It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, April 19, 2026
Family-led firearm strategy goes 'beyond the screen' to curb suicide risk
A family-centered approach to firearm safety can change how guns are kept in homes and may offer a new path to reducing suicide risk.
A new University of Michigan study, published in Injury Prevention, tested a method called the Family Safety Net in Alaska, which shifts suicide prevention away from individual screening and toward household action. This change, researchers say, could help reach people who are often missed by standard tools.
"Currently, suicide is a leading cause of death, particularly for young people, and is not getting better with the same old approaches. said Lisa Wexler, research professor at the U-M Institute for Social Research and professor of social work. "Our typical suicide screening tools rely on individual self-report and miss people who are suicidal for a number of reasons, such as suicide behavior can be impulsive, not sure they want help, fear of losing personal agency in service of safety, etc."
The approach suggests that caregivers take three actions. First, they answer brief screening questions about whether someone in the home may be at risk of suicide. Second, they participate in a brief motivational interviewing session, and receive free firearm safety and mental health awareness resources. Lastly, participants receive positive text messages for a month afterward that emphasize the person's good intentions in fun, culturally based ways.
Wexler and colleagues developed this program with Alaska Native partners. They enrolled 62 adults who had firearms in the home and a young person under 29 in the household.
The average number of guns per household was 3.12.
The results showed high levels of feasibility and community support:
93% of participants completed the follow-up study
33% of participants identified concern for a household member and received the full Family Safety Net intervention
Safe storage scores increased across all participant groups
15.5% of participants moved firearms to a different household to increase safety
"The vast majority of people who participated in the Family Safety Net gave us a 10 out of 10 in their experience," Wexler said. "The intervention really builds on family members' love for each other and helps to keep them safe. In this way, the intervention is universal and reduces suicide risk by helping people do what they want to do."
The study found that both delivery methods, such as a 30‑minute motivational interview or a 15‑minute scripted session, were practical in rural clinics. The scripted version requires less training and may be easier to scale.
Participants said the program also helped them talk with family members about safety and reduced their concerns. One participant said learning the "10‑minute rule," delaying access to a gun by even a few minutes, was a key lesson.
"We know that if you can interrupt a suicidal impulse, make it 10 minutes harder to act on that impulse, you can save a life," Wexler said. "Half of the suicide deaths in the U.S. are by firearms, which cause more suicide deaths than any other kind of death."
Findings point to a new direction for suicide prevention in high gun‑ownership regions and firearm injury prevention is essential to prevent suicide. The program also builds on family concern, household action and avoids stigma by focusing on safety rather than diagnosis.
"Most people who die by suicide see a primary care provider in the year before their death, making this approach a potential fit for clinical settings," Wexler said. "Offering resources and support, without control, to help other people and teens in their lives is a promising, less professionalized and novel way to prevent suicide."
The soft bioelectrodes use a honeycomb-inspired design that allows researchers to stretch them onto the specific geometry of a patient’s brain, without sacrificing structural strength or sensitivity to electrical and physiological signals.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Soft electrodes designed to perfectly match a person’s brain surface may help advance neural interfaces for neurodegenerative disease monitoring and treatment, according to a new study led by Penn State researchers. Neural interfaces are powered by tiny sensors capable of tracking biophysical signals, known as bioelectrodes. These sensors are usually made from stiff materials in a one-size-fits-all design that struggles to match the brain’s complex structure. The researchers have created a novel approach to 3D printing bioelectrodes that can stretch and morph to fit the minor differences that make every brain unique.
The team used software to simulate detailed brains based on MRI scans taken from 21 human patients, shaping a set of electrodes tailored for brains’ specific structures before 3D printing the electrodes and models of the brains. In a paper published in Advanced Materials, they reported that their electrodes better fit the structure of the brain than traditional designs, while remaining effective and biologically compatible, even in tests done in rats.
The folds in the human brain are created through a process known as gyrification, where the cortical sheet on the outer wall of the brain bunches up into ridges, known as gyri, and grooves, known as sulci. This helps cells across the brain communicate at high speeds, and allows for a relatively large organ to fit compactly in the skull — a spread-out adult brain would be around 2,000 square centimeters, or about the size of two large pizzas.
Although the major cortical folds are consistent across individuals, the precise layout of the brain’s gryi and sulci changes substantially from person to person, according to Tao Zhou, Wormley Family Early Career Professor, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics and corresponding author on the paper. However, traditional bioelectrode designs don’t take this into account.
“Each person has a different brain structure, depending on their height, weight, age, sex and more,” said Zhou, who also holds an affiliation in biomedical engineering and the center for neural engineering at Penn State. “Despite this, we try to fit neural interfaces onto brains like they have identical structures. This motivated us to create electrodes that are tailored for each individual, based on the structure of their brain.”
