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Science8 Oct 2025

Trailblazing Young Scientists honored with $250,000 prizes at Blavatnik National Awards Gala

New York — October 7, 2025 — Three of America’s most promising young scientists were awarded top honors tonight at the 2025 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists, one of the country’s most significant prizes for early-career researchers. Presented by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and The New York Academy of Sciences, the awards recognize exceptional scientific achievement and innovation by U.S.-based researchers aged 42 and younger. This year’s Laureates were selected from a competitive pool of 310 nominees representing 161 academic ...

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Science7 Oct 2025

Widely prescribed opioid painkiller tramadol not that effective for easing chronic pain

The strong opioid painkiller, tramadol, is not that effective at easing chronic pain for which it’s widely prescribed, finds a pooled data analysis of the available research, published online in BMJ Evidence Based Medicine. And it likely increases the risk of serious side effects, including heart disease, the findings indicate, prompting the researchers to conclude that the potential harms of tramadol probably outweigh its benefits, and that its use should be minimised. Tramadol is a dual action opioid widely prescribed for the treatment of moderate ...

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Science7 Oct 2025

Study highlights risks of Caesarean births to future pregnancies

Women who have Caesarean births at an advanced stage of labour are about eight times more likely to develop scars in the womb which are known to increase the likelihood of premature births in future pregnancies, UCL researchers have found. The study, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, looked at how the stage of labour when the operation is performed affects where the scar forms and how well it heals. More than 40 per cent of all births in high-income countries including England are now by Caesarean. As labour progresses, ...

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Science7 Oct 2025

GLP-1 agonists pose emerging challenge for PET-CT imaging, study finds

(Barcelona, Spain, Wednesday 8 September 2025) The growing use of GLP-1 receptor agonists may affect the interpretation of oncological FDG PET-CT scans, new research presented today at the 38th Annual Congress of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM'25) has revealed.1 GLP-1 receptor agonists are now widely prescribed for individuals with type 2 diabetes and weight loss, with a 700% increase in usage reported in the United States between 2019 and 2023.² These medications alter glucose metabolism, gastric motility and sympathetic tone, which may lead to unique uptake patterns on PET-CT. Previous case reports have shown increased FDG uptake in skeletal ...

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Science7 Oct 2025

Panama Canal may face frequent extreme water lows in coming decades

WASHINGTON — In 2023, Panama experienced one of the worst droughts in its recorded history, and it severely depleted water available to the Panama Canal, so much that it decreased shipping by 30%. A new study projected that those historic water lows could become the new norm if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. “If we mitigate emissions and we choose one of the lower emissions pathways, then it really keeps this system pretty stable,” said Samuel Muñoz, lead author of the a new study and a researcher studying hydrologic and climatic variability at Northeastern University. “But if we don't, then these low water levels that ...

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Science7 Oct 2025

Questionable lead reporting for drinking water virtually vanished after Flint water crisis, study reveals

Public water systems in the U.S. were far less likely to report suspiciously rounded lead levels after the Flint, Michigan water crisis drew national outrage and federal scrutiny, according to new research led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The study, published as the first article in the latest issue of American Economic Review: Insights, introduces new statistical methods to distinguish between natural rounding and potential “threshold manipulation” in reported figures. “Existing ...

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Science7 Oct 2025

Assessing overconfidence among national security officials

National security officials are "overwhelmingly overconfident," which hinders their ability to accurately assess uncertainty, according to new research by a Dartmouth government professor. When they thought statements had a 90% chance of being true, the statements were only true about 60% of the time, according to the study. The findings are published in the Texas National Security Review. About 1,900 national security officials from more than 40 NATO allies and partners were surveyed on the uncertainty of current and future states of the world, and delivered a total of 60,000 assessments. ...

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Science7 Oct 2025

Jamestown colonists brought donkeys, not just horses, to North America, old bones reveal

A new study published in Science Advances about centuries-old horse and donkey bones, unearthed in Jamestown, Virginia, is rewriting the story of how these animals first arrived in North America. While written records from the earliest English explorers show that horses were among the animals brought to Virginia, the new zooarchaeological analysis of animal remains found at Jamestown is the first to show that colonists also brought donkeys to the New World. The study also reveals a dark ending to these equids in the colony: The horses and donkeys were likely butchered and eaten during Jamestown’s infamous winter of starvation. “There ...

