Science
press releases.

Science12 Dec 2025

CRISPR primes goldenberry for fruit bowl fame

Since the dawn of agriculture around 10,000 years ago, our ancestors have saved seeds from the tastiest, largest, and most resilient crops to plant in the following season. Today, most fruits and vegetables we buy are the result of hundreds to thousands of years of selective breeding. Now, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) plant biologists may have found a “shortcut” to this tedious breeding process using the gene-editing tool CRISPR on a tiny tomato relative called goldenberry. This method could make the fruit easier to grow, opening it up for large-scale farming in the U.S. ...

Read the release

Science12 Dec 2025

Global measures consistently underestimate food insecurity; one in five who suffer from hunger may go uncounted

URBANA, Ill. — International humanitarian aid organizations rely on analyses from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system, a global partnership that monitors and classifies the severity of food insecurity to help target assistance where and when it is most needed. Those analyses are multifaceted and complex – often taking place in regions where data is scarce and conditions are deteriorating – and stakeholders tend to assume they overestimate need. However, a new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and collaborators, published in Nature Food, finds the opposite is the case: global food insecurity analyses systematically ...

Read the release

Science12 Dec 2025

Hidden patterns of isolation and segregation found in all American cities

UCL Press Release Under embargo until Friday 12 December 2025, 10:00 UK time / 05:00 US Eastern time Hidden patterns of isolation and segregation found in all American cities A comprehensive analysis of 383 U.S. cities reveals a striking pattern: most have rings of isolation in suburban areas and segregated pockets of near the urban core, that are shaped by race, wealth, and proximity to downtown, finds a new study by UCL researchers. Published in Nature Cities, the paper analyses the daily movements of people in cities right ...

Read the release

Science12 Dec 2025

Sea reptile’s tooth shows that mosasaurs could live in freshwater

Mosasaurs, giant marine reptiles that existed more than 66 million years ago, lived not only in the sea but also in rivers. This is shown by new research based on analyses of a mosasaur tooth found in North Dakota and believed to belong to an animal that could reach a length of 11 metres. The study, conducted by an international team of researchers led from Uppsala University, shows that mosasaurs adapted to riverine environments in the final million years before they became extinct. In 2022, palaeontologists found a large tooth from a mosasaur in North Dakota. It was ...

Read the release

Science12 Dec 2025

New UBCO research challenges traditional teen suicide prevention models

The old proverb “it takes a village to raise a child” also applies to preventing youth suicide, according to UBC Okanagan researchers who found that community support is essential. In Canada, suicide is the fourth leading cause of death among children under 14 and the second for youth and young adults between 15 and 34 years old. The UBCO Faculty of Health and Social Development researchers say governments, schools and community agencies need to rethink how youth suicide prevention efforts are designed. And work together on the issue. “Suicide among young people is a major public health issue and is among the leading causes of death among children ...

Read the release

Science12 Dec 2025

UBCO study finds microdosing can temporarily improve mood, creativity

A new UBC Okanagan study found that people who microdose psychedelics feel better on the days they take them—but those boosts don’t seem to last. This suggests, says Dr. Michelle St. Pierre, that perceived benefits may be acute rather than long lasting. Dr. St. Pierre is a post-doctoral psychology researcher with UBCO’s Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She recently published a study in Psychopharmacology that tracks the daily experiences of people who microdose with psychedelics. Microdosing involves ingesting small amounts of a psychedelic substance, commonly psilocybin mushrooms or lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). “Most ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

Tufts professor named Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors

James (Jim) Schwob, a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine, has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Election as an academy fellow is the highest professional distinction awarded solely to inventors. The NAI was founded to recognize and encourage inventors with U.S. patents and enhance the visibility of academic technology and innovation. This year’s fellows include Nobel Prize winners and recipients of the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation and Medal of Science. The group, which holds over 5,300 issued U.S. patents, includes members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, among others. The ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

