UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State’s LionGlass project has reached a major milestone in its partnership with Italian glassmaker Bormioli Luigi, marking one year of collaboration and the signing of a second-year agreement to continue commercialization efforts in the cosmetics packaging industry. The partnership, which began in 2024, aims to scale up LionGlass — a new family of glass developed at Penn State — as a sustainable alternative to traditional soda lime glass. LionGlass ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The dream of an artificial intelligence (AI)-integrated society could turn into a nightmare if safety is not prioritized by developers, according to Rui Zhang, assistant professor of computer science and engineering in the Penn State School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.  Zhang is the principal investigator on a project awarded $166,078 from Open Philanthropy to better mitigate sandbagging — attempting to look less capable or powerful — in AI models. While these systems go ...

Machine learning models called convolutional neural networks (CNNs) power technologies like image recognition and language translation. A quantum counterpart—known as a quantum convolutional neural network (QCNN)—could process information more efficiently by using quantum states instead of classical bits. Photons are fast, stable, and easy to manipulate on chips, making photonic systems a promising platform for QCNNs. However, photonic circuits typically behave linearly, limiting the flexible operations that neural networks need. In a study published ...

Researchers find that cancer cells mimic myeloid cells to hide from the immune system and promote disease hyper progression after immunotherapy Inhibiting the myeloid mimicry pathway along with immunotherapy improves antitumor outcomes in preclinical models Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have found that renal medullary carcinoma (RMC) cells use an adaptive mechanism called “myeloid mimicry” to hide from the immune system and promote disease hyper progression after ...

Individuals with coronary artery disease (CAD) — a constricting or blocking of blood vessels feeding the heart — face increased risks of strokes, cognitive impairment and dementia. However, the link between CAD and cognitive function is not fully understood. A new study led by Concordia researchers looks at how the disease affects the brain’s white matter, the network of nerve fibers that connects different regions of the brains and is critical to transmitting information efficiently. The study, published in the journal Journal ...

HER2-positive metastatic biliary tract cancer (BTC) is a rare and aggressive cancer with limited treatment options Final results from the HERIZON-BTC-01 clinical trial, the largest study of a HER2-targeted drug in BTC, show zanidatamab has clinically meaningful responses The targeted therapy demonstrated durable responses, longer survival and tumor shrinkage in some BTC patients Zanidatamab was granted accelerated FDA approval for treating HER2-positive BTC in Nov. 2024, based on these trial results Zanidatamab, a bispecific HER2-targeted antibody, delivered clinically meaningful and durable responses for patients with HER2-positive ...

For decades, scientists have known that what harms the body often harms the brain. Conditions such as obesity, high blood pressure and insulin resistance strain the body’s vascular and metabolic systems. Over time, that stress can speed up cognitive decline and increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Now, researchers at Arizona State University and their collaborators report that these effects may begin far earlier than expected. In young adults with obesity, the team identified biological markers of inflammation, liver stress ...

Background and objectives Mechanical valve replacement is a primary treatment for rheumatic heart disease, yet prosthesis-related adverse outcomes remain underreported in India. This study aimed to examine the in-hospital mortality rate among patients who underwent prosthetic heart valve replacement surgeries in the past five years. Methods A retrospective analysis of 221 rheumatic heart disease patients (2019–2023) who underwent aortic valve replacement (AVR), mitral valve replacement (MVR), or double valve replacement (DVR) was conducted. Comorbidities (hypertension, type-2 diabetes mellitus) and valve origin (Indian ...

“I just can’t make it tonight. You have fun without me.” Across much of the animal kingdom, when infection strikes, social contact shuts down. A new study details how the immune and central nervous systems implement this sickness behavior. It makes perfect sense that when we’re battling an infection, we lose our desire to be around others. That protects them from getting sick and lets us get much needed rest. What hasn’t been as clear is how this behavior change happens. In the research published Nov. 25 in Cell, scientists at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory of MIT and collaborators used multiple methods to demonstrate ...

Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have discovered that milk from grey seals in the Atlantic Ocean may be more potent than breast milk. An analysis of seal milk found approximately 33 per cent more sugar molecules than in breast milk. Many of these sugars are unique and may pave the way for even better infant formula for babies.    During the 17 days that grey seal pups suckle, they need to get their digestive systems up and running and build up an immune system to protect them against diseases and other dangers they may encounter in the North Atlantic. It is reasonable to suspect that their mother's milk is extremely refined to accomplish this task. ...

Veterans living in California who have cardiometabolic conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure experience significantly higher risk of dying during heat waves compared to cooler days, UCLA-led research finds. The study, to be published in the peer-reviewed JAMA Network Open, demonstrates the danger that heat waves can pose for people with heart disease and risk factors for heart disease, whether or not they are veterans, said Dr. Evan Shannon, assistant professor-in-residence at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the study’s lead author. Veterans are particularly vulnerable to these heat events because they tend to be older, ...

What makes plants tolerant to nutrient fluctuations? An international research team led by the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and involving the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) has investigated this question on the micronutrient boron. The researchers analyzed 185 gene data sets from the model plant Arabidopsis. Their goal is to then be able to transfer the findings to the important crop plant rapeseed. Boron is one of the key micronutrients for the growth and fertility of many plants. However, extreme weather events reduce the availability of this nutrient: drought reduces boron uptake, ...

Vision shapes behavior and, a new study by MIT neuroscientists finds, behavior and internal states shape vision. The research, published Nov. 25 in Neuron, finds in mice that via specific circuits, the brain’s executive control center, the prefrontal cortex, sends tailored messages to regions governing vision and motion to ensure that their work is shaped by contexts such as the mouse’s level of arousal and whether they are on the move. “That’s the major conclusion of this paper: There are targeted projections for targeted ...

