DURHAM, N.C. – Alzheimer’s disease affects millions of people worldwide, yet the illness is hardest to catch at the very beginning, when new treatments may work best. In a new study, Duke Health researchers show that a quick, outpatient nasal swab can pick up early biological changes linked to Alzheimer’s, even before thinking and memory problems appear. The study, published March 18 in Nature Communications, used a gentle swab placed high inside the nose to collect nerve and immune cells. When researchers analyzed these cells, they found clear patterns that separated people with early or diagnosed Alzheimer’s from ...

Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a new type of lipid nanoparticle (LNP) that could one day serve as a universal immunotherapy for cancers that form solid tumors, including common variants such as cancers of the breast, liver and colon. One of the greatest challenges in immunotherapy is the exhaustion of T cells, the white blood cells responsible for detecting and destroying cancer cells. Many tumors produce an enzyme called IDO that dampens immune activity. Over time, exposure to the harsh environment ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- One of the symptoms of schizophrenia is difficulty incorporating new information about the world. This can lead patients to struggle with making decisions and, eventually, to lose touch with reality. MIT neuroscientists have now identified a gene mutation that appears to give rise to this type of difficulty. In a study of mice, the researchers found that the mutated gene impairs the function of a brain circuit that is responsible for updating beliefs based on new input. This mutation, in a gene called grin2a, was originally identified in a large-scale screen of patients with schizophrenia. The new study suggests that ...

Proteins, one of the smallest building blocks of life on Earth, hold promise for answering some of biology’s biggest questions. Consisting of amino acids strung together into peptide chains, these molecules perform much of the work inside living cells. While they execute life’s most essential functions with apparent ease, decoding their precise sequence and structure has long been one of biology’s hardest challenges. Now, a team led by bioengineers at Stanford University has developed a novel approach to visualize proteins at unprecedented scale and sensitivity. The work, ...

Researchers at the University of Konstanz have uncovered a new mechanism of sliding friction: resistance to motion that arises without any mechanical contact, driven purely by collective magnetic dynamics. The study shows that friction does not necessarily increase steadily with load, as postulated by Amontons’ law – one of the oldest and most fundamental empirical laws of physics – but can instead exhibit a pronounced maximum when internal magnetic ordering becomes frustrated. For more than three centuries, Amontons’ law has linked friction directly to load, reflecting the everyday experience ...

Researchers at the University of St Andrews have unveiled two breakthrough techniques for chemically recycling and upcycling nitrile‑rubber products, such as disposable gloves, seals, and industrial parts, into new materials that are also capable of capturing carbon dioxide.  The development of sustainable methods for the upcycling of plastic waste is one of the most important challenges in achieving a circular economy and can play a significant role in tackling the climate crisis.   Among ...

Leptomeningeal metastasis occurs when cancer spreads to the thin layers of tissue and fluid that surround the brain and spinal cord  Treatment for leptomeningeal metastasis is limited, and the disease often has poor outcomes  Targeted therapy plus chemotherapy regime is found to be safe and effective in Phase II trial  HOUSTON, MARCH 18, 2026 ― Patients with leptomeningeal metastasis (LM) have historically had few treatment options. ...

Sea ice around Antarctica expanded for several decades until a dramatic decline in 2015. The reasons behind this are revealed by research from the University of Gothenburg. Antarctic sea ice plays a crucial role in the ecosystem and physical environment of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. Since the ice reflects the sun's rays and blocks heat exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere, it is critical to our weather and climate. Therefore, we need to understand what affects its extent to improve future climate models and prediction. While Arctic sea ice has been steadily declining since satellite measurements of sea ice began, Antarctic sea ice has exhibited ...

Beavers could engineer riverbeds into promising carbon dioxide sinks, according to a new international study led by researchers at the University of Birmingham. The new paper, published in Communications Earth & Environment today, has for the first time calculated the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted and sequestered due to engineering work done by beavers in suitable wetland areas. The research was led by the University of Birmingham, Wageningen University, the University of Bern, and numerous international partners and the study was conducted in a stream corridor in northern Switzerland which has seen ...

As human-caused climate change continues to raise temperatures across the globe, understanding how birds regulate their temperature is vital for their conservation. But how much heat birds emit—an invisible spectrum of radiation known as mid-infrared—has never been studied, until now. Published in the journal Integrative Organismal Biology, a groundbreaking collaboration between material engineers and museum biologists explored the impact of mid-infrared on birds for the first time in history, ...

PULLMAN, Wash. — Entomologists have discovered a new species of mining bee that has an unusually tight relationship with cenizo, the official state shrub of Texas. Silas Bossert, assistant professor in Washington State University's Department of Entomology, worked with colleagues in Texas and Kansas to identify and describe the new mining bee, Andrena cenizophila. Published in the Journal of Melittology, their findings offer new insights into the diverse group of native pollinators. The new bee species’ name, “cenizophila,” means lover of cenizo, the native ...

Researchers from King’s College London and the University of Surrey have developed a new technique to measure the content of individual human cells infected with bacteria that model tuberculosis – and it is already revealing biological changes that conventional analysis would miss. Using the new method, the researchers have shown how bacteria used to model tuberculosis (TB) infection influences the metabolism of the human cell. The findings could help to understand why some human cells are vulnerable to infection while others remain uninfected. Abigail Cook, ...

