BUFFALO, N.Y. — Look inside a brain cell with Huntington’s disease or ALS and you are likely to find RNA clumped together. These solid-like clusters, thought to be irreversible, can act as sponges that soak up surrounding proteins key for brain health, contributing to neurological disorders.  How these harmful RNA clusters form in the first place has remained an open question. Now, University at Buffalo researchers have not only uncovered that tiny droplets of protein and nucleic acids in cells contribute to the formation of RNA clusters but also demonstrated a way to prevent and disassemble ...

As cities worldwide begin embracing low-altitude logistics to support rapid, flexible deliveries by drones, urban planners face an increasingly difficult challenge: how to design an aerial delivery network that balances cost efficiency, safety, and noise impact. A research team from Beihang University has developed a new framework that tackles this challenge head-on. Their study presents a multi-layered, hub-and-spoke logistics network design optimized using a dual-population co-evolutionary algorithm. This method not only improves route planning and facility placement but also explicitly accounts for noise constraints — a key concern for residents living ...

Studies suggest mindfulness meditation can improve cognition, but few researchers have examined whether virtual mindfulness meditation apps are effective. In a new eNeuro paper, Andy Kim et al., from the University of Southern California, assessed attention control in adults following about a month of mindfulness meditation guided by a mobile app.  In participants of all ages, mindfulness improved attention control as measured by reliable eye movement tasks established to assess how quickly people orient their attention. A control group that listened to an audio book did not have this cognitive improvement. Notably, self-reported measures of cognitive ability, ...

How do emotions influence memory? In a collaboration between Hangzhou Normal University and Nanjing Normal University, Xi Jia led a study to explore whether emotions shape how well people remember meaningless, or neutral, images.  As detailed in their new JNeurosci paper, the researchers recorded the brain activity of 44 study participants as they viewed meaningless images of squiggles followed by images meant to evoke positive, neutral, or negative emotions. Researchers presented each squiggle–emotional image pair to participants three times. During image pair learning sessions, positive emotions promoted ...

A new study from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus reveals that individuals living with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) often feel dismissed, misunderstood and underserved by the healthcare system. The study, published today in F&S Reports. “PCOS is a common hormone-related condition that affects up to 1 in 10 individuals with ovaries. It can cause a range of symptoms including irregular periods, acne, unwanted facial hair, weight gain and fertility issues,” said Kathryn McKenney, MD, co-director of the PCOS Multi-Disciplinary Program and assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and senior author of the study. ...

WASHINGTON, D.C.— A focused review published in the journal Research Integrity and Peer Review has found that Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUC) provide surprisingly little protection for animals in research, that searches for alternatives to animal use are seldom conducted, and that, when performed, they are inadequate. For the first time since the publication of “The Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals” (The Guide) in 1963, research scientists are recommending a new guide that puts replacement of animals in research and IACUC member training ...

HOUSTON – (July 7, 2025) – Lei Li, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University, has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to develop a new generation of wearable medical imaging technology capable of visualizing deep tissue function in real time. The highly competitive five-year NSF grants are given to early career faculty members who demonstrate the potential to serve as academic models and leaders in research and education. Li’s project centers on photoacoustic imaging, a technique that merges light and ...

Treatment with Virtual Reality appears to work very well for people with psychosis. It works faster than the current treatment with cognitive behavioural therapy and is at least as effective. This is evident from research conducted by UMCG psychiatrist Wim Veling. 'I hope that this application of Virtual Reality will soon be available in all mental health care facilities. Cognitive behavioural therapy is the most important psychological treatment for paranoid ideas in patients with psychotic disorders. In a study, Veling compared the effect of treatment with Virtual Reality-based therapy with current standard therapy. 'With ...

There's something magnetic about a group of people looking in the same direction – others will follow their gazes to see what has caught their attention. But is the same true for animals like pigeons – and, if so, does it make a difference, if just one pigeon or a large group of them looks at something? A team of animal behaviour researchers around Fumihiro Kano (team leader) and Mathilde Delacoux from the University of Konstanz examined the gaze following behaviour in groups of pigeons. A story about why it is important to know where pigeons are looking. Following the gaze Gaze following ...

Chihtong “Lily” Lee never set out to reinvent surgical tools, but her curiosity, precision and creativity led her to do just that. The 2025 Rice University graduate recently earned second place in the undergraduate category at the ASME SB3C Summer Bioengineering Conference, a competition hosted by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Selected as one of the top presentations out of more than 200 submissions, Lee was invited to attend the national conference in New Mexico, where she stood out for her work on improving surgical ...

In the pursuit of more effective and accessible solutions for joint health monitoring, researchers are constantly seeking innovative ways to enhance the capabilities of wearable devices. A recent article published in Nano-Micro Letters, authored by Professor Jin-Chong Tan and Professor Hubin Zhao from the University of Oxford and University College London, presents a groundbreaking AI-enabled piezoelectric wearable device for accurate joint torque sensing, leveraging the unique properties of boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs). Why ...

In the quest for more efficient and sustainable energy storage solutions, researchers are constantly exploring innovative ways to enhance the performance of solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) for lithium metal batteries (LMBs). A recent article published in Nano-Micro Letters, authored by Professor Xingping Zhou and Professor Zhigang Xue from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, presents a groundbreaking approach to improving lithium-ion conduction in SPEs through in situ polymerization within a covalent organic framework (COF). Why This Research Matters Enhanced Ion Transport Efficiency: Traditional SPEs often suffer from low ion transport ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — While immunosuppressive medications are critical to prevent rejection of transplant organs, they also come with plenty of downsides. They can cause harsh side effects, like headaches and tremors, and increase the risk for infection and cancer. But what if there was a way to prevent organ rejection without using these medications? That goal fuels the work of Mark Stegall, M.D., a longtime Mayo Clinic transplant researcher. He leads a team of researchers developing pioneering therapies to prevent organ rejection without the need for immunosuppression. A recently published study in the American Journal of Transplantation is offering hope for patients. Using ...

