The vast North American Phosphoria Rock Complex might be rich in silica because it was home to millions of sea sponges almost 300 million years ago, whose fossils were misdiagnosed until now Article URL: http://plos.io/47syMdi Article title: Glass factory found: Basinwide (600 km) preservation of sponges on the Phosphoria glass ramp, Permian, USA Author countries: U.S. Funding: WM- Idaho State University Geosciences Geslin Award, https://www.isu.edu/geosciences/resources/endowments_grants_scholarships/Tobacco WM- Root Geological Society, www.trgs.org KR- ACS PRF 56988, American Chemical Society, https://www.acs.org/ ZW-Paleontological ...

The link between air pollution and breast cancer is weakened in greener environments, suggests study using UK Biobank data Article URL: http://plos.io/4oHyRAF Article title: Greenness and its interaction with air pollution in relation to postmenopausal breast cancer risk in UK Biobank Author countries: U.S. Funding: BS effort was supported in part by grant P20GM103644 from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. END ...

Dutch Afghanistan veterans with battle-related injuries report a similar physical and psychological quality of life as they did five years prior in a ten-year follow-up study Article URL: https://plos.io/3LpG1uY Article title: Long-term impact of battle injuries; Ten-year follow-up of Dutch servicemembers injured in Afghanistan Author countries: The Netherlands Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Loneliness in young adults - especially educated females - often coexists alongside friendship and social connectedness, and might instead be linked with experiencing major life changes, per large US study Article URL: http://plos.io/3JyFOoG Article title: Lonely and connected in emerging adulthood: The ambivalence of sociality in a time of transitions Author countries: U.S. Funding: This paper was supported by the University of Kansas GRF #2177080 (2022); the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Faculty Opportunity Award (2022-2023) received by Natalie Pennington; and the Michigan State University ComArtSci Research and Creative Incubator and Accelerator (CRCIA) award (2022–2025) ...

From medicine to agriculture and aquaculture, bacteriophages are poised to have a huge global impact. As viruses which target only bacterial cells, they hold promise as an alternative to antibiotics, overcoming increasing issues around antibiotic resistance. However, the size, complexity and growth conditions of phages make them difficult to study, limiting progress in the field. Now in Science Advances, researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) and University of Otago describe the bacteriophage Bas63 in unprecedented detail, supporting new mechanistic understanding into how these viruses function. Co-author Professor Matthias Wolf, head of the Molecular ...

LAWRENCE — A new study challenges common assumptions about loneliness in young adulthood, finding that feelings of disconnection can coexist with rich, active social lives. The research, co-authored by Jeffrey A. Hall, professor and chair of the University of Kansas Department of Communication Studies, reveals that ongoing life changes, delayed intimacy and prolonged instability — especially among college-educated women — may contribute to social ambivalence, even though young adults have supportive friendships and strong ...

One of humanity’s most ubiquitous infectious pathogens bears the blame for the chronic autoimmune condition called systemic lupus erythematosus or, colloquially, lupus, Stanford Medicine investigators and their colleagues have found. The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which resides silently inside the bodies of 19 out of 20 Americans, is directly responsible for commandeering what starts out as a minuscule number of immune cells to go rogue and persuade far more of their fellow immune cells to launch a widespread assault on the body’s tissues, the scientists have ...

AMHERST, Mass. — Mass shootings can spur higher voter turnout in nearby communities, but the effect is highly localized and doesn’t appear to change how people vote for president, according to new findings from researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law. The study, published today in Science Advances, analyzed whether mass shootings motivate Americans to vote—and if they change whom voters support at the polls. “Mass shootings boost turnout generally, but especially in deeply blue areas [and] without changing minds,” says Kelsey Shoub, associate ...

Swift observations with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) have revealed the explosive death of a star just as the blast was breaking through the star’s surface. For the first time, astronomers unveiled the shape of the explosion at its earliest, fleeting stage. This brief initial phase wouldn’t have been observable a day later and helps address a whole set of questions about how massive stars go supernova. When the supernova explosion SN 2024ggi was first detected on ...

Alcohol, cocaine use, and cigarette use are positively correlated with problematic pornography use (PPU), though studies saw no significant correlation between use of other substances and PPU, finds scoping review.    Article Title: Substance use patterns among individuals with problematic pornography use: A scoping review Author Countries: Canada, United States Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. END ...

Studying historical hourly weather data – and the amount of time that temperatures remain above or below certain thresholds – reveals several impacts of U.S. regional climate change trends. In a new study, researchers from North Carolina State University found that over the past four and a half decades, areas in the northeastern U.S. have lost almost 1 1/2 weeks of temperatures below freezing, while portions of some states in the Gulf and Southwest have gained almost 1 1/2 weeks of temperatures that cause heat ...

Cervical cancer, which affects the reproductive tract, is one of the most common cancers in women worldwide. It is primarily caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV), a viral infection that spreads through sexual contact. While regular screening tests and preventive HPV vaccines can lower the risk of developing the disease, there are no approved therapeutic medicines to treat existing infections or HPV-associated cancers. As a result, current treatments remain limited to surgery, radiotherapy, or chemotherapy. Now, researchers from Chiba University, Japan, have developed a therapeutic HPV vaccine that can be administered through the nose. This new intranasal ...

Surgeons in the United States perform nearly 600,000 coronary artery stent procedures and bypass surgeries every year. They are the most common cardiovascular operations, and yet many fail within a few years because treatment damages the endothelium — a microscopically thin layer of cells lining blood vessels. Healthy endothelial cells are crucial to healing and long-term success. Now, Scott Johnstone, an assistant professor with Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, and collaborators have identified a protein vital to the healing process. The study was published this month in Heart and ...

