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Mars is a harsh and unforgiving world. Any life that may have existed there in the past, or could exist today or in the future, would need to survive intense environmental stress. Two major threats stand out. One is the powerful shock waves generated when meteorites slam into the planet’s…
An international team of astronomers has delivered one of the clearest measurements yet of how quickly the nearby Universe is expanding. Instead of resolving a long-standing issue, the new result makes the problem even more difficult to ignore. The collaboration includes John Blakeslee of NSF NOIRLab, which is funded by…
When people gain weight during life can play a major role in their health decades later. A large study of more than 600,000 individuals from Lund University in Sweden examined how weight changes between ages 17 and 60 relate to the risk of dying from different diseases. The findings point…
Maintaining a healthy weight may depend not only on food choices but also on meal timing. A study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity found that two habits are linked to a lower body mass index (BMI) over time: extending the overnight fasting period and…
Scientific fieldwork does not always go as planned. Researchers often set out with a clear goal, but sometimes the data leads them somewhere unexpected. That is exactly what happened during a University of Colorado Boulder field study in an agricultural region of Oklahoma. The team was using advanced instruments to…
Chemists have achieved what many once considered impossible by stabilizing an extremely reactive molecule in water, confirming a 67-year-old theory about vitamin B1. The breakthrough not only resolves a long-standing biochemical puzzle, but also points toward cleaner, more efficient methods for producing pharmaceuticals. At the center of the discovery is…
A declining sense of smell may be one of the earliest warning signs of Alzheimer’s disease, appearing even before noticeable memory problems. New research from scientists at DZNE and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) offers fresh insight into why this happens. The study points to the brain’s immune system as a key…
Researchers led by Flinders University, working with international collaborators, have uncovered how a rare blood clotting condition can develop after certain COVID19 adenovirus-based vaccines or even after a natural adenovirus infection. The team, which included scientists from Flinders University and Greifswald University, discovered that in a very small number of…
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) remains one of the most pressing global health challenges, especially as aging populations continue to grow. The condition steadily erodes memory and thinking abilities, deeply affecting daily life. New treatments, including monoclonal antibodies such as lecanemab and donanemab, have offered some optimism by slowing cognitive decline. However,…
Researchers at the University of Chicago have uncovered a surprising new role for zeaxanthin, a plant-based compound best known for supporting eye health. According to findings published in Cell Reports Medicine, this common carotenoid may also help the immune system fight cancer by enhancing the activity of key immune cells.…
Gravitational waves are tiny ripples in spacetime created by powerful cosmic events such as colliding black holes. Until now, scientists have detected them by measuring extremely small changes in distance using huge instruments that stretch for kilometers. A new theoretical study, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters, suggests a…
Researchers have uncovered and explained an unusual form of superconductivity that only appears under extremely strong magnetic fields. The work, led in part by Rice University physicist Andriy Nevidomskyy, was published in Science and describes how uranium ditelluride (UTe2) forms a distinctive superconducting halo when exposed to intense magnetic conditions.…
Lead-halide perovskites, even when packed with impurities and structural flaws, are remarkably effective at turning sunlight into electricity. Their performance is now approaching that of silicon-based solar cells, which have long dominated the industry. In a recent study published in Nature Communications, researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology…
As data centers consume more energy to support growing digital demands, engineers at the University of California San Diego have introduced a new chip design that could make powering graphics processing units (GPUs) more efficient. The innovation focuses on a key function in electronics: converting high voltages into the lower…
Sometimes, not seeing something can be just as important as detecting it. That idea is at the heart of a new study published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP). The research suggests scientists may not need to find identical signals everywhere in the universe to understand dark…
For more than a decade, scientists have tested a group of cancer drugs known as BET inhibitors with high hopes. The science behind them seemed strong. Many tumors rely on oncogenes that are switched on with help from “Bromo- and Extra-Terminal domain” (BET) proteins, so blocking those proteins was expected…
Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. When caught early, it is often highly treatable. However, colonoscopies — the primary screening method used today — can be costly and uncomfortable, which discourages many people from getting tested on time. Researchers at the University of Geneva (UNIGE)…
Satellite observations show that the planet is steadily getting brighter at night, but the trend is far from uniform. Data from the VIIRS DNB instrument, covering 2014 to 2022, indicate that global nighttime lighting has been increasing by roughly two percent each year. “Although there has been a total increase…
How does the brain get rid of waste? It relies on a specialized drainage network known as the lymphatic system. Scientists have been working to understand how this system functions, and in the process, they have pushed brain imaging technology to new limits. A new study published in iScience by…
Different species sometimes arrive at the same biological solution on their own, a phenomenon known as parallel evolution. Researchers at Osaka Metropolitan University (OMU) have now found that dragonflies detect red light in a way that closely mirrors how mammals, including humans, do. Because many medical technologies depend on red…
Researchers from Radboud University, the University of Oxford, and the University of Cambridge set out to test a surprising idea. Could simply changing what people expect to taste alter how much they enjoy sweet drinks? Their findings, published in JNeurosci, suggest the answer is yes. The team studied 99 healthy…
A study published in Molecular Psychiatry suggests that autism and ADHD may be connected at a biological level in ways that go beyond traditional diagnostic labels. While it is well known that the two conditions often occur together, the underlying mechanisms they may share have remained unclear. Researchers from the…
Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have uncovered a finding that could reshape how doctors approach two of the most devastating brain disorders. Their work points to an unexpected player in disease progression: gut bacteria. The team identified a clear connection between microbes in the digestive system and brain damage…
Human DNA is built from long sequences of three-letter units made up of four nucleotides. These units, known as codons, tell cells which amino acids to use when building proteins. While several different codons can code for the same amino acid, this has often been viewed as simple redundancy in…
New research from Vanderbilt Health shows that both modern weight loss drugs and bariatric (weight loss) surgery can improve body composition in people with obesity. These treatments lead to a large drop in fat while also causing a smaller reduction in fat-free mass (including lean muscle). This balance matters because…
Chronic inflammation often develops quietly, without obvious pain or noticeable symptoms. Over time, however, it can contribute to serious health problems such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, obesity, arthritis, and even cancer. Inside the body, this process is driven by immune cells that release chemical signals to respond to…
A large international collaboration between researchers at the University of Huddersfield and the University of Southampton has provided new insight into when and how modern humans, Homo sapiens, first settled New Guinea and Australia. The project brought together experts in archaeogenetics and maritime archaeology, with funding from the European Research…
Contamination from perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) has spread into groundwater, surface water, and even drinking supplies, affecting millions of people around the world. Researchers at Flinders University have now developed a promising new approach that could help remove some of the hardest-to-capture forms of these long-lasting pollutants from water.…
Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine report that a newly funded study by the National Institutes of Health is helping advance a potential new approach to Alzheimer’s disease treatment. The focus is a protein in the brain that produces a small but important gas. The protein, called Cystathionine γ-lyase, or CSE…
Autism BrainNet has released new survey results that reveal a major gap between public support for autism research and awareness of how that research is carried out. While most Americans recognize the importance of studying the autistic brain, far fewer understand the role that brain donation after death plays in…
