News and views

An exoskeleton developed by Arizona State University and Phoenix engineering companies WearTech Center, GoX Labs and Augspurger Komm Engineering has potential implications for workers. Their PhenEx suit assists manual laborers moving heavy objects or bending over all day, making back injuries “a thing of the past.”

ASU marine conservation biologist, David Shiffman and his new book, “Why Sharks Matter: A Deep Dive With the World’s Most Misunderstood Predator," helps a critic, a surfer, see the creatures in a new, more appreciative light.

For much of the 20th century, the stretch of Salt River in the Phoenix area was a dry riverbed that was considered to be an eyesore. Thanks to a group of ASU students, a stretch of the Salt River in Tempe has now become a point of pride for the Valley. 

Experimental stem cell replacement therapy for Parkinson's disease shows promise in rats and will soon be tested in a human clinical trial, according to a study co-authored by Jeffrey Kordower. Kordower is director of the ASU-Banner Neurodegenerative Disease Research Center.

In partnership with the city of Mesa, researchers at the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions at Arizona State University are attempting to turn wastewater byproducts into fuel and other uses. They want to harness algae's natural way of coaxing another use out of gases that would otherwise be emitted as a result of the necessary process of breaking down human-produced wastewater.