FAPESP and Uruguay’s National Research and Innovation Agency (ANII) are hosting the FAPESP Day Uruguay symposium tomorrow (11/13) and Friday (11/14) in Montevideo. The event aims to foster partnerships between researchers from São Paulo and Uruguay in strategic areas of mutual interest. The event will have a similar structure to the FAPESP Week series, which has had 24 previous editions. However, it will have a shorter program focused on three themes: Oceanography, Strategies and Policies for Sustainable Animal Protein Production, and Forestry for Production and Conservation: Innovations ...

Contact: Katy Lenard, +1-202-494-2584, klenard@burness.com Preeti Singh, +1 301-280-5722, psingh@burness.com   Clinical Trial in Africa Finds Single-Dose Malaria Treatment Combining Four Existing Drugs as Effective as More Onerous Multi-Day, Multi-Dose Regimen Research advance from Gabon presented at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Annual Meeting addresses threat of malaria parasite drug resistance TORONTO (November 12, 2025) —Hundreds of malaria patients participating in a Phase 3 clinical ...

Serious damage to short-term kidney function—known as acute kidney injury, or AKI—can be fatal and also increase the risk of irreversible chronic kidney disease. It can be triggered by stressors ranging from sepsis to heart surgery, and it affects more than half of ICU patients. There are currently no drugs to treat AKI. Now, researchers at University of Utah Health (U of U Health) have found that AKI is triggered by fatty molecules called ceramides, which cause serious injury by damaging kidney mitochondria. Using a backup drug candidate that changes ceramide metabolism, ...

The weeks leading up to a major surgery can be a time of uncertainty and worry for patients, many of whom anticipate the need for rehabilition to get back on their feet. But if patients improve their physical and mental health prior to surgery, a process called prehabilitation or prehab, they can reduce the risk of complications afterward. The problem is that many patients, even when directed to change their diet, increase their physical activity and get plenty of sleep, fail to make significant changes before surgery. A new study by Stanford Medicine researchers finds that a personalized prehab coaching program focused on nutrition, physical ...

In the future, your clothes might come from vats of living microbes. Reporting in the Cell Press journal Trends in Biotechnology on November 12, researchers demonstrate that bacteria can both create fabric and dye it in every color of the rainbow—all in one pot. The approach offers a sustainable alternative to the chemical-heavy practices used in today’s textile industry.  “The industry relies on petroleum-based synthetic fibers and chemicals for dyeing, which include carcinogens, ...

Astronomers using the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton space observatory and the LOFAR telescope have definitively spotted an explosive burst of material thrown out into space by another star – a burst powerful enough to strip away the atmosphere of any unlucky planet in its path. The burst was a coronal mass ejection (CME), eruptions we often see coming from the Sun. During a CME, massive amounts of material are flung out from our star, flooding the surrounding space. These dramatic expulsions ...

A new study shows, for the first time, that cow cells can naturally become immortal—continuing to divide indefinitely without genetic modification or any abnormal transformation. This overturns long-held assumptions that bovine cells could only be immortalized through gene editing, providing a safe, stable, and scalable source of cells for cultivated beef production. The finding removes one of the biggest technical and regulatory barriers to producing affordable cultivated beef, a potential game-changer for creating sustainable, ethical meat without the environmental toll of traditional livestock farming.   On a mission to ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- MIT researchers have developed a lightweight polymer film that is nearly impenetrable to gas molecules, raising the possibility that it could be used as a protective coating to prevent solar cells and other infrastructure from corrosion, and to slow the aging of packaged food and medicines. The polymer, which can be applied as a film mere nanometers thick, completely repels nitrogen and other gases, as far as can be detected by laboratory equipment, the researchers found. That degree of impermeability ...

About The Study: In this cohort study of 715 U.S. hospitals from 2019 to 2024, risk-adjusted in-hospital mortality declined significantly following the COVID-19 pandemic, resuming its prepandemic trajectory of improvement, while patient acuity as measured by case mix index remained elevated. These findings suggest a new postpandemic baseline for patient acuity, whereas hospital mortality outcomes have returned to prior improvement trends.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Alyssa Harris, MPH, email alyssa.harris@vizientinc.com. To ...

About The Study: The findings of this cohort study suggest that sexual assault may increase the risk of developing functional somatic disorder (FSD), involving multiple body systems. Functional somatic disorder is characterized by persistent physical symptoms and substantial disability. Despite limitations from small case samples in some FSD subtypes, the pooled analysis underscores the high risk of FSD, emphasizing the critical need for further research and targeted interventions to address the long-term biopsychosocial consequences of sexual assault.   Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Sofie ...

Animals from completely different branches of the tree of life such as insects, worms and vertebrates independently evolved similar genetic solutions to survive on land, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Bristol and University of Barcelona. The research, published in Nature today [12 November] suggests that some adaptations are so essential that environmental challenges make evolution predictable. The researchers decoded the genetic basis of one of evolution’s more extraordinary innovations – ...

Genome sequencing has been used to determine how much genes influence human characteristics including height and weight, and susceptibility to diseases like Type 2 diabetes, in a study co-led by University of Queensland researchers and collaborators at genomic technology company Illumina, Inc. This study is the largest of its kind and used the DNA sequences of 347,630 people of European descent from the UK Biobank to quantify how much trait differences between people can be explained by genetic factors, known as heritability. Professor Loic Yengo from UQ’s ...