Reporting world updates to you
Researchers Kohki Horie, Keiichiro Toda, Takuma Nakamura, and Takuro Ideguchi at the University of Tokyo have created a microscope capable of detecting signals across an intensity range fourteen times broader than that of standard instruments. The system also works label-free, meaning it does not rely on added dyes. This gentle…
Listening to music after the age of 70 appears to be associated with a meaningful reduction in dementia risk. A research team from Monash University analyzed data from more than 10,800 older adults and found that people in this age group who regularly listened to music experienced a 39 percent…
When a routine blood test shows high levels of a protein called SerpinB3, it often alerts doctors that something is seriously wrong. Elevated SerpinB3 can be associated with difficult-to-treat cancers or severe inflammatory diseases. SerpinB3 is known as a key protein that helps reveal when the body’s barrier tissues, such…
Detecting dishonesty requires people to interpret social cues, judge intent, and decide whether someone’s words are trustworthy. Scientists have long wondered how we sort through this kind of social information and how we decide if someone is being honest. A key question is whether people evaluate information in the same…
More than half of the calories people consume in the United States come from ultra-processed foods (UPFs), which include items such as fast food and packaged snacks that tend to contain large amounts of sodium, added sugars and unhealthy fats. While studies in adults have firmly connected these foods to…
Across the globe, a wide range of animals, including household pets, livestock, and marine species, are developing serious health problems such as cancer, obesity, diabetes, and degenerative joint disease. These non-communicable diseases (NCDs) chronic diseases are becoming increasingly common, yet the scientific community still lacks broad, interdisciplinary research that explains…
How many squid short-finned pilot whales (Globicephala macrorhynchus) living off Hawaiʻi must eat each day, and whether the surrounding waters can support their needs, are key questions for conservation. Understanding these fundamentals helps scientists assess the stability of whale populations. A research team from the USA, Spain, Australia and Denmark…
Princeton engineers have created a superconducting qubit that remains stable for three times longer than the strongest designs available today. This improvement represents an important move toward building quantum computers that can operate reliably. “The real challenge, the thing that stops us from having useful quantum computers today, is that…
Electricity keeps modern life running, from cars and phones to computers and nearly every device we rely on. It works through the movement of electrons traveling through a circuit. Although these particles are far too small to see, the electric current they produce flows through wires in a way that…
Swift observations with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) have captured a star in the act of exploding, right as the blast pushed through its surface. This moment revealed the shape of the explosion during its earliest stage, a phase so brief that it would have disappeared…
Astronomers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have found that the well-known Pleiades star cluster, often called the “Seven Sisters,” represents only the bright center of a much larger community of related stars. By analyzing data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the European Space…
Three new Cochrane reviews report that GLP-1 drugs can lead to meaningful weight loss, although the strong involvement of pharmaceutical companies in many studies raises concerns. The World Health Organization (WHO) requested these reviews to help shape upcoming recommendations on using these medications for obesity treatment. The analyses evaluated three…
Counties in Pennsylvania that contain or sit close to cultivated cropland show notably higher melanoma rates than other parts of the state, according to new research led by scientists at Penn State. Researchers at the Penn State Cancer Institute reviewed cancer registry data collected from 2017 through 2021 and discovered…
Researchers led by Keiya Hirashima at the RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS) in Japan, working with partners from The University of Tokyo and Universitat de Barcelona in Spain, have created the first Milky Way simulation capable of tracking more than 100 billion individual stars across 10…
Milestone results released by the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) on November 16 have finally clarified a decades-old puzzle in astrophysics: the unusual drop in cosmic ray counts above 3 PeV that produces what scientists call the “knee” in the cosmic ray energy spectrum. The cause of this…
The Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS, President Lee Ho Seong) has captured the first-ever observation of water repeatedly freezing and melting at ultrahigh pressures above 2 gigapascals (2 GPa) while remaining at room temperature. These rapid changes were recorded on a microsecond (μs, one-millionth of a second)…
A major international research effort is reshaping the long-held belief that lead exposure is primarily a modern problem. The new findings show that early human ancestors encountered lead repeatedly for more than two million years, suggesting that this toxic metal may have played an unexpected role in shaping the evolution…
Prof. Alon Monsonego of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev found that T helper lymphocytes, which are immune cells involved in regulating the body’s defenses, shift in function as people grow older. These shifts can reflect a person’s biological age, which may not match their chronological age. Within these changes, the…
Does dark matter behave according to the same physical rules that apply to ordinary matter? This question remains one of the major puzzles in modern cosmology, since this invisible form of matter (which neither emits nor reflects any light) is still hypothetical and extremely difficult to study directly. Researchers from…
Chimpanzees may share more with human thinkers than researchers once realized. A new study published in Science presents compelling evidence that chimpanzees can revise their beliefs in a rational way when they encounter new information. The study, titled “Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs,” was carried out by an international team…
Tensor operations are a form of advanced mathematics that support many modern technologies, especially artificial intelligence. These operations go far beyond the simple calculations most people encounter. A helpful way to picture them is to imagine manipulating a Rubik’s cube in several dimensions at once by rotating, slicing, or rearranging…
Researchers from Stockholm University have — for the first time ever — managed to successfully isolate and sequence RNA molecules from Ice Age woolly mammoths. These RNA sequences are the oldest ever recovered and come from mammoth tissue preserved in the Siberian permafrost for nearly 40,000 years. The study, published…
Intense flooding has significantly reduced rice harvests around the world in recent decades, putting at risk the food supply of billions of people who rely on the grain as a dietary staple. Between 1980 and 2015, annual losses averaged about 4.3%, or roughly 18 million tons of rice each year,…
People who use both cannabis and tobacco show measurable differences in brain activity compared to those who rely solely on cannabis, according to new findings from a McGill University team at the Douglas Research Centre. These results may help clarify why people who combine the two substances more often experience…
Researchers at Tokyo Metropolitan University have turned to concepts from polymer physics to better understand a central feature of Alzheimer’s disease: the formation of tau protein fibrils. Their work revealed that these fibrils do not appear suddenly. Instead, they emerge after large clusters of tau proteins begin to gather in…
Raindrops are more than a source of fresh water. They also carry mechanical energy that reaches the ground for free, and scientists have been exploring how to turn that energy into electricity for years. Traditional droplet electricity generators, however, often struggle with low efficiency, heavy components, and limited potential for…
An experimental compound has been found to limit cell death, reduce inflammation, and lessen organ damage associated with diabetes. A research team at NYU Langone Health reported that, in mouse studies, a drug candidate successfully prevented two proteins from interacting: RAGE and DIAPH1. When these proteins come together, they contribute…
Tombs found throughout China, built from the time of the 4,000-year old Xia Dynasty to the present day, offer insight into long-term social and political trends. This conclusion comes from a study published October 29, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Quanbao Ma of the Beijing University of…
The oldest known crocodile eggshells ever identified in Australia are giving UNSW researchers fresh insight into long vanished animals and the environments they depended on. These remains come from creatures that lived millions of years before the continent separated from the landmasses that became Antarctica and South America. In the…
Gout is one of the oldest documented human illnesses. It develops when sharp crystals form inside joints, triggering intense swelling and pain, and is considered a type of arthritis. Researchers at Georgia State University believe they may have uncovered a surprisingly ancient way to address it. A study in Scientific…
