Many experts suggest using the entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE) approach to help grow Africa’s economy, especially in poorer countries. EE looks at how things like roads, money, rules, and skilled people can come together to support business growth. But Africa already has more entrepreneurs than anywhere else—mostly people working for themselves because they have no other choice. This raises an important question: Is encouraging even more entrepreneurship really the best path for Africa’s growth? To gain more insights, ...

Sexual behavior and sex preference in animals and humans are shaped by complex interactions between the brain and hormones during early development. One critical factor is exposure to androgens (male sex hormones) during fetal development, which influences the sexual differentiation of the brain. This early hormonal exposure is linked to a wide range of adult behaviors, like sexual behavior and cognitive traits, but finding a reliable, non-invasive biological marker for the same has remained a challenge.   Now, a team of researchers led by Professor Hirotaka Sakamoto, along with Dr. Himeka Hayashi from Okayama University, ...

Quantum computers still face a major hurdle on their pathway to practical use cases: their limited ability to correct the arising computational errors. To develop truly reliable quantum computers, researchers must be able to simulate quantum computations using conventional computers to verify their correctness – a vital yet extraordinarily difficult task. Now, in a world-first, researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, the University of Milan, the University of Granada, and the University of Tokyo have unveiled a method for simulating ...

Scientists have revealed how certain immune cells may be quietly helping prostate cancer grow — and how blocking them could help the body fight back. The study, published July 2 as the cover story in Molecular Cancer Research, identifies a group of cells called macrophages that, instead of protecting the body, appear to shield tumors from attack and promote tumor metastasis.  These cells are typically the immune system’s housekeeping crew — engulfing dead cells and responding to infection ...

Foams have numerous possible potential applications, for example ranging from the automotive, household and mechanical engineering sectors to leisure and sports applications. Until now, it has been common practice to produce these materials from crude oil, which negatively impacts their ecological footprint. In the EU project BreadCell, an international consortium has developed cellulose-based foams that are produced using a process similar to baking bread. These foams are completely biodegradable and recyclable. ...

University of Leeds news  Embargoed until 10:30 BST, 2 July 2025  Images available here   New fossils from Earth’s most famous extinction show climate tipping point was crossed  The collapse of tropical forests during Earth’s most catastrophic extinction event was the primary cause of the prolonged global warming which followed, according to new research.  The Permian–Triassic Mass Extinction – sometimes referred to as the "Great Dying," happened around 252 million years ago, leading to the massive loss of marine species and significant declines in terrestrial plants and ...

A new AI model is much better than doctors at identifying patients likely to experience cardiac arrest. The linchpin is the system’s ability to analyze long-underused heart imaging, alongside a full spectrum of medical records, to reveal previously hidden information about a patient’s heart health. The federally-funded work, led by Johns Hopkins University researchers, could save many lives and also spare many people unnecessary medical interventions, including the implantation of unneeded defibrillators. “Currently ...

For the first time, astronomers have obtained visual evidence that a star met its end by detonating twice. By studying the centuries-old remains of supernova SNR 0509-67.5 with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), they have found patterns that confirm its star suffered a pair of explosive blasts. Published today, this discovery shows some of the most important explosions in the Universe in a new light. Most supernovae are the explosive deaths of massive stars, but one important variety comes from an unassuming source. White dwarfs, the small, inactive cores left over after stars like our Sun burn ...

Gene therapy can improve hearing in children and adults with congenital deafness or severe hearing impairment, a new study involving researchers at Karolinska Institutet reports. Hearing improved in all ten patients, and the treatment was well-tolerated. The study was conducted in collaboration with hospitals and universities in China and is published in the journal Nature Medicine. “This is a huge step forward in the genetic treatment of deafness, one that can be life-changing for children and adults,” says Maoli Duan, consultant and docent at the Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology, ...

Irvine, Calif., July 2, 2025 — President Donald Trump’s approval ratings among California residents are tanking while Gov. Gavin Newsom’s favorability has improved, according to the latest UCI-OC Poll, administered by the University of California, Irvine School of Social Ecology.  In late May and early June, Newsom’s approval ratings looked nearly as bad as those for Trump. Fifty-nine percent of Californians disapproved of the governor’s job performance, nearly a third ...

The downstream consequences of religion, politics and war can have far-reaching effects on the environment and on the evolutionary processes affecting urban organisms, according to a new analysis from Washington University in St. Louis.  Typically viewed from a sociological perspective, the implications of religion, politics and war are rarely discussed in the field of evolutionary biology. That should change, according to an international team of biologists, including Elizabeth Carlen in Arts & Sciences at WashU, co-lead author ...

New research reveals a surprising geometric link between human and machine learning. A mathematical property called convexity may help explain how brains and algorithms form concepts and make sense of the world. In recent years, with the public availability of AI tools, more people have become aware of how closely the inner workings of artificial intelligence can resemble those of a human brain. There are several similarities in how machines and human brains work, for example, in how they represent the world in abstract form, generalise from limited data, ...

Catalysis – the acceleration of a chemical reaction by adding a particular substance – is extremely important in industry as well as in everyday life. Around 80 % of all chemical products are produced with the help of catalysis, and technologies like exhaust catalysts or fuel cells are also based on this principle. One particularly effective and versatile catalyst is platinum. However, because platinum is a very rare and expensive precious metal whose production causes a lot of CO2 emissions, it is important to use as little of it as possible while maximizing its efficiency. Catalysts with single ...

