Osaka, Japan – Neutrophils, one of the immune system warriors that were thought to be all the same, turn out to be diverse. Unfortunately, these cells are also active in autoimmune diseases. New research from Japan has found that a certain subpopulation of these white blood cells can predict disease relapse at an early stage, which may enable improved personalized treatment. In a study soon to be published in Nature Communications, a multi-institutional research team led by The University of Osaka investigated which cell types dominate the blood of patients at the ...

As Canadians face increasingly intense and frequent heat waves, health, education and legal experts are sounding the alarm on a growing crisis: extreme heat in schools and child care settings due to the escalating effects of climate change.  Amid Government of Canada warnings of near record heat ahead in 2025, the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment (CPCHE) and the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) say Canada’s schools and child care facilities are ill-prepared and children are paying the price.   Released in parallel by CPCHE ...

Humans, it turns out, are better than current AI models at describing and interpreting social interactions in a moving scene—a skill necessary for self-driving cars, assistive robots, and other technologies that rely on AI systems to navigate the real world. The research, led by scientists at Johns Hopkins University, finds that artificial intelligence systems fail at understanding social dynamics and context necessary for interacting with people and suggests the problem may be rooted in the infrastructure of AI systems. “AI for a self-driving car, for example, would need to recognize the intentions, goals, and actions of human drivers and pedestrians. You ...

A Kobe University team was able to edit the DNA of Lactobacillus strains directly without a template from other organisms. This technique is indistinguishable from natural variation and enabled the researchers to create a strain that doesn’t produce diabetes-aggravating chemicals. Humans have improved the microorganisms we rely on for millennia, selecting variants that are better able to produce wine, yogurt, natto and many other products. More recently, direct genetic modification has emerged as a tool to exert more precise and efficient control over the improvement, but also has drawn much public criticism for often using DNA from unrelated organisms ...

ChatGPT and alike often amaze us with the accuracy of their answers, but unfortunately, they also repeatedly give us cause for doubt. The main issue with powerful AI response engines (artificial intelligence) is that they provide us with perfect answers and obvious nonsense with the same ease.  One of the major challenges lies in how the large language models (LLMs) underlying AI deal with uncertainty. Until now, it has been very difficult to assess whether LLMs designed for text processing and generation base their responses on a solid foundation ...

In recent years, the number of students missing school has risen steeply. In the UK, one in 50 students missed more than 50% of school in 2022-23. Previously, almost 95% of sampled students were found to miss school regularly because going caused them significant emotional distress, a phenomenon known as school distress. Of this sample, many students were diagnosed with neurodivergent disorders or autism. But how does kids struggling with school attendance affect parents? Now, in the first large-scale study that ...

New research led by Griffith University argues that the term nature positive is being adopted more for political rhetoric and less for any real-life improvement in nature conservation, posing a new risk to biodiversity.  The study, published in Nature Portfolio Journal njpBiodiversity explores the tourism sector as an example.  The team, led by Emeritus Professor Ralf Buckley with coauthors from universities in Australia, Chile, China and Japan, analysed the fine-scale political processes in the lead-up ...

UNDER STRICT EMBARGO UNTIL THURSDAY 24 APRIL 2025 AT 1AM (UK TIME).   Peer reviewed | Systematic Review | People    Breakthrough approach for diagnosing TB could significantly improve detection  A new strategy for tuberculosis (TB) screening, proposed by a team of researchers led by Queen Mary University of London, provides a solution to problems with current TB screening, which does not always accurately detect disease. Simultaneously screening for both active and dormant TB infection could save lives, ...

A sharp drop in aid for pre-primary education may be the first sign that the international community is turning its back on the world’s most vulnerable children amid wider economic strain, a new report warns. The annual donor ‘scorecard’, produced by researchers at the University of Cambridge for the charity Theirworld, reveals that the proportion of global education aid being committed to early childhood education – which was already well below international targets – has started to fall. The report’s authors warn that the true picture could be far worse, ...

Today, 24 April 2025, marks the first-ever World Hormone Day, a global campaign to raise awareness of the vital role of hormones in human health. After three successful years of European Hormone Day, the European Society of Endocrinology (ESE) and the European Hormone and Metabolism Foundation (ESE Foundation) have moved to a worldwide campaign this year in response to requests from the global endocrine community. Endocrinology is the study of hormones. When they are out of balance or fail, this can lead to the development of prevalent chronic diseases such as diabetes, thyroid disorders, cancer, osteoporosis and obesity, and other health challenges such as infertility. Despite ...

The first clinical trial to test whether adults allergic to peanuts can be desensitised has shown great success with two thirds of the cohort consuming the equivalent of five peanuts without reacting.   The Grown Up Peanut Immunotherapy (GUPI) trial is the first study entirely in adults with severe allergy to test whether daily doses of peanuts taken under strict supervision can be safely tolerated.   The approach, known as oral immunotherapy, has seen success in trials in infants and children worldwide. The findings of the ...

About The Study: By taking advantage of a quasi-experiment and corroborating findings from Wales in a different population, this study provides evidence of the potential benefits of herpes zoster vaccination for dementia that is more likely to be causal than that of more commonly conducted associational studies. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Pascal Geldsetzer, ScD, MBChB, MPH, email pgeldsetzer@stanford.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2025.5013) Editor’s ...

