“Migraine disease is debilitating and can lead to kids having to miss school and other activities,” said author Anisa Kelley, MD, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “Currently, there is only one FDA-approved migraine preventative medication for this age group. Our results are encouraging, showing zonisamide may be another option for reducing migraine attacks.”

For the study, researchers reviewed health records at one institution. They identified 256 children and teens who had been diagnosed with migraine and prescribed preventative zonisamide. Of these participants, 28% had difficult-to-treat migraine, which was defined as having migraine disease unsuccessfully treated with two or more previous medications. Researchers documented the number of headache days per month for each participant both before and after starting zonisamide.

They then divided participants into three subgroups based on how long they took the medication before a follow-up visit with a physician. The first group followed up in the first month, the second group within two to six months and the third group, after six months.

For all participants, the median number of headache days per month reduced from 18 to six at the first follow-up visit. When comparing between the groups, the subgroup that followed up within two to six months had the largest reduction with a median decrease of six headache days per month. Kelley noted that the data suggested the drug was most effective after at least two months of use.

The data also suggested that the drug was effective for both those with difficult-to-treat migraine disease and those without.

“It’s very exciting that we may have an effective way to treat difficult migraine disease in children and teens, however it’s important to note that our study did have limitations,” said Kelley. “For instance, our study did not compare people taking the medication to people who did not take the medication. Future studies are needed with control groups to confirm our results.”

This study was funded by Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

Published in Science Robotics, the research glimpses a future where nimble microrobots can crawl through tiny spaces, skitter across dangerous ground, and sense their environments without human intervention.

The new Harvard robot was created in the lab of Robert J. Wood, the Harry Lewis and Marlyn McGrath Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at SEAS. It is a modification of the Harvard Ambulatory Microrobot (HAMR), a microrobotic platform originally modeled after the dexterous, hard-to-kill cockroach. Now, HAMR is outfitted with a robotic furcula — the forked, tail-like appendage tucked under a springtail’s body that it pushes off the ground to send it Simone Biles-ing into the air.

“Springtails are interesting as inspiration, given their ubiquity, both spatially and temporally across evolutionary scales,” Wood said. “They have this unique mechanism that involves rapid contact with the ground, like a quick punch, to transfer momentum and initiate the jump.”

To go airborne, the robot uses what’s called latch-mediated spring actuation, in which potential energy is stored in an elastic element — the furcula — that can be deployed in milliseconds like a catapult. This physical phenomenon is found time and again in nature, not just in springtails: from the flicking tongue of a chameleon to the prey-killing appendage of a mantis shrimp.

Wood’s team previously created amantis shrimp-inspired punching robot. “It seemed natural to try to explore the use of a similar mechanism, along with insights from springtail jumps, for small jumping robots,” Wood said.

The springtail’s furcula is also elegantly simple, composed of just two or three linked units. “I think that simplicity is what initially charmed me into exploring this type of solution,” said first author and former SEAS research fellow Francisco Ramirez Serrano.

The team used streamlined microfabrication workflows pioneered in the Wood lab to develop the palm-sized, paper clip-light robot that can walk, jump, climb, strike, and even scoop up objects.

The robot demonstrates some of the longest and highest jumps of any existing robot relative to body length; its best performance is 1.4 meters, or 23 times its length. By contrast, a similar robot can jump twice as far but outweighs the Harvard robot by 20 times.

“Existing microrobots that move on flat terrain and jump do not possess nearly the agility that our platform does,” Serrano said.

The team incorporated detailed computer simulations into the design of the robot to help it land optimally every time, precisely controlling for the lengths of its linkages, the amount of energy stored in them, and the orientation of the robot before takeoff.

Packing all manner of athletic abilities into one lightweight robot has the team excited for a future where robots like theirs could traverse places humans can’t or shouldn’t.

“Walking provides a precise and efficient locomotion mode but is limited in terms of obstacle traversal,” Wood said. “Jumping can get over obstacles but is less controlled. The combination of the two modes can be effective for navigating natural and unstructured environments.”

The research was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office under grant No. W911NF1510358.

A research group from Tohoku University has helped shed light on this by improving an existing Mars climate model. The enhanced model accommodates the various properties of Martian regolith, or the loose deposits of solid rock that comprise Martian soil.

Mirai Kobayashi says current models fail to account for the fact that laboratory experiments have demonstrated that the water-holding capacity of the regolith is strongly influenced by its adsorption coefficient.

“Models to date that estimate the distribution of surface and subsurface water on Mars assume that its regolith properties are uniform. This contrasts with observations made by orbiters and landers, which suggest that Martian regolith has globally non-uniform physical properties.”

The model estimated Mars’s subsurface water distribution down to 2 meters from the surface. Like a sponge, highly absorptive regolith in Mars’s mid- and low latitudes retains substantial amounts of absorbed water. Some of this water, the findings showed, remains on the surface of the regolith as stable adsorbed water.

The study also showed that the soil on Mars could keep ice near the surface in the middle and lower areas because water vapor moves more slowly there. This means the soil helps trap water for a long time by slowing down how water vapor spreads, which is important for understanding the change in water on Mars over time.

“Our study stresses the importance of incorporating absorption and inhomogeneity of Martian regolith in forecasting Mars’s surface water,” says Takeshi Kuroda, who led the team alongside Kobayashi, Arihiro Kamada and Naoki Terada. “The model can also be used to study how water on Mars has changed, and how it may have moved deeper underground near the planet’s mantle.”

With several Mars exploration missions underway, including the Japan-led Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) and the international Mars Ice Mapper (MIM) projects, the model is expected to complement further studies that can lead to subsurface water maps of Mars.