The electrodes are built mainly from a water-rich material known as hydrogel to better match with the soft tissues and patient-specific geometry of a brain. Furthermore, the team used a novel honeycomb-inspired structure that offers flexibility and strength, while remaining cost-effective and quick to print, according to Zhou.
“The honeycomb structure helps us significantly reduce the stiffness of the electrodes, without sacrificing their mechanical strength,” Zhou said. “What’s more, the structure helps us reduce the overall material used during fabrication, reducing production time, cost and environmental impact.”
Production starts by taking an MRI scan of a patient's brain, which is used to conduct finite element analysis — a process that creates a detailed simulation of a person’s neural structure. This analysis is then rendered as a 3D model of the patient's brain, where the team uses computer software to tailor a bioelectrode specifically morphed to fit the ridges and grooves of the cerebral cortex.
After shaping, the team 3D prints the hydrogel electrode using direct ink printing, a technique that can create electrodes capable of monitoring and transmitting brain signals over a relatively small surface. For this study, the team 3D printed models of 21 different participant brains, applying their electrodes and physically measuring how accurately the electrodes could fit the brain surface. Zhou explained how traditional fabrication approaches require specialized facilities like clean rooms, making them incredibly expensive to customize — 3D printing allows the team to personalize and manufacture electrodes much faster, for a fraction of the price.
Compared to traditional approaches, the hydrogel-based electrodes follow the structure of the brain more precisely. Zhou said their approach produces electrodes that exhibit nearly perfect connectivity to electrical signals present in the brain. Additionally, because the stretchy gel is so malleable, it can be applied to the soft brain tissue without causing damage, compared to the stiff materials comprising other designs that could damage tissue.
According to Zhou, the softness of their electrodes enables closer and more stable contact with the brain, in turn facilitating higher-quality, more reliable monitoring. Moreover, bioelectrodes made with this approach don’t impact fluid transport around the brain, a critical aspect of brain function that many traditional electrodes disrupt.
“Personalizing the electrodes to the brain’s specific structure substantially improves their reliability,” Zhou said. “Because they conform to the brain better, the signal quality itself is significantly improved.”
To further study their electrodes, the team placed them onto the brains of rat models over a period of 28 days. The rats did not exhibit any immune response to the printed electrodes, a key consideration in biodevice development, Zhou said. Additionally, the electrodes did not exhibit performance degradation, while offering sensitive and accurate readings of the electric and physiological signals in the brain.
Zhou said he believes that this printing method could serve as a framework for the commercial-scale printing of bioelectrodes customized for specific patients. Although these systems are traditionally used for monitoring neural activity, the team plans to explore how personalized electrodes may contribute to neurological treatments.
“We are looking to further improve this technology to optimize the electrodes to monitor for specific diseases,” Zhou said. “In the future, we would really like to work with patients to see how this approach could support brain monitoring and disease treatment in clinical settings.”
Additional co-authors affiliated with Penn State include Nanyin Zhang, professor of biomedical engineering and Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Brain Imaging; Sulin Zhang, professor of engineering science and mechanics and of biomedical engineering; engineering science and mechanics doctoral candidates Marzia Momin, Luyi Feng, Salahuddin Ahmed and Jiashu Ren; biomedical engineering doctoral candidates Xiaoai Chen, Hyunjin Lee and post-doctoral scholar Samuel R. Cramer; mechanical engineering doctoral candidate Xinyi Wang; Basma AlMahood, an undergraduate student studying physics at the time of research who is now a physics doctoral candidate at Michigan State University; and Li-Pang Huang, a research assistant.
This work was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
At Penn State, researchers are solving real problems that impact the health, safety and quality of life of people across the commonwealth, the nation and around the world.
For decades, federal support for research has fueled innovation that makes our country safer, our industries more competitive and our economy stronger. Recent federal funding cuts threaten this progress.
Learn more about the implications of federal funding cuts to our future at Research or Regress.
Using 3D-printed models of several patients' brains, the team tested how well their electrodes could stretch to fit the individual cortical geometry – their electrodes can snugly fit atop the geometry of a patient’s brain with more precision than systems created with traditional methods.
3D-Printable, Honeycomb-Inspired Tissue-Like Bioelectrodes for Patient-Specific Neural Interface
Researchers combine carbon dioxide capture and conversion into one system
The new approach, developed by the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and Argonne National Laboratory researchers, offers a streamlined and cost-effective pathway toward decarbonization
University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering researcher Reginaldo Gomes, PhD'25, is the first author on a new study from the lab of Asst. Prof. Chibueze Amanchukwu that modeled a system that can simultaneously capture and convert CO₂. (Photo by John Zich)
Credit: UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering / John Zich
Every year, power plants and factories release billions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the atmosphere. Methods exist to capture that CO₂ using chemical solutions and, separately, to convert pure CO₂ into useful fuels and chemicals. But doing both steps at once, in a cost-efficient and scalable way, has been difficult.
