Thin tissue grafts and flexible electronics have a host of applications for wound healing, regenerative medicine and biosensing. A new device inspired by an octopus’s sucker rapidly transfers delicate tissue or electronic sheets to the patient, overcoming a key barrier to clinical application, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and collaborators.

“For the last few decades, cell or tissue sheets have been increasingly used to treat injured or diseased tissues. A crucial aspect of tissue transplantation surgery, such as corneal tissue transplantation surgery, is surgical gripping and safe transplantation of soft tissues...

Astronomers at the University of Iowa have determined our galaxy is surrounded by a clumpy halo of hot gases that is continually being supplied with material ejected by birthing or dying stars. The halo also may be where matter unaccounted for since the birth of the universe may reside. Results published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

University of Iowa astronomers have determined our galaxy is surrounded by a clumpy halo of hot gases that is continuall...

Multidrug resistance (MDR) — a process in which tumors become resistant to multiple medicines — is the main cause of failure of cancer chemotherapy. Tumor cells often acquire MDR by boosting their production of proteins that pump drugs out of the cell, rendering the chemotherapies ineffective. Now, researchers reporting in ACS’ Nano Letters have developed nanoparticles that release bursts of calcium inside tumor cells, inhibiting drug pumps and reversing MDR.

A pump protein called P-glycoprotein (P-gp) often plays a key role in MDR. P-gp is in the cell membrane, where it uses energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) to pump drugs out of tumor cells...

In a world first, researchers from the University of Ottawa in collaboration with Israeli scientists have been able to create optical framed knots in the laboratory that could potentially be applied in modern technologies. Their work opens the door to new methods of distributing secret cryptographic keys — used to encrypt and decrypt data, ensure secure communication and protect private information. The group recently published their findings in Nature Communications.

“This is fundamentally important, in particular from a topology-focused perspective, since framed knots provide a platform for topological quantum computations,” explained senior author, Professor Ebrahim Karimi, Canada Research Chair in Structured Light at the University of Ottawa.

“In addition, we used these non-...