A groundbreaking discovery  led by the University of St Andrews has found a way to turn ordinary household plastic waste into the building block for anti-cancer drugs.   Household PET (polyethylene terephthalate) waste, such as plastic bottles and textiles, can be recycled in two main ways: mechanically or chemically. Chemical recycling breaks down PET’s long polymer chains into individual units called monomers or into other valuable chemicals.  Published today (Thursday 18 December) ...

Researchers from Miguel Hernández University of Elche (UMH) in Spain have identified an effective strategy to reduce structural liver damage and improve hepatic vascular function in cirrhosis. The study, published in Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy, also reveals a key inflammatory mechanism that contributes to liver injury and could be targeted to develop new treatments for a disease responsible for more than one million deaths worldwide each year. The work was led by Rubén Francés ...

FRANKFURT. While the spread of raccoons in Europe is often discussed, their companion tends to remain unnoticed: The raccoon roundworm Baylisascaris procyonis arrived in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century with the first raccoons from North America. Since their release or escape from fur farms, raccoons have spread uncontrollably across large parts of Central Europe – and their parasite with them. Germany is now considered the main distribution area for both species in Europe.   Dangerous ...

Programmable photonics promise faster and more energy-efficient computing than traditional electronics by using light to transmit signals. However, current systems are limited by the need for precise on-chip power monitors. Researchers from the School of Engineering at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have developed a germanium-ion-implanted silicon waveguide photodiode. This novel photodetector achieves high responsivity, ultra-low optical loss, and minimal dark current, significantly enhancing the performance of on-chip light monitoring. It provides core ...

NEW ORLEANS — Camp Mystic in Texas flooded on July 4, killing 27 people, including 25 children. Over 200 millimeters (over seven inches) of rain fell over the area in 12 hours, and the Guadalupe River rose nearly 8 meters (26 feet) in just 45 minutes. New research recreated the flood conditions and found multiple spots upstream where local communities could have placed water level monitors to give early warnings about rising water.  Researchers presented the findings on Thursday, 18 December at AGU25, joining more than 20,000 scientists discussing the latest Earth and space science research.  The flooding of the camp occurred ...

Drones have been used to successfully collect samples from the exhaled breath - or “blow” - from wild humpback, sperm and fin whales in northern Norway, hailing a new era of non-invasive health monitoring for these marine giants in Arctic regions. This approach for pathogen screening has confirmed for the first time that a potentially deadly whale virus, known as cetacean morbillivirus, is circulating above the Arctic Circle. Experts say this new use of drones could support conservation strategies by detecting early emerging threats of the virus, which has been connected to numerous ...

A new analysis of sewer drains from the Roman fort of Vindolanda, close to Hadrian’s Wall, has shown that the occupants were infected by three types of intestinal parasite – roundworm, whipworm, and Giardia duodenalis. These parasites are all spread by ineffective sanitation, with contamination of food, drink or hands by human faeces. Roundworms are 20-30cm long and whipworms about 5cm long. Giardia are microscopic protozoan parasites that cause outbreaks of diarrhoea. This is the first evidence for Giardia duodenalis in Roman Britain. Vindolanda was located near to Hadrian’s wall in northern ...

University of Cambridge media release   Pinochet’s prisoners were tormented with music but still found solace in it, a new book reveals   UNDER STRICT EMBARGO UNTIL 19:01 US (ET) ON THURSDAY 18TH DECEMBER 2025 / 00:01AM (UK TIME ON FRIDAY 19TH DECEMBER 2025   110 years after Augusto Pinochet’s birth, Chile has just elected a new far-right President, José Antonio Kast, who has praised the dictator's legacy. At the same time, a new book exposes the brutal and tender realities of political imprisonment during the dictatorship (1973–1990) through the power of music.   Music and Political ...