Researchers from more than 50 international institutions have launched Open Problems (https://openproblems.bio), a collaborative open-source platform to benchmark, improve, and run competitions for computational methods in single-cell genomics. Co-led by Helmholtz Munich and Yale University, the initiative aims to standardize evaluations, foster reproducibility, and accelerate progress towards open challenges in this fast-moving field. A Common Language for a Complex Field Single-cell genomics allows scientists to analyze individual cells at unprecedented resolution, revealing how they function, interact, and contribute to health and disease. But as the field has grown, so has ...

Since their first detection, powerful bursts of X-rays from distant galaxies, known as fast X-ray transients (FXTs), have mystified astronomers. FXTs have historically been elusive events, occurring at vast distances away from Earth and only lasting seconds to hours. Einstein Probe (EP), launched in 2024, is dedicated to observing transient events in the X-ray and is changing the game for astronomers looking to understand the origin of these exotic events. In January 2025 EP alerted astronomers to the nearest FXT known at the time, named EP 250108a. Its proximity to Earth (2.8 billion light-years away) ...

During the coronavirus pandemic, german universities had to act quickly: Lectures and seminars had to be offered online via Zoom. After the pandemic-related lockdowns, many lecturers introduced synchronous hybrid teaching/learning settings. These are courses in which students can take part either on site in the seminar room or online at the same time. Students are therefore faced with the decision every session as to whether they want to take part in the course online or on site. Three researchers from the Professorship of Adult Education/Continuing Education at the Institute of Education at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) have investigated the factors ...

High-resolution flow field data are essential for accurately evaluating the aerodynamic performance of aircraft. However, acquiring such data via large-scale numerical simulations or wind tunnel experiments is highly resource-intensive. Flow field super-resolution techniques aim to reconstruct high-resolution information from low-resolution data, significantly improving data acquisition efficiency. With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, especially deep learning, neural network-based super-resolution methods have been widely adopted for flow field reconstruction. Nonetheless, these ...

The conceptual design stage is a key step in aircraft development, laying the foundation for performance, efficiency and innovation. Traditionally, this process relies heavily on experienced designers to iterate designs based on design theory, design experience, and engineering calculations, which places high demands on designers' design experience and professional skills. With the continuous improvement of aircraft design requirements and the continuous expansion of application scenarios, it is necessary to explore new conceptual design methods to free designers from a large amount of low-value, highly repetitive, and experience-dependent ...

Scientists have been working on the artificial production of blood for several decades. Now, researchers from the University of Konstanz and Queen Mary University of London have taken an important step closer to that goal with a new discovery. Roughly 15,000 units of blood are needed daily in Germany, most of which currently come from donations. Research into developing alternative sources, such as large-scale artificial blood production, has been ongoing for decades but is still far from reaching its widespread utility. The main challenge ...

The Vortex Particle Method (VPM), a meshless vortex flow simulation approach, is gaining traction for its efficient simulation of unsteady vortex wakes evolution that is shed by aircrafts, rotors and wind turbines. It outperforms traditional grid-based CFD methods with faster computation, lower dissipation, and easier satisfaction of the CFL stability condition. However, traditional VPM has huge challenge on accurately simulating these complex flows, due to its poor numerical stability, which is compromised by factors such ...

Nitrogen fixation is a critical ecological process that converts atmospheric nitrogen into bioavailable forms, essential for plant growth and carbon sequestration. This study, published in Forest Ecosystems, focused on two primary forms of biological nitrogen fixation (BNF): symbiotic nitrogen fixation (SNF), which occurs within the root nodules of nitrogen-fixing plants, and asymbiotic nitrogen fixation (ANF), which is carried out by free-living microorganisms in soil and litter. Understanding the environmental controls on these processes is crucial for predicting ...

Immune checkpoint pathways regulate T cell function and play pivotal roles in the treatment of both cancer and autoimmune diseases. One key component of these pathways is Lymphocyte Activation Gene 3 (LAG-3)—a classical immunosuppressive receptor that has long posed unresolved questions regarding its biological mechanisms. In a new study published on June 30 in Cell, researchers from the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Grossman School of Medicine at New York University, and the School of Medicine at Zhejiang University have ...

A pairing of two experimental drugs inhibits tumor growth and blocks drug-induced resistance in ovarian cancer, according to a preclinical study led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The research reveals a promising strategy against this hard-to-treat malignancy, and more generally demonstrates a powerful new approach for the identification of effective regimens to treat genetically diverse cancers. Ovarian cancer is genetically diverse in the sense that it can be driven by mutations in many different genes. This complicates the standard strategy of developing drugs to target common driver mutations. In the study, published July 7 in Cell Reports Medicine, the researchers applied a ...

“Space ice” contains tiny crystals and is not, as previously assumed, a completely disordered material like liquid water, according to a new study by scientists at UCL (University College London) and the University of Cambridge. Ice in space is different to the crystalline (highly ordered) form of ice on Earth. For decades, scientists have assumed it is amorphous (without a structure), with colder temperatures meaning it does not have enough energy to form crystals when it freezes. In the new study, ...

About The Study: The health of U.S. children has worsened across a wide range of health indicator domains over the past 17 years. The broad scope of this deterioration highlights the need to identify and address the root causes of this fundamental decline in the nation’s health.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Christopher B. Forrest, MD, PhD, email forrestc@chop.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2025.9855) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author ...