Nitrogen fixation is a critical ecological process that converts atmospheric nitrogen into bioavailable forms, essential for plant growth and carbon sequestration. This study, published in Forest Ecosystems, focused on two primary forms of biological nitrogen fixation (BNF): symbiotic nitrogen fixation (SNF), which occurs within the root nodules of nitrogen-fixing plants, and asymbiotic nitrogen fixation (ANF), which is carried out by free-living microorganisms in soil and litter. Understanding the environmental controls on these processes is crucial for predicting ...

Immune checkpoint pathways regulate T cell function and play pivotal roles in the treatment of both cancer and autoimmune diseases. One key component of these pathways is Lymphocyte Activation Gene 3 (LAG-3)—a classical immunosuppressive receptor that has long posed unresolved questions regarding its biological mechanisms. In a new study published on June 30 in Cell, researchers from the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Grossman School of Medicine at New York University, and the School of Medicine at Zhejiang University have ...

A pairing of two experimental drugs inhibits tumor growth and blocks drug-induced resistance in ovarian cancer, according to a preclinical study led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The research reveals a promising strategy against this hard-to-treat malignancy, and more generally demonstrates a powerful new approach for the identification of effective regimens to treat genetically diverse cancers. Ovarian cancer is genetically diverse in the sense that it can be driven by mutations in many different genes. This complicates the standard strategy of developing drugs to target common driver mutations. In the study, published July 7 in Cell Reports Medicine, the researchers applied a ...

“Space ice” contains tiny crystals and is not, as previously assumed, a completely disordered material like liquid water, according to a new study by scientists at UCL (University College London) and the University of Cambridge. Ice in space is different to the crystalline (highly ordered) form of ice on Earth. For decades, scientists have assumed it is amorphous (without a structure), with colder temperatures meaning it does not have enough energy to form crystals when it freezes. In the new study, ...

About The Study: The health of U.S. children has worsened across a wide range of health indicator domains over the past 17 years. The broad scope of this deterioration highlights the need to identify and address the root causes of this fundamental decline in the nation’s health.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Christopher B. Forrest, MD, PhD, email forrestc@chop.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2025.9855) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author ...

About The Study: In this randomized double-blind clinical trial of healthy adults administered cannabidiol (CBD), 5 mg/kg/d for 28 days, 8 (5.6%) experienced liver enzyme level elevations and 7 (4.9%) met protocol defined criteria for potential drug-induced liver injury. Participants did not experience clinical symptoms related to liver function during this 28-day study and hepatic enzymes returned to normal within 1 to 2 weeks following discontinuation. The findings of this study underscore the need for further investigation on the long-term effects of CBD use, its impact on various populations, and the safety of lower doses ...

A team of Chinese researchers led by Prof. GAO Caixia from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology (IGDB) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a groundbreaking method that could transform the field of protein engineering. The new approach, called AI-informed Constraints for protein Engineering (AiCE), enables rapid and efficient protein evolution by integrating structural and evolutionary constraints into a generic inverse folding model—without the need to train specialized artificial intelligence (AI) models. The study, published in Cell on July 7, addresses many of the challenges ...

Scientists at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA have discovered that certain retinal cells can rewire themselves when vision begins to deteriorate in retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic eye disease that leads to progressive blindness. In a study using mouse models, researchers found that rod bipolar cells, neurons that normally receive signals from rods that provide night vision, can form new functional connections with cones that provide daytime vision when their usual partners stop working. The study appears in Current Biology. Why it matters Retinitis pigmentosa affects millions of people worldwide and is a leading cause of inherited ...

A study led by Cambridge researchers has shed light on how neural stem cell grafts could help restore myelin in the central nervous system. The findings suggest that neural stem cell-based therapies hold promise as a potential treatment for chronic demyelinating disorders, particularly progressive multiple sclerosis. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease where the body's immune system mistakenly attacks the central nervous system, leading to the destruction of myelin, the protective sheath surrounding nerve fibres. This damage is a leading cause of neurological disability in young adults. In the early stages ...

Highlights: Mosquitoes that carry pathogens often develop resistance to insecticides. Biopesticides offer an ecologically friendly way to control the pests and mitigate resistance, but options are limited. Researchers recently identified bacteria in Crete producing metabolites that quickly kill mosquito larvae in lab tests. The compounds might be useful for the development of new biopesticides, though developing the right formulations and delivery method remains a challenge. Washington, D.C.—Mosquito-borne diseases kill more than 700,000 people every year, according to the World Health Organization, ...

UCLA Health researchers have identified four distinct pathways that lead to Alzheimer's disease by analyzing electronic health records, offering new insights into how the condition develops over time rather than from isolated risk factors. The study, published in the journal eBioMedicine, examined longitudinal health data from nearly 25,000 patients in the University of California Health Data Warehouse and validated findings in the nationally diverse All of Us Research Program. Unlike previous ...

The majority of the earth’s plant species, including our crop plants, rely on the services of animal pollinators in order to reproduce. Honey bees and other pollinating insects annually contribute billions of dollars to the U.S. economy, and are responsible for nearly a third of the food that ends up on our tables. Our modern agricultural industry is so reliant on honey bees that humans have introduced them worldwide, and in many cases, they have escaped human management and risen to prominence in natural ecosystems as non-native, ...

In India, the Slam Out Loud program connects teachers and artists in classrooms for storytelling, theater, and visual arts that bolster children’s socio-emotional learning. In the United States, Carnegie Hall partners with more than 115 orchestras across the country to teach children to sing and play instruments, culminating in an orchestral performance. Nonprofits like these are providing opportunities across the world in the face of reduced funding and support for arts education in public school systems. In a new report, an NYU ...

