Science
press releases.

Science2 Jan 2026

Researchers want to find out why quick clay is so unstable

Quick clay is actually an old seabed. The clay thus formed under water, but came to the surface when the landscape rose after the last ice age. However, this clay was not so dangerous, because it was full of salt from the sea. Only when the salt in the clay was washed out of fresh water from rain and groundwater did it turn into quick clay. But what exactly makes quick clay so unstable? "We have made very detailed and careful simulations of the friction between clay particles," says researcher and doctor Ge Li at PoreLab and the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Production at the Norwegian University of Science ...

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Science1 Jan 2026

Pigs settled Pacific islands alongside early human voyagers

Pigs across the Pacific can trace their ancestry to Southeast Asian domestic pigs that accompanied early Austronesian-speaking groups as they island-hopped across the region, according to a new genomic study. For thousands of years, humans have moved animals far beyond their natural ranges – sometimes accidentally and sometimes deliberately, but often with profound ecological consequences, especially on islands. Pigs are a striking example; although their home ranges lie mostly west of the Wallace Line, multiple species are now widespread across the islands of Southeast Asia and throughout Oceania. Archaeological and genetic evidence suggest that pigs ...

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Science1 Jan 2026

Groundbreaking discovery reveals Africa’s oldest cremation pyre and complex ritual practices

About 9,500 years ago, a community of hunter-gatherers in central Africa cremated a small woman on an open pyre at the base of Mount Hora, a prominent natural landmark in northern Malawi, according to a new study coauthored by an international team based in the United States, Africa, and Europe. It is the first time this behavior has been documented in the African hunter-gatherer record. The study, published in the journal Science Advances, provides the earliest evidence of intentional cremation in Africa and describes ...

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Science1 Jan 2026

How people moved pigs across the Pacific

How people moved pigs across the Pacific Genomic study reveals the routes taken by people as they island hopped across Indonesia A new study, published today in the journal Science, reveals how millennia of human migration across Pacific islands led to the introduction of invasive pig species all over the Asia-Pacific region. The study was led by Laurent Frantz, Professor of Palaeogenomics at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), and the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich (LMU), David Stanton, from Cardiff University, and Greger Larson, from the University of Oxford. Plants and animals have not always spread ...

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Science31 Dec 2025

From addressing uncertainty to national strategy: an interpretation of Professor Lim Siong Guan’s views

As global uncertainty intensifies, governments around the world are grappling with how to make decisions that safeguard long-term stability while remaining adaptable to sudden change. In a newly published interview in the journal Risk Sciences, Lim Siong Guan—one of Singapore’s most experienced public-sector leaders—offers a rare, first-hand perspective on how uncertainty can be managed through governance, leadership, and culture. Lim emphasizes that effective governance is not about eliminating risk, but about anticipating the future and building resilience. ...

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Science31 Dec 2025

Human adipose tissue: a new source for functional organoids

A recent study published in Engineering has unveiled a novel approach to generating functional organoids from human adult adipose tissue. This method, which bypasses traditional stem cell isolation and genetic manipulation, offers a more straightforward and scalable pathway for creating organoids that can be used in regenerative medicine and disease modeling. The research, led by a team from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine and the Shanghai Institute for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, demonstrates the potential of human adult adipose tissue to differentiate into organoids representing all ...

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Science31 Dec 2025

Metro lines double as freight highways during off-peak hours, Beijing study shows

Beijing’s metro system could soon carry express parcels alongside commuters during quiet periods, according to a new operational blueprint published in Engineering. Researchers from Beijing Jiaotong University and East China Jiaotong University have designed a joint optimization model that simultaneously plans train timetables, rolling-stock circulation, and cargo loading while allowing trains to skip stations with low demand. The approach, tested on the Yizhuang Line, cut operating costs by up to 25% compared with conventional fixed-composition, all-stop services. The study addresses the rapid rise in urban freight volumes—already 15 million parcels a day in Beijing—by ...

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Science31 Dec 2025

Enriching framework Al sites in 8-membered rings of Cu-SSZ-39 zeolite to enhance low-temperature ammonia selective catalytic reduction performance

A research team led by Prof. Jihong Yu and Prof. Wenfu Yan (Jilin University, State Key Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis and Preparative Chemistry) recently developed a potassium-based Cu-SSZ-39 catalyst (Cu-SSZ-39-K) with an increased concentration of Al in the 8-memberedrings. This design promotes the formation of more [Cu(OH)]+-Z species, resulting in nearly double the NOx conversion at 150-225°C and excellent retention of activity after hydrothermal ageing at 800°C. The work was published ...

