Binghamton University, State University of New York will play a key role in a federal grant of up to $42.8 million to develop an implantable device that acts as a living pharmacy to treat inflammatory diseases. Mayo Clinic is the prime site for this groundbreaking research, and researchers at Binghamton will assist with bioengineering the transplanted cells.

Frustrated with a gap of available data science training opportunities for environmental science undergraduate students and instructors, in 2017 Virginia Tech researchers built a new educational program and extended it to other universities.

Dr. Yaqing Jin, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at The University of Texas at Dallas, was recently named an Early-Career Fellow of the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine for his research on offshore wind turbine safety. He is one of five fellows joining the Offshore Energy Safety Track, where their work will focus on contributing to the understanding, management and reduction of systemic risk in offshore energy activities.

Swallows infected with parasites move less and in smaller ranges than healthy ones – with detrimental effects on their foraging success and their survival. As a result, infected individuals foraged in less productive areas, such as cultivated farmland, clearly avoided by their healthy conspecifics. Although infected swallows show no externally recognisable signs of infection, scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) and the University of Potsdam now demonstrate the negative effects of these infections using the high-resolution tracking system ATLAS. This system records precise position data of swallows at intervals of one second using ultra-light transmitters. The results were published in the journal “Communications Biology”.

Studying synapses in live human brains is crucial for understanding many psychiatric disorders. Now, using positron emission tomography of the brain of patients with psychiatric disorders, researchers from Japan have developed and used a novel technology to visualize the distribution of AMPA receptors, one of the most important molecules in synaptic transmission. Their efforts could lead to more accurate diagnosis and targeted treatments for diseases like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and autism spectrum disorder.

A team of researchers led by SNSB paleontologist Gertrud Rößner has discovered a new prehistoric dolphin species. Analyses of its inner ear confirm that this dolphin had excellent hearing abilities in the high-frequency range, which is very similar to modern dolphins. The animal lived around 22 million years ago in a coastal section of the Miocene Paratethys Sea in what is now Upper Austria.

 Plesiosaurs once roamed Earth’s waters, using four equal flippers to propel their elongated bodies through the water. Fossils from these Mesozoic marine reptiles do not preserve the muscle tissue needed to explain how they maneuvered. Yet a group of researchers have harnessed a bio-inspired control system, creating a plesiosaur-like robot that reveals key insights into how they once traversed the oceans. The model could be used in the future to shed light on the movement of other extinct animals.