A fingerprint has been found in the tars used to build the oldest known wooden plank boat in Scandinavia, which provides a direct link to the seaborne raiders who used the boat over 2,000 years ago. By analysing the tar itself, Lund University researchers are closer to solving the long-standing mystery of where the attackers in the boat came from. WATCH VIDEO: Archaeologist describes moment he discovered ancient fingerprint In the 4th century BC, an armada of boats attacked the island of Als off the coast ...

SAN ANTONIO — December 10, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) scientists are collaborating with researchers at UT San Antonio to study how space weathering can alter the lunar surface materials to help interpret regional and global far-ultraviolet (FUV) maps of the Moon. The study looked at how such weathering influences the FUV spectral response. By analyzing just a few grains of returned samples from the Apollo missions, the team gained important insights into the evolution of the lunar surface shaped by solar wind and micrometeoroid impacts over eons, said SwRI’s Dr. Ujjwal Raut. Using modern instruments and investigative techniques, the team gleaned ...

The cosmos has served up a gift for a group of scientists who have been searching for one of the most elusive phenomena in the night sky. Their study, presented today in Science Advances, reports on the very first observations of a swirling vortex in spacetime caused by a rapidly rotating black hole. The process, known as Lense-Thirring precession or frame-dragging, describes how black holes twist the spacetime that surrounds them, dragging nearby objects like stars and wobbling their orbits along the way. The team, led by the National Astronomical Observatories at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and supported by Cardiff University, examined AT2020afhd, a tidal disruption event (TDE) ...

ST. LOUIS, MO., December 10, 2025 -  Andrea Eveland, Ph.D., Principal Investigator and member at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, will lead a multi-institutional project to deepen the understanding of sorghum, a versatile bioenergy crop, and its response to environmental challenges. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program supports the three-year $2.5 million project for Genomics-Enabled Understanding and Advancing Knowledge on Plant Gene Function.  Tailoring crop productivity to variable growing environments, including resilience to and recovery from weather episodes such as flash droughts, is critical ...

December 10, 2025 – A new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior (JNEB), published by Elsevier, evaluated a 12-week home-delivered food and education program among adults in Northwest Arkansas. Participants received diabetes-appropriate grocery boxes along with diabetes self-management education materials in English, Spanish, or Marshallese. The intervention was designed and implemented by researchers at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Institute for Community Health Innovation (ICHI) using ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA - In everyday conversation, it’s critical to understand not just the words that are spoken, but the context in which they are said. If it’s pouring rain and someone remarks on the “lovely weather,” you won’t understand their meaning unless you realize that they’re being sarcastic. Making inferences about what someone really means when it doesn’t match the literal meaning of their words is a skill known as pragmatic language ability. This includes not only interpreting sarcasm but also understanding metaphors and white lies, among many other conversational subtleties. “Pragmatics is trying to reason ...

Plate tectonics can be visualized like large moving parts on the earth’s crust. The constant movement of the plates causes major stresses, and, as a result, deformations or earthquakes occur on the plate boundaries. “Every year the Eurasian and African plates are moving 4-6 mm closer to each other. The boundary between the plates around the Atlantic Ocean and Algeria is very clear, whereas in the south of the Iberian Peninsula the boundary is much more blurred and complex,” explained Asier ...

SAN ANTONIO — December 10, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Trinity University will study Thermus thermophilus, a thermal bacterium with highly stable proteins, to advance scientific understanding of stability mechanisms that could pave the way for advanced treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, ALS and cancer. The project is supported by SwRI and Trinity through a new grant program designed to encourage collaborative research. Thermus thermophilus is extremely heat tolerant and produces thermostable enzymes and proteins. Originally isolated ...

Using lung cancer biospecimens from the Sherlock-Lung study, an international team led by National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers, identified key factors that drive tumor evolution and influence outcomes. Overall, the findings, published Dec. 10, 2025, in Nature, describe a previously unknown origin of some aggressive lung cancers.    From whole-genome sequencing of more than 1,000 lung cancer cases, the team focused on 542 lung adenocarcinomas with diverse clonal architectures. Among them were a collection of aggressive tumors enriched with ...

A single signaling pathway controls whether immune cells attack or befriend cells they encounter while patrolling our bodies, researchers at Stanford Medicine have found. Manipulating this pathway could allow researchers to toggle the immune response to treat many types of diseases, including cancers, autoimmune disorders and those that require organ transplants. The research, which was conducted in mice, illuminates the mechanism of an important immune function that prevents inappropriate attacks on healthy tissue. Called peripheral immune tolerance, ...

Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine have uncovered a surprising new function for immune cells: preventing excess weight loss. In a recent study, the team demonstrates that when the body is exposed to physiological stressors, such as low temperature, neutrophils — a type of white blood cell — infiltrate fat tissue and release signals that slow fat breakdown. The researchers hypothesize that this mechanism helped our early human ancestors preserve vital energy stores when food ...

About The Study: In this cohort of patients with type 2 diabetes, glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonist (GLP-1 RA) use was associated with significantly lower risks of vertebral compression fractures and related surgical interventions compared with nonuse, suggesting bone protective benefits of GLP-1 RAs.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Yu Chang, MD, email yuchang111235@gmail.com. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamasurg.2025.5372) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including ...

About The Study: Consistent with prior work, this study found low adherence (7.3%) to cervical cancer screening guidelines among the commercially insured U.S. population despite stable coverage, likely reflecting guideline confusion among patients, clinicians, and health systems. More evidence-based strategies are needed to expand capacity for guideline-adherent screening, reduce over-screening, and align payer and health system incentives, particularly as new modalities, such as human papillomavirus (HPV) self-sampling, emerge. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Michelle B. Shin, PhD, MPH, MSN, RN, email mbyshin@uw.edu. To access the embargoed ...

