A dissertation from the University of Gothenburg, for which the author studied presidential elections around the world among other things, shows that the closer the race appeared to be in the opinion polls before the elections, the greater the risks for manipulation and electoral fraud. However, opinion polls don’t only influence politicians to undermine the […]

Space travel can be agonizingly slow: For example, the New Horizons probe took almost 10 years to reach Pluto. Traveling to Proxima Centauri b, the closest habitable planet to Earth, would require thousands of years with even the biggest rockets. Now, researchers calculate in ACS’ Nano Letters that low-power lasers on Earth could launch and maneuver small […]

A couple of years ago, a woman named Joy Milne made headlines when scientists discovered that she could “smell” Parkinson’s disease (PD) on people with the neurodegenerative disorder. Since then, researchers have been trying to build devices that could diagnose PD through odor compounds on the skin. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Omega have developed a portable, […]

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine and Stanford Medicine have launched a collaborative, three-year study to investigate new ways to treat or prevent major depression, accelerate application of effective treatments and develop predictive models to identify which treatments may work best for individual patients. It’s estimated 21 million […]

Through synthetic biology, scientists can add novel functions to cells, such as the ability to produce new materials or detect and respond in specific ways to diseases. Though the applications are exciting, the process suffers from some inefficiencies – one of which Stanford University chemical engineer Xiaojing Gao is working to avoid. For many years scientists have […]

Confronted by dangerous and challenging diseases such as the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists strive to understand the interactions between virus and human cells with hopes that the knowledge will lead to means to prevent, treat and cure the condition. With this idea in mind, the lab of Dr. Pedro Piedra at Baylor College of Medicine and his colleagues […]

It is often said that “children eat what they like,” but the results of a new study by Penn State nutritionists and sensory scientists suggests that when it comes to meals, it is more accurate and more relevant to say, “children do not eat what they dislike.” There is an important difference, according to lead […]

Japan’s new ¥10 trillion (£65 billion) national endowment fund to boost research in universities will go live at the start of the new financial year, Japan’s Science and Technology Agency (JST) has confirmed. But universities will have to meet strict criteria to apply for funding as the government tries to push the sector towards long […]

Diverse Team of Medical Scientists Solve Problems and Point at Computer Screens Showing CT, MRI Scans. © Gorodenkoff Rare diseases constitute a major health issue in Europe: an estimated 30 million people live with one, and of these, 50% have not received a diagnosis. The suffering caused by these disorders, both to patients and the […]

Scientists in China have developed a macrocyclic compound that can mask the bitter taste of alkaloid drugs. The water-soluble compound forms a complex with alkaloids but subsequently releases them in the digestive tract, where they can go on to exert their pharmaceutical effect. Compliance is a key issue for pharmaceuticals. In fact, according to a […]