Science
press releases.

Science18 Mar 2025

Terrorists time their attacks during periods of security or financial crisis

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- Terrorists time their attacks during periods of security or financial crisis, according to new research from political scientists at Binghamton University, State University of New York. To a bystander, a terrorist attack may seem an indiscriminate act of violence, timed solely to inflict maximum damage on its victims. But the timing of such attacks is strategic, involving a series of tradeoffs to strike vulnerable targets while preserving the group’s reputation, according to research by Binghamton University Professor of Political Science Seden ...

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Science18 Mar 2025

Looking for donors? Start with where they live

AUSTIN, Texas -- While nonprofit organizations are growing, their donations are shrinking. The number of nonprofits registered with the Internal Revenue Service grew 25% from 2013 to 2023. But during the past year, both money raised and donor counts have dropped 3%. Their main challenge is low response rates for fundraising solicitations, says Vijay Mahajan, professor of marketing at Texas McCombs. In turn, a major reason is lack of quality data on donors, which makes it harder to successfully target their appeals. Nonprofits tend to keep data on active donors, such as how much ...

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Science18 Mar 2025

Mastery of language could predict longevity

Everyone ages, but, sometimes, people outlive all predictions. Previous research has uncovered an unlikely factor related to longevity: intelligence (Bäckman & MacDonald, 2006; Bosworth & Siegler, 2002). However, intelligence isn’t a simple characteristic. There are many traits that contribute to it that can be tested—from memory to mathematical logic. In a 2024 Clinical Psychological Science study, Paolo Ghisletta of the University of Geneva linked longevity specifically to one of those traits: verbal fluency, the measure of one’s vocabulary and ability to use ...

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Science18 Mar 2025

Threatened by warming waters, brook trout may be able to adapt to hotter weather

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Brook trout may have a genetic trick up their scales when it comes to adapting, with limitations, to heatwaves that threaten their existence. Scientists have known for years that brook trout — an iconic coldwater fish species native to streams and lakes in the eastern United States and Canada — are extremely vulnerable to warming temperatures, with more than half of their habitats characterized as highly sensitive and highly vulnerable to such changes by U.S. Forest Service researchers in 2010. Now, a novel study led by researchers ...

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Science18 Mar 2025

What’s behind the ‘pop and slosh’ when opening a swing-top bottle of beer?

WASHINGTON, March 18, 2025 — In a fun experiment, Max Koch, a researcher at the University of Göttingen in Germany — who also happens to be passionate about homebrewing — decided to use a high-speed camera to capture what occurs while opening a swing-top bottle of homebrew. When Robert Mettin, who leads the Ultrasound and Cavitation group at the university’s Third Institute of Physics, Biophysics, suggested that Koch should submit the findings to the special “kitchen flows” issue of Physics of Fluids, from AIP Publishing, Koch and his colleagues chose to ...

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Science18 Mar 2025

Add some spice: Curcumin helps treat mycobacterium abscessus

Highlights: Mycobacterium abscessus can cause dangerous lung infections. Treatment usually requires a combination of antibiotics for more than a year. Researchers in China report that curcumin, found in turmeric, can enhance treatment with bedaquiline, an antimycobacterial. Animal studies showed that treatment with the combination led to a faster clearance of the infection. Washington, D.C.—Mycobacterium abscessus is a fast-growing, pathogenic mycobacteria that can cause lung infections, and people who have respiratory conditions or are immunocompromised ...

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Science18 Mar 2025

Coastal guardians pioneer a new way to protect the Florida Keys’ shorelines

By 2050, sea levels along the United States coast are expected to rise by 0.25 to 0.30 meters, increasing flooding in low-lying areas. Due to its unique geography and infrastructure network, the Florida Keys is particularly at risk of climate hazards such as sea level rise, hurricanes and flooding. Since 2015, the Florida Keys has experienced four hurricanes – Irma (2107), Ian (2022), Helene (2024) and Milton (2024). Nature-based solutions, such as restoring mangroves and coastal strands, can help mitigate these risks by stabilizing shorelines, improving ecosystems ...

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Science18 Mar 2025

Popular cooking cheese made with peas yields same taste and texture

Creamy, crumbly, mild, or sharp — cheese is a true crowd-pleaser. From everyday meals to gourmet delights, it’s a staple across the Western world. In 2023, the average European enjoyed 20.5 kilograms of cheese. But it is no secret that, as a dairy product, heavy cheese consumption comes with a significant environmental impact. As such, extensive research is being conducted on how to produce plant-based cheeses. Unfortunately, finding an entirely plant-based cheese that satisfies cheese lovers in terms of both texture and taste has been difficult. And texture in particular has been challenging to get just right. So, food researchers at the University ...

