In coral reefs throughout the world, visually striking bands of bare sand surrounding reefs are often visible in satellite imagery but their cause remains a mystery. One theory is fear. Parrotfish and other herbivores will leave a reef's shelter to eat algae or the surrounding seagrass, but their fear of being gobbled up by predators may keep them from roving too far or eating too much, creating, what's known as "grazing halos"–bands encircling reefs where vegetation once existed.  Prior studies have proposed that ...

An updated systematic review finds that consuming cannabis while pregnant appears to increase the odds of preterm birth, low birth weight and infant death. The study by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University published today in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. The lead author is a physician-scientist who provides prenatal care for high-risk pregnancies at OHSU. “Patients are coming to me in their prenatal visits saying, ‘I quit smoking and drinking, but is it safe to still use cannabis?’” said lead author Jamie Lo, M.D., ...

Researchers have developed a new protocol for benchmarking quantum gates, a critical step toward realizing the full potential of quantum computing and potentially accelerating progress toward fault-tolerant quantum computers. The new protocol, called deterministic benchmarking (DB), provides a more detailed and efficient method for identifying specific types of quantum noise and errors compared to widely used existing techniques. “Quantum computing is ultimately limited by how accurately we can implement gates — the basic operations of a quantum processor,” said Daniel Lidar, co-corresponding author of the study and ...

People who are given a vaccine for shingles have a 23% lower risk of cardiovascular events, including stroke, heart failure, and coronary heart disease, according to a study of more than a million people published in the European Heart Journal [1] today (Tuesday).   The protective effect of the vaccine lasts for up to eight years and is particularly pronounced for men, people under the age of 60 and those with unhealthy lifestyles, such as smoking, drinking alcohol and being inactive.   The study was led by Professor Dong Keon Yon from the Kyung Hee University College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea. He said: “Shingles ...

Many behavioral studies suggest that using landmarks to navigate through large-scale spaces — known as map-based navigation — is not established until around age 12. A neuroscience study at Emory University counters that assumption. Through experiments combining brain scans and a virtual environment the researchers dubbed Tiny Town, they showed that five-year-olds have the brain system that supports map-based navigation. The journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published ...

A recent study conducted by researchers from Universidad San Francisco de Quito and Johns Hopkins University has revealed critical insights into the mental health of healthcare providers in Ecuador during the COVID-19 pandemic. Published in journal Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, this research examines the balance between compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress among healthcare professionals working in public institutions across Ecuador, a low-and middle-income country.  The study surveyed 2,873 healthcare providers from 111 public institutions across 23 provinces in Ecuador ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has announced a new strategic direction for its NIKE laser-target facility to align its world-class capabilities with the Department of Defense’s (DoD) nuclear strategic priorities. The new strategic direction marks a shift from the facility’s historical focus on Department of Energy (DoE) missions, specifically those related to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The initiative emphasizes NRL’s commitment to advancing national security through cutting-edge science and technology. Originally constructed in 1995 with support from the NNSA, the NIKE (pronounced nai-kee) laser was designed ...

In a first-of-its-kind clinical study, scientists at The University of Texas at Dallas and Baylor University Medical Center showed that patients with treatment-resistant PTSD were symptom-free up to six months after completing traditional therapy paired with vagus nerve stimulation (VNS). The results of the nine-patient Phase 1 trial, conducted by scientists from UT Dallas’ Texas Biomedical Device Center (TxBDC) in collaboration with researchers from the Baylor Scott & White Research Institute (BSWRI), were published online March 15 in Brain Stimulation. Dr. Michael Kilgard, the Margaret Fonde Jonsson Professor of neuroscience in the School of Behavioral ...

A novel health-assessment tool uses eight metrics derived from a person’s physical exam and routine lab tests to characterize biological age. It may be able to predict a person’s risk of disability and death better than current health predictors. University of Washington School of Medicine researchers describe their method in a May 5 Nature Communication paper. The method, called the Health Octo Tool, might make it possible to identify new factors that affect aging, and to design interventions that prolong life, said the report’s first author, Dr. Shabnam ...

Key takeaways: Retail pharmacies excluded from Part D networks were as much as 4.5 times more likely to close in the past decade Growing use of preferred networks disadvantages independent pharmacies, as well as those in low-income or minority neighborhoods Use of preferred pharmacy networks has soared amid mergers of major PBMs and retail pharmacy chains PBM ownership of pharmacies has recently drawn scrutiny from federal and state officials Retail pharmacies excluded from Medicare Part D networks maintained by drug benefits middlemen were much more ...

A team of engineers at the University of California San Diego is making it easier for researchers from a broad range of backgrounds to understand how different species are evolutionarily related, and support the transformative biological and medical applications that rely on these species trees. The researchers developed a scalable, automated and user-friendly tool called ROADIES that allows scientists to infer species trees directly from raw genome data, with less reliance on the domain expertise and computational resources currently required. Species trees are critical ...

While text-to-video artificial intelligence models like OpenAI’s Sora are rapidly metamorphosing in front of our eyes, they have struggled to produce metamorphic videos. Simulating a tree sprouting or a flower blooming is harder for AI systems than generating other types of videos because it requires the knowledge of the physical world and can vary widely. But now, these models have taken an evolutionary step. Computer scientists at the University of Rochester, Peking University, University of California, Santa Cruz, and National University of Singapore ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 5 May 2025    Follow @Annalsofim on X, Facebook, Instagram, threads, and Linkedin         Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on ...

