Distinct psychiatric disorders have more in common biologically than previously believed, according to the largest and most detailed analysis to date of how genes influence mental illness. The study, led by University of Colorado Boulder and Mass General Brigham researchers, could inform efforts to improve the way psychological disorders are diagnosed and provide insight for developing novel treatments that address multiple disorders at once. The findings were published Dec. 10 in the journal Nature. “Right ...

URBANA, Ill. –  The U.S. is largely self-sufficient in agricultural food production, supported by a well-developed storage and interstate trade system. However, extreme weather events put increasing pressure on agriculture, potentially impacting the country’s ability to provide food for its growing population and underscoring the importance of maintaining a resilient food supply chain.  A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looks at U.S. interstate trade for agricultural products, analyzing how weather ...

Industrial farming landscapes often have shortages of pollinators, which can cause production limitations for produce that needs them – and often lead to dire predictions (or at least online images of) supermarket produce sections empty of pollinator-dependent food. This is largely due to unsustainable practices such as heavy pesticide use, the dependence on a handful of pollinator species, and long distances from natural areas where pollinators can live. The story, however, on the globe’s ...

First global index tracking real-time prices for verifying fake accounts on 500+ online platforms in every country launched by Cambridge University.   The US, UK and Russia rank among the cheapest countries for buying fake account verification, while Japan and Australia are among the most expensive.   Meta, Shopify, X, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and Amazon all among platforms with the cheapest fake account verifications.   Fake account verification prices on Telegram and WhatsApp surge ahead of national elections around the world, suggesting “influence operations”. A new ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Wood warblers, also called New World warblers, are some of the most colorful birds in North America, with more than a hundred species in the family ranging in color from yellow, orange and red to blue, green and pink. A new study led by researchers at Penn State has uncovered several instances of the birds passing color-related genes to other species of wood warblers, including those that are not closely related. This glimpse into the hidden evolutionary dynamics of these songbirds may help explain why some species display certain colors as well ...

Long before flowers dazzled pollinators with brilliant colors and sweet scents, ancient plants used another feature to signal insects: heat. The findings, based on an analysis of the biology and relationship between modern cycad plants and the rare beetle species that pollinate them, offer new insights into what shaped the earliest eras of plant-animal co-evolution. Plants have evolved a remarkable array of strategies to attract pollinators, including not only color and scent, but also the production of heat. Thermogenic plants generate heat through intense cellular respiration. It’s thought that in some cases, this heat, via infrared radiation, may serve as ...

Online today, the creation of fake accounts in various forms is supported by an underground market that sells text message-based verifications for these accounts. Now, researchers have developed a global index that tracks the price of these fake-account text verifications, revealing price spikes around elections and market trends that reflect national telecom costs. The findings offer policymakers a new window into how online manipulation operations take shape in real time. The internet is saturated with inauthentic activity, ranging from benign automation to networks of fake accounts promoting scams. Most platforms attempt to curb mass fake account creation through SMS-based identity verifications. ...

High-resolution data from the GHGSat satellite constellation reveal facility-level methane emissions at thousands of individual sites worldwide, according to a new study. The findings provide a far more detailed picture of methane emissions from the energy sector, offering new insights for global inventories and mitigation strategies. Methane is among the most powerful drivers of atmospheric warming a after carbon dioxide, and much of it comes from human activities – often from concentrated “point sources” such as individual oil, gas, and coal facilities. Methane emissions from these industries are generally estimated in two ways: bottom-up ...

(Boston)—Ebola (EBOV) and Marburg virus (MARV) are highly lethal viruses that cause severe disease in infected patients by extensively damaging the body. This includes the gastrointestinal tract. Severe diarrhea followed by dehydration is a major causes of death in EBOV and MARV disease patients, yet the role of the intestinal lining (epithelium) in these outcomes remain poorly understood.   A new study first-authored by Elizabeth Yvonne Flores, PhD, a recent graduate from Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) and the Center for ...

Brace yourself for a hot story about plant sex. Harvard researchers have discovered that cycads—one of the oldest living lineages of seed plants—heat up their reproductive organs to attract beetle pollinators and the insects possess infrared sensors to detect these signals. First the male cycads warm their pollen cones to entice beetles and then the female plants similarly get hot and the insects follow—and thereby spread the genetic material enabling the plants to reproduce. The new study [LINK WILL ACTIVATE WHEN EMBARGO LIFTS 2PM THURS 12/11 ], published Thursday in a cover story in Science, marks the first time that infrared radiation has been identified as ...

Summary In April 2025, the Main Marmara Fault below the Sea of Marmara in north-western Türkiye has experienced its largest earthquake in over 60 years. In a new study now published in Science, a team of researchers led by Prof. Dr Patricia Martínez-Garzón from the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany, analyses nearly two decades of seismic data framing the 2025 April magnitude M 6.2 earthquake. The analysis of rupture dynamics and aftershock patterns on multiple temporal scales reveals a remarkable ...

Some 4.6 billion years ago, Earth was nothing like the gentle blue planet we know today. Frequent and violent celestial impacts churned its surface and interior into a seething ocean of magma—an environment so extreme that liquid water could not exist, leaving the entire planet resembling an inferno. Since 70% of Earth's surface is now covered in oceans, the mystery of how water was survived and preserved in our planet from an early molten to a mostly solid state,  has long been a subject of scientific study. Recently, a team of researchers led by Prof. DU Zhixue from the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (GIGCAS) ...

University of California San Diego researchers have discovered the enzyme responsible for chromothripsis, a process in which a single chromosome is shattered into pieces and rearranged in a scrambled order, allowing cancer cells to rapidly evolve and become resistant to treatment. Since its discovery more than a decade ago, chromothripsis has emerged as a major driver of cancer progression and treatment resistance, but scientists haven’t learned what causes it. Now, UC San Diego scientists have solved this longstanding mystery in cancer biology, opening up new possibilities for treating ...

In a discovery that’s fit for a movie, Northwestern University astronomers have directly imaged a Tatooine-like exoplanet, orbiting two suns. While obtaining an image of a planet beyond our solar system is already rare, finding one that circles two suns is even rarer. But this new world is extra exceptional. It hugs its twin stars more tightly than any other directly imaged planet in a binary system. In fact, it is six times closer to its suns than other previously discovered exoplanets.  The discovery provides an unprecedented look at how planets move and form around ...

Over the past 50 years the lyrics of popular songs in the USA have become simpler, more negative, and contain more stress-related words, according to an analysis published in Scientific Reports. The authors suggest that their findings reflect the complex ways people use music to navigate stress Maurício Martins and colleagues analysed the lyrics of the top 100 most popular English-language songs in the United States each week between 1973 and 2023 (20,186 songs), according to the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The authors found that, in general, the lyrics of popular songs have become ...

Killer whales or orca (Orcinus orca) have been observed hunting with Pacific white-sided dolphins (Lagenorhynchus obliquidens) in the waters off British Columbia, Canada and sharing fish scraps with them after making a kill, according to research published in Scientific Reports. The authors suggest that the findings represent the first documented recording of cooperative hunting between orca and dolphins. Pacific white-sided dolphins are often seen hunting along the coastline of British Columbia ...

Toronto, ON, December 11, 2025 – Annual prescriptions for drugs to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) increased 157 percent in Ontario from 2015 to 2023, according to a new study from researchers at ICES, North York General, and The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids).  ADHD is a common neurodevelopmental disorder that affects approximately 1.6 to 5 percent of people worldwide. Stimulant medications such as amphetamines are often prescribed to treat the symptoms of ADHD and can lead to ...

Leading synthetic biologists have shared hard-won lessons from their decade-long quest to build the world's first synthetic eukaryotic genome in a Nature Biotechnology paper out today. Their insights could accelerate development of the next generation of engineered organisms, from climate-resilient crops to custom-built cell factories. "We've assembled a comprehensive overview of the literature on how to build a life form where we review what went right – but also what went wrong," says Dr Paige Erpf, lead author of the paper and postdoctoral researcher at Macquarie University's School of Natural Sciences and the Australian ...

A new Ontario-based study has found a significant rise in prescriptions for stimulant medications used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), particularly among adults and females. The study, published in JAMA Network Open, calls for better clinical guidance to help ensure those medications are prescribed appropriately, and to help prevent possible adverse health effects, such as heart conditions.  ADHD is a common neurodevelopmental condition that affects attention and impulse control, impacting about five per cent of the population.  Researchers from The ...

About The Study: As of 2023, approximately one-third of U.S. adults met criteria for metabolic syndrome, with overall prevalence showing no significant change between 2013 and 2023. Even though most individual metabolic syndrome components remained largely stable over the past decade, elevation in triglycerides demonstrated a modest increase. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Shady Abohashem, MD, MPH, email sabohashem@mgh.harvard.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website ...

About The Study: This population-based, repeated cross-sectional study identified increases in stimulant prescribing, accelerating in 2020, particularly among females and individuals ages 18 to 64. The findings are consistent with prior research in commercially insured U.S. populations; however, this population-wide study reveals a broader and more accelerated increase in stimulant prescribing. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Daniel T. Myran, MD, MPH, email dmyran@ohri.ca. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The ...

Our nerve cells are surrounded by a protective layer (myelin). This protective layer allows signals to pass between cells incredibly quickly. But what happens when this layer goes missing from cells that transfer signals over longer distances? Maarten Kole’s research group studied this question in mice, looking specifically at nerve fibres travelling from the brain’s outer layer to the thalamus, a crucial switching station deep in the middle of the brain.  Processing sensory information involves continuous communication between the brain’s outer layer (cerebral cortex) and the thalamus. Such an exchange, for example, ...

Insilico Medicine has licensed TaiGen Biotechnology exclusive rights in the Greater China area to develop, commercialize, and sub-license ISM4808, an AI-driven potential best-in-class oral PHD inhibitor with IND clearance granted in 2023.  The partnership combines Insilico’s generative AI discovery platform with TaiGen’s regional clinical and commercial expertise to accelerate the development of ISM4808 for the treatment of Anemia of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD).    Shanghai and Taipei, December 12, 2025 --- Insilico ...

A research team led by Professor Chulong Zhang at the College of Agriculture and Biotechnology, Zhejiang University, China, investigated dominant endophytic fungi of the order Pleosporales isolated from Poaceae plants collected in Yunnan, Zhejiang, and Inner Mongolia, China. The study, published in Mycology, combined multi-locus phylogenetic analyses with morphological observations to resolve taxonomy and species limits among key pleosporalean endophytes of grasses.   The analysis confirmed that the family Didymosphaeriaceae forms a strongly supported monophyletic group. Within this lineage, the researchers identified multiple well-supported clades corresponding ...

The interaction between genetics and tissue environment shapes how individual teeth form in different regions of the jaw. While most experimental studies have focused on mandibular (lower jaw) teeth, little was known about how human maxillary (upper jaw) and mandibular teeth diverge at the molecular level during early development.   In a new study published in Oral Science and Homeostatic Medicine, a collaborative team from Beijing Stomatological Hospital, Capital Medical University, and Peking University School and Hospital of Stomatology performed a RNA-sequencing analysis of human fetal tooth germs at the cap stage (11–12 post-conception ...