In modern immunotherapy, modified immune cells are introduced into the body to attack tumors and other targets. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed a method for tracking these cells in the body. This new approach could deepen our understanding of cellular therapies and help make future treatments safer.

PleaseApp, an app designed to assess and treat pragmatic and social communication skills in children aged 5 to 12, developed by researchers at the Universitat Jaume I in Castelló (UJI) and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), is now available in the Hogrefe TEA Ediciones catalogue.

Study suggests that appetite for bushmeat – rather than black market for scales to use in traditional Chinese medicine – is driving West Africa’s illegal hunting of one of the world’s most threatened mammals. Interviews with hundreds of hunters show pangolins overwhelmingly caught for food, with majority of scales thrown away. Survey work shows pangolin is considered the most palatable meat in the region.

Scientists studied the obstacle-clearing behavior of longhorn crazy ants, where a subset of workers temporarily specializes in removing tiny objects blocking the path between the nest and large food items. Experiments revealed that serial clearing behavior can be triggered by a single pheromone mark, which happened to be deposited near an obstacle by a forager recruited to a large food item. Clearing mostly occurs in the context of collective transport, which typically stalls in front of obstacles. The authors concluded that obstacle-clearing is a form of ‘swarm intelligence’ which emerges at the colony level, and which does not require understanding by individual ants.