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In a new study in Physical Review Letters, scientists have demonstrated a method to control artificial microswimmers using electric fields and fluid flow. These microscopic droplets could pave the way for targeted drug delivery and microrobotics.

In the natural world, biological swimmers, like algae and bacteria, can change their direction of movement (or swimming) in response to an external stimulus, like light or electricity. The ability of biological swimmers to change directions in response to electrical fields is known as electrotaxis.

Artificial swimmers that can respond to external stimuli can be extremely helpful for targeted drug delivery applications. In this study, researchers chose to model artificial swimmers that respond to electric fields.

Phys...

As Canadians brace for “vitamin D winter”—months when the sun’s angle is too low to produce the vitamin in the skin—a McGill University study explains why vitamin D deficiency early in life is associated with a higher risk of autoimmune diseases.

During childhood, the thymus helps train immune cells to distinguish between the body’s own tissues and harmful invaders. A vitamin D deficiency at that stage of life causes the thymus to age more quickly, the researchers discovered.

The study is published in the journal Science Advances.

“An aging thymus leads to a ‘leaky’ immune system,” said lead author John White, a Professor in and Chair of M...

An ischemic stroke is a type of stroke that occurs when a blood clot in an artery, also known as thrombus, or the progressive narrowing of arteries, blocks the blood and oxygen flowing to the brain. This process can cause both temporary and permanent brain damage, for instance, leading to partial paralysis, cognitive impairments and other debilitating impairments.

Statistics suggest that older age increases the risk of experiencing ischemic strokes...

The past century of human-induced warming has increased rainfall variability over 75% of the Earth’s land area—particularly over Australia, Europe and eastern North America, new research shows.

The findings, by Chinese researchers and the UK Met Office, were published in the journal Science. They provide the first systematic observational evidence that climate change is making global rainfall patterns more volatile.

Climate models had predicted this variability would worsen under climate change. But these new findings show rainfall variability has already worsened over the past 100 years—especially in Australia.

Past studies of the observational record either focused on long-term average rain, which is not systematically changing globally...