More images available via the link in the notes section Engineers at Oxford University have developed a rapid, ultra-low-cost method for manufacturing soft robots using common lab equipment. The method has been published today (8 March) in Advanced Science. The new technique enables researchers to fabricate soft robotic actuators - the flexible components that power movement - in under 10 minutes at a material cost of less than $0.10 (US Dollars) per unit. Principle Investigator and corresponding author Professor Antonio Forte (Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford) said: “By lowering the financial and technical barriers ...

Neuroscientists at King’s College London have pinpointed a mechanism behind the increased neural connectivity observed in the very early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.   Published in Translational Psychiatry, the study also demonstrated that a cancer medication has the potential to reduce this hyperconnectivity.  The research, funded by Alzheimer's Society and conducted in brain cells of rats, showed that low levels of the protein amyloid-beta could induce hyperconnectivity and this pattern closely resembled changes seen in the brains ...

The recreational drugs cannabis, cocaine and amphetamines significantly increase the risk of stroke – including among younger users – Cambridge researchers have concluded after analysing data from more than 100 million people. Stroke is a major global health challenge – the third leading cause of death and disability combined. But it also a condition that, for the most part, results from modifiable risk factors, such as poor diet, lack of exercise and other lifestyle factors. In 2024, 8.8% of adults aged 16 to 59 years in England and Wales – around 2.9 ...

VANCOUVER - March 8, 2026 - Age is more than just one number. While neuroscientists used to think of cognitive aging as a single trendline, they now realize that vast individual differences require a more predictive and personalized approach. As they uncover more factors that affect cognition over time, they are realizing that modeling the aging brain requires more diverse data than traditionally captured.  “We need to appreciate that how people age is as much a biological process as it is a social process,” says Randy McIntosh of Simon Fraser University, who is chairing a symposium at the ...

EMBARGO 8 March 00:01 CET Key takeaways  A new patient version of ESC Guidelines on pregnancy is being published on International Women’s Day to empower women living with cardiovascular disease to make informed decisions about pregnancy and birth and support shared decision making with clinical staff.  The patient guidelines give accessible information about medical and psychological support options available to women with pre-existing cardiovascular disease before, during and after birth. The guidelines also state that Specialist Pregnancy Heart Teams should support women at high risk from the moment they want to start a ...

Tokyo, Japan – Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have discovered that a hydrogen-absorbing material shrinks in one direction upon heating, so-called negative thermal expansion (NTE). They found that this NTE is driven by a phase transition in the alignment of magnetic moments, an entirely different mechanism from its hydrogen-free counterpart. Since hydrogenation can be tuned, their findings promise customized high-precision ingredients in materials which don’t change in volume on heating, for next-generation precision nanotechnology.   Most materials tend to expand when heated. This can be problematic: glass containers often break when hot liquids are suddenly ...

(WASHINGTON – March 6, 2026) – Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to redefine how radiology is practiced, as well as highlight specific challenges for radiology departments, according to new research from the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR). The JACR Focus Issue on Impact of AI on Workflow Optimization offers a collection of invited research and reviews that explore the ways in which AI technology is being regularly utilized across practice types. “When thoughtfully implemented, AI can complement human expertise and improve efficiency and patient care,” said ...

Rice University has signed an $8.1 million cooperative agreement to lead the United States Space Force University Consortium/Space Strategic Technology Institute 4 (SSTI), called the Center for Advanced Space Sensing Technologies (CASST) at Rice. Led by David Alexander, director of the Rice Space Institute, CASST will bring new technologies to advance remote sensing and sensemaking from space.  The research team includes Rice professors and staff Kevin Kelly, Tomasz Tkaczyk, Kaden Hazzard, Mark Jernigan and Vinod Veedu, as well as collaborators ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Every time we feel a gentle tap on the skin, specialized nerve cells convert that physical force into an electrical signal the brain can interpret as touch. While scientists have long known that a protein called PIEZO2 acts as a key sensor for touch, it remained unclear why PIEZO2 is specialized for the localized mechanical forces experienced by sensory neurons, whereas its close relative PIEZO1 responds to broader mechanical stresses such as those generated when cells stretch, as occurs in blood vessels. Now, a new study from Scripps Research ...

  The greatest impacts would be concentrated in the northern lowlands of the country, potentially shifting cocoa cultivation toward higher elevations, especially in the Andean foothills. However, the areas where most of the country’s cocoa is currently produced would maintain favorable climate conditions.  Wild cocoa and agroforestry systems are emerging as complementary solutions: the former as a source of genes to develop more resilient varieties, and the latter to create more stable growing conditions in the face of climate change.  The study was published in the scientific journal Regional ...

DALLAS, March 6, 2026 — At time when trust in health information is at unprecedented risk, the American Heart Association today welcomed new findings from the independent Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) at the University of Pennsylvania suggesting that Americans consider the Association the most trusted source of public health information after their personal physician. According to the APPC poll, more than 8 in 10 (82%) U.S. adults say they are confident in the American Heart Association ...

A research team has developed a new strategy to improve catalysts used to remove nitrogen oxides from industrial emissions. By using ethanol during catalyst preparation, the scientists significantly enhanced the performance of manganese based carbon catalysts, achieving very high pollution removal efficiency at relatively low temperatures. The findings were published in the journal Sustainable Carbon Materials. Nitrogen oxides, commonly referred to as NOx, are major air pollutants produced during fossil fuel combustion in power plants and heavy industries. These gases contribute to smog formation, acid rain, and environmental and health problems. ...

