For many cancer patients, side effects from radiation can be debilitating. But a new way of delivering radiation treatment has proven effective at eliminating a hard-to-treat cancer with the only side effect being light skin discoloration, even nine months after treatment. This new treatment, step-and-shoot proton arc therapy, is the first to be used by physicians and scientists to treat a patient at Corewell Health William Beaumont University Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan.

A new review paper in Engineering delves into silicon carbide (SiC)-based pressure sensors. SiC, a third-generation semiconductor, shows great potential for high-temperature applications. The report covers SiC’s material properties, key technologies in sensor development like piezoresistive effect, ohmic contact, etching, and packaging, along with future research directions.

In the realm of smart manufacturing and digital engineering, a new technology named Data-Model Fusion (DMF) is gaining traction. A review paper in Engineering details how DMF integrates model-based and data-driven methods, addresses their limitations, and finds applications across the product lifecycle. It also explores DMF’s future directions, showing its potential to reshape industrial processes.

In a recent study published in Engineering, researchers from Xi’an Jiaotong University have developed a self-adaptive core-shell dry adhesive with a “live core”. This new adhesive addresses the long-standing issue of weak adhesion under non-parallel contact in engineering operations, offering improved performance and potential applications in various fields such as robotic gripping and optical component assembly.

A new research facility at Concordia University will examine the gambling industry’s embrace of the digital revolution.

Housed on the university’s Sir George Williams Campus, the Collaboratoire pour les études des jeux de hasard et d’argent numériques connectés (CHANCE) is a space for researchers to examine the social aspects of gambling behaviour — in particular, the ways in which gamblers interact with their environment and with each other. As a collaboratory, the space is designed to serve both as a laboratory where experiments can be conducted and as a collaborative area where different partners can gather to exchange information, ideas and knowledge.

South Africa is slowly lifting out of the water – by up to two millimeters per year depending on the region. It had been assumed up to now that this phenomenon was due to mantle flow in the Earth’s crust. However, a study carried out by the University of Bonn now provides another explanation: Droughts and the associated water loss are the main reason for this land uplift. The results have now been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.

If the protein TDP-43 is defective inside a nerve cell it can form neurotoxic aggregates, which are the cause of the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Nerve cells are also damaged by TDP-43 in Alzheimer's dementia. A research team led by Goethe University has now succeeded in preventing these aggregates by manipulating the protein so that it is transported to the cell's own repair system. The study was carried out as part of the Cluster4Future PROXIDRUGS. The cluster is researching a new class of drugs that reprogram cellular systems to render disease-relevant proteins harmless.