Science
press releases.

Science10 Dec 2025

Be careful trusting TikTok for gout advice

A new paper in Rheumatology Advances in Practice, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that Tik Tok videos about gout are commonly misleading, inconsistent, or inaccurate. Gout is a painful inflammatory arthritis caused by high urate in the blood that crystallizes and deposits in the joints. An estimated forty-one million people worldwide suffer from gout, with physicians diagnosing about seven million new cases a year. There are persistent gaps in awareness and understanding about gout among patients and the public. Although rheumatology guidelines recommend long-term urate-lowering therapy for ...

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Science10 Dec 2025

How parasitic, asexual plants evolve and live

There are plants that are neither green nor sexually reproductive, but precisely because of that they teach us a lot about what it means to be a plant. New research with Kobe University participation took a close look at Balanophora to learn how such non-green, asexual plants evolve and live. “My long-standing aim is to rethink what it truly means to be a plant,” says Kobe University botanist SUETSUGU Kenji. He continues, “For many years I have been fascinated by plants that have abandoned photosynthesis, and I want ...

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Science10 Dec 2025

Membrane electrode assembly design for high-efficiency anion exchange membrane water electrolysis

Research Background Hydrogen energy is vital for renewable energy storage and "dual carbon" goals, but 95% of global hydrogen production relies on fossil fuel reforming (emitting ~1.3 billion tons of CO₂ yearly), driving demand for green hydrogen via water electrolysis. Anion exchange membrane water electrolysis (AEMWE) combines the advantages of alkaline water electrolysis (noble-metal-free, low cost) and proton exchange membrane water electrolysis (high current density, compact structure), but its industrialization is limited by traditional ...

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Science10 Dec 2025

U.S. debt ceiling disputes show measurable impact on global crude oil markets

Background and Motivation The United States debt ceiling—the legal limit on federal borrowing—has been a recurring source of political and economic uncertainty, especially as U.S. national debt has nearly doubled over the past decade. While existing research has explored how broad economic policy uncertainty affects financial markets, little attention has been paid to the specific impact of debt ceiling uncertainty on commodity markets, particularly crude oil. Given oil’s central role in the global economy, understanding ...

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Science10 Dec 2025

Humans rank between meerkats and beavers in monogamy ‘league table’

Humans are far closer to meerkats and beavers for levels of exclusive mating than we are to most of our primate cousins, according to a new University of Cambridge study that includes a table ranking monogamy rates in various species of mammal. Previous evolutionary research has used fossil records and anthropological fieldwork to infer human sexual selection. While in other species, researchers have conducted long-term observations of animal societies and used paternity tests to study mating systems. Now, a new approach by Dr Mark Dyble from Cambridge’s Department ...

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Science10 Dec 2025

Call to increase funding for ‘invisible’ Deaf victim-survivors of domestic abuse

A new report warns Deaf women experiencing domestic abuse in Scotland remain “effectively invisible” due to the chronic absence of specialist services and a lack of coordinated national support. Researchers say this gap leaves deaf victim-survivors without meaningful access to safety and advocacy. Led by Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh, the British Academy-funded Sign LOUD report highlights that Scotland currently has no national dedicated British Sign Language (BSL) support services ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

Receptors in mammary glands make livestock and humans inviting hosts for avian flu

AMES, Iowa – An ongoing outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza has affected more than 184 million domestic poultry since 2022 and, since making the leap to dairy cattle in spring 2024, more than 1,000 milking cow herds. A new study led by Iowa State University researchers shows that the mammary glands of several other production animals – including pigs, sheep, goats, beef cattle and alpacas – are biologically suitable to harbor avian influenza, due to high levels of sialic acids. “The main thing we wanted to understand in this study is whether there is potential for transmission among these other domestic mammals and humans, and ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

Male bonobos track females’ reproductive cycle to maximize mating success

Male bonobos can decipher females’ unreliable fertility signals, allowing them to focus their efforts on matings with the highest chance of conception, according to a study by Heungjin Ryu at Kyoto University, Japan, and colleagues publishing December 9th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. In most mammals, females are only receptive to mating during ovulation, allowing males to time their mating efforts to maximize the chances of conception. But in some primates, such as bonobos (Pan paniscus), females become sexually receptive and display a conspicuous pink swelling around the genitals for a prolonged period of time. To investigate how males ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

