Seeing cancer’s spread through a computational window

Computational model allows researchers to simulate cellular-scale interactions across unprecedented distances in the human vasculature

29-Nov-2023 - Biomedical engineers at Duke University have significantly enhanced the capabilities of a computational model that simulates the movement of individual cancer cells across long distances within the entire human body. Called “Adaptive Physics Refinement (APR),” the approach captures detailed ...

Scientists find key reason why loss of smell occurs in long COVID-19

The inflammatory mechanism could also help explain other long COVID-19 symptom

04-Jan-2023 - The reason some people fail to recover their sense of smell after COVID-19 is linked to an ongoing immune assault on olfactory nerve cells and an associated decline in the number of those cells, a team of scientists led by Duke Health report. The finding, publishing online Dec. 21 in the journal ...

Air pollution and stress alter brain development and social behavior in male mice

Smog and stress while pregnant alters brain connections in developing male mice, but not females, leading to autism-like social behavior

08-Aug-2022 - Naval oceanographer Carina Block had a hunch that the jet exhaust fumes she and her fellow female sailors were regularly exposed to, combined with unavoidable job stress, was leading to adverse health outcomes for their children. A new study in mice backs up Block’s suspicion, finding that air ...

The surprising structural reason your kitchen sponge is disgusting

A Kitchen sponge is a better incubator for bacterial diversity than a Petri dish

21-Feb-2022 - Researchers at Duke University have uncovered a basic but surprising fact: your kitchen sponge is a better incubator for diverse bacterial communities than a laboratory Petri dish. But it’s not just the trapped leftovers that make the cornucopia of microbes swarming around so happy and ...

Taking new aim at COVID-19

The coronavirus’s tangled strands of RNA could offer new ways to treat people who get infected

30-Nov-2021 - To the untrained eye, the loops, kinks and folds in the single strand of RNA that makes up the coronavirus genome look like a jumble of spaghetti or tangled yarn. But to researchers likeAmanda Hargrove, a chemistry professor at Duke University, the complex shapes that RNA takes on as it folds ...

Blood-based test accurately identifies viral infection before symptoms develop

The study, conducted prior to COVID-19, has broad potential for pandemic responses

29-Sep-2020 - A team of Duke Health scientists have identified biomarkers that accurately identify numerous viral infections across the clinical stages of disease, advancing a potential new way to guide treatment, quarantine decisions, and other clinical and public health interventions in the setting of ...

Tiny light-up barcodes identify molecules by their twinkling

Tags made of flashing DNA let researchers tease apart dozens of molecules at once

16-Apr-2019 - An imaging technique developed at Duke University could make it possible to peer inside cells and watch dozens of different molecules in action at once -- by labeling them with short strands of light-up DNA that blink on and off with their own unique rhythm. "The idea is everything has its own ...

Unmasking blood doping in athletes

RNA changes mark old blood cells among new ones, foiling self-transfusions

22-Oct-2018 - A Duke University research team has found a way to help sporting officials detect whether an athlete's blood has been doped by an infusion of their own stored blood. While tests have been developed to detect two of the three most common methods of dramatically boosting the oxygen-carrying ...

Widespread uranium contamination found in India's groundwater

11-Jun-2018 - A new Duke University-led study has found widespread uranium contamination in groundwater from aquifers in 16 Indian states. The main source of the uranium contamination is natural, but human factors such as groundwater-table decline and nitrate pollution may be exacerbating the problem. Several ...

Malaria-causing parasite manipulates liver cells to survive

24-May-2018 - When the malaria-causing Plasmodium parasite first slips into the human bloodstream, injected by the bite of an infected mosquito, it does not immediately target red blood cells. Instead, it seeks refuge inside the liver and rapidly reproduces, copying itself as many as 30,000 times in the span ...