Researchers have developed a new class of nontoxic, biodegradable solid lubricants that can be used to facilitate seed dispersal using modern farming equipment, with the goal of replacing existing lubricants that pose human and environmental toxicity concerns. The researchers have also developed an analytical model that can be used to evaluate candidate materials for future lubricant technologies. Modern farming makes use of various machines to accurately and efficiently plant seeds in the ground. However, it can be difficult to prevent the seeds from jamming in these machines. To keep the seeds flowing smoothly, farmers use solid lubricants that prevent the seeds ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7, 2025 – Cement is one of the most-used materials in the world, and one of the highest emitters of global CO2 emissions. As demand for cement continues to grow, researchers are looking for alternatives to help reduce its environmental impacts. One alternative could be silicon carbide, an inert substance used as a grit in gemstone polishing. It’s used across the industry at every level of processing, including in hobbyist rock tumblers and industrial-scale saws, grinders, sanding belts, and polishing wheels. Large amounts of silicon carbide ...

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study of primary care patients in a single health system, there were significant disparities in the responsiveness of primary care teams to asynchronous patient-portal messages by race and ethnicity, insurance type, and language. These were partially attributable to slower response times at practices that treat underserved patients. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Lisa S. Rotenstein, MD, MBA, MSc, email lisa.rotenstein@ucsf.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our ...

About The Study: This cross-sectional study aligns with the reported prevalence of developmental coordination disorder and reinforces concerns about under-recognition. None of the parents of children with substantial motor difficulties reported awareness, underscoring the value of structured, objective screening. Unlike earlier studies that focused on older children, this study offers a systematic, scalable approach for early identification in preschoolers that supports timely referral to clinicians for formal diagnosis. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The genetic roots of a disease or disorder do not always grow into clear cut, easily diagnosed clinical features. Even if a parent and child have the same genetic marker implicated in an outcome, such as autism, only one may present clinically or they may both present with wildly different features. That’s because a single gene does not fully explain the cause for a disease or its clinical features, according to an international team led by researchers from Penn State. ...

Current battery management systems might report a car is 40% charged but drivers have to guess whether they can go 100 kilometers over hills with the heater running. Engineers at the University of California, Riverside want to take the guesswork out of it. They’ve developed a new diagnostic metric called the State of Mission, or SOM, designed to answer a practical question: Can this battery, in its current state, safely and successfully power a specific task? SOM uses both battery data and environmental factors like traffic patterns, elevation changes, or ambient temperature to generate real-time, task-specific predictions. “SOM fills that gap,” said Mihri Ozkan, a ...

“The findings highlight miRNA-145-5p and miRNA-27b-3p as potential therapeutic targets to address adipose tissue defects and premature aging in HGPS.” BUFFALO, NY — October 7, 2025 — A new research paper was published in Volume 17, Issue 9 of Aging-US on August 27, 2025, titled, “Deregulated miR-145 and miR-27b in Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome: implications for adipogenesis.” In this study, led by first author Felix Quirin Fenzl and corresponding author Karima Djabali from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), researchers identified ...

Crosswalk Confusion: MA Drivers Flummoxed by Pedestrian Hybrid Beacons, find UMass Amherst Researchers   Among other findings, nearly a quarter of drivers run through the red light.   AMHERST, Mass. — Stopping early, failing to stop or rolling through—new research from University of Massachusetts Amherst reveals that more awareness of the rules of the road around this crosswalk design is necessary. Published in Transportation Research Record, the study looked at how Massachusetts drivers behave at pedestrian hybrid beacons, a type of crosswalk device increasingly found at mid-block crosswalks where there ...

Heart disease mortality is on the rise in California, accelerated by socioeconomic disparities that disproportionately impact marginalized communities, according to a study being presented at ACC Quality Summit 2025 taking place October 14 – 16 in Denver. It’s crucial to align prevention with equity and implement data-driven, community-focused interventions that address this heightened cardiovascular burden in low-income communities, the authors said. “By using state and federal data, I wanted to identify which risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and smoking remain inadequately addressed ...

WASHINGTON—The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions (SCAI) has published a comprehensive roadmap that details the use of intracardiac echocardiography (ICE) to guide structural heart disease (SHD) interventions for clinicians. ICE represents a significant departure from the traditional reliance on transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) by providing clinicians with real-time, high-resolution imaging from inside the heart without the need for general anesthesia.   Published in JSCAI, “SCAI Position Statement on Intracardiac Echocardiography to Guide Structural Heart Disease Interventions” ...

New research finds that “man’s best friend” may help slow biological aging in women. This groundbreaking study, focused on female veterans in the United States, is among the first to examine the impact of working with service dogs on this often-overlooked population. By measuring biological indicators of stress, the researchers have uncovered a key insight: the way stress is felt emotionally doesn’t always reflect how it affects the body at a cellular level. While women have served in the U.S. military for generations, ...

A study finds that a representative sample of people given wearable data collection devices provides more equitable and accurate health data than larger convenience samples of people who already own wearable devices. Leveraging the smartwatches and other data-logging wearables that people already have is a tempting way to gather data, but such groups overrepresent the wealthy, urban, White, and fit people who tend to buy these products. Ritika Chaturvedi and colleagues recruited 1,038 participants for American Life in Realtime (ALiR), a longitudinal health study that provided Fitbits ...

High-growth firms (HGFs) refer to businesses that achieve rapid growth in terms of employees or revenue. Based on the established definition, HGFs are businesses with at least 10 employees and annual growth rates of 20% or more, observed over a period of three years. This three-year span is considered the high-growth (HG) period of the company. Even though this growth is often short-lived and difficult to sustain, it plays a significant role in driving economic dynamism. Hence, entrepreneurship-related research often focuses on the growth ...