Want to curb cannabis-related crashes? Don’t forget older adults, study finds

With cannabis-related vehicle crashes on the rise, a new study suggests that prevention campaigns shouldn’t focus just on young people. In fact, 20% of people over 50 who use cannabis products reported that at least once in the past year, they had driven within two hours of using the drug. That means they likely got on the road while the THC in cannabis still impaired their reaction times, attention and other abilities that are important to driving safely. The findings, from a University of Michigan team led by addiction psychologist Erin E. Bonar, Ph.D., are published in the journal Drug ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

The ERC selects 349 mid-career researchers for €728 million in Consolidator Grants

Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, said: ‘Congratulations to all the researchers on winning the ERC grants. The record budget of 728 million euro invested to support these scientific projects shows the EU is serious about making the continent attractive for excellent researchers.’ President of the European Research Council, Prof. Maria Leptin, said: ‘To see all this talent with groundbreaking ideas, based in Europe, is truly inspiring. This bold research may well lead to new industries, improve lives and strengthen Europe’s global standing. This was one of the most competitive ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

ERC Consolidator Grant awarded to CISPA researcher Rayna Dimitrova

The ERC Consolidator Grant is one of Europe’s most prestigious funding schemes and supports high-risk, high-reward research projects. SyReP tackles a core challenge that existing methods fail to address: once reactive systems must operate on real-world data—such as sensor readings, user inputs, or complex system states—classical synthesis approaches break down. “Traditional methods strictly separate decision-making from the data used to make those decisions. That may be theoretically elegant, but it fails in modern software practice,” ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

Antimicrobial effects of Syzygium aromaticum and Salvadora persica against common peri-implantitis pathogens in vitro

Background and objectives Clove essential oil (CEO) derived from Syzygium aromaticum and miswak (Salvadora persica) contains bioactive compounds with antimicrobial properties. Due to the growing interest in alternatives to conventional antibiotics, this study aimed to evaluate the in vitro antimicrobial efficacy of CEO, miswak, and their combination against key peri-implantitis pathogens. Methods The antimicrobial activities of CEO, miswak, and their combinations were tested against Fusobacterium nucleatum, Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans, Porphyromonas gingivalis, and Prevotella intermedia. Disc diffusion ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

An assessment of the antidepressant potential of deramciclane in two animal tests

Background and objectives Preclinical studies of the serotonin 2A (5-HT2A) antagonist deramciclane suggested an anxiolytic profile, which has not been unequivocally established in the clinic. The same receptor profile also indicated that the compound may exhibit antidepressant potential. However, evidence for these effects remains inconclusive. The present study examined the effect of the drug in two preclinical tests with predictive validity for antidepressant activity. Methods The antidepressant-like activity ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

Announcing the third cohort of the Hevolution/AFAR new investigator awards in aging biology and geroscience research

New York, NY —The American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) and Hevolution Foundation are pleased to announce the third cohort of the Hevolution/AFAR New Investigator Awardees in Aging Biology and Geroscience Research. This grant program enables junior investigators with labs in the US and Canada, and with at least three years of independent research, to advance research projects in basic biology of aging, as well as geroscience projects that translate advances in basic research on aging biology from the laboratory to the clinic, paving ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

Tec-Dara combination offers substantial improvement over standard second-line therapies for relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma

(ORLANDO, Dec. 9, 2025) Patients with relapsed or refractory (R/R) multiple myeloma who received a combination of teclistamab, a bispecific monoclonal antibody, and daratumumab, a CD38-directed monoclonal antibody, were 83% more likely to be alive without disease progression compared with those who received standard second-line therapies at a median of nearly 35 months of follow-up, according to the results of a new trial presented at the 67th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition. The ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

Pirtobrutinib outperforms bendamustine plus rituximab for previously untreated CLL/SLL

(ORLANDO, Dec. 9, 2025) – In a new trial, the Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor pirtobrutinib increased the rate of survival without disease progression and was well tolerated with a more favorable safety profile when compared with bendamustine plus rituximab (BR) in patients with previously untreated chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL). The data were presented at the 67th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition. “We were able to prove that pirtobrutinib is an excellent drug both in terms of efficacy and tolerance,” ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

