The precise control of tiny droplets on surfaces is essential for advanced manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and next-generation lab-on-a-chip diagnostics. However, once droplet volume reaches pico- and nanoliter scales, the droplets become extremely sensitive to microscopic surface irregularities, and friction at the solid–liquid interface becomes a major obstacle to smooth transport. Against this backdrop, a study led by Dr. Mizuki Tenjimbayashi and his colleagues at Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA) proposed a novel strategy that involved coating the droplet with a repellent material instead of engineering a perfectly smooth surface. This study published in the journal ACS Nano has ...

The demand for energy is ever-increasing across various industries. In recent decades, scientists have explored the electrostatic potential of particulate matter as a highly promising avenue for energy harvesting. However, this technology poses ignition risks that can cause significant harm owing to uncontrolled electrical discharge. While some studies have attempted to mitigate this issue by introducing additional particles or water, these approaches lead to restricted applicability and also ignore the high electric potential. In previous research, a team of researchers from South Korea, including Professor Sangmin Lee from the School ...

A large share of medicines developed today may never reach patients for a surprisingly simple reason: they cannot dissolve well enough in water. For most treatments, the oral route remains the gold standard because it is convenient and familiar. However, for a pill to work, its active ingredients must first dissolve in the fluids of the gastrointestinal tract before they can be absorbed into the bloodstream. If a drug dissolves too slowly or incompletely, its therapeutic effect can be compromised. This so-called ‘solubility crisis’ has become one of the main bottlenecks in modern drug development, affecting as much as 90% of active compounds currently under ...

Babies and very young sauropods – the long-necked, long-tailed plant-eaters that in adulthood were the largest animals to have ever walked on land – were a key food sustaining predators in the Late Jurassic, according to a new study led by a UCL (University College London) researcher. The study, published in the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin, used data from fossils laid down 150 million years ago in the Morrison Formation*, in the United States, to map out a “food web” of the time – a gigantic network of who ate what and who ate whom. The research team found that very young sauropods, relatively defenceless ...

The study, published in Nature Climate Change and led by scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) analysed future projections across five large-scale modelling projects, as well as considering 135,000 species and 70 biodiversity hotspots, to produce spatial mapping of where land-based carbon removal may be sited in the future. The authors’ approach allows for a risk–risk assessment, not only focusing on overlaps between biodiversity areas and land allocated to carbon dioxide removal (CDR), but also showing the positive impacts of ...

A comprehensive new review paper reveals the staggering loss of biodiversity among island land snails globally. Lead author Robert Cowie of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) and co-authors note that ‘devastation’ is not a hyperbolic term, pointing out that extinction rates on high volcanic islands commonly range from 30% to as high as 80%. The review was published recently in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.  Tracking trends through the ‘shell bank’ While the review is global in scope, Cowie, along with Philippe Bouchet and Benoît ...

Agricultural waste from the global sugar industry could become a powerful tool for clean energy, pollution control, and sustainable materials, thanks to new research showing how microwave technology can dramatically improve biochar production. In a study published in Sustainable Materials and Chemicals, researchers report that microwave-assisted pyrolysis can be precisely optimized to convert sugarcane bagasse, the fibrous residue left after sugar extraction, into highly porous biochar with exceptional surface ...

Mannan rich palm handicraft waste, such as tagua nuts and bodhi roots, can be turned into valuable green chemicals instead of being burned or discarded, according to a new study. “In many parts of the world, polished palm seeds are carved into jewelry and religious beads, but the cutting and drilling leave behind piles of fine powder that usually end up as waste,” said first author Bin Hu of North China Electric Power University. “Our work shows that this overlooked by product can become a promising feedstock for clean chemical production.” The researchers examined two popular palm based handicraft materials: tagua nuts from Ecuador, sometimes called “vegetable ...

“A lot of governments are spending serious money on farm conservation, yet the rivers are not getting cleaner as fast as people expect,” said lead author Yi Pan of Zhejiang University in China. “Our work shows that the problem is not that best management practices are useless. It is that our planning tools have been aiming at the wrong processes, the wrong places, and the wrong time scales for nitrogen.”​ The new review pulls together advances in hydrology, computer modeling, and social science to propose a practical optimization framework tailored specifically to agricultural nitrogen, one of the ...

An estimated 4.2 million people die within 30 days of surgery worldwide each year. A new study, published in the European Heart Journal [1] today (Thursday), suggests that deaths and serious heart disease might be prevented if some patients see a specialist heart doctor as part of their post-surgery care.   In this observational study, researchers studied a group of patients who had suffered heart damage during or immediately after non-cardiac surgery. A proportion were evaluated by a cardiologist, but the rest were not. Patients who saw a cardiologist were less likely ...

A new machine learning tool has identified more than 250,000 cancer research papers that may have been produced by so-called “paper mills”. Developed by QUT researcher Professor Adrian Barnett, from the School of Public Health and Social Work and Australian Centre for Health Services and Innovation (AusHSI), and an international team of collaborators, the study, published in The BMJ, analysed 2.6 million cancer studies from 1999 to 2024. It found more than 250,000 papers with writing patterns similar to articles already retracted for suspected fabrication. “Paper mills are companies that sell fake or low-quality scientific studies. They are producing ‘research’ ...

For Immediate Release Friday, January 30, 2026   Contact: NIH Office of Communications   National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported investigators have developed a blood test to find pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, one of the deadliest forms of cancer. The new test could improve survival rates from pancreatic cancer, which tends to be diagnosed at late stages when therapy is less likely to be effective. The findings were published in Clinical Cancer Research.   Overall, only about 1 in 10 pancreatic cancer patients survive more than five years from diagnosis. However, experts expect that when ...