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Science31 Dec 2025

Decoupling the HOR enhancement on PtRu: Dynamically matching interfacial water to reaction coordinates

Platinum-ruthenium (PtRu) alloys are notable for their catalytic activity and durability in the hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR). However, the mechanisms behind their superior performance compared to pure Pt are not fully understood. Research has identified many factors influencing HOR activity, including initial hydrogen binding energy, OH affinity driving the bifunctional mechanism, and factors like hydrogen bond (H-bond) network rigidity, connectivity, and interfacial water orientation. These complexities of the interfacial catalytic reaction present significant challenges in understanding the underlying mechanisms and achieving more precise enhancements ...

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Science31 Dec 2025

Sulfur isn’t poisonous when it synergistically acts with phosphine in olefins hydroformylation

Full news release Dalian, China-Sulfur, long feared as a “poison” that shuts down precious metal catalysts, can actually help them work better when used in just the right way, according to new research published in Chinese Journal of Catalysis. A team led by Prof. Yunjie Ding at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences andProf. Xueqing Gong at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, has shown that a tiny, carefully tuned amount of sulfur can boost the speed and robustness of a key industrial reaction by up to twofold. The reaction, called hydroformylation, adds carbon monoxide and hydrogen to simple molecules ...

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Science30 Dec 2025

URI researchers uncover molecular mechanisms behind speciation in corals

Matías Gómez-Corrales, a recent biological sciences Ph.D. graduate from the University of Rhode Island, and his advisor, Associate Professor Carlos Prada, have published a paper in Nature Communications, revealing key mechanisms in speciation in corals and proposing a new hypothesis on the origin of species in the ocean. Their new study examines how coral species form and contributes to long-standing questions in evolutionary biology about how marine biodiversity originates. The work builds on decades of ecological, reproductive, ...

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Science30 Dec 2025

Three UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s faculty elected to prestigious American Pediatric Society

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Three pediatric faculty members and leaders from University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s (UH Rainbow) have been elected to membership in the American Pediatric Society (APS), one of the nation’s most distinguished academic pediatric organizations. The newly elected APS members include: Michael S. Dell, MD, Vice Chair for Education, UH Rainbow, Professor of Pediatrics, Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) School of Medicine, and Morris S. Dixon, Jr., MD Chair in Global Child Health, UH Rainbow Ross E. Myers, MD, Director of the Pediatric Residency Program, UH Rainbow and UH Cleveland Medical Center, Professor of Pediatrics, CWRU ...

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Science30 Dec 2025

Examining private equity’s role in fertility care

The rise of private equity firms investing in health care facilities across the United States has been exploding in the last decade. Because of that rapid growth, researchers have been digging into what this could mean for health care and patients in the long term. In recent years, private equity firms have become more active in the fertility space, where many patients seek care for reproductive issues and pursue in vitro fertilization, or IVF, which costs thousands of dollars, and usually isn’t covered by insurance. James ...

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Science30 Dec 2025

Skeletal muscle epigenetic clocks developed using postmortem tissue from an Asian population

“This study introduces the skeletal muscle epigenetic clocks in an Asian population using postmortem skeletal muscle tissue.” BUFFALO, NY — December 30, 2025 — A new research paper was published in Volume 17, Issue 11 of Aging-US on November 26, 2025, titled “Epigenetic aging signatures and age prediction in human skeletal muscle.” In this study, first author Soo-Bin Yang and corresponding author Hwan Young Lee from Seoul National University College of Medicine investigated ...

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Science29 Dec 2025

Fungus turns bark beetles’ defenses against them

Spruce bark is rich in phenolic compounds that protect trees from pathogenic fungi. A research team at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena investigated how these plant defenses function within the food web, particularly in spruce bark beetles (Ips typographus), which ingest the compounds through their diet. Could the beetles use substances from the spruce's defenses to protect themselves against pathogenic fungi? Beetles convert plant defenses into even more toxic forms Using state-of-the-art analytical methods such ...

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Science29 Dec 2025

CDI scientist, colleagues author review of global burden of fungus Candida auris

The fungal species Candida auris is spreading across the globe, and gaining in virulence, according to a new review by a Hackensack Meridian Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI) scientist and colleagues. But there are strategies available and underway to combat the invasive and drug resistant germ, according to the new review in the American Society of Microbiology journal Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews. The paper summarizes and analyzes the latest developments - and needs - in mycology in 2025. Neeraj Chauhan, Ph.D., of ...

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Science29 Dec 2025

How does stroke influence speech comprehension?

