Soil hosts dense and diverse microbial communities that drive major ecological processes, yet the way microbes respond to the physical structure of the soil is still not fully understood. One key unknown is how the distribution of pore sizes, which stem from soil aggregates,...
The problem addressed in this study centers on the need for rapid and dependable point-of-care diagnostics that can distinguish between respiratory viruses that often present with overlapping symptoms. Standard laboratory nucleic acid tests provide high accuracy but require specialized equipment, multistep sample preparation, and...
Microfluidic technology is changing how scientists work. It allows labs to run complex experiments using tiny amounts of liquid. At the center of it all are microfluidic chips, small devices that act like mini laboratories. Across Canada, researchers and engineers use them to make testing...
Recreating the complex mechanical environment of the human lung alveoli in vitro has long been a challenge. Traditional lung-on-chip microfluidic models sometimes fail to fully capture the three-dimensional dynamics of breathing, often relying on overly simplified or non-physiological stretch patterns. Moreover, these systems typically...
Neutrophils, the most abundant immune cells in human blood, play a puzzling dual role in cancer. While some neutrophils (N1) attack tumor cells, others (N2) actually aid tumor progression by supporting invasion and metastasis. Translating insights from animal models to humans has been challenging...