Blocking reproduction increases lifespan in both males and females of many different species, a new international University of Otago – Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka-led study has found.   Using data from mammals housed in zoos and aquariums worldwide, the researchers found ongoing hormonal contraception and permanent surgical sterilisation were associated with increased life expectancy.   Lead author Associate Professor Mike Garratt, of Otago’s School of Biomedical Sciences, says that while the relative increase in lifespan was similar across sexes, the cause ...

Last year, a UCLA-led team accomplished something scientists have been trying to do for 50 years. They made radioactive thorium nuclei absorb and emit photons like electrons in an atom do. This achievement was the realization of a dream they first proposed in 2008 and is expected to usher in a new era of high-precision timekeeping, with a dramatic impact on navigation. It could also lead to new scientific discoveries that rewrite some of the fundamental constants of nature.    But there’s a catch. The isotope of thorium they need, thorium-229, can only ...

Older people with a history of chronic kidney disease or conditions affecting blood flow to the brain such as stroke face about double the risk for developing neuroinvasive disease that can lead to paralysis and death following infection with West Nile virus, new UCLA research finds. The study, to be published December 10 in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Network Open, also suggests that other factors such as male sex, hematologic malignancy, immune suppressants, hypertension, alcohol-related disorders and multiple sclerosis, contribute to the higher risk for developing neuroinvasive disease, which occurs when the ...

New immune role discovered for specialized gut cells linked to celiac disease The human small intestine absorbs nutrients while protecting us from potentially harmful microbes. One of the cell types that plays a key role in this protection is the microfold cell, or M cell. These cells detect bacteria and other foreign particles and pass them on to immune cells. Until now, most knowledge about M cells came from studies in mice. In a new study published in Nature, researchers from the Clevers Group show that human M cells have additional immune functions. They do not only transport antigens, ...

The Amazon rainforest is slowly transitioning to a new, hotter climate with more frequent and intense droughts — conditions that haven’t been seen on Earth for tens of millions of years. The conclusions come from a new study led by the University of California, Berkeley, involving a large team of national and international scientists. The researchers predict that, if society continues to emit high levels of greenhouse gases, “hot drought” conditions could become more prevalent across the Amazon ...

Minimally invasive tissue penetration techniques are increasingly demanded in biomedical applications such as neural probe implantation, ophthalmic surgery, and single-cell puncture. These procedures require highly precise penetration of biological membranes with minimal tissue damage, often relying on real-time force feedback to control insertion forces. Traditional methods typically use sharp micro-tools or robotic systems, which can lead to rapid insertion speeds, increasing tissue damage and inflammation risks. Additionally, the heterogeneous nature of biological tissues complicates the ability to adjust to varying mechanical properties. ...

A new University of California San Diego School of Medicine study offers a unified biological model to explain how genetic predispositions and environmental exposures converge to cause autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The study, published in Mitochondrion on Dec. 9, 2025, describes a “three-hit” metabolic signaling model that reframes autism as a treatable disorder of cellular communication and energy metabolism. The model also suggests that as many as half of all autism cases might be prevented or reduced with ...

European beech trees, a key species in central Europe’s forests, are showing remarkable adaptability underground. A new study published in Forest Ecosystems reveals that these trees adjust the structure and growth of their fine roots according to seasonal soil moisture fluctuations, rather than the long-term wetness or dryness of their sites. The research team, led by scientists from Dresden University of Technology (TUD), Germany, monitored beech trees across three near-natural forest sites in Saxony, Germany, representing wet, intermediate, and dry soil conditions. Over a 30-month period, the team collected high-resolution data on fine root biomass, growth, ...

A new study on intensively managed loblolly pine plantations in the southern United States reveals how trees compete for light and nutrients, and how thinning reshapes that competition. The findings, published in Forest Ecosystems, provide new insight into how forest management affects both tree growth patterns and overall productivity. Researchers from Zhejiang University and Stephen F. Austin State University tracked 48 plots of loblolly pine across Texas and Louisiana for seven years after mid-rotation thinning. They used two indicators to assess forest structure: the Gini index (GI), which measures differences in tree size, and growth ...

The study, published in Forest Ecosystems, presents a refined update to the 3-PG (Physiological Processes Predicting Growth) model. Its major innovation is adding a carbon storage pool specifically for stem growth, making it possible for the model to account for the “carry-over effect” in which trees use carbohydrates stored from previous years to form new wood, particularly early in the growing season when photosynthesis is low. Including such physiological processes improved simulations in ...

In the fields of radiation detection and X-ray imaging, oil exploration poses more stringent and specific requirements for performance of scintillators. Scintillators have to be operated at temperature higher than 200 ℃, and sometimes they are used in high humidity environment. However, most of existing commercial scintillators, such as Bi4Ge3O12 and CsI:Tl, exhibit inferior thermal stability, which hinders their application in complex environment. Therefore, it is extremely urgent to develop new scintillator materials ...

The rapid advancement of fifth-generation (5G) communication and high-power electronic devices has revolutionized modern life, yet it also brings about dual challenges of electromagnetic wave (EMW) pollution and heat accumulation, which severely threaten the stability and service life of integrated components. While hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is a promising candidate for thermal management due to its high thermal conductivity and chemical stability, its inherent electrical insulation and chemical inertness significantly limit its ability to absorb EMWs. Achieving simultaneous high-efficiency EMW absorption and thermal conductivity in a single BN-based ...