A new study published in the SCI journal Pest Management Science sheds light on the behaviour of grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) and explores methods for the targeted delivery of oral contraceptives to control their populations. The research, a collaboration between APHA's National Wildlife Management Centre, Durham University, and the University of York, provides a platform for mitigating the environmental damage caused by this invasive species and protecting the UK’s declining native red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) population.

Exhaled breath contains chemical clues to what’s going on inside the body, including diseases like lung cancer. And devising ways to sense these compounds could help doctors provide early diagnoses — and improve patients’ prospects. In a study in ACS Sensors, researchers report developing ultrasensitive, nanoscale sensors that in small-scale tests distinguished a key change in the chemistry of the breath of people with lung cancer. November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month.

Sylvain Bouix, from École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), Martha E. Shenton and Ofer Pasternak, from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (Harvard University), and René Kahn, from Mount Sinai Hospital (New York) has just received US $33 million in funding—the equivalent of CAD 45 million—over five years from the National Institute of Mental Health to better understand the mechanisms of action of new drugs designed to treat psychosis.

Automated vehicles promise to improve urban mobility, but passenger trust remains a challenge. Providing timely, passenger-specific explanations for automated vehicle decisions can bridge this trust gap. To address this, researchers from the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology introduced TimelyTale, a novel dataset designed to capture real-world driving scenarios and passenger explanation needs. It would be nice to see this multimodal dataset approach for in-vehicle explanation generation improving passengers’ trust and confidence in automated vehicles.

Researchers from the IBB-UAB have developed a new class of nanostructures capable of trapping and neutralising large quantities of the SARS-CoV2 virus particles, both in liquid solutions and on the surface of materials. These novel nanoparticles could be used to manufacture antiviral materials such as wastewater and air filters, and could be exploited to develop new tests for the early detection of Covid-19. Moreover, the nanoparticles could be redesigned to target other pathogens.