Blinking is a human reflex most often performed without thinking, like breathing. Although research on blinking is usually related to vision, a new Concordia study examines how blinking is connected to cognitive function such as filtering out background noise to focus on what someone is trying to say to us in a crowded room. Writing in the journal Trends in Hearing, the researchers describe two experiments designed to measure how eye blinking changes in response to stimuli under different conditions. They found that people naturally blink less when they are working harder to understand ...

Male bonobos can decipher females’ unreliable fertility signals, allowing them to focus their efforts on matings with the highest chance of conception, according to a study by Heungjin Ryu at Kyoto University, Japan, and colleagues publishing December 9th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. In most mammals, females are only receptive to mating during ovulation, allowing males to time their mating efforts to maximize the chances of conception. But in some primates, such as bonobos (Pan paniscus), females become sexually receptive and display a conspicuous pink swelling around the genitals for a prolonged period of time. To investigate how males ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — As humanity prepares to take its first steps on Mars, a comprehensive report released today (Dec. 9) from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and steered by scientists at Penn State lays out a detailed science strategy to guide the initial human missions to the red planet.   The report, commissioned by NASA, identifies the highest priority scientific objectives for the missions as well as proposes four distinct mission campaigns designed to maximize the scientific return of the first three human landings on Mars. The report is intended ...

With cannabis-related vehicle crashes on the rise, a new study suggests that prevention campaigns shouldn’t focus just on young people. In fact, 20% of people over 50 who use cannabis products reported that at least once in the past year, they had driven within two hours of using the drug. That means they likely got on the road while the THC in cannabis still impaired their reaction times, attention and other abilities that are important to driving safely. The findings, from a University of Michigan team led by addiction psychologist Erin E. Bonar, Ph.D., are published in the journal Drug ...

About The Study: In extremely preterm infants with a protocol-defined patent ductus arteriosus, death or bronchopulmonary dysplasia did not differ between the expectant management group and the active treatment group. Survival was substantially higher with expectant management. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Matthew M. Laughon, MD, MPH, email matt_laughon@med.unc.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2025.23330) Editor’s ...

PHILADELPHIA—The Pew Charitable Trusts announced today the seven pairs of researchers who will make up its 2025 class of Innovation Fund investigators. These 14 acclaimed scientists—all alumni of Pew’s biomedical programs in the United States and Latin America—will collaborate on interdisciplinary research projects exploring key questions about human biology and disease. Bringing together their expertise in such specialties as neuroscience, immunology, and cancer biology, these partnerships will help accelerate discoveries and advance understanding of human health. “Many of the best scientific breakthroughs happen when researchers work together to tackle ...

Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, said: ‘Congratulations to all the researchers on winning the ERC grants. The record budget of 728 million euro invested to support these scientific projects shows the EU is serious about making the continent attractive for excellent researchers.’ President of the European Research Council, Prof. Maria Leptin, said: ‘To see all this talent with groundbreaking ideas, based in Europe, is truly inspiring. This bold research may well lead to new industries, improve lives and strengthen Europe’s global standing. This was one of the most competitive ...

The ERC Consolidator Grant is one of Europe’s most prestigious funding schemes and supports high-risk, high-reward research projects. SyReP tackles a core challenge that existing methods fail to address: once reactive systems must operate on real-world data—such as sensor readings, user inputs, or complex system states—classical synthesis approaches break down. “Traditional methods strictly separate decision-making from the data used to make those decisions. That may be theoretically elegant, but it fails in modern software practice,” ...

Background and objectives Clove essential oil (CEO) derived from Syzygium aromaticum and miswak (Salvadora persica) contains bioactive compounds with antimicrobial properties. Due to the growing interest in alternatives to conventional antibiotics, this study aimed to evaluate the in vitro antimicrobial efficacy of CEO, miswak, and their combination against key peri-implantitis pathogens. Methods The antimicrobial activities of CEO, miswak, and their combinations were tested against Fusobacterium nucleatum, Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans, Porphyromonas gingivalis, and Prevotella intermedia. Disc diffusion ...

Under embargo until 4pm GMT/11am ET on Tuesday December 9, 2025  With images  EVs Pose No Greater Risk to Pedestrians than Conventional Vehicles  Electric vehicles (EVs) are no more dangerous to pedestrians than traditional petrol or diesel cars, according to a new study.    Research by the University of Leeds into UK collisions involving pedestrians and cars found no significant difference in the pedestrian casualty rates between EVs and conventional vehicles.   It ...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9, 2025 — The ocean is saturated with microplastics. While we know the location of the great garbage patches, where plastic particles may accumulate below the ocean surface remains unknown. The vastness of the ocean means particle sampling data is sparse, but modeling how particles aggregate in 3D fluid flows can help determine where to look. In Chaos, by AIP Publishing, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution established a theory for how microplastic particles may accumulate in an idealized eddy, or circular current. Larry Pratt and Irina Rypina began by modeling how fluid moves in a rotating cylinder, a laboratory setup ...

Concrete was the foundation of the ancient Roman empire. It enabled Rome’s storied architectural revolution as well as the construction of buildings, bridges, and aqueducts, many of which are still used some 2,000 years after their creation. In 2023, MIT Associate Professor Admir Masic and his collaborators published a paper describing the manufacturing process that gave Roman concrete its longevity: Lime fragments were mixed with volcanic ash and other dry ingredients before the addition of water. Once water is added to this dry mix, heat is produced. As the concrete ...

