Single treatment provides patients with rapid, lasting antidepressant effects. A single, one-hour treatment that involves breathing in a mixture of oxygen and nitrous oxide — otherwise known as laughing gas — significantly improved symptoms in people with treatment-resistant depression, according to new data from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Chicago.

In a phase 2 clinical trial...

Prototype technology could enable smart home systems that don’t record speech. Microphones are perhaps the most common electronic sensor in the world, with an estimated 320 million listening for our commands in the world’s smart speakers. The trouble is that they’re capable of hearing everything else, too.

But now, a team of University of Michigan researchers has developed a system that can inform a smart home — or listen for the signal that would turn on a smart speaker — without eavesdropping on audible sound.

The key to the device, called PrivacyMic, is ultrasonic sound at frequencies above the range of human hearing...

The spectacularly colorful aurora borealis — or northern lights — that fills the sky in high-latitude regions has fascinated people for thousands of years. Now, a team of scientists has resolved one of the final mysteries surrounding its origin.

Scientists know that electrons and other energized particles that emanate from the sun as part of the “solar wind” speed down Earth’s magnetic field lines and into the upper atmosphere, where they collide with oxygen and nitrogen molecules, kicking them into an excited state. These molecules then relax by emitting light, producing the beautiful green and red hues of the aurora.

What has not been well understood is precisely how group...

Single cell encapsulation in gel can optimize cell-based therapy. Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have shown that even after lung tissue has been damaged, it may be possible to reverse fibrosis and promote tissue repair through treatment with microgel-coated mesenchymal stromal cells.

Pulmonary fibrosis is a chronic disease caused by environmental toxins, medications or medical conditions like pneumonia and rheumatoid arthritis...