The parasite that may already live in your brain can infect the very immune cells trying to destroy it, but new UVA Health research reveals how our bodies keep it under control.   The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, is potentially deadly. It infects warm-blooded animals, but it’s typically passed to people by cats or by consuming contaminated produce or undercooked meat. Once it’s made its way inside you, the parasite spreads throughout your body and takes up permanent residence in your brain. It’s estimated about a third of all people around the world have the parasite, yet, amazingly, few ever have symptoms. ...

“Here we propose the concept of infection-driven senescence (IDS) to describe the phenomenon in which microbial agents, beyond viruses, can trigger cellular senescence in host cells.” BUFFALO, NY — January 7, 2026 — A new meeting report was published in Volume 17, Issue 12 of Aging-US on December 23, 2025, titled “Cellular senescence meets infection: highlights from the 10th annual International Cell Senescence Association (ICSA) conference, Rome 2025.” Led by Stefanie Deinhardt-Emmer ...

Researchers from China University of Petroleum (East China), in collaboration with international partners, have reported a comprehensive review of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques integrated with density functional theory (DFT) to accelerate materials discovery, property prediction, and rational design. The work outlines how AI–DFT coupling improves computational efficiency and enables a shift from traditional trial-and-error approaches toward intelligent, data-driven materials innovation. Materials ...

Driven by the global wave of informatization, the real-time transmission, efficient processing, and intelligent analysis of massive data have become both the core engine propelling frontier technologies like artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, and augmented reality, and a critical bottleneck currently faced. As the most intuitive and information-rich carrier in communication, the processing efficiency of images directly determines the "comprehensibility" and ultimate "decision-making value" of visual information. However, traditional electronic computing architectures are gradually approaching their physical limits, encountering severe ...

NEW YORK, January 7, 2026 — The City University of New York Graduate Center (CUNY Graduate Center) has received a grant totaling more than $1 million from Google.org to support the work of Empire AI, a statewide consortium of 11 public and private academic institutions focused on advancing the effective integration of artificial intelligence into higher education. The award—which is the second such source of funding that the CUNY Graduate Center has received from Google.org to support AI literacy in higher education—will further the reach of a comprehensive, multi-institution assessment of how best to prepare ...

NEW YORK, NY (January 7, 2026) – The National Institutes of Health has awarded the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai an $8.5 million renewal grant to continue groundbreaking work aimed at understanding and improving long-term outcomes for children with congenital heart disease—the most common type of birth defect in the United States. The project, led by Brett Anderson, MD, MBA, MS, Director of the Center for Child Health Services Research in The Mindich Child Health and Development Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine, expands upon the earlier work of Dr. Anderson and her team, who created the first statewide data network ...

CLEVELAND—Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed a treatment for advanced prostate cancer that could eliminate a side effect so debilitating that patients often refuse the life-saving therapy. In a study recently published in Molecular Imaging and Biology, the researchers describe how the breakthrough treatment targets prostate cancer cells as effectively as current therapies, but with dramatically reduced damage to salivary glands. The result: This treatment eliminates the severe ...

LOS ANGELES — Keck Medicine of USC has named Christian Pass chief financial officer, effective Jan. 12, 2026.   “Pass has more than 30 years of health care finance leadership experience with a proven history of cultivating high-performing teams and guiding organizations through critical financial and operational transformations,” said Rod Hanners, CEO of Keck Medicine. “He brings tremendous knowledge and skill to this position that will support the continued growth of the health system.”   As ...

PULLMAN, Wash — A low-cost, simple robotic apple picker arm developed by Washington State University researchers may someday help with fruit picking and other farm chores. The inflatable arm can see an apple, then extend and retract to pick a piece of fruit in about 25 seconds. Weighing less than 50 pounds with its metal base, the two-foot-long arm is made of a soft fabric filled with air that is similar to, but stronger than, the wacky inflatable arm-flailing tube men that are used in outdoor advertising. The researchers in WSU’s School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering recently published their work on the robotic arm in the journal, Smart Agricultural ...

HOUSTON and BOSTON, JANUARY 7, 2026 ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and SOPHiA GENETICS today announced a strategic collaboration that unites SOPHiA GENETICS’ AI-powered analytics with MD Anderson’s clinical and scientific expertise to accelerate data-driven cancer care through new tools that can accurately analyze, interpret and translate diagnostic results into clinical practice. As part of the collaboration, MD Anderson and SOPHiA GENETICS are launching a series of research and development programs and co-developing an advanced next-generation sequencing oncology test. Built ...

When oily plastic and glass, as well as rubber, washed onto Florida beaches in 2020, a community group shared the mystery online, attracting scientists’ attention. Working together, they linked the black residue-coated debris to a 2019 oil slick along Brazil’s coastline. Using ocean current models and chemical analysis, the team explains in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology how some of the oily material managed to travel over 5,200 miles (8,500 kilometers) by clinging to debris. “The research findings of our study would not have been possible without the dedication of the Friends of Palm Beach,” says Bryan James, lead author ...

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is among the most aggressive types of breast cancer, lacking estrogen, progesterone, and HER2 receptors and thus relying primarily on cytotoxic chemotherapy. Despite initial responsiveness, many patients experience rapid relapse driven by cancer stem-like cells that survive chemotherapy and seed metastasis. Addressing this unmet need, researchers led by Professor Jae Hong Seo from Korea University have discovered that pitavastatin, a widely prescribed cholesterol-lowering drug, can directly inhibit the anti-apoptotic protein Mcl-1, a key driver ...

