Eating three servings of French fries a week is associated with a 20% increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, but eating similar amounts of potatoes cooked in other ways - boiled, baked or mashed - does not substantially increase the risk, finds a study published by The BMJ today.  What’s more, replacing any form of potatoes with whole grains was associated with a lower type 2 diabetes risk, but swapping them for white rice was linked to an increased risk, the results show. Potatoes contain several nutrients including fibre, vitamin C, and magnesium, but they also have a high starch content and therefore a high glycemic index, so have been linked to a ...

Experts are calling for a global effort to identify “positive tipping points” to accelerate the green transition – and have devised a method to find them. A tipping point is a threshold where a small change can trigger a significant, often irreversible, transformation. With climate change becoming increasingly damaging and dangerous, positive tipping points in human societies and economies can spark rapid reductions in emissions and other environmental harm. Positive tipping points are already happening – with solar power and electric vehicles rapidly displacing fossil-fuelled alternatives – but many more are needed to ensure a thriving, sustainable ...

Of 1.7 million referrals for therapy in 2022-23, more than 1 million people dropped out before starting or during their therapy. This represents a dropout rate of over 60%. Many patients report worries about therapy, uncertainty about the process, and ill-preparedness for the journey ahead as to why they didn’t engage.  Using the scientific Delphi Consensus approach with 41 therapists, researchers from Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, have published a report in BMJ Open listing recommendations for things people should know, and steps they can try, while awaiting therapy ...

Even if enough renewable energy is available, simply switching from gas-powered cars to electric vehicles (EVs) won’t be enough to fight climate change — unless the U.S. also upgrades its transmission grid, a new Northwestern University study finds. If every gas-powered vehicle in the U.S. were replaced by an EV, transmission constraints would prevent the cleanest available electricity from reaching many charging locations. This “grid congestion” would force greater reliance on nearby fossil fuel power plants, undercutting the emissions benefits of electrification. After identifying the issue, the study also recommends a modest set of targeted ...

While overdose deaths in the U.S. sharply declined in 2024, they remain high. Almost 90,000 Americans died from drug overdoses between October 2023 and September 2024. Overdose death rates are particularly high in American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) people. The earlier someone starts substance use, the more likely they are to have substance use problems later in life. So, it is important to work with young people to prevent substance use early in life. Researchers at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health recently partnered ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have found that better access to technology can go a long way toward achieving equity in healthcare for African Americans in the United States. According to Sharon Tettegah and Ebenezer Larnyo, both researchers at UCSB’s Center for Black Studies Research (CBSR), leveraging health technology is a promising strategy for addressing longstanding healthcare disparities “by enhancing access to care, improving its quality and reducing inequities.” “Our study shows that improving access to technology like broadband internet and smartphones, and healthcare technology use like ...

The study examined over a thousand women aged 18 to 49. Of these, 358 had suffered an ischemic stroke. Researchers compared the pregnancy histories of these women with those of 714 women who had not experienced a stroke. The results showed that more than half of the women who had an ischemic stroke had experienced at least one complication during pregnancy. In the group without ischemic stroke, this was one-third.    Women who had experienced a stillbirth were found to be nearly five times more likely to ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4:00 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6, 2025 MINNEAPOLIS – Experiencing complications during pregnancy is linked with a higher risk of stroke before age 50, according to a study published August 6, 2025, in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Researchers found female participants who had certain pregnancy complications were more likely to have an early stroke. These included preeclampsia, preterm birth, gestational diabetes, miscarriage and stillbirth. The study does not prove that pregnancy complications cause stroke. It only shows an association. “While the ...

CHICAGO – Older patients whose primary language is not English may be at greater risk for delirium after surgery in American hospitals. People who struggle with food insecurity or loneliness may be more likely to experience chronic pain after surgery. Fentanyl overdose deaths in older adults are rising at similar rates to younger people. When anesthesiologists lead preoperative care for hip fractures, patients get to the operating room faster and recover better. These findings and other timely research ...

Captive cockatoos have at least 30 different dance moves in their repertoire, including headbanging and body rolls, according to a study by Natasha Lubke at Charles Sturt University in Australia, and colleagues, publishing August 6, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS One. The moves, of which 17 are newly identified, may be performed with or without music. Several species of parrot have been anecdotally observed dancing to music in captivity. Dancing results from complex brain processes including imitation, ...

A new analysis of data on scientists with exceptional early-career success—according to a metric known as citation impact—has identified common characteristics among them, some of which could also be indicators of problematic or fraudulent behaviors. John Ioannidis of Stanford University, U.S., presents these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on August 6, 2025. Citation impact reflects a scientist’s overall influence in their field, which depends, in part, on the number of ...

Adolescent girls who have weight concerns despite not being obese are more likely to also experience depression and suicidality, per Korean survey of more than 50,000 middle and high school students Article URL: http://plos.io/4m9mewW Article title: Sex differences in the association of BMI and weight perception with depression and suicidality among Korean adolescents Author countries: Republic of Korea Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Two-thirds of dogs tested in a recent survey consume higher-than-recommended levels of heavy metals in their drinking water, according to a study published August 6, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS Water by Audrey Ruple from Virginia Tech, U.S., and colleagues. The survey, which focused on well water households in 10 states, uncovered 13 instances where arsenic, lead and copper tested above EPA-recommended levels.  Roughly 15 million U.S. households use private well water and are not protected by the EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Act, which regulates safety testing in drinking water. These households — and the canine companions inside — ...

