A method to convert a commonly thrown-away plastic to a resin used in 3Dprinting could allow for making better use of plastic waste.

A team of Washington State University researchers developed a simple and efficient way to convert polylactic acid (PLA), a bio-based plastic used in products such as filament, plastic silverware and food packaging to a high-quality resin.

“We found a way to immediately turn this into something that’s stronger and better, and we hope that will provide people the incentive to upcycle this stuff instead of just toss it away,” said Yu-Chung Chang, a postdoctoral researcher in the WSU School of Mechanical and Mat...

Researchers at Osaka Metropolitan University have observed “baby stars” in the Small Magellanic Cloud, having an environment similar to the early universe. Toward one of the baby stars, they found molecular outflow, which has similar properties to those seen in the Milky Way galaxy, giving a new perspective on the birth of stars.

The heavy elements in interstellar matter significantly impact the mechanism of star formation. In the early universe, the abundance of heavy elements was lower than in the present universe because there was not enough time for nucleosynthesis to produce heavy elements in stars. It has not been well understood how star formation in such an environment differs from present-day star formation.

An international team led by Professor Toshikazu Onishi, Osaka...

Scientists at the Francis Crick Institute, UCL and the University of Edinburgh have uncovered how a build-up of harmful protein starts to happen within neurons in Parkinson’s disease, ultimately causing nerve cell death. By looking at how, where and why this build-up happens, the work provides unique insight into a key biological process driving Parkinson’s.

Parkinson’s is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that causes tremors, slowing of movements, stiffness and can progress to cause severe cognitive problems...

As demonstrated by breakthroughs in various fields of artificial intelligence (AI), such as image processing, smart health care, self-driving vehicles and smart cities, this is undoubtedly the golden period of deep learning. In the next decade or so, AI and computing systems will eventually be equipped with the ability to learn and think the way humans do—to process continuous flow of information and interact with the real world.

However, current AI models suffer from a per...