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Science18 Mar 2025

Genetic study reveals hidden chapter in human evolution

Modern humans descended from not one, but at least two ancestral populations that drifted apart and later reconnected, long before modern humans spread across the globe. Using advanced analysis based on full genome sequences, researchers from the University of Cambridge have found evidence that modern humans are the result of a genetic mixing event between two ancient populations that diverged around 1.5 million years ago. About 300,000 years ago, these groups came back together, with one group contributing 80% of the genetic makeup of modern humans and the other contributing 20%. For the last two decades, the prevailing view in human evolutionary genetics has been that Homo sapiens first ...

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Science18 Mar 2025

New ‘shy’ fungus found in old-growth forest

Although fungi of the genus Piloderma are common, scientists have now discovered five previously unknown species. One of these is one of the most widely distributed species in Northern Europe, while another is found only in old-growth forests. The discoveries, published in Fungal Biology, show that diversity in this genus is much greater than previously thought and that some of its species are at risk of disappearing as old-growth forest is logged. Many of the fungi of the genus Piloderma are among the most common fungal species ...

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Science18 Mar 2025

Some nicotine pouch flavors much more addictive than others

A new paper in Nicotine & Tobacco Research, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that different nicotine pouches, which have become very popular in recent years, particularly among young people, may influence user preferences very differently. An investigation using rats finds some flavors lead to much more nicotine consumption than others. According to the World Health Organization, tobacco use remains a major global health threat, with 1.3 billion tobacco users, and 8 million tobacco-related deaths annually. ...

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Science17 Mar 2025

Last supper of 15-million-year-old freshwater fish

18th March 2025, Sydney: In an Australian first, a team of scientists led by Australian Museum and UNSW Sydney palaeontologist, Dr Matthew McCurry, have described a new species of 15-million-year-old fossilised freshwater fish, Ferruaspis brocksi, that shows preserved stomach contents as well as the pattern of colouration. The research is published today in The Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology (DOI - 10.1080/02724634.2024.2445684) Named after Professor Jochen J. Brocks from the Australian National University, who discovered several of the fossilised species at the Australian Museum’s, McGraths Flat fossil site near Gulgong, NSW, Ferruaspis brocksi is the first ...

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Science17 Mar 2025

Iguanas floated one-fifth of the way around the world to colonize Fiji

Iguanas have often been spotted rafting around the Caribbean on vegetation and, ages ago, evidently caught a 600-mile ride from Central America to colonize the Galapagos Islands. But for long distance travel, the Fiji iguanas can't be touched. A new analysis conducted by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of San Francisco (USF) suggests that sometime after about 34 million years ago, Fiji iguanas landed on the isolated group of South Pacific islands after voyaging 5,000 miles from the western coast of North America — the longest known transoceanic dispersal of any terrestrial vertebrate. Overwater ...

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Science17 Mar 2025

‘Audible enclaves’ could enable private listening without headphones

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — It may someday be possible to listen to a favorite podcast or song without disturbing the people around you, even without wearing headphones. In a new advancement in audio engineering, a team of researchers led by Yun Jing, professor of acoustics in the Penn State College of Engineering, has precisely narrowed where sound is perceived by creating localized pockets of sound zones, called audible enclaves. In an enclave, a listener can hear sound, while others standing nearby cannot, even if the people are in an enclosed space, like a vehicle, or standing ...

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Science17 Mar 2025

Early surgical intervention in children with sleep-disordered breathing reduces need for doctor visits, prescriptions

In a randomized trial, Mass General Brigham researchers found the surgical removal of tonsils and adenoids was effective for children with snoring and mild sleep apnea An estimated 6 to 17 percent of children have sleep-disordered breathing, ranging from snoring to sleep apnea, which can cause behavioral, neurocognitive, cardiovascular, and cardiometabolic issues. A new study from Mass General Brigham researchers reveals that adenotonsillectomy—the surgical removal of tonsils and adenoids—is an effective early intervention for these children. Their results are published in JAMA Pediatrics. “To ...

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Science17 Mar 2025

Pro-life people partly motivated to prevent casual sex, study finds

(Note: The following press release was prepared by Brunel University of London.) Abortion is murder – the emotive rallying cry popular with pro-life campaigners keen to convert others to their cause. But what if opposition to abortion isn’t all about sanctity-of-life concerns, and instead at least partly about discouraging casual sex? That’s what psychology researchers found in experiments designed to test what really drives anti-abortion attitudes in the USA. The study, published today in ...

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Science17 Mar 2025

Attention can be used to drive cooperation – new study

Our ability to cooperate with others may be influenced by how our attention is captured and directed, as much as by how altruistic we are feeling. According to a new study by researchers at the University of Birmingham jointly with the University of Zurich, choices made for individual reward or cooperatively for a joint reward can be influenced by presenting information to participants in configurations that naturally draw their attention. The results are published today in Communications Psychology. Cooperation – defined as the ability of individuals to incur a personal cost for the benefit ...

