NSF-funded engineers at Northwestern University are developing materials resilient enough to weather the forces of nature. This includes introducing nanoparticles into the manufacture of cement, making it smarter, more durable, tougher, and highly functional. They are manufacturing “smart cement.” Learn more with NSF’s “The Discovery Files.”

Having reviewed a comparative study on mosquitoes, NSF-funded researchers are exploring why blood-sucking flies discriminate when it comes to selecting their hosts. They’ve learned it’s likely an attraction that might not even go skin-deep, but a community of bacteria that has taken up residence on the skin. Learn more with NSF’s The Discovery Files.

Herbaria are collections of plant specimens. Over the last 200 years, scientists have gathered over more than 5 million plant specimens, stored across multiple herbaria. Digitizing these collections make them accessible for study by a larger number of researchers, land managers, conservationists, and the public. That was the herculean task taken on by a multi-institutional team of NSF-funded researchers. Learn more with NSF’s The Discovery Files.

NSF-funded scientists are developing two alternative delivery methods for the COVID vaccine. Each can help us prepare to fend off potential future pandemics. They are using it to develop an inhalable vaccine spray, building immune system protection directly from the lungs, as well as a vaccine administered by the traditional shot.

Researchers at Columbia University have developed a robotic neck brace to help doctors analyze the impact of cancer treatments on neck mobility and to guide in patient recovery. In existing techniques, doctors use to assess the range of motion in the neck and shoulders, that a patient might lose after treatment, provide little assistance and identifying which patients are at greatest risk represents a significant challenge. So, the researchers are keenly focused on making the treatment of head and neck cancer, no longer a “pain-in-the-neck.”

RESEARCHERS FROM VIRGINIA TECH – FUNDED BY NSF – ARE TRACKING SEVERAL TROOPS OF BANDED MONGOOSE IN NORTHERN BOTSWANA, SOUTHERN AFRICA -- TO ANALYZE THIER MOVEMENTS BETWEEN URBAN CENTERS AND THEIR NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS – AS WELL AS BETWEEN DIFFERENT TROOPS. WHY YOU ASK? BOTSWANA MONGOOSE HAVE A NOVEL TUBERCULOSIS PATHOGEN WHICH ALLOWS THE RESEARCH TEAM TO TRACK HOW INDIVIDUAL ANIMALS INTERACT WITH ONE ANOTHER AND HOW THAT IMPACTS THE TRANSMISSION.

NSF-funded researchers use AI to improve disaster resilience, protect human life and minimize damage and economic losses during earthquakes.

An NSF-funded team of scientists from the Universities of Montana and Wyoming have analyzed charcoal found in nearby lake sediments to study the history of forest fires in the Rocky mountains.

NSF-funded researchers at Clemson University project that periods of extremely high heat are likely to double across the lower 48 United States by the end of this century. As temperatures rise, so will the incidences of heat stress.

NSF-funded researchers from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville were astonished to find life-frozen in suspended animation-for some 24,000 years.