Assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania Yun Ding led research on courtship rituals of a close cousin of the common fruit fly and discovered a novel female adaptation that promotes prolonged courtship in males. New traits are often ancient behaviors re-surfacing under the right conditions,” she says. “At first, we were cautious in our claim of novelty, but our methods and analysis continually pointed to this female wing-spreading behavior being a newly evolved novelty.”

Researchers at Duke University have invented a new solvent-free polymer for digital light printing (DLP), a type of 3D printing that essentially pulls solid objects out of a shallow pool of resin one layer at a time. Besides eliminating a well-known issue of finished objects shrinking after printing, the lack of solvent also results in improved mechanical properties of the part while maintaining the ability to degrade in the body.

A highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus, isolated from the eye of a farm worker who became infected through contact with dairy cows, was lethal in mice and ferrets infected in a high-containment laboratory environment, according to a new study in Nature. The study investigators also found that the virus isolated from the worker, who experienced mild inflammation of the cornea (conjunctivitis), could be transmitted through the air between separated ferrets and might be capable of binding to and replicating in human respiratory tract cells.

 A grant from the National Institutes of Health will help Wayne State University researchers explore new avenues for using computer models to produce medications.

A study from researchers at National Institutes of Health (NIH) and their collaborators revealed a significant genetic risk factor for kidney disease in people from Ghana and Nigeria. Their study demonstrated that having just one risk variant in a gene known as APOL1 can significantly increase the risk of developing kidney disease. APOL1 is important for the immune system and variants of the gene are linked to increased risk of chronic kidney disease. The study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine and was conducted by researchers from the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) Kidney Disease Research Network.