By swapping the water usually used in carbon capture and conversion systems for a different solvent, the team was able to capture CO₂ more efficiently and convert it into carbon monoxide, an industrially relevant building block for the chemical industry used to make a wide range of fuels and chemicals today. They also turned to zinc, rather than the usual silver, to catalyze the conversion reaction, bringing costs for the process down further.
“The concept of being able to integrate capture and conversion into a single step is a relatively new one, and we’ve made significant headway in not only showing that this is possible but that it can be done under conditions that are relevant for industrial deployment,” said Chibueze Amanchukwu, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Molecular Engineering at UChicago PME and senior author of the new study.
One process instead of two
In conventional carbon capture, amines — nitrogen-based compounds that bind readily to CO₂ — are dissolved in water. Releasing the captured CO₂ for later use requires heating the solution to temperatures as high as 150°C and compressing the CO₂. Meanwhile, if that captured CO2 was converted in water, water carries out unwanted side reactions, ultimately leading to hydrogen gas.
Amanchukwu, whose lab focuses on electrochemistry in non-aqueous solvents, was brought together with scientists at Argonne National Laboratory through the University of Chicago Joint Task Force Initiative, a program designed to foster collaboration between the two institutions. About four years ago, the group formed a team and asked themselves what big problem was worth tackling together. They landed on reactive capture — the idea that CO₂ could be converted directly into a useful product while still bound to the amine.
“The challenge with current capture methods comes when you need to recover that CO₂. You need to boil the solution, which requires significant energy,” said first author of the study Reginaldo Gomes, who completed his PhD at UChicago PME and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Argonne. “We asked whether, instead of going though those costly steps, we could use electricity to convert the captured CO₂ directly into something valuable."
Changing the solvent changes the chemistry
Many of the challenges around combining current capture and conversion methods revolve around water’s unwanted chemical reactions. So the team began by replacing water with DMSO — a widely used industrial solvent.
In water, two amines must come together to bind each captured CO₂ molecule. Amanchukwu, Gomes, and their colleagues showed that in DMSO, the same amines form a different arrangement and can capture one CO₂ for every amine, doubling the system’s capture capacity. At the same time, no CO₂ is lost to the competing chemical pathways that occur in water. Overall, the team observed nearly three times higher CO₂ uptake per amine molecule in DMSO compared to water.
With fewer hydrogen-forming side reactions, the group realized they could also make another change to the system. Silver catalysts, used in water-based capture approaches because they are resistant to making hydrogen, could be swapped for zinc — an earth-abundant metal far less expensive than the silver.
“We didn’t anticipate how removing water would open up all these other new ways to make capture and conversion more efficient,” said Amanchukwu. “It worked better than we had even hoped for.”
Under lab conditions with pure CO₂, the zinc catalyst achieved 78% efficiency in converting captured CO₂ to carbon monoxide, a key industrial feedstock. Computational work by collaborator Cong Liu at Argonne revealed exactly why the zinc outperformed the silver in the DMSO system, requiring less energy.
Performing under real-world conditions
A critical test for any carbon capture technology is whether it works under actual industrial exhaust conditions rather than only with pure CO₂ in the lab. The team tested their system using simulated flue gas mixtures containing oxygen, which typically interferes with chemical reactions and can lower the efficiency of carbon capture and conversion.
The new approach still achieved up to 43% efficiency in converting CO₂ to carbon monoxide over multiple capture-and-conversion cycles. That figure matches what state-of-the-art water-based systems achieve using silver under pure CO₂, a far less challenging condition.
Collaborators at Argonne, led by Dr. Chukwunwike Iloeje, carried out a techno-economic analysis to estimate the cost of using DMSO instead of water. They found that the improved performance of the system, particularly higher CO₂ conversion, can substantially offset the higher solvent cost. Replacing silver with zinc in the DMSO system could further reduce costs by using a more active and abundant catalyst.
The researchers are candid that significant work remains before the system can be scaled up. It must be able to run for thousands of hours rather than days, and reaction rates must increase roughly tenfold to reach commercial viability. New reactor designs better suited to industrial scale will also be required. Still, a patent disclosure has been filed, and the team has already been contacted by industry.
“We established the scientific foundation for this system,” said Gomes. “We’re not just working with a pure, controlled CO₂ stream in the lab — we developed something that can start to handle the complexity of real-world challenges.”
Citation: “Reactive CO₂ Capture via Controlled Amine Speciation in Nonaqueous Electrolytes,” Gomes et al, Nature Energy, April 17, 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41560-026-02035-4
Funding: This work was primarily funded by the University of Chicago Joint Task Force Initiative and the U.S. Department of Energy (DE-SC0024103, DE-AC02-06CH11357). Additional support was provided by the CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars Program and the Research Corporation for Science Advancement Negative Emissions Science program.
