A team of researchers including Rice University’s James Tour and Shichen Xu has developed an ultrafast, one-step method to recover rare earth elements (REEs) from discarded magnets using an innovative approach that offers significant environmental and economic benefits over traditional recycling methods. Their study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Sept. 29, 2025. Conventional rare earth recycling is energy-heavy and creates toxic waste. The research team’s method uses flash Joule heating (FJH), which rapidly raises material temperatures to thousands of degrees within milliseconds, and chlorine gas to extract REEs from ...

SAN FRANCISCO, September 29, 2025 — The first randomized trial to compare photon- and proton-based radiation therapy for breast cancer finds that patients report equally strong health-related quality of life with either treatment. Patients who received proton therapy were more likely to say they would recommend or choose it again, but overall patient-reported outcomes were similar. The phase III Radiotherapy Comparative Effectiveness (RadComp) trial enrolled more than 1,200 patients, making it also the largest head-to-head comparison of photon and proton therapy for any ...

SAN FRANCISCO, September 29, 2025 — For patients with intermediate-risk, localized prostate cancer, radiation therapy delivered in five sessions reduced patient-reported side effects compared to longer courses of radiation, according to results of a large, randomized phase III trial. Patients treated with stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) reported fewer declines in bowel, urinary and sexual functioning but were more likely to experience a rise in prostate-specific antigen (PSA). Initial results of the NRG Oncology GU005 ...

On September 5, 2020, California’s Creek Fire grew so severe that it began producing it’s own weather system. The fire’s extreme heat produced an explosive thunderhead that spewed lightning strikes and further fanned the roaring flames, making containment elusive and endangering the lives of firefighters on the ground. These wildfire-born storms have become a growing part of fire seasons across the West, with lasting impacts on air quality, weather, and climate. Until now, scientists have struggled to replicate them in Earth system models, hindering our ability to predict their occurrence ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 29 September 2025    Follow @Annalsofim on X, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and Linkedin              Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of ...

One in 270 Americans (nearly 1 million adults) has a BMI of 60 or greater More than half of surveyed clinics lacked exam tables, chairs and/or gowns for patients weighing 450 pounds Receptionists made stigmatizing comments: ‘We’ve reached our limit for bariatric patients’ Patients with obesity are less likely to get cancer screenings and preventive care CHICAGO --- Patients weighing 450 pounds or more face barriers and discrimination when scheduling or attending doctor visits at subspecialty practices, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. The scientists used a “secret-shopper” method to attempt to schedule an appointment ...

Adiposity—or the accumulation of excess fat in the body—is a known driver of cardiometabolic diseases such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and kidney disease. But getting the full picture of a person’s risk is harder than it may seem. Traditional measures such as body mass index (BMI) are imperfect, conflating fat and muscle mass and not capturing where in the body fat is located. A new study from researchers at Mass General Brigham and their colleagues found that an AI tool designed to measure ...

Cancer cells are subjected to high mechanical pressure that leads to a rupture of the nuclear envelope when migrating through narrow tissue structures, as in the case of metastasis. DNA would normally leak out in the process, causing damage to the cell. However, researchers at the University of Freiburg’s Cluster of Excellence CIBSS - Centre for Integrative Biological Signalling Studies succeeded in demonstrating that a protective mechanism takes effect at this moment. A fine scaffold of actin filaments forms in the cell nucleus within seconds. The protein actin is a fundamental component of the cell structure. ...

EMBARGO: THIS CONTENT IS UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 3 P.M. U.S. EASTERN STANDARD TIME ON SEPT. 29, 2025. INTERESTED MEDIA MAY RECIVE A PREVIEW COPY OF THE JOURNAL ARTICLE IN ADVANCE OF THAT DATE OR CONDUCT INTERVIEWS, BUT THE INFORMATION MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, OR POSTED ONLINE UNTIL AFTER THE RELEASE WINDOW. Climate change is drying landscapes and raising temperatures faster than many species can adapt. A new research paper from Colorado State University offers a rare empirical look at how these pressures are already reshaping wildlife through the lens of the yellow warbler –– a ...

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London’s School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences, using the simple fission yeast as a model, have shown that new TOR inhibitor rapalink-1 prolongs chronological lifespan.   The new study, published in Communications Biology journal by Juhi Kumar, Kristal Ng and Charalampos Rallis, sheds light on how drugs and natural metabolites can influence lifespan through the Target of Rapamycin (TOR) pathway.   TOR is a conserved signalling pathway active in humans as well as yeast. It is a central regulator of growth and ageing fundamental in age-related diseases such as cancer and neurodegeneration and is already a major ...

A new tool greatly improves scientists’ ability to identify and study proteins that regulate gene activity in cells, according to research led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The technology should enable and enhance investigations in both fundamental biology and disease research. The activity of a gene is often regulated—switched on, sped up, slowed down, switched off—by one or more proteins that bind to DNA to exert their effect. However, identifying these DNA-binding proteins has been challenging due to the lack of a precise method. In their study, reported Sept. 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers developed a ...

Why did life on Earth choose alpha amino acids as the building blocks of proteins? A new study suggests the answer lies in the stability of their inter-molecular interactions. Researchers found that primitive peptide-like molecules made from alpha backbones formed more durable, compartment-like structures than their longer beta counterparts, giving them a potential evolutionary advantage. The findings propose an assembly-driven model for the origins of life, offering fresh insight into how chemistry shaped biology. A new study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem sheds light on one of life’s greatest mysteries: ...

