Global Virus Network Announces Appointment of New Board Members Global leaders in science, medicine, and journalism join GVN’s Board to strengthen pandemic preparedness and global health Tampa, FL, USA – December 10, 2025 – The Global Virus Network (GVN), a worldwide coalition of leading human and animal virologists from 90+ Centers of Excellence and Affiliates in more than 40 countries dedicated to advancing research and strengthening pandemic preparedness against viral threats to public ...

VANCOUVER, Wash. — The use of artificial beaver dams to replicate the ecological benefits created by the industrious rodents shows promise for offsetting damage to fish habitat, water quality, and biodiversity arising from climate change. But as the use of such “beaver mimicry” spreads, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, there are key gaps in the research and a need for more studies that examine whether the outcomes seen in specific projects are broadly applicable. That is a key takeaway from a new review of scientific literature by Washington State University researchers and ...

For millions suffering from long COVID, their persistent breathlessness, brain fog and fatigue remain a maddening mystery, but a group of leading microbiologists think they may have cracked the case.  The culprit for some long COVID cases, they suggest, might be other infections that accompany SARS-CoV-2. A review published in eLife by 17 experts, including those from Rutgers Health, argues that co-infections acquired before or during COVID could cause symptoms to persist indefinitely for many people. "This is an aspect of long COVID that is not talked about a lot," ...

About The Study: Initiating resuscitation of preterm infants with fraction of inspired oxygen of 0.6 vs 0.3 did not affect the risk of death or brain injury by 36 weeks’ corrected gestational age. These results lay a foundation for future trials evaluating the effectiveness and safety of using higher initial fraction of inspired oxygen levels for preterm infant resuscitation. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Ju Lee Oei, MD, email j.oei@uq.edu.au. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2025.23327) Editor’s ...

Using machine learning models, researchers at Michigan Medicine have identified a potential way to diagnose amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, earlier from a blood sample, a study suggests. The models, which analyze blood for biomarkers through gene expression with RNA sequencing to detect ALS, also have the potential to predict disease severity — and how long a person might live with the neurodegenerative condition. The results are published in Nature Communications. “Our findings present an ...

Adhesives are essential in various industries, including aerospace, electronics, construction, marine, automotive, and biomedical fields. As these fields continue to advance, the demand for high-performance, multifunctional adhesives is also growing. However, such widespread use has also highlighted their environmental issues. Conventional adhesives, while effective and economical, release petroleum-based chemicals that are harmful to soil and water quality. Their production also contributes to environmental ...

The Jahn–Teller effect, proposed by Jahn and Teller in 1937, describes how molecules or crystals with degenerate electronic orbitals can lower their total energy by distorting their structure. This distortion lifts the degeneracy, stabilizing certain orbitals that become occupied by electrons. While many materials exhibiting this effect have been found, the involvement of spin—the source of magnetism—has rarely been observed because magnetic ordering usually occurs at much lower temperatures than structural distortions caused by the Jahn–Teller ...

As life expectancy continues to climb globally, the focus of many people has moved from longevity alone to living in good health. This has drawn attention to the need to extend “healthspan,” the period during which an individual maintains their vitality, independence, and good health, and is free from major age-related issues. Mitochondria, known popularly as the powerhouse of the cell, are central to this goal as they produce the energy essential for life in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Given that many age-related diseases and aging itself are strongly linked to the decline of mitochondrial function, mitochondria ...

Everyday acts of care—tightening a loose hinge, patching up a wall, or simply moving a crate—may seem mundane. But a new study from Ritsumeikan University shows that these small repairs are key to sustaining autonomy and an inclusive social life in a squatted space in Japan. The research, led by Associate Professor Kyoko Tominaga from the College of Social Sciences at Ritsumeikan University, Japan, explores how spatial practices within the squat at the Takayama Architecture Summer School (TASS) enable diverse residents to coexist through collaborative ...

            Today, the Arabian Gulf is home to manatee-like marine mammals called dugongs that shape the seafloor as they graze on seagrasses. A newly described fossil site in Qatar reveals that ancient sea cows engineered aquatic ecosystems in a similar way more than 20 million years ago.             In a paper published today in the journal PeerJ, researchers at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History worked with collaborators at Qatar Museums to also name a new species of sea cow that was a miniature version ...

Termite pellets can linger long after the insects that dropped them have disappeared. By testing for microbes in the excrement, researchers can distinguish old droppings from fresh, and whether a colony is actively chewing its way through a home. Previous efforts to determine pellet age focused on testing hydrocarbon compounds or other chemicals in the pellets.  These studies have required expensive, specialized laboratory equipment and complicated extraction processes.  In some cases, researchers ...

Research Highlights: Long-term heart disease risk among women diagnosed with uterine fibroids was more than 80% higher than in women without uterine fibroids, according to a 10-year study of more than 2.7 million U.S. women. The elevated heart disease risk among those with uterine fibroids persisted among all races and ages but was particularly strong in women younger than 40. Researchers said more studies are needed to better understand and confirm the relationship between having uterine fibroids and increased heart ...

A new major study from Queen Mary University of London has found that smokers who use both cigarettes and e-cigarettes at the same time – known as dual use – are reducing their intake of harmful chemicals and are also more likely to eventually quit smoking than those who continue to smoke only. This challenges common fears about dual use. The study examined data from a large trial, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and Cancer Research UK (CRUK), which followed 886 adult smokers ...