New research reveals that excess weight is linked to an especially high risk of developing breast cancer in postmenopausal women with cardiovascular disease. The findings are published by Wiley online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. Although higher body mass index (BMI) is a known risk factor for breast cancer in postmenopausal women, it’s unclear whether this risk differs among women with and without cardiovascular disease or type 2 diabetes. To investigate, a team led by Heinz Freisling, PhD, of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (the specialized cancer ...

Most people associate Hong Kong with skyscrapers and shopping malls, but a small population of feral water buffalo calls the marshlands of South Lantau Island home. And they’re sparking a mix of curiosity, concern, and connection among locals. A new study published in People and Nature in July 2025 led by City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) examines how Hong Kong residents feel about their unusual neighbours. These findings suggest opinions are about as diverse as the city itself. The article is titled “Public attitudes and values regarding a ...

The Anglo-USA  team behind the study named them dark dwarfs. Not because they are dark bodies—on the contrary—but because of their special link with dark matter, one of the most central topics in current cosmology and astrophysics research. “We think that 25% of the universe is composed of a type of matter that doesn’t emit light, making it invisible to our eyes and telescopes. We only detect it through its gravitational effects. That’s why we call it dark matter,” explains Jeremy Sakstein, Professor of Physics at the University of Hawai‘i ...

The language capabilities of today’s artificial intelligence systems are astonishing. We can now engage in natural conversations with systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, and many others, with a fluency nearly comparable to that of a human being. Yet we still know very little about the internal processes in these networks that lead to such remarkable results. A new study published in the Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment (JSTAT) reveals a piece of this mystery. It shows that when small amounts of data are used for training, neural networks initially rely on the position of words in a ...

The classic microscope is getting a modern twist - US researchers are developing an AI-powered microscope system that could make soil health testing faster, cheaper, and more accessible to farmers and land managers around the world. Researchers at The University of Texas at San Antonio, USA, have successfully combined low-cost optical microscopy with machine learning to measure the presence and quantity of fungi in soil samples. Their early-stage proof-of-concept technology is presented at the Goldschmidt Conference in Prague on Wednesday 9 July. Determining the abundance and diversity of soil fungi can ...

Some species of fig trees store calcium carbonate in their trunks – essentially turning themselves (partially) into stone, new research has found. The team of Kenyan, U.S., Austrian, and Swiss scientists found that the trees could draw carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and store it as calcium carbonate ‘rocks’ in the surrounding soil. The research is being presented this week at the Goldschmidt conference in Prague. The trees – native to Kenya – are one of the first fruit trees shown to have this ability, known as the oxalate carbonate pathway. All trees use photosynthesis to turn CO2 into organic carbon, which forms their trunk, ...

About The Study: In patients with acute large vessel occlusion presenting between 4.5 and 24 hours of symptom onset, intra-arterial tenecteplase after successful thrombectomy had a greater likelihood of excellent neurological outcome at 90 days without increasing the risk of symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage or mortality. However, because none of the secondary efficacy analyses supported the primary finding, further trials are needed to confirm the results.  Corresponding Authors: To contact the corresponding ...

Despite rice being the staple food for more than half of the world’s population, its cultivation remains highly resource-intensive, requiring large amounts of water and chemical fertilizers. Even as environmental concerns pertaining to global food security and climate change continue to mount, there is a growing interest in finding more sustainable ways to grow this essential crop. Microbes in plant roots are known to play a vital role in helping plants survive. It’s known that plants can survive in poor soils by recruiting helpful microbes and forming symbiotic relationships, but we still don’t ...

Scientists are striving to discover new semiconductor materials that could boost the efficiency of solar cells and other electronics. But the pace of innovation is bottlenecked by the speed at which researchers can manually measure important material properties. A fully autonomous robotic system developed by MIT researchers could speed things up.  Their system utilizes a robotic probe to measure an important electrical property known as photoconductivity, which is how electrically responsive ...

A new study finds extreme heat reduces milk production by up to 10 percent and adding cooling technologies only offsets about half of the loss. While recent studies have shown climate change will cut crop production, there has been less research into its impacts on livestock. Dairy farmers already know their cows are vulnerable to heat. What will more heat mean? In one of the most comprehensive assessments of heat’s impact on dairy cows, a study in the journal Science Advances finds one day of extreme heat can cut milk production by up to 10 percent. The effects ...

For years, scientists have debated whether a giant thick ice shelf once covered the entire Arctic Ocean during the coldest ice ages. Now a new study published in Science Advances, challenges this idea as the research team found no evidence for the presence of a massive ~1km ice shelf. Instead, the Arctic Ocean appears to have been covered by seasonal sea ice—leaving open water and life-sustaining conditions even during the harshest periods of cold periods during the last 750,000 years. This discovery gives insights ...

Imagine the magnificent glaciers of Greenland, the eternal snow of the Tibetan high mountains, and the permanently ice-cold groundwater in Finland. As cold and beautiful these are, for the structural biologist Kirill Kovalev, they are more importantly home to unusual molecules that could control brain cells’ activity. Kovalev, EIPOD Postdoctoral Fellow at EMBL Hamburg’s Schneider Group and EMBL-EBI’s Bateman Group, is a physicist passionate about solving biological problems. He is particularly hooked by rhodopsins, a group of colourful proteins that enable aquatic microorganisms to harness ...