Autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis arise when the immune system turns against the body itself. Yet for most of them, it remains unclear why this process begins. Researchers have now identified how the Epstein-Barr virus can, under specific conditions, initiate early multiple sclerosis-like damage in the brain. This offers a new perspective on how rare immune events may shape disease risk. There is mounting evidence that the Epstein-Barr virus may play a part in causing autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis. But one puzzle remains: almost everyone gets this virus early in life, yet only ...

(BOSTON) — The majority of human illnesses is caused by damage of a single organ like the liver whose failure accounts for 2M deaths worldwide every year. Orthotopic transplants are the only curative therapy available, but the severe shortage of donor organs, which are reserved for the most severe cases, leaves millions of patients without an accessible solution. The liver is the central hub in our body for filtering blood, metabolizing nutrients and toxins, producing essential proteins and bile, storing vitamins and glucose, and a multitude of other processes. Accordingly, an excessive loss of liver function through various diseases poses ...

As global energy transitions accelerate, distributed PV systems have become a cornerstone of rural energy transformation in China, shifting rural households from passive energy consumers to active prosumers. However, low household electricity demand, limited grid capacity, and complex stakeholder interactions hinder widespread adoption. To address these challenges, researchers Wenbing Zhou and Songlin Tang from the School of Economics at Shandong Technology and Business University developed a multi-agent dynamic game model. The model incorporates four core stakeholders: village organizations, PV enterprises, grid companies, and rural households, analyzing their ...

More Surgical Patients Are on Opioid Use Disorder Medications — Hospitals Must Modernize Pain Care CHICAGO – As more Americans receive treatment for opioid use disorder, that progress is increasingly showing up in the operating room, creating an urgent need to modernize how pain is managed during and after major surgery, according to a study in the February 2026 issue of Anesthesiology, the peer-reviewed medical journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA). The study documents a steady rise in surgical patients using medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD), highlighting a gap between current surgical pain practices and the needs of today’s patients. "From ...

A new study published in the Strategic Management Journal sheds light on how multinational firms make strategic decisions about where to pursue patent litigation in an increasingly interconnected and politically complex global environment. Rather than treating patent disputes as isolated, country-by-country legal actions, the research shows that firms approach litigation as part of a coordinated global strategy. Drawing on patent litigation data from leading technology firms across 50 countries over ...

Researchers have identified bradycardia—an abnormally low heart rate–as a symptom of xylazine-opioid overdose. This breakthrough finding from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai may help emergency medicine physicians detect whether patients have been exposed to xylazine, a drug that is increasingly found as an additive to the illicit fentanyl supply, particularly in the Northeast. Accurate detection of xylazine overdose could help physicians take the correct steps to save lives ...

At times the sun ejects energetic material into space which can have consequences for space-based and even ground-based electronic technology. Researchers aim to understand this phenomenon and find ways to forecast it, including how ejected material evolves as it travels through the solar system. For the first time, researchers, including those from the University of Tokyo, made high-quality measurements of an evolving cloud of solar ejecta by using multiple space-based instruments which were not designed to do so, and observed the way the ...

Background and Aims Cirrhotic cardiomyopathy (CCM) is a significant complication of cirrhosis, but its progression and underlying mechanisms remain incompletely understood. This study aimed to investigate dynamic changes in cardiac function, pathology, inflammation, and mitochondrial damage in a mouse model of CCM, and to compare echocardiographic characteristics in patients with cirrhosis. Methods Bile duct ligation was performed in male C57BL/6J mice to induce cirrhosis. Longitudinal analyses were conducted over eight weeks. Cardiac function was assessed using serum biomarkers, echocardiography, and electrocardiography. Pathology was examined with hematoxylin and eosin, ...

The Great Bear Nature Writing Retreat                                                January, 2026 Great Bear Rainforest, BC. The Great Bear Lodge on the Central Coast of British Columbia is collaborating with internationally acclaimed science journalist Lesley Evans Ogden to host a nature writing retreat from May 31 - June 4, 2026. Located in the remote and beautiful Smith Inlet, ...

New research led by King’s College London, in collaboration with the University of Westminster, has shed light on the diversity and characteristics of E. coli strains that drive diabetic foot infections. Published in Microbiology Spectrum, the research provides the first comprehensive genomic characterisation of E. coli strains isolated directly from diabetic foot ulcers across multiple continents. The findings could help to explain why some infections become particularly difficult to treat and why they can lead to severe, sometimes life-threatening, outcomes. Diabetic foot infections remain one of the most serious complications ...

Automatic mesh generation, recognized as the “Holy Grail” of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), was highlighted as a critical objective in the NASA CFD Vision 2030 study. Adaptive Cartesian grid generation has attracted significant interest due to its high level of automation and low manual intervention. However, its broad use in multicore parallel environments has been hindered by significant load imbalance. Traditional parallel techniques distribute grid cells evenly after each adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) cycle, ...

A new study reveals how entrepreneurs can win support for their ideas from audiences who never speak up. The research shows that the way entrepreneurs engage with a few vocal participants in online discussions can crucially shape how the larger, silent audience perceives and supports their ideas.  The study “Mobilizing the silent majority: Discourse broadening and audience support for entrepreneurial innovations,” by Jamie Song, assistant professor of strategy at ESMT Berlin, has been published in the ...

