A research paper by scientists at Beijing Institute of Technology presented a steering control strategy for cyborg insects in operant learning training of cockroaches in a T-maze. Cockroaches developed a preference for specific maze channels after only five consecutive sessions of unilateral cercus electrical stimulation and steering behavior induction, achieving a memory score of 83.5%, outperforming traditional punishing training schemes.

A new study in the peer-reviewed journal Human Gene Therapy reports on five patients with a clinical and biochemical diagnosis of Canavan disease, but were previously lacking a genetic diagnosis, in whom a novel variant was identified.

Leadership from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Volkswagen Group of America and Oak Ridge National Laboratory celebrated more than a decade of collaboration and the fifth anniversary of the Volkswagen Innovation Hub Knoxville on April 24. 

Three University of Texas at Arlington faculty members were recognized for their research and creative contributions as part of the faculty research honors. J. Ping Liu, professor of physics, received the University Award for Distinguished Record of Research or Creative Activity. Kyrah Brown, associate professor of kinesiology, and Ben Jones, associate professor of physics, received the University Award for Outstanding Research or Creative Accomplishment.

A study of statewide data on North Carolina high school teachers who teach computer science and their students' learning outcomes suggests that these teachers were better qualified than their peers teaching other subjects, even those at the same schools. Learning outcomes were based on the proportion of students who took advanced placement tests in computer science and their test scores.

Following on from the recent official launch of BGI’s new CycloneSEQ™ is the first independently reviewed benchmarking data. The CycloneSEQ™ platform delivers long-reads using novel nanopore technology. This study tests the performance of a new platform in sequencing diverse microbial genomes and presents both the raw and processed data to allow others to scrutinize and verify the work. To provide further transparency, the peer-reviews, scripts and protocols of this benchmarking process are also included, allowing others to directly assess this new technology. By directly reading  DNA molecules without fragmentation, the analysis demonstrates that CycloneSEQ delivers long-read data with impressive length and accuracy, unlocking gaps that short-read technologies alone cannot bridge. This work has been published in the open-science journal GigaByte.