Let’s get one thing out of the way: All hummingbirds fight. Most species fight for food, using their tiny bodies and sharp bills to force competitors away from flowers. But the green hermit hummingbird, which lives primarily in mountain forests of Central and South America, fights to win a mate. “They gather together at a place in the forest that looks just like a singles bar,” said Alejandro Rico-Guevara, an associate professor of biology at the University of Washington. “They all have perches, and if someone else takes their perch — their place in the singles ...

DALLAS, Nov. 21, 2025 — One in every five American children and teens is obese; that’s up 35% from 2000, as severe childhood obesity rates have nearly doubled in that time[1]. In recognition of efforts to fight back locally to create healthier classrooms and communities, the American Heart Association, a relentless force changing the future of health for everyone everywhere, has honored nine students, schools and educators from across the country during a virtual awards ceremony on Nov. 20. The ceremony — held annually to recognize outstanding ...

LA JOLLA (November 21, 2025)—All the cells in an organism have the exact same genetic sequence. What differs across cell types is their epigenetics—meticulously placed chemical tags that influence which genes are expressed in each cell. Mistakes or failures in epigenetic regulation can lead to severe developmental defects in plants and animals alike. This creates a puzzling question: If epigenetic changes regulate our genetics, what is regulating them? Scientists at the Salk Institute have now used plant cells to discover that a type of epigenetic tag, called DNA ...

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, along with collaborators at Northwestern University, have developed a noninvasive approach to treat one of the most aggressive and deadly brain cancers. Their technology uses precisely engineered structures assembled from nano-size materials to deliver potent tumor-fighting medicine to the brain through nasal drops. The novel delivery method is less invasive than similar treatments in development and was shown in mice to effectively treat glioblastoma by boosting the brain’s immune response. The findings were published this month in PNAS. Glioblastoma ...

Okayama University of Science (OUS) has once again earned a place in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2026, released on October 9 by the UK-based higher education magazine Times Higher Education.   OUS was ranked in the 1501+ band out of 2,191 universities worldwide, marking its second consecutive appearance in the rankings. Among 115 Japanese universities included this year—four fewer than last year—OUS rose from a tie for 63rd to a tie for 52nd.   The THE World University Rankings evaluate universities ...

Researchers at Northern Arizona University and the Smithsonian found an unconventional method to understand how rainforests will survive with climate change—making tea with living leaves at the top of the rainforest canopy.  The results, published this week in JGR Biogeosciences, are encouraging: The researchers learned that tropical forests may be less sensitive to climate change than originally feared.  “Experiments like these will help us improve the models that predict not only how tropical forests will respond to future warming, ...

When militia attacks disrupted shipping lanes in the Red Sea, few imagined the ripple effects would reach the clouds over the South Atlantic. But for Florida State University atmospheric scientist Michael Diamond, the rerouting of cargo ships offered a rare opportunity to clarify a pressing climate question — How much do cleaner fuels change how clouds form?  In research published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Diamond and FSU Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science graduate student Lilli Boss showed that new fuel regulations that ...

Sugar-based liquid solvents store crucial injection-based therapeutics such as insulin and vaccines. However, the shelf lives of these therapeutics are altered because the properties of these solvents alter the critical proteins necessary for under-the-skin treatments over time. Kennesaw State University Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Mohammad Halim has received a three-year National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to study protein- and enzyme-based solvents, aiming to improve storage of injection-based ...

Current cardiac screening tools used to prevent heart attacks fail to identify nearly half of the people who are actually at risk of having one, according to a new study led by Mount Sinai researchers. The results, published in a brief report on November 21, in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Advances, expose a major flaw in patient care: that following current screening guidelines may cause missed opportunities for early detection of heart attacks and prevention. The researchers assessed the accuracy of a widely used tool, the atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) risk score, and of a newer measure, called PREVENT, which adds variables and is intended ...

LA JOLLA, CA—We owe a lot to tissue resident memory T cells (TRM). These specialized immune cells are among the body's first responders to disease.  Rather than coursing through the bloodstream—as many T cells do—our TRM cells specialize in defending specific organs. They battle viruses, breast cancer, liver cancer, melanomas, and many other health threats.  Pandurangan Vijayanand, M.D., Ph.D., William K. Bowes Distinguished Professor at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), has even shown that a greater density of TRM cells is linked to better survival ...

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have identified a brain circuit that can drive repetitive and compulsive behaviours in mice, even when natural rewards such as food or social contact are available. The study has been published in the journal Science Advances and may contribute to increased knowledge about obsessive-compulsive disorder and addiction. Both animals and humans can become stuck in certain behaviours, but exactly how this is regulated in the brain has been unknown. Now, researchers have been able to show that a specific nerve circuit in the brain can put behaviours into ...

Tokyo, Japan – At low temperatures, hydrogen atoms move less like particles and more like waves. This characteristic enables “quantum tunneling”, the passage of an atom through a barrier with a higher potential energy than the energy of the atom. Understanding how hydrogen atoms move through potential barriers has important industrial applications. However, the small size of hydrogen atoms makes direct observation of their motion extremely challenging. In a study to be published in Science Advances, researchers at the Institute of Industrial Science, The University ...

The understanding of complex many-body dynamics in laser-driven polyatomic molecules is crucial for any attempt to steer chemical reactions by means of intense light fields. Ultrashort and intense X-ray pulses from accelerator-based free electron lasers (FELs) now open the door to directly watch the strong reshaping of molecules by laser fields. A prototype molecule, the famous football-shaped “Buckminsterfullerene” C60 was studied both experimentally and theoretically by physicists from two Max Planck Institutes, ...

