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Trauma analysis finds brain injuries more common among e-scooter riders than motorcyclists

E-scooter riders in England and Wales may face a higher risk of brain and internal organ injuries than motorcyclists and cyclists, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. The authors recommend increasing e-scooter safety through measures including mandatory helmet legislation, stricter speed limits and e-scooter design improvements such as deformable handlebar grips and enhanced braking.

E-scooters are used in urban areas throughout the world, but reliable data on injuries and risks have been limited. David Bodansky and colleagues analyzed data from the National Major Trauma Registry for 15,247 patients—including 580 e-scooter riders, 7,027 motorcyclists and 7,640 pedal cyclists—with moderate-to-severe traumatic injuries from 18 cities in England and Wales between 2020 and 2022. Of e-scooter riders, 87.9% were adults.

They found that adult e-scooter riders had a 3.5 times higher risk of traumatic brain injury, a 1.5 times higher risk of internal organ injury and a 3.2 times higher risk of artery or vein injury than motorcyclists. These risks were also 1.7, 1.4 and 1.7 times higher, respectively, compared with pedal cyclists. However, the fracture risk for adult e-scooter riders was 20.0% lower than for motorcyclists and 10.0% lower than for pedal cyclists.

First mRNA flu shot approved by FDA bodes well for improving drugs of the future few hurdles remain before mRNA can move beyond vaccines

From COVID-19 vaccines to Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine, using mRNA as medicine has shown promise. But before mRNA drugs can go beyond vaccines, researchers need to identify the right diseases to treat.

A new way to watch heat move through electronics

The same overheating problem that happens to our laptops also plagues computer servers and data centers around the world—and heat management is only getting harder as computer chips get more compact and powerful.

Understanding how heat moves through chips at the microscale is essential for continuing to improve their performance. Unfortunately, most methods for measuring heat flow struggle with multilayered devices like the electronics that power our modern world.

Now MIT researchers have demonstrated a new way to study how heat moves through multilayered materials, combining X-rays that penetrate multiple layers with laser pulses to deliver heat. The researchers used the technique to measure how heat moves inside a promising device for transistors and flexible electronics.

Connecting Data, Computing, and AI for Scientific Discovery

As Director of the Scientific Data Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Ana Kupresanin leads scientists and engineers who develop the methods, software, workflows, and infrastructure needed to make scientific data usable, reliable, and reusable for science and AI. The division works across the scientific data lifecycle, helping researchers organize, curate, manage, access, analyze, and reuse data, while also developing machine learning methods, high-performance computing workflows, and partnerships with domain scientists across disciplines.

Kupresanin is a statistician and a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. Before joining Berkeley Lab in 2023, she spent more than a decade at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where she held scientific and leadership roles and worked with researchers across fields to develop statistical methods, analyze complex data, and address uncertainty quantification problems.

That background shapes how she thinks about AI for science. Scientific data are not generic inputs to a model. They come from experiments, simulations, instruments, and observations, each with its own assumptions, limitations, uncertainties, and context. Kupresanin’s work focuses on bringing statistical thinking, machine learning, and data infrastructure together so that AI systems can be more reliable, interpretable, and useful for scientific discovery.

Pluto’s Heart Glacier Shows Signs of Liquid Nitrogen

*New Horizons* data reveals evidence of liquid nitrogen recently flowing onto Pluto’s surface. [ https://www.labroots.com/trending/space/30869/pluto-s-heart-…nitrogen-2](https://www.labroots.com/trending/space/30869/pluto-s-heart-…nitrogen-2)

Is Pluto geologically active enough to have liquid nitrogen on its surface? This is what a recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated the possibility of Pluto’s geologic activity, specifically focusing on liquid nitrogen rising to the surface. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand the intricate geological processes on Pluto and how they occur so far from the Sun.

For the study, the researchers used a combination of computer models and Earth-based imagery to discuss the potential upward movement of liquid nitrogen within Pluto’s Sputnik Planitia, which is the dwarf planet’s most prominent surface feature. The primary motivation for this study comes from Sputnik Planitia being primarily smooth with boundary lines and various regions of dark and light colors. The researchers note this indicates evidence of ongoing geologic activity, specifically liquid nitrogen cycling from Pluto’s interior to its surface. After careful analysis, specifically noting how similar features identified in Greenland exhibit the same dark and light features, the researchers concluded that liquid nitrogen could be cycling from Pluto’s interior to its surface.

“The surface of Sputnik Planitia is quite young, probably less than one million years based on modeling of the surface overturn, and thus these features that we are looking at must have formed since then,” said Dr. Kelsi Singer, who is a principal scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and a co-author on the study. “Pluto has many unique terrains seen nowhere else in the solar system, and this area of Sputnik Planitia is one of them. Its surface provides a different set of conditions compared to what we are used to on Earth, and exploring that allows us to better understand how materials behave in environments that are difficult to produce on Earth.”