Soil erosion is widely known for degrading land and reducing agricultural productivity. But new research shows it may also play a far more complex and important role in regulating the global nitrogen cycle, a fundamental process that supports plant growth and ecosystem health. In a new review published in Nitrogen Cycling, researchers synthesized current scientific knowledge on how soil erosion affects nitrogen transport, storage, and transformation in terrestrial ecosystems. The study reveals that erosion can significantly reshape how nitrogen moves through landscapes, with important implications for ...

Scientists have uncovered how different types of biochar influence the movement of water in agricultural soils that contain excessive phosphorus, offering new insights into how farmers can reduce nutrient loss and protect surrounding water bodies. In a new study, researchers investigated how two widely available agricultural biochars affect water infiltration and leakage in phosphorus enriched vegetable soils. The findings suggest that biochar made from rice husks can significantly slow water movement through soil, potentially reducing the risk of phosphorus leaching and improving water retention for crops. Vegetable production systems ...

LA JOLLA (March 6, 2026)—In little moments like when sipping coffee or licking an ice cream cone, it doesn’t seem like your body is pulling off a biological miracle. But it is. That cookie is not you—yet when you put it in your mouth, your body is able to tolerate it and process it without any detriment to your health in a process called oral tolerance. How does the human body make that decision between tolerance and rejection? A study led by Stanford University scientists—including first and co-corresponding author ...

NORMAN, OKLA. – The University of Oklahoma’s Native Nations Center for Tribal Policy Research recently released a new Sovereign Report titled “Purchased/Referred Care and Cancer: Overview and Options for Tribal Consideration.” Authored by Grace Fox (Seminole), tribal health care policy analyst at the center, the report examines how the Indian Health Service’s Purchased/Referred Care (PRC) program intersects with cancer screening, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up for eligible tribal citizens. PRC is the program through which the Indian Health Service (IHS) authorizes ...

A newly released compendium, Feminism and COVID-19: How Women Fare in the Face of a Global Crisis, is revealing how women across the world were simultaneously critical for the success of the global COVID-19 response, and disproportionately impacted by the pandemic’s secondary effects, such as lost income, and increased unpaid care work and violence. Book co-editors, Dr. Julia Smith of Simon Fraser University and Dr. Clare Wenham from the London School of Economics, gathered together a unique multidisciplinary and transnational team of authors and experts who examined nine case studies of the COVID-19 response and its global and local impacts on women from Bangladesh, Brazil, ...

Northwestern University engineers have developed the first modular robots with athletic intelligence. They can be combined and recombined in the wild, recover from injury and keep moving no matter what’s thrown at them. Called “legged metamachines,” the creations are made from autonomous, Lego-like modules that snap together into an endless number of configurations. Each module by itself is a complete robot with its own motor, battery and computer. Alone, a module can roll, turn and jump. But the real agility and indestructibility emerges when the modules combine. The study was published today (March 6) in the Proceedings ...

Study finds shared genetic roots of MS across diverse ancestries A new study published in Neurology and led by Queen Mary University of London, has revealed that people of South Asian, African and European ancestry share many of the same genetic risk factors for multiple sclerosis (MS).  This new study is one of the most ancestrally diverse genetic analyses of MS conducted in the UK. MS affects around 150,000 people ...

WASHINGTON—Endocrine Society members elected Joy Wu, M.D., Ph.D., of the Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, Calif., as its 2027-2028 President. She will serve as President-Elect for a year beginning in June 2026 before becoming President in June 2027. Wu is the Gerald M. Reaven, MD Professor of Endocrinology, Chief of the Division of Endocrinology and Vice Chair of Basic Science in the Department of Medicine at Stanford. She is a board-certified endocrinologist ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Pay range transparency laws that are intended to promote pay equity can inadvertently deter women from applying for those positions, thus perpetuating gender gaps in the workforce, according to research from Cornell University. “Across our four studies, we consistently found that women show a stronger preference for jobs with narrower salary ranges compared to men, and that this preference is associated with less assertive negotiation behaviors. In other words, the way these laws are being implemented may be perpetuating the very pay gaps they were designed to close,” said Alice Lee, ...

The electronic and magnetic properties of two-dimensional materials both have strong potential for technological applications. Researchers have long assumed that they are distinct phenomena, but Illinois Grainger engineers have demonstrated that they share a mathematical language. In an article recently published in Physical Review X, a team in The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign showed how to engineer two-dimensional magnetic systems to obey the same equations as mobile electrons ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Employees who are impressed by vague corporate-speak like “synergistic leadership,” or “growth-hacking paradigms” may struggle with practical decision-making, a new Cornell University study reveals. Published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, research by cognitive psychologist Shane Littrell introduces the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale (CBSR), a tool designed to measure susceptibility to impressive-but-empty organizational rhetoric. “Corporate bullshit is a specific style of communication that uses confusing, abstract buzzwords in a functionally misleading way,” ...

Local elected officials and community stakeholders gathered on March 5 at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital to learn about Pennington Biomedical Research Center’s Greaux Healthy initiative. Greaux Healthy is an initiative by LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center in partnership with the State of Louisiana focused on preventing and treating childhood obesity in Louisiana. Lake Charles Mayor Marshall Simien, Jr. was onsite to present the group with a proclamation announcing March 5th as “Greaux ...

Neutron stars harbor some of the most extreme environments in the universe: their densities soar to several times those of atomic nuclei, and they possess some of the strongest gravitational fields of any known objects, surpassed only by black holes. First observed in the 1960s, much of the internal composition of neutron stars is still unknown. Scientists are beginning to look to gravitational waves emitted by binary neutron-star inspirals—pairs of mutually orbiting neutron stars—as possible sources ...