Earth scientists have discovered how continents are slowly peeled from beneath, fuelling volcanic activity in an unexpected place: the oceans. The research, led by the University of Southampton, shows how slivers of continents are slowly stripped from below and swept into the oceanic mantle – the hot, mostly solid layer beneath the ocean floor that slowly flows. Here, the continental material fuels volcanic activity for tens of millions of years. The discovery solves a long-standing geological mystery: why many ocean islands far from plate tectonic ...

Many oceanic islands far from active plate tectonic boundaries contain materials that clearly originate from continents, even though they are located in the middle of an oceanic plate. Where do the continental remnants come from? Are they sediments that are recycled when oceanic plates subduct into the mantle? Or do they originate from the depths of the Earth's mantle and are carried upward by hot currents, known as mantle plumes? Both explanations are being discussed, but they fall short. This is because some volcanic regions show little evidence of crustal recycling, while others are too cool to be driven by mantle plumes. Researchers at the University of Southampton and the GFZ Helmholtz ...

The discovery of a new mechanism of resistance to common antibiotics could pave the way for improved treatments for harmful bacterial infections, a study suggests. Targeting this defence mechanism could aid efforts to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR), one of the world’s most urgent health challenges, researchers say. Findings from the study reveal how a repair system inside some bacteria plays a pivotal role in helping them survive commonly-used antibiotics. Many of these drugs work by targeting the production of proteins essential for bacterial growth and survival. Now, researchers from the University of Edinburgh have identified ...

Reversed sex roles: In seahorses, it is the males who carry offspring to term. The females lay their eggs into a special brood pouch on the bellies of the males where they are fertilized by the male’s sperm. In the brood pouches, embryos are provided with nutrients and oxygen from the males' bodies until the males give live birth to small seahorses (viviparity). But how does this work? A German-Chinese research team led by evolutionary biologist Axel Meyer from the University of Konstanz and working in collaboration with Liu Yali and Lin Qiang from the South China Sea ...

Pore-forming proteins are found throughout nature. In humans, they play key roles in immune defense, while in bacteria they often act as toxins that punch holes in cell membranes. These biological pores allow ions and molecules to pass through membranes. Their unique ability to control molecular transport has also made them powerful nanopore tools in biotechnology, for example in DNA sequencing and molecular sensing. Despite their importance and impact on biotechnology, biological nanopores can also ...

A new compound tested at the Miguel Hernández University of Elche (UMH) in Spain shows promising effects in reducing alcohol consumption and motivation to drink in mice, with marked sex-dependent differences in efficacy. Although MCH11 is not yet available for human use, it could pave the way for personalized treatments of alcohol use disorder. The results, published in the journal Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy, stem from four years of work by a team from the Institute of Neurosciences (a joint UMH–CSIC centre), the Institute for Health and Biomedical ...

A new study published in Environmental Research Letters finds that continued growth in artificial intelligence (AI) use across the United States could add approximately 900,000 tonnes of CO₂ annually. This is not a small amount but equates to a relatively minor increase when viewed in the context of nationwide emissions. While AI adoption is expected to boost productivity and economic output, researchers note that its environmental footprint can be seen as relatively modest compared to other industrial activities. The study examined potential AI integration across various sectors, estimating ...

NEW YORK, New York, USA, 11 November 2025 -- Perhaps the most intriguing implication of recent breakthrough research lies in an unexpected connection: the most rigorous mechanistic dissection of rapid antidepressant action identifies adenosine as the critical mediator, yet adenosine receptors are the primary target of caffeine, the world's most widely consumed psychoactive substance. A commentary published today in Brain Medicine by Drs. Julio Licinio and Ma-Li Wong explores this striking convergence. Is this merely coincidence, or ...

Only around 1.1% of the world's population is vegan, but this percentage is growing. For example, in Germany the number of vegans approximately doubled between 2016 and 2020 to 2% of the population, while a 2.4-fold increase between 2023 and 2025 to 4.7% of the population has been reported in the UK. Many people cite health benefits as their reason to go vegan: moving from a typical Western diet to a vegan one can lower the risk of premature mortality from noncommunicable diseases by an estimated 18% to 21%. Another excellent reason is to reduce your ecological footprint. Now, a study in Frontiers in Nutrition has calculated precisely how ...

A group from Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan, led by graduate student Tatsushi Oura and Dr. Hiroyuki Tatekawa, found that treatment using the drug lecanemab to remove amyloid plaques in the brain does not change the waste clearance function in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients in the short term. This suggests that even after treatment, the AD patients’ nerves are already damaged, and the waste clearance function does not recover in the short term. Their findings show the complexity of the disease and the need to address multiple disease-causing pathways simultaneously in the future. Their findings add to the complicated process of unraveling ...

A new setup for social games suggests that when people are given the freedom to tailor their actions to different people in their networks, they become significantly more cooperative, trusting and fair. The international study with Kobe University participation thus argues that many standard experimental setups of cooperation underestimate people’s prosocial potential. Games that are models of social interactions are used in sciences spanning from sociology and anthropology to psychology and economics, giving us very concrete data on how likely it is that people behave in a certain way in certain social contexts. For example, when modeling how people cooperate in social networks, ...

A research team including a scientist of Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Institute of Science Tokyo, Japan, has identified a novel principle in biology that mathematically explains why the growth of organisms slows as nutrients become more abundant—a phenomenon known as “the law of diminishing returns.” Understanding how living organisms grow under various nutritional environments has long been a central question in biology. Across microbes, plants, and animals, growth is shaped by the availability of nutrients, energy, and cellular machinery. While extensive ...