Work engagement is a positive and persistent state of mind related to one’s work. It is characterized by high energy and mental resilience (vigor), enthusiasm and involvement (dedication), and complete concentration in the task at hand (absorption). Engaged workers are not merely more productive; they are more likely to be proactive, creative, and less susceptible to burnout. Most importantly, work engagement has been consistently linked to many health benefits and overall well-being. Despite its relevance for both organizations and workers alike, there aren’t many scientifically proven ...

CLEVELAND—Even as autumn days grow shorter, a warming climate means Ohio winters aren't as cold as they were just a few decades ago, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data. This increasing mismatch between hours of daylight and temperature could spell trouble for animals that thrive by relying on seasonal cues to prepare their bodies for winter, according to new research from Case Western Reserve University. Scientists studying gray tree frogs—a species that survives freezing temperatures by storing “antifreeze” compounds in their bodies—have discovered that these amphibians naturally begin to prepare for winter by responding ...

Seattle, WASH.—October 7, 2025—In a powerful fusion of AI and neuroscience, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Allen Institute designed an AI model that has created one of the most detailed maps of the mouse brain to date, featuring 1,300 regions/subregions. This new map includes previously uncharted subregions of the brain, opening new avenues for neuroscience exploration. The findings were published today in Nature Communications. They offer an unprecedented level of detail and advance our understanding of the brain by allowing researchers ...

AI and omics unlock personalized drugs and RNA therapies for heart disease  AI, omics, and systems biology can now help scientists design targeted drugs for cardiovascular disease pathways once thought “untreatable.”   A new article published in Frontiers in Science says these tools could transform heart drug development and save lives—but that global, equitable health policy leadership is urgently needed.  Despite major advances in cardiovascular care, heart disease remains the world’s leading cause of death. This is partly because cardiovascular medicine still largely relies on broad-brush ...

The June 2023 heatwave in northern European seas was “unprecedented but not unexpected”, new research shows. During the heatwave, temperatures in the shallow seas around the UK (including the North Sea and Celtic Sea) reached 2.9°C above the June average for 16 days. While unprecedented since observations began, the study warns that rapid climate change means there is now about a 10% chance of a marine heatwave of this scale occurring each year. The June 2023 marine heatwave significantly disrupted phytoplankton blooms. Although its full impact ...

In a significant step towards improving road safety, Johns Hopkins University researchers have developed an A.I.-based based tool that can identify the risk factors contributing to car crashes across the United States and to accurately predict future incidents.   The tool, called SafeTraffic Copilot, aims to provide experts with both crash analyses and crash predictions to reduce the rising number of fatalities and injuries that happen on U.S. roads each year.  The work, led by Johns Hopkins ...

A new drug combination could significantly delay the progression of a life-threatening form of prostate cancer in men with specific genetic mutations, finds a major international trial led by UCL researchers. The Phase III AMPLITUDE trial, published in Nature Medicine, tested the addition of niraparib, a type of targeted cancer drug known as a PARP inhibitor1, to the standard treatment of abiraterone acetate and prednisone (AAP).2 The study focused on patients diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer where cells have spread to other parts of the body, who were starting their first ...

LOS ANGELES — Scientists at City of Hope®, one of the largest and most advanced cancer research and treatment organizations in the U.S., and a leading research center for diabetes and other life-threatening illnesses, have uncovered a gene called SMOC1 that plays a surprising role in the development of type 2 diabetes (T2D) by converting pancreatic cells that normally produce insulin into those that increase blood sugar.   The findings, published in Nature Communications, identify an important new therapeutic target for T2D and ...

A few years ago, researchers in Michal Lipson’s lab noticed something remarkable.  They were working on a project to improve LiDAR, a technology that uses lightwaves to measure distance. The lab was designing high-power chips that could produce brighter beams of light.  “As we sent more and more power through the chip, we noticed that it was creating what we call a frequency comb,” says Andres Gil-Molina, a former postdoctoral researcher in Lipson’s lab.  A frequency comb is a special type of light that contains many colors lined up next to each other in an orderly pattern, kind of like ...

Survey of 166 international experts highlights concerns about protecting human and wildlife health from environmental pollutants Less than a third of industry scientists support including behavioural tests in chemical safety assessments, compared to 80 per cent of academics and 91 per cent of government scientists Despite almost all scientists (97 per cent) agreeing that chemicals can affect wildlife behaviour, most testing is done by universities rather than chemical companies, leaving gaps ...

Cells all require the transport of materials to maintain their function. In nerve cells, a tiny motor made of protein called KIF1A is responsible for that. Mutations in this protein can lead to neurological disorders, including difficulties in walking, intellectual impairment and nerve degradation. It’s known that mutations in KIF1A also result in a weakened motor performance, but this has been difficult to measure so far. Researchers including those from the University of Tokyo and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan have measured changes in the force of KIF1A using a nanospring, a tiny, coiled structure, ...

A unique collaboration, the Elsevier Foundation and RIKEN, Japan’s premier research institute, have released “Envisioning Futures: Women’s Leadership and Gender Equity in Japanese Research,” a comprehensive report that shines a spotlight on the journeys, achievements and challenges faced by women research leaders in Japan. The report blends data-driven analysis with compelling personal narratives, offering a timely roadmap for institutional change and a call to action for the advancement of women in science and innovation. The report shows that despite Japan’s global reputation for technological ...