S. Hersberger et al. present a smartphone-guided handheld breath acetone detector for self-monitoring of fat metabolism at home. The device combines volume-controlled end-tidal breath sampling with humidity-robust sensor performance and was validated against proton transfer reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometry (PTR-MS) across 312 human breath samples during exercise and dietary interventions.
When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down international travel in 2020, Michigan State University researcher Eric Benbow faced a problem. A $2.5 million research project designed to study an environmental pathogen in South America was suddenly on hold. With fieldwork canceled and uncertainty surrounding when travel might resume, Benbow and his collaborators needed a new plan.
That unexpected detour led to a surprising discovery—and new insights into a disease that has puzzled scientists for decades.
In their study published in Communications Medicine, the international team of researchers examined the environmental and human factors that influence the distribution of Buruli ulcer, a neglected tropical disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium ulcerans. The work helps explain how ecosystems, climate, land use and human activities interact to shape disease risk.
Every person’s DNA tells a unique story. To unlock the full potential of genetic research, scientists need tools that reflect the complexity of the people they study.
Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Duncan Neurological Research Institute (Duncan NRI) have developed a new computational method that enables scientists to more accurately identify genetic changes linked to disease by accounting for the ancestry and family relationships found in real-world populations.
Published in Nature Genetics, the new approach, called Tractor-Mix, addresses a longstanding challenge in genetic research. Many existing methods struggle to accurately analyze people whose DNA reflects ancestry from more than one ancestral population, as well as relatives participating in the same study. As a result, researchers often must simplify their data or exclude participants altogether.
The continuity equation was not the work of a single physicist. Its development grew from early hydraulic studies and the work of Daniel and Johann Bernoulli. In the eighteenth century, Jean le Rond d’Alembert produced the first partial-differential expression of mass conservation in fluid motion, and Leonhard Euler soon placed it in the general mathematical framework that became the foundation of modern fluid mechanics. It should therefore not be attributed solely to Giovanni Battista Venturi, whose later work concerned flow through constricted tubes. Its general form is ∂ρ/∂t + ∇·(ρv) = 0 where ρ is fluid density and v is the velocity field. The equation says that mass cannot simply appear or disappear: any change in the amount of fluid inside a region must be explained by fluid entering or leaving it. For steady flow through a pipe, this becomes ρ₁A₁v₁ = ρ₂A₂v₂ If the fluid is effectively incompressible, its density remains constant, giving the familiar form: A₁v₁ = A₂v₂ The meaning is simple. The same volume of fluid must pass through every section of the pipe each second. When the pipe becomes narrower, the fluid must move faster; when it becomes wider, the fluid slows down. This equation is fundamental to the study of pipes, nozzles, rivers, aircraft flow, circulation systems and computational fluid dynamics. More broadly, continuity equations appear throughout physics wherever something locally conserved, such as mass or electric charge, moves through space. The equation is not merely about fluids; it is the mathematical language of the principle that what flows into a region must either flow out or remain inside.
University of Virginia Comprehensive Cancer Center scientists have developed a promising new experimental approach to targeting glioblastoma, the most common and deadliest brain cancer. The approach could overcome many of the limitations of treatments using existing drugs.
UVA’s Roger Abounader, MD, Ph.D., and colleagues have identified “microRNAs” that can simultaneously suppress multiple malfunctioning genes responsible for glioblastoma’s formation and growth. The scientists use a combination of brain-penetrating nanoparticles, focused ultrasound waves and microbubbles to deliver the miRNAs through the brain’s natural protective barrier—a barrier that typically blocks treatments for tumors and neurodegenerative diseases. The study is published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
“This new approach could help target numerous molecules that promote cancer growth, including those for which no drugs exist, at the same time to achieve better therapies,” said Abounader, a professor at UVA’s School of Medicine, Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology, Comprehensive Cancer Center and Center for RNA Science and Medicine. “We are hoping to translate our findings into future clinical trials for patients with glioblastoma and other brain tumors.”
Why do cancers develop differently in different people—even when they are exposed to the same risk factors? An international research group, including the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), has demonstrated in mice that an organism’s genetic makeup significantly influences the course of cancer development.
The findings, published in Nature, provide new insights into the earliest stages of tumor development and could, in the long term, represent an important step toward more precise, personalized cancer medicine.