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 The rapid international effort to develop and deploy vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been the pandemic's saving grace. But the story is far from over. Scientists must now thoroughly understand how our immune systems respond to various vaccines over time in order to continue to tweak and improve their efficacy as the virus evolves. Researchers from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) examined blood samples from more than 300 vaccinees in the state of Sarawak in a paper published in Scientific Reports. They looked for the appearance of different antibodies up to 13 weeks after receiving the second dose of two different vaccines: Pfizer/BioNTech and Sinovac. Each vaccine employs a unique strategy to elicit an immune response. The mRNA in the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine codes for the spike protein found on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. When a person's cells begin to produce this protein, the immune system reacts by producing antibodies that recognize and bind to it, ...

  A multidisciplinary team of robotics and electronic systems engineers collaborated with cardiologists and materials scientists to develop a robotic apparatus that precisely and remotely controls guidewires through tiny and tortuous blood vessels using an external magnetic field. The findings were published in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials by a team led by researchers at Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST). Following further testing and commercialization, the apparatus could reduce physicians' exposure to X-ray radiation while searching for and treating narrowed or blocked blood vessels. "Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide, and it is critical to be able to diagnose and treat these diseases in the least invasive way possible," says Hongsoo Choi, DGIST robotics engineer. Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) currently entails inserting a guidewire through the large femoral artery in the groin or the radia...

 Arsenic contamination in flooded paddy fields endangers the health of more than half the world's population, which relies on rice as their primary source of nutrition. Existing methods for removing arsenic are costly, require additional chemicals, and can degrade soil quality. Researchers at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in China, led by Zheng Chen, have pioneered a simple, inexpensive, and sustainable alternative that involves inserting plastic tubes coated with naturally forming iron oxides into the soil. In the Journal of Hazardous Materials, they describe their method. "Iron oxides can absorb large amounts of arsenic, so we wondered if it would be possible to use them as a trap for this poisonous element. "In our first attempt, we discovered that the arsenic naturally took the bait," Zheng says. Iron oxides occur naturally in high concentrations in specific areas of soil, such as at the soil-water interface and on the root surfaces of wetland plants. H...

Shaking the small, light device generates enough energy to power 100 LEDs. A new stick-like, water-based device can convert movement energy into electricity. The research, published in the journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials, could be used to power portable devices such as safety lights. The growing popularity of the Internet of Things and small electronics has resulted in a high demand for portable energy sources. Harvesting energy from the environment, such as thermal, solar, or mechanical energy, is one method of producing power. To capture mechanical energy – the power derived from an object’s position and motion – scientists created triboelectric nanogenerators, which can generate electricity through friction. “Triboelectric nanogenerators are one of the most effective tools for harvesting mechanical energy because of their high electrical output, low cost, and ease of access,” explains mechanical engineer Sangmin Lee of the Republic of Korea’s Chung-ang Universit...

Swarm robotics is a new discipline inspired by living organisms' cooperative behavior. It entails creating robots and getting them to work together to complete complex tasks. Macro-scale swarm robots have been developed and used for a variety of applications, including cargo transport and accumulation, shape formation, and complex structure construction. Researchers led by Akira Kakugo, a physical chemist at Hokkaido University, have developed tiny micro-sized machines that take advantage of swarming behavior. Their research has been published in the journal Science Robotics. A swarm of cooperating robots gains abilities that individual robots do not have. They can divide a workload, respond to risks, and even build complex structures in response to environmental changes. Because of their incredibly small size, single micro and nano-scale robots and machines have very few practical applications. However, if they could work together in swarms, their potential applications would skyr...

The Neumayer III polar station is located near the unforgiving Ekström Ice Shelf in Antarctica. No one can come or go from the station during the winter, when temperatures can drop below minus 50 degrees Celsius and winds can reach more than 100 kilometers per hour. Its isolation is critical to the meteorological, atmospheric, and geophysical science experiments conducted there by the small group of scientists who work at the station during the winter and endure its frigid isolation. However, a few years ago, the station became the site of a study on loneliness. A German research team wanted to see if social isolation and environmental monotony affected the brains of people who spent long periods of time in Antarctica. Eight expeditioners who worked at the Neumayer III station for 14 months agreed to have their brains scanned before and after their mission, as well as their brain chemistry and cognitive performance monitored. According to the researchers, when compared to a control gro...