On 9 July in Lausanne, scientists, partners and industry leaders will mark the close of the NCCR MARVEL — a Swiss National Centre that helped move materials discovery from trial-and-error individual efforts toward predictive, open and AI-powered design.

A burst of new data has ignited a better understanding of how fireworks impact the environment. Three recent studies comb through pyrotechnics’ fallout, analyzing litter, particulate matter, and airborne compounds. These papers, published in ACS journals, provide insights into what happens after the sparkles fade and explain the potential impacts on human health and the environment.

Dobutamine is a well-known drug given intravenously to patients in acute heart failure, where it stimulates the heart to pump more effectively. Over the past decade, however, a growing body of research has reported something surprising: the drug also suppresses the growth of cancer cells in bone tumours (osteosarcoma), stomach cancer, and multiple myeloma. No one could fully explain why. A research team led by Dr. Safa Daoud, from the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Pharmacognosy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Applied Science Private University, Amman, Jordan, and co-led by Dr. Mutasem O. Taha from the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy, The University of Jordan, noticed a telling pattern in the scientific literature: all the cancers where dobutamine shows activity also tend to produce unusually high levels of a protein called ROCK2 — a molecular switch that, when left unchecked, pushes tumour cells to grow, spread, and resist treatment. The team's central question was whether dobutamine's anticancer effects could be explained, at least in part, by its ability to block ROCK2 directly.