When everyday clothes can quietly support your back during a long work shift, help you rise from a chair or steady your balance on a crowded bus, assistive technology stops looking like a medical device and starts feeling like life. That’s the vision driving a new multimillion dollar grant supported by the Canadian government called the New Frontiers in Research Fund. Rice University professors of mechanical engineering Daniel J. Preston and Vanessa Sanchez are core partners in the project led by the University of Alberta, bringing breakthrough materials, soft-robotic actuation and human-centered design to the team.

Delivering therapies to the brain remains a major challenge due to the limited permeability of the blood-brain barrier. In a recent study published in Cell, researchers proposed a strategy to hijack skull-derived immune cells using drug-loaded nanoparticles, leveraging their unique migration mechanism through skull-meninges microchannels to bypass the blood-brain barrier. The team demonstrated efficient in situ construction of nanoparticle-loaded immune cells and their rapid migration to the disease site in response to CNS perturbations, enabling targeted delivery to brain lesions. In preclinical stroke models, this strategy achieved promising therapeutic efficacy in improving both short- and long-term outcomes. A prospective clinical trial further supports the translational feasibility of the calvarial immune access in treating malignant stroke. These findings establish a potentially clinically translatable platform for brain drug delivery.

A new University at Buffalo study examines what happens to discarded cigarette butts when released into the environment. Findings showing that one cigarette filter can release up to two dozen microfibers almost immediately upon contacting water. More than 100 additional microfibers may break free of the filter within 10 days depending on how the water is moving.

This quick release of cellulose acetate fibers – what most cigarette filters are made of – had not been precisely measured before. This builds upon the evidence that cigarette butts –the most littered item worldwide – are a direct and underestimated source of microplastic pollution.

Hydrogen fuel cell heavy-duty trucks offer a cleaner alternative to diesel transport, but public support is essential for large-scale adoption. In a new study, researchers surveyed households in South Korea to measure willingness to pay for expanding hydrogen truck deployment. The results show strong public acceptance, with benefits exceeding carbon reduction costs, indicating the policy is socially profitable and supports long-term low-carbon transport transitions under national climate policy goals frameworks.