PHILADELPHIA— Type 1 diabetes (T1D) impacts nearly two million Americans, and by the time most people learn they have it, most of the body's insulin-producing cells are destroyed. Now, pinpointing a hidden group of immune “attack” cells in the pancreatic lymph nodes that appear earlier in the disease could offer the first real chance to detect – and even stop- T1D, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania detailed in Science Immunology. “For the first time, this research has caught the attack cells in the act, while the disease is still unfolding; we’re not just seeing the wreckage after the ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – When designing membranes that separate industrial gases, scientists often incorporate structures that attract the gas they want to obtain. This attraction can enhances the membrane’s permeability, and help isolate the desired gas more efficiently. A study today in Science Advances shows sometimes the opposite can occur – the chemically enhanced membrane can bind too strongly to the intended gas, thus slowing the membrane’s permeability and reducing the separation efficiency. “It’s very counterintuitive, and it challenges traditional thinking in gas separation science,” says the study’s corresponding author Haiqing Lin, ...

Biomedical researchers at Texas A&M University may have discovered a way to stop or even reverse the decline of cellular energy production — a finding that could have revolutionary effects across medicine. Dr. Akhilesh K. Gaharwar and Ph.D. student John Soukar, along with their fellow researchers from the Department of Biomedical Engineering, have developed a new method to give damaged cells new mitochondria, returning energy output to its previous levels and dramatically increasing cell health. Mitochondrial decline is linked to aging, heart disease and neurodegenerative disorders. Enhancing the ...

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (11/21/2025) — University of Minnesota Medical School researchers have shown that reducing chronic inflammation can significantly protect against age-related macular degeneration (AMD)-like pathology in preclinical models. The findings were recently published in Cell Death and Disease. AMD is the leading cause of vision loss and blindness for Americans aged 65 years and older, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While most current AMD therapies treat only late-stage ...

Whether you’re a home gardener or an industrial farmer, you might be familiar with mulching films — plastic sheets laid over the soil to protect seedlings and promote crop growth. But like many other plastic materials, these films can release damaging microplastics and don’t have any insect-repelling power. So, a team reporting in ACS Agricultural Science & Technology has developed an alternative biodegradable mulching film that also naturally repels pests using citronella oil. “This research shows that it is possible to protect crops using biodegradable ...

Despite recommendations for posttreatment surveillance in lung cancer patients, there is wide variability in the follow-up care that lung cancer patients receive. A recent study, led by senior author Leah Backhus, MD, MPH, Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery (Thoracic Surgery) in the Stanford Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, offers new insights on patient care and lung cancer surveillance rates. The study, titled, Adherence to Posttreatment Surveillance Guidelines in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC): Retrospective Cohort Study, was published October 2025 in the Journal of Medical Internet Research ...

Lightweight components are generally designed with computer-based methods before being manufactured. There are various common methodologies. Because they use different physical and mathematical descriptions, however, direct comparisons are difficult. Moreover, the highly complex computation methods limit them to low spatial resolutions. With their Stress-Guided Lightweight 3D Designs (SGLDBench) benchmark, the researchers have succeeded in overcoming these serious obstacles. SGLDBench standardizes lightweight design methods SGLDBench permits six reference strategies such as classical topology optimization, ...

Improving diet and increasing physical activity levels together may be more effective at preventing weight gain – particularly harmful fat inside the abdomen – than just changing one of these behaviours, new research from the University of Cambridge suggests. An analysis of changes in physical activity and diet quality in UK adults found that while improved diet quality and increased physical activity were each independently associated with lower increases in body fat, the greatest benefits were achieved by combining both.   Body fat is stored in different locations, some of which are more harmful than others. Subcutaneous ...

At the cellular level, the mechanics of how muscle tissue repair occurs gets complicated. There are significant differences between, say, tearing a muscle in a sports injury versus muscle tissue wasting away from diseases like muscular dystrophy. Now, a new study led by experts at Cincinnati Children’s reports finding a shared—and unexpected—mechanism that may help improve healing across several types of muscle injury. The eye-opening study was published online Nov. 21, 2025, in Current Biology. The study was led by first author Gyanesh Tripathi, PhD, and corresponding author Michael Jankowski, PhD, who ...

New York, NY [November 21, 2025]—Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and collaborators have created the most comprehensive map to date showing how antibodies attach to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, and how viral mutations weaken that attachment. The findings, published in the November 21 online issue of Cell Systems, a Cell Press journal, explain why variants like Omicron can evade immune defenses and suggest new strategies for building longer-lasting ...

In the search for a way to measure different forms of a condition called sensory processing disorder, neuroscientists are using imaging to see how young brains process sensory stimulation. Now, investigators at UC San Francisco have found a distinctive pattern for overwhelm in some children who are overly sensitive to sound, touch, and visual information. The finding could one day help clinicians refine treatments for kids who have strong emotional and behavioral reactions, such as tantrums, to their sensory environment. Sensory processing disorder affects how the brain understands and responds ...

A joint research team from NIMS and Toyo Tanso has developed a carbon electrode that enables stable operation of a 1-Wh-class stacked lithium-air battery, achieving higher output, longer life and scalability simultaneously. The team created this electrode by combining manufacturing technology that Toyo Tanso developed for its “CNovel™” porous carbon product with proprietary technology NIMS developed to fabricate self-standing carbon membranes. This combination made it possible to scale up the battery cell size—a significant step toward practical, industrial-scale lithium-air batteries. The research was published online ...