Physicists from the University of Copenhagen have begun using the gigantic magnetic fields of galaxy clusters to observe distant black holes in their search for an elusive particle that has stumped scientists for decades. It is a story of extremes that are hard to fathom. The heaviest structures in the universe, clusters of galaxies, are a quadrillion times more massive than the Sun. And axions, mysterious theoretical particles, are much, much lighter than even the lightest atom. The axion is a hypothetical elementary particle ...

Researchers at Columbia Engineering have built a cancer therapy that makes bacteria and viruses work as a team. In a study published today in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the Synthetic Biological Systems Lab shows how their system hides a virus inside a tumor-seeking bacterium, smuggles it past the immune system, and unleashes it inside cancerous tumors.  The new platform combines the bacteria’s tendency to find and attack tumors with the virus’s natural preference for infecting and killing cancerous cells. Tal Danino, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering, ...

Pop-up screening for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) risk held at community pharmacies and large-scale sporting events can identify people with uncontrolled cardiovascular risk factors, according to a study published in JACC, the flagship journal of the American College of Cardiology, and simultaneously presented at the 73rd Annual Scientific Meeting of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand. ASCVD is the leading cause of death worldwide but is often preventable in many cases. Regular preventative screenings can identify modifiable risk factors like ...

What’s Happening From 16th August to 19th September 2025, the Norwegian research vessel R/V Kronprins Haakon will be sailing into the Arctic Ocean for an expedition organised and funded through the prestigious European Research Council Synergy Grant “i2B – Into The Blue”. The i2B Arctic Ocean Expedition team consisting of 25 scientists will collect new geological archives that will shed light on Arctic climate during past ‘warmer-than-present-day’ conditions (interglacial periods). These archives are crucial to understand the ...

A Medical University of South Carolina team reports in Frontiers in Immunology that it has engineered a new type of genetically modified immune cell that can precisely target and neutralize antibody-producing cells complicit in organ rejection. Similar strategies have been used to stimulate the immune system against certain cancers, but Ferreira’s team is the first to show its utility in tamping down immune responses that can lead to organ rejection. More than 50,000 organ transplants take place each year in the U.S. While often lifesaving, these procedures depend on a precise match between donor and recipient genes to avoid rejection. When the immune system detects foreign ...

As the world’s largest wheat producer, China’s annual wheat output reaches 136 million tons, and the stability of its production is directly related to global food security. However, in recent years, China’s wheat imports have continued to rise, reaching 9.96 million tons in 2022. Meanwhile, environmental problems caused by excessive fertilizer application have become increasingly prominent. How to ensure output while reducing resource consumption and environmental costs has become a core issue for sustainable agricultural development. Recently, ...

As a staple food for more than half of the global population, the high and stable yield of rice is directly related to food security. As the world’s largest rice producer, China has increased rice yield per unit through intensive fertilization and flood irrigation, but this model has also brought problems such as soil degradation, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. How to ensure food supply while breaking through resource and environmental constraints? Xusheng Meng and colleagues from Nanjing Agricultural University proposed a green, high-yield, and high-efficiency rice technology system in a review study, providing a solution to this problem. The ...

The North China Plain is an important “granary” in China, with its winter wheat and summer maize planting areas accounting for 73.6% and 30.6% of the national total for wheat and maize respectively. However, its agricultural production has long been trapped in the dilemma of “high input, low efficiency”—fertilizer usage has increased more than 4 times compared with 40 years ago, while grain output has only risen by 1.2 times. Problems such as over-exploitation of water resources and soil degradation have also become increasingly prominent. How to balance ...

A new generation of CRISPR technology developed at UNSW Sydney offers a safer path to treating genetic diseases like Sickle Cell, while also proving beyond doubt that chemical tags on DNA — often thought to be little more than genetic cobwebs — actively silence genes. For decades, scientists have debated whether methyl groups — small chemical clusters that accumulate on DNA — are simply detritus that accumulates in the genome where genes are turned off, or the actual cause of gene repression. But now researchers at UNSW, working with colleagues in the US at the St Jude Children’s Research Hospital (Memphis), have shown in a paper published recently ...

The number of people living with Parkinson's disease globally has doubled in the past 25 years. Yet the treatment and monitoring of the neurological disease seems many decades behind. Clinicians typically gauge the severity of the disease using subjective rating scales, and a shortage of doctors trained to treat Parkinson's means that people can go months — or years — between clinic visits. This leaves patients in a troubling spot, often unsure how quickly their disease is progressing and whether they are responding appropriately to medications. Now, ...

Australian researchers have found that households with solar panels could boost their returns by selling surplus power directly to their neighbours, known as peer-to-peer (P2P) energy sharing, helping to stabilise the electricity grid and negotiating a better price than retailers currently offer. Worldwide, around 25 million households already rely on solar panels, with forecasts predicting 100 million by 2030. In 2024, the world installed an estimated 597 GW of solar power, a 33% increase compared to 2023. Australia has one of the highest rates of solar panels ...

A striking photograph of two male saiga antelope sparring on the banks of a steppe lake is the winner of the 2025 BMC Ecology and Evolution and BMC Zoology image competition. The annual competition spotlights the beauty, struggles, and survival strategies of remarkable life on earth, while celebrating the researchers striving to understand the natural world in the fields of ecology, evolutionary biology, palaeontology, and zoology. Along with the overall winning image, the judges selected winners and runners-up in four categories: Collective ...