Analysis of ocean sediments has surfaced geochemical clues in line with the possibility that an encounter with a disintegrating comet 12,800 years ago in the Northern Hemisphere triggered rapid cooling of Earth’s air and ocean. Christopher Moore of the University of South Carolina, U.S., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on August 6, 2025. During the abrupt cool-off—the Younger Dryas event—temperatures dropped about 10 degrees Celsius in a year or less, with cooler temperatures lasting about 1,200 years. Many researchers believe that no comet was ...

August 6, 2025        Waiting in Line: Why Six Feet of Social Distancing May Not Be Enough Study, led by undergraduate physics majors at UMass Amherst and researchers at University of Cadiz, sharpens our understanding of how airborne-communicable diseases travel   AMHERST, Mass. – We all remember the advice frequently repeated during the COVID pandemic: maintain six feet of distance from every other human when waiting in a line to avoid transmitting the virus. While reasonable, the advice did not take into account the complicated fluid dynamics governing how the airborne particles ...

Dogs drink water wherever they happen to find it — a puddle, a pond, a toilet. But the stuff in their actual water bowls almost always comes from the same tap their owners use. When that water is contaminated, both dogs and humans may suffer. The risk is especially high for the 15 million American households that rely on private wells, according to a new Virginia Tech study in the journal PLOS Water. In dog drinking water sampled from wells across the country, 64 percent contained excessive levels of at least one potentially toxic heavy metal, such as lead, iron, sulfur, or arsenic.  Whatever’s ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif) — Researchers at UC Santa Barbara, The University of Texas at Austin, Yale University and National Taiwan Normal University have found that a fair number of sun-like stars emerge with their rotational axis tilted with respect to their protoplanetary disks, the clouds of gas and dust from which solar systems are born. “All young stars have these discs, but we’ve known little about their orientations with respect to the spin axis of the host stars,” said UCSB associate physics professor Brendan Bowler, who studies how planets form and evolve through their orbits and atmospheres, and is senior author of a study in ...

A study from the Texas A&M University School of Public Health sheds new light on the relationship between community cohesion prior to a natural disaster and resilience after one, with possible policy applications for public health and emergency preparedness practitioners. “Recent events have reminded us that resilience isn’t just about bricks and budgets,” said community health expert Garett T. Sansom, who led the study. “In part, it’s also about bonds between neighbors.” Until now, he added, little has been known about the mechanisms ...

Virtual Reality Shows Promise in Easing Stress for Cardiac Patients, UCLA Health Study Finds  Living with cardiovascular disease often takes a serious emotional toll - and with stress known to worsen heart health, there’s growing interest in low-risk, innovative ways to help patients cope. New research from UCLA Health suggests that virtual reality (VR) may offer a promising tool to ease psychological stress and support heart health.  In a pilot study involving 20 patients from UCLA’s ...

MBARI researchers have developed an innovative imaging system that can be deployed at great depths underwater to study the movement of marine life. The team used the system to study deep-sea octopus and shared their findings in the scientific journal Nature. EyeRIS (Remote Imaging System) can capture detailed three-dimensional visual data about the structures and movement of marine life in their natural deep-sea habitat. MBARI researchers integrated EyeRIS on board a remotely operated vehicle to observe deep-sea pearl ...

Mutations in a single gene, HNF1A, are known to cause MODY3, a rare, early onset form of diabetes. Smaller scale mutations in the very same gene are also common and quietly nudge millions of people toward type-2 diabetes. A study published today in Cell Metabolism reveals why. Researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona show it’s fundamentally a problem of insulin-producing β‑cells. Using mouse models, they switched HNF1A off in different tissues and cell types including the liver, the gut and both α and β‑cells in the pancreas, ...

An international team led by scientists from the Canadian Museum of Nature and the University of Chicago reconstructed the brain, heart, and fins of an extinct fish called Norselaspis glacialis from a tiny fossil the size of fingernail and found evidence of change toward a fast-swimming, sensorily attuned lifestyle well before jaws and teeth were invented to better capture food. “These are the opening acts for a key episode in our own deep evolutionary history,” said Tetsuto Miyashita, who is a research scientist with the ...

Hydrogels are a permeable soft material consisting of polymer networks and water with applications ranging from bio-medical engineering to contact lenses. Intrinsic to hydrogels is the ability to endow diverse characteristics by modifying their polymer networks. Professor Gong’s research lab at WPI-ICReDD, Hokkaido University, specializes in hydrogel technology and has engineered hydrogels with self-strengthening, self-healing, underwater adhesion properties and more. For adhesive hydrogels, achieving instant, strong, and repeatable underwater adhesion is a prevailing challenge. Through a combination of data mining and machine learning, Professor Gong, Professor Takigawa, Professor ...

The Health Impact of Wildfires in Los Angeles County and Maui JAMA and JAMA Network Open EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE: 11:00 A.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6, 2025 About The Studies: JAMA and JAMA Network Open are publishing studies examining the health impact of wildfires in Los Angeles County in January 2025 and in Maui in August 2023. Among the findings: JAMA Excess Deaths Attributable to the Los Angeles Wildfires While there were only 30 direct fatalities from the Los Angeles wildfires, this study estimates that 440 deaths from January 5 to February 1, 2025, were attributable to the wildfires. These additional deaths likely reflect a combination of factors, including increased ...

Tay-Sachs and Sandhoff diseases, genetic disorders affecting the brain, have no effective treatment and are typically fatal within the first years of life. Scientists have reasoned that replacing the affected cells with those that are genetically healthy could slow or halt the neural degeneration that causes the symptoms. But the approach has been plagued with problems, including poor engraftment in the brain and a graft-versus-host response in which transplanted cells attack healthy tissue. Now researchers at Stanford Medicine have developed a way to replace more than half of the most severely affected cells, called microglia, with ...