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Tech & Engineering

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 12-Jun-2026 15:16 ET (12-Jun-2026 19:16 GMT/UTC)

Improving sleep isn’t enough: researchers highlight daytime function as key to assessing insomnia treatments

University of Maryland School of Medicine
Peer-Reviewed Publication

About one in nine adults suffer from chronic insomnia and its residual effects like drowsiness, cognitive issues, and irritability as well as increased health risks like diabetes and heart risks if left untreated. While many treatments are available, the challenge lies in determining how well a medication or other sleep aid works in individual patients. Now a new study from the University of Maryland School of Medicine has found using real-time smartphone-based assessments can help to determine the effectiveness of sleep medications by detecting improvements in daytime insomnia symptoms including thinking, fatigue, and mood. Following a two-week course of treatment, this smartphone-based assessment approach detected treatment effects more powerfully than did traditional methods like recall questionnaires.

Journal: JAMA Network Open
Funder: Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC

More data, more sharing can help avoid misinterpreting “smoking gun” signals in topological physics

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Peer-Reviewed Publication

In topological condensed matter physics, where major discoveries could hold big implications for fields like information technology, the reliability of such discoveries could be greatly enhanced by taking several steps, like presenting larger sets of data, say Sergey Frolov and colleagues. Their insights are based in part on four original experiments they did that correspond to either theory predictions or published work. “Overall,” write the authors, “although replication crises are typically perceived to be a problem in fields less quantitative than physics, the overemphasis on smoking- gun claims has the potential to affect the reliability of findings irrespective of field.” Electrons in solids are restricted by their energies to certain intervals or bands that determine the solid’s electronic properties. These bands can be re-ordered into new topologies in non-traditional or re-structured materials, yielding unique electronic properties that could be useful in applications such as quantum computing and data storage. Guided by theory, condensed matter physicists design experiments to identify when a new topological regime has been achieved in a material, looking for a particular “smoking gun” signal that indicates the new topology. Now, Sergey Frolov and colleagues show in four experiments in topological physics that these smoking gun signals can also arise from trivial phenomena that mimic the true signal of a topological change. By fine-tuning their experimental parameters, Frolov et al. suggest, some researchers may be introducing a confirmation bias that points to the “discovery” of a smoking gun. Releasing comprehensive data sets, disclosing the full volume of their study and exploring alternative scenarios for the signal could help mitigate the risk of misleading smoking guns, Frolov et al. conclude.

Journal: Science

UBCO innovation blocks nanoplastics release from landfill leachate

University of British Columbia Okanagan campus
Peer-Reviewed Publication

UBC Okanagan researchers have created a new two-layer membrane filtration system that can significantly reduce the amount of micro and nanoplastics that leak from landfills into local water basins.

Dr. Sumi Siddiqua, Professor at UBCO’s School of Engineering, and doctoral student Mahmoud Babalar, have published a study detailing how a double-layer membrane installed at landfills can act as a filter to keep tiny pollutants out of groundwater and surrounding ecosystems.

“Landfills are silent threats to our environment, acting as major reservoirs for emerging pollutants,” says Dr. Siddiqua.

Journal: Journal of Environmental Management

Evidence of cross-regional marine plastic pollution in green sea turtles

Rissho University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Plastics were detected in 7 of 10 green sea turtles migrating to Japan’s Ogasawara Islands, dominated by meso- and macroplastics rather than microplastics. Green turtles likely ingested plastics through two distinct pathways: non-selective ingestion of plastics associated with large and drifting seaweeds, and selective ingestion of plastics resembling gelatinous plankton such as jellyfish and salpas. The ingested plastics originated beyond the turtles’ migratory range, highlighting the transboundary nature of marine plastic pollution.

What does cybersecurity look like in the quantum age?

Penn State
Reports and Proceedings

Quantum computers could become a prime target for malicious hackers, according to Swaroop Ghosh, professor of computer science and of electrical engineering in the Penn State School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Suryansh Upadhyay, who recently received his doctorate in electrical engineering from Penn State. They recently authored a paper, set to publish in the Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, highlighting the need to develop new defense mechanisms covering not just the software and programs running on these systems, but the physical components that power them.

Journal: Proceedings of the IEEE

Stem cell therapy for stroke shows how cells find their way in the brain

Sanford Burnham Prebys
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The human brain is not a fast-healing organ. Normally it doesn’t need to be as adult brain cells are stable and last for a lifetime. When trauma or disease such as a stroke occurs, the brain struggles to bounce back because it has a limited ability to regenerate lost cells.

Stem cell therapy is a promising method for boosting regeneration in the brain, but transplanted cells have struggled to replace damaged tissue and reestablish broken circuits. In a new study of a therapy derived from human stem cells and transplanted into mice, the cells matured, integrated into existing circuits and restored function. By tracing the cells and sequencing their gene expression patterns, the researchers also revealed how transplanted cells find where they need to go and form connections with the nervous system.

Journal: Cell Stem Cell

Stem cell engineering breakthrough paves way for next-generation living drugs

University of British Columbia
Peer-Reviewed Publication

For the first time, researchers at UBC have demonstrated how to reliably produce an important type of human immune cell—known as helper T cells—from stem cells in a laboratory setting. The findings, published Jan. 8 in Cell Stem Cell, overcome a major hurdle that has limited the development, affordability and large-scale manufacturing of cell therapies. The discovery could pave the way for more accessible and effective off-the-shelf treatments for a wide range of conditions like cancer, infectious diseases, autoimmune disorders and more.

Journal: Cell Stem Cell
Funder: Genome BC, Wellcome Leap, Canadian Foundation for Innovation/B.C. Knowledge Development Fund, Canadian Institutes of Health Research

Global data gaps highlight why citizen science has now become essential for official statistics

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A commentary coauthored by IIASA experts and senior representatives from the UN and the international statistics community discusses the implications of recent changes to the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) program and highlights the importance of integrating citizen science more fully into official data systems.

Litter in the Rhine river: Some 53,000 items of litter flow past Cologne daily

University of Bonn
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The amount of litter floating in the Rhine is many times larger than previously believed. Researchers from the University of Bonn, the University of Tübingen and the Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG) partnered with the Cologne-based non-profit pollution-fighting organization K.R.A.K.E. to collect and classify macro litter in a floating litter trap—the only one of its kind in Germany—over a period of 16 months. Extrapolation models based on the observed volume indicate that roughly 53,000 items of macro waste debris float past Cologne on the Rhine river every day. Disposable plastic products make up a large proportion of the litter found in the Rhine. The findings have now been published in the scientific journal “Communications Sustainability.”