Lifeboat Foundation

“Forever chemicals” have been identified in water systems that serve about 9.5 million people in just six states, according to a new analysis of state data by a congressional watchdog.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report this week saying that the toxic chemicals had been found in at least 18 percent of water systems in Illinois, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio and Vermont.

Sound-diffracting walls and rubberised asphalt ingredients tackle the major environmental concern of noise pollution from traffic.

In cities across the European Union, noise is a significant health hazard along with air pollution. Efforts are under way to reduce a major source of both: traffic.

Noise is the number-two environmental source of health troubles, after air pollution, according to the United Nations World Health Organization.

Engineers at Duke University have developed a novel delivery system for cancer treatment and demonstrated its potential against one of the disease’s most troublesome forms. In newly published research in mice with pancreatic cancer, the scientists showed how a radioactive implant could completely eliminate tumors in the majority of the rodents, demonstrating what they say is the most effective treatment ever studied in these pre-clinical models.

Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to diagnose and treat, with tumor cells of this type highly evasive and loaded with mutations that make them resistant to many drugs. It accounts for just 3.2 percent of all cancers, yet is the third leading cause of cancer-related death. One way of tackling it is by deploying chemotherapy to hold the tumor cells in a state that makes them vulnerable to radiation, and then hitting the tumor with a targeted radiation beam.

But doing so in a way that attacks the tumor but doesn’t expose the patient to heavy doses of radiation is a fine line to tread, and raises the risk of severe side effects. Another method scientists are exploring is the use of implants that can be placed directly inside the tumor to attack it with radioactive materials from within. They have made some inroads using titanium shells to encase the radioactive samples, but these can cause damage to the surrounding tissue.

The Taiwanese firm TSMC is the world’s largest chipmaker. But if tensions boil over with China, it could have trillions of dollars of economic costs.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a debilitating progressive illness that begins with mild memory loss and slowly destroys cognitive function and memory. It currently has no cure and is predicted to affect over 100 million people worldwide by 2050. In the United States, AD is the leading cause of dementia in older adults and the 7th most common cause of death, according to the National Institute on Aging.

Ongoing Alzheimer’s research is focused on two key neurotoxic proteins: amyloid beta (Aβ) and tau. Although these proteins have been shown to be associated with AD, the levels of Aβ and tau do not consistently explain or correlate with the severity of cognitive decline for some people with the disease.

Investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, set out to identify other proteins that may be directly involved with fundamental aspects of AD, like synaptic loss and neurodegeneration. They exposed laboratory neurons to human brain extracts from about 40 people who either had AD, were protected from AD despite having high Aβ and tau levels, or were protected from AD with little or no Aβ and tau in their brains.

A study found hazardous air pollutants emitted from gas stoves in California, including benzene — a chemical known to cause to cancer in some people.

JILA and NIST Fellow James K. Thompson’s team of researchers have for the first time successfully combined two of the “spookiest” features of quantum mechanics to make a better quantum sensor: entanglement between atoms and delocalization of atoms.

Einstein originally referred to entanglement as creating spooky action at a distance—the strange effect of quantum mechanics in which what happens to one atom somehow influences another atom somewhere else. Entanglement is at the heart of hoped-for quantum computers, quantum simulators and quantum sensors.

A second rather spooky aspect of quantum mechanics is delocalization, the fact that a single atom can be in more than one place at the same time. As described in their paper recently published in Nature, the Thompson group has combined the spookiness of both entanglement and delocalization to realize a matter-wave interferometer that can sense accelerations with a precision that surpasses the standard quantum limit (a limit on the accuracy of an experimental measurement at a quantum level) for the first time.

California produces about 90% of the nation’s strawberries, but severe drought and worker shortages are threatening the fruit. One company is hoping to change that with the power of robots.

Eric Adamson’s company is behind a strawberry robotic revolution. He said they’re programmed to think on their own, with cameras that sense texture and color.

“People think robots have been around forever, but they’re actually very, very new, especially robots that make decisions and are autonomous,” Adamson said.

Over the last several decades, obesity has rapidly grown to affect more than 2 billion people, making it one of the biggest contributors to poor health globally. Many individuals still have trouble losing weight despite decades of study on diet and exercise regimens. Researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and affiliated institutions now believe they understand why, and they argue that the emphasis should be shifted from treating obesity to preventing it.

The research team reports in the journal Science Advances that early-life molecular processes of brain development are likely a major determinant of obesity risk. Previous large human studies have shown that the genes most strongly associated with obesity are expressed in the developing brain. This most recent study in mice focused on epigenetic development. Epigenetics is a molecular bookmarking system that regulates whether genes are utilized or not in certain cell types.

“Decades of research in humans and animal models have shown that environmental influences during critical periods of development have a major long-term impact on health and disease,” said corresponding author Dr. Robert Waterland, professor of pediatrics-nutrition and a member of the USDA Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor. “Body weight regulation is very sensitive to such ‘developmental programming,’ but exactly how this works remains unknown.”