Science
press releases.

Science10 Oct 2025

New discovery could open door to male birth control

Oct. 10, 2025 MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request. Contact: Emilie Lorditch, University Communications: 517-355-4082, lorditch@msu.edu; Bethany Mauger, College of Natural Science: 765-571-0623, maugerbe@msu.edu. Images, video Fuel for the finish line: How sperm achieve ‘overdrive’ Why this matters: To successfully reach and fertilize an egg, sperm undergo a rapid and massive increase in energy. Researchers have revealed how sperm use glucose found in their environment ...

Read the release

Science10 Oct 2025

Destined to melt

Glaciers are fighting back against climate change by cooling the air that touches their surfaces. But for how long? The Pellicciotti group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) has compiled and re-analyzed an unprecedented dataset of on-glacier observations worldwide. Their findings, published today in Nature Climate Change, demonstrate that glaciers will likely reach the peak of their self-cooling power by the next decade before their near-surface temperatures spike up and melting accelerates. Thomas Shaw keeps a vivid memory of this special summer day in August 2022. The postdoctoral researcher in Francesca Pellicciotti’s group at the Institute of Science ...

Read the release

Science10 Oct 2025

The playbook for perfect polaritons

Light is fast, but travels in long wavelengths and interacts weakly with itself. The particles that make up matter are tiny and interact strongly with each other, but move slowly. Together, the two can combine into a hybrid quasiparticle called a polariton that is part light, part matter. In a new paper published today in Chem, a team of Columbia chemists has identified how to combine matter and light to get the best of both worlds: polaritons with strong interactions and fast, wavelike flow. These distinctive behaviors can be used to power optical computers and other light-based quantum ...

Read the release

Science10 Oct 2025

GLP-1RA order fills and out-of-pocket costs by race, ethnicity, and indication

About The Study: In this cohort study, 40% of orders for glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) were not filled. Non-Hispanic Black patients and Hispanic patients were less likely to fill orders than non-Hispanic white patients, and the non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic patients who filled their orders paid lower out-of-pocket costs. Out-of-pocket differences across groups may stem from differences in insurance coverage, use of different GLP-1RAs, or different cost thresholds for forgoing GLP-1RAs. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding ...

Read the release

Science10 Oct 2025

Male infertility in Indian men linked to lifestyle choices and hormonal imbalances

“Lifestyle habits and hormonal imbalances significantly affect the fertility of men.” BUFFALO, NY — October 10, 2025 — A new research paper was published in Volume 12 of Oncoscience on September 30, 2025, titled “Lifestyle and hormonal factors affecting semen quality and sperm DNA integrity: A cross-sectional study.” In this study, Saniya Imtiyaz Chamanmalik, Rajendra B. Nerli, and Pankaja Umarane from KLE Academy of Higher Education and Research and Dr. D. Y. Patil ...

Read the release

Science10 Oct 2025

A prototype LED as thin as wallpaper — that glows like the sun

Light bulbs come in many shapes and styles: globes, twists, flame-like candle tips and long tubes. But there aren’t many thin options. Now, researchers report in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces that they have created a paper-thin LED that gives off a warm, sun-like glow. The LEDs could light up the next generation of phone and computer screens and other light sources while helping users avoid disruptions to their sleep patterns. “This work demonstrates the feasibility of ultra-thin, large-area quantum dot LEDs that closely match the solar spectrum,” says Xianghua Wang, a corresponding author of the study. “These devices could enable next-generation eye-friendly ...

Read the release

Science10 Oct 2025

‘Chinese lantern’ structure shifts into more than a dozen shapes for various applications

Researchers have created a polymer “Chinese lantern” that can snap into more than a dozen curved, three-dimensional shapes by compressing or twisting the original structure. This rapid shape-shifting behavior can be controlled remotely using a magnetic field, allowing the structure to be used for a variety of applications. The basic lantern object is made by cutting a polymer sheet into a diamond-like parallelogram shape, then cutting a row of parallel lines across the center of each sheet. This creates a row of identical ribbons that is connected by a solid ...

Read the release

Science10 Oct 2025

Fire provides long-lasting benefits to bird populations in Sierra Nevada National Parks

Researchers have found that low to moderate-severity fires not only benefit many bird species in the Sierra Nevada, but these benefits may persist for decades. In addition to a handful of bird species already known to be “post-fire specialists”, a broad variety of other more generalist species, like Dark-eyed Juncos and Mountain Chickadees, clearly benefited from wildfire. This research will help land managers make decisions about how to manage forests and fires as they face a changing fire regime. In the study, published October 9, 2025 in the journal Fire Ecology, researchers from The Institute for Bird ...

