Research announcements from universities, hospitals and scientific institutions. Explore the stories, people and discoveries behind the headlines.
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Michelle Ng Gong, an NIH-funded critical care researcher who quadrupled faculty publications and led Montefiore Einstein through COVID-19, has been named permanent chair of its Department of Medicine after a national search.
Read the releaseField Museum researchers analyzed 31 ancient political units across three continents and found democratic governance was far more widespread than the Greece-and-Rome narrative suggests. The strongest predictor of autocracy was not population size but how rulers financed their power.
Read the releaseGeorgia Tech and MIT researchers tracked hundreds of mosquitoes in 3D and found they do not swarm by following each other. Each mosquito independently responds to visual and chemical cues, converging on the same target like strangers drawn to the same bar.
Read the releaseUsing 53 million data points from over 477,000 flight paths, researchers created the first mathematical model predicting mosquito flight behavior. Mosquitoes use three distinct strategies - quick fly-bys for visual cues, hesitant double-takes for CO2, and shark-like orbiting when both are present.
Read the releaseIn Alaska's Deshka River, invasive northern pike are eating significantly more fish as water temperatures rise. Year-old pike showed a 63% increase in fish consumption over a decade, compounding threats to already struggling Chinook and coho salmon populations.
Read the releaseProfessor Kaveh Madani, branded a 'water terrorist' and forced into exile from Iran for speaking about the country's water crisis, has been named the 2026 Stockholm Water Prize laureate. The CCNY professor and UN water institute director is the youngest recipient in the award's 35-year history.
Read the releaseProfessor Kaveh Madani, director of UNU-INWEH and the scientist who coined 'water bankruptcy,' has been named the 2026 Stockholm Water Prize laureate. At 44, he is the youngest winner, the first UN official, and the first former politician to receive the honor often called the Nobel Prize of Water.
Read the releaseAfter a century of searching, researchers have identified the complete enzymatic pathway by which cinchona trees produce quinine and related alkaloids. The discovery of five new enzymes - including a transferase that performs an unusual ring-forming reaction - enables biotechnological production of these compounds for the first time.
Read the releaseA new Nature study maps tidal influence in over 3,000 rivers worldwide, finding that 175,000 km of coastal waterways are significantly affected by tides and more than 725 million people live in tidal river zones.
Read the releaseResearchers studying Galapagos yellow warblers found that females sing frequently, mostly during non-breeding season and almost always as duets with their mates. But the singing showed no link to aggression or territorial defense, suggesting female birdsong serves a different, still-unknown purpose.
Read the releaseResearchers from China's South China Botanical Garden and Australia's Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria make the case that botanical gardens are not luxury green space but essential urban infrastructure for biodiversity conservation, mental health, and climate adaptation.
Read the releaseA Florida Atlantic University biologist developed a simple, low-cost device that generates a mild electric field on fishing hooks to deter sharks while leaving target species unaffected - and commercial fishermen are already testing it at sea.
Read the releaseBy reverting five unnecessary mutations in an older base editor, researchers created ME-ABE - a tool that maintains a narrow editing window and high efficiency, solving a longstanding tradeoff that has complicated gene therapy safety.
Read the releaseUniversity of Konstanz physicists built a system where two magnetic layers generate friction without ever touching. The friction peaks at intermediate distances rather than increasing steadily with load, violating Amontons' law - one of the oldest rules in physics.
Read the releaseScientists measured mid-infrared reflectance in bird feathers for the first time, finding that visually identical ravens absorb heat differently by subspecies, while open-habitat bobwhites show the most variation in thermal emittance - suggesting feathers evolve for heat management invisible to the eye.
Read the releaseEntomologists have formally described Andrena cenizophila, a mining bee from southwest Texas and northern Mexico that collects pollen exclusively from cenizo (Texas purple sage) during its brief, rain-triggered blooms - making it the only known mining bee specialized on this shrub.
Read the releaseA randomized controlled trial found that brief, evidence-based messages challenging beliefs about risk and social norms significantly reduced people's intention to panic buy - suggesting the behavior is preventable with the right communication strategy.
Read the releaseAnalyzing 37,000 images of women's clothing from 1869 to today, mathematicians confirmed that fashion trends cycle roughly every 20 years. Their model traces the pattern to a social tension between differentiation and conformity.
Read the releaseScientists introduced a dynamic contact angle method that monitors water droplet behavior on biochar over 90 seconds, identifying a new category of 'pseudo-hydrophobic' materials that appear water-repellent initially but become wettable within seconds - resolving contradictions between existing measurement techniques.
Read the releaseStanford researchers developed a scaffold-free approach to muscle regeneration that uses simple molds to grow dense, custom-shaped muscle tissue. Without artificial biomaterials taking up space, more healing cells reach the injury site and self-organize into tissue with stronger muscle identity.
Read the releaseLinkoping University researchers created functional qubits from perovskite crystals doped with chromium - a material theorists said should be too noisy for quantum computing. The qubits work at higher temperatures than superconducting alternatives and can convert quantum information into optical signals.
Read the releaseResearchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University found that in noisy environments, closing your eyes impairs sound detection rather than enhancing it, while watching a matching video significantly improves hearing sensitivity - explained by EEG-measured shifts in neural criticality.
Read the releaseResearchers applied chaos theory to atopic dermatitis and found that while suppressing a flare-up requires predictable, proportional medication, maintaining remission is governed by nonlinear dynamics where small changes in skin barrier or immune function can massively escalate the treatment needed.
Read the releaseA University of Michigan survey of over 7,000 adults finds that 7% of Americans have thought about shooting someone, firearm owners are no likelier to have these thoughts than non-owners, and 21% of those with such thoughts told someone - suggesting real opportunities for prevention.
Read the releaseAustralian-born historian Lyndal Roper, emeritus Regius Chair of History at Oxford, has been named the 2026 Holberg Prize Laureate for pioneering scholarship that reshaped the study of witch persecutions, Martin Luther, and the German Peasants' War through the lenses of gender, psyche, and bodily experience.
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