Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified central routes that two deadly viruses take to invade human cells and have designed decoy molecules that block the infections. The discoveries — published this week in two separate studies — set the stage for developing new prevention and treatment strategies for yellow fever virus and tick-borne encephalitis viruses.

AMHERST, Mass. — An app that turns consumer Apple Watches into tools for highly sophisticated sleep stage monitoring was developed by team of researchers led by professor Joyita Dutta at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The researchers say the app and corresponding AI code are convenient and effective alternatives to existing costly and complex sleep study equipment and protocols.

A set of three new tools out of the Medical University of South Carolina, introduced in recent articles in the Journal of Clinical and Translational Science, seeks to improve the rigor of decentralized clinical trials. CheatBlocker helps to address enrollment fraud; QuotaConfig aims to counter bias in clinical trials and MyTrials facilitates remote biomarker data collection throughout the trial.

Researchers have captured unprecedented images of the mechanisms that allow mosquitoes, the world’s deadliest animal, to target our blood. The scientists used advanced imaging technology to assemble detailed visualizations of the neurons within hairs that mosquitoes use to detect us as blood hosts.