Hitherto, scientists have not fully understood why ticks are such dangerous disease vectors. A research team led by Johanna Strobl and Georg Stary from MedUni Vienna’s Department of Dermatology shows that tick saliva inhibits the skin’s defence function, thereby increasing the risk of diseases such as tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) or Lyme disease. The study was recently published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

The researchers carried out their investigations on skin samples from volunteers and also on models of human skin, mimicking the bite of the most common European tick (Ixodes ricinus)...

Soft robots can navigate hard-to-reach places like pipes or inside the human body. An interdisciplinary team of University of Minnesota Twin Cities scientists and engineers has developed a first-of-its-kind, plant-inspired extrusion process that enables synthetic material growth. The new approach will allow researchers to build better soft robots that can navigate hard-to-reach places, complicated terrain, and potentially areas within the human body.

The paper is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“This is the first time t...

An international team of researchers has revealed new evidence for the ...

Researchers experimentally demonstrate the first fully connected annealing processor that can be scaled up across multiple chips. Annealing processors are more energy efficient and quicker at solving mathematical optimization problems than PCs. Researchers at Tokyo University of Science have now developed a new approach to realizing scalable fully coupled annealing processors. These quantum-inspired systems can model the interactions between magnetic spins and use it to solve complex optimization problems. The new method greatly outperforms modern CPUs and shows potential for applications in drug discovery, artificial intelligence, and materials science.

Have you ever been faced with a pro...