The origin of life on Earth becomes even more fascinating and complex as we peer into the mysterious world of viruses. Said to have existed since living cells first appeared, these microscopic entities differ greatly from other forms of life. Composed of only genetic material, they lack the ability to synthesize proteins, which are essential for carrying out cellular activity and, ultimately, for life by itself. As a result, scientists have long sought to unravel virus origins, how they evolve, and how they fit into the conventional tree of life. Professor Masaharu Takemura from ...

Cells have a remarkable housekeeping system: proteins that are no longer needed, defective, or potentially harmful are labeled with a molecular “tag” and dismantled in the cellular recycling machinery. This process, known as the ubiquitin-proteasome system, is crucial for health and survival. Now, an international team of scientists led by CeMM, AITHYRA and the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund has identified a new class of small molecules that harness this natural system to accelerate the removal of an immune-modulating enzyme called IDO1. The findings, published in Nature Chemistry (DOI: 10.1038/s41557-025-02021-5), introduce a new concept in ...

Research Highlights: Light physical activity was associated with lower risk of death for adults in stages 2, 3 and 4 of cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic (CKM) syndrome, a health condition that includes heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes and obesity. A one hour increase in light physical activity each day was associated with a 14% to 20% lower risk of death. The association between light physical activity and lower risk of death was most pronounced for people with advanced CKM syndrome. Embargoed until 4 a.m. CT/5 a.m. ET Wednesday, January 7, 2026 DALLAS, ...

WASHINGTON – Researchers have developed a new computational approach that uncovers possible drugs for specific cellular targets for treating glioblastoma, a lethal brain tumor.  This approach enabled them to predict more effective treatment combinations to fight the disease on an individualized basis. This laboratory and computational research effort was led by scientists at Georgetown’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.  “The cellular targets we identified could be key to effectively fighting a disease that has seen only one new targeted drug approved in the last two decades,” says Nagi G. Ayad, PhD, senior author, associate director for translational ...

An evidence-based web-app helped children with epilepsy to fall asleep on average 16.5 minutes earlier.   A new UK-wide clinical trial led by the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London has evaluated a self-guided behavioural sleep programme for the parents of children with epilepsy.  The programme, which is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, is called COSI (CASTLE Online Sleep Intervention) and consists of online videos and written guides based on clinically informed sleep intervention behavioural techniques.  “Sleep problems affect more than 80% ...

Higher consumption of food preservatives, widely used in industrially processed foods and beverages to extend their shelf life, has been linked to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. These findings are the result of work carried out by researchers from Inserm, INRAE, Sorbonne Paris Nord University, Paris Cité University and Cnam, within the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team (CRESS-EREN). They are based on health and dietary data from more than 100,000 adults participating in the NutriNet-Santé cohort study, and ...

For the first time, an international research team led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has recorded a tiny mechanical “twitch” in living human and rodent eyes at the exact moment a rod photoreceptor detects light. The research breakthrough could provide a new, non-invasive way to assess retinal health and enable earlier diagnosis of blinding eye diseases, according to the research team, which involves multiple institutions including the University of Washington (UW), Singapore Eye Research Institute (SERI), and Duke-NUS Medical School. Rod photoreceptors ...

A new study co-led by the University of Oxford has found that global aviation emissions could be reduced by 50-75% through combining three strategies to boost efficiency: flying only the most fuel-efficient aircraft, switching to all-economy layouts, and increasing passenger loads. Crucially, the study shows that around a 11% reduction in global aviation emissions is achievable immediately, by using the most efficient aircraft that airlines already have more strategically on routes they already fly. Published today (7 January) in Nature Communications Earth ...

Waiting in an airport for a connecting flight is often tedious. A new study by MIT researchers shows it’s bad for business, too.  Looking at air travel and multinational firm formation over a 30-year period, the researchers measured how much a strong network of airline connections matters for economic growth. They found that multinational firms are more likely to locate their subsidiaries in cities they can reach with direct flights, and that this trend is particularly pronounced in knowledge industries. The degree ...

Metabolic diseases have reached epidemic proportions in our society, driven by a sedentary lifestyle coupled with circadian misalignment - a desynchrony between our intrinsic biological clocks and environmental signals. Furthermore, we spend almost 90% of our time indoors, with a very limited exposure to natural daylight. To investigate the specific role of daylight in human metabolism, particularly in glycaemic control, researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG), Maastricht University, and the German Diabetes Center ...

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have discovered that the nervous system's own immune cells help protect the spinal cord from age-related damage. The results, which may contribute to new knowledge about how certain neurological diseases arise, are published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.  Ageing affects the entire body, including the spinal cord, which transmits signals between the brain and the rest of the body. The negative consequences of ageing are well known, but could there be positive, protective mechanisms activated?  The researchers ...

Bethesda, MD (Dec. 26, 2025) — A new update from the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) is calling for greater caution before surgery is considered for patients with refractory constipation, a severe, chronic form of constipation that does not respond to standard treatments.  Chronic constipation affects 8–12% of Americans. While most patients improve with conventional treatments, a small but challenging subset remains refractory. These patients often undergo extensive ...

A research team led by Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have presented a new way to produce hydrogen gas without the scarce and expensive metal platinum. Using sunlight, water and tiny particles of electrically conductive plastic, the researchers show how the hydrogen can be produced efficiently, sustainably and at low cost. Hydrogen plays a key role in the global pursuit for renewable energy. Although its use produces only water as a by-product, significant challenges remain before hydrogen can be produced both on a large-scale and in an environmentally friendly way. A major challenge is the use of the metal platinum as a co-catalyst when sunlight and water ...