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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Saturday

To further test the efficacy of the BK-TriGs, the researchers worked with lab mice that were genetically engineered to not make fibrinogen, the precursor to fibrin. This allowed the researchers to first introduce infant fibrinogen into the lab mice so that the mice exhibit a form of hemostasis similar to infants.
They found that the BK-TriGs outperformed any of the other options they tested at reducing blood loss.

Nooshin Zandi et al, Hemostatic B-Knob Triggered MicroGels (BK-TriGs) to Address Bleeding in Neonates, Science Advances (2026). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ady7698. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ady7698

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Saturday

An injectable particle could make surgery safer for infants
Biomedical researchers have designed an injectable microgel to help reduce bleeding in infants who require surgical care. In an animal model, the engineered microgel reduced bleeding by at least 50%. The paper, "Hemostatic B-Knob Triggered MicroGels (BK-TriGs) to Address Bleeding in Neonates," is published in the journal Science Advances.
When adults cut themselves, a multi-step process called hemostasis stops the bleeding from the injured blood vessel. But hemostasis in infants is different from hemostasis in adults. This difference can be problematic if infants require surgery to address significant medical problems. In surgeries, patients normally receive blood from adult donors to compensate for blood lost during the operation.

"But if you give adult blood to an infant, the difference in adult hemostasis versus infant hemostasis can lead to too much clotting.
That can increase the likelihood of thrombosis, where blood clots form in the lungs or elsewhere and put the baby at risk.
So researchers wanted to develop a therapeutic intervention that would reduce bleeding and—by extension—reduce the need for infants to receive adult blood transfusions during surgery.
To that end, the researchers developed a material called B-knob triggered microgels (BK-TriGs).

Fibrin is the main clotting protein in human blood. There is a short amino acid sequence called a "B peptide' that links together fibrin molecules to create blood clots where they are needed—and these B peptides play a particularly important role in hemostasis for infants. The BK-TriGs are engineered particles that are studded with those B peptides.
The particles can absorb water and become squishy hydrogels, which mimic the mechanical properties of natural platelets in a way that maximizes the ability of the B peptides to create fibrin networks and stanch bleeding.

The researchers first tested the BK-TriGs by using microfluidic devices that allowed them to conduct in vitro testing to see how the microgels affected clotting in blood plasma from human adults and infants.
They found that BK-TriGs worked better at improving blood clotting in infant plasma than in adult plasma.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

Quantum physics can confirm where someone is located

Scammers and spies beware: Scientists have uncovered a way to verify someone’s location using the weird world of quantum mechanics. The experimental technique makes use of a phenomenon called entanglement, in which properties of two subatomic particles are linked no matter how much distance lies between them.
How does quantum verification work? The method involves two people who are seeking to verify the location of a third party in between them. The verifiers each send the person a random number, and one verifier sends half of an entangled pair of photons. The person being checked out needs to use the random numbers to measure their photon at the same time as the verifier. If this person is where they claim to be, a series of such measurements should show a strong correlation with measurements of the photons taken by the verifier. If an imposter at a different location intercepts the photon, the correlation won't be as strong, indicating that something is awry.
Reliably verifying someone’s location from afar is no easy task in the modern era. If this method pans out, one day quantum weirdness could help prevent certain types of phishing attacks, or it could ensure that only people inside a secure facility can send certain messages or commands.

Abigail Gookin et al. Device-Independent Quantum Position Verification. Global Physics Summit, Denver, March 18, 2026.

G.A. Kavuri et al. Quantum Position Verification with Remote Untrusted Devices. arXiv:2601.16892. Submitted on January 23, 2026.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

Study suggests people are losing 338 spoken words every year and have been for at least 15 years
Analysis of spoken word counts from 2005 to 2019 indicates a consistent annual decline of 338 words per person, with daily averages dropping from about 16,000 to 12,700 words. The reduction is more pronounced in younger adults and is attributed to fewer incidental face-to-face interactions, likely influenced by technology. The trend is observed in Western societies, with unknown global applicability.

