Nanoplastics are abundant in the environment and substantially impact public health. However, existing knowledge on the effects of nanoplastics on terrestrial plants is inconsistent. The absence of systematic techniques for assessing these impacts restricts the capacity to generalize from recent findings and creates significant procedural barriers. A recent study published in the journal ACS Nano tackles this problem [...]
The vision of Purdue University biomedical engineer Chi Hwan Lee to develop specialized smart soft contact lenses that can accurately measure intraocular pressure (IOP) in a person’s eye could be the latest answer to stopping glaucoma-related blindness. Lee, the Leslie A. Geddes Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering in Purdue’s Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, [...]
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a thin, flexible and stretchy sweat sensor that can show the level of glucose, lactate, sodium, or pH of your sweat, at the press of a finger. It is the first standalone wearable device that allows the sensor to operate independently – without any [...]
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is an airborne disease transmitted via aerosols, which are spread from the oral and nasal cavities—the mouth and the nose. In addition to the well-known division and spread of the virus in the cells of the respiratory tract, SARS-CoV-2 is also known to infect the cells of the [...]
AI-enabled imaging of the retina's network of veins and arteries can accurately predict cardiovascular disease and death, without the need for blood tests or blood pressure measurement, finds research published online in the British Journal of Ophthalmology. As such, it paves the way for a highly effective, non-invasive screening test for people at medium to [...]
Researchers from King's College London have shown that when brain cells are directly exposed to blood taken from COVID-19 patients with delirium, there is an increase in cell death and a decrease in the generation of new brain cells. Delirium represents a state of confusion indicating that, in these patients, the COVID-19 infection had [...]
Bristol-led team uses nanomaterials made from seaweed to create a strong battery separator, paving the way for greener and more efficient energy storage. Sodium-metal batteries (SMBs) are one of the most promising high-energy and low-cost energy storage systems for the next-generation of large-scale applications. However, one of the major impediments to the [...]
Breakthrough medical technology like mRNA vaccines rely on tiny nanoparticles to deliver medicine to cells. A new device will help drug manufacturers and evaluators like the FDA more precisely measure genetic payloads to evaluate drug effectiveness. An important component of the vaccines protecting people against SARS-CoV-2 virus and its variants are lipid nanoparticles, or [...]
A Brazilian study published in the journal PNAS describes some of the effects infection by SARS-CoV-2 can have on the central nervous system. A preliminary version (not yet peer-reviewed) posted in 2020 was one of the first to show that the virus that causes COVID-19 can infect brain cells, especially astrocytes. It also broke new ground [...]
A new drug designed by scientists at Scripps Research can turn the COVID-19 virus into a harbinger of its own doom. The drug, NMT5, described in Nature Chemical Biology on September 29, 2022, coats SARS-CoV-2 with chemicals that can temporarily alter the human ACE2 receptor—the molecule the virus normally latches onto to infect cells. That means [...]