New research by UCLA Health and UC San Francisco has uncovered why certain brain cells are more resilient than others to the buildup of a toxic protein that is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, potentially leading to new targets for therapies or treatments. The study, published in the journal Cell, used a novel CRISPR-based genetic screening approach on lab-grown human brain cells to determine the cellular machinery that controls the accumulation of tau protein in the brain. These proteins can build up as toxic clumps in the brain, killing ...

First full results of a randomised trial investigating the use of AI in a national breast cancer screening programme finds AI-supported mammography screening is more effective across many measures than standard mammography.  AI-supported breast cancer screening identified more women with clinically relevant cancers during the screening without a higher rate of false positives.  Additionally, women who underwent AI-supported screening were less likely to be diagnosed with more aggressive and advanced breast cancer in the two years following. Authors say these findings could justify implementing AI in mammography screening programmes, particularly in the context of health ...

Cancer patients who suffer a heart attack face a dangerous mix of risks, which makes their clinical treatment particularly challenging. As a result, patients with cancer have been systematically excluded from many clinical trials and available risk scores. Until now, doctors had no standard tool to guide treatment in this vulnerable group. International study leverages population data An international team led by researchers from the University of Zurich (UZH) has now developed the first risk prediction model designed specifically for cancer patients who have had a heart attack. The study, published in The Lancet, analyzed more than one million heart attack patients in England, Sweden ...

Neurological disorders contribute to nearly nine million deaths globally each year, and an estimated 22.6 million new cases require neurosurgical attention annually, of which approximately 13.8 million require surgical intervention. Despite this burden, access to safe and timely neurosurgical care remains limited for more than two-thirds of the world’s population, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This gap has increasingly been recognized as a major global public health concern. A new article, published on November 20, 2025, in the ...

John F. Kelly, PhD, of the Recovery Research Institute and Department of Psychiatry at Mass General Brigham, is the lead author of a paper published in Frontiers in Public Health, “Long-term relapse: markers, mechanisms, and implications for disease management in alcohol use disorder.”  Q: What challenges or unmet needs make this study important? Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is one of leading causes of preventable death in the United States and worldwide, and leads to substantial disease and medical complication. While treatments are available that can help ...

As the world shifts toward renewable energy sources, some experts warn that a lack of planning for the retirement of fossil fuels could lead to a disorderly and dangerous collapse of existing systems that could prolong the transition to green energy. In a study published in the journal Science, University of Notre Dame researchers Emily Grubert and Joshua Lappen argue that fossil fuel systems might be far more fragile than current energy models assume. “Systems designed to be large and growing behave differently when they shrink,” said Grubert, associate professor of sustainable energy policy at ...

The lower hinge of immunoglobulin G (IgG), an overlooked part of the antibody, acts as a structural and functional control hub, according to a study by researchers at Science Tokyo. Deleting a single amino acid in this region transforms a full-length antibody into a stable half-IgG1 molecule with altered immune activity. The findings provide a blueprint for engineering next-generation antibody therapies with precisely tailored immune effects for treating diseases such as cancer and autoimmune diseases.   Antibodies are Y-shaped proteins that help the immune system recognize and eliminate foreign threats such as bacteria and viruses. ...

NEW ORLEANS — January 29, 2026 — At the 2026 Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) Annual Meeting, investigators will present a late-breaking study focused on surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) following prior transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), a clinical scenario increasingly encountered as TAVR use expands. The analysis draws on data from the STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database to characterize risk over time and to validate a dedicated STS risk model designed to support decision-making for patients requiring surgery after TAVR. The study, to be ...

A new peer-reviewed study evaluating climate policies in 40 countries over a 32-year period finds that carbon pricing and taxation—combined with investments in renewable energy and research—are among the most effective tools governments can use to reduce CO₂ emissions. Drawing on successful examples such as Sweden and Norway, which have implemented a broad mix of climate policies at varying levels of stringency, the authors conclude that countries benefit most from a comprehensive and diverse policy toolkit rather than reliance on a single measure. The research team—comprising experts from the University of Barcelona, ...

Using data collected by NASA's Parker Solar Probe during its closest approach to the sun, a University of Arizona-led research team has measured the dynamics and ever-changing "shell" of hot gas from where the solar wind originates. Published in Geophysical Research Letters, the findings not only help scientists answer fundamental questions about energy and matter moving through the heliosphere – the volume of space controlled by the sun's activity – which affects not just the Earth and moon, but all ...

The fight against climate change relies heavily on finding better ways to capture carbon dioxide before it escapes into our atmosphere. While carbon nanotubes have long been seen as a "wonder material" for this task, their internal structures are often locked away like a closed pipe. Now, a research team from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) has pioneered a deceptively simple way to pop those caps open and supercharge their adsorption capacity. In a study published in Carbon Research, the team reveals that a straightforward thermal treatment, essentially "baking" single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) in ambient air, can ...

Researchers have developed a powerful machine learning framework that can accurately predict and optimize biochar production from algae, offering a faster and more sustainable path toward carbon rich materials for climate mitigation, soil improvement, and environmental applications. Biochar is a solid, carbon rich product created when biomass is heated in low oxygen conditions. It has attracted global attention for its ability to store carbon long term, improve soil health, and support renewable energy systems. While most biochar is made from wood or agricultural residues, algae are emerging as ...

Antibiotic resistance is often framed as a hospital problem, but a growing body of evidence shows that rivers, soils, wastewater, and other natural environments are quietly becoming major reservoirs of resistant bacteria. A new review highlights a critical obstacle standing in the way of effective global surveillance: the lack of a unified standard for interpreting antibiotic resistance data. In a comprehensive review published in New Contaminants, researchers analyze how antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, is monitored in the environment and why inconsistent interpretation of laboratory results may be distorting our understanding of the scale of the problem. The authors ...