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Science17 Mar 2025

Optimizing public placement of naloxone kits to save lives

Making it easy to access naloxone kits to reverse the effects of opioid poisoning will help save lives, according to research published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.241228 that looks at the best placements for these kits. Researchers wanted to understand the best placement for public-access naloxone kits in Vancouver, British Columbia, to help prevent deaths from opioid poisoning. They compared public access strategies for more than 14 000 opioid poisonings over 6 years. They looked at placement at existing locations of take-home naloxone, at public locations like chain businesses, and at public transit ...

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Science17 Mar 2025

Who does Darth Vader vote for? Not the same party as Harry Potter

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 00:01AM UK TIME ON MONDAY 17 MARCH 2025 People think that Harry Potter, Spiderman and Gandalf would vote the same way they do, whereas Darth Vader, Cruella de Vill and Joffrey Baratheon would vote for the rival party. New research from the University of Southampton, published today [17 March] in the journal Political Science Research & Method, shows how people in the UK and USA believe that fictional characters they admire would share their voting preferences, while those they dislike would vote the other way. The researchers also found that around one in six people recalled ...

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Science15 Mar 2025

Good fences make good neighbors (with carnivores)

A predator’s gotta eat, but sometimes what they eat harms people sharing the landscape, and that often leads to the carnivore’s death. Fortified corrals are one strategy used in Tanzania to protect both livestock and vulnerable carnivore species. But then where do lions, leopards and hyenas go for dinner? Do they feed on the next herd over? A new study led by Colorado State University has found that good fences truly do make good neighbors because fortified enclosures also benefit livestock keepers who live nearby. Instead of dining on easier meals next-door and negatively impacting neighbors who don’t ...

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Science14 Mar 2025

Introducing our new cohort of AGA Future Leaders

We’re thrilled to announce the 16 distinguished early-career gastroenterologists and hepatologists selected for our 2025-2026 class of AGA Future Leaders. This AGA program cultivates effective leadership skills for professional advancement in AGA and within the field of digestive diseases. Meet the AGA Future Leaders Class of 2025-2026 Lubin Arevalo, MD Veroushka Ballester, MD, MS Victor Chedid, MD, MS Ryan Fawley, MD Melissa Hershman, MD Pichamol Jirapinyo, MD, MPH Babu Pappu Mohan, MD Carolyn Newberry, MD Long ...

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Science14 Mar 2025

Sharks are dying at alarming rates, mostly due to fishing. Retention bans may help

Despite the fear they may inspire in humans, sharks have far more reason to fear us. Nearly one-third of sharks are threatened with extinction globally, mostly as a result of fishing. A team led by researchers at UC Santa Barbara discovered that mandates to release captured sharks won’t be enough to prevent the continued decline of these important ocean predators. These findings, published in Fish & Fisheries, highlight the importance of monitoring shark populations and combining different strategies for managing their numbers. Some ...

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Science14 Mar 2025

YouTube influencers: gaming’s best friend or worst enemy?

New INFORMS Marketing Science Study Key Takeaways: YouTube influencers increase player engagement and playtime but often reduce game purchases, especially for story-driven games. A unique event in YouTube’s history, the “Adpocalypse,” allowed researchers to measure the causal impact of influencer content, revealing its complex effects on game sales and usage. Game developers must align their business models with influencer marketing, because games with in-game purchases benefit from exposure, while ...

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Science14 Mar 2025

NJIT mathematician to help map Earth's last frontier with Navy grant

We’ve mapped nearly all of Mars’ surface from orbit, yet we know less about Earth’s ocean floor — almost 75% remains unmapped in high resolution. This terrestrial blind spot is driving NJIT Mathematics Professor Eliza Michalopoulou’s latest research, funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR). The project aims to improve how scientists explore the vast, uncharted ocean floor through sound. “Mapping the seabed is a challenging endeavor due to the extreme conditions,” said Michalopoulou, ...

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Science14 Mar 2025

‘Microlightning’ in water droplets may have sparked life on Earth

Life may not have begun with a dramatic lightning strike into the ocean but from many smaller “microlightning” exchanges among water droplets from crashing waterfalls or breaking waves. New research from Stanford University shows that water sprayed into a mixture of gases thought to be present in Earth’s early atmosphere can lead to the formation of organic molecules with carbon-nitrogen bonds, including uracil, one of the components of DNA and RNA. The study, published in the journal Science Advances, adds evidence – and a new angle – to the much-disputed Miller-Urey ...

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