A multi-institutional study led by the University of California, Davis, finds that living in urban areas with a higher percentage of visible trees is associated with a 4% decrease in cardiovascular disease. By comparison, living in urban areas with a higher percentage of grass was associated with a 6% increase in cardiovascular disease. Likewise, a higher rate of other types of green space, like bushes or shrubs, was associated with a 3% increase in cardiovascular disease. The new research was published in Environmental Epidemiology.

NYU Abu Dhabi researchers discover the first organic crystalline material that not only remains flexible, but can also self-heal after damage at temperatures where most polymer materials become brittle and fail.

University of Warwick-led study shows how tabletop devices could uncover the fundamental texture of the universe.

The University of Bonn has opened its own supermarket, in which pineapples, canned tomatoes, and toast are neatly lined up on black shelves. The space measuring 55 square meters (approx. 600 square feet) has pretty much everything you’d need in everyday life. The ‘clientele’, however, is very special: they are subjects participating in scientific studies. Here, researchers from the fields of food and resource economics, psychology, economics, and behavioral science are investigating how health- and sustainability-oriented purchases can be encouraged, for example, through product placement and other incentives. Robots are also demonstrating their capabilities here. 

At Frontiers Science House, SPARK Microgravity GmbH revealed plans to build Europe’s first dedicated commercial orbital cancer lab. The lab will accelerate the path from discovery to therapy. In microgravity, researchers can run experiments that are impossible on Earth – including 3D tumor growth and revealing new drug targets.

To overcome the lack of wavelength-selective extraction in existing on-chip metasurfaces, Chinese scientists developed a novel approach by leveraging a nonlocal on-chip design based on symmetry-broken quasi-bound states in the continuum (q-BICs) physics, enabling precise wavelength-selective extraction and color routing of guided waves. Beyond free-space spatial-multiplexing schemes, these on-chip cascaded-multiplexing architectures achieve a significant improvement in the energy utilization efficiency, offering a new pathway for high-efficiency spectral control and routing on chip-integrated metadevices.