Vital tech with a fatal flaw

Most vaccines require constant refrigeration during shipment to remain effective. An international research team led by ETH Zurich has now developed a special hydrogel that vastly improves the shelf life of vaccines, even without refrigeration. The development could save many lives and lower the cost of cold chains.

Sepsis is a primary cause of mortality in newborns, particularly in lowand middle-income countries (LMICs).

Women who experience racial discrimination on the basis of their ethnicity, race or nationality are at increased risk of giving birth prematurely, according to a team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge.

The different geographic and climatic regions from which ragweed pollen originates, as well as the degree of environmental pollution, may influence the severity of allergic reactions such as hay fever and asthma. Pollen from plants in different areas exhibit different levels of aggressiveness. This is the conclusion reached by an inter-university study team led by MedUni Vienna and involving the University of Vienna and the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences. The study was recently published in the journal "Frontiers in Allergy".

Michael Bondin, a graduate student studying nuclear engineering at UC Berkeley, is one of a team of engineers that is testing and refurbishing radiation detectors to send to scientists working at the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Signs of disturbance in the dwarf galaxies of one of Earth's nearest galaxy clusters indicate an alternative gravity theory.

Ultrasound is transforming the field of neuroimaging, thanks to technological advances made over the last decade by the Physics for Medicine laboratory (Inserm, ESPCI Paris - PSL, CNRS). The introduction of functional ultrasound imaging (fUS) in 2009 provided neuroscientists with a unique technology - portable, easy to use, and reasonably priced - to visualize brain activity with high sensitivity. In 2015, another method, called ultrasound localization microscopy (ULM), produced novel images of the cerebral vascular network, revealing blood vessels just a few micrometers in diameter.

Although there has been significant progress in the treatment of rare forms of blood cancer in recent years and new drugs have been approved in Germany, the prognosis for many affected individuals remains unfavourable.

UK scientists have highlighted a mutation in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 that allows the virus to evade important immune cells induced by infection and vaccines.

A common weed harbors important clues about how to create drought resistant crops in a world beset by climate change. Yale scientists describe how Portulaca oleracea , commonly known as purslane, integrates two distinct metabolic pathways to create a novel type of photosynthesis that enables the weed to endure drought while remaining highly productive, they report August 5 in the journal Science Advances.