Alveolar macrophages are immune cells that live in the tiny air sacs of the lungs. Under normal conditions, these cells act as guardians, keeping the lungs healthy, supporting breathing, and preventing unnecessary immune responses. However, new work led by Prof. Bart Lambrecht and Prof. Martin Guilliams (both VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research) shows that during allergic reactions, these macrophages can undergo a dramatic change. Instead of calming the immune system, they switch into an inflammatory mode that actively fuels allergy-driven lung inflammation. “Alveolar macrophages have long been seen as peacekeepers in the lung,” ...

Women are dramatically more likely than men to suffer from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a chronic condition causing abdominal pain, bloating, and digestive discomfort. Now, scientists at UC San Francisco have discovered why.   Estrogen, the researchers report in Science, activates previously unknown pathways in the colon that can trigger pain and make the female gut more sensitive to certain foods and their breakdown products. When male mice were given estrogen to mimic the levels found in females, their gut pain sensitivity increased to match that of females.   The findings not only explain the female predominance ...

Scientists have created a new family of organic materials that stay conductive in the solid state. The new materials conduct ions equally well as liquids, liquid crystals, and solids, with no steep decrease in ion movement when the salt solidifies. The team’s discovery overturns a long-standing limitation in electrochemistry: that freezing or crystallizing a liquid inevitably slows ion movement. The findings have been published today (18/12/25) in Science. Normally, when liquids solidify, their molecules become locked in place, making it much harder for ions to move and leading to a steep decrease in ionic conductivity. Now, scientists ...

Science has named the seemingly unstoppable growth of renewable energy worldwide as the 2025 Breakthrough of the Year. Since the Industrial Revolution, humanity has relied on fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas for energy. Carbon emissions from these finite resources have greatly contributed to accelerated climate warming. However, 2025 marked a significant shift in this paradigm as renewable energy generated from the Sun and wind began to surpass conventional fossil fuel-based energy production in several domains. This year, global renewable energy, led ...

LLM-assisted manuscripts exhibit more complexity of the written word but are lower in research quality, according to a Policy Article by Keigo Kusumegi, Paul Ginsparg, and colleagues that sought to evaluate the impacts of widespread use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies on scientific production. “As AI systems advance, they will challenge our fundamental assumptions about research quality, scholarly communication, and the nature of intellectual labor,” write the authors. “Science policymakers must consider how to evolve our scientific institutions to accommodate the rapidly changing scientific production process.” Despite ...

Researchers present LightGen – the first all-optical chip capable of performing challenging advanced generative artificial intelligence (AI) tasks at speeds and energy efficiencies orders of magnitude beyond today’s traditional electronic hardware. Large-scale generative AI models can now create text, images, and video with remarkable fidelity. However, these sophisticated tasks require enormous computing power, time, and energy; existing hardware struggles to meet the demands of today’s large models. Photonic computing, which processes information using pulses of laser light instead of electricity, ...

Young star systems are a place of violent collisions. Rocks, comets, asteroids and larger objects bounce off one another and occasionally coalesce, gradually turning the primordial dust and ice of a stellar nebula into planets and moons. The largest of these collisions, however, are expected to be rare over the hundreds of millions of years it takes to form a planetary system — perhaps one every 100,000 years. Now, astronomers have seen the aftermath of two powerful collisions within a 20-year ...

WASHINGTON and DALLAS (Dec. 18, 2025) — The American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association, along with several other leading medical associations, have issued a new guideline for managing congenital heart disease in adults. The guideline was jointly published today in JACC, the flagship journal of the American College of Cardiology, and Circulation, the flagship journal of the American Heart Association.  Congenital heart disease—being born with defects in the heart’s structure—is the most common birth defect. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it affects nearly 1% of births, or about ...

In an unprecedented celestial event, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST) captured the dramatic aftermath of colliding space rocks within a nearby planetary system. When astronomers initially spotted a bright object in the sky, they assumed it was a dust-covered exoplanet, reflecting starlight. But when the “exoplanet” disappeared and a new bright object appeared, the international team of astrophysicists — including Northwestern University’s Jason Wang — realized these were not planets at all. Instead, they were the illuminated remains of a cosmic fender bender. Two distinct, violent collisions generated two luminous clouds of debris in the ...

Exceptional performers drive innovation and help solve humanity's most pressing problems. Societies have a vital interest in the development of top performers in various fields. A recent review in the journal Science suggests that gifted education and talent programs have been based on false premises. For the first time, an international, interdisciplinary research team has collated the development of world-class performers in science, classical music, chess, and sports. Traditional research into giftedness and expertise assumes that the key factors to develop outstanding achievements are early performance (e.g., in a school subject, sport, or in concerts) and corresponding abilities ...

Has a crucial component to the development of human medicine been hiding under our feet? Auburn University Assistant Professor of Entomology Clint Penick and a team of graduate students may have found that ants are far ahead of humans in antibiotic innovation. “In our study, we tested how ants use antibiotic compounds to fight off pathogens and asked why their chemical defenses remain effective over evolutionary time,” Penick said.  “Humans have relied on antibiotics for less than a century, yet many pathogens have already evolved resistance, giving rise to ‘superbugs.’’ Ants, by contrast, have been using antibiotics for tens ...

Historians and archaeologists are constantly looking for new ways to bring the past to life. And in museums, audiovisual and digital solutions have long been a part of the presentation of cultural heritage. However, until now, developing immersive digital content about the past has been very expensive and has required specialized labour. At the same time, it has been difficult to update the content if needed. For this reason, only large commercial game developers have been successful in making (pre-)history-based video games. Popular examples are Assassin's Creed and Civilisation, which are great, but don't always place ...