Discovering new, powerful electrolytes is one of the major bottlenecks for designing next-generation batteries for electric vehicles, phones, laptops and grid-scale energy storage. The most stable electrolytes are not always the most conductive. The most efficient batteries are not always the most stable. And so on. “The electrodes have to satisfy very different properties at the same time. They always conflict with each other,” said Ritesh Kumar, an Eric and Wendy Schimdt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellow working in the Amanchukwu Lab at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of ...

TAMPA, Fla. (May 5, 2025) — People living with HIV are less likely to receive potentially lifesaving cancer treatment if they live in communities with lower income levels and educational attainment, according to a new national study led by researchers from Moffitt Cancer Center. In the study, published in Cancer, researchers looked at cancer treatment records for more than 31,000 adults with HIV who were diagnosed with one of 14 common cancers between 2004 and 2020. They found that 16.5% of them did not receive the recommended first line curative treatment for ...

The Min protein system prevents abnormal cell division in bacteria by forming oscillating patterns between the ends of a cell (“poles”). Despite decades of theoretical work, predicting the protein concentrations at which oscillations start and whether cells can maintain them under different conditions has been a challenge. Understanding these thresholds is important because they reveal how efficient this self-organizing system is in guiding division to the right place. UC San Diego researchers have engineered ...

Protons are the basis of bioenergetics. We know them, in our everyday life, from the pH values we see on various soaps and lotions. But the ability to move them through biological systems is essential for life. A new study shows for the first time that proton transfer is directly influenced by the spin of electrons, when measured in chiral biological environments such as proteins. In other words, proton movement in living systems is not purely chemical; it is also a quantum process involving electron spin and molecular chirality. The quantum process directly affects ...

Friendship comes with complex pros and cons – possibly explaining why some individuals are less sociable, according to a new study of gorillas. Scientists examined over 20 years of data on 164 wild mountain gorillas, to see how their social lives affected their health. Costs and benefits changed depending on the size of gorilla groups, and differed for males and females. For example, friendly females in small groups didn’t get ill very often but had fewer offspring – while those in large groups got ill more but had higher birth rates. Meanwhile, males with strong social bonds tended to get ill more – ...

Two thousand years before the Inca empire dominated the Andes, a lesser-known society known as the Chavín Phenomenon shared common art, architecture, and materials throughout modern-day Peru. Through agricultural innovations, craft production, and trade, Chavín shaped a growing social order and laid the foundations for hierarchical society among the high peaks. But one of their most powerful tools wasn’t farming. It was access to altered states of consciousness. That’s according to a new study that uncovered the earliest-known direct evidence of the use of psychoactive plants in the Peruvian Andes. A team ...

Muscle cells contain their own circadian clocks and disrupting them with shift work can have a profound impact on ageing, according to new research. A study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) contributes to the growing evidence of the damage shift work has on health. The King’s College London team revealed how muscle cells have an intrinsic timekeeping mechanism that regulates protein turnover, modulating muscle growth and function. At night, the muscle clock activates the breakdown of defective proteins, replenishing muscles while the body rests. Altering this intrinsic ...

Whether designing a window in an airliner or a cable conduit for an engine, manufacturers devote a lot of effort to reinforcing openings for structural integrity. But the reinforcement is rarely perfect and often creates structural weaknesses elsewhere. Now, engineers at Princeton and Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a technique that can maintain structural integrity by essentially hiding the opening from the surrounding forces. Rather than reinforcing the opening to protect against a few select forces, the new approach reorganizes nearly any set of forces that could affect the surrounding material to avoid the opening. In a May 5 article in the ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Tuberculosis, the world’s deadliest infectious disease, is estimated to infect around 10 million people each year, and kills more than 1 million annually. Once established in the lungs, the bacteria’s thick cell wall helps it to fight off the host immune system. Much of that cell wall is made from complex sugar molecules known as glycans, but it’s not well-understood how those glycans help to defend the bacteria. One reason for that is that there hasn’t been an easy way to label them inside cells.  MIT chemists have now overcome that obstacle, demonstrating that they can label a ...

Some reef fish have the unexpected ability to move their jaws from side to side, biologists at the University of California, Davis have discovered. This ability – which is rare among vertebrate animals – allows these fish to feed rapidly and efficiently on algae growing on rocks. The work is published May 5 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Being able to move your jaw from side to side might not seem surprising from a human point of view, but if you look across all vertebrate ...

Wheat is a major source of calories, carbohydrates and protein worldwide, and its distinctive gluten proteins are what gives bread and pasta dough texture and elasticity. But it also can cause autoimmune reactions such as celiac disease, which is growing in prevalence worldwide. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have deleted a cluster of genes in wheat that generates gluten proteins that can trigger immune reactions without harming the breadmaking quality of this globally nutritious crop. The findings, published this month in the journal Theoretical and Applied Genetics, won’t ...

Researchers used precision medicine platform, Quadratic Phenotypic Optimisation Platform (QPOP), to predict treatment response and identify effective drug combinations for soft tissue sarcomas (STS). Results highlight a promising drug pairing of AZD5153 and pazopanib to treat STS. Findings support the potential of using data-driven, phenotypic screening in guiding personalised cancer therapies for STS.   SINGAPORE – A study conducted by researchers from the Agency for Science, Technology and ...