URBANA, Ill. – Fertility rates in much of Sub-Saharan Africa remain high, despite declining child mortality and improved access to contraceptives and female education — factors that generally lead to smaller families and improved economic conditions in developing countries. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign looks at men’s and women’s desired fertility in rural Tanzania, gauging some of the factors that influence how many children they want.  “This conversation ...

Access to autism evaluations through specialty health care is notorious for long wait times across the United States. In Missouri, many families wait nearly a year for a diagnostic appointment. AI might be a solution to cutting the wait, according to researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine. Lead author Kristin Sohl and her team partnered with Cognoa, Inc. to test their FDA-approved medical device, CanvasDx, for primary care clinicians in areas without autism care. It incorporates AI algorithms into patient data and makes a prediction of a positive or negative ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Science can be as dynamic as the researchers who explore it. The Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers is recognizing three Sandia National Laboratories engineers who pushed beyond the boundaries of linear research to expand their knowledge and impact across multiple fields. Mechanical engineer Anton Sumali earned an SASE Career Achievement Award, chemist and nanoengineer Bishnu Khanal received an SASE Professional Achievement Award and transportation systems engineer Esther Woon Lyn John was honored with an SASE Promising Professional Achievement Award. Each has a unique journey but with ...

Ikoma, Japan—Parasitic plants are notorious agricultural pests that drain nutrients from crops and cause economic losses of more than USD 1 billion due to yield losses every year. Yet these plants almost never attack themselves or closely related plants. Scientists have long suspected that parasitic plants can recognize “kin,” but the molecular basis for this self-protection has remained unclear. Now, a team of researchers at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) in Japan has uncovered the mechanism that allows parasitic plants to distinguish self from non-self. Their findings, ...

LA JOLLA, CA — Filoviruses get their name from the Latin word “filum,” meaning thread—a reference to their long, filamentous shape. This virus family contains some of the most dangerous pathogens known to science, including Ebola, Sudan, Bundibugyo and Marburg viruses. One reason these viruses remain so deadly is the instability of their surface proteins, which makes them difficult for our immune systems to detect and challenging for researchers to target with treatments or vaccines. Now, a Nature Communications study (currently an Article-in-Press) from Scripps Research scientists published on December 12, 2025, describes new vaccine candidates designed to protect ...

A new study from Mass General Brigham found the Brain Care Score (BCS) is a strong predictor of stroke across different racial groups in the U.S. The findings, published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, suggest that improvements in the BCS could have particularly meaningful benefits for stroke prevention among Black individuals. “Black adults in the United States face a two- to threefold higher risk of stroke compared to white adults,” said senior author Sanjula Dhillon Singh, MD, PhD, MS, a principal investigator in the Brain Care Labs within the Mass General Brigham Department of Neurology. “Our findings ...

Alveolar macrophages are immune cells that live in the tiny air sacs of the lungs. Under normal conditions, these cells act as guardians, keeping the lungs healthy, supporting breathing, and preventing unnecessary immune responses. However, new work led by Prof. Bart Lambrecht and Prof. Martin Guilliams (both VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research) shows that during allergic reactions, these macrophages can undergo a dramatic change. Instead of calming the immune system, they switch into an inflammatory mode that actively fuels allergy-driven lung inflammation. “Alveolar macrophages have long been seen as peacekeepers in the lung,” ...

Women are dramatically more likely than men to suffer from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a chronic condition causing abdominal pain, bloating, and digestive discomfort. Now, scientists at UC San Francisco have discovered why.   Estrogen, the researchers report in Science, activates previously unknown pathways in the colon that can trigger pain and make the female gut more sensitive to certain foods and their breakdown products. When male mice were given estrogen to mimic the levels found in females, their gut pain sensitivity increased to match that of females.   The findings not only explain the female predominance ...

Scientists have created a new family of organic materials that stay conductive in the solid state. The new materials conduct ions equally well as liquids, liquid crystals, and solids, with no steep decrease in ion movement when the salt solidifies. The team’s discovery overturns a long-standing limitation in electrochemistry: that freezing or crystallizing a liquid inevitably slows ion movement. The findings have been published today (18/12/25) in Science. Normally, when liquids solidify, their molecules become locked in place, making it much harder for ions to move and leading to a steep decrease in ionic conductivity. Now, scientists ...

