With climate change and more frequent extreme weather events, researchers predict that global yields of important crops like maize, rice, and soybeans could decline by 12 to 20% by the end of the century. To prepare, plant scientists are hoping to find ways to improve yields and grow hardier varieties of these crops. New insights into the genetic makeup of wild varieties of common crops show how domestication has changed crop traits over time and propose a new cultivation method to improve genetic diversity. The research was shared in a paper published in Life on July 11. “While domesticated species have originally been bred by cultivating wild species, the resulting reduction in genetic ...

Introducing Sustainable Carbon Materials—a new peer-reviewed, open-access journal dedicated to advancing fundamental and applied research on carbon-based materials!  As a multidisciplinary global platform, we foster innovation in this rapidly expanding field by publishing high-impact reviews, original research, rapid reports, perspectives, commentaries, and correspondence. Broad Scope Includes: ✅ Synthesis & characterization of graphene, nanotubes, fullerenes & more ✅ Physical/chemical properties for electronics, optics, and spintronics ✅ Energy applications (batteries, ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- When companies are acquired, conventional wisdom suggests that employee nostalgia for their pre-buyout days is a problem to be eliminated so workers can more quickly adapt to the new owners’ ways of doing business. A new study published in the journal Strategic Organization led by UC Riverside School of Business professors Boris Maciejovsky and Jerayr Haleblian suggests this thinking is wrong—especially when the new owners want to retain the most talented, productive, and informed workers. Nostalgia, they found, serves as a comforting and stabilizing force during takeover periods, when employees feel vulnerable, fear ...

Individuals should be held accountable for “ecocide,” the most serious acts of environmental destruction, argue experts in The BMJ today. And they say the UK should take on a leadership role by adopting legislation of its own to criminalise ecocide and inspiring other nations to protect our planet. The term “ecocide” was coined in 1970 by biologist Arthur Galston, who condemned the large scale environmental devastation caused during the Vietnam War, they explain. Fifty years on, as the world grapples with the escalating consequences of climate change, including sea level rises and biodiversity ...

Many direct to consumer menopause services are unnecessary and do not improve care, warn experts in The BMJ today. They argue that the sharp rise in commercial services for women seeking relief for menopausal symptoms raises concerns about the reliability and potential commercial bias of the information, and that symptoms are best assessed by a thorough clinical history with treatment decisions guided by clinical response and patient preferences. One of the most troubling trends arising from this surge is the promotion of routine ...

Parents are spending thousands of pounds to bank stem cells from their children’s milk teeth – but the recipient companies’ claims about their future medical value are unproven and potentially misleading, reveals an investigation by The BMJ, published today. The companies’ claims include that stem cells banked from teeth are already being used in treatments for autism and diabetes. They also highlight current research using stem cells in multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and heart attacks. Tooth stem cell ...

The world will warm more than expected due to future changes in ozone, which protects Earth from harmful sun rays but also traps heat as it is a greenhouse gas.  While banning ozone-destroying gases such as CFCs has helped the ozone layer to recover, when combined with increased air pollution the impact of ozone could warm the planet 40% more than originally thought.   A new study led by the University of Reading found that from 2015 to 2050, ozone is expected to cause 0.27 watts ...

The complex 3D shapes of brains, lungs, eyes, hands, and other vital bodily structures emerge from the way in which flat 2D sheets of cells fold during embryonic development. Now, researchers at Columbia Engineering have developed a novel way to use light to influence an animal's own proteins in order to control folding in live embryos. These new findings, detailed Aug. 18 in Nature Communications, may one day lead to a host of applications in biorobotics and medical research. "Being able to precisely control the shape of folds in tissue sheets ...

In a towering aquarium in a darkened laboratory, moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita) hover as if floating in space. The glow of neon lights illuminates their translucent, bell-shaped bodies as they expand and contract rhythmically, their graceful tentacles flowing in wavelike patterns. CU Boulder engineer Nicole Xu watches them with fondness. Xu, an assistant professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering, first became fascinated with moon jellies more than a decade ago because of their ...

Atmospheric waves from a massive 2022 South Pacific volcanic eruption created seismic waves that penetrated Earth to at least 5 kilometers in Alaska, creating an opportunity to employ an unusual method of peering into the state’s deep subsurface. Ken Macpherson, a scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, and other researchers analyzed the coupling of atmospheric pressure waves with the ground to determine the speed at which seismic waves travel through Alaska’s upper crust.  Subsurface material properties such as hardness, which controls seismic velocity, can ...

PHILADELPHIA (August 20, 2025) – A new publication highlights the success of an international partnership working to strengthen nursing and midwifery in the Caribbean. “Fostering International Collaborations to Inform Nursing and Midwifery Policy: A Caribbean Initiative,” appears in the International Nursing Review. It was led by Penn Nursing’s Eileen T. Lake, PhD, RN, FAAN, the Edith Clemmer Steinbright Professor in Gerontology, with Carmen Alvarez, PhD, CRNP, CNM, FAAN, Associate Professor of Nursing, serving as co-author. The initiative was created to support ...

Jeffrey Carson spent more than a decade persuading hospitals that fewer, resource-saving blood transfusions work just as well as more frequent transfusions for most patients. More recently, the Rutgers internist finished a massive study that indicates a major exception to the rule: anemic heart attack patients. That work, published in late 2023 in the New England Journal of Medicine and reinforced by a combined analysis of patients from several studies this past winter, underpins a just-published recommendation from the Association for the Advancement of ...

In 1995, scientists translocated eight Texas pumas into Florida in a genetic restoration effort to save the only viable puma population east of the Mississippi from extinction, the Florida panther. The move raised concerns about harmful mutations and genetic swamping — or loss of unique traits. However, a recent study co-authored by UCF Assistant Professor of Biology and Genomics and Bioinformatics faculty cluster member Robert Fitak, found that since the introduction, genetic variation has significantly improved; unique traits have been retained; and harmful mutations, while still present, are largely masked by the restored ...

