Cancer treatment: Understanding risks and side effects
Peer-Reviewed Publication
This month, we’re focusing on artificial intelligence (AI), a topic that continues to capture attention everywhere. Here, you’ll find the latest research news, insights, and discoveries shaping how AI is being developed and used across the world.
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 31-Mar-2026 18:15 ET (31-Mar-2026 22:15 GMT/UTC)
Multiple myeloma is a cancer in which plasma cells, which normally produce antibodies, multiply uncontrollably in the bone marrow. There is currently no cure. However, various therapies can stabilise the disease and alleviate symptoms. One such therapy is to treat the patient with their own stem cells. This often involves weeks in hospital. Using machine learning methods, a research team has now assessed the conditions in which some of the therapy can be safely carried out as an outpatient. The study was conducted by researchers from the Göttingen Campus Institute for Dynamics of Biological Networks (CIDBN) at the University of Göttingen, the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG), and the University Medical Center Bielefeld (OWL). It was published in the journal npj digital medicine.
For decades, that thermal ceiling has been one of the hardest walls in engineering.A team at the University of Southern California may have just found a way around it. In a study in Science, researchers from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the USC School of Advanced Computing report a new type of electronic memory device that kept working reliably at 700 degrees Celsius, hotter than molten lava and far beyond anything previously achieved in its class. The device showed no signs of reaching its limit. Seven hundred degrees was simply as hot as their testing equipment could go.
The Keck School of Medicine of USC and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering have announced that the Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering will become a joint department between the two schools, forging a formal partnership in education, research and innovation in technology and medicine. This joint department, one of the first of its kind in California, builds on decades of cross-disciplinary research and breakthroughs at USC, including the world’s first FDA-approved artificial retina, the first brain implant to restore lost memory function, and innovations in immunotherapy to treat cancer. With added support from USC’s president and provost, the newly integrated biomedical engineering department will create new structures and gain new resources dedicated to further accelerating biomedical innovation, enriching educational programs and advancing technology in medicine. It will combine expertise in priority areas spanning medical devices, neuroengineering, imaging science, drug discovery, artificial intelligence (AI) and informatics, cellular and molecular bioengineering, and more. Facilities at both the Viterbi School of Engineering and the Keck School of Medicine will be devoted to the joint department, with the chair reporting to both deans. Yingxiao (Peter) Wang, PhD, the department’s current chair, who also holds the Dwight C. and Hildagarde E. Baum Chair in Biomedical Engineering, will help implement the transition by leading the department into its next phase.
New twin research shows that innate IQ plays a major role in predicting your future socio-economic status. The study, which follows twins during the crucial early adult years, reinforces the view that heredity and genes shape our life opportunities – and the people we become.
Researchers at Trinity College Dublin have developed a new light-based technology on a tiny chip that could help make the data centres behind cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and global internet services faster and more efficient. In the new research, recently published in leading international journal Nature Communications, the Trinity team reported one such promising advance with collaborators at the University of Bath and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL).
The team developed a new way to generate extremely stable signals of light using microscopic ring-shaped devices called “microresonators”. These signals form what scientists call optical frequency combs, sometimes described as “optical rulers” because they produce a series of evenly spaced colours of light that can be used to measure light with remarkable precision.
The researchers also demonstrated a new type of light pulse called a “hyperparametric soliton”. This stable pulse is the key behind the major advancement in this work, as it allows the comb signals to be produced at different colours of light from the laser that powers the device.
This makes the technology useful for high-speed optical communications that play a major role in data transfer (in data centres). And the researchers demonstrated this in a wavelength region used for high-speed data links inside large data centres, an area of growing importance as demand for data continues to surge with the expansion of AI computing infrastructure.