A research team has developed pioneering technology that enables human kidney organoids to be produced on a scalable basis. These organoids can then be combined with pig kidneys outside the body and transplanted back into the same animal in a viable manner.

The experiment, led by the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), is in the preclinical phase. It confirms the safety and viability of the procedure, paving the way for future trials involving humans.

In the long term, this approach could help to extend the useful life of organs intended for transplantation and provide an alternative therapy for patients with chronic kidney disease.

Critical concerns regarding the security and privacy of information transmitted within Internet of Medical Things systems have increased greatly, since these systems manage and generate substantial amounts of sensitive private data. Current traditional security methods have not yet adapted to evolving cyber threats, making the need for data security in medical settings crucial. Recently, a security framework based on blockchain technology and distributed reinforcement learning has been presented to address these challenges. The new framework ensures that data are stored securely and transmitted reliably while minimizing resource usage, and it also enables security measures to adapt to changing threat patterns and enhance system resilience against attacks. In summary, the new methods demonstrated improved memory consumption and transaction latency compared to existing approaches, while maintaining high data throughput. This work was published in Intelligent Computing, a Science Partner Journal, under the title “Privacy-Preserving Strategies in the Internet of Medical Things Using Reinforcement Learning and Blockchain” by Dounia Doha and Ping Guo.

University of Texas at Dallas researchers have taken an important step forward in building a neuromorphic computer by creating a small-scale prototype that learns patterns and makes predictions using fewer training computations than conventional AI systems. Their next challenge is to scale up the proof-of-concept to larger sizes.

In a recent study, researchers share their novel work on coupling free electrons with nonlinear optical states investigate, leveraging microcomb generation in photonic chip-based, high-quality-factor microresonators. They also highlight other technologies, including attosecond electron microscopy via free-electron homodyne detection, probing polariton wavepackets with free-electron resonant interferometry, generation and characterization of chiral electron coils, and ultrafast Kapitza-Dirac effect.

Land use is at the heart of the many emergencies facing our world today: climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice and food insecurity. These – exacerbated by unsustainable practices such as industrial agriculture – combine to create simultaneous and interconnected crises. To overcome these challenges, large parts of the Earth's surface must meet several demands at the same time – from species conservation and food production to human well-being. This is where multifunctional landscapes come in, because they can meet many ecological, social and economic goals at once. Researchers at the Universities of Göttingen and Kassel have evaluated how using land in such ways can support nature conservation and ecosystem restoration. Their review article shows ways to redesign land use and nature conservation using integrated approaches. This was published in Nature Reviews Biodiversity.