On Hainan Island, centuries-old masonry supports an unexpectedly rich diversity of epilithic, or rock-dwelling, plants, highlighting a close intersection between cultural heritage and natural biodiversity. By integrating island-wide field surveys with statistical modeling, the team demonstrates how geographic gradients, architectural features, and human activities jointly shape these often-overlooked plant communities, offering new scientific evidence to support more balanced and ecologically informed strategies for heritage conservation. Rapid urbanization across China has placed increasing pressure on historic architecture, particularly in tropical ...

New research shows that the mere smell of predators is enough to change deer behavior and limit browsing damage to tree saplings. The findings offer a potential tool for forest recovery and highlight the important role large predators play. The research is published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Applied Ecology. Research conducted in the forests of south-eastern Germany, shows that the smell of large predators, like lynx and wolves, is enough to make deer more cautious and spend less time eating tree saplings. In an experiment that involved adding lynx and wolf urine and scat to plots of saplings, researchers from the University of Freiburg found ...

Hidden behind every successful career story is the reality that progression isn’t often a smooth and easy path. Rejections, setbacks, and the doubts they seed are rarely shared - leaving us to believe that they don’t happen to other people the way they happen to us. Adrian Liston, Professor of Pathology at the University of Cambridge, mentors hundreds of scientists early in their careers, and repeatedly hears them worry that they’re not up to the task. He has decided it’s time to share the truth behind the ...

Researchers at UC San Francisco have identified a hazardous waste collector in the brain that disposes of the toxic clumps of tau protein that can lead to dementia.   Neurons with more of this garbage collector, technically known as CUL5, are less vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease.   The research helps explain how some brain cells may remain resilient even in advanced disease ...

Witching Hour, a hard tech startup and member of Cohort 2025 of Innovation Crossroads, is wielding the support of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop technology that reduces wildfire risk by retrofitting powerlines with insulation in fire-prone areas. ORNL is the site of the Powerline Conductor Accelerated Testing Facility, one of the only facilities in the country where companies can try out new transmission line technologies for long time periods in a real-world environment. In 2025, wildfires across the United States cost ...

Researchers from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), in collaboration with the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC), have led the most extensive observational study to date of runaway massive stars, which includes an analysis of the rotation and binarity of these stars in our galaxy. This study, published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, sheds new light on how these stellar “runaways” are ejected into ...

People can develop emotional closeness to Artificial Intelligence (AI) – under certain conditions, even more so than to other people. This is shown by a new study conducted by a research team led by Prof. Dr Markus Heinrichs and Dr Tobias Kleinert from the Department of Psychology at the University of Freiburg and Prof. Dr Bastian Schiller from Heidelberg University’s Institute of Psychology. Participants felt a sense of closeness especially when they did not know that they were communicating with AI. The results have been published in the renowned journal Communications Psychology. Questions about life experiences and friendships In ...

MINNEAPOLIS — Taking certain antidepressants at the time of a traumatic brain injury (TBI) is not associated with an increased risk of death, brain surgery or longer hospital stays, according to a study published on January 28, 2026, in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. For the study, researchers looked at serotonergic antidepressants, which treat anxiety and depression by increasing serotonin activity in the brain. These included selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), serotonin ...

Key points Scientists constructed a family tree for butterflies in the genus Adelpha, which are native to North and South America and display perplexing color patterns that may represent an unusual case of evasive mimicry. They found the first known correlation between latitude and the rate of mimicry evolution in butterflies, consistent with a longstanding theory of biodiversity that can trace its origin to Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection. The tree helps ...

In a small study, dogs experienced both stabilization and destabilization of their balance upon hearing angry or happy human voices, but angry voices were linked to the biggest destabilizing effects. Nadja Affenzeller and colleagues at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on January 28, 2026. For humans and animals alike, stable posture underpins the ability to stand still, walk, and perform other activities without falling. To maintain stability, our muscles rely on visual cues as well as the body’s sense of its own position. Recent research in humans suggests that external sounds may also ...

A third of fish living in the remote coastal waters of the Pacific Island Countries and Territories are contaminated with microplastics, with especially high rates in Fiji, according to an analysis publishing January 28, 2026 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Jasha Dehm at the University of the South Pacific and colleagues. Microplastic pollution in marine environments is a global issue impacting ecosystems and human health. Despite their remoteness, the Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs) may be particularly vulnerable to microplastic pollution because of rapid urbanization ...

Professor Nisreen Alwan calls to de-stigmatize self-reported data in health care research, highlighting Long COVID as one setting where it has unique strengths over 'objective' data.  Article URL: https://plos.io/4qBRszB Article Title: The Stigma of self-report in health research: Time to reconsider what counts as “Objective” Author Countries: United Kingdom Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. END ...

A new analysis of 471 U.S. counties has found that, for everyday travel, people from counties with particularly strong political leanings—whether liberal or conservative—are more likely to visit like-minded destinations. Zhengyi Liang and Jaeho Cho of the University of California, Davis, U.S., present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on January 28, 2026. Prior research has shown that U.S. residents increasingly live in areas where their neighbors share similar political leanings. This clustering can limit how often people of differing political views cross paths with each other, further deepening political polarization. In ...

