Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM)

Federally funded research pays off with new process for environmental remediation Researchers from Rice University, DuPont Central Research and Development and Stanford University have announced a full-scale field test of an innovative process that gently but quickly destroys some of the world’s most pervasive and problematic pollutants. The technology, called PGClear, originated from basic scientific

Image via Wikipedia Triage technology comes with a Star Trek twist, at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Science & Technology Directorate (DHS S&T). Determining who needs medical care at the scene of a disaster is still pretty old-fashioned: emergency responders bent over a victim, checking body temperature, heart rate, and muscle movement. Up close

How do you capture a molecule? It may sound like a rhetorical question, but the answer is simple: You use a very tiny cage, like the molecular traps pictured here. These three-dimensional shapes, called truncated octahedrons, self-assembled out of molecular “tiles” created by researchers at New York University. The geometric regularity of the cages, and

Algae eats CO2, and then it makes fuel.   Where do we have a lot of CO2? Spewing out of coal power plants. Now OriginOil is working to use those emissions to feed algae and ramp up the biofuels business. At first glance, a marriage between algae and coal-fired power plants seems unlikely. One is

Gut bacteria from a worm can degrade plastic Plastic is well-known for sticking around in the environment for years without breaking down, contributing significantly to litter and landfills. But scientists have now discovered that bacteria from the guts of a worm known to munch on food packaging can degrade polyethylene, the most common plastic. Reported

Image by Axel Bührmann via Flickr TIM NICHOLS measures fun. A slim, 32-year-old psychologist, he spends his days behind a one-way mirror at Microsoft’s video games research center here, watching people play the company’s Xbox systems. He looks for smiles, listens for ecstatic squawks and logs triumphant gyrations. When a game is good, it elicits all

Seventy-nine million Americans are estimated to have prediabetes. “So…do I have diabetes or not, doc?” my patient asked me, one eyebrow raised skeptically. Juan was a mechanic with a calm gaze; we had first met in the emergency room a few months earlier, when I treated him for high blood pressure. Now I explained how his

Drones say goodbye to pilots. With the goal of achieving autonomous flight of these aerial vehicles, the researcher José Martínez Carranza from the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics (INAOE) in Mexico, developed a vision and learning system to control and navigate them without relying on a GPS signal or trained personnel. Mexican José

  Identifying microbial species Millions of microbial species populate the world, but so far only a few have been identified due to the inability of most microbes to grow in the laboratory. Edgar Goluch, an engineer, and Slava Epstein, a biologist, aim to change this. The pair, both researchers at Northeastern University, has developed a

Personalised 3D printed fashion – manufactured within 24 hours – is the end goal of a new project led by Loughborough University that’s set to change the way we shop for clothes. Dr Guy Bingham, Senior Lecturer in Product and Industrial Design, has teamed up with global textile and garment manufacturer the Yeh Group, to