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Science8 May 2025

Simple tweaks to a gene underlie the stench of rotten-smelling flowers

Some plants lure pollinators not with sweet fragrances, but with the rank stench of decay. In a new study, researchers show how plants pull this off. In Asarum flowers, a gene typically used for detoxifying smelly compounds has instead evolved to produce unpleasant odors, the researchers report. The findings shed light on how plants co-opt widely conserved metabolic pathways for ecological advantage. A key feature of foul-smelling flowers is the release of malodorous volatile compounds, particularly oligosulfides like dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) and dimethyl trisulfide (DMTS). These compounds mimic the chemical signals given off by decaying material. ...

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Science8 May 2025

Ultrasound-guided 3D bioprinting enables deep-tissue implant fabrication in vivo

A new ultrasound-guided 3D printing technique could make it possible to fabricate medical implants in vivo and deliver tailored therapies to tissues deep inside the body – all without invasive surgery, researchers report. 3D bioprinting technologies offer significant promise to modern medicine by enabling the creation of customized implants, intricate medical devices, and engineered tissues tailored to individual patients. However, most current approaches require invasive surgical implantation. Although in vivo bioprinting – “3D printing” tissue directly within the body – offers ...

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Science8 May 2025

Red alert for our closest relatives

New report shows drastic decline in endangered primates and calls for conservation measures An international team of primate researchers has published the 25 most endangered primate species in Asia, Africa, Madagascar and South America for the years 2023 to 2025. The publication, supported by the German Primate Center (DPZ) - Leibniz Institute for Primate Research in Göttingen, emphasizes how urgently global conservation measures need to be implemented now to save irreplaceable biodiversity. "The situation is dramatic. If we don't act now, we will lose some of these species forever," warns Christian Roos, geneticist at the German Primate Center. “But ...

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Science8 May 2025

MD Anderson Research Highlights for May 8, 2025

HOUSTON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights showcases the latest breakthroughs in cancer care, research and prevention. These advances are made possible through seamless collaboration between MD Anderson’s world-leading clinicians and scientists, bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic and back. Comprehensive spatial map provides insights into pancreatic cancer metastases Read summary | Read in Nature Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to treat, resulting in a five-year survival rate of roughly 12%. Approximately half of patients develop metastases shortly ...

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Science8 May 2025

Study of Türkiye gold mine landslide highlights need for future monitoring

A new analysis of a fatal landslide that occurred on 13 February 2024 at theÇöpler Gold Mine in Türkiye reveals that the site of the landslide had been slowly moving for at least four years prior to the failure. “Additionally, our analyses detected deformation anomalies in other sectors of the mining operation, which could potentially lead to similar catastrophes,” said Pınar Büyükakpınar of the GFZ German Research Centre For Geosciences, who published the study in The Seismic Record with her colleagues. The Çöpler Gold ...

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Science8 May 2025

New study: high efficiency of severe thalassemia prevention with HTS based carrier screening

Sulfur applied to sugarcane crops in South Florida is flowing into wetlands upgradient of Everglades National Park, triggering a chemical reaction that converts mercury into toxic methylmercury, which accumulates in fish, new research from University of California, Davis finds. In a paper published in Nature Communications, researchers collected water and mosquito fish across wetlands fed by agricultural canals. They documented how sulfur runoff can dramatically increase methylmercury concentrations in fish — sometimes up to 10 million times greater than the waters in which they lived, posing a risk ...

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Science8 May 2025

Vitamin supplements slow down the progression of glaucoma

A vitamin supplement that improves metabolism in the eye appears to slow down damage to the optic nerve in glaucoma. Promising results have been published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine. The researchers behind the study have now started a clinical trial on patients. In glaucoma, the optic nerve is gradually damaged, leading to vision loss and, in the worst cases, blindness. High pressure in the eye drives the disease, and eye drops, laser treatment or surgery are therefore used to lower the pressure in the eye and thus slow down the disease. Unfortunately, however, the effect ...

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Science8 May 2025

FAU CARD releases free water safety guide for children with Autism

Drowning is the leading cause of unintentional death for children aged 1 to 4 in Florida, and children with autism face even greater danger – many times more likely to drown than their neurotypical peers. One key factor behind this alarming statistic is wandering, also known as elopement. Nearly 50% of children with autism will wander from a safe environment at some point. These incidents can happen in a split second and often lead to children being drawn to nearby water sources such as pools, ponds or canals – many of which are unprotected. Children ...

