TV infomercials offer a world of potential solutions for back pain, but most of them have at least one of three problems — they’re unproven, unworkable or just plain unattractive. A team of Vanderbilt University engineers is changing that with a design that combines the science of biomechanics and advances in wearable tech to create a…
An Immune Regulator of Addiction
Multitasking Monolayers Lay Groundwork for Dual-Function Devices
Two-dimensional materials that can multitask. That is the result of a new process that naturally produces patterned monolayers that can act as a base for creating a wide variety of novel materials with dual optical, magnetic, catalytic or sensing capabilities. “Patterned materials open up the possibility of having two functionalities in a single material, such as catalyzing…
Ultrathin Device Harvests Electricity from Human Motion
Imagine slipping into a jacket, shirt or skirt that powers your cell phone, fitness tracker and other personal electronic devices as you walk, wave and even when you are sitting. A new, ultrathin energy harvesting system developed at Vanderbilt University’s Nanomaterials and Energy Devices Laboratory has the potential to do just that. Based on battery…
Team Investigates Antiviral That Inhibits SARS & MERS
A new antiviral drug candidate inhibits a broad range of coronaviruses, including the SARS and MERS coronaviruses, a multi-institutional team of investigators reports this week in Science Translational Medicine. The findings support further development of the drug candidate for treating and preventing current coronavirus infections and potential future epidemic outbreaks. Coronaviruses are a genetically diverse family…
Cotton Candy Capillaries Lead to Circuit Boards That Dissolve When Cooled
Building transient electronics is usually about doing something to make them stop working: blast them with light, soak them with acid, dunk them in water. Professor Leon Bellan’s idea is to dissolve them with neglect: Stop applying heat, and they come apart. Using silver nanowires embedded in a polymer that dissolves in water below 32…
Wet and Stormy Weather Lashed California Coast 8,200 Years Ago
New Method for Tapping Vast Plant Pharmacopeia to Make More Effective Drugs
Cocaine, nicotine, capsaicin. These are just three familiar examples of the hundreds of thousands of small molecules (also called specialized or secondary metabolites) that plants use as chemical ammunition to protect themselves from predation. Unfortunately, identifying the networks of genes that plants use to make these biologically active compounds, which are the source of many…
The Human Vaccines Project, Vanderbilt, Illumina Partner on Decoding the Human Immunome
Forget Sponges: The Earliest Animals Were Marine Jellies
When cartoonist and marine-biology teacher Steve Hillenburg created SpongeBob SquarePants in 1999, he may have backed the wrong side of one of the longest-running controversies in the field of evolutionary biology. For the last decade, zoologists have been battling over the question, “What was the oldest branch of the animal family tree?” Was it the…
Making America’s Power Grid Much, Much Smarter
AAAS Annual Meeting: Particles From Space are Impacting Personal Electronics
DNA Duplicator Small Enough to Hold in Your Hand
Imagine a “DNA photocopier” small enough to hold in your hand that could identify the bacteria or virus causing an infection even before the symptoms appear. This possibility is raised by a fundamentally new method for controlling a powerful but finicky process called the polymerase chain reaction. PCR was developed in 1983 by Kary Mullis,…
Surprising New Class of ‘Hypervelocity Stars’ Discovered Escaping Galaxy
An international team of astronomers has discovered a surprising new class of “hypervelocity stars” – solitary stars moving fast enough to escape the gravitational grasp of the Milky Way galaxy. The discovery of this new set of “hypervelocity” stars was described at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society this week in Washington, D.C.,…