A freely available tool to document wartime destruction

Researchers develop a method to detect the destruction of buildings using freely available satellite radar imagery. Daniel Racek and colleagues’ algorithm analyzes publicly available Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar images from the European Space Agency to identify destroyed buildings in conflict zones. The method statistically assesses the visual similarity of locations over time, enabling detection of destruction from a single satellite image every 12 days, without requiring labeled training data or expensive proprietary imagery. Unlike optical ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

Exercise might help improve mobility during aging

The brain-chemical surge that comes with running may bolster coordination and speed in the old and young alike, a new study of middle-aged mice shows. Such physical activity may help restore ease of movement and agility, which often decline as humans and animals get older, the study authors said. Led by NYU Langone Health researchers, the investigation explored how aerobic exercise can boost the release of dopamine, a brain chemical involved in movement, reward, and memory. The team built upon its earlier work, which revealed that young (10-week-old) male rodents had a lasting increase in dopamine release after voluntarily running on an exercise wheel for 30 days. The new findings showed ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

Research reveals new hybrid state of matter where solids meet liquids

Researchers have discovered that not all atoms in a liquid are in motion and that some remain stationary regardless of the temperature, significantly impacting the solidification process, including the formation of an unusual state of matter—a corralled supercooled liquid. The formation of solids is essential in various natural processes, including mineralisation, ice formation, and the folding of protein fibrils. It also plays a significant role in technological applications such as pharmacy and industries ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

Elephants, giraffes and rhinos go where the salt is

Herbivores require a steady intake of sodium to keep their metabolism running smoothly. This is why farm animals have long been given salt or mineral licks. Animals in the wild, however, need to get their salt from sources in their habitats. In some areas, plants and other natural sources of salt provide sufficient sodium, while in others sodium levels are scarce. These differences can influence where certain species settle or how far they will migrate to find natural salt licks. A new study conducted in collaboration with the University ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

The twisted nanotubes that tell a story

Magnonics is an emerging engineering subfield that targets high-speed, high-efficiency information encoding without the energy loss that burdens electronics. This energy loss occurs when electrons flowing through a circuit generate heat, but magnonic systems don’t involve any electron flow at all. Instead, an external magnetic field is applied to a magnet, upsetting the magnetic orientation (or ‘spin’) of the magnet’s electrons. This upset enables a tailored collective excitation called a spin wave (magnon), which travels through ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

Study explores the link between newspaper preference and attitudes towards autism

A new study from City St George’s, University of London has found that people’s newspaper reading habits are a reliable predictor of their attitudes towards autism, even when many other factors such as age, education, political views and personal experiences are taken into account. The research, published in the journal Autism, reveals that around 10% of the differences in automatic, unconscious bias were linked to what newspapers people read. People who read right-leaning tabloid papers more ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

Common institutional ownership linked to less aggressive business strategies in Chinese firms

Background and Motivation In recent years, the rise of common institutional ownership—where large institutional investors hold significant shares in multiple competing firms within the same industry—has sparked intense debate among scholars and regulators. While some argue it fosters information sharing and improves governance, others warn it may reduce competition and encourage collusion. Despite growing attention, little research has examined how this ownership structure affects overall business strategy. This study investigates whether common institutional ownership makes companies more or less aggressive in ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

Cost-effectiveness of cryopreserved vs liquid-stored platelets for managing surgical bleeding

About The Study: In this economic evaluation, cryopreserved platelets were dominated by liquid-stored platelets for managing bleeding in cardiac surgery. Further research is needed to assess the potential economic benefits of cryopreserved platelets in broader populations, particularly in regional and remote hospitals where platelet availability is limited. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Alisa M. Higgins, PhD, email lisa.higgins@monash.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.54363) Editor’s Note: Please see ...

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Science9 Dec 2025

Sport in middle childhood can breed respect for authority in adolescence

Young adolescents, especially boys, who participated in organized sports between ages 6 and 10 are less likely to defy their parents, teachers and other authority figures, a new study by researchers in Canada and Italy suggests. “Oppositional-defiant disorder (ODD) is often under-diagnosed and can co-occur with other developmental disorders," said the study's lead author Matteo Privitera, a doctoral student at the University of Pavia (UofP), supervised by Linda Pagani, a professor at Université de Montréal's School of Psycho-Education. "Symptoms of the disorder include persistent patterns of irritability, defiance and hostility toward ...

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