News by Subject Technology & Engineering

The roots of plants can do a lot of things: They grow in length to reach water, they can bend to circumvent stones, and they form fine root hairs enabling them to absorb more nutrients from the soil. A team of researchers led by scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now identified an important regulator of this process.

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Tennessee and Texas A&M University demonstrated bio-inspired devices that accelerate routes to neuromorphic, or brain-like, computing. Their discovery could support the emergence of computing networks modeled on biology for a sensory approach to machine learning.

A team led by the University of Washington has developed a model that could help foresters predict which nonnative insect invasions will be most problematic. This could help managers decide where to allocate resources to avoid widespread tree death.

A brain mapping technique called BARseq is capable of mapping thousands of neurons in a single mouse, at single neuron resolution, while also detailing which neuron expresses what genes. It could be a game-changer for how neuroscientists look at brains.

Agricultural Research Service scientists have published the first genome of the invasive spotted lanternfly (SLF) in the journal Gigascience and they did it from a single caught-in-the-wild specimen. Not only is it the first published genome for this pest, but no closely related species has had its genome sequenced, making the data even more important, according to entomologist Scott M. Geib with the ARS Daniel K Inouye US Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center.

A multicenter randomized clinical trial evaluating a new artificial pancreas system -- which automatically monitors and regulates blood glucose levels -- has found that the new system was more effective than existing treatments at controlling blood glucose levels in people with type 1 diabetes. The trial, based partly at the University of Virginia Center for Diabetes Technology, was primarily funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), part of the National Institutes of Health.

Working with clinicians from Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School, a team of EPFL researchers has developed a conformable electrode implant that will allow people with a dysfunctional inner ear to hear again. This new device could replace existing auditory brainstem implants, which have a number of shortcomings.

A secret weapon used by the killer rice blast fungus to infect host plants has been discovered in new research.