For years, wide-speed-range waveriders that can balance both high-speed and low-speed flight states have attracted significant attention in aerospace engineering. Such designs are crucial for developing reusable space shuttles capable of horizontal takeoff and landing. However, the significant degradation in performance exhibited by traditional waveriders across a wide-speed-range remains a major obstacle to the engineering application. At the core of this challenge is the difficulty in reconciling two conflicting aerodynamic requirements: effective shock wave control ...

PASADENA, CA – January 13, 2026 – The GMTO Corporation, the international consortium building the Giant Magellan Telescope, today announced it has appointed Daniel T. Jaffe as president, succeeding Robert N. Shelton, who announced his retirement last year after guiding the observatory through a period of significant growth. “Dan brings decades of leadership in research, astronomy instrumentation, public-private partnerships, and academia,” said Taft Armandroff, board chair of the GMTO Corporation. “His deep understanding ...

As lunar exploration intensifies, the cislunar space is experiencing increasing congestion. Traditional two-body Keplerian elements, which have long been the standard for Earth-orbiting objects, prove insufficient for accurately describing the complex orbits near the Earth–Moon Lagrange points due to the chaotic and non-integrable nature of three-body dynamics. This fundamental deficiency has hindered the development of an effective space situational awareness (SSA) framework for this strategically vital region. A research team from the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) ...

Researchers propose a new citation index that balances productivity and impact in academic publishing. The h-index of citations was introduced in 2005 by a physicist Jorge E. Hirsch. This index is defined simply as the maximum number h of an author’s published papers with at least h citations each. For example, h = 3 means that there are three papers with 3 or more citations, but if a fourth paper exists, it has fewer than four citations. The h-index has quickly gained popularity and is now widely used to measure productivity ...

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (01/13/2026) — Researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and Universit´e Paris-Saclay have challenged a decades-old dark matter theory. Their new research shows that the Universe’s most mysterious material could have been “incredibly hot”–moving at nearly the speed of light–when it was first born.  The study was recently published in Physical Review Letters, the premier journal of the American Physical Society. The research gives new clues about the origins of our Universe and opens up a broader range of possibilities for dark matter and how it ...

Playing linear number board games, those where players move pieces along a straight numbered path, can significantly strengthen young children’s math skills, according to a new report  by the HEDCO Institute for Evidence-Based Educational Practice at the UO. Even better, the report found just a few short, 10-minute sessions of game play may have lasting benefits. The findings are from a meta-analysis, or systematic review, of 18 studies looking at number board games and early math skills in children preschool ...

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (01/12/2026) — A new study by researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities challenges previous classifications paleontologists use to determine how the fossil record is formed. They investigated how dinosaur and mammal bones are transported and buried by floodwaters to understand how the remains of animals might disperse prior to being buried and becoming fossils. The research provides new clues for understanding animal extinction and environmental changes. The paper was recently published in Paleobiology, ...

An automated cell culture system reduces hands-on time and improves seeding consistency in 96-well microplates. Manuel Leonetti, Rafael Gómez-Sjöberg, and colleagues developed the Automated Cell Culture Splitter, an open-source robotic system built around the Opentrons OT-2 liquid handling robot equipped with a custom cell counting imaging instrument. The system automates passaging—the transfer of cells from one culture plate to another when they grow too numerous—of either adherent or suspended cells in 96-well plates, a process conventionally requiring tedious manual work. The authors tested the system with a commonly ...

A study in mice on small RNAs in sperm helps explain how the health of fathers can influence the health of their offspring. Bin He and colleagues explored how paternal immune activation in mice affects a specific class of small RNAs in sperm, known as 28S-rsRNAs. Mice were injected with lipopolysaccharides derived from the bacteria Escherichia coli, to prompt an immune response. A week later, the mice were found to have fewer sperm and an increased number of 28S-rsRNAs in what sperm they did have. Notably, these effects largely subsided six weeks post-injection—spanning ...

Heart disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide, yet progress in understanding and treating cardiac disorders is limited by the shortcomings of existing experimental models. Traditional animal models often fail to capture human-specific cardiac biology, while conventional two-dimensional cell cultures lack the functional and structural complexity of heart tissue. These challenges have fueled growing interest in regenerative medicine approaches that more accurately model human heart development, disease mechanisms, and therapeutic responses, with stem ...

Using muon spin rotation spectroscopy, researchers from Japan and Canada successfully captured the rapid conversion of an imidoyl radical into a quinoxalinyl radical occurring within nanoseconds. The technique enabled real time detection of a highly reactive aromatic heterocyclic radical generated during the isocyanide insertion reaction, using muonium as a molecular tracker. The discovery is expected to advance particle-driven radical chemistry—exploring functional properties and offering new strategies for ...

Environmentally friendly buildings are highly attractive for sustainable development and efficient energy consumption. Recently, scientists have made significant strides towards the development of energy-efficient smart windows—with features such as optical modulation, high transparency, low thermal conductivity, and ultraviolet (UV) blocking and heat shielding capabilities—to replace traditional glass windows. The smart windows are a lucrative technology to protect household items as well as human health from the adverse effects of UV radiation. In a recent breakthrough, a team of researchers from the Republic of Korea, led by Professor ...

AMOLF researchers discovered a mysterious interplay of insulin signals in the worm C. elegans. The insulin-driven protein DAF-16 does not only move in and out of the cell nucleus in a complex rhythm, it does so at exactly the same moment in all cells of the body. Because of the many similarities between C. elegans and humans, the research may contribute to a better understanding of diseases such as diabetes, cancer and of ageing. The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Communications on December 11. Cells experience many different types of stress, such as starvation or ...