Despite its small size—it could sit in the palm of your hand—the zebra finch is a remarkable learner. A songbird native to Australia, it’s renowned for its ability to pick up new songs.
That talent has made it a favorite of scientists studying how animal brains imprint new skills, particularly vocal learning, or the capacity to perfect new sounds. And now researchers at Boston University have discovered another quirk to the zebra finch brain—one that could also have implications for understanding our own gray matter.
In a study that looked at the bird’s brain in unprecedented detail, they uncovered new insights into a mechanism known as neurogenesis—the birth, migration, and maturation of neurons—that may help the brain learn, add new skills, and restore and repair itself.
Observing the finch brain using a high-powered microscope, the researchers watched as new neurons bullied their way through the brain en route to bolstering existing circuits and connections. They’d expected the neurons to gingerly step around established brain structures, including more mature brain cells, to better preserve them; instead, they saw them tunnel right through, squishing and shoving as they went.
According to the BU-led team, their findings could help explain human vulnerability to a range of brain disorders. They also noted that cell tunneling is used by some metastatic cancer cells. The findings were published in Current Biology.
“We found that in songbirds, new neurons in the adult brain behave like explorers forging a path through a dense jungle,” says Benjamin Scott, a BU College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences and the study’s corresponding author. That may help them learn new things or repair damage, but it could come with a cost to existing cells and memories—and that might be why neurogenesis is a skill humans don’t seem to have beyond the womb.
“This potentially disruptive behavior may help explain why humans and other mammals have limited capacity to regenerate brain tissue in adulthood,” says Scott, “leaving us more vulnerable to neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.”
Tunneling Neurons
When you’re born, your brain pretty much has all the neurons it’s ever going to have. Other organs—from your skin to your heart—might get frequent cell updates, but the brain is working on version 1.0.
That’s true for most mammals, but not fish, reptiles, and birds—their brains get a regular refresh.
“This raises two questions,” says Scott, who’s also affiliated with BU’s centers for neurophotonics, photonics, and systems neuroscience. “Why do other species have high rates of neurogenesis throughout life and why is it so restricted in humans? And is there something we can learn from their biology that we might be able to harness in future?”
Scott typically studies the neural circuits that control behavior in humans and other mammals, but chose the zebra finch to investigate neurogenesis because it has a reputation as a champion species—it’s really good at generating new neurons.
“We applied a new tool to study this process [neurogenesis] called electron microscopy-based connectomics—basically a really high-powered microscope—to image these cells at a very high resolution,” says Scott. “Our first hope was just to say, what does this look like at a detail we couldn’t see before?” Instead, they spotted the tunneling neurons.
If these new neurons are deforming brain tissue, says Scott, are they also disrupting memories along the way? And, if neurogenesis comes with a cost, how does that balance against the brain’s capacity for learning new things and repairing after injury?
Scott has two—as yet untested—hypotheses for what the findings might mean for the human brain. The first is that our brains evolved to limit neurogenesis after birth as a form of protection—a way of making sure determined neurons couldn’t barge through mature connections and damage memory storage.
“There is an alternative framing that is more optimistic,” he says. “Our discovery of tunneling shows how cells can move without glia scaffolds.” These are the structures that operate as highways for migrating neurons.
“Most glia scaffolds are lost in humans after birth, and this loss was thought to be an obstacle for neurogenesis in the adult brain,” says Scott. “However, our work shows that new neurons in the bird do not need this glia scaffold. This is exciting because it means that brain repair may not require specialized glia scaffolds.” That opens the door for scientists to explore potential stem-cell therapies that would spark neurogenesis in humans.
Next: Figuring Out the How and Why of Neurogenesis
In current studies, Scott and the team in his BU Laboratory of Comparative Cognition are digging into the biology driving neurogenesis to uncover which genes are regulating the process. Much of the work merges ideas and tools from biomedical engineering and neuroethology, the study of the mechanisms underpinning animal behavior.
“Right now, we’re using a technique called single-cell RNA sequencing to identify genes that are expressed by these new neurons as they migrate,” says Scott. “We want to know what other cells they’re talking to as they move and how they are speaking to these different cells.”
That’ll help them figure out whether neurons warn other cells they’re travelling through and how they know where to stop and integrate with a current circuit.
“We share a lot with our animal relatives on this planet,” says Scott. And, while the term “bird brain” might be an insult, by learning more about the biology of songbird brains, he says, we could learn some remarkable things about our own.
This research was funded with support from the BU Neurophotonics Center. The study also included researchers from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, United Kingdom, and the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, Germany.
