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Category: engineering

New mechanism explains how spinal stimulation improves arm movement after stroke

Researchers in the Neuromechatronics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University have already proven that spinal cord stimulation can help people regain movement after stroke, but until now they didn’t quite know how.

In a new study, published today in Cell Reports Medicine, a research team led by Doug Weber, professor of mechanical engineering and neuroscience, and Ph.D. candidate Luigi Borda report that epidural spinal cord stimulation works by restoring inhibitory spinal circuits. These circuits enable the nervous system to coordinate opposing muscles, such as the biceps and triceps, which must work together to bend and straighten the elbow. After a stroke, those neural control circuits are disrupted. The new study found that spinal cord stimulation helps restore that balance, allowing stroke survivors to move their arms more smoothly, quickly and efficiently.

“This discovery allows us to move beyond simply strengthening weak muscles; we can now fine-tune stimulation to release the ‘brakes’ on overactive muscles, providing a more effective and personalized path to recovery,” said Weber.

Before babies can hear, their brains are already wiring for sound

Long before a baby’s ears are functional, the brain is already building the circuitry needed for hearing, according to new research from Johns Hopkins University. Published in the journal Science Advances, the study in mice identifies a previously unknown neural “shortcut” that organizes the auditory system before birth, offering new insight into how the auditory system prepares to process sound and eventually learn language.

While it’s well-known that sound travels from the ear to the auditory cortex, the brain’s hub for hearing, Johns Hopkins researchers discovered a new neural circuit that bypasses the ear entirely. Their findings show that the frontal cortex—the region involved in vocalization—sends signals directly to the auditory cortex, allowing the developing brain to activate hearing-related circuits before external sounds can be heard.

“Our results provide the first direct functional evidence of this biological shortcut that doesn’t go through hearing,” says senior author Patrick Kanold, a professor of biomedical engineering and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins. “It’s a novel brain activity source that can shape the earliest development in mammals, like interpreting information and discerning complex sounds.”

Braided, exotic particles could build reliable, universal quantum computers

A truly useful quantum computer must be able to run any algorithm, with the same versatility an ordinary laptop offers. Physicists have now shown a new way to give a quantum computer exactly that flexibility, harnessing the capabilities of exotic quantum particles called non-Abelian anyons.

A team of scientists from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME), Harvard, Stony Brook University and Quantinuum built and tested a complete toolkit of operations using non-Abelian anyons, proving for the first time the broad utility of this approach.

“We demonstrated a so-called universal gate set—meaning that if you store information in these emergent versions of quarks, and you move them around, you can do any quantum computation you might want to do,” said Ruben Verresen, assistant professor of molecular engineering at UChicago PME and a co-author of the new study published in Nature.

Physicists create first room-temperature quantum material

Quantum materials could transform technologies ranging from powerful computers and ultrasecure communications to advanced energy systems. But there has always been one major obstacle.

Nearly all known quantum materials exhibit their remarkable properties only when cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero. At room temperature, heat creates constant atomic vibrations that overwhelm the delicate quantum behavior scientists are trying to harness. Keeping those vibrations in check requires bulky cryogenic refrigeration systems, making quantum materials powerful tools in the laboratory but difficult to translate into practical technologies.

In a study published in Nature, LSU physicists have developed the first room-temperature quantum material capable of distinguishing and transporting different quantum states of light, overcoming one of the biggest challenges in quantum materials research. Led by Associate Professor of Physics Omar S. Magaña-Loaiza, the work establishes a general design principle for engineering an entirely new class of quantum materials, opening new possibilities for quantum computing, secure communications, sensing technologies and advanced energy systems.

Chinese scientists develop world’s first bionic auditory neural interface, enabling artificial auditory nerve to ‘understand’ sounds

Chinese scientists have successfully developed the world’s first bionic auditory neural interface, enabling conventional cochlear implants to progress from helping users hear sounds to helping them understand what they hear, marking a major advance from restoring hearing perception to rebuilding auditory function, the Global Times learned from the research team on Monday.

Beyond traditional cochlear implants, this research led by Xu Wentao, professor from the College of Electronic Information and Optical Engineering, Nankai University, provides a new technological pathway for auditory reconstruction through an innovative electronic replacement and restorative solution. The research results were recently published in the international academic journal Nature Materials.

Plant-based wound dressing fights infection before it takes hold

A new dressing made from plant-based materials can deliver antibiotics directly to wounds during critical early stages of infection, according to researchers from the University of Bath. The study, published in Bioactive Materials, is the first to use this family of sustainable furan-based polymers, previously explored for sustainable plastics and packaging, for infection-fighting wound dressings.

Wound infections are a major challenge for health care systems worldwide and are estimated to cost the NHS alone billions every year. Bacteria can enter a wound and begin forming a protective, slimy layer known as a biofilm within hours, slowing healing and making infections much harder to treat.

The team from the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Department of Chemistry created a novel, two-sided dressing from sustainable polymers, plastic-like materials sourced from plants rather than petrochemicals. One side of the dressing rapidly releases antibiotics into the wound, while the other acts as a barrier to maintain the protected healing environment.

Oobleck droplets reveal 5 ways cornstarch ‘goo’ behaves when hitting water

Cornstarch can thicken soup or serve as a base for a DIY shampoo, but there’s more to the humble pantry staple. Given the right conditions, it seems to defy the laws of physics. Mixing cornstarch with water creates “oobleck”—a shape-shifting substance classified as a non-Newtonian fluid that changes states when subjected to a force.

Leave it alone, and it oozes like liquid. Stir it up, and it gets more viscous before locking into a solid. Under certain conditions, if it’s punctured, it can even fracture, according to Northeastern University researchers. The thickening phenomenon is known as the oobleck effect.

Back in 1949, Seuss made oobleck famous as the “green goo” wreaking havoc on a fictional kingdom that a boy named Bartholomew endeavors to rescue. But today, Northeastern mechanical and industrial engineering scientist Xiaoyu Tang and Ph.D. student Boqian Yan are using the same mix of ingredients for a different purpose.

Reimagining the furnace: How a new magnetic design could supercharge industrial plasma

Imagine trying to trap a miniature star inside a machine without letting it touch the walls or burn itself out. This is the central, high-stakes challenge of high-temperature plasma engineering.

High-temperature plasma systems are crucial for modern industry. They serve as the foundation for manufacturing semiconductors, synthesizing advanced nanomaterials and testing materials meant for extreme environments. However, for decades, these systems have been held back by three major engineering bottlenecks: low energy-conversion efficiency, chaotic plasma instability and rapid material degradation caused by punishing heat.

In my recent paper published in IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, I set out to tackle these limitations by designing a completely new type of non-nuclear reactor: the Spherical Magnetically Stabilized Plasma Furnace, or SMSPF. My initial goal was to step away from traditional linear or cylindrical reactor designs to see whether a spherical geometry could inherently solve containment issues.

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