Tracing a path through photosynthesis to food security

The energy that plants capture from sunlight through photosynthesis provides the source of nearly all of humanity’s food. Yet the process of photosynthesis has inefficiencies that limit crop productivity, especially in a rapidly changing world. A new review by University of Illinois scientists and collaborators reflects on how improving photosynthesis can bring us closer to food security. The review, which was published in Cell, was coauthored by plant biology professors Stephen Long, Amy Marshall-Colon, and Lisa Ainsworth. ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

Researchers pitch strategies to identify potential fraudulent participants in online qualitative research

Recruiting participants for injury and violence-related studies can be challenging. Online qualitative data collection can increase accessibility for some participants, expand a study’s reach to potential participants, offer convenience and extend a sense of safety. But the data can be marred by fraudulent responses. As online data collection has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, widely available online platforms and sophisticated bots can potentially expose studies to would-be fraudulent participants, that can jeopardize the research. Fraudulent participants are ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

Smallholder farms maintain strong pollinator diversity – even when far from forests

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 ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

Price of a bot army revealed across hundreds of online platforms worldwide – from TikTok to Amazon

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 ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

Warblers borrow color-related genes from evolutionary neighbors, study finds

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 ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

Heat signaling from plants is an ancient pollinator signal

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 ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

Researchers discover how Ebola and Marburg disrupt the gastrointestinal tract

(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 ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

Feeling the heat

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 ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

Music: Popular song lyrics have become more negative since 1973

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 ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

ADHD prescriptions on the rise, study finds

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 ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

Sharp rise in ADHD stimulant prescriptions in Ontario, research finds

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 ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

Trends and prevalence of the metabolic syndrome among US adults

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 ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

Exploring dominant endophytic Pleosporales in grasses: New taxonomic insights in the suborder Massarineae

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 ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

Comparative transcriptomic analysis of human maxillary and mandibular tooth germs reveals discrepancies in gene expression patterns

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 ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

The National Academy of Inventors welcomes 2025 Class of Fellows

The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) has elected the newest class of Fellows, naming 169 U.S. distinguished academic and institutional inventors and 16 International Fellows to the 2025 cohort. Explore the full list of 2025 Fellows here. NAI Fellowship is the highest professional distinction awarded solely to inventors. Together, the 2025 class hold more than 5,300 U.S. patents and include recipients of the Nobel Prize, the National Medals of Science and Technology & Innovation, and members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, among others. This year’s 169 U.S. Fellows represent ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

Rats may seek cannabis to cope with stress

PULLMAN, Wash. -- It isn’t just people – when given the chance rats may also use cannabis to cope with stress, according to a study by researchers at Washington State University. Published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, the study was designed to examine cannabis-seeking behavior and found that rats with higher natural stress levels are far more likely to self-administer the popular recreational drug. "We ran rats through this extensive battery of behavioral and biological tests, and what we found was that when we look at all of these different factors and all the variables that we measured, stress ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

Tea linked to stronger bones in older women, while coffee may pose risks

A new study from Flinders University offers insight into how two of the world’s most popular beverages, coffee and tea, may influence bone health in older women. The research, published in the journal Nutrients, followed nearly 10,000 women aged 65 and older over a decade to explore whether their daily habits of sipping coffee or tea were linked to changes in bone mineral density (BMD), a key indicator of osteoporosis risk. Osteoporosis is a major global health concern, affecting one in three women over 50 and contributing to millions of fractures each year. With coffee and tea consumed daily by billions worldwide, understanding their impact on bone health ...

Read the release

Science11 Dec 2025

£13m NHS bill for ‘mismanagement’ of menstrual bleeds

A landmark UK study has revealed that acute heavy menstrual bleeding (HMB) is placing a significant hidden burden on the NHS, with around £13 million spent annually on hospital admissions and post-discharge care. The study, led by Dr Bassel Wattar of Anglia Ruskin University and published in The Lancet Obstetrics, Gynaecology, & Women’s Health journal, is the first UK-based multicentre study to evaluate the prevalence of acute HMB and number of women requiring red blood ...

Read the release