The cycling of water within Earth's interior regulates plate tectonics, volcanism, ocean volume, and climate stability, making it central to the planet's long-term evolution and habitability and a key scientific question. While subducting slabs are known to transport water into the mantle, scientists have long assumed that most hydrous minerals dehydrate at high temperatures, releasing fluids as they descend. Whether water can survive the extreme conditions of the deep lower mantle, however, has remained an open question. To fill this knowledge gap, a research team from the Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences ...

Cardiovascular disease continues to be the leading cause of death worldwide. To save lives, constantly improving diagnostic and risk assessments is vital. One researcher from the University of Missouri School of Medicine is exploring ways to do just that by using machine learning, which is a type of artificial intelligence (AI). Some assessments use traditional statistical analysis to predict a patient’s risk. These predictive models have already been implemented across ...

While current clinical trials for cardiac regeneration using induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CMs) employ immunosuppressive regimens used in heart transplants, the precise immunosuppressive regimen needed remains elusive. Now, researchers have identified optimized immunosuppressive strategies that allow transplanted iPSC-CMs to survive without immune rejection in non-human primates. These findings advance the clinical potential of regenerative therapies for severe heart failure, addressing a major challenge in translating stem cell science into effective human treatments. Heart failure remains one of the most pressing global health challenges, ...

UBC researchers have engineered gut bacteria that dim their fluorescent glow in the presence of illness.  Their findings, published in Cell today, could improve how we diagnose problems in the gut by using bacteria that already live there.  “Our biosensors could improve the ability to predict how diseases in the gut progress, identifying early changes that could aid preventative interventions,” said co-first author Juan Camilo Burckhardt (he/him), a doctoral candidate in the department ...

About The Study: In this nationwide cohort study of patients with diabetes and prior major adverse limb events, treatment with glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) was associated with significantly lower risks of recurrent limb events, cardiovascular events, all-cause mortality, and kidney disease progression compared with dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors. These findings support the preferential use of GLP-1 RAs for secondary prevention in this high-risk population. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding ...

About The Study: In this cohort study, exposure to adverse experiences throughout life was associated with increased risks of dementia and stroke, with depression mediating these associations. These findings highlight the importance of implementing life-course interventions that address both psychological trauma and mental health to reduce the burden of neurovascular diseases. Corresponding Authors: To contact the corresponding authors, email Jianhui Zhao, MPH, PhD, (jzhao40@mgh.harvard.edu) and Shan Liu, PhD, (graystar92@163.com). To ...

For almost 60 years, scientists have tried to understand why DNA doesn’t replicate wildly and uncontrollably every time a cell divides – which they need to do constantly. Without this process, we would die. These essential, ongoing cell divisions involve a cell copying its unique genetic material, DNA, and then forming new cells. Cells know exactly when and how to do this during the roughly 24 hours it takes to complete a division, and they also know what type of cell they should become: a liver cell, a brain cell, or a skin cell. If cells were to launch into random DNA replication, they would quickly run out of resources, and the timing ...

Young adults with complex chronic childhood-onset conditions such as sickle cell disease and cystic fibrosis experience longer hospital stays, higher readmission rates and greater use of resources in adult hospitals, according to a new study in JAMA Network Open.  More children with medically complex conditions are surviving into adulthood, but researchers have had limited visibility into how these conditions influence adult hospital care.   Led by a team at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), the study shows that while this group represents 6.7 ...

UCLA Health researchers have created a comprehensive map showing how eight different genetic mutations associated with autism spectrum disorder affect early brain development, providing new insights into the ways diverse genetic causes may lead to shared features and symptoms of the disorder. Genetic studies performed over the past two decades have identified more than 100 genes harboring rare mutations linked to autism. This genetic heterogeneity has raised a fundamental question: if autism can be caused by so many different ...

Light does a lot of work in the modern world, enabling all types of information technology from TVs to satellites to fiber-optic cables that carry the internet across oceans. Stanford physicists recently found a way to make that light work even harder with an optical amplifier that requires low amounts of energy without any loss of bandwidth, all on a device the size of a fingertip. Similar to sound amplifiers, optical amplifiers take a light signal and intensify it. Current small-sized optical amplifiers need a lot of power to function. The new optical amplifier, detailed in ...

A light has emerged at the end of the tunnel in the long pursuit of developing quantum computers, which are expected to radically reduce the time needed to perform some complex calculations from thousands of years down to a matter of hours. A team led by Stanford physicists has developed a new type of “optical cavity” that can efficiently collect single photons, the fundamental particle of light, from single atoms. These atoms act as the building blocks of a quantum computer by storing “qubits”  – the quantum version of a normal computer’s bits of zeros and ones. This work enables that process for ...

Seventy percent of soils in Europe are contaminated with pesticides. A Europe-wide study co-led by researchers of the University of Zurich now shows that their effects on soil life are substantial, as pesticides suppress various beneficial soil organisms. To protect soil biodiversity, the findings should be taken into account in current pesticide regulations. Life beneath our feet is essential for maintaining critical ecosystem functions and services like food production, carbon storage, erosion control and water regulation. An international study now provides the first comprehensive quantitative evidence of the prevalence and impact of agricultural pesticides in European soils. According ...