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 ...

Francis Crick Institute press release Under strict embargo: 16:00hrs BST Wednesday 6 August 2025 Peer reviewed Experimental study Animals (zebrafish) Early heartbeats direct the heart’s own development and growth Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have discovered that the heart’s own contractions trigger biological signals that guide the formation of a functional beating heart. Their study in zebrafish highlights the heart’s ability to remodel and adapt to physiological demands and could also reveal what goes wrong during congenital ...

Arthropods, including insects and spiders, make up the vast majority of animal species on the planet. Despite their small size they are irreplaceable contributors to the health of natural habitats, as well as vital food sources for birds and other larger animals. But, arthropods may be declining globally. There is some evidence to support reduced numbers of species in temperate regions of the Northen Hemisphere. In the tropics, however, evidence for arthropod declines has so far been limited. A recent international collaboration of scientists has attempted to find this missing evidence, with the findings published in Nature. The ...

In nanophotonics, tiny structures are used to control light at the nanoscale and render it useful for technological applications. A key element here is optical resonators, which trap and amplify light of a certain color (wavelength). Previous methods of controlling these resonances were more like a dimmer switch: You could weaken the resonance or slightly shift its color. However, genuine on-and-off switching was not possible, as the resonators always remain fundamentally coupled with the light. A team led by Andreas Tittl, Professor of Experimental Physics at LMU, has now achieved precisely this breakthrough together with partners from Monash ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a powerful new tool in training and education, including in the field of neurosurgery. Yet a new study suggests that AI tutoring provides better results when paired with human instruction. Researchers at the Neurosurgical Simulation and Artificial Intelligence Learning Centre at The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital) of McGill University are studying how AI and virtual reality (VR) can improve the training and performance of brain surgeons. They simulate brain surgeries using VR, monitor ...

IHME’s 2025 Roux Prize Awarded to Rural Health Equity Advocate – Recognized for Advancing Access to Oral Health Care in Nigeria  Dr. Adekemi Adeniyan will receive a $100,000 award for pioneering innovative, data-driven solutions to tackle oral health disparities in underserved communities.  Dr. Adekemi Adeniyan, Executive Director of the Dentalcare Foundation, rural dentist, and advocate for oral health advancement in Nigeria, has been named the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s ...

Recent findings, made by Griffith University researchers, show that early hominins made a major deep-sea crossing to reach the Indonesian island of Sulawesi much earlier than previously established, based on the discovery of stone tools dating to at least 1.04 million years ago at the Early Pleistocene (or ‘Ice Age’) site of Calio. Budianto Hakim from the National Research and Innovation Agency of Indonesia (BRIN) and Professor Adam Brumm from the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution at Griffith University led the ...

With the global rollout of 5G networks and the onset of 6G research, the need for advanced materials that enable faster and more reliable wireless communication has never been greater. Microwave dielectric ceramics, key components in devices like resonators, filters, and antennas, must meet strict criteria: low signal delay, low loss, and stable performance across temperatures.   A research team from Guilin University of Technology in China has risen to this challenge by developing a novel garnet-type ceramic, YMAG. Synthesized using a solid-state reaction method, YMAG exhibits impressive microwave properties: a permittivity (εr) of 9.86, a quality factor ...

Australian researchers have visualised a key protein complex in malaria parasites for the first time, uncovering a new target for next-generation vaccines that could help stop the disease from spreading. Using cutting-edge cryo-electron microscopy, the research team from WEHI captured the first detailed structure of a protein complex essential for malaria parasite fertilisation. The discovery published in Science has led to the development of a promising new mRNA vaccine candidate that stops the malaria parasite from reproducing inside mosquitoes, breaking the cycle of transmission ...

WASHINGTON (August 6, 2025) — Using portable high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) purifiers at home can significantly lower systolic blood pressure (SBP) in adults with elevated baseline readings — even in areas with relatively low overall air pollution levels, according to a study published today in JACC, the flagship journal of the American College of Cardiology.   Particulate matter (PM) is a major contributor to air pollution and is strongly associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD). People ...

(WASHINGTON – August 6, 2025) – Most patients with high-risk myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) do not receive guideline-recommended treatment with hypomethylating agents (HMAs), according to results published in Blood Neoplasia. The findings suggest that underuse of these drugs may help explain why MDS outcomes have not improved over the past two decades since these life-extending medications became available.   The study is the largest analysis of MDS treatment patterns in the United States to date and the most comprehensive study of real-world use of HMAs, which are highly effective in improving outcomes. HMAs are the best available ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The established conservation practice of relocating animals from large, genetically diverse populations to small communities of inbred endangered species may risk introducing more damaging than beneficial gene variants into the threatened group, a new study suggests. Analysis of genomes of Eastern massasauga rattlesnakes showed that, by the numbers, more deleterious than adaptation-enabling mutations were present in the more genetically diverse donor animals selected in a hypothetical scenario to join a small, isolated population. Because donor relocation, known as ...

The research group of fungal diversity and molecular evolution at Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted in-depth research on more than 1,600 samples of macrofungi collected from 2019 to 2024 by means of species identification combining morphology and molecular systematics. The results showed that there were 480 species of macrofungi in this area, covering 7 classes, 17 orders, 67 families, and 158 genera of Ascomycota and Basidiomycota, and 8 new species were described.   Fungal diversity patterns revealed taxonomic dominance at both family and genus levels. Among the 67 documented families, 15 were dominant (≥10 species each), collectively representing ...

Given the current youth mental health crisis in the United States, many adolescents report experiencing low levels of hope – a longstanding concern that is even more pressing as the new school year begins. Substantial research over decades has established that higher levels of hope are linked with greater academic achievement, as well as improved emotional and physical health. Now, a new study shows that hope does even more: it acts as a powerful protective force in the lives of children, helping to reduce both bullying and cyberbullying. The study by Florida Atlantic University, in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, surveyed a nationally representative ...

New York, NY [August 6, 2025] — A new study by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai finds that widely used AI chatbots are highly vulnerable to repeating and elaborating on false medical information, revealing a critical need for stronger safeguards before these tools can be trusted in health care. The researchers also demonstrated that a simple built-in warning prompt can meaningfully reduce that risk, offering a practical path forward as the technology rapidly evolves. Their findings were detailed in the August 2 online issue of Communications Medicine ...