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Science8 May 2025

Discovery opens up for new ways to treat chlamydia

Researchers at Umeå University, Sweden, and Michigan State University, USA, have discovered a type of molecule that can kill chlamydia bacteria but spare bacteria that are important for health. The discovery opens the door for further research towards developing new antibiotics against chlamydia, the world's most common bacterial sexually transmitted disease with 130 million cases a year. "No one should have to live with chlamydia. But the problem is that the treatments we have today do not distinguish between dangerous and friendly bacteria. A growing problem is ...

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Science8 May 2025

Major US cities are sinking

Twenty-eight major U.S. cities, including New York, Dallas, and Seattle, are seeing urban areas sink by 2 to 10 millimeters per year, according to new research from Virginia Tech. The major cause is groundwater extraction. Published in Nature Cities, the study used satellite-based radar measurements to create high-resolution maps of subsidence, or sinking land, for 28 of the most populous U.S. cities. The cities are home to 34 million people, about 12 percent of the total U.S. population. In every city studied, at least 20 percent of the urban area ...

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Science8 May 2025

Too fast to see

If you quickly move a camera from object to object, the abrupt shift between the two points causes a motion smear that might give you nausea. Our eyes, however, do movements like these two or three times per second. These rapid movements are called saccades, and although the visual stimulus during a saccade shifts abruptly across the retina, our brain seems to keep it under the hood: we never perceive the shift. New research shows that the speed of our saccades predicts the speed limit in our vision when an object becomes too fast to see. According to a study published in Nature ...

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Science8 May 2025

All of the biggest U.S. cities are sinking

A new study of the 28 most populous U.S. cities finds that all are sinking to one degree or another. The cities include not just those on the coasts, where relative sea level is a concern, but many in the interior. Furthermore, using newly granular data, the study finds that some cities are sinking at different rates in different spots, or sinking in some places and rising in others, potentially introducing stresses that could affect buildings and other infrastructure. Massive ongoing groundwater extraction is the most common cause of these land movements, say the authors, though other ...

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Science8 May 2025

Top EU food & agri institutes launch new science alliance

Five of Europe’s leading agricultural, food and life sciences institutions announce the launch of the European Science Alliance for Agriculture and Food (ESAAF)—a new scientific coalition designed to support the transformation and resilience of the EU agri-food sector. ESAAF aims to harness the momentum and shared ambition across Europe to create sustainable, competitive, and resilient food systems. EU policy makers have some pressing dilemmas to tackle in that regard. ESAAF will serve as a hub and dedicated scientific voice in food system policy discussions, ensuring that sound, independent evidence underpins future strategies. The founding members of ESAAF ...

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Science7 May 2025

The Lancet: Nearly half of sexual abuse first happens at age 15 or younger

The prevalence of sexual violence against children (SVAC) is high, with nearly one out of five women and one out of seven men around the globe who are survivors. Regardless of regional or economic status, SVAC prevalence among women is substantial, even in high-income countries such as the Netherlands (30%), New Zealand (29%), the US (28%), and the UK (24%). Low- and middle-income nations like Chile, Costa Rica, India, and Rwanda recorded a high prevalence among women of at least 30%; among men in Bangladesh and Côte d’Ivoire, the prevalence was 28%. SEATTLE, Wash., May 7, 2025 ...

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Science7 May 2025

Non-inherited genes affect children’s development

Parents’ genes – even when not directly inherited by a child – may play a role in their educational and mental health outcomes, finds a new report by UCL researchers. The report, Understanding the intergenerational transmission of educational (under)achievement, which was funded by the Nuffield Foundation, evaluated how parental genetics can influence child development through the environment provided by their parents (for example, reading habits or access to better resources), also known as “genetic nurture” or “indirect genetic effects”. The ...

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Science7 May 2025

New method provides fresh insights into insect decline

It has long been known that agriculture contributes to the decline in insect biodiversity. The loss of host plants, frequent mowing, and pesticide use all deprive many species of their habitats. Now, a research team from the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) has discovered—using innovative analytical methods—that the impact of agricultural land use on insect diversity is even more dramatic than previously assumed. The findings are based on an analysis of insect species from 400 families collected across a wide range of habitats in Bavaria. The study was led by Professor Jörg Müller, Chair of Conservation ...

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Science7 May 2025

New study reveals striking differences in life expectancy across U.S. states

New Haven, Conn. — A sweeping new study led by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH) reveals stark disparities in life expectancy across U.S. states and Washington, D.C. over the past century – offering new insights into how a region’s public health policies, social conditions, and environmental factors can shape people’s lifespans. Analyzing more than 179 million deaths between 1969 and 2020, the multi-institutional research team traced life expectancy trends by birth cohort — a more precise measure for following the life experiences of a population than traditional year-by-year summaries of mortality, which ...

