The University of Rochester has launched the Department of Sound Arts and Engineering, a new interdisciplinary academic department bringing together two of URochester’s world-class schools—the Eastman School of Music and the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences. The integrated department advances research, education, creative practice, and public engagement at the nexus of sound, technology, and the musical arts.

Rather than treating Alzheimer’s disease as a single endpoint, Rahul Srinivasan and Michelle Hook — both associate professors with the Texas A&M University Naresh K. Vashisht College of Medicine at Texas A&M Health — are focusing on the key biological moment that precedes it: the transition from MCI to dementia. Their collaborative project, supported by a seedling grant from the Texas A&M Health Dementia and Alzheimer’s Research Initiative (DARI), asks whether this transition can be understood mechanistically and if intervening during that transition could change long-term outcomes.

A team of Korean researchers will jointly develop next-generation smart agriculture technology that converges Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), multi-agent systems, and AI robot technologies, and will begin full-scale cooperation to establish an industrialization foundation by demonstrating it in actual agricultural fields.

During the first period of Russification, a significant strategic center of the Finnish resistance movement operated in New York. There, among others, Carl Erik Johan Mannerheim sought support from Japan and the United States for Finland’s independence, while his brother Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, the future President of Finland, served in the Russian army. New research sheds new light on this subject and challenges our understanding of the Finnish resistance movement.

The Rice bioengineering department helped host the annual meeting of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, where two Rice faculty were inducted as Fellows and Michael King stepped in as president.

Key highlights from the attached story:

1. While traditional kits confirmed infections, genomic sequencing was essential to investigate the outbreak's origin, especially as patients simultaneously battled malaria.

2. Without advanced diagnostics, misdiagnosis rates for fever can exceed 30%, leading to the overuse of broad-spectrum antibiotics and accelerating antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

3. Experts like Dr. Atsbeha Weldemariam of the Ethiopian Public Health Institute are advocating for a shift toward automated DNA sequencing technology that can isolate pathogens in under 20 minutes.

4. As Prof. Claude Mambo Muvunyi, Director General of the Rwanda Biomedical Centre, notes: “Precision diagnostics are increasingly cost-effective when evaluated through a population health lens”.

5. Tools like BGI Genomics’ PMseq™ can now analyze more than 36,000 pathogens in a single sample without prior culture.

An ageing population is often accompanied by an increase in age‑related disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, an incurable neurodegenerative disorder that impairs body movement and which is mainly alleviated by medicines or surgical procedures. A research team at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has developed the next‑generation “All‑Acoustics Brain‑Computer Interface (BCI) System”, leveraging “transcranial ultrasound neuromodulation” to deliver fully non‑invasive, deep‑brain and high‑precision neural modulation with ultrasound. The system presents a promising new therapeutic approach for treating Parkinson’s disease, as well as other neurological and psychiatric disorders. The team has begun clinical research in collaboration with Huashan Hospital in Shanghai and Zhujiang Hospital of Southern Medical University.

Professor Kunio Shirahada’s research at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology explores how services can improve people’s quality of life as well as their harmony with the environment. Inspired by Japan’s “satoyama” landscapes, where human life and nature intertwine, he has developed a framework that treats nature as a partner in value creation to enable services that focus on long-term societal impact to promote psychological, social, and ecological well-being along with economic value.