Science has named the seemingly unstoppable growth of renewable energy worldwide as the 2025 Breakthrough of the Year. Since the Industrial Revolution, humanity has relied on fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas for energy. Carbon emissions from these finite resources have greatly contributed to accelerated climate warming. However, 2025 marked a significant shift in this paradigm as renewable energy generated from the Sun and wind began to surpass conventional fossil fuel-based energy production in several domains. This year, global renewable energy, led ...

LLM-assisted manuscripts exhibit more complexity of the written word but are lower in research quality, according to a Policy Article by Keigo Kusumegi, Paul Ginsparg, and colleagues that sought to evaluate the impacts of widespread use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies on scientific production. “As AI systems advance, they will challenge our fundamental assumptions about research quality, scholarly communication, and the nature of intellectual labor,” write the authors. “Science policymakers must consider how to evolve our scientific institutions to accommodate the rapidly changing scientific production process.” Despite ...

Researchers present LightGen – the first all-optical chip capable of performing challenging advanced generative artificial intelligence (AI) tasks at speeds and energy efficiencies orders of magnitude beyond today’s traditional electronic hardware. Large-scale generative AI models can now create text, images, and video with remarkable fidelity. However, these sophisticated tasks require enormous computing power, time, and energy; existing hardware struggles to meet the demands of today’s large models. Photonic computing, which processes information using pulses of laser light instead of electricity, ...

Young star systems are a place of violent collisions. Rocks, comets, asteroids and larger objects bounce off one another and occasionally coalesce, gradually turning the primordial dust and ice of a stellar nebula into planets and moons. The largest of these collisions, however, are expected to be rare over the hundreds of millions of years it takes to form a planetary system — perhaps one every 100,000 years. Now, astronomers have seen the aftermath of two powerful collisions within a 20-year ...

WASHINGTON and DALLAS (Dec. 18, 2025) — The American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association, along with several other leading medical associations, have issued a new guideline for managing congenital heart disease in adults. The guideline was jointly published today in JACC, the flagship journal of the American College of Cardiology, and Circulation, the flagship journal of the American Heart Association.  Congenital heart disease—being born with defects in the heart’s structure—is the most common birth defect. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it affects nearly 1% of births, or about ...

In an unprecedented celestial event, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST) captured the dramatic aftermath of colliding space rocks within a nearby planetary system. When astronomers initially spotted a bright object in the sky, they assumed it was a dust-covered exoplanet, reflecting starlight. But when the “exoplanet” disappeared and a new bright object appeared, the international team of astrophysicists — including Northwestern University’s Jason Wang — realized these were not planets at all. Instead, they were the illuminated remains of a cosmic fender bender. Two distinct, violent collisions generated two luminous clouds of debris in the ...

Exceptional performers drive innovation and help solve humanity's most pressing problems. Societies have a vital interest in the development of top performers in various fields. A recent review in the journal Science suggests that gifted education and talent programs have been based on false premises. For the first time, an international, interdisciplinary research team has collated the development of world-class performers in science, classical music, chess, and sports. Traditional research into giftedness and expertise assumes that the key factors to develop outstanding achievements are early performance (e.g., in a school subject, sport, or in concerts) and corresponding abilities ...

Has a crucial component to the development of human medicine been hiding under our feet? Auburn University Assistant Professor of Entomology Clint Penick and a team of graduate students may have found that ants are far ahead of humans in antibiotic innovation. “In our study, we tested how ants use antibiotic compounds to fight off pathogens and asked why their chemical defenses remain effective over evolutionary time,” Penick said.  “Humans have relied on antibiotics for less than a century, yet many pathogens have already evolved resistance, giving rise to ‘superbugs.’’ Ants, by contrast, have been using antibiotics for tens ...