It’s common to wonder as tax season ramps up: Are taxes too high? According to a new study by University of Cincinnati economics professor David Brasington, the answer is no, at least when it comes to Ohio’s city service taxes. These taxes go toward local services such as funds for the fire department, road repair and park upkeep.  “It seems like public services are not over-provided at the local level in Ohio,” Brasington said. “Because good things seem to happen when people renew these taxes instead of cut them.” Brasington, PhD, published a new study in Regional Science and Urban Economics called “Effect ...

Hydrocephalus is a life-threatening condition that occurs in about 1 in 1,000 newborns and is often treated with invasive surgery. Now, a new study offers hope of preventing hydrocephalus before it even occurs. Also known as water on the brain, hydrocephalus is caused by a surplus of cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) that increases pressure inside the skull and can damage brain tissue. About 40 per cent of hydrocephalus cases are caused by single gene mutations which impact the brain’s ability to reabsorb CSF ...

Tampa, FL, USA, January 30, 2026:  The Global Virus Network (GVN), representing eminent human and animal virologists from more than 90 Centers of Excellence and Affiliates in over 40 countries dedicated to advancing research, collaboration, and pandemic preparedness, is monitoring reports of a  Nipah virus outbreak in India and emphasizes that such cases, while very concerning and serious, are not unexpected or unprecedented. Sporadic Nipah virus infections have occurred almost annually in parts of South Asia, particularly in India and Bangladesh, and do not indicate a new or escalating global threat. Nipah ...

Tau protein aggregation is a shared feature in over 20 neurodegenerative diseases (collectively referred to as “tauopathies”). New research led by Boston Children’s Hospital challenges the current "one-size-fits-all" approach to diagnosing and treating these tauopathies. The team, led by senior authors Judith A. Steen, PhD, and Hanno Steen, PhD, and executed by co–first authors Mukesh Kumar, PhD, Christoph N. Schlaffner, PhD, Shaojun Tang, PhD, and Maaike A. Beuvink, analyzed brain tissue from 203 patients spanning several tauopathies, including ...

About The Study: This analysis documents a major demographic transition; non-Hispanic white births now constitute less than half of U.S. births, while Hispanic births exceed one-fourth. These shifts reflect declining fertility across most groups, contrasted with immigration trends and younger ages among Hispanic women that sustain overall birth rates. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Amos Grünebaum, MD, email agrunebaum@northwell.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.56659) Editor’s ...

About The Study: In this cohort study of 47,000 adults participating in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, after accounting for demographic characteristics (e.g., age, race and ethnicity), behavioral factors (e.g., smoking, alcohol use), and chronic conditions (e.g., diabetes, hypertension), males had a 63% greater risk of all-cause mortality than females. These findings suggest that there may be intrinsic biological factors (sex hormones, chromosomes, or immune response) associated with sex differences in mortality. Further research should investigate the effects ...

News Release | Washington University in St. Louis NEWS RELEASE Embargoed until 11 a.m. ET Friday, Jan. 30, 2026 MEDIA CONTACT Abeeha Shamshad · abeeha@wustl.edu · 925-998-0775 Since it was first detected in the U.S. in 2014, H5N1 avian influenza, commonly known as bird flu, has jumped from wild birds to farm animals and then to people, causing more than 70 human cases in the U.S. since 2022, including two fatalities. The virus continues to circulate among ...

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major unrecognized cause of deadly sepsis among people with HIV in Africa, a sweeping new study reveals. Beginning treatment for TB immediately – even before sepsis patients are diagnosed with TB – could save countless lives, the researchers say. The ATLAS study, conducted over five years at hospitals in Tanzania and Uganda, has found that more than half of the hundreds of patients enrolled in the study had TB and that immediate treatment increased their chances of survival significantly.  The ...

New York, Jan. 30, 2026 — More than 4 in 10 women in the U.S. have some form of cardiovascular disease, such as heart disease or stroke — a figure that is only expected to grow. Each year, heart disease and stroke kill more women than all forms of cancer combined. To help reverse that trend, leading global fashion, beauty and lifestyle retailers joined the American Heart Association volunteers at the New York Stock Exchange to ring the opening bell and sound an alarm — launching the inaugural Go Red. Shop with Heart. campaign to raise funds and awareness of the growing burden of heart disease ...

Korea University College of Medicine (Dean Sung Bom Pyun; Principal Investigator Byung Chul Chun, MD, PhD, MPH) successfully concluded the 2025 Lee Jong-Wook Fellowship on Infectious Disease Specialists Program on October 17. The program is jointly organized by Korea University College of Medicine and GC Labs under the auspices of the Korea Foundation for International Healthcare (KOFIH).   The Lee Jong-Wook Fellowship was established in honor of the late Dr. Jong-Wook Lee, the 6th Director-General of the World Health ...

A new survey shows that there is a clear difference between girls and boys when it comes to well-being at school. "Girls are happier than boys. This applies both in class and at school in general," says Professor Hermundur Sigmundsson at the Department of Psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology  (NTNU). The researchers questioned 1620 children aged 6 to 9 years in Norway. The average age was 7.5 years old, meaning these were youngest children in primary school. The gender differences are clear. Safety ...

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 9 am Friday, Jan. 30, 2026                                                                                                                    Researchers ...

The globe may be running out of sand suitable for concrete. Researchers are therefore testing a possible solution for using desert sand as a material. The world's most important building material Concrete is the world's most widely used building material – second only to water. Globally, more than four billion tonnes of cement are produced every year. Concrete consumption is so enormous that it accounts for around eight percent of the world's CO₂ emissions. To make concrete, sand is needed, and not just any sand: it must be of the right size and shape. Therefore, rock is crushed into gravel and sand, and river sand is excavated ...