EL PASO, Texas (April 23, 2025) – The University of Texas at El Paso has launched the AI Institute for Community-Engaged Research (AI-ICER), an interdisciplinary think tank designed to leverage artificial intelligence technologies to address pressing regional and national challenges. The institute was established with funding from The University of Texas System Regents' Research Excellence Program. "This institute positions UTEP as a leader in responsible AI research while strengthening our mission as a community-engaged institution," said Ahmad M. Itani, Ph.D., UTEP vice president for research. ...

Yuze “Alice” Sun, an electrical engineering professor, has been elected to The University of Texas at Arlington’s Academy of Distinguished Researchers for her contributions to technologies critical to health care, environmental monitoring and national defense. “Dr. Sun is a trailblazer in multidisciplinary research whose transformative advancements have significantly impacted devices we rely on every day to diagnose and treat disease, communicate with others and allow our military ...

The Association for Chemoreception Sciences (AChemS) continues its legacy as a premier organization dedicated to advancing the understanding of chemosensory systems. Over the past four decades, AChemS has been instrumental in fostering interdisciplinary research and collaboration in the fields of taste, smell, and chemical senses. Through its annual meetings, publications, and networking opportunities, AChemS provides a platform for scientists, clinicians, and industry professionals to exchange ideas, present cutting-edge research findings, and address pressing challenges in chemoreception. The 47th Annual AChemS Conference is set to take place from April 23rd to 26th, 2025, at ...

Researchers from the Francis Crick Institute, UCL, Gustave Roussy and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), have discovered that expansion of mutant blood cells, a phenomenon linked to ageing, can be found in cancerous tumours, and this is associated with worse outcomes for patients. Understanding the biological interface of age-related genetic changes and diseases of ageing, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, is important to develop preventative therapies for a growing proportion of the population. Clonal haematopoiesis of indeterminate ...

Millions of people worldwide are affected by African sleeping sickness, Chagas disease and other life-threatening infections caused by microscopic parasites borne by insects such as the tsetse fly. Each of the underlying single-celled parasites — Trypanosoma brucei and its relatives — has one flagellum, a whiplike appendage that is essential for moving, infecting hosts and surviving in different environments. Now, a research team at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, or CNSI, has ...

Adverse situations experienced by the mother during childhood – such as neglect or physical, psychological or sexual violence – can trigger excessive weight gain in male children as early as the first two months of life. This was shown in a study that followed 352 pairs of newborns and their mothers in the cities of Guarulhos and São Paulo, Brazil. The results were published in the journal Scientific Reports. The analyses indicated the occurrence of very early metabolic alterations in babies that not only led to weight gain above that expected for their ...

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today named Cordelia Schmid, Research Director at Inria, the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology, as the 2025-2026 ACM Athena Lecturer. Schmid is recognized for outstanding contributions to computer vision in image retrieval, object recognition, and video understanding. Her work has helped computers understand, perceive, and interact with the visual world. Initiated in 2006, the ACM Athena Lecturer Award celebrates women researchers who have ...

Depression involves a complex interplay of psychological patterns, biological vulnerabilities and social stressors, making its causes and symptoms highly variable. Equally complex is the treatment of depression, which requires a highly individualized approach that may involve a combination of medication, psychotherapy and lifestyle changes. In a decade-long multi-institutional study, U of A psychologists teamed up with Radboud University in the Netherlands to develop a precision treatment approach for depression that gives patients individualized recommendations based on multiple characteristics, ...

MINNEAPOLIS — Having a larger waistline, high blood pressure and other risk factors that make up metabolic syndrome is associated with an increased risk of young-onset dementia, according to a study published on April 23, 2025, online in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Young-onset dementia is diagnosed before the age of 65. The study does not prove that metabolic syndrome causes young-onset dementia, it only shows an association. Metabolic syndrome is defined as having excess belly fat plus two or more of the following risk factors: high blood pressure, high blood sugar, higher than normal ...

Rising temperatures could tip the scale in an underground battle that has raged for millennia. In the soils of Earth’s wetlands, microbes are fighting to both produce and consume the powerful greenhouse gas methane. But if the Earth gets too hot, a key way wetlands clamp down on methane could be at risk, according to a Smithsonian study published April 23. Methane is responsible for roughly 19% of global warming, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. And while wetlands are champions at removing carbon dioxide (CO2)—the more abundant greenhouse gas—they are ...

Neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) are debilitating conditions that affect millions of people worldwide every year. These pathologies are notoriously difficult to prevent or effectively treat due to a complex interplay of genetics, lifestyle, co-infection, and many other factors impacting everything from diagnosis to treatment. While a comprehensive cure-all to these neurological conditions is unlikely, scientists are making headway into understanding their fundamental ...

Water quality could be degraded by development and conversion of forests upstream, with sediment levels and nitrogen concentrations also worsened, per modelling analysis of the Middle Chattahoochee watershed of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. #### Article URL: https://plos.io/3Gi6Kaq Article Title: Projected land use changes will cause water quality degradation at drinking water intakes across a regional watershed Author Countries: United States Funding: This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) ...

Current ‘gold standard’ treatment does not work for up to 20% of population and kills beneficial bacteria Scientists screened nearly 500 FDA-approved compounds to assess effectiveness against Lyme Piperacillin effectively treats Lyme disease at 100-times lower dose than doxycycline CHICAGO --- Lyme disease, a disease transmitted when deer ticks feed on infected animals like deer and rodents, and then bite humans, impacts nearly half a million individuals in the U.S. annually. Even in acute cases, Lyme can be devastating; but early treatment with antibiotics can prevent chronic symptoms like heart and neurological problems and arthritis from developing.  Scientists ...