Scientists believe they have cracked the question of how the malaria parasite keeps a low profile in infected people during the dry season in Africa in order to avoid immune attention and trigger outbreaks when the rains and mosquitoes return. The knowledge could open up new ways to combat the disease, which killed 409,000 people, mostly […]

Every year, more than 200 million people are infected with malaria, and nearly 500,000 die from the disease. Existing drugs can treat the infection, but the parasite that causes the disease has evolved resistance to many of them. To help overcome that resistance, scientists are now searching for drugs that hit novel molecular targets within […]

Demand for energy-intensive cooling technologies – whether for buildings, electronics, or refrigeration of food and medicines – is on the rise as global temperatures increase. But how can we make cooling technologies available to all while reducing the environmental impact? In August, Horizon looks at how science and innovation can help ‘green’ the cooling sector. […]

The idea of cryogenically freezing a person to preserve their body until many years into the future has long been a staple of science fiction stories. However, the need to reliably store biological materials such as cells or tissue is a common concern for scientific research and, increasingly, for society too. Whether it’s the dark, […]

Increasing the amount of trains on Europe’s tracks to replace other modes of transport could help reduce CO2 emissions and air pollution. But fitting more trains requires a serious rethink of how trains brake and could move across the track using cyber-secure radio and satellite navigation. More and more people are looking to rail as a […]

The justice system, banks, and private companies use algorithms to make decisions that have profound impacts on people’s lives. Unfortunately, those algorithms are sometimes biased — disproportionately impacting people of color as well as individuals in lower income classes when they apply for loans or jobs, or even when courts decide what bail should be […]

Inspired by the sticky substance that barnacles use to cling to rocks, MIT engineers have designed a strong, biocompatible glue that can seal injured tissues and stop bleeding. The new paste can adhere to surfaces even when they are covered with blood, and can form a tight seal within about 15 seconds of application. Such […]

Findings from a new University of Kentucky College of Medicine and College of Health Sciences study add to growing evidence that resistance exercise has unique benefits for fat loss. The Department of Physiology and Center for Muscle Biology study published in the FASEB Journal found that resistance-like exercise regulates fat cell metabolism at a molecular level. The study results in mice and humans show that […]

[embedded content] Researchers used to believe that individual primary touch-sensitive neatly responded to specific types of touch. Now a Northwestern University study finds that touch-sensitive neurons communicate touch in a much messier and jumbled manner. In the study, the team developed a new technique to stimulate rats’ whiskers in three dimensions while simultaneously recording first-stage […]

When Stanford University graduate student Jeff Rutherford began his doctorate in 2018, the amount of methane entering the atmosphere from oil and gas extraction operations – mostly due to fracking – had become a major matter of contention. Tracking this harmful greenhouse gas falls to the Environmental Protection Agency. To help in their accounting, the […]