To protect against rising sea levels in a warming world, coastal cities typically follow a standard playbook with various protective infrastructure options. For example, a seawall could be designed based on the latest climate projections, with the city officials then computing its cost-benefit ratio and proceeding to build, accordingly. The problem? Future climate conditions might differ substantially from the used projections, according to Ashmita Bhattacharya, a civil engineering doctoral student at Penn State and first author of a study published in Nature Communications by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh.

A new way to deliver disease-fighting proteins throughout the brain may improve the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological disorders, according to University of California, Irvine scientists. By engineering human immune cells called microglia, the researchers have created living cellular “couriers” capable of responding to brain pathology and releasing therapeutic agents exactly where needed.