News by Subject Technology & Engineering

Soft-bodied robots offer the possibility for social engagement, and novel tactile human-robot interactions that require careful consideration of the potential for misplaced emotional attachments and personally and socially destructive behavior by users.

Attaching curcumin, a component of the common spice turmeric, to nanoparticles can be used to target and destroy treatment-resistant neuroblastoma tumor cells, according to a new study published in Nanoscale. The study, conducted in partnership by researchers at Nemours Children's Hospital and the University of Central Florida, demonstrates a potentially novel treatment for neuroblastoma, the most common cancer in infants.

Many cancer patients are susceptible to potentially lethal weight loss. Now researchers understand better why this happens, and perhaps how to prevent the condition.

Using cheese as a novel way to study microscopic communities, researchers have found that bacteria living on artisanal cheese varieties have transferred thousands of genes between each other. They also identified regional hotspots where such exchanges take place, including several genomic "islands" that host exchanges across several species of bacteria. Microbiome communities are known to play a key function in many areas, including human health, protecting us from some diseases and amplifying others.

While beneficial microbes are increasingly used in agriculture, environmental stressors such as heat can quickly kill or render them useless in the field; and discovering new and better treatments is slow due to the large microbial diversity in soils. Through a new and novel review paper titled 'Translating Phytobiomes from Theory to Practice: Ecological and Evolutionary Considerations,' Hawkes and Connor propose using ecological theory and practice to improve the process of microbial technology development.

To ensure patients receive full medicinal treatments, engineers at MIT and Brigham and Women's Hospital have developed a new set of hydrogel-based drug delivery materials, which can live in the stomach up to nine days, slowly releasing medication.

A novel material may improve the safety of drug-delivery systems that reside in the stomach.