Read the release

Science10 Oct 2025

Menstrual cycle affects women’s reaction time but not as much as being active

Women performed best on cognitive tests during ovulation but physical activity level had a stronger influence on brain function, according to a new study from researchers at UCL. The study, published in Sports Medicine – Open, explored how the different phases of the menstrual cycle and physical activity level affected performance on a range of cognitive tests designed to mimic mental processes used in team sports and everyday life, such as the accurate timing of movements, attention, and reaction time. The team found that women had the fastest reaction times and made the fewest errors on the day of ovulation, when the ovaries ...

Read the release

Science9 Oct 2025

Housing associations more effective than government in supporting unemployed in deprived areas

New research reveals that ‘third-sector’ services, such as those run by housing associations, are far more effective than government work programmes at helping the long-term unemployed in deprived areas. The study, led by the University of East Anglia (UEA), investigated the impact of alternative support services and recommends key strategies for helping individuals move closer to employment and improve their overall wellbeing, using a person-centred, strength-based, and long-term approach. Published in the Journal of European Social Policy, it highlights three crucial ingredients for success: Focusing on strengths: rather than ...

Read the release

Science9 Oct 2025

Ulrich named president-elect of the AACI

Neli Ulrich, PhD, MS, chief scientific officer and executive director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah (the U) and Jon M. and Karen Huntsman Presidential Professor in Cancer Research in population sciences at the U, has been elected by the members of the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) to serve as vice president/president-elect of the AACI Board of Directors. Ulrich is a leading epidemiologist, whose ...

Read the release

Science9 Oct 2025

Multitasking makes you more likely to fall for phishing emails

Picture this: You’re on a Zoom call, Slack is buzzing, three spreadsheets are open and your inbox pings. In that moment of divided attention, you miss the tiny red flag in an email. That’s how phishing sneaks through, and with 3.4 billion malicious emails sent daily, the stakes couldn’t be higher. A new study involving faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York's School of Management shows that multitasking makes phishing detection significantly worse: When people are overloaded ...

Read the release

Science9 Oct 2025

The dose-dependent effects of dissolved biochar on C. elegans: Insights into the physiological and transcriptomic responses

Researchers have uncovered how dissolved biochar—tiny carbon particles derived from burning plant material—affects soil nematodes, shedding light on both benefits and risks to these important ecosystem players. The study focused on the common laboratory worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, revealing that the impact of dissolved biochar strongly depends on the amount present in the environment. The team found that when nematodes were exposed to low concentrations of dissolved biochar, their growth and physical activity increased. These smaller doses likely functioned as extra nutrients ...

Read the release

Science9 Oct 2025

Why does female fertility decline so fast? The key is the ovary

With a new imaging technique, scientists discover an ecosystem that determines how eggs mature and ovaries age. The ticking of the biological clock is especially loud in the ovaries — the organs that store and release a woman’s eggs. From age 25 to 40, a woman’s chance of conceiving each month decreases drastically. For decades, scientists have pointed to declining egg quality as the main culprit. But new research from UC San Francisco and Chan Zuckerberg Biohub San Francisco shows that the story is bigger than the eggs: The surrounding ...

Read the release

Science9 Oct 2025

Mystery solved: How Europe’s largest bat catches and eats passerines mid-air

After nearly 25 years of research, the mystery has finally been solved: Europe’s largest bat doesn’t just eat small birds – it hunts and captures them more than a kilometre above the ground. And it eats them without landing. An international team of researchers has shed light on how Europe’s largest bat hunts and consumes small birds. The results, now published in Science, make for fascinating reading – a story of nocturnal aerial acrobatics, pursuit and predation. Every year, billions of songbirds migrate between their breeding grounds and wintering areas. Many species fly high and travel at night, partly to avoid daytime ...

Read the release

Science9 Oct 2025

A study by UPF reveals discrimination on grounds of ethnic background in Spain’s leading online second-hand marketplace, especially when buying

Research conducted by Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) finds that discrimination exists based on ethnic background in Spain’s leading online second-hand marketplace, especially when it comes to buying, towards people with Arab and Chinese names, who should offer up to 3% more to be treated the same as people with Spanish names. The study, by Jorge Rodríguez Menés, Clara Cortina and Maria José González, researchers with the Sociodemography Research Group (DemoSoc) of the UPF Department of Political and Social Sciences, aims to analyse the prevalence of discrimination against ethnic minorities in the main online second-hand ...