Pediatric ependymoma in the molecular era: realworld experience with diagnostic correlation and longterm clinical outcomes NeuroOncology

Real-world longitudinal data documenting the diagnostic impact of DNA methylation array (MA) profiling in pediatric ependymoma remain sparse. We report a single-center retrospective analysis evaluating MA-driven reclassification, molecular subgroup distribution, and long-term survival outcomes in a national pediatric referral cohort.

Sixty-three pediatric patients with a histological ependymoma diagnosis treated at Motol and Homolka University Hospital (2010–2025) were included. DNA methylation profiling, RNA sequencing, copy number variation and t-SNE analysis were performed. Survival was estimated by the Kaplan–Meier method.

MA confirmed ependymoma in 48 patients (76.2%) and reclassified 15 (23.8%) as non-ependymoma entities, including newly described tumor types. The reclassification rate was 36.1% in the pre-2019 cohort versus 7.4% post-2019. Posterior fossa group A (PFA) ependymoma was the predominant subgroup (n = 26). Ten-year overall survival (OS) was 69.6% and event-free survival (EFS) 47.7%. Gross total resection was the only factor significantly associated with improved survival (OS 75% vs. 40%, p = 0.017). Chromosome 1q gain, identified exclusively in PFA patients, was associated with a high relapse rate despite standard therapy.

Powerhouses for fake meat: Muscle protein can now be grown in chloroplasts of lettuce and tobacco plants

Livestock farming requires valuable land to grow fodder, uses vast amounts of freshwater and contributes to global warming through methane and nitrous oxide emissions. And, for many consumers it is important to prevent animal suffering. For these reasons, the global market for meat alternatives is currently worth €6.7 billion to €8.1 billion per year and is projected to grow 8.1% to 12.3% each year over the next decade.

One common method for producing fake meat is microbial engineering, in which genes coding for animal proteins are inserted into the genomes of bacteria or yeast for mass production in bioreactors. But now, scientists have developed a promising alternative as a proof of principle.

“Here we show that plants can be engineered to produce the animal protein myoglobin (Mb) in their chloroplasts, the energy factories for photosynthesis. This could provide a more sustainable way to produce an important ingredient for plant-based meat products,” said Dr. Alexia Groff, a researcher at Imperial College London.

Nobel Prize in Physics 2001

The matter surrounding us consists of atoms that obey the laws of quantum mechanics. At normal temperatures these often agree with classical conceptions, and a gas under these conditions behaves rather like a swarm of billiard balls bouncing against one another and the containing walls. When the temperature is lowered and the speed of the atoms is reduced, however, their properties will be increasingly dominated by the principles of quantum mechanics. The atoms rotate round their axes – they have spin – and this movement is described by a spin quantum number, which has to be an integer – a whole number – or a half-integer. Particles that have integer spin are called bosons, while those with half-integer spin are called fermions. Bosons show strong “social” behaviour and at low temperatures strive to gather in one and the same quantum state, the one with the lowest energy. Fermions on the other hand avoid one another. They cannot appear in exactly the same quantum state, so that states of higher energy must also be used. The arrangement of the elements in the periodic system may be understood on the basis of the fact that the electrons in the atomic shells are fermions.

As early as 1924 the Indian physicist S. N. Bose carried out a statistical calculation for the kind of particles which have since come to bear his name, bosons, and more specifically light particles later termed photons. Bose presented an alternative derivation for the radiation law earlier found by Planck. Bose sent his work to A. Einstein, who realised its importance. He translated it to German and had it published. Einstein rapidly extended the theory to cover Bose particles with mass and he himself published two articles in quick succession, predicting that when a given number of particles approach each other sufficiently closely and move sufficiently slowly they will together convert to the lowest energy state: what we now term Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) occurs.

Ever since publication of this pioneering work, physicists have wished to be able to achieve this new fundamental state of matter, which was expected to have many interesting and useful properties. Seventy years were to pass before this year’s laureates, Eric A. Cornell, Wolfgang Ketterle and Carl E. Wieman, using very advanced methods, finally managed to do this in 1995. The state was achieved in alkali atom gases, in which the phenomenon can be studied in a very pure manner. Nowhere else in the universe can one find the extreme conditions which BEC in dilute gases represents. Manifestations of Bose-Einstein condensation have earlier been observed in more complicated systems: condensation of paired electrons in superconductors (loss of all electrical resistance) and suprafluidity (loss of internal friction in fluids). Here, too, low temperatures are required. Research in these areas has been rewarded with several Nobel Prizes. As opposed to alkali-atom vapours these quantum-mechanical systems are not simple since the condensation phenomenon concerns only a part of the systems and the strong interactions involved tend to hide the BEC phenomenon.

Novel insights into the ROCKJAKSTAT signaling pathway in upper respiratory tract infections and neurodegenerative diseases

This comprehensive review of the relationship between uncontrolled inflammation in upper respiratory tract viral infections and the development of neurodegenerative diseases reveals the importance and possibility of the JAK-STAT-ROCK2 signaling pathway in the treatment of both.

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