LA JOLLA, CA—Alzheimer's disease affects an estimated 7.2 million Americans age 65 and older, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. Current tests often measure the levels of two proteins—amyloid beta (Aβ) and phosphorylated tau (p-tau)—in the blood or spinal fluid, but these markers may not fully capture earlier biological changes linked to disease progression. Now, scientists at Scripps Research have developed a blood-based approach that examines how proteins are folded in the bloodstream rather than simply measuring their concentrations. Their study, published in Nature Aging on February 27, 2026, reports that ...

In a study published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, a team led by Profs. BAO Xinhe, GAO Dunfeng, and ZHANG Guohui from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with Prof. WANG Guoxiong from Fudan University, achieved efficient bicarbonate-mediated integrated carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and electrolysis to CO through an ionomer-driven reaction microenvironment control strategy. Traditional CO2 capture and conversion routes from industrial flue gas typically follow a "capture-release-compression-electrolysis" tandem pathway. ...

A study led by McKenna Litynski, a recent Ph.D. graduate in anthropology and adjunct assistant professor at the University of Wyoming, confirms that ancient needles and awls enabled humans to survive in cold climates and shows these tools served a variety of purposes beyond clothing production, from medicine to ceremony. Some 100,000 years ago, humans began to expand around the globe, including into some of the world’s coldest environments. Scholars have long hypothesized that this remarkable expansion was made possible by a profoundly humble technology: the ...

Most plants allow fungal microorganisms to enter their root cells and provide them with carbohydrates in exchange for a better supply of nutrients and water. Only leguminous plants like peas, beans, and clover enter into an additional, mutually beneficial symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria. The alliance with so-called rhizobia enables them to supply themselves with the nitrogen they need for their growth from the air. Within the context of the Enabling Nutrient Symbiosis in Agriculture (ENSA) ...

Drug discovery is like molecular Tetris. Chemists snap atoms together, adjusting the pieces until everything fits and suddenly, a molecule makes a promising new medicine. Normally, creating better molecules consumes huge amounts of time and money. In a new study, researchers used machine learning to build a smarter prediction system that could speed up the process at a fraction of the cost. “Sometimes we use sophisticated, physics-based computational chemistry tools to understand novel reactions. However, these tools are too expensive to make predictions on thousands of potential new molecules,” said Simone Gallarati, the study’s co-lead author ...

Researchers have developed a practical and low cost method to transform agricultural waste into high quality biochar, significantly increasing its ability to store carbon and help combat climate change. The study demonstrates that a simple treatment using limewater can dramatically improve the efficiency of biochar production while keeping the process accessible for use directly in the field. Biochar is a carbon rich material produced when plant biomass is heated in low oxygen conditions. Because the carbon in biochar remains stable in soil for long periods, scientists consider it a promising carbon negative technology that can help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, traditional ...

New ACP papers say health care must be more accessible and inclusive for patients and physicians with disabilities  Abstract: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-04524    Abstract: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-04518 Editorial: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-05480 URL goes live when the embargo lifts              Two new papers from the American College of Physicians (ACP) address barriers to health care for people with disabilities and offer policy recommendations ...

Over the past century, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased dramatically. This rise has contributed to global warming and led to many harmful effects, including shifting weather patterns and more frequent droughts. There is an urgent need to lower the amount of carbon dioxide in the air to protect ecosystems and reduce future damage to the planet. Paul V. Galvin professor Petra Fromme in ASU’s  School of Molecular Sciences (SMS), and her team, have taken an important step toward improving technologies that pull carbon dioxide directly from the air—an approach considered ...

Ikoma, Japan—The retina is a thin layer of neural tissue at the back of the eye that detects light and converts it into signals, sent to the brain. During development, all the specialized neurons in the retina—including photoreceptors and other cells essential for vision—arise from stem-like cells known as retinal progenitor cells (RPCs). Although RPCs can differentiate into multiple retinal cell types, this capacity is only temporary in mammals. As development proceeds, RPCs gradually lose their flexibility and ultimately transform into supporting cells called Müller glia (MG). Once this transition is complete, the retina ...

Indigenous people in the United States are at higher risk of fatal police violence in and around American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) reservations, according to the first comprehensive national study on the subject from researchers at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health and the University of Washington. The study, using data on the 203 AIAN people killed by police from 2013 through 2024, was published today in the journal PNAS. The authors hope this work will inform policy action to better protect these communities. The ...

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have identified new genetic variants associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by using long-read whole genome sequencing (LR-WGS), an emerging approach that reads large sections of the genome at once, making it easier for scientists to find new genetic variants and understand how genetic variants affect the function of a gene. The team found that compared to traditional short-read approaches, LR-WGS enhanced the discovery of several categories of genetic variants. The findings may pave ...

Herring from different parts of the Baltic Sea belong to distinct populations genetically adapted to local differences in salinity and temperature. However, these populations can also mix with each other, according to a new study by researchers from Uppsala University, Stockholm University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. These results have important implications for the management of the Baltic herring. The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Spring- and autumn-spawning herring in the Baltic Sea as well as in the Atlantic Ocean are genetically distinct. This is well known. “Despite ...

