A new study reveals that astrocytes—star-shaped support cells traditionally viewed as passive partners of neurons—play a previously underappreciated role in the maturation of coordinated movement. A research team led by Director C. Justin LEE and Senior Research Fellow HONG Sungho of the Center for Memory and Glioscience within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), in collaboration with Professor Erik DE SCHUTTER from the Compational Neuroscience Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), Japan, has uncovered how astrocytes regulate inhibitory signaling in the cerebellum during development, enabling the emergence of flexible and precise motor coordination.

Researchers present a comprehensive review of frontier AI applications in computational structural analysis from 2020 to 2025, focusing on graph neural networks (GNNs), sequence-to-sequence (Seq2Seq) and Transformer-based architectures, and physics-informed methods. Published in Smart Construction, their work offers a valuable guide for researchers and engineers to understand fundamental concepts, current research status, existing challenges, and future application prospects.

This March, join the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology (Alliance) and the Alliance Foundation Trials (AFT) in spotlighting colorectal cancer, the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States, behind only lung cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute. Last year, an estimated 155,000 Americans received a diagnosis of colon or rectal cancer, and about 53,000 died from the disease. Alliance has 10 active trials focused on improving treatments for colorectal cancers as well as others aimed at ways to prevent the disease or catch it very early when symptoms are most easily and effectively treated.

Compressed air energy storage (CAES) is an effective technology for mitigating the fluctuations associated with renewable energy sources. In this work, a hybrid cogeneration energy system that integrates CAES with high-temperature thermal energy storage and a supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle is proposed for enhancing the overall system performance. This proposal emphasizes system cost-effectiveness, eco-friendliness, and adaptability. Comprehensive analyses, including thermodynamic, exergoeconomic, economic, and sensitivity evaluations, are conducted to assess the viability of the system. The findings indicate that, under design conditions, the system achieves an energy storage density, a round-trip efficiency, an exergy efficiency, a unit product cost, and a dynamic payback period of 5.49 kWh/m3, 58.39%, 61.85%, 0.1421 $/kWh, and 4.81 years, respectively. The high-temperature thermal energy storage unit, intercoolers, and aftercooler show potential for optimization due to their suboptimal exergoeconomic performance. Sensitivity evaluation indicates that the operational effectiveness of the system is highly sensitive to the maximum and minimum air storage pressures, the outlet temperature of the high-temperature thermal energy storage unit, and the isentropic efficiencies of both compressors and turbines. Ultimately, the system is optimized for maximum exergy efficiency and minimum dynamic payback period. These findings demonstrate the significant potential of this system and provide valuable insights for its design and optimization.

A new expert commentary in ENGINEERING Energy （formerly Frontiers in Energy）underscores a revolutionary "self-supplied hydrogen" strategy that achieves 99% selectivity in upcycling polyethylene into high-value fuel without external hydrogen sources.