Johns Hopkins University engineers have created robots the size of a pencil tip intended to travel through the body to deliver medicine to infections inside a beating heart.

The bots, designed to replace risky open-heart surgery and ineffective IV-drug therapy to treat life-threatening heart infections, could also be used to less invasively and more precisely treat other hard-to-reach diseases including cancer.

Background: Scabies, caused by the mite Sarcoptes scabiei, affects more than 200 million people at any one time and can be complicated by severe secondary bacterial disease. The same mite causes sarcoptic mange in companion animals, livestock and wildlife. Population-scale nuclear genomic data spanning diverse hosts and geographical regions remain limited.

Methods: We generated whole-genome sequence data for 106 S. scabiei samples and incorporated 19 publicly available datasets from humans, companion animals, livestock and wildlife. After quality filtering, 83 of 125 sample-level datasets were retained. We assessed ancestry, phylogenetic relationships, nucleotide diversity, genetic differentiation, gene-level variation and candidate selection signals.

Results: We identified 1,568,031 filter-passing nuclear variants, including 698,136 single-nucleotide polymorphisms; sample-level heterozygosity estimates ranged from 0.27% to 11%. ADMIXTURE, principal component and phylogenetic analyses supported seven ancestry clusters broadly corresponding to host-associated groups, with pairwise fixation-index estimates ranging from 0.22 to 0.92. Multi-metric analysis identified 1,600 candidate selection blocks – eight hard-sweep, 486 soft-sweep and 1,106 ancient-adaptation blocks – and six conserved low-diversity blocks. Variable genes showed nominal enrichment for DNA repair, cell adhesion and signalling, whereas invariable genes showed nominal enrichment for ribosomal function, oxidative phosphorylation and mitochondrial processes.

Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) following successful cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is the principal determinant of patient outcomes after cardiac arrest. We performed a comprehensive analysis of clinical data from 44,535 patients with HIE following CPR between 2020 and 2021 across 31 provinces in China. Notable regional variations in both incidence and mortality rates were observed across China. Mortality was significantly higher among patients with multiple comorbidities, complications, use of invasive interventions, delayed tracheotomy, and blood transfusion.

Suicidal ideation can involve interconnected psychological processes. Researchers from Pusan National University examined 2,018 adults across Italy, Korea, the UK, and the US to map psychosocial networks related to suicidal ideation. Perceived burdensomeness showed the strongest direct association with suicidal ideation, while defeat and internal entrapment were among the most central factors in the broader network.