On icy roads, studded winter tires can save lives – but they pulverize pavement and fill the air with dangerous, inhalable particles. A new Swedish study shows that both road wear and airborne particles could be reduced by as much as 20 percent if studs were made instead with an alternative hard metal. • Two stud materials were evaluated in two dedicated test rigs for road wear and airborne particle emission studies. • One of the stud materials was a cobalt containing stud and the other one was a cobalt free alternative. • Lower particle emissions and road wear for the cobalt free stud compared to today’s standard cobalt containing one.

InsectNet – which is backed by a dataset of 12 million insect images, including many collected by citizen-scientists – provides identification and predictions for more than 2,500 insect species at more than 96% accuracy.

Today, the Kraft Center for Community Health at Mass General Brigham announced the launch of the inaugural Kraft Prize for Excellence and Innovation in Community Health. This national prize seeks to honor a transformative organization, program or innovation that is making a measurable impact on health outcomes and has the potential to become a scalable model for addressing community health.

Fish is a high-quality source of protein, containing omega-3 fatty acids and many other beneficial nutrients. However, the accumulation of toxic mercury also makes fish consumption a concern, of which tuna is particularly susceptible. Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have come up with a novel approach to packaging canned tuna infused in the water-based solution of amino acid cysteine. It was shown to remove up to 35 percent of the accumulated mercury in canned tuna, significantly reducing human exposure to mercury via food.

Scientists have created a new low-cost, fast response sensor to detect lung cancer biomarkers, paving the way for the development of screening devices to spot the disease even before symptoms occur. Similar in design to glucose monitoring devices, the sensor provides results from a blood sample in just 40 minutes. The technology has the potential to be used by clinicians to both identify patients at higher risk of lung cancer, and tailor treatments for those already diagnosed in a ‘precision medicine’ approach.

In the three-year research project, Mahdi Arabnejad a former PhD student at Cranfield University, Sam Tothill, Professor of Bio-Nano Sensors, and Dr Iva Chianella, Senior Lecturer in Bio-sensors and Functional Polymers, developed the sensors to screen for two proteins in a blood sample and demonstrated the concept in a lab environment.

The study focused on developing highly sensitive sensors for two key lung cancer biomarkers: neuron-specific enolase (NSE) and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA). The sensors were tested with buffer and human samples, and achieved clinically relevant detection limits for both NSE and CEA.

The results indicate the technology has significant promise as a valuable tool in the early and accurate detection of lung cancer.