Whether you’re reaching for a mug, a pencil or someone’s hand, you don’t need to consciously instruct each of your fingers on where they need to go to get a proper grip. The loss of that intrinsic ability is one of the many challenges people with prosthetic arms and hands face. Even with the most advanced robotic prostheses, these everyday activities come with an added cognitive burden as users purposefully open and close their fingers around a target. Researchers at the University of Utah are now using artificial intelligence to solve this problem. By integrating proximity and pressure sensors into a commercial bionic hand, and then training ...

About The Study: This study found short-term, transient risks of low back pain flares associated with some activities but no associations with functional limitations at 1-year follow-up. These findings suggest that people with low back pain who engage in more of these activities do not have better or worse long-term outcomes. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Pradeep Suri, MD, MSc, email pradeep.suri@va.gov. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.47915) Editor’s ...

About The Study: This cohort study of older traditional Medicare beneficiaries who were diagnosed with common metastatic cancers found a mean of 40 to 62 health care contact days in the year after diagnosis. Health care contact days increased from 2008 to 2019, suggesting that treatment advancements and/or care inefficiencies may have imposed additional burdens on beneficiaries. The results of this study suggest that oncology teams should discuss expected contact days and related burdens when ...

NEW YORK, New York, USA, 2 December 2025 -- In a revealing Genomic Press Interview published today in Brain Medicine, Dr. Eric J. Nestler offers a rare glimpse into how curiosity about brain chemistry spawned an international movement in psychiatric research. The Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai describes nearly forty years spent uncovering the molecular secrets of why drugs and stress alter human behavior, research that has fundamentally reshaped how scientists across six continents approach mental illness. What began ...

Background and objectives Preclinical studies of the serotonin 2A (5-HT2A) antagonist deramciclane suggested an anxiolytic profile, which has not been unequivocally established in the clinic. The same receptor profile also indicated that the compound may exhibit antidepressant potential. However, evidence for these effects remains inconclusive. The present study examined the effect of the drug in two preclinical tests with predictive validity for antidepressant activity. Methods The antidepressant-like activity ...

PITTSBURGH, – Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh discovered a promising new biomarker of “complicated” mild- to severe-pediatric traumatic brain injury, or TBI. Unlike a concussion—which usually resolves within weeks—complicated TBI requires at least an overnight hospital stay, signaling a more serious injury. Published today in the Journal of Neurotrauma, this study is first to identify a signature of potentially ...

McGill University researchers have identified a brain function that helps explain why childhood stress raises metabolic health risks for some women later in life. A new study found that variations in the brain’s insulin receptor network affect how women respond to early-life adversity. This effect has a lesser impact in men, suggesting there is a sex-specific process at play. The findings, published in Communications Biology (Nature Portfolio), point to the brain’s insulin receptor network as a promising avenue for earlier detection and future prevention strategies for metabolic syndrome, a major driver of cardiovascular ...

SAN ANTONIO — December 9, 2025 — A new study led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) links quasi-periodic pulsations (QPPs) in solar flares to dynamic oscillations in magnetic reconnection, a phenomenon that can drive space weather and affect technology on Earth. This research could help refine traditional solar flare models and provide new insights into the mechanisms driving them. Magnetic reconnection occurs when magnetic field lines in plasma break and reconnect, releasing immense energy into the surrounding atmosphere ...

New York, NY —The American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) and Hevolution Foundation are pleased to announce the third cohort of the Hevolution/AFAR New Investigator Awardees in Aging Biology and Geroscience Research. This grant program enables junior investigators with labs in the US and Canada, and with at least three years of independent research, to advance research projects in basic biology of aging, as well as geroscience projects that translate advances in basic research on aging biology from the laboratory to the clinic, paving ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  EMBARGOED UNTIL DECEMBER 9, 2025  GeoFlame VISION: Using AI and Satellite Imagery to Predict Future Wildfire Risk  A new computer model produces a dynamic wildfire risk map,  starting with the state of California  Washington, D.C., December 9, 2025 – Wildfires pose a significant threat across the southwestern United States, due to the region’s unique topography and weather conditions. Accurately identifying locations at the highest risk of a severe wildfire is critical ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  EMBARGOED UNTIL DECEMBER 9, 2025  Nationwide Study Suggests that Water Treatment Methods May Impact the Risk of Legionnaires’ Disease  Higher rates of disease are seen in zip codes served by water treatment plants that use chlorine as the primary disinfectant  Washington, D.C., December 9, 2025 – Preliminary results of a nationwide study suggest that the disinfectant used to treat water before it is distributed through pipes may impact the incidence of Legionnaire’s disease in certain parts of the country. The findings will be presented Dec. 9 at the annual meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis in Washington, D.C.   Waterborne ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  EMBARGOED UNTIL DECEMBER 9, 2025  Oyster Larvae on Drugs Move Slowly and Are Stressed  Study finds that exposure to addictive drugs like fentanyl and ketamine affect the behavior and survival rates of oyster larvae   Washington, D.C., December 9, 2025 – The discharge and prevalence of psychoactive drugs in surface waters has raised concerns about potential risks to ecosystems and public health. Yet there is limited information on the ecotoxicity of these compounds in marine environments and aquaculture.  A study presented on Dec. 9 at the annual meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis in ...

PULLMAN, Wash. -- Washington State University researchers have discovered how a neural circuit – or a connection between two brain regions – drives relapse after opioid use, a finding that could lead to more effective treatments for opioid use disorders. In a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers in the Department of Integrative Physiology and Neuroscience at WSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine used a preclinical model to model opioid use in humans and found that reducing the activity within a specific neuronal ...