Unlike our organs, cell organelles such as mitochondria are not fixed in place, but when, where, how, and why organelles move remain unclear. Research publishing December 18 in the Cell Press journal Biophysical Journal shows that when beta cells—the pancreatic cells that produce insulin—are exposed to high levels of glucose, their mitochondria move toward the cell’s periphery. This mitochondrial migration could play a role in regulating insulin secretion because beta cells’ mitochondria are responsible for sensing glucose ...

As antibiotic-resistant infections rise and are projected to cause up to 10 million deaths per year by 2050, scientists are looking to bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, as an alternative. A new study shows how these phages use a tiny RNA molecule, called PreS, to hijack bacterial cells and boost their own replication. By acting as a hidden genetic “switch” that rewires key bacterial genes, PreS helps the virus copy its DNA more efficiently, offering important insights that could guide the design ...

Feeding babies peanut-containing foods as early as possible can help prevent peanut allergy, but a new study published in JAMA Network Open found that parents need more support to get it right. Interviews with parents revealed widespread confusion about the purpose, risks, and timing of early peanut introduction guidelines. “While some parents we talked to understood correctly that starting their baby on peanut foods trains the immune system in order to prevent the development of peanut allergy, other parents mistakenly believed that the purpose is to test if their baby is allergic – a misconception that fueled fears of severe allergic reaction, leading to hesitation and delays ...

Girls who are vaccinated against HPV are not only well protected against cervical cancer; they are also less likely to develop severe precancerous lesions of the vulva and vagina, particularly if they were vaccinated before the age of 17. This is shown in a new study from Karolinska Institutet published in JAMA Oncology. In Sweden, all children in middle school are offered vaccination against human papillomavirus (HPV), which protects against cervical cancer, among other things. HPV can cause high-grade, precancerous lesions and cancer in different parts of the genital area. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now shown that ...

About The Study: In this population-based cohort study of Ontario children and youth, while emergency department visits following a primary sick visit were infrequent, virtual sick visits to primary care were associated with a small increase in emergency department use in children ages 3 months or older, especially low-acuity emergency department visits. Judicious use of virtual primary care to manage acute illness in children is warranted. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Natasha R. Saunders, MD, MSc, email natasha.saunders@sickkids.ca. To access the embargoed ...

About The Study: In this study, quadrivalent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination was associated with reduced risk of high-grade vulvovaginal lesions, suggesting that expanding vaccination, especially at younger ages, could help prevent high-grade vulvovaginal lesions.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Yunyang Deng, PhD, email yunyang.deng@ki.se. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2025.5511) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, ...

An estimated 5-15% of people have problems with dry eyes, with symptoms including eye redness, stinging, or burning sensation, and eye fatigue. Dry eye disease (DED) occurs when the eyes’ tear glands produce insufficient or poor-quality tears which can be due to allergy or autoimmune disease, hormonal changes, aging, etc. When left untreated, DED can increase the risk of eye infections and abrasion damage to the ocular surface, which may impair vision.   A process called autophagy, which is needed to clear up a cell’s interior from damaged proteins etc., is thought to be compromised in tear ...

To date, more than 100 clinical trials with human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC)-derived products have been initiated worldwide and an increasing number of potential hPSC-derived clinical products have entered early developmental pipelines. For off-the-shelf (allogeneic) products, the identification and selection of the right hPSC line early on during this process is of utmost importance as failure to do so may delay or completely stall product development. While developers acknowledge the importance of this issue, a comprehensive, accessible listing of globally ...

SAN ANTONIO — December 18, 2025 — The Southwest Research Institute-led Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft has made valuable observations of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, which in July became the third officially recognized interstellar object to cross into our solar system. UVS had a unique view of the object during a period when Mars- and Earth-based observations were impractical or impossible. “We’re excited that this opportunity to view another target on the way to Jupiter was completely unexpected,” said SwRI’s Dr. Kurt Retherford, the principal investigator for Europa-UVS. ...

Key Findings:  Syria's civil war cannot be traced to a single environmental cause but is deeply rooted in policy and socioeconomic failures that increased agricultural vulnerability.  The 2007-2009 drought caused a temporary spike in fallow land, but the agricultural sector rebounded quickly the following year.  19% of Syrian cropland was abandoned between 2001 and 2016 due to a mix of political, socioeconomic, and environmental changes rather than drought ...

A new paper in The BMJ from researchers at the University of Chicago and Harvard University is among the first to examine what happens when hospitals sell their buildings to Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and lease them back. The researchers previously documented how roughly 20 REITs have quietly accumulated a large share of U.S. health care real estate. Globally, REITs, often in partnership with private equity, have been buying medical office buildings, nursing homes, and hospitals. Some experts are raising the alarm that these financial entities have become major, ...

WASHINGTON — Researchers have developed a new compact Raman imaging system that is sensitive enough to differentiate between tumor and normal tissue. The system offers a promising route to earlier cancer detection and to making molecular imaging more practical outside the lab. The new Raman system is designed to detect very faint signals from special surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) nanoparticles that bind to tumor markers. After the particles are applied to a sample or the area being ...

Boston Children’s Hospital today announced that it has received a grant of $7.5 million from Aligning Research to Impact Autism (ARIA) to support its role in the Clinical Coordinating Center (CCC) for the Innovative Medicine and Precision Approaches to Clinical Trials (IMPACT) Network, an international network of sites designed to accelerate clinical trials for individuals with autism, both with a known rare high-penetrance genetic etiology and those with profound autism without a genetic cause identified. Selection of Boston Children’s Hospital as a co-lead for this major clinical research program is a testament to the Hospital’s decades-long ...