Valeria A. Pfeifer et al, Sliding Into Silence? We Are Speaking 300 Daily Words Fewer Every Year, Perspectives on Psychological Science (2026). DOI: 10.1177/17456916261425131

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

New research suggests the immune system has its own daily cycle

The brain's immune defenses, particularly in the olfactory bulb, exhibit daily rhythms, with antiviral gene expression peaking around dusk. Immune responses and microglial activity vary depending on the time of pathogen exposure, indicating that circadian timing influences susceptibility to respiratory infections and related neurological effects.
New research reveals that the brain's immune defenses operate on a daily schedule, a finding with potential implications for how we think about respiratory infections and their neurological consequences.
The study shows that the mouse olfactory bulb, a brain region directly connected to the nasal cavity and a known entry point for viruses like influenza and herpes simplex, rhythmically ramps up antiviral gene expression around dusk, and mounts markedly different immune responses to a nasal viral mimic depending on time of day.
The team also found distinct subpopulations of microglia, the brain's resident immune cells, whose responses varied with the timing of the challenge.
The findings suggest that when a person is exposed to a respiratory pathogen, it may matter as much as the pathogen itself and could help explain why shift workers and others with disrupted circadian rhythms face elevated risks of infection and inflammatory disease.

Gregory L. Pearson et al, Time of day alters olfactory bulb immune state with ramifications for intranasal inflammatory challenge, Cell Reports (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2026.117133

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

EPA moves to designate microplastics and pharmaceuticals as contaminants in drinking water
The EPA has proposed adding microplastics and pharmaceuticals to its Contaminant Candidate List for drinking water, marking the first time these substances are formally recognized as potential threats. This action initiates a process that could eventually lead to regulatory limits, though historically few contaminants on the list have been regulated. The draft list also includes PFAS, disinfection byproducts, 75 chemicals, and nine microbes.

The Environmental Protection Agency proposed Thursday to include microplastics and pharmaceuticals on a list of contaminants in drinking water for the first time, a step that could lead to new limits on those substances for water utilities.
Studies have looked at the prevalence of microplastics in drinking water and in people's hearts, brains and testicles. Doctors and scientists are still assessing what it means in terms of human health threats, but say there's cause for concern. There is also growing worry about pharmaceutical drugs that get into the water supply because humans excrete them and conventional wastewater treatment plants fail to remove them.

https://phys.org/news/2026-04-epa-microplastics-pharmaceuticals-con...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

n the laboratory, the researchers applied chlorhexidine to common materials—plastic, metal and laminate—often found in hospitals. Then, they cleaned those surfaces with chlorhexidine-free disinfectants typically used to sterilize hospital environments.

Even after these cleaning treatments, chlorhexidine residue lingered on surfaces after 24 hours. The residue levels were too low to kill bacteria but high enough to expose them to the chemical. In these conditions, surviving microbes can develop tolerance to the disinfectant.
To explore what happens under those sub-lethal conditions, the team exposed several clinically relevant bacteria, including Escherichia coli, to trace concentrations of chlorhexidine. Even after a full day of exposure, the microbes survived.
Then the researchers conducted an environmental survey inside a MICU, collecting nearly 200 samples from hospital bed rails, keyboards, doorsills, light switches and sink drains. From those samples, they isolated more than 1,400 bacteria, and about 36% exhibited some level of tolerance to chlorhexidine.
While bacteria showed up all over the MICU, sink drains stood out as the biggest hotspot. Compared to dry surfaces, drains contained far higher levels of bacteria, including strains capable of tolerating much higher concentrations of chlorhexidine.
In perhaps the most surprising finding, the team found bacteria with signs of chlorhexidine tolerance in samples collected from the top of doorsills.
Because people rarely touch doorsills, the finding suggests bacteria might have hitched a ride on airborne particles, like dead skin cells. According to the researchers dust on doorsills can trap these particles circulating in the air.
While chlorhexidine remains necessary and effective in clinical settings, the findings underscore the message that antimicrobial chemicals can have unintended consequences.
Unless a person is actively sick or immune compromised, the environment around them does not need to be disinfected. To prevent antimicrobial resistance, the researchers recommend using plain soap and water to clean our homes and offices.
We don't need to expose ourselves and our environments to these chemicals because those exposures are not necessarily benign, they conclude.

