July 2023    
         
         
 
     
  Climate crisis transforms medical research  
     
 
 
 
     
  Chuan He, PhD, inspects crops at the Pritzker Plant Biology Center at UChicago, housed in the greenhouse atop the Biological Sciences Learning Center.  
     
 
     
  Three UChicago Medicine researchers are working toward solutions for some of today’s biggest challenges to human health—all linked to climate change. Chemist Chuan He tackles food insecurity by modifying plant RNA to achieve higher crop yields. Physician Elizabeth Tung connects climate change pressures to inequities in health care. And dermatologist Yu-Ying He investigates genetic changes from environmental pollutants that may lead to cancer.  
     
 
 
  Nano news  
     
 
     
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“It’s alive!”: A PhD student designed a living smartwatch that, when cared for, provides its wearer’s health data.
 
     
     
     
 
     
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Up and atom: Using X-ray technology, researchers at Argonne National Laboratory analyzed an individual atom for the first time.
 
     
     
     
 
     
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Breaking new sound: A team at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering likens its newly developed qubits to “noise-canceling headphones” for a quantum computer, reducing error in a fragile system.
 
     
     
     
 
     
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Building the supercomputer of tomorrow: Learn more about UChicago’s recent partnership to accelerate quantum research.
 
     
     
     
 
     
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On fungi, with a fun guy: Field Museum scientist Matthew Nelsen, PhD’14, explains his fascination with the mysteries of mycology.
 
     
     
 
         
         
    Spotlight    
         
         
 
     
  Tongue-tied with AI  
     
 
 
 
     
  Markers attached to the tongue of rhesus macaques recorded movement during feeding (black dots), while a neural network predicted its shape based on brain wave patterns (red dots). (JD Laurence-Chasen)  
     
 
     
  The tongue is a complex, enigmatic muscle that doesn’t rely on the structure of bones and joints to move around. UChicago researchers use machine learning to predict its movements by decoding the brain activity of macaque monkeys.  
     
 
 
  In case you missed it  
     
 
 
 
The Day Tomorrow Began: Learn about the history of radiocarbon dating, developed on the UChicago campus in the late 1940s.
 
 
Visionaries: See the winner, runner-up, and audience favorite from UChicago’s Science as Art photo contest.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     
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