As any diver knows, oceans can be cloudy places. Even on sunny days, snow-like particles drift through the water column, obscuring the aquatic world below. Scientists have long known that this “marine snow” carries inorganic calcium carbonate – the building block of shells – but couldn’t explain how the mineral dissolves in the upper part of the ocean. New research from Rutgers University-New Brunswick points to the culprit: bacteria. “Think of marine particles as the megacities of the ocean,” said Benedict ...

In some parts of the deep ocean, it can look like it’s snowing. This “marine snow” is the dust and detritus that organisms slough off as they die and decompose. Marine snow can fall several kilometers to the deepest parts of the ocean, where the particles are buried in the seafloor for millennia.  Now, researchers at MIT and their collaborators have found that as marine snow falls, tiny hitchhikers may limit how deep the particles can sink before dissolving away. The team shows that when bacteria hitch a ride ...

The search for materials that can conduct electricity at room temperature without losing energy is one of the greatest and most consequential challenges of modern physics: loss-free power transmission, more efficient motors and generators, more powerful quantum computers, cheaper MRI devices. Hardly any other material discovery has the potential to change so many areas of technology and everyday life at the same time. An international research team with the participation of Christoph Heil from the Institute of Theoretical and Computational Physics at Graz University of Technology ...

Infectious disease can afflict a population in complex ways. Understanding the varying risks is an equally complex challenge. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers a general metric for assessing the risk of natural disasters in a region in terms of Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), which includes socioeconomic and cultural factors that impact how a region can adapt to a disaster. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis wanted to take a more specific approach for assessing a state’s risk for influenza-like illness. Their work, now published in the journal ...

The prevalence of congenital heart disease points to the need for a better understanding of how it influences neurodevelopment. New in JNeurosci, Jung-Hoon Kim and Catherine Limperopoulos, from Children’s National Hospital, led a study examining brain network disruptions that may be linked to congenital heart disease.  Compared to publicly accessible brain imaging data from healthy newborns, babies with heart failure had atypical networks associated with sensory perception, movement, and social behavior. After corrective cardiovascular ...

In a collaboration between Tianjin University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, researchers led by Xiangbin Teng used behavioral and brain activity measures to explore whether people can discern between AI-generated and human speech. The researchers also assessed whether brief training improves this ability. This work is published in eNeuro.  Thirty participants listened to sentences spoken by people or AI-generated voices and judged ...

AI has designed candidate drugs for antibiotic-resistant infections and genetic diseases. But efforts to incorporate AI into the design of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), the revolutionary delivery vehicles behind mRNA therapies like the COVID-19 vaccines, have been much more limited.  Designing LNPs is especially challenging: Each formulation combines multiple lipid components whose ratios influence how the particle delivers genetic instructions inside cells. Scientists still lack a clear map connecting those chemical inputs ...

An analysis led by Mass General Brigham investigators found slower aging in older adults after two years of a daily multivitamin, with greater benefits for those who began the trial with accelerated biological age How quickly our bodies age on a cellular level, our “biological age,” can differ from how old we actually are in years. Using data from a large randomized clinical trial of older adults, researchers at Mass General Brigham evaluated the effects of taking a daily multivitamin over the course of two years on five measures of biological aging and found a slowing equivalent to about ...

DURHAM, N.C. – When the eye’s drainage system clogs, pressure builds up and causes damage. The pressure can lead to glaucoma and vision loss. New research, published March 9 in the journal Immunity, reveals that a specialized set of immune cells act as the cleanup crew, pointing to a promising new target for therapies to prevent a major cause of blindness. These immune cells - known as resident macrophages - live in the eye’s drainage tissues. Until now, the role of resident macrophages in controlling eye pressure was unknown. “The only way we can treat glaucoma ...

A new national study evaluating a landmark U.S. transplant policy change finds that efforts to correct the harms of race-based kidney function equations are associated with increased kidney transplantation rates among Black patients. The study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, underscores how reparative strategies that address the harms of race-based algorithms in medicine can help save lives.  Previous national clinical guidelines recommended using race-based equations to estimate kidney function, which assigned higher kidney function estimates to Black patients. These equations ...

A new study from researchers at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill finds that middle and high school students spend nearly one-third of the school day on their smartphones, checking them dozens of times, often for social media and entertainment, with frequent checking linked to weaker attention and impulse control.  The research examined how often adolescents use their phones during school and whether that behavior is related to their ability to focus and regulate attention. By objectively tracking smartphone use every hour over a two-week period, the study generated thousands of real-world data points, ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — By simulating the life cycle of a minimal bacterial cell — from DNA replication to protein translation to metabolism and cell division — scientists have opened a new frontier of computer vision into the essential processes of life. The researchers, led by chemistry professor Zan Luthey-Schulten at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, present their findings in the journal Cell. In two videos, researchers describe the work and walk viewers through the simulation of a full cell cycle.  The team simulated a living cell at ...

State-level abortion restrictions have shifted the landscape of care and the experiences of people traveling for abortion care after the June 2022 Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court decision. A new, qualitative study published JAMA Network Open takes a deeper look at the experiences of people traveling from U.S. states with abortion restrictions or bans to Illinois, a state where abortion remains legal. Through interviews and surveys with 33 individuals, the paper tells the story ...