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Diesel pollution is linked with heart damage, according to research presented today at EuroCMR 2017 (1).

“There is strong evidence that particulate matter (PM) emitted mainly from diesel road vehicles is associated with increased risk of heart attack, heart failure, and death,” said lead author Dr Nay Aung, a cardiologist and Wellcome Trust research fellow, William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London, UK. “This appears to be driven by an inflammatory response – inhalation of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) causes localised inflammation of the lungs followed by a more systemic inflammation affecting the whole body.”

Researchers have developed a new device to map the brain during surgery and distinguish between healthy and diseased tissues. The device provides higher resolution neural readings than existing tools used in the clinic and could enable doctors to perform safer, more precise brain surgeries.

The device is an improved version of a clinical tool called an electrode grid, which is a plastic or silicone-based grid of electrodes that is placed directly on the surface of the brain during surgery to monitor the activity of large groups of neurons. Neurosurgeons use electrode grids to identify which areas of the brain are diseased in order to avoid damaging or removing healthy, functional tissue during operations. Despite their wide use, electrode grids have remained bulky and have not experienced any major advances over the last 20 years.

NOAA will begin using its newest weather prediction tool -- the dynamic core, Finite-Volume on a Cubed-Sphere (FV3), to provide high quality guidance to NOAA’s National Hurricane Center through the 2017 hurricane season.

Developed by Shian-Jiann Lin and his team at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), the FV3 will be used to power experimental hurricane forecast models that run parallel to the operational forecast models this season. This is the start of a major transition of the FV3 to NOAA operational weather forecasting, expected to be completed in 2019.

Emissions of isoprene, a compound from plant matter that wields great influence in the atmosphere, are up to three times higher in the Amazon rainforest than scientists have thought, according to new findings published this week in Nature Communications.

The findings come from a team of scientists from the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of California, Irvine. Corresponding authors are Dasa Gu of both UCI and PNNL along with Alex Guenther of UCI.

Coronaviruses such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle-East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) cause serious and often fatal disease in people, but bats seem unharmed.

Veterinary microbiology PhD candidate Arinjay Banerjee and his professor Vikram Misra have now found some clues.