Tokyo, Japan – Operators have pumped water to cool the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant  (FDNPP) since the accident in 2011 and treated this cooling water with the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), which is a state-of-the-art purification system that removes radioactive materials, except tritium. As part of the water molecule, tritium radionuclide, with a half-life of 12.32 years, is very costly and difficult to remove. The ALPS-treated water was accumulating and stored at the FDNPP site and there is limited space to store this ...

Canada must address the growing crisis of communicable diseases that has occurred in tandem with a rise in misinformation that threatens our health systems, argue authors in an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.250916. “A crisis of communicable diseases is unfolding in North America, just as Canada’s health systems’ responses are being hampered by the dismantling of public health and research infrastructure in the United States,” writes family physician Dr. Shannon Charlebois, medical editor, CMAJ, with ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (July 2, 2025)—There has been a lot of research focused on understanding women’s experiences with depression during the menopause transition and early menopause, but there are few studies on perimenopausal women’s experiences with emotional arousal, such as anger. A new study shows that women’s anger traits significantly decrease with age starting at midlife. Results of the study are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The Menopause Society. Anger is defined as antagonism toward someone or something, often accompanied by a propensity to experience and express it indiscriminately. ...

Research from the University of Adelaide’s School of Biological Sciences and Wildlife Crime Research Hub has highlighted evidence of shark products entering both Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, including clear patterns in flows between the two countries. According to the study, published in Pacific Conservation Biology, the products identified were carried in personal luggage and postage, likely transported for personal use, as trophies, or for resale or consumption. Most products seized upon entry to Australia came from Asia, ...

Imagine you are on a treasure hunt in a vast library with no catalog—typing random words into a search bar and hoping to stumble upon the exact book you need. That has been the reality for many roboticists trying to find the right ROS (Robot Operating System) package. With over 7,500 options available, keyword searches often return irrelevant results, wasting developers’ precious time and energy. Researchers from the National University of Defense Technology and Zhejiang University have developed a more efficient method for searching. Instead of relying on simple word matching, their new tool uses a “knowledge ...

Imagine reading a long article or a thick legal contract and knowing, with confidence, exactly which lines prove that an event happened—or did not happen. That is now possible thanks to a research team at Soochow University. They have built a new neural network that not only determines if an event described in a document is real but also highlights the exact sentences that led it to that conclusion. In head-to-head comparisons with earlier approaches, this new model improved overall fact-checking accuracy by 2.5 points and exact-match ...

Aromatics, as extremely crucial basic chemicals in the modern industrial system, are widely used in many fields such as energy, medicine, materials and the daily chemical industry. However, the traditional petroleum-based production routes, such as naphtha cracking and catalytic reforming, are facing the dual pressures of tight petroleum resources and carbon emissions. Meanwhile, CO2, as a typical greenhouse gas, its efficient and value-added utilization offers dual benefits in both environment and economic development, but is limited by its thermodynamic stability, and there are still challenges in producing aromatics with high selectivity through hydrogenation pathways. Propane, as a major ...

With the exponential growth of global data traffic driven by AI, big-data analytics, and cloud computing, today’s single-mode fiber (SMF) networks are edging toward their Shannon-capacity limits. Space-division multiplexing (SDM) in multimode fiber (MMF) has emerged as a leading candidate for the next-generation bandwidth breakthrough because a single MMF can carry many orthogonal transverse modes in parallel. However, random mode coupling during propagation mixes these modes into complex speckle patterns, severely complicating signal recovery. Although conventional digital signal ...

This study investigates the effectiveness of a vitamin D3-loaded nanoemulsion in improving the core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in children. Children with ASD often have low vitamin D3 levels, which are linked to delays in language development, adaptive behavior, and fine motor skills. While traditional vitamin D3 supplementation has shown mixed results in past studies, this research evaluates whether a nanoemulsion form—engineered to enhance absorption and bioavailability—might produce better outcomes.   Eighty children between the ages of 3 and 6 with diagnosed ASD were randomly assigned into two groups: one receiving the ...

This pilot study evaluates a newly developed point-of-care (PoC) device designed to measure bilirubin levels in human blood serum using a microfluidic cartridge and optoelectronic sensing module. Accurate bilirubin measurement is critical for assessing liver function and diagnosing conditions such as jaundice and neonatal hyperbilirubinemia. Traditional laboratory methods are accurate but not suitable for rapid or resource-limited settings due to their complexity. The goal of this study was to determine if the new portable PoC device could deliver comparable accuracy and clinical utility.   Serum samples from 20 patients with bilirubin concentrations ranging ...

This study investigates the potential of amygdalin, a natural compound found in almonds, peaches, and apples, as a therapeutic agent for HER2-positive breast cancer. HER2 (human epidermal growth factor receptor 2) is overexpressed in a significant percentage of aggressive breast cancer cases and is associated with poor prognosis. The researchers aimed to explore whether amygdalin could effectively bind to and stabilize the HER2 protein, which could suppress its cancer-promoting activity.   To do this, the study employed a variety of computational tools. Molecular docking was used to determine how strongly amygdalin could bind to HER2, and results showed favorable binding ...

Published in Smart Construction, this study investigates the cyclic bond behavior of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) bars—an area vital to seismic design yet previously underexplored. By examining carbon (CFRP), glass (GFRP), and basalt (BFRP) fiber reinforced polymer bars under reversed cyclic loading, the research quantifies how bar diameter, embedment length, concrete strength, and rib geometry influence initial bond stiffness, unloading strength, frictional resistance, and energy dissipation. A unified bond stress–slip ...