Highlights - A new optical transmission record of 430 Tb/s, surpassing the previous record of 402 Tb/s. - The breakthrough leverages international-standard-compliant, cutoff-shifted optical fibers with a novel approach that triples the capacity of certain spectral regions using spatial-division multiplexing. - This innovation promises to enhance metropolitan networks and inter-datacenter links by offering high throughput with reduced complexity, while utilizing existing optical fiber infrastructure.   Abstract The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: TOKUDA Hideyuki, Ph.D.), together with 11 international ...

Risk prediction tools might help identify patients at the highest risk of overdose and death after a “before medically advised” (BMA) hospital discharge according to new research in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.250492. Patients who leave hospital against the advice of a physician are about twice as likely to die and about 10 times more likely to experience an illicit drug overdose in the first 30 days after leaving hospital. Such BMA discharges are initiated ...

If you are among the 620 million people who lace up their running shoes on a regular basis, chances are that you’re an early riser. Hopefully, you will have got at least eight hours of good sleep the night before, otherwise your risk of injury skyrockets. That’s the finding from a new study led by Professor Jan de Jonge, a work and sports psychologist at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of South Australia. In a survey of 425 recreational runners, Prof de Jonge and his team found that those reporting shorter sleep duration, lower sleep ...

More than half of calories consumed in the United States come from ultra-processed foods (UPFs), items like fast food and packaged snacks that are often high in sodium, sugar and unhealthy fats. In adults, research has clearly linked these foods to type 2 diabetes and other conditions, but few studies have explored their effects among youth. Now, researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of USC have completed one of the first studies to examine the link between UPF consumption and how the body processes glucose, which is ...

Research led by the University of Auckland has cast light on the evolutionary origins of one of nature’s first motors, which developed 3.5 billion to 4 billion years ago to propel bacteria. Scientists have created the most comprehensive picture yet of the evolution of bacterial stators, proteins with roles similar to pistons in a car engine, says Dr Caroline Puente-Lelievre, of the School of Biological Sciences. Stator proteins sit in the bacterial cell wall, transforming charged particles (ions) into torque, creating propulsion for bacteria to swim. Stators likely evolved from ion transporter ...

The evolution of civil and hydraulic engineering spans across historical eras, deeply intertwined with societal, economic, and scientific advancement. Particularly, it mirrors the progress in science and technology. Emerging as the harmonious amalgamation of contemporary information technology and construction, intelligent construction emerges as the prime catalyst propelling the transformation and enhancement of the construction sector, steering it towards modernization. Centered around civil engineering, water management, and intelligent construction, this conference strives to bridge the latest scholarly accomplishments ...

The chemical industry is one of the largest on the planet, essential for supplying us with pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, materials and more. Great care is taken to optimize reagents and conditions for each reaction, striving for efficiency and, increasingly, sustainability. A growing field of synthesis is mechanochemistry, in which reagents are mixed using mechanical force, making for greener reactions with less solvent usage and enabling access to a wide array of essential chemicals. In a typical mechanochemistry setup, the reagents are placed in a jar ...

Mosunetuzumab and polatuzumab combined with axicabtagene ciloleucel induce high complete response rates at day+90 in Relapsed/Refractory large B-cell lymphoma  Dr. Jay Spiegel is the presenting author and all other authors are with Sylvester or the University of Miami. A phase 2 trial of abbreviated fixed-duration (Default 4 Cycles) linvoseltamab immuno-consolidation to deepen responses post newly diagnosed multiple myeloma combination therapy for minimal residual disease positivity (the IMMUNOPLANT Study) ...

New research from Edith Cowan University (ECU) has revealed a striking disconnect between how recreational athletes perceive their health and fitness, and how they feel about their bodies.   The research found that while 69 per cent of recreational athletes that participated in a survey considered themselves healthy and 62 per cent believed they were fit, only 26 per cent reported being satisfied with their body weight and shape.   The findings confirm a concerning trend that athletes, particularly those engaged in regular or structured physical activity, are statistically more likely to experience disordered eating and exercise behaviours ...

Our brains do not react in a fixed, mechanical way like electronic circuits. Even if we see the same scene every day on our commute to work, what we feel - and whether it leaves a lasting impression - depends on our internal state at that moment. For example, your commute may be a blur if you're too tired to pay attention to your surroundings. The 24-hour cycle that humans naturally follow is one of the factors that shapes the brain's internal environment. These internal physiological cycles arise from ...

Scientists have developed a fast, energy-efficient method to create an iron-carbon (Fe/C) catalyst that can remove antibiotic pollutants from both water and soil by using oxygen from the air. The study, published in Sustainable Carbon Materials, introduces a self-heating synthesis approach that could pave the way for greener environmental cleanup technologies. Antibiotic residues such as sulfamethoxazole, commonly found in wastewater and agricultural runoff, are a growing environmental concern. These contaminants persist in the environment and ...

As plastic pollution worsens worldwide, scientists are uncovering a new and unsettling possibility. Tiny airborne fragments of plastic, known as micro- and nanoplastics, may do more than pollute the air we breathe. They could also help viruses linger and travel farther, potentially influencing how respiratory diseases spread. A commentary published in New Contaminants by Mengjie Wu and Huan Zhong of Nanjing University calls attention to the emerging concern that airborne plastics might act as invisible vehicles for viruses. While plastics ...

Scientists at Japan's Institute for Molecular Science have achieved a 1,000-fold enhancement in white-light generation inside water by using non-harmonic two-color femtosecond laser excitation. This previously unexplored approach in liquids unlocks new nonlinear optical pathways, enabling a dramatic boost in supercontinuum generation. The breakthrough lays a foundation for next-generation bioimaging, aqueous-phase spectroscopy, and attosecond science in water. Researchers at the Institute for Molecular ...