University of Utah researchers used their Salt Lake City campus as lab to determine how much outdoor particulate pollution affects indoor air quality. Their study concluded pollution from inversion and dust events is kept out of buildings, but wildfire smoke can sneak inside if efficient 'air-side economizers' are in use.

How do we think, feel, remember, or move? It all depends on transmission of chemical signals in the brain, carried and released by molecular containers called vesicles. In a new collaborative study, published in Science Advances, researchers in Japan and Germany have modeled the vesicle cycle in unprecedented detail, revealing new information about the way our brains function.

The paper describes an advanced computational model, which considers the complex interplay of vesicles, their cellular environments, activities and interactions, to predict vesicle behavior under different conditions.

“Technological advances have enabled experimental scientists to capture more and more data. The challenge lies in integrating and interpreting different data types, to understand the complexities of the brain,” said Professor Erik De Schutter, head of the OIST Computational Neuroscience Unit and co-author on this study. “Our model provides better detail of the vesicle cycle, and much faster, than any other systems before. And it’s transferable to different cells and scenarios too. It’s a significant leap forward towards scientific aspirations of full cell and full tissue simulation.”