A new study finds that a high-salt diet triggers brain inflammation that drives up blood pressure. The research, led by McGill University scientist Masha Prager-Khoutorsky in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team at McGill and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, suggests the brain may be a missing link in certain forms of high blood pressure – or hypertension – traditionally attributed to the kidneys. “This is new evidence that high ...

A trusted and essential resource for more than four decades, Laboratory Guide for Identification of Plant Pathogenic Bacteria returns in a fully updated fourth edition. This guide remains the most authoritative reference for plant pathologists, diagnosticians, and students who need to accurately identify bacterial plant pathogens using both conventional and cutting-edge methods. Each chapter is authored by leading experts and provides a holistic, comprehensive overview of the genus or genera, including characteristics useful for identification, isolation techniques, and molecular, ...

It’s been a long-accepted reality that with age comes increased inflammation – so widely accepted it’s been dubbed “inflammaging.” With this increase in age-related chronic inflammation also comes serious health concerns, such as cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s. But according to new research, inflammaging isn’t as universal of an experience as previously thought. Published today in Proceedings of Royal Society B, “Inflammaging is minimal among forager-horticulturalists in the Bolivian Amazon,” the work highlights little inflammaging in one non-industrialized ...

At UC Berkeley, researchers in Sergey Levine’s Robotic AI and Learning Lab eyed a table where a tower of 39 Jenga blocks stood perfectly stacked. Then a white-and-black robot, its single limb doubled over like a hunched-over giraffe, zoomed toward the tower, brandishing a black leather whip. Through what might have seemed to a casual viewer like a miracle of physics, the whip struck in precisely the right spot to send a single block flying out from the stack while the rest of the tower remained structurally sound. This task, known as ...

Woods Hole, Mass. (August 20, 2025) -- A newly published study challenges long-held assumptions about the origins of urban civilization in ancient Mesopotamia, suggesting that the rise of Sumer was driven by the dynamic interplay of rivers, tides, and sediments at the head of the Persian Gulf. Published today in PLOS ONE, the study, Morphodynamic Foundations of Sumer, is led by Liviu Giosan, Senior Scientist Emeritus in Geology & Geophysics at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and Reed Goodman, Assistant Professor of Environmental Social Science at Baruch Institute of Social Ecology and Forest Science (BICEFS), Clemson ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4:00 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20, 2025 MINNEAPOLIS — Having a larger waistline, high blood pressure and other risk factors that make up metabolic syndrome is associated with an increased risk of Parkinson’s disease, according to a study published on August 20, 2025, in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study does not prove that metabolic syndrome causes Parkinson’s disease; it only shows an association. Metabolic syndrome is defined as having three or more of the following risk factors: excess belly fat, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, higher than normal triglycerides, ...

We’re often told it is “unscientific” or “meaningless” to ask what happened before the big bang. But a new paper by FQxI cosmologist Eugene Lim, of King's College London, UK, and astrophysicists Katy Clough, of Queen Mary University of London, UK, and Josu Aurrekoetxea, at Oxford University, UK, published in Living Reviews in Relativity, in June 2025, proposes a way forward: using complex computer simulations to numerically (rather than exactly) solve Einstein’s equations for gravity in extreme situations. The team argues that numerical relativity should be applied increasingly in cosmology to probe ...

SAN ANTONIO — August 20, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has constructed its first facility outside of its San Antonio headquarters in Warner Robins, Georgia. The 33,000-square-foot, $18.5 million building, equipped to advance national defense technology, is strategically located 3 miles from Robins Air Force Base to bolster SwRI’s longstanding support for the U.S. Air Force. Institute leadership welcomed government and community leaders to the grounds on August 20 for a ribbon-cutting ceremony and tours to mark the grand opening of the new structure, which houses offices, conference rooms and laboratories. SwRI employees based in Warner Robins ...

Ad hominem attacks are the most common way users confront content they perceive as wrong in comment sections beneath news videos, with over 40% of analyzed comments relying on reputation-based insults to oppose earlier replies Article URL: http://plos.io/4os0Tkc Article title: Beyond ad hominem attacks: A typology of the discursive tactics used when objecting to news commentary on social media Author countries: U.S. Funding: This research was funded by the National Science Foundation Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (NSF, Funding number: 2106476). Full ...

California's dwarf Channel Island foxes mostly have relatively bigger brains than their larger mainland gray fox cousins, which may reflect island-specific evolutionary pressures Article URL: http://plos.io/4m6uyhk Article title: Increased brain size of the dwarf Channel Island fox (Urocyon littoralis) challenges “Island Syndrome” and suggests little evidence of domestication Author countries: U.S. Funding: Funding for this project and Kimberly's PhD research was provided by Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California; the Wrigley Institute for Environmental ...

Embargoed until 2:00 PM ET on August 20, 2025 COLUMBUS, Ohio – Older adults often don’t realize how vulnerable they are to extreme heat and most aren’t prepared for long periods of hot weather, according to a review of more than 40 studies.   In the review, researchers found that most studies focused on how older adults react when heat waves strike, such as staying hydrated or moving to cooler locations.   But there is less research on how they plan for prolonged heat events, which may be evidence of low-risk ...

Stanford Medicine scientists investigating the neurological underpinnings of autism spectrum disorder have found that hyperactivity in a specific brain region could drive behaviors commonly associated with the disorder. Using a mouse model of the disease, the researchers identified the reticular thalamic nucleus — which serves as a gatekeeper of sensory information between the thalamus and cortex — as a potential target for treatments. Moreover, they were able to reverse symptoms similar to those ...