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Ultrasound-based pacemaker noninvasively steadies the heart

MIT engineers have developed a noninvasive pacemaker that stimulates the heart using ultrasound. The design could one day provide a surgery-free alternative to traditional cardiac implants.

The new device is designed as a small sticker that can be worn on the chest. Tiny transducers on the sticker send ultrasound pulses through the chest to stimulate the heart. The ultrasound waves trigger the opening of certain ion channels in heart cells, an effect the researchers amplified through genetic engineering. When the channels open, they let in calcium, which signals a heart cell to squeeze and beat.

In experiments in the lab, the researchers applied ultrasound waves to engineered human cardiac cells and found that the pulses effectively maintained the cells’ healthy contractions. They also tested the ultrasound sticker on rats and found the device quickly, safely, and noninvasively corrected arrhythmias and restored normal, regular heart contractions.

New evidence undermines our theories of the universe

New observations appear to have undermined our leading theories of the universe — so claims Kansas State University computer scientist Lior Shamir, who has identified that far more spiral galaxies spin clockwise than counter-clockwise as seen from Earth. This is a near 50% asymmetry, visible to the naked eye. And it grows stronger the deeper into cosmic history we look. Under the cosmological principle, the century-old assumption that the universe looks the same from every vantage point, an observer anywhere should see a roughly even split. Shamir’s data suggests otherwise, and the implications may require a whole new cosmological theory. Furthermore, the same systematic bias that could explain the spiral galaxy asymmetry may also be inflating the measurements behind two of cosmology’s most stubborn open problems: dark energy, the unexplained force thought to be accelerating the universe’s expansion, and the Hubble tension, the unresolved disagreement over how fast the universe is expanding.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the most powerful astronomical imaging device ever built. With its ability to image the early universe, it provides observations that challenge our understanding of the cosmos, gradually leading to a new era in cosmology.

One of the unexpected observations made by JWST is the asymmetry between the number of galaxies that rotate in one direction and the number of galaxies that rotate in the opposite direction. That is, the number of galaxies imaged by JWST that rotate clockwise is not the same as the number of galaxies that rotate counterclockwise. That can be seen by observing spiral galaxies imaged by JWST deep field images.

Visualization of Merging Black Holes and Gravitational Waves

Source: Ashtekar A, Paraizo DE, Shu J (2026). “Thermodynamics of Black Holes, Far from Equilibrium.” Physical Review Letters. DOI 10.1103/3c1r-v8f1. Published June 24, 2026. Selected as Editor’s Suggestion. Penn State University. ScienceDaily, July 13, 2026. Quotes: Abhay Ashtekar, Penn State. Video.

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TESS just found a planet in a new way—and more may be hiding in its eight years of data

For the first time, NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission has identified a planet orbiting a distant star thanks to its warping of space-time. Unlike the star-hugging transiting planets TESS regularly reveals, the newfound microlensing world is a super-Jupiter orbiting far from its host star.

“When TESS launched, no one expected it to ever be capable of finding this kind of planet,” said University of New Mexico professor Diana Dragomir. “The discovery implies that there are probably other microlensing planets hiding in TESS’s data that we hadn’t previously thought to look for.”

Astronomers first became aware of the alerting microlensing event, called Gaia23bra b, in 2023 using ESA’s (European Space Agency) now-retired Gaia space telescope. Gaia23bra b is fundamentally different from the transiting planets normally found by TESS. Instead of causing a dimming, the star-planet system magnified the light of a more distant background star (the “source”).

AI tool improves prediction of who will respond to cancer immunotherapy drugs

Cancer immunotherapy drugs known as immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) can be miracle drugs for cancer patients, curing some and turning deadly disease into a manageable chronic condition in others. But these drugs work for only a subset of patients, with few indications why—a knowledge gap that has detrimental effects on patient prognosis, clinical trial recruitment and research that could lead to new therapies.

A new artificial intelligence model called COMPASS, developed by Harvard Medical School researchers and their colleagues, improves prediction of which patients are most likely to respond to ICIs. Using data from patients treated in the past, the model outperformed the best existing approaches by 8.5%. It makes its predictions based on patients’ tumor gene activity and provides a rationale for its output.

If these results are validated in a future clinical trial, COMPASS could lead to better personalized medicine for cancer patients, more efficient trial enrollment for new therapies and new drug targets for researchers to explore.

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