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Science7 Oct 2025

The world’s snow leopards are very similar genetically. That doesn’t bode well for their future

There are relatively few snow leopards in the world, and it has likely been that way for a long time, a new study indicates. This situation increases their risk of extinction in a changing environment. The Stanford-led research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found very low genetic diversity among the elusive big cats, who have an estimated population of less than 8,000. They are also highly specialized to their habitat in the arid, mountainous regions of 12 Asian countries, including Russia, Afghanistan, Nepal, and Tibet. “Snow ...

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Science7 Oct 2025

Leafcutter ants have blind spots, just like truck drivers

We have all been in that situation: the moving boxes are large and heavy, but we are determined to carry them all in one trip, even if that means we can’t see where we’re going. In the tropics, some leaf-cutter ants face a similar challenge: carrying a load that is several times their body weight. To make matters even more difficult, scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama recently discovered that carrying oversized weights may create “blind spots” when leafcutter ants transport ...

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Science7 Oct 2025

Crosswalk confusion: MA drivers flummoxed by pedestrian hybrid beacons, find UMass Amherst researchers

Crosswalk Confusion: MA Drivers Flummoxed by Pedestrian Hybrid Beacons, find UMass Amherst Researchers Among other findings, nearly a quarter of drivers run through the red light. AMHERST, Mass. — Stopping early, failing to stop or rolling through—new research from University of Massachusetts Amherst reveals that more awareness of the rules of the road around this crosswalk design is necessary. Published in Transportation Research Record, the study looked at how Massachusetts drivers behave at pedestrian hybrid beacons, a type of crosswalk device increasingly found at mid-block crosswalks where there ...

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Science7 Oct 2025

Hiring in high-growth firms: new study explores the timing of organizational changes

High-growth firms (HGFs) refer to businesses that achieve rapid growth in terms of employees or revenue. Based on the established definition, HGFs are businesses with at least 10 employees and annual growth rates of 20% or more, observed over a period of three years. This three-year span is considered the high-growth (HG) period of the company. Even though this growth is often short-lived and difficult to sustain, it plays a significant role in driving economic dynamism. Hence, entrepreneurship-related research often focuses on the growth ...

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Science7 Oct 2025

Boosting work engagement through a simple smartphone diary

Work engagement is a positive and persistent state of mind related to one’s work. It is characterized by high energy and mental resilience (vigor), enthusiasm and involvement (dedication), and complete concentration in the task at hand (absorption). Engaged workers are not merely more productive; they are more likely to be proactive, creative, and less susceptible to burnout. Most importantly, work engagement has been consistently linked to many health benefits and overall well-being. Despite its relevance for both organizations and workers alike, there aren’t many scientifically proven ...

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Science7 Oct 2025

Elsevier Foundation and RIKEN launch “Envisioning Futures” report: paving the way for gender equity and women’s leadership in Japanese research

A unique collaboration, the Elsevier Foundation and RIKEN, Japan’s premier research institute, have released “Envisioning Futures: Women’s Leadership and Gender Equity in Japanese Research,” a comprehensive report that shines a spotlight on the journeys, achievements and challenges faced by women research leaders in Japan. The report blends data-driven analysis with compelling personal narratives, offering a timely roadmap for institutional change and a call to action for the advancement of women in science and innovation. The report shows that despite Japan’s global reputation for technological ...

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Science7 Oct 2025

Researchers discover enlarged areas of the spinal cord in fish, previously found only in four-limbed vertebrates

Four-limbed vertebrates, known as tetrapods, have two enlarged areas in their spinal cords. The two enlargements have a correlation with the forelimbs and hind limbs, respectively. These enlargements are thought to be caused by the complex muscular system and the rich sensory networks supplying nerves to the limbs. Meanwhile, it was long thought that fish had no enlarged areas in their spinal cords due to the absence of limbs. However, a recent study by scientists from Nagoya University in Japan has revealed that zebrafish, in fact, have enlarged areas in their spinal cords, although these areas are not visible ...

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Science7 Oct 2025

Catching Alport syndrome through universal age-3 urine screening

The most common first diagnosis of Alport syndrome in Japan is during the universal age-3 urine screening. In 60% of these children, the disease had already progressed far enough to qualify for treatment. Therefore, universal early-age urinalysis may be an apt means for both better prognoses and reduced costs of medical care. Alport syndrome is a genetic disease that affects about one in 5,000 people. Patients cannot produce a certain type of collagen which leads to kidney failure, and may also lead to hearing loss and ...

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Science7 Oct 2025

Instructions help you remember something better than emotions or a good night’s sleep

A good night’s sleep has long been understood to help us consolidate new memories, but we don’t understand how. Associations with negative feelings like fear or stress can improve recall, but intentionally trying to remember can also be effective. But these two mechanisms are very different — one involuntary, one deliberate. Which influences memory most? To investigate, researchers asked participants to remember or forget words, some of which had negative emotional associations. They found that instructions improved recall ...