Cancer Research UK-funded scientists have uncovered dementia-like behaviour in pancreas cells at risk of turning into cancer. The findings provide clues that could help in the treatment and prevention of pancreatic cancer, a difficult-to-treat disease linked to 6,900 deaths in the UK every year.* The research was published today (15 August) in the journal Developmental Cell**, and was funded by Cancer Research UK, with additional support from Wellcome, the Medical Research Council, and the Biotechnology ...

The medical pros of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) are being exaggerated while the risks are being downplayed, suggest the findings of a survey on the type of information patients and their relatives/friends recall having been given before the procedure, and published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics. Based on the responses, the researchers calculate that patients were nearly 4 times more likely to recall being told that resulting memory problems were temporary rather than long term. And they were 6 times more likely ...

SGLT-2 inhibitor and GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs should be used in all or almost all adults with type 2 diabetes at higher risk of cardiovascular and kidney complications, and in the majority of adults at moderate risk of complications, say a panel of international experts in The BMJ today. But for those at lower risk, they advise against routinely recommending these drugs, and suggest doctors discuss treatment options with their patients, noting that decisions are likely to be more contextual and based on what’s most important to the individual.  For ...

A large international study has found that spironolactone, a medication for high blood pressure and heart failure, does not reduce the risk of heart-related death or hospitalizations in people with kidney failure receiving dialysis, despite earlier smaller studies suggesting benefit. The findings were published on August 14 in The Lancet and presented at ERA Congress 2025. The study enrolled 2,538 participants from 143 dialysis centres across 12 countries, making it the largest trial to date on spironolactone ...

*Embargoed links to the paper, regional data, and additional quotes are available at the end of this press release*  IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON PRESS RELEASE Peer Reviewed / Observational study / People                        An analysis of suicide rates in England has shown how factors like deprivation and transport density are linked to regional increases in suicide risk. The first of its kind study, led by researchers at Imperial College London, UCL and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), looked at suicide trends in England from 2002 to 2022 combined with the ...

Tiny pond worms could help find new ways to treat schizophrenia, develop understanding around drug addiction and test new medicines for mental illnesses – all while reducing the number of mice and rats used in early medical research.  Scientists from the University of Reading say that planaria - harmless flatworms found in ponds and rivers - react to brain medicines in ways similar to rodents. When given haloperidol, a drug used to treat mental health conditions, the worms became much less active, ...

In Ho Yong Chung’s laboratory, magic is at work — plants turn into plastics. In new research, Chung, an associate professor in the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, showed for the first time the possibility of using lignin, a material found in plant cell walls, and carbon dioxide to create a new kind of polyurethane, a polymer used in various applications for its ability to regulate heat, flexibility during processing and strength as a finished product. The work was published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. “We’ve ...

Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah (the U) announces leadership team appointments overseeing clinical and research efforts in theranostics, an innovative approach to radiation treatment for cancer that combines diagnostics and therapeutics.  Heloisa Soares, MD, PhD, Huntsman Cancer Institute medical oncologist and associate professor of internal medicine at the U, will serve as medical director of the theranostics program.  Theranostics is a powerful new way to both find and treat cancer. It uses radioactive drugs—called radiopharmaceuticals—that ...

Most people picture a doctor checking for a broken bone when they think of an X-ray. But the technology is just as important in places like airport security, manufacturing, quality control and scientific research, each with its own criteria for size and shape.  A team led by Florida State University Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Biwu Ma has developed a new form for X-ray materials that can meet the needs of large-area applications, changing out complex crystal structures for an adaptable and scalable thin-film detector. The work was published in Angewandte Chemie.  “We took a material we developed and made it better,” Ma said. “This ...

CHICAGO — August 14, 2025  — The 66th Supplement to the American Ornithological Society’s (AOS’s) Check-list of North American Birds, published today in Ornithology, includes several significant updates to the classification of bird species found in North America, Central America, and the Caribbean. A few highlights from the supplement, detailed below, include species splits for Myiarchus nuttingi, Vireo gilvus, and Larus argentatus; the addition of subfamilies in the Laridae for white-terns and noddies; and a merging of three families ...

Canadian-grown wheat, canola and peas have some of the lowest carbon footprints in the world—so low that, in some cases, they could be shipped to Europe 17 times before matching the emissions of the same crops grown there.  The study out of UBC Okanagan, published in Nature Food, compared the carbon footprints of these crops from Canada, France, Germany, Australia and the United States using the ISO 14067 standard.   Led by Dr. Nicole Bamber of UBCO’s Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science, the research ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Origin-recognition complex, or ORC, plays an unexpectedly broad role in the regulation of human cell gene expression, according to a study in the journal Cell Reports. “This is the first detailed study of how and where ORC regulates epigenetics and gene expression in human cells,” said Anindya Dutta, Ph.D., leader of the study and chair of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Genetics. “The unanticipated scale and breadth of the regulation opens new chapters in ORC biology.” The six-subunit complex was discovered ...

The next time you breathe, consider this: photosynthesis of algae, powered by iron dust in the ocean, made it possible. Now, a new Rutgers University study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences pulls back the curtain on this vital process. Iron is a critical micronutrient for marine phytoplankton, the microscopic algae that form the foundation of the ocean’s food webs. It is deposited into the world’s oceans as dust from deserts and arid areas as well as from glacial meltwater. “Every other breath you take includes oxygen from the ocean, ...