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What are the origins of life on Earth and possibly elsewhere? Did “protein nanomachines” evolve here before life began to catalyze and support the development of living things? Could the same thing have happened on Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Neptune, and elsewhere in the universe? A Rutgers University-led team of scientists called ENIGMA, for “Evolution of Nanomachines in Geospheres and Microbial Ancestors,” will try to answer those questions over the next five years, thanks to an approximately $6 million NASA grant and membership in the NASA Astrobiology Institute.

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A Rutgers-led team of physicists has demonstrated a way to conduct electricity between transistors without energy loss, opening the door to low-power electronics and, potentially, quantum computing that would be far faster than today’s computers. Their findings, which involved using a special mix of materials with magnetic and insulator properties, are published online in Nature Physics.

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Rutgers Global Health Institute’s director discusses how rejecting scientific facts can undermine progress in public health – and how the medical profession can further public understanding of science

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The hand-held device RETeval may prove to be a more accessible way to diagnose schizophrenia, predict relapse and symptom severity, and assess treatment effectiveness.

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Generations of Rutgers students and alumni have sung lovingly about the “Banks of the Old Raritan,” but the 90-mile-long waterway is awash in microplastic pollutants, a problem that plagues many freshwaters in New Jersey. In a recent study, researchers from Rutgers University–New Brunswick and other institutions found high levels of tiny pieces of plastic – often fragments from bigger items – in the Raritan and Passaic rivers. They later identified more than 300 organic chemical compounds that appeared to be associated with microplastic particles in the two rivers.

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Rutgers University–New Brunswick engineers have created a 3D-printed smart gel that walks underwater and grabs objects and moves them. The watery creation could lead to soft robots that mimic sea animals like the octopus, which can walk underwater and bump into things without damaging them. It may also lead to artificial heart, stomach and other muscles, along with devices for diagnosing diseases, detecting and delivering drugs and performing underwater inspections.

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Findings suggest that children do not retain safety skills when encountering a firearm in a real-world scenario

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Eric Zwerling has led America’s last noise control center at Rutgers University–New Brunswick for 28 years, and fighting noise pollution remains an uphill battle.

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Every 405,000 years, gravitational tugs from Jupiter and Venus slightly elongate Earth’s orbit, an amazingly consistent pattern that has influenced our planet’s climate for at least 215 million years and allows scientists to more precisely date geological events like the spread of dinosaurs, according to a Rutgers-led study. The findings are published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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In an amazing achievement akin to adding solar panels to your body, a Northeast sea slug sucks raw materials from algae to provide its lifetime supply of solar-powered energy, according to a study by Rutgers University–New Brunswick and other scientists.

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U.S. Autism Rates Rise 15 Percent; New Jersey Rates Remain Highest

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About 21 million years ago, a fungus that causes a devastating disease in rice first became harmful to the food that nourishes roughly half the world’s population, according to an international study led by Rutgers University–New Brunswick scientists.The findings may help lead to different ways to fight or prevent crop and plant diseases, such as new fungicides and more effective quarantines.

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Former Planned Parenthood vice president of education and Mailman School of Public Health faculty member advocates for underserved, marginalized populations

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Helen M. Berman, Board of Governors distinguished professor emerita of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berman is among 213 people elected to the academy this year, including author Ta-Nehisi Coates, actor Tom Hanks, President Barack Obama, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, gene editing developer Feng Zhang and pediatric neurologist Huda Zoghbi.

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The SIDS Info app developed by Rutgers medical experts puts safe sleep recommendations in the hands of health care providers and new parents

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A Poison Control Center expert at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School discusses the health implications of legalized recreational marijuana

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The wireless standard known as 4G turned mobile phones into movie-streaming platforms, but the next wireless revolution promises more than speedy downloads. It could pave the way for surgeons operating remotely on patients, cars that rarely crash and events that can be virtually experienced from thousands of miles away.

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Experts from New Jersey Medical School discuss who should carry naloxone, how it is used and what this advisory means for public health

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Imagine a small paper device that can rapidly reveal from a drop of blood whether an infection is bacterial or viral. The device could help reduce the overuse of antibiotics – which kill bacteria, not viruses. Misuse of antibiotics has led to antimicrobial resistance, a growing global public health issue.

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Using his own version of Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility, Rutgers professor Andrew Norris can help make underwater objects appear invisible. Norris, a distinguished professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, is developing honeycomb-like metallic structures that reroute sound waves to create the impression that both the cloak and anything beneath it are not there. Rutgers Today asked Norris to discuss his pioneering research, which could lead to improved acoustic technology, including better imaging under water, and biomedical applications, such as better imaging of tissue.

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Childhood lead exposure was a problem in Flint long before the water crisis, but young children’s exposure to the toxin has been steadily declining since 2006.

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Scientists at Rutgers University–New Brunswick and elsewhere are at a crossroads in their 50-year quest to go beyond the Standard Model in physics.

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A Rutgers study calls attention to post-storm hazards posed to tree care workers and provides safety recommendations

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Rutgers doctoral student Didik Prasetyo’s passion is learning more about the endangered apes and trying to conserve their habitats and populations, which face enormous pressure from deforestation from logging, palm oil and paper pulp production, and hunting. He coauthored an alarming recent study in Current Biology on the estimated loss of more than 100,000 Bornean orangutans between 1999 and 2015.