A research team at the Center for Neuroscience Imaging Research (CNIR) within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), together with Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), has developed a new class of ultra-thin, flexible bioelectronic material that can seamlessly interface with living tissues. The researchers introduced a novel device called THIN (Transformable and Imperceptible Hydrogel-Elastomer Ionic-Electronic Nanomembrane). THIN is a membrane just 350 nanometers thick that transforms from a dry, rigid film into an ultra-soft, tissue-like interface ...

When two homozygous plant lines with different characteristics are crossed, the resulting offspring are often more robust and productive than their parents. This phenomenon is called heterosis. It can be caused by positive variants of genes that dominate negative ones, or by complex interactions among numerous genes that ‘communicate’ with each other and influence one another. The research team has developed a new statistical method that can analyse these gene interactions more quickly and accurately. Rather than testing billions of possible gene combinations individually, the new method, hQTL-ODS ...

Astronomers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS, and the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets (IREx) at the University of Montreal (UdeM) have made a striking discovery using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). For the very first time, scientists have continuously monitored the atmosphere escaping from an exoplanet throughout a complete orbit. The result: the gas giant WASP-121b is surrounded not by one, but by two immense helium tails ...

Much remains to be known about the chemical composition of small asteroids. Their potential to harbour valuable metals, materials from the early solar system, and the possibility of obtaining a geochemical record of their parent bodies makes them promising candidates for future use of space resources. A team led by the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) has analyzed samples of C-type asteroids, carbon-rich minor bodies of the Solar System, progenitors of the carbonaceous chondrites. Their findings, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, support the idea that these asteroids ...

One in five young people in the UK now access specialist mental health care by age 18 – a four-fold increase in under two decades, new research suggests.  Figures from Wales – which researchers say serve as an accurate indicator for the whole of the UK – indicate a consistent year-on-year rise in service use, with a sharp acceleration after 2010.   Experts warn that existing services may no longer meet the needs of today’s young people, with many treatment decisions based on decades-old evidence.  Rates of mental ill health among young people have been rising across the world. Despite this, there has been a lack of evidence on the proportion ...

A new paper in Rheumatology Advances in Practice, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that Tik Tok videos about gout are commonly misleading, inconsistent, or inaccurate. Gout is a painful inflammatory arthritis caused by high urate in the blood that crystallizes and deposits in the joints. An estimated forty-one million people worldwide suffer from gout, with physicians diagnosing about seven million new cases a year. There are persistent gaps in awareness and understanding about gout among patients and the public. Although rheumatology guidelines recommend long-term urate-lowering therapy for ...

In a new publication, Professor José-María Martín-Olalla, from the Department of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Seville, has described the direct link between the vanishing of specific heats at absolute zero—a general experimental observation established in the early 20th century—and the second law of thermodynamics. The study, published in Physica Scripta, reinterprets a 100-year-old problem and completes the consequences of the principle of increasing entropy in the universe. The new study follows another published in the European Physical Journal Plus in ...

Natural killer (NK) cells are the bodyguards of our immune system. As a first line of defense, they destroy invading pathogens, foreign bodies, and infected cells in early stages, thereby preventing them from spreading. NK cells can circulate within the blood stream (circulatory) or reside in tissue and organs. Having too few NK cells can lead to immune system dysfunction and increase susceptibility to disease. Anxiety disorder and insomnia are two conditions that can disrupt the normal functioning of the immune system. Given these disorders ...

There are plants that are neither green nor sexually reproductive, but precisely because of that they teach us a lot about what it means to be a plant. New research with Kobe University participation took a close look at Balanophora to learn how such non-green, asexual plants evolve and live. “My long-standing aim is to rethink what it truly means to be a plant,” says Kobe University botanist SUETSUGU Kenji. He continues, “For many years I have been fascinated by plants that have abandoned photosynthesis, and I want ...

Naoise Mac Giollabhui, PhD, of the Department of Psychiatry at Mass General Brigham, is the lead author of a paper published in American Journal of Psychiatry, “Effect of anti-inflammatory treatment on depressive symptom severity and anhedonia in depressed individuals with elevated inflammation: Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.” Richard Liu, PhD, of the Department of Psychiatry at Mass General Brigham, is the senior author. Q: How would you summarize your study ...

Artificial intelligence and machine learning could become dramatically more efficient, thanks to a new type of computer component developed by researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Tohoku University, in collaboration with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). The technology is based on "probabilistic bits," or "p-bits", which are hardware elements that naturally fluctuate between 0 and 1. Unlike conventional digital bits, which are fixed in value, p-bits can efficiently explore many possibilities. This makes them well-suited for solving problems such as optimization and inference, tasks that ...

Research Background Hydrogen energy is vital for renewable energy storage and "dual carbon" goals, but 95% of global hydrogen production relies on fossil fuel reforming (emitting ~1.3 billion tons of CO₂ yearly), driving demand for green hydrogen via water electrolysis. Anion exchange membrane water electrolysis (AEMWE) combines the advantages of alkaline water electrolysis (noble-metal-free, low cost) and proton exchange membrane water electrolysis (high current density, compact structure), but its industrialization is limited by traditional ...