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Science7 May 2025

New discovery shows how molecules can mute heat like music

Imagine you are playing the guitar—each pluck of a string creates a sound wave that vibrates and interacts with other waves. Now shrink that idea down to a small single molecule, and instead of sound waves, picture vibrations that carry heat. A team of engineers and materials scientists in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at CU Boulder has recently discovered that these tiny thermal vibrations, otherwise known as phonons, can interfere with each other just like musical notes—either amplifying or canceling each other, depending on how a molecule is "strung" together. Phonon ...

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Science7 May 2025

India has one of the world’s highest densities of snow leopards

Most of India’s snow leopard population live in a remote region in the north of the country, where they co-exist alongside rural communities, according to a study publishing May 7, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Pankaj Raina at Union Territory of Ladakh's Department of Wildlife Protection, and colleagues. To effectively conserve wild carnivores, researchers need accurate data on their population size and distribution. However, gathering this data has proved particularly challenging for snow leopards (Panthera uncia) because of their shy nature and preference for remote, rugged terrain. Researchers assessed the population size and distribution of snow leopards ...

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Science7 May 2025

Are you curious? It might help you stay sharp as you age

What is the trick to aging successfully? If you’re curious about learning the answer, you might already be on the right track, according to an international team of psychologists including several from UCLA. Their research shows that some forms of curiosity can increase well into old age and suggests that older adults who maintain curiosity and want to learn new things relevant to their interests may be able to offset or even prevent Alzheimer’s disease. Conversely, those who show muted curiosity and disinterest may be at risk for dementia. The finding contradicts prior research that showed that curiosity ...

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Science7 May 2025

Eating avocados during pregnancy associated with lower food allergy risk in baby

MISSION VIEJO, Calif. (May 7, 2025) -- An observational study among 2,272 mother-child pairs in Finland found that infants had 44% lower odds of developing food allergies at 12 months if their mother consumed fresh avocado during pregnancy, after adjusting for other lifestyle, delivery, and maternal health factors. Decades of research have explored the relationship between maternal diet and allergic outcomes in infants, but this is the first published study to link avocados in the maternal diet to ...

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Science7 May 2025

Will you live an unprecedented life?

Climate change's disproportionate burden on youth Climate extremes, including heatwaves, crop failures, river floods, tropical cyclones, wildfires and droughts, will intensify with continued atmospheric warming. Today’s children will endure more climate extremes then any previous generation. “In 2021, we demonstrated how children are to face disproportionate increases in extreme event exposure – especially in low-income countries. Now, we examined where the cumulative exposure to climate extremes across one’s lifetime will far exceed that which would have ...

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Science7 May 2025

Low-dose rapamycin improves muscle mass and well-being in aging adults

“Low-dose, intermittent rapamycin administration over 48 weeks is relatively safe in healthy, normative-aging adults, and was associated with significant improvements in lean tissue mass and pain in women.” BUFFALO, NY — May 7, 2025 — A new research paper was published in Aging (Aging-US) Volume 17, Issue 4, on April 4, 2025, titled “Influence of rapamycin on safety and healthspan metrics after one year: PEARL trial results.” A research team led by first author Mauricio Moel and corresponding author Stefanie L. Morgan from AgelessRx conducted a clinical trial to ...

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Science7 May 2025

Formaldehyde releasers found in common personal care products

More than half of Black and Latina women in a study in South Los Angeles reported using personal care products that contain formaldehyde-releasing preservatives. Given that formaldehyde is known to cause cancer in humans, the study reveals both critical safety gaps in how personal care products are regulated in the United States and their disproportionate health impacts on women of color. In recent years, growing concerns about exposure to formaldehyde in personal care products have focused on hair relaxers. For instance, recent studies show a link between ...

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Science7 May 2025

The world’s wealthiest 10% caused two thirds of global warming since 1990

Wealthy individuals have a higher carbon footprint. A new study published in Nature Climate Change quantifies the climate outcomes of these inequalities. It finds that the world’s wealthiest 10% are responsible for two thirds of observed global warming since 1990 and the resulting increases in climate extremes such as heatwaves and droughts. The study assesses the contribution of the highest emitting groups within societies and finds that the top 1% of the wealthiest individuals globally contributed 26 times the global average to increases in monthly 1-in-100-year heat extremes globally and 17 times more to ...

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