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The fight against type 2 diabetes may soon improve thanks to a pioneering high-fiber diet study led by a Rutgers University–New Brunswick professor. Promotion of a select group of gut bacteria by a diet high in diverse fibers led to better blood glucose control, greater weight loss and better lipid levels in people with type 2 diabetes, according to research published today in Science.

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Rutgers’ Xiang Liu heads the only academic rail engineering and safety program in the entire region – one of less than a dozen nationwide – at Rutgers University-New Brunswick’s School of Engineering.

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Hookah use is on the rise, especially among young adults, but few consumers are aware of its potentially lethal effects

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Rutgers and Stanford researchers develop new mathematical model to explain how smartphones act as “portable funhouse mirrors”

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When Lena Struwe was hiking in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve in Costa Rica three years ago, she spotted a yellowish harvestman, a spider-type animal, on a hiking trail rail and took a photo with her camera. It turned out her photo of the long-legged arachnid, Eucynorta conigera, was the first ever of that species and only the third sighting of it ever reported.

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Rutgers palliative care expert Judy Barberio gives patients and their families strategies on how to ease the transition to end-of-life care

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Scientists from Rutgers University–New Brunswick and elsewhere documented fewer than 10,000 red knot shorebirds in Chile in January, down from more than 13,000 a year earlier.

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Rutgers trains correction officers to better understand substance use disorder as a treatable disease

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Hurricanes spawn most of the largest storm surges in the northeastern U.S., right? Wrong, according to a study by Rutgers University–New Brunswick scientists. Extratropical cyclones , including nor’easters and other non-tropical storms, generate most of the large storm surges in the Northeast, according to the study in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology. They include a freak November 1950 storm and devastating nor’easters in March 1962 and December 1992.

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Engineers at Rutgers University–New Brunswick and Oregon State University are developing a new method of processing nanomaterials that could lead to faster and cheaper manufacturing of flexible thin film devices – from touch screens to window coatings, according to a new study. The “intense pulsed light sintering” method uses high-energy light over an area nearly 7,000 times larger than a laser to fuse nanomaterials in seconds.

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Rutgers engineers have invented a “4D printing” method for a smart gel that could lead to the development of “living” structures in human organs and tissues, soft robots and targeted drug delivery.

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Did you know that New Jersey can expect higher temperatures, heavier rains, rising sea levels and more frequent and severe coastal flooding this century? The New Jersey Climate Adaptation Alliance – facilitated by Rutgers University–New Brunswick – has launched a social media campaign to enhance public education and to guide people to a wealth of information on climate change resilience on its website.

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Rutgers scientists have found the “Legos of life” – four core chemical structures that can be stacked together to build the myriad proteins inside every organism – after smashing and dissecting nearly 10,000 proteins to understand their component parts. The four building blocks make energy available for humans and all other living organisms, according to a study published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Facing a climate crisis, we may someday spray sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to form a cloud that cools the Earth, but suddenly stopping the spraying would have a severe global impact on animals and plants, according to the first study on the potential biological impacts of geoengineering, or climate intervention.

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About 13 million years ago, a distant ancestor of modern apes and humans suffered an untimely death on the arid landscape of northern Kenya. Last year, a Rutgers scientist helped bring its tiny skull to light, filling in a huge gap in the evolutionary record. And on Saturday, members of the public are invited to come face-to-skull with that ancestor, known as “Alesi,” at the Rutgers Geology Museum’s 50th annual Open House event. The museum stands on the College Avenue Campus of Rutgers University–New Brunswick. Admission is free.

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A campaign by Rutgers University and the Tara Hansen Foundation prompts New Jersey to designate January 23 of each year as Maternal Health Awareness Day

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If you own Bitcoin or want to invest in the mercurial digital currency, which soared to more than $19,000 before plunging in value, watch out, a Rutgers University–New Brunswick professor says. Security and privacy issues, not to mention the possibility of a Bitcoin market crash, should give you pause for concern, according to Janne Lindqvist, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the School of Engineering.

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From the time of Hippocrates, physicians have suspected a link between epilepsy and depression. Now, for the first time, scientists at Rutgers University–New Brunswick and Columbia University have found evidence that seizures and mood disorders such as depression may share the same genetic cause in some people with epilepsy, which may lead to better screening and treatment to improve patients’ quality of life.

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Nearly three years after the Federal Communications Commission approved “open internet” rules aimed at ensuring fair access to the web, the FCC reversed the decision last month, saying it was “restoring internet freedom.” Rutgers Today asked Richard E. Howard, a research professor at the Wireless Information Network Laboratory (WINLAB) at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, to discuss net neutrality. Howard is former vice president for wireless research at Bell Labs.

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It may take until the 2060s to know how much the sea level will rise by the end of this century, according to a new Rutgers University–New Brunswick-led analysis. The study is the first to link global and local sea-level rise projections with simulations of two major mechanisms by which climate change can affect the vast Antarctic ice sheet.

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Using light-emitting nanoparticles, Rutgers University-New Brunswick scientists have invented a highly effective method to detect tiny tumors and track their spread, potentially leading to earlier cancer detection and more precise treatment. The technology, announced today, could improve patient cure rates and survival times.