Researchers from the UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center have received a $3.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study and develop treatments for mpox. 

Although only a handful of cases from a new, more infectious strain of mpox have been reported in the U.S. so far, primarily in travelers, experts say the virus is rapidly evolving in ways that could eventually make it far more dangerous and widespread. 

With this new grant, the UCLA-led team will work toward three goals: 

Understanding how mpox virus spreads and causes injury within skin and eye tissue through studies using human stem cell-based models.

Identifying the genetic mutations that are making newer strains of mpox virus more infectious and lethal.

Developing new classes of antiviral drugs to treat mpox infection and stop viral transmission.

The Texas A&M University Cyclotron Institute-led medical isotope program has perfected routine production and distribution of astatine-211, a short-lived alpha-emitting radioisotope that shows promise as a strategic therapeutic weapon against cancer.

Instead of a tempest in a teapot, imagine the cosmos in a canister. Scientists have performed experiments using nested, spinning cylinders to confirm that an uneven wobble in a ring of electrically conductive fluid like liquid metal or plasma causes particles on the inside of the ring to drift inward. Since revolving rings of plasma also occur around stars and black holes, these new findings imply that the wobbles can cause matter in those rings to fall toward the central mass and form planets.

The scientists found that the wobble could grow in a new, unexpected way. Researchers already knew that wobbles could grow from the interaction between plasma and magnetic fields in a gravitational field. But these new results show that wobbles can more easily arise in a region between two jets of fluid with different velocities, an area known as a free shear layer.

A unique ice core is currently being examined in the Alfred Wegener Institute's ice laboratory: the oldest continuous ice core that has ever been drilled on Earth. As part of the EU-funded Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice project, a research consortium set up a drilling camp on the high plateau in East Antarctica in 2019. Up until January 2025, international teams drilled over 2,800 metres of continuous ice during the Antarctic summer months. This ice core includes air bubbles that enable direct measurements of greenhouse gases from the last 1.2 million years and presumably beyond – marking a historic milestone for climate research.

Korean researchers will begin developing core technologies for cooperative autonomous driving services using heterogeneous vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology. This will overcome the limitations of safety services that have been limited to vehicles equipped with vehicular communication devices and extend safety services to general vehicles and pedestrians, which is expected to bring about a dramatic improvement in the efficiency and safety of road transportation.