Burnout is at an all-time high, with some studies saying two-thirds of employees now cite job burnout as a major challenge[1]. Overwork and chronic stress do not just drain energy, they can erode health, contributing to a wide range of psychological and physical problems, including depression, anxiety, cardiovascular disease and even increased stroke risk. Shaina Siber offers solutions rooted in science in her new book, Using ACT and CFT for Burnout Recovery: The Beyond Burnout Blueprint, with strategies to help people in high pressure situations break the cycle of exhaustion. What is burnout The term “burnout,” ...

Plastic trash has reached the world’s most remote locations, from the bottom of the Mariana Trench to the summit of Everest. Hundreds of plastic-eating microbes that could help us clean up have been discovered over the past quarter of a century, but there is a long way to go before they can be put to work in natural environments: microbial digestion of plastic is still slow, requires high temperatures, and only proceeds efficiently in bioreactors. Moreover, most plastic-eating microbes discovered so far can only digest a single kind of plastic. One solution would be to combine ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (March 18, 2026)—Life’s Essential 8 (LE8) and Life’s Crucial 9 (LC9) from the American Heart Association are industry-accepted metrics that summarize overall cardiovascular health. A new study documented inverse associations between these indicators and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in postmenopausal women. Adiposity and systemic inflammation showed partial statistical mediation of these associations. Results of the study are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The Menopause Society. Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in women worldwide. Due ...

A paper titled "Tip-enhanced sum frequency generation spectroscopy using temporally asymmetric pulse for detecting weak vibrational signals," published on February 19, 2026 by a research team from the Institute for Molecular Science (Atsunori Sakurai, Shota Takahashi, Tatsuto Mochizuki, and Toshiki Sugimoto) and Tohoku University (Tomonori Hirano and Akihiro Morita), has been selected as a "Featured Article" in The Journal of Chemical Physics, published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP), in recognition of its particularly noteworthy ...

As the demand for high-performance electrochemical energy storage continues to grow, the limitations of conventional material-level capacitance measurements in predicting practical device energy densities become more pronounced. Now, researchers from the State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surface at Xiamen University and Imperial College London, led by Professor Qiulong Wei, have presented a breakthrough study establishing clear relationships between activated carbon properties and supercapacitor device performance. This work offers valuable insights into the development of next-generation supercapacitor technologies that ...

As the demand for high-energy-density lithium-ion batteries continues to grow, the limitations of conventional silicon-based anodes in terms of initial coulombic efficiency, structural instability, and complex prelithiation methods become more pronounced. Now, researchers from the School of Chemistry and Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Tel Aviv University, led by Professor Fernando Patolsky, have presented a breakthrough laser-driven, ambient, solid-state, in situ prelithiation technique ...

Panic buying doesn’t just respond to shortages - it creates them. And according to a University of the Sunshine Coast behavioural scientist, the lessons learned during COVID-19 remain critical for preventing future buying frenzies.  Dr Karina Rune, a researcher in health and behavioural sciences at UniSC, says panic buying is driven less by who people are and more by how risk and social behaviour are communicated during times of uncertainty.  “We saw this clearly during COVID,” said Dr Rune, whose collaborative ...

Severe U.S. drought undermined Gulf fisheries, raising food security concerns Reduced Mississippi river flow weakened the base of the marine food web, triggering cascading fishery losses A severe and prolonged U.S. drought in the late 1980s played a central role in one of the largest fisheries declines ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a new study published in Nature Communications. The research, led by scientists at the University of Haifa and co-authored by Ben Kirtman, a climate scientist ...

Weight loss drugs have been linked to an increased risk of premature births among women who took them inadvertently just before or during early pregnancy to treat pre-existing diabetes. However, a large study of over 750,000 pregnancies found that there was no link to preterm births or other obstetric complications if the medication was being used to lose weight. The authors of the study, published today (Wednesday) in Human Reproduction Open [1], one of the world’s leading reproductive medicine journals, say their findings suggest that it is diabetes rather than ...

The cactus on your windowsill may grow slowly, but new research shows that cacti are surprisingly fast at creating new species.  Biologists have long thought that pollinators and specialised flowers drive the formation of new plant species. But scientists at the University of Reading found that in cacti, the secret lies in how quickly flowers change shape, rather than how big the flowers grow or which animal pollinates them.  Researchers studied flower length data for more than 750 ...

UCLA Health will host its first-ever Brain Health Summit on March 20-21, bringing together leading scientists, policymakers, philanthropists and community advocates from across the country to address one of the most pressing and underfunded challenges in public health. Disorders affecting the brain and nervous system — from neurological, neurodevelopmental, and mental health conditions — impact more than 180 million Americans and are the leading cause of disability in the country, according to a 2025 study published in JAMA Neurology. Yet federal neuroscience research funding has seen significant 2023, leaving scientists, ...

Melbourne, Australia [18 March 2026] – For 15 years, the Gilead Australia Medical Fellowships have supported Australian led clinical research focused on generating evidence to support improved patient outcomes in real world healthcare settings. Since its inception, the program has awarded more than $4 million* to Australian led research initiatives,  focusing on strengthening models of care, addressing unmet medical needs, and reducing barriers to diagnosis and treatment across communities throughout Australia. The Fellowships support research projects across priority disease areas including HIV, chronic viral hepatitis, ...