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Too much fat in the diet promotes insulin resistance by spurring chronic inflammation. In the image above, immune cells (shown in green) produce fatty acids that contribute to diabetes-related inflammation. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have developed a way to block production of fatty acids in these immune cells in mice and protect them from diet-induced diabetes. Credit: Semenkovich lab/ Washington University

Inflammation is one of the main reasons why people with diabetes experience heart attacks, strokes, kidney problems and other, related complications. Now, in a surprise finding, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a possible trigger of chronic inflammation...

Genome-wide analysis identifies 12 loci influencing human reproductive behavior.

Researchers have identified 12 specific areas of the DNA sequence that are robustly related with the age at which we have our first child, and the total number of children we have during the course of our life. The study, led by University of Oxford, together with the Universities of Groningen, The Netherlands and Uppsala, Sweden, includes an analysis of 62 datasets with information from 238,064 men and women for age at first birth, and almost 330,000 men and women for the number of children. Until now, reproductive behaviour was thought to be mainly linked to personal choices or social circumstances and environmental factors...

Nitroaromatic detection and infrared communication in wild-type plants via plant nanobionics.

After sensing dangerous chemicals, the carbon-nanotube-enhanced plants send an alert. Spinach is no longer just a superfood: By embedding leaves with CNTs, MIT engineers have transformed spinach plants into sensors that can detect explosives and wirelessly relay that information to a handheld device similar to a smartphone. This is one of the first demonstrations of engineering electronic systems into plants, an approach that the researchers call “plant nanobionics.”

“The goal of plant nanobionics is to introduce nanoparticles into the plant to give it non-native functions,” says Prof. Michael Strano, Chemical Engineering, MIT...

Post-doctoral researcher Congcong Wu, who is working in the lab of Shashank Priya, the Robert E. Hord Jr. Professor of Mechanical Engineering, holds up a layer of the flexible solar panel the group is working on. The process to adhere a thin film of titanium oxide to the panel takes less than 10 seconds using screen-printing technology.

In the very near future, recycling light energy may be easier than recycling any other item in your house. Led by Shashank Priya, a team at Virginia Tech is producing flexible solar panels that can become part of window shades or wallpaper that will capture light from the sun as well as light from sources inside buildings...