A team of MIT geochemists has unearthed new evidence in very old rocks suggesting that some of the first animals on Earth were likely ancestors of the modern sea sponge.  In a study appearing today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers report that they have identified “chemical fossils” that may have been left by ancient sponges in rocks that are more than 541 million years old. A chemical fossil is a remnant of a biomolecule that originated from a living organism that has since been buried, transformed, and preserved in sediment, sometimes for hundreds of millions of years.  The newly identified chemical fossils are special types ...

The next time you watch your dog visit the same places around your yard or notice that your cat seems to explore a new area every time it ventures outside, consider this: you might be witnessing an ancient evolutionary strategy in action. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of September 29, 2025 reveals that wild canids have, on average, both a greater density of travel routeways and a greater probability of routeway usage than wild felids. Led by University of Maryland researchers, the ...

At the 18th World Congress on Polyphenols Applications, which will be held in Malta on October 2-3, 2025, Iprona and Polyphenols Applications will announce a global call to action, inviting researchers to strengthen the quality and reproducibility of polyphenol science. Through this initiative, ElderCraft®, a polyphenol-standardised European black elderberry (Sambucus nigra) water extract, is now available at no cost to qualified academic and clinical research groups worldwide. ElderCraft® is a polyphenol and anthocyanin-rich extract, sourced exclusively from ...

For patients with recurrent retroperitoneal sarcomas that cannot be treated surgically, treatment choices are limited. These tumors can grow quite large in the abdomen adjacent to vital organs or enmeshed within the bowel. Given their radioresistant nature they require high doses of radiation that risk damaging healthy nearby tissue. Once patients have undergone an initial radiation course, doctors are often left with no safe radiation treatment option. But a pilot study from Fox Chase Cancer Center, presented at the 2025 American ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Electric space heating systems and appliances like water heaters can help American homeowners reduce their energy use, and possibly their utility bills, according to a team led by researchers at Penn State. The researchers set out to identify the most important factors driving U.S. on-site residential energy consumption, which the team said accounts for approximately 21% of primary energy consumption in the country and is more complex than commercial energy use. They found that electric heating systems like heat pumps, compared to systems that rely on natural gas and oil, had the largest impact on reducing on-site energy ...

Landing a job traditionally meant polishing a resume, printing extra copies and sitting across from a hiring manager. Today, the first “person” to evaluate you might not be a person at all — it could be a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence. These automated systems can ask questions, score responses and even recommend who gets hired. Rice University’s Tianjun Sun has received a National Science Foundation award to lead a two-year collaborative project with the University of Florida examining how AI interview systems work — and how to make them more fair. For employers, chatbot interviews promise consistency ...

SAN FRANCISCO, September 29, 2025 — A new phase III clinical trial finds that intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and proton beam therapy resulted in similar quality-of-life outcomes and low rates of side effects for people with locally advanced oropharyngeal cancer. The TORPEdO trial, a randomized study conducted across the United Kingdom, found no meaningful differences between the treatments in patient-reported quality of life, swallowing function or feeding tube dependence at one year. Both advanced radiation approaches resulted in excellent ...

SAN FRANCISCO, September 29, 2025 — Radiation therapy could be an underused tool to reduce pelvic relapse risk for patients with locally advanced, muscle-invasive bladder cancer, according to results of a new phase III randomized trial. In the study, moderate doses of radiation therapy after bladder removal surgery sharply cut the rates of cancer returning in the pelvis without adding serious side effects. Findings of the Bladder Adjuvant RadioTherapy (BART) trial conducted at centers across India will be presented today at the American Society ...

Intensity-modulated radiotherapy is as good as proton beam therapy for treating people with head and neck cancer, according to the results of a Cancer Research UK-funded clinical trial. The TORPEdO trial funded by Cancer Research UK and The Taylor Family Foundation, led by The Christie NHS Foundation Trust and sponsored by the Institute of Cancer Research, London, compared two forms of highly targeted radiotherapy for head and neck cancer – proton beam therapy (PBT) and intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT). Presented at the American Society of Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California, the initial results of ...

Collaborative research by the University of Tokyo and RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research has led to the development of a new method for simultaneously synthesizing all transfer RNA (tRNA) required for protein synthesis in a reconstituted translation system in vitro. Currently, humans rely on living organisms (bacteria, yeast, plants, and animals) for the production of pharmaceuticals and food. However, living organisms are susceptible to environmental changes, breeding improvements require time, and ...

Keith Renshaw, Senior Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education, Office of the Provost, received funding for: “VISR 3.0: Learning Management System Development and Implementation.” This project aims to train employees within a wide variety of agencies in a) identifying service members, veterans, and family members; b) screening for suicide risk; and c) providing appropriate referrals and/or interventions as needed. VISR was first piloted in 2020, with good success. From 2022-2023, Renshaw led a follow-up project dubbed “VISR 2.0” focused on evaluating VISR’s broader impact and identifying ways to increase the scale of the program. Results ...

Yang Receives Funding For Welfare & Poverty Mapping Project Ruixin Yang, Associate Professor, Geography Geoinformation Science, College of Science, received funding for: “Welfare and Poverty Mapping with Satellite-Derived Data, Spatial Analysis and Machine Learning Application.” The objective of this consultancy is to provide technical and advisory support in: processing satellite imagery and geospatial datasets; designing and implementing machine learning models for spatial analysis; and supporting ...

Suicide is a leading cause of death in the United States. The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) will host a free webinar on Tuesday, October 14, 2025, at 2:00 pm ET, examining the biological factors that contribute to suicide risk and what can be done to strengthen prevention efforts. The event will be hosted by Jeffrey Borenstein, M.D., President & CEO of BBRF and host of the Emmy® nominated television series Healthy Minds. Featured speaker, Steven Lamontagne, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Experimental Therapeutics and Pathophysiology Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), will ...