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Tech & Engineering

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 8-Jun-2026 02:16 ET (8-Jun-2026 06:16 GMT/UTC)

Brain Health emergency: Microplastic burden in the human brain now linked to stroke and dementia, with apheresis emerging as the first plausible removal pathway

Genomic Press
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Microplastics and nanoplastics now contaminate every human compartment that has been examined. Decedent brain tissue carries seven to thirty times the concentration found in liver or kidney. The burden rose by approximately fifty percent between 2016 and 2024. The heaviest loads sit in the brains of donors with documented dementia. Recent prospective cohort data link these particles to fourfold increases in the composite risk of myocardial infarction, stroke, or death. A new Perspective in the inaugural issue of Brain Health, published by Genomic Press, argues that the field must now move past alarm and toward the three priorities that follow from the evidence: validated measurement, polymer-specific mechanism, and population-scale removal.

Biodegradable, all-metal microrobots could transform drug delivery and biopsy procedures

Digestive Disease Week
Reports and Proceedings

This preclinical biomedical engineering study tested the durability and safety of biodegradable, shape-changing, all-metal microrobots designed to deliver drugs and capture biopsy samples inside the gastrointestinal tract without needing surgical removal in mice.

A toy model to understand how AI learns

Sissa Medialab
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Artificial intelligence systems based on neural networks — such as ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek or Gemini — are extraordinarily powerful, yet their internal workings remain largely a “black box”. To better understand how these systems produce their responses, a group of physicists at Harvard University has developed a simplified mathematical model of learning in neural networks that can be analysed mathematically using the tools of statistical physics.

“Toy models”, like the one presented in the study just published in the Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment (JSTAT), provide researchers with a controlled theoretical laboratory for investigating the fundamental mechanisms of neural networks. A deeper understanding of how these systems work could help design artificial intelligence systems that are more efficient and reliable, while also addressing some of the current challenges.

Against the wind: FAMU-FSU researchers show how flight angles affect turbulence, vortex formation

Florida State University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

New FAMU-FSU College of Engineering research shows how different angles of flight affect the vortices that form behind aircraft forebodies in flight. The research, published in Journal of Aircraft, could help design more stable missiles and high-speed aircraft.

Journal: Journal of Aircraft
Funder: Army Research Office

Engineers track eye movements to advance student simulation training, enhance clinical preparedness in Meridian

Mississippi State University
Reports and Proceedings

A Mississippi State University faculty member and undergraduate researcher are using eye-tracking technology at MSU-Meridian to study how students see, process and respond in high-pressure training scenarios, helping reshape how future healthcare professionals are educated.

New AI model reads DNA sequences to reconstruct ancestry

University of Oregon
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers at the University of Oregon have developed an artificial intelligence tool that can read genetic code the way large language models like ChatGPT read text. Scanning the genome for biological mutation patterns, the computer model traces pairs of genes back in time to their last common ancestor.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Sanford Burnham Prebys awarded $3.9 million NIH grant to develop first-in-class non-opioid pain treatment

Sanford Burnham Prebys
Grant and Award Announcement

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has awarded a $3.9 million grant to a multi-institutional team led by scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute to develop a non-opioid pain therapeutic and advance it into a Phase 1 clinical trial.

Researchers uncover brain mechanism that may help slow Parkinson’s disease, curiously only in females

Texas A&M University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

By boosting nicotine‑responsive receptors — without using nicotine itself — scientists protected brain cells from degeneration.

Journal: JNeurosci
Funder: American Parkinson Disease Association

New study finds low-dose eye drops successful in managing adult myopia for 24 hours

University of Houston
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Groundbreaking research from the University of Houston shows that a single low-dose atropine eye drop can produce daylong effects in managing myopia, or nearsightedness, which affects roughly one-third of U.S. adults.

Journal: Eye and Vision