon emissions in the petroleum industry.

When materials are created on a nanometer scale — just a handful of atoms thick — even the thermal energy present at room temperature can cause structural ripples. How these ripples affect the mechanical properties of these thin materials can limit their use in electronics and other key systems. New research from Binghamton University, State University of New York validates theoretical models about how elasticity is scale-dependent — in other words, the elastic properties of a material are not constant, but vary with the size of the piece of material. 

Numerous widely used chemicals induce genetic and epigenetic alterations implicated in various diseases, including cancer. Safety assessment of potential carcinogens is necessary to minimize their hazardous impact. While genotoxicity assays are widely used to evaluate genetic changes, quantification of epigenetic changes requires advanced and expensive sequencing techniques. Researchers from Japan have developed a simple and cost-effective cell-based reporter assay that can quantify chemical-induced epigenetic effects, and enhance the safety evaluation of environmental chemicals.

A paper published in Science Bulletin provides a detailed investigation of a series of six 2D D-A COFs to optimize the compatibility of D and A units for photocatalytic H2O2 synthesis.