Biomedical research that began at the University of Virginia School of Medicine has yielded a much-needed new treatment for patients with the deadliest form of blood cancer. The federal Food and Drug Administration has approved the drug ziftomenib for patients with recurring or treatment-resistant acute myeloid leukemia who have a mutation in the NPM1 gene. The new medication, taken by mouth once daily, offers a potential treatment for patients who otherwise have no good options. The drug arose from many years of research by Jolanta Grembecka, PhD, and Tomasz Cierpicki, PhD, who began the ...

The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) has published a position paper calling for the implementation of lifestyle medicine as a high-value care solution that delivers on the Quintuple Aim—better health outcomes, higher patient and clinician satisfaction, greater health equity, and lower costs. The paper includes five position statements asserting that lifestyle medicine—a rapidly growing medical specialty focused on evidence-based lifestyle interventions to treat, reverse and prevent chronic disease—offers a scalable and sustainable approach to address the nation’s ...

BUFFALO, NY — November 25, 2025 — A new research paper was published in Volume 17, Issue 10 of Aging-US on October 13, 2025, titled “Hospitalization with infections and risk of Dementia: a systematic review and meta-analysis.” This large-scale meta-analysis, led by first author Wei Yu Chua from the National University of Singapore and corresponding author Eng-King Tan from the National Neuroscience Institute and Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, shows that adults hospitalized ...

WASHINGTON—Women with persistent thyroid hormone imbalance across pregnancy may be at an increased risk of having children with autism, according to a new study published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Maternal thyroid hormones are essential for fetal neurodevelopment. Gestational thyroid imbalance has been associated with atypical neurodevelopment, including increased risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Autism is a complex neurodevelopmental condition that affects how a person communicates, interacts with others and experiences the world. “We ...

Global challenges necessitate cooperation beyond national borders. Prosociality—the tendency to share with and value the outcomes of others—can help achieve this objective. While it is well-established that people favor their own compatriots, people also display substantial prosociality toward individuals from other nations, though not all foreigners are treated equally. Vanessa Clemens and colleagues invited 6,182 participants from 25 nations to take part in a sharing game with individuals from each of the participating nations. Each person received 150 “Talers” — a made-up currency — and chose between different ways of sharing the ...

If people do not observe inequality, they are less likely to favor policies that redistribute wealth, such as taxation—but they are also more satisfied with their lot, according to online experiments involving 1,440 US-based participants. Milena Tsvetkova and colleagues developed a model simulating how network structure affects perception of inequality and tested its predictions through an online experiment where participants voted on tax rates. In the experiment, participants were randomly assigned as "rich" (with scores around ...

The same personalized algorithms that deliver online content based on your previous choices on social media sites like YouTube also impair learning, a new study suggests.   Researchers found that when an algorithm controlled what information was shown to study participants on a subject they knew nothing about, they tended to narrow their focus and only explore a limited subset of the information that was available to them.   As a result, these participants were often wrong when tested on the information they were supposed to learn – but were still overconfident in their incorrect answers.   The ...

Note: December 1-5 is Older Driver Safety Awareness Week   When today’s older adults learned to drive, they might have heard the Beatles’ “Drive My Car” or Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” on their car radio’s Top 40 station. Now, 84% of people age 65 and older drive at least once a week, and 62% drive most days, according to a new University of Michigan national poll. But less than half of these older drivers have made a plan for a time down the road, when changes ...

Up to 30% of life, by weight, is underground. Seismic activity may renew the energy supply for subterranean ecosystems. Eric Boyd and colleagues chronicled the ecological changes in subsurface microbial communities that took place after a swarm of small earthquakes rattled the Yellowstone Plateau Volcanic Field in 2021. Subsurface microbial communities are powered by chemical energy gleaned from the interactions between rocks and water. Earthquakes can expose new rocks, release trapped fluids, and alter the flow path of water, together kicking off new reactions and changing the chemical “menu” for subsurface ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming an integral part of our everyday lives and with that emerges a pressing question: Who should be held responsible, when AI goes wrong? AI lacks consciousness and free-will, which makes it difficult to blame the system for the mistakes. AI systems operate through complex, opaque processes in a semi-autonomous manner. Hence, even though the systems are developed and used by human stakeholders, it is impossible for them to predict the harm. The traditional ethical frameworks thus fail to explain who is responsible for these harms, leading to the so-called responsibility gap in AI ethics. A recent study by Dr. Hyungrae Noh, an Assistant ...

Perovskites—a class of compounds with a unique ABX3 structure and high temperature stability—are promising materials for energy conversion. In recent years, they have been utilized in photovoltaic systems. They exhibit excellent performance in solid oxide fuel cells and organic reactions such as oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) for the production of ethane and ethylene. Notably, BaTiO3 is a promising perovskite with applications in fields including ferroelectricity, piezoelectricity, and semiconductivity. It possesses a flexible lattice and rich defect chemistry, making it suitable for structural modifications via doping for enhanced functional performance. Furthermore, ...

CHICAGO – Using a deep learning AI model, researchers identified the first-of-its-kind biomarker of chronic stress detectable through routine imaging, according to research being presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Chronic stress can affect both physical and psychological well-being, causing a variety of problems including anxiety, insomnia, muscle pain, high blood pressure and a weakened immune system, according to the American Psychological Association. Research shows that chronic stress can contribute to the development of major illnesses, such as heart ...