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Science6 Oct 2025

New Canadian study reveals where HIV hides in different parts of the body

New Canadian study reveals where HIV hides in different parts of the body Researchers at Western University and the University of Calgary have discovered how HIV hides in different parts of the body by embedding itself into the DNA of cells in a tissue-specific manner, offering new insights into why the virus is so difficult to eliminate and cure – even decades after infection and treatment. The study, led by Western University’s Stephen Barr and UCalgary’s Guido van Marle, reveals that HIV cloaks itself in the DNA of infected cells using unique DNA patterns in the ...

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Science6 Oct 2025

Lidocaine poisonings rise despite overall drop in local anesthetic toxicity

Over the last decade, poisonings and deaths linked to the use of local anesthetics have decreased. Even so, poisonings from one commonly used anesthetic, lidocaine, have increased in the United States, according to two new studies from the University of Illinois Chicago. By analyzing data from reports to national Poison Control Centers and to the Food and Drug Administration from 2010 to 2020, UIC researchers found total reports of poisonings fell 50% in that period. But poisonings from lidocaine increased more than 50% in less than half that ...

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Science6 Oct 2025

Nurse workload and missed nursing care in neonatal intensive care units

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study, nurses’ subjective workload and shift-level staffing ratios exerted direct effects on reliable care delivery. High subjective workload and staffing ratios greater than 2 infants per nurse should be targets for workload reduction in neonatal intensive care units. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Heather L. Tubbs-Cooley, Ph.D., email tubbscooley.1@osu.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2025.3647) Editor’s ...

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Science6 Oct 2025

How to solve the remote work stalemate – dissertation offers tools for successful hybrid work

The remote work debate often focuses only on leadership or the employee, but according to a new doctoral dissertation from the University of Vaasa, Finland, the prerequisites for success are found in a broader context. Johanna Jansson's research in the field of human resource management reveals that successful remote work is built on three foundations: overall organisational design, the supervisor-subordinate relationship, and the employee's own role. When these three foundations are in balance, both company ...

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Science6 Oct 2025

Texas Children’s researchers create groundbreaking tool to improve accuracy of genetic testing

HOUSTON (Oct. 6, 2025) – Researchers at Texas Children’s Neurological Research Institute (NRI) and Baylor College of Medicine have developed a powerful new tool within the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) to sharpen the accuracy of genetic testing – a breakthrough with direct implications for patient diagnoses and care worldwide. The work, published in Nature Communications, applies a method called local ancestry inference (LAI), which breaks the genome into ancestry-specific segments to provide more accurate insights into genetic differences. “This research updates our genomic resources to better reflect the ...

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Science6 Oct 2025

Milken Institute, Ann Theodore Foundation announce more than $2.5 million in new funding for sarcoidosis research and launch new call for proposals

October 6, 2025 (Washington, DC)—The Milken Institute Science Philanthropy Accelerator for Research and Collaboration (SPARC), in partnership with the Ann Theodore Foundation (ATF), today announced that the Ann Theodore Foundation Breakthrough Sarcoidosis Initiative (ATF-BSI) has awarded five grants totaling more than $2.5 million to interdisciplinary research teams. Concurrently, the two partners have launched ATF-BSI’s fifth round of philanthropic funding via a new request for proposals (RFP) related to sarcoidosis ...

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Science6 Oct 2025

The real reasons Endurance sank — study finds Shackleton knew of ship’s shortcomings

Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, was crushed by Antarctic sea ice and sank in November 1915. Emblematic of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration, it is widely considered the strongest polar ship of its time, albeit with a fatal flaw — a weakness in the rudder that caused the ship to sink. Now, a world-first study incorporating both technical analysis and research into diaries and correspondence sheds new light on the expedition and the man himself. Not only did the ship have structural weaknesses that made it notably less robust than other early polar vessels ...

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Science6 Oct 2025

New wheat diversity discovery could provide an urgently-needed solution to global food security

Wheat has a very large and complex genome. Researchers have found that different varieties can use their genes in different ways. By studying RNA—the molecules that carry out instructions from DNA—researchers can see which genes are active and when. By mapping this gene activity for the first time, researchers are able accelerate international wheat breeding programmes, developing new varieties of wheat which can adapt to the rapidly escalating climate emergency. Wheat is the most widely cultivated crop in the world, with over 215 million hectares grown annually. To meet the demands of a growing global population, plant breeders face ...

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