A passage in the Norse Sverris Saga, the 800-year-old story of King Sverre Sigurdsson, describes a military raid that occurred in AD 1197, during which a body was thrown into a well at Sverresborg Castle, outside Trondheim in central Norway, likely as an attempt to poison the main water source for the local inhabitants. A new study published in the Cell Press journal iScience on October 25 describes how researchers used ancient DNA to corroborate the events of the saga and discover details about the “Well-man,” blending history and archaeology with science and setting a precedent for future research on historical figures.

Early detection of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is crucial for improving survival in patients with chronic hepatitis. The GALAD algorithm combines gender (biological sex), age, α-fetoprotein (AFP), Lens culinaris agglutinin-reactive fraction of AFP (AFP-L3), and protein induced by vitamin K absence or antagonist-II (PIVKA-II) for HCC detection. Similarly, the GAAD algorithm incorporates gender (biological sex), age, AFP, and PIVKA-II. This study aimed to assess the clinical utility of AFP-L3 in the GALAD algorithm and its potential synergies with ultrasound. We compared the clinical performance of GALAD with GAAD; AFP; AFP-L3; and PIVKA-II, with or without ultrasound, in Taiwanese adults.

Professor Anna Nekaris, one of the world’s leading experts in lorises, nicknamed ‘Jungle Gremlins’, is to receive a prestigious honour from the Primate Society of Great Britain.

Professor Nekaris of Anglia Ruskin University, in England, established the Little Fireface Project to help the conservation of lorises and has published more than 300 scientific papers.

Her studies cover all species of lorises – the world’s only poisonous primate – including five she named or elevated from subspecies, and one genus that she named.

Ultrafast optical imaging plays a key role in capturing transient time-evolving phenomena occurring on extremely fast timescales, driving breakthroughs in fields ranging from physics to biology. Conventional ultrafast imaging techniques, such as compressed ultrafast photography (CUP), can record transient events at hundreds of trillions of frames per second using chirped ultrashort pulses. However, these systems are usually large in size, limiting their versatility and practical use. How can ultrafast imaging systems be made more compact, reliable, and versatile without sacrificing performance? To address this issue, this study proposes integrating advanced nanophotonics, compressed sensing, and deep learning to develop single-exposure compressed ultra-compact femtosecond photography (CUF). The simulation shows that by utilizing a super-dispersive metalens, CUF combines focusing and dispersion functions in a compact device to achieve single-exposure ultrafast imaging, providing a transformative solution to overcome the limitations of conventional CUP technology in terms of system size. This work was recently published in Ultrafast Science and featured as the cover story.

Researchers have developed a miniature soft lithium-ion battery that could be used as a defibrillator to control heart rhythm during surgery.

The flexible lithium-ion battery is constructed by assembling biocompatible hydrogel droplets.

The state-of-the-art device is the smallest soft lithium-ion battery with the highest energy density.

The research opens the way to developing tiny bio-integrated devices, with a range of applications in robotics, biology, and medicine.

The review provides a detailed overview of the current understanding of RNA modifications in cancer, emphasizing the potential of targeting these modifications for therapeutic intervention. It also points to the need for further research to uncover the full spectrum of regulatory mechanisms and their implications in cancer biology.