In a new JNeurosci paper, Masako Okamoto and colleagues, from the University of Tokyo, explored the brain activity involved in smelling odors.  The researchers recorded brain activity as study volunteers inhaled a panel of odors. The volunteers also completed questionnaires as well as tests for odor detection, identification, and discrimination. A distinct frequency of brain activity arising soon after odor presentation was linked to detecting odors. Notably, the quality of this activity was associated with the ability to discriminate ...

SAN FRANCISCO—November 17, 2025—For decades, scientists have known that mitochondria, which produce energy inside our cells, malfunction in Parkinson’s disease. But a critical question remained: do the failing mitochondria cause Parkinson’s, or do they become damaged when brain cells die during the course of disease? Many studies have sought to answer this question over the years. Yet, progress has been slow—in large part due to the limitations of animal models used to research this highly complex disease. Now, a team of scientists ...

SAN ANTONIO — November 17, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has upgraded its hydrogen-powered heavy-duty internal combustion engine (H2-ICE) with a state-of-the-art turbocharger. The upgrades have significantly improved performance across the board, making the engine competitive with current long-haul diesel engines focused on fuel economy while maintaining near-zero tailpipe emissions. In 2023, SwRI converted a traditional natural gas-fueled internal combustion engine to run solely on hydrogen fuel with minimal modifications. It was integrated into a Class-8 truck as part of the Institute’s H2-ICE project to demonstrate a cost-efficient hydrogen-fueled ...

Scientists document a new form of host manipulation where an invading, parasitic ant queen “tricks” ant workers into killing their queen mother. The invading ant integrates herself into the nest by pretending to be a member of the colony, then sprays the host queen with fluid that causes her daughters to turn against her. The parasitic queen then usurps the throne, having the workers serve her instead as the new queen regent. This work appears in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on November 17. “At first, I wanted the title of this study to exemplify a fable where a daughter is tricked to kill their mother. I asked CHATGPT ...

Animals survive in changing and unpredictable environments by not merely responding to new circumstances, but also, like humans, by forming inferences about their surroundings—for instance, squirrels understand that certain bird noises don’t signal the presence of a predator, so won’t seek shelter when they later hear these same sounds. But less clear is how the brain works to create these inferences.  In a newly published study in the journal Neuron, a team of New York University researchers ...

A new 20-year study of nearly 11,000 adults in Bangladesh found that lowering arsenic levels in drinking water was associated with up to a 50 percent lower risk of death from heart disease, cancer and other chronic illnesses, compared with continued exposure. Published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study provides the first long-term, individual-level evidence that reducing arsenic exposure may lower mortality, even among people exposed to the toxic contaminant for years. The landmark analysis, led by researchers at Columbia University and New York University, is important for public health because ...

A new 20-year study of nearly 11,000 adults in Bangladesh found that lowering arsenic levels in drinking water was associated with up to a 50 percent lower risk of death from heart disease, cancer and other chronic illnesses, compared with continued exposure. The study highlights the importance of ensuring access to arsenic-free drinking water and provides the first long-term, individual-level evidence that reducing arsenic exposure may lower mortality, even among people exposed to the toxic contaminant for years. The findings ...

Reducing amounts of arsenic in drinking water can lower long-term deaths from cardiovascular disease and cancer, a new study shows. Researchers at NYU Langone Health, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago say their landmark analysis is important for public health because groundwater contamination from naturally occurring arsenic remains a serious issue worldwide. In the United States, more than 100 million people rely on potentially contaminated groundwater sources, especially private wells, for their drinking water. Arsenic is among the most common chemical pollutants. During the study, the drinking water and ...

About The Study: The findings of this study support an association between reduced arsenic exposure and improved health outcomes in populations exposed to contaminated drinking water. Corresponding Authors: To contact the corresponding authors, email Yu Chen, PhD, (Yu.Chen@nyulangone.org) and Habibul Ahsan, MD, (hahsan@bsd.uchicago.edu). To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2025.19161) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, ...

Fukuoka, Japan—In the ruthless world of parasitic ants, taking over a host colony is a matter of life and death. The conventional understanding has been that an invading queen must physically fight and kill the resident queen to seize control. However, a new study published in Current Biology details a more sinister strategy: a parasitic ant queen that chemically manipulates the host colony’s workers into executing their own mother. “The initial discovery was made by my friend Taku Shimada, the first author of the paper, who has been passionate about ants since childhood and runs a popular blog called ‘AntRoom.’ He observed the colony infiltration ...

About The Study: Approximately 1 in 30 trials and more than 74,000 trial participants were affected by grant funding disruptions. Affected trials disproportionately studied infectious diseases, prevention, and behavioral interventions, and were based in the Northeastern U.S. or in other countries. Because trials require sustained financial support to ensure operations and participant safety, unanticipated funding disruptions raise concerns about avoidable waste, data quality, and compromised ethical obligations to participants.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Anupam B. Jena, MD, PhD, email jena@hcp.med.harvard.edu. To ...

About The Study: In this cohort study of births in the United States from 2012 to 2021, the rate of overall cesarean births decreased slightly over the study period. However, racial and ethnic disparities persisted, with increasing risk of primary cesarean births among non-Hispanic Black individuals compared with individuals from other racial and ethnic groups. Quality improvement efforts to reduce unnecessary cesarean births should address this inequity and the structural racism that drives it.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Marie J. Boller, MD, email boller@ohsu.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website ...

Constructing out-of-equilibrium molecular assemblies that deviate from thermodynamic equilibrium is a central challenge in materials science. While numerous studies have reported the creation of such states using external energy sources such as chemical fuels or light, few systems can adaptively access different states depending on how much energy is input. Developing such systems could offer new design principles for advanced functional materials capable of flexibly adapting to environmental changes, much like biological systems. In a recent study published online in Chem on November 17, 2025, researchers in Japan reported a supramolecular polymer system that can produce out-of-equilibrium ...

