Researchers have developed an adhesive polymer that is stronger than current commercially available options while also being biodegradable, tunable, and reusable. The findings – described in Science – show how the common, naturally occurring polymer P3HB can be chemically re-engineered for use as a strong yet sustainable bonding agent. 

Resembling the interlocking links in chainmail, novel nanoscale material is incredibly strong and flexible. The interlocked material contains 100 trillion mechanical bonds per 1 square centimeter — the highest density of mechanical bonds ever achieved. Small amounts of the mechanically interlocked polymer added to Ultem fibers increased the high-performance material's toughness.

The National Institute of Mental Health has awarded a significant grant of $1.5 million to Jianyang Du, PhD, of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, for a research study aimed at uncovering the cellular and molecular mechanisms that lead to neurological disorders caused by long COVID-19.

A research team from the University of Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) has discovered another piece in the puzzle of the formation of the Moon and water on Earth. The prevailing theory was that the Moon was the result of a collision between the early Earth and the protoplanet Theia. New measurements indicate that the Moon formed from material ejected from the Earth's mantle with little contribution from Theia. In addition, the findings support the idea that water could have reached the Earth early in its development and may not have been added by late impacts. The results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Nebraska scientists have taken a significant step toward bringing to market a new way to target therapeutic drugs to specific locations in the body. The strategy, which uses universal milk exosomes to transport cargo to human cells, would overcome one of the major flaws of current drug delivery approaches, where therapeutics reach beyond diseased cells to healthy parts of the body. Chemotherapy patients, for example, often suffer compromised immune function, hair loss and gastrointestinal upset because their therapeutics reach beyond targeted cells. Minovacca, a startup company recently incorporated by Janos Zempleni and Jiantao Guo of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, would commercialize use of universal milk exosomes, natural nanoparticles found in milk to deliver therapeutics, gene editing tools plasmids and more to targeted locations in the human body. The technique also offers new avenues to develop treatments for rare diseases.