Fukuoka, Japan—University campuses are often places of learning and discovery, but rarely do researchers find a new species living right on their doorstep. However, that is exactly what happened when a research team from Kyushu University discovered a new species of ladybird beetle, Parastethorus pinicola, on a pine tree at Kyushu University’s Hakozaki Satellite. The discovery, published in Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae, was part of a three-year study that revises the classification of the tribe Stethorini —a group of tiny ladybirds known for preying on spider mites—in Japan for the first time ...

PULLMAN, Wash. — The class of anti-inflammatory drugs known as TNF-inhibitors has brought relief to many sufferers of rheumatoid arthritis, but they don't work for up to 4 of every 10 patients. New research led by Washington State University may have discovered why: a “backdoor” pathway of inflammation that sidesteps medicines that lock the front door. The findings, published in the journal Cellular & Molecular Immunology, suggest new avenues for improving the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, a debilitating autoimmune disease where the body attacks its own joints. The disease affects roughly 1% of the world’s population, and the discovery could have positive ...

The precise control of tiny droplets on surfaces is essential for advanced manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and next-generation lab-on-a-chip diagnostics. However, once droplet volume reaches pico- and nanoliter scales, the droplets become extremely sensitive to microscopic surface irregularities, and friction at the solid–liquid interface becomes a major obstacle to smooth transport. Against this backdrop, a study led by Dr. Mizuki Tenjimbayashi and his colleagues at Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA) proposed a novel strategy that involved coating the droplet with a repellent material instead of engineering a perfectly smooth surface. This study published in the journal ACS Nano has ...

The demand for energy is ever-increasing across various industries. In recent decades, scientists have explored the electrostatic potential of particulate matter as a highly promising avenue for energy harvesting. However, this technology poses ignition risks that can cause significant harm owing to uncontrolled electrical discharge. While some studies have attempted to mitigate this issue by introducing additional particles or water, these approaches lead to restricted applicability and also ignore the high electric potential. In previous research, a team of researchers from South Korea, including Professor Sangmin Lee from the School ...

A large share of medicines developed today may never reach patients for a surprisingly simple reason: they cannot dissolve well enough in water. For most treatments, the oral route remains the gold standard because it is convenient and familiar. However, for a pill to work, its active ingredients must first dissolve in the fluids of the gastrointestinal tract before they can be absorbed into the bloodstream. If a drug dissolves too slowly or incompletely, its therapeutic effect can be compromised. This so-called ‘solubility crisis’ has become one of the main bottlenecks in modern drug development, affecting as much as 90% of active compounds currently under ...

Babies and very young sauropods – the long-necked, long-tailed plant-eaters that in adulthood were the largest animals to have ever walked on land – were a key food sustaining predators in the Late Jurassic, according to a new study led by a UCL (University College London) researcher. The study, published in the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin, used data from fossils laid down 150 million years ago in the Morrison Formation*, in the United States, to map out a “food web” of the time – a gigantic network of who ate what and who ate whom. The research team found that very young sauropods, relatively defenceless ...

The study, published in Nature Climate Change and led by scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) analysed future projections across five large-scale modelling projects, as well as considering 135,000 species and 70 biodiversity hotspots, to produce spatial mapping of where land-based carbon removal may be sited in the future. The authors’ approach allows for a risk–risk assessment, not only focusing on overlaps between biodiversity areas and land allocated to carbon dioxide removal (CDR), but also showing the positive impacts of ...

A comprehensive new review paper reveals the staggering loss of biodiversity among island land snails globally. Lead author Robert Cowie of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) and co-authors note that ‘devastation’ is not a hyperbolic term, pointing out that extinction rates on high volcanic islands commonly range from 30% to as high as 80%. The review was published recently in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.  Tracking trends through the ‘shell bank’ While the review is global in scope, Cowie, along with Philippe Bouchet and Benoît ...

Agricultural waste from the global sugar industry could become a powerful tool for clean energy, pollution control, and sustainable materials, thanks to new research showing how microwave technology can dramatically improve biochar production. In a study published in Sustainable Materials and Chemicals, researchers report that microwave-assisted pyrolysis can be precisely optimized to convert sugarcane bagasse, the fibrous residue left after sugar extraction, into highly porous biochar with exceptional surface ...

Mannan rich palm handicraft waste, such as tagua nuts and bodhi roots, can be turned into valuable green chemicals instead of being burned or discarded, according to a new study. “In many parts of the world, polished palm seeds are carved into jewelry and religious beads, but the cutting and drilling leave behind piles of fine powder that usually end up as waste,” said first author Bin Hu of North China Electric Power University. “Our work shows that this overlooked by product can become a promising feedstock for clean chemical production.” The researchers examined two popular palm based handicraft materials: tagua nuts from Ecuador, sometimes called “vegetable ...

“A lot of governments are spending serious money on farm conservation, yet the rivers are not getting cleaner as fast as people expect,” said lead author Yi Pan of Zhejiang University in China. “Our work shows that the problem is not that best management practices are useless. It is that our planning tools have been aiming at the wrong processes, the wrong places, and the wrong time scales for nitrogen.”​ The new review pulls together advances in hydrology, computer modeling, and social science to propose a practical optimization framework tailored specifically to agricultural nitrogen, one of the ...

An estimated 4.2 million people die within 30 days of surgery worldwide each year. A new study, published in the European Heart Journal [1] today (Thursday), suggests that deaths and serious heart disease might be prevented if some patients see a specialist heart doctor as part of their post-surgery care.   In this observational study, researchers studied a group of patients who had suffered heart damage during or immediately after non-cardiac surgery. A proportion were evaluated by a cardiologist, but the rest were not. Patients who saw a cardiologist were less likely ...