PHILADELPHIA—A rare glimpse into the brain activity of a patient with obesity and loss of control eating on tirzepatide, marketed as Mounjaro and Zepbound,  revealed that the medication suppresses signaling in the brain’s “reward center” thought to be involved in food noise – but only temporarily. Research suggests that the medication, a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) receptor agonist, originally developed to manage Type 2 diabetes, may be able to treat a wide range of conditions ...

Do All Countries Benefit From Clinical Trials? A New Study Examines the Data A new study led by Yale’s Jennifer Miller, PhD, found that medicines are not physically accessible in many of the countries where they are tested for FDA approval. The findings were published in JAMA Internal Medicine.   For the study, researchers analyzed 172 FDA-approved medicines tested between 2015 and 2018 in nearly 90 countries. They found that five years after testing, only 24 percent of the medicines had received market authorization, or approval for distribution and patient access, in the countries where the clinical ...

The therapeutic landscape for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has been revolutionized by the advent of molecular targeted therapies and immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). While these systemic treatments have significantly improved outcomes for patients with intermediate and advanced HCC, their use is accompanied by a spectrum of adverse events, with drug-induced liver injury (DILI) being a common and potentially serious complication. To address this growing clinical challenge, the Chinese Society of Hepatology convened a multidisciplinary panel of experts to formulate the "Consensus on the Management of Liver Injury Associated with Targeted Drugs and Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors ...

In recent years, robots have increasingly become integral in enhancing human life, particularly with the growing demand for mobile robots with high payload-to-weight ratios and dynamic capabilities. Traditional wheeled or tracked robots are difficult to operate stably in complex real-world environments, which has driven research on legged robots. Legged robots leverage their distinctive “leg” structures to traverse obstacles and adapt to uneven terrain, demonstrating exceptional mobility when confronted with pronounced undulations or soft ground. ...

(Toronto, November 17, 2025) A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal JMIR Mental Health by JMIR Publications highlights a critical risk in the growing use of Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-4o by researchers: the frequent fabrication and inaccuracy of bibliographic citations. The findings underscore an urgent need for rigorous human verification and institutional safeguards to protect research integrity, particularly in specialized and less publicly known fields within mental health. Nearly 1 in 5 Citations Fabricated by GPT-4o in Literature Reviews The article, titled "Influence of Topic Familiarity and Prompt Specificity on Citation Fabrication in Mental ...

First tool to estimate percentiles of 30-year heart disease risk for adults ages 30–59 Aims to spark earlier prevention efforts amid rising diabetes and hypertension in young adults Men showed the highest long-term risk in national analysis Free online calculator is based on the American Heart Association’s PREVENT equations CHICAGO --- Just as saving for retirement starts early, so should protecting your heart. A new Northwestern Medicine study introduces a first-of-its-kind online calculator that uses percentiles to help younger adults forecast and understand their risk of a heart event over the next 30 years. ...

SAN ANTONIO — November 17, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has significantly expanded its heat exchanger performance evaluation capabilities with a new facility designed to industry standards, the Large-Scale Heat Exchanger Test Facility (LS-HXTF) that supports testing up to five megawatts of heat loads as well as a wider range of thermal performance testing. Heat exchangers efficiently transfer heat between two or more fluids without mixing for a wide variety of heating and cooling applications. The ...

WILMINGTON, DEL. (November 14, 2025) – In a major step forward for cancer care, researchers at ChristianaCare’s Gene Editing Institute have shown that disabling the NRF2 gene with CRISPR technology can reverse chemotherapy resistance in lung cancer. The approach restores drug sensitivity and slows tumor growth. The findings appear today in the journal Molecular Therapy Oncology. This breakthrough stems from more than a decade of research by the Gene Editing Institute into the NRF2 gene, a known driver of treatment resistance. The results were consistent across multiple in vitro studies using human lung cancer cell lines and in vivo animal models. “We’ve ...

A University of Otago – Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka-led study has produced a detailed blueprint of a bacteriophage, furthering their potential in the fight against drug-resistant bacteria.   Lead author Dr James Hodgkinson-Bean, who completed his PhD in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, says bacteriophages are “extremely exciting” in the scientific world as researchers search for antibiotic alternatives to combat the increasing risk of antimicrobial resistance.   “Bacteriophage viruses are non-harmful to all multi-cellular life and able to ...

Singapore, 17 November 2025—A new study by researchers from Duke-NUS Medical School has revealed that almost all community-dwelling older adults with advanced dementia in Singapore experience at least one potentially burdensome intervention in their last year of life. The findings highlight an urgent need for new strategies to support families and reduce unnecessary interventions at the end of life. Although the number of individuals living with dementia in the Asia-Pacific region is projected to rise to 71 million by ...

About a quarter of U.S. service members and veterans who start psychotherapy for post-traumatic stress disorder quit before they finish treatment. But not all therapies are equal in their appeal, with some effective approaches reporting the highest dropout rates, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. PTSD affects about 7% of veterans at some point in their lives, slightly higher than the rate seen in the general U.S. adult population, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Beyond PTSD’s emotional impact, the American Heart Association notes that it can also ...

New research examines how social approval from different sources predicts relationship quality for intercultural couples. Researchers found that having supportive friends can be a powerful protective factor, especially when they face disapproval from family or society more broadly. The research, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, advances research on intercultural relationships by drawing on a large sample of people in such relationships. This sample allowed researchers to study how social approval varies across cultural backgrounds, racial pairing, relationship length, and gender. “The results highlight that friends and family can play distinct roles: for example, ...