Against a backdrop of long-term rises in temperature in recent decades, California has seen ever higher spikes in seasonal wildfires, and, in the last two years, a string of disastrous, record-setting blazes.

The European eel (Anguilla anguilla), the freshwater blenny (Salaria fluviatilis), the freshwater pearl mussel (Margaritifera auricularia) and the pronged clubtail (Gomphus graslini) are some of the vulnerable species that are not represented enough in the biodiversity catalogue of the Natural River Basins (RNF) in Spain, according to a new article published in the journal Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems -in which researchers Miguel Cañedo-Argüelles and Núria Bonada, from the Research Group Freshwater Ecology, Hydrology and Management (FEHM) of the University of Barcelona take part.

Cold weather snaps are followed by a marked increase in fatal opioid overdoses, a new study finds.

Climate change is amplifying the intensity and likelihood of heatwaves during severe droughts in the southern plains and southwest United States, according to a new study by a University of Arkansas researcher.

When University of Alberta dermatologist Robert Gniadecki was growing up in Denmark, getting a sunburn was part of every family holiday.

Once found widely throughout Australia, Tasmanian devils are now indigenous only to the island state of Tasmania.

A promising new way to treat some types of cancer is to program the patient’s own T cells to destroy the cancerous cells. This approach, termed CAR-T cell therapy, is now used to combat some types of leukemia, but so far it has not worked well against solid tumors such as lung or breast tumors.

MIT researchers have now devised a way to super-charge this therapy so that it could be used as a weapon against nearly any type of cancer. The research team developed a vaccine that dramatically boosts the antitumor T cell population and allows the cells to vigorously invade solid tumors.

In a study of mice, the researchers found that they could completely eliminate solid tumors in 60 percent of the animals that were given T-cell therapy along with the booster vaccination. Engineered T cells on their own had almost no effect.

“By adding the vaccine, a CAR-T cell treatment which had no impact on survival can be amplified to give a complete response in more than half of the animals,” says Darrell Irvine, who is the Underwood-Prescott Professor with appointments in Biological Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering, an associate director of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, a member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, and the senior author of the study.

Read more at: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MIT engineers have devised a way to stimulate T cells (shown in red) to attack tumors by activating them with a vaccine that accumulates in the lymph nodes. B cells in the lymph nodes are labeled in blue. (Photo Credit: Leyuan Ma and Jason Chang)

An automated system developed by MIT researchers designs and 3-D prints complex robotic parts called actuators that are optimized according to an enormous number of specifications.

As fishermen deep in the Louisiana bayou, Kindra Arnesen and her family have faced their share of life-altering challenges in recent years.

AI algorithms can now more accurately detect depressed mood using the sound of your voice, according to new research by University of Alberta computing scientists.