Like all complex organisms, every human originates from a single cell that multiplies through countless cell divisions. Thousands of cells coordinate, move and exert mechanical forces on each other as an embryo takes shape. Researchers at the Göttingen Campus Institute for Dynamics of Biological Networks (CIDBN), the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation, and the University of Marburg have now discovered a new way that embryonic cells coordinate their behaviour. This involves molecular mechanisms previously known only from the process of hearing. The researchers attribute the fact that such different cells use the same proteins for two such different functions to their evolutionary origin. The results were published in Current Biology.

Quantum sensing: 

Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, have developed a tunable system that paves the way for more accurate sensing in a variety of technologies, including biomedical diagnostics. The potential range of technologies is large, stretching from the largest scales – detecting gravitational waves in space over environmental monitoring to the tiny fluctuations in our own bodies – biomedical sensing for imaging and diagnostics in e.g. magnetic scanners. The result is now published in Nature.

A first in 3D food printing, Ali Ubeyitogullari, an assistant professor of food engineering with the food science and biological and agricultural engineering departments at the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, and postdoctoral fellow Sorour Barekat developed sorghum protein into a 3D food printing gel noted for its hydrophobicity to aid in product cohesion. Known for its drought tolerance, grain sorghum also has multiple health benefits.

Harvard scientists have described a particular movement observed mostly in young, teenaged anacondas, called an S-start. A mathematical model shows that young anacondas, as opposed to babies and adults, exist in a “goldilocks zone” of relative weight and strength to allow them to execute the movement.

The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder has recently designed and built a new CubeSat instrument, toward future energy balance observations with much sharper detail and greater accuracy than we've ever had before.

Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin used machine learning and artificial intelligence to develop new materials that could keep your house cooler and reduce energy bills.