Following stroke, some people experience a language disorder that hinders their ability to process speech sounds. How do their brains change from stroke? Researchers led by Laura Gwilliams, faculty scholar at the Wu Tsai Neuroscience Institute and Stanford Data Science and assistant professor at the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences, and Maaike Vandermosten, associate professor at the Department of Neurosciences at KU Leuven, compared the brains of 39 patients following stroke and ...

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Science29 Dec 2025

Accelerated streaming subgraph matching framework is faster, more robust, and scalable

Graphs are widely used to represent complex relationships in everyday applications such as social networks, bioinformatics, and recommendation systems, where they model how people or things (nodes) are connected through interactions (edges). Subgraph matching—the task of finding a smaller pattern, or query subgraph, within a larger graph—is crucial for detecting fraud, recognizing patterns, and performing semantic searches. However, current research on streaming subgraph, a similar task where timing is important, matching faces major challenges in scalability and latency, including difficulties in handling large graphs, low cache efficiency, limited query result reuse, and ...

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Science27 Dec 2025

SIMJ announces global collaborative book project in commemoration of its 75th anniversary

The Society of Inorganic Materials, Japan (SIMJ) has announced a prestigious international book initiative entitled “Sustainable Materials for a Better Environment: Advances in Gypsum, Lime, Cement, and Other Inorganic Materials” to commemorate the 75th anniversary of its founding. The initiative was officially announced at the Board of Directors’ executive meeting held on November 26th, 2025. The project aims to bring together leading researchers and experts from Japan and around the world within industry and academia ...

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Science26 Dec 2025

How talking slows eye movements behind the wheel

Talking while driving is widely recognized as a major source of distraction, but the specific ways conversation interferes with the earliest stages of visual processing have remained largely unclear. While previous research has shown that cognitive distraction can slow braking or reduce situational awareness, the question of whether talking disrupts the foundational gaze processes that precede physical reactions has remained unanswered. Now, researchers from Fujita Health University have demonstrated that talking imposes cognitive load strong enough to delay essential eye-movement ...

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Science23 Dec 2025

American Meteorological Society announces Rick Spinrad as 2026 President-Elect

Members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), the professional society for weather, water, and climate sciences and services, have elected Richard (Rick) Spinrad to the position of AMS president-elect for 2026, as well as electing five new council members. Spinrad, an oceanographer, formerly served as U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and the 11th administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He will be inducted as president-elect on Sunday, 25 January, 2026, during the AMS’s 106th Annual Meeting in Houston, Texas. The five newly elected AMS Council Members are Marilyn Averill, Julie Demuth, Jordan Gerth, ...

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Science23 Dec 2025

How does age affect recovery from spinal cord injury?

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4:00 P.M. ET, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2025 MINNEAPOLIS — A new study published on December 23, 2025, in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, looks at how age may affect recovery for people with spinal cord injuries. “With population growth and improvements in medicine, the number of people diagnosed with spinal cord injury is increasing and the average age at the time of injury is rising,” said study author Chiara Pavese, MD, PhD, of the University of Pavia in Pavia, ...

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Science23 Dec 2025

New study finds where you live affects recovery after a hip fracture

Older adults who live in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods spend significantly fewer days at home in the year after a fall-related hip fracture than those living in more affluent areas, according to a large national study published today in JAMA Network Open. The study analyzed Medicare data from more than 52,000 older adults who experienced a hip fracture. Researchers found that people living in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods spent about 23 fewer days at home during the year after their injury compared with those in the least disadvantaged areas after considering individual factors such as age or chronic illnesses. “Neighborhood ...

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Science23 Dec 2025

Beyond fragmented markets: A new framework for efficient and stable ride-pooling

Ride-pooling is widely recognized as a sustainable way to ease congestion, reduce costs and cut emissions, yet adoption remains limited. When operators act independently, efficiency is low because requests cannot be matched across platforms. Aggregation platforms seek to improve this by forcing all operators into a permanent coalition, but differences in size, cost and market position make such arrangements unstable. To address this, researchers from Beihang University and Delft University of Technology developed a multi-level coalition formation game framework that enables coalitions to form dynamically in response to trip requests, allowing flexible cooperation ...

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Science23 Dec 2025

Can shape priors make road perception more reliable for autonomous driving?

Researchers at Tsinghua University developed PriorFusion, a unified framework that integrates semantic, geometric, and generative shape priors to significantly improve the accuracy and stability of road element perception in autonomous driving systems. The research addresses a long-standing challenge: existing end-to-end perception models often generate irregular shapes, fragmented boundaries, and incomplete road elements in complex urban scenarios. The team published their study in Communications in Transportation Research on November 18, 2025. “We design PriorFusion to introduce shape priors into every ...

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