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Category: engineering

Implantable islet cells could control diabetes without insulin injections

Most diabetes patients must carefully monitor their blood sugar levels and inject insulin multiple times per day, to help keep their blood sugar from getting too high. As a possible alternative to those injections, MIT researchers are developing an implantable device that contains insulin-producing cells. The device encapsulates the cells, protecting them from immune rejection, and it also carries an onboard oxygen generator to keep the cells healthy.

This device, the researchers hope, could offer a way to achieve long-term control of type 1 diabetes. In a new study, they showed that these encapsulated pancreatic islet cells could survive in the body for at least 90 days. In mice that received the implants, the cells remained functional and produced enough insulin to control the animals’ blood sugar levels.

“Islet cell therapy can be a transformative treatment for patients. However, current methods also require immune suppression, which for some people can be really debilitating,” says Daniel Anderson, a professor in MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. “Our goal is to find a way to give patients the benefit of cell therapy without the need for immune suppression.”

Low-frequency wireless sensor tracks artery stiffening in real time with less interference

Wireless sensors used in wearable smart devices and medical equipment must be capable of detecting minute changes while maintaining high operational stability. However, existing technologies often utilize excessively high frequencies, leading to electromagnetic interference (EMI) or potential health risks to the human body. To address these fundamental issues, a Korean research team has developed a low-frequency-based wireless sensor technology.

A joint research team, led by Professor Seungyoung Ahn from the KAIST Cho Chun Shik Graduate School of Mobility and Professor Do Hwan Kim from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Hanyang University, has developed the “WiLECS” (Wireless Ionic-Electronic Coupling System), a low-frequency wireless electrochemical sensing platform that combines ion-based materials with wireless power transfer technology. The research is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Conventional wireless sensors suffer from low capacitance (the ability to store electrical charge), requiring high frequencies in the megahertz (MHz) range to compensate. However, these high-frequency methods can cause tissue heating or signal instability, limiting their practical application in clinical medical settings.

Unlocking unusual superconductivity in a lightweight element

Superconductors—materials that can conduct electricity without energy loss—are crucial for next-generation high-efficiency, ultrafast electronics. However, most superconductors share a critical limitation: they lose their superconducting properties in strong magnetic fields. In contrast, a class of superconductors containing heavy elements can sustain an unusual type of superconductivity in magnetic fields beyond the conventional limit. Now, new research has demonstrated that this limitation can be overcome by sandwiching atomically thin films of a lightweight element called gallium between two other materials to engineer quantum interactions at the interfaces between the layers.

A paper describing the research, led by an interdisciplinary team at Penn State’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) for Nanoscale Science, was published in the journal Nature Materials. The team showed that when just three atomic layers of gallium are layered between graphene and a silicon carbide substrate, the resulting structure maintains superconductivity in magnetic fields that are parallel to the surface of the material, or in-plane, well above the expected limit.

“This discovery highlights the strength of collaborative, cross-disciplinary research fostered by the Penn State MRSEC,” said Cui-Zu Chang, professor of physics at Penn State Eberly College of Science and leader of the research team. “By bringing together expertise in materials synthesis, quantum transport and theoretical modeling, we were able to uncover a phenomenon that would have been difficult to realize within a single research group.”

Universal surface-growth law confirmed in two dimensions after 40 years

Crystals, bacterial colonies, flame fronts: the growth of surfaces was first described in the 1980s by the Kardar–Parisi–Zhang equation. Since then, it has been regarded as a fundamental model in physics, with implications for mathematics, biology, and computer science.

Now—40 years later—a Würzburg-based research team from the Cluster of Excellence ctd.qmat has achieved the first experimental demonstration of KPZ behavior on 2D surfaces in space and time.

This was made possible by sophisticated materials engineering and a bold experimental approach: researchers injected polaritons—hybrid particles composed of light and matter—into the material. The results have been published in Science.

Specific Gravity Made Easy | Float, Sink & Hydrometer Explained

In this Easy Peasy Chemistry lesson, we break down Specific Gravity in a simple and clear way!

After learning about density, it’s time to understand how substances compare to water. Why do some objects float while others sink? What does a hydrometer reading like 1.25 actually mean?

In this video, you’ll learn:

• What specific gravity really means
• How it is different from density
• Why water is used as the reference
• How floating and sinking are related
• How a hydrometer measures specific gravity
• Why specific gravity has no units.

This lesson is perfect for high school, college, pre-med, nursing, and engineering students.

Watch till the end to fully understand how scientists measure and compare densities in the lab.

Continue reading “Specific Gravity Made Easy | Float, Sink & Hydrometer Explained” | >

Non-producing oil and gas wells may emit microbial methane at rates 1,000 times higher than previously estimated

Microbial methane leaking from non-producing oil and gas wells is being emitted at rates about 1,000 times higher than previously estimated, according to a new study led by McGill University researchers. “Origins of Subsurface Methane Leaking from Nonproducing Oil and Gas Wells in Canada,” by Gianni Micucci and Mary Kang, is published in Environmental Science and Technology.

“Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas when released into the atmosphere, regardless of its origin. In particular, this study implies that non-producing oil and gas wells could continue to emit microbial methane long after the targeted formation has been fully depleted,” said Kang, study co-author and Associate Professor of Civil Engineering.

“However, the exact source of this methane is often unclear because the subsurface is a complex system with multiple gas-bearing formations,” she said.

Engineering high-fidelity tapasin variants to enhance MHC-I antigen presentation

New in JBC press|

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Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) proteins are extremely polymorphic, with different allotypes exhibiting a wide range of dependencies on the chaperone tapasin for peptide loading, expression, and stability at the cell surface. Given its central role in antigen processing, tapasin is frequently downregulated across viral infections and cancers, impairing antigen presentation and hindering the identification of therapeutically relevant peptide antigens. We hypothesized that elucidating the mutational tolerance of tapasin surfaces which mediate interactions with polymorphic HLA residues can provide a means for fine-tuning its chaperoning function and reveal mechanistic epitopes that underlie its function.

How does the most common cause of Alternating Hemiplegia of Childhood (AHC) lead to abnormal repolarization and arrhythmogenesis?

Andrew P. Landstrom & team propose a Ca2+-mediated mechanism in ATP1A3-D801N carriers & identify NCX1 as a possible therapeutic target.

1Department of Cell Biology and.

2Department of Pediatrics, Division of Cardiology, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina, USA.

3Department of Biomedical Engineering and.

4Division of Pediatric Neurology and Developmental Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA.

3D-printed metamaterials that stretch and fail by design

MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE) offers a world-class education that combines thorough analysis with hands-on discovery. One of the original six courses offered when MIT was founded, MechE faculty and students conduct research that pushes boundaries and provides creative solutions for the world’s problems.

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