Read the release

Science9 Oct 2025

Research examines the good, bad and ugly of true crime media

True crime is a lucrative genre, topping ratings and spawning online communities. But despite its popularity — and its ability to highlight cases that need attention — the production of true crime has a dark side, often adding to the trauma experienced by victims’ loved ones. University of Nebraska–Lincoln scholar Kelli Boling published new research highlighting the impacts of true crime media on the family and friends of crime victims. Through in-depth interviews with 20 co-victims — all of whom experienced their ...

Read the release

Science9 Oct 2025

Research shows National Living Wage has reduced labor mobility across firms, but at what cost?

New research led by Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) has revealed the introduction of the National Living Wage (NLW) in the UK in April 2016 significantly decreased labour mobility across firms by minimum wage workers. While it has delivered a pay boost for many low-paid workers, the rising wage floor could be affecting the fluidity of the job market if it is reducing workers’ incentives to search for new jobs and move between firms. The National Living Wage was introduced by the UK Government to replace the National Minimum Wage for workers aged 25 and over, initially raising the threshold hourly rate by 50 pence to £7.20. The rise represented ...

Read the release

Science9 Oct 2025

City of Hope Research Spotlight, September 2025

This roundup highlights new insights into why acute myeloid leukemia resists treatment, racial disparities in triple-negative breast cancer, a potential strategy to make CAR T therapies stronger, early human trial results for an investigational new treatment for glioblastoma and a new approach to fighting pancreatic cancer — with a virus. To learn more about research at City of Hope, one of the largest and most advanced cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States with its National Medical Center ranked among the nation’s top cancer centers ...

Read the release

Science9 Oct 2025

Streamlining the consciousness debate, from trees to hermit crabs

Beyond spirited dinner party debate, establishing which creatures have consciousness matters in terms of animal welfare and conservation policy. A Michigan State University philosophy scholar has added clarity to a messy philosophical debate. In this month’s journal Biology & Philosophy, PhD candidate Jonah Branding contributes a decision tree that can be applied to questions such as, do fish feel pain when they’re on a hook? Does an ant feel alarm when protecting its colony? Do banana slugs feel anything when they eat dead leaves on the forest floor? Or are these simpler organisms more like stimulus-response machines, which don’t have any mental experience? “There ...

Read the release

Science9 Oct 2025

Long-term continuous monitoring of new-onset atrial fibrillation after coronary artery bypass grafting

About The Study: Although the incidence of new-onset atrial fibrillation (AF) after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) in this study was higher than previously reported, the AF burden in these patients was very low, especially after 30 days. The very low AF burden questions the current guideline recommendations that long-term oral anticoagulation should be considered in patients with new-onset AF after CABG. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Florian Herrmann, MD, email florian.herrmann@med.uni-muenchen.de. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2025.14891) Editor’s ...

Read the release

Science9 Oct 2025

BfR Consumer Monitor: Not many people are concerned about raw milk

What it's about: Raw milk (untreated milk) enjoys a certain popularity, but poses health risks. To avoid food poisoning, it should be boiled before drinking. But how well is raw milk actually known among the population? How do people perceive its health risk? Two-thirds of those surveyed had already heard of raw milk. Only ten percent expressed concern, making raw milk the topic of least concern of the risks surveyed. This is according to the BfR Consumer Monitor, a regularly conducted representative survey by the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR). “The health risks of raw milk ...

Read the release

Science9 Oct 2025

Short inspirational videos as effective as meditation at reducing stress

Watching short inspirational videos may be just as effective at reducing stress as meditation, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. Stress has arguably reached epidemic levels in the U.S. According to the APA’s Stress in America survey, Americans say they’re feeling more anxious than in previous years, with a majority of people 18-44 saying they feel moderate to extreme stress daily. “Though there are many effective ways to deal with stress, people often feel too busy or overwhelmed to enact these strategies,” ...

Read the release

Science9 Oct 2025

American Society of Human Genetics to hold 2025 Annual Meeting next week in Boston

Rockville, Md. - The American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2025 Annual Meeting will take place October 14-18, 2025 at the Thomas M. Menino Convention & Exhibition Center in Boston, MA. Credentialed members of the press and media are eligible to request complimentary press access to attend the in-person event. The ASHG 2025 Annual Meeting highlights cutting edge research in genetics and genomics from scientists and clinicians from around the world. Abstracts ...

Read the release

Science9 Oct 2025

A high-performance supercapacitor made from upcycled water bottles

Lots of single-use water bottles made from poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) end up in landfills, but there’s a growing interest in upcycling them instead. Researchers in ACS’ Energy & Fuels report on new heat-based fabrication methods to transform PET into supercapacitor electrodes and separator films for upcycled energy storage devices. In demonstrations, an all-plastic supercapacitor made from discarded water bottles outperformed a similar design that used a traditional glass fiber separator. “PET ...

Read the release