CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — In a study that tracked explicit and implicit bias against stigmatized groups in 33 countries between 2009 and 2019, researchers found substantial reductions in explicit, self-reported bias against all categories of stigma they examined: age, race, body weight, skin tone and sexual orientation. The picture for implicit bias, which is sometimes described as “hidden” or “automatically revealed” bias, was more varied, however. The new findings are reported in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. “We used data from Project Implicit, a website established in the early 2000s that serves both as a venue to educate people ...

Illiberal pro-China narratives have gained traction in democratic countries like Japan, raising questions about how such narratives spread across political ideologies. Social media has become a key tool in this process, blurring the lines between traditional propagandists and their audiences. Ordinary citizens and astroturfing agents[1] within the target countries are now actively engaged in interpreting and disseminating propaganda, making participatory propaganda increasingly relevant in today’s information landscape. Although ...

A new artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can help interpret and assess how well treatments are working for patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) has been developed by UCL researchers. AI uses mathematical models to train computers using massive amounts of data to learn and solve problems in ways that can seem human, including to perform complex tasks like image recognition. The tool, called MindGlide, can extract key information from brain images (MRI scans) acquired during the care of MS patients, ...

The Last of Us is back on April 13 and this season is more realistic than ever. The trailer for the hit HBO series appears to show the “zombie fungus” cordyceps infecting humans by releasing air-borne spores, instead of through tentacles—closer to scientific reality. Spread the love (and spores) “Fungi love to make spores,” says Dr. Jim Kronstad, a professor and microbiologist at UBC’s Michael Smith Laboratories. Real-life cordyceps colonizes ant brains, causing the insect to climb to a high branch. The fungus then ...

Meeting the unmet need for a vaccine is the top priority for researchers studying Lyme disease, which infects about 476,000 people in the U.S. each year and can come with severe complications such as ongoing fatigue and joint issues. Vaccine developers have come close to success, but no human vaccine has yet been commercially viable.   After decades of trial and error, a promising new target is emerging—the Lyme bacterial protein CspZ, which the bacteria use to evade detection from the body’s immune system. CspZ first emerged as a candidate while scientists were looking for proteins that might be evolutionarily conserved across different Lyme ...

Statement Highlights: Mobile health technologies, such as wearable devices, mobile health apps and telehealth or remote coaching, have shown potential to help people start and maintain heart-healthy behaviors, such as eating a healthy diet, increasing physical activity, quitting smoking, monitoring sleep and more. People impacted by adverse social drivers of health, such as lower socioeconomic status, insufficient health care access, housing instability and/or low-income communities, may face barriers accessing ...

New York, NY [April 7, 2025]—As artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly integrates into health care, a new study by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai reveals that all generative AI models may recommend different treatments for the same medical condition based solely on a patient’s socioeconomic and demographic background. Their findings, which are detailed in the April 7, 2025 online issue of Nature Medicine [DOI: 10.1038/s41591-025-03626-6], highlight the importance of early detection and intervention to ensure that AI-driven care is safe, effective, and appropriate for all. As ...

EMBARGOED UNTIL MONDAY 7TH APRIL 09:20 CEST  SOCIOECONOMIC INEQUALITIES DRIVE SIGNIFICANT GAPS IN ACCESS TO MENTAL HEALTH CARE ACROSS THE EUROPEAN UNION  Monday 7 April 2025 – 09:20 CEST - A new study presented today at the European Psychiatric Association Congress 2025 reveals significant socioeconomic inequalities in unmet needs for mental health care across European Union countries, with financial barriers disproportionately affecting lower-income populations.   Across Europe, millions ...

Project-based learning (PBL), which improves skills through various challenges, is a technique utilized in foreign language and general education classes. Though group work in PBL is actively carried out, the impact of the environment and team size on the motivation to learn has not been fully examined. Further, individual factors, such as language ability, can affect motivation, but it is not clear what effect group work has on these differences. Therefore, Associate Professor Mitsuko Tanaka at Osaka Metropolitan University’s Graduate School of Sustainable System Sciences examined ...

In 2013, 8% of the bottlenose dolphins living in Florida’s Indian River Lagoon died. Investigations have now revealed that the dolphins may have starved because key habitats for nutritious prey were destroyed by a phytoplankton bloom. This bloom was driven by the accumulation in the lagoon of fertilizer, effluent from septic tanks, and other by-products of human activity that are rich in nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus.   “We linked mortality and malnutrition to a decreased intake of energy following a shift in dolphins’ diets,” said Dr Charles Jacoby of the Florