Tunnel vision during planning can lead us to neglect negative consequences, but this cognitive bias can be addressed by simply prompting people to explicitly consider them

Human populations need at least 2.7 children per woman – a much higher fertility rate than previously believed – to reliably avoid long-term extinction, according to a new study published April 30, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Takuya Okabe of Shizuoka University, Japan, and colleagues. While a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman is often considered the replacement level needed to sustain a population, this figure doesn’t account for random differences in how many children people have – as well as mortality ...

Researchers at Mass General Brigham have identified new biomarkers for tinnitus by measuring pupil dilation and subtle facial movements that correlate with the level of distress caused by the disorder. Published in Science Translational Medicine, the findings could lead to placebo-controlled treatment studies that have largely been not feasible due to lack of objective measures. “Imagine if cancer severity were determined by giving patients a questionnaire – this is the state of affairs for some common neurological disorders like tinnitus,” said corresponding author Daniel Polley, ...

An AI tool has made a step forward in translating the language proteins use to dictate whether they form sticky clumps similar to those linked to Alzheimer’s Disease and around fifty other types of human disease. In a departure from typical “black-box” AI models, the new tool, CANYA, was designed to be able to explain its decisions, revealing the specific chemical patterns that drive or prevent harmful protein folding.  The discovery, published today in the journal Science Advances, was possible thanks to the largest-ever dataset on protein aggregation created to date. The study gives new insights about the molecular mechanisms underpinning sticky proteins, which are ...

Mounting evidence supports ayahuasca’s potential to improve mental health, but its long-term effects are shaped by both individual mental health history and the context in which the psychedelic is used, according to a study published on April 30, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS Mental Health by Óscar Andión from Research Sherpas, Spain; José Carlos Bouso from the International Centre for Ethnobotanical Education, Research, and Services (ICEERS) and the University of Rovira i Virgili, Spain; Daniel Perkins from the University of Melbourne and Swinburne University; and colleagues. Ayahuasca, a psychedelic medicine traditionally ...

National-level policies can reduce the impact of antibiotic resistance across diverse countries, according to a study published April 30, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS Global Public Health by Peter Søgaard Jørgensen from Stockholm University and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Sweden, and colleagues. Antibiotic resistance is a major public health concern, contributing to 1.27 million deaths per year. In 2016, countries around the world committed to developing and implementing national action plans to combat antibiotic resistance. These plans have been criticized ...

Object recognition software is used by law enforcement to help identify suspects, by self-driving cars to navigate roadways and by many consumers to unlock their cell phones or pay for their morning coffee. Now, researchers led by the University of Cincinnati’s Anna Kruyer and the University of Houston’s Demetrio Labate have applied object recognition technology to track changes in brain cell structure and provide new insights into how the brain responds to heroin use, withdrawal and relapse. The research was published April 30 in the journal Science Advances. Study ...

  A new “atlas” developed by researchers at Duke University School of Medicine, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, and the University of Pittsburgh will increase precision in measuring changes in brain structure and make it easier to share results for scientists working to understand neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's disease.   The tool, the Duke Mouse Brain Atlas, combines microscopic resolution, three-dimensional images from three different techniques to create a detailed map of the entire mouse brain, from large structures down to individual cells and circuits.  “This ...

Fish are masters of coordinated motion. Schools of fish have no leader, yet individuals manage to stay in formation, avoid collisions, and respond with liquid flexibility to changes in their environment. Reproducing this combination of robustness and flexibility has been a long-standing challenge for human engineered systems like robots. Now, using virtual reality for freely-moving fish, a research team based in Konstanz has taken an important step towards that goal. “Our work illustrates that solutions evolved by nature over millennia can inspire robust and efficient control laws in engineered systems,” said first author Liang Li from the University of Konstanz. Co-author ...

A new study, led by Peter Søgaard Jørgensen from the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, reveals that while global cooperation remains essential, countries have more power than previously believed to reduce antibiotic resistance through effective domestic interventions. Currently only a handful of countries are taking sufficient action. The study is the first to assess the level of government intervention needed to improve the worsening situation on antibiotic resistance across 73 countries. The researchers find strong associations between the level of action a country reports and whether antibiotic use and antibiotic resistance increased during a ...

A type of virus thought to be a ‘mere curiosity’ is plentiful in one common bacteria, and possibly others, a Monash University-led research team has found.  The discovery improves understanding of how viruses work and could mean this particular virus is also common in other types of bacteria. Published in Science Advances, the study looked at bacteriophages (phages), which are viruses that infect bacteria and come in many forms. In particular, researchers investigated telomere phages, a ...