Plastic pollution represents a global environmental challenge, and once in the environment plastic can fragment into smaller and smaller pieces. A new study shows for the first time that some of the tiniest particles found in the environment can be absorbed into the edible sections of crops during the growing process. The research used radishes to demonstrate, for the first time, that nanoplastics – some measuring as little as one millionth of a centimetre in diameter – can enter the roots, before spreading and accumulating into the edible parts of the plant. The researchers say the findings reveal another potential pathway for humans and animals to unintentionally consume ...

A new artificial intelligence model found previously undetected signals in routine heart tests that strongly predict which patients will suffer potentially deadly complications after surgery. The model significantly outperformed risk scores currently relied upon by doctors. The federally-funded work by Johns Hopkins University researchers, which turns standard and inexpensive test results into a potentially life-saving tool, could transform decision-making and risk calculation for both patients and surgeons. “We ...

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London have developed and validated a new tool that could help GPs detect ovarian cancer earlier and improve patient outcomes cost-effectively.   Ovatools combines results from a standard blood test which measures the levels of a protein Cancer Antigen 125 (CA125) with a woman’s age, to provide a personalised risk score for ovarian cancer. Two new studies, funded by Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), analysed data from over 340,000 women across England. They show that this approach is accurate, especially for women aged over 50 and represents good value ...

GLP-1 receptor agonists like Ozempic can be a lifeline for people with diabetes — helping stabilize blood glucose and lose weight which contributes to diabetes complications. But not everyone benefits equally. Scientists monitoring 92 individuals with diabetes in Japan over their first year of taking GLP-1 drugs found that people’s reasons for overeating may affect the success of these therapies. Individuals who overeat in response to the sight or smell of tasty food were most likely to respond well to the drugs in the long term, whereas individuals who overeat for emotional reasons ...

PHILADELPHIA – Today, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) released the 15th edition of its annual Cancer Progress Report. A cornerstone of the AACR’s educational and advocacy efforts, this comprehensive report provides the latest statistics on cancer incidence, mortality, and survivorship and highlights how federal investments in basic, translational, and clinical cancer research and cancer-related population sciences have led to impressive scientific advances that are improving health and saving lives. The AACR Cancer Progress Report 2025 features a special section that explains how advances in understanding blood cancers over the past decade have contributed ...

Kyoto, Japan -- Online platforms promise connection, yet the social comparison, digital surveillance, and public criticism they foster can also heighten emotional instability. Recently, these platforms have even intensified global challenges by fueling misinformation-driven unrest and deepening emotional divides. These dynamics have been linked to rising levels of distress, fear, and trauma, often shaped by collective outrage and transient narratives. While current psychiatry offers various approaches to address individual distress, the field remains relatively under-equipped to understand ...

A team of researchers, led by the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute), explored the cellular and molecular interactions revealing how lymph nodes play a crucial role in the fight against chronic infection and cancer. The research, published across two papers in Nature Immunology, showed that lymph nodes provide the right environment for stem-like T cells, an important type of immune cell, to survive, multiply and produce killer cells that can fight cancer or viruses. In other immune organs, such as the spleen, these cells don’t develop ...

In a world first, researchers at Nagoya University in Japan have successfully developed a resonant tunnel diode (RTD) that operates at room temperature made entirely from Group IV semiconductor materials. The development of an RTD that operates at room temperature means the device could be deployed at scale for next-generation wireless communication systems. The use of only non-toxic Group IV semiconductor materials also supports more sustainable manufacturing processes. This research marks a pivotal step toward terahertz wireless components that deliver unprecedented speed and data handling capacity with superior energy efficiency. “Compared ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — With CO2 emissions continuing unabated, an increasing number of policymakers, scientists and environmentalists are considering geoengineering to avert a climate catastrophe. Such interventions could influence everything from rainfall to global food supplies, making the stakes enormous. In brief, manipulating other aspects of Earth’s climate system might reduce some effects of climate change. But the wondrous complexity of our planet complicates every one of these proposals. Climate scientists at UC Santa Barbara analyzed two approaches ...

Australian researchers have discovered that sleepy lizards (Tiliqua rugosus) can recognise the smell of smoke as a sign of approaching fire and attempt to escape, but they do not respond to the sound of fire. The study, published this month in Biology Letters, provides the first empirical test of an amusing anecdote: when zookeepers at a US zoo burnt their lunch, they noticed they were not alone in smelling the acrid smoke. Captive sleepy lizards became agitated by the smell wafting through the building, while other reptiles remained calm. Despite being mostly captive-bred, the lizards tongue-flicked, paced, and tried to escape—behaviour researchers now show ...

(Paris, France, Wednesday, 17 September 2025) A new international study presented today at the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (EADV) Congress 2025 reveals that adults with atopic eczema (AE) are significantly more likely to experience suicidal thoughts, with researchers uncovering the key factors driving this elevated risk.1 As one of the largest global investigations to examine the link between AE and suicidal ideation, the “Scars of Life” study surveyed 30,801 adults across 27 countries in 2024. Among ...

Maintaining weight loss with regular exercise rather than the glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA) liraglutide, a drug used to treat type 2 diabetes and obesity, seems to reduce atherosclerosis development in adults with obesity—a leading underlying cause of cardiovascular disease. The study of adults with obesity but not diabetes is by researchers from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and is presented at this year’s Annual Meeting of The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), Vienna ...

Guideline development and inclusiveness The guideline was developed in line with internationally recognised standards, including the GRADE methodology and the RIGHT reporting statement, and reflects the EASD’s newly established Standard Operating Procedures for guideline development. Importantly, people with lived experience of type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes were active members of the Guideline Development Panel from the outset. Their contributions helped shape the clinical questions, interpretation of evidence, and formulation of recommendations, ensuring that the final guideline is firmly ...

GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs protect against diabetic retinopathy, a common complication of diabetes that can lead to sight loss, suggests new research being presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Vienna, Austria (15-19 September) and published in the journal Pharmaceutics. GLP-1 drugs such as semaglutide are widely used to treat type 2 diabetes and obesity.  They do this by mimicking the action of GLP-1, a hormone that helps the body make more insulin when needed, slows down digestion, curbs appetite and increases feelings of fullness. Many tissues around the body have GLP-1 receptors (proteins ...

New research presented at the Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Vienna, Austria (Sept 15-19) and simultaneously published in NEJM shows that daily treatment with the new once-daily GLP-1 agonist orforglipron results in substantial weight loss in people living with obesity that do not have type 2 diabetes. The study is by Dr Sean Wharton, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada and Wharton Weight Management Clinic, Burlington, ON, Canada, and colleagues. The study is sponsored by Eli Lilly, the manufacturer of orforglipron.  Orforglipron is a small-molecule, ...

URBANA, Ill. – Genes are the building blocks of life, and the genetic code provides the instructions for the complex processes that make organisms function. But how and why did it come to be the way it is? A recent study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign sheds new light on the origin and evolution of the genetic code, providing valuable insights for genetic engineering and bioinformatics. “We find the origin of the genetic code mysteriously linked to the dipeptide composition of a proteome, the collective of proteins in an organism,” said corresponding author Gustavo Caetano-Anollés, professor in the Department ...

Key points State and local officials in Florida maintain hundreds coops with what are referred to as sentinel chickens, which act as an early alarm system for the presence of mosquito-borne illnesses in an area. This alarm system just got an upgrade. An interdisciplinary team of experts, including a zoonotic disease specialist, a museum data scientist and a salamander biologist, have combined their skills and created a statistical model that accurately predicts the activity of West Nile virus in an area up to six months in advance. The model was trained using two decades of sentinel chicken data. The original data files ...

A new study illuminates how some areas of the country have been hit much harder than others by the fentanyl epidemic, which took more than 70,800 lives in 2022 alone. The research calls attention to a need for focused, coordinated efforts to prevent overdose deaths in the places where deaths from the opioid are rampant, said lead author Thomas Wickizer, a professor emeritus in The Ohio State University College of Public Health. The study appears in the journal Health Affairs Scholar. “We can look at this map and see there are certain areas which are experiencing this at an extremely dire rate, and energy and resources, including financial investments, should ...

One of the main factors driving prices in pharmaceuticals, such as cholesterol-lowering drugs and antibiotics, is the cost of production and materials. Researchers at the University of Maine Forest Bioproducts Research Institute (FBRI) have discovered a sustainable method to produce the key ingredient in a broad range of pharmaceuticals, which could help address high prescription drug costs in the U.S.  Among some of the most expensive medications are those that require a chiral center  ― a property in which a molecule cannot be superimposed with its mirror image, like right and ...

Aging, neurological diseases and our bodies’ stress response are all linked to the tiny power plants inside each cell known as mitochondria. To function properly, mitochondria must first read instructions from their DNA and then copy it over into mRNA in a process called transcription. Now, researchers at Thomas Jefferson University have reconstructed transcription in human mitochondria in unprecedented detail. The findings, published in Molecular Cell, show how the molecular machinery works and reveal potential drug targets for mitochondrial diseases. “When we understand ...

In a new study conducted at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, researchers from the John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) have shown that the loss of a key male fertility gene leads to infertility and changes expression of hundreds of other important genes. The study was led by Professor Dr. Monika Ward from the Department of Anatomy, Biochemistry & Physiology and the Yanagimachi Institute for Biogenesis Research (YIBR). The team has been investigating a zinc finger Y-encoded gene called Zfy. This gene, encoded on Y chromosome in both mice and humans, is considered a male fertility factor. In mice, Zfy is present as two copies, Zfy1 and Zfy2. The researchers ...

AMHERST, Mass. — One of the biggest obstacles on the road to the low-carbon energy future is caused by the rare-earth element lithium, a critical component for the batteries that can store the abundant and sustainable energy from renewable sources. The element occurs naturally as a salt in briny oases, called salares, in some of the world’s harshest environments, including the “Lithium Triangle” high in South America’s arid Altiplano. Mining lithium has the potential to destabilize already sensitive environments that are host to rare flora and fauna, ...

New research has shown how harmful gambling is clearly linked to a marked and long-lasting increase in suicide attempts among young people in the UK. The study, by researchers at the University of Bristol, found that compared to someone who experiences no gambling harms, problem gamblers face triple the suicide risk one year later, and quadruple the risk four years on. Researchers analysed data from 2,801 people in the renowned Children of the 90s study, which has followed the health and development of 14,000 pregnant women and their families since the early nineties, and which continues ...

Catalysts play an indispensable role in modern manufacturing. More than 80% of all manufactured products, from pharmaceuticals to plastics, rely on catalytic processes at some stage of production. Transition metals, in particular, stand out as highly effective catalysts because their partially filled d-orbitals allow them to easily exchange electrons with other molecules. This very property, however, makes them challenging to model accurately, requiring precise descriptions of their electronic structure. Designing efficient transition-metal catalysts ...

When Rutgers theoretical astrophysicist Charles Keeton first saw an unusual picture shared by his colleague, he was intrigued. “Have you ever seen an Einstein Cross with an image in the middle?” his colleague Andrew Baker asked, referring to a rarely seen cosmic configuration. Keeton hadn’t. The implications were enormous. “I said, well, that’s not supposed to happen,” said Keeton, the Vice Provost for Experiential Learning at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. “You can’t get a fifth image in the center unless something unusual is going on with the mass that’s bending the light.” An ...