Hospital environments harbor chlorhexidine tolerant bacteria potentially linked to chlorhexidine persistence in the environment, Environmental Science & Technology (2026). On medRxiv DOI: 10.1101/2024.10.07.24315058

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

How disinfectants influence microbes across hospital rooms

Just because a topical antiseptic is swabbed on the skin doesn't mean it stays on the skin. In a new study scientists investigated how a powerful antiseptic, called chlorhexidine, affects bacteria in hospital environments. To prevent infections, hospitals heavily rely on chlorhexidine wipes to sterilize patients' skin before procedures.
Through laboratory experiments, the researchers discovered that traces of chlorhexidine linger on surfaces much longer than previously known—long enough to help microbes build tolerance. By analyzing samples from a medical intensive care unit (MICU), the team also found chlorhexidine-tolerant bacteria spread throughout the hospital environment through touch—and, surprisingly, through the air.

The findings offer new insights into how disinfectants interact with microbes in indoor environments and could help inform strategies for preventing infection and antimicrobial resistance.

Even though chlorhexidine is applied to patients' skin, researchers saw evidence that it affects the microbes in the room all around the patients.
Widely used in health care since the 1950s, chlorhexidine is an important chemical for preventing infections in hospitals. Health care workers use products containing chlorhexidine in routine medical care, including the daily bathing of MICU patients, preparing skin before surgery or catheter insertion, sterilizing equipment and washing hands. It's also commonly used in prescription mouthwashes for dental care and in veterinary clinics.

Chlorhexidine is used in environments where patients are incredibly vulnerable, and physicians want to make sure microbial exposures are highly controlled.
It's a well-regulated chemical and really important for keeping high-risk patients safe. But after chlorhexidine is applied to the skin, it appears to live a second life.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Thursday

Language processing requires rapid cross-talk across brain regions, researchers discover
Language processing involves rapid, coordinated activity across multiple brain regions rather than a single area. Concrete words engage both sensory and language regions, while abstract words rely more on language-related areas. Brain responses to words of varying concreteness remain stable across individuals, and disrupting different regions impairs word classification, indicating distributed processing.

Multiple regions of the brain engage in fast-moving conversations to understand language, researchers have discovered, dispelling a prior school of thought that only one region of the brain was responsible for language processing. The research was published in PLOS Biology.
The team found that concrete words activated regions of the brain that process sensory experiences and regions responsible for language, while abstract words relied more heavily on language-related areas of the brain. For words that fell in between, the team found that the patients' brain responses were stable regardless of individual, subjective ratings.
Even if a person thinks of the word 'magic' in purely physical terms, their brain seems to still activate some of the abstract features associated with the word 'magic.'"

Additionally, researchers found that whether the participants were reading purely abstract or purely concrete words, multiple regions of the brain communicated with each other to process them.
In a separate part of the study, researchers asked participants to classify ambiguous words while they stimulated different parts of the brain with small electrical pulses to temporarily disable their processing. When different regions were stimulated, participants had a harder time making decisions about how to classify the words, reaffirming that multiple areas are responsible for decoding language.

The research has important clinical implications for patients with aphasia, or the inability to speak, as well as dementia and brain injuries.

Elliot Murphy et al, Frontotemporal network interactions causally support rapid concreteness judgments during reading, PLOS Biology (2026). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3003723

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Thursday

AI maps science papers to predict research trends two to three years ahead
Artificial intelligence combining large language models and machine learning can systematically analyze scientific literature, mapping concept relationships to predict emerging research trends two to three years in advance. This approach highlights novel topic combinations and supports researchers in identifying innovative directions and interdisciplinary opportunities within rapidly expanding fields.

The number of scientific papers is growing so rapidly that scientists are no longer able to keep track of all of them, even in their own research area. Researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), in collaboration with scientific partners, have shown how new research ideas can still be obtained from this wealth of information. Using artificial intelligence (AI), they systematically analyzed materials science publications to identify potential new avenues of research. Their results have been published in Nature Machine Intelligence.

Thomas Marwitz et al, Predicting new research directions in materials science using large language models and concept graphs, Nature Machine Intelligence (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s42256-026-01206-y

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