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Apical periodontitis, a chronic and hard-to-treat dental infection, affects more than half of the population worldwide and is the leading cause of tooth loss. Root canal is the standard treatment, but existing approaches to treat the infection have many limitations that can cause complications, leading to treatment failure.

Now, researchers at the School of Dental Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have identified a promising new therapeutic option that could potentially disrupt current treatments. The team of researchers is part of the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry, a joint research center between Penn Dental Medicine and Penn Engineering that leverages engineering and computational approaches to advance oral and craniofacial health care innovation.

In a paper published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, they show that ferumoxytol, an FDA-approved iron oxide nanoparticle formulation, greatly reduces infection in patients diagnosed with apical periodontitis.

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SpaceX’s Starship is poised for its eighth flight from Boca Chica, Texas, pending regulatory approval from the FAA. The previous flight resulted in a mid-air explosion, leading to increased scrutiny and a temporary suspension by the FAA. The upcoming launch will feature a daring maneuver to catch the booster stage with “chopstick” arms, showcasing advanced engineering feats. The mission aims to deploy Starlink simulators, marking progress toward new satellite technology. Elon Musk and SpaceX view Starship as crucial for future missions to Mars and the Moon, with NASA keenly following its progress.

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The edge of the Solar System is a strange place, full of oddities we’ve only just begun to probe. But perhaps the oddest of all is the Oort Cloud, a vast field of icy debris extending out to 100,000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.

We have a rough idea of the size and shape of this field, but the fine particulars elude our understanding. Now, a new computational study has revealed a surprising structure – a spiral generated by the tidal forces exerted by the Milky Way galaxy itself.

The finding, in press at The Astrophysical Journal, is currently available on preprint server arXiv.

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The dream of having robots do household chores inched a little closer to reality last week.

Figure, an OpenAI-backed robotics artificial intelligence (AI) startup, showed off humanoid robots that can understand voice commands and can grab objects they had never seen before.

In a Figure video, a guy holding a bag of groceries starts unloading eggs, apple, ketchup, cheese, cookies and other items on a counter.

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Mars – dusty, dry, and desert-clad – was once so rich in water it had not just lakes, but oceans, according to a new study.

Observations using ground-penetrating radar have revealed underground features consistent with beaches on the red planet, 4 billion years ago. It’s some of the best evidence to date that Mars was once so soggy as to host a northern sea.

The research team has named that sea Deuteronilus.

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Smart bullets are real—and they might already be in use. From DARPA’s EXACTO to Russia’s secretive programs, guided bullets have come a long way since The Fifth Element. Here’s what we know.

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A groundbreaking cancer ‘vaccine’ developed by a Yale University scientist has reversed the disease in nine patients.

All patients enrolled in the study between March 2019 and September 2021 were free from kidney cancer at the three-year follow-up in July 2023, marking a major milestone.

The type of kidney cancer they had — stages three and four clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) — kills between 85 and 90 percent of patents.

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Have you ever questioned the deep nature of time? While some physicists argue that time is just an illusion, dismissing it outright contradicts our lived experience. In my latest work, Temporal Mechanics: D-Theory as a Critical Upgrade to Our Understanding of the Nature of Time (2025), I explore how time is deeply rooted in the computational nature of reality and information processing by conscious systems. This paper tackles why the “now” is all we have.

In the absence of observers, the cosmic arrow of time doesn’t exist. This statement is not merely philosophical; it is a profound implication of the problem of time in physics. In standard quantum mechanics, time is an external parameter, a backdrop against which events unfold. However, in quantum gravity and the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, the problem of time emerges because there is no preferred universal time variable—only a timeless wavefunction of the universe. The flow of time, as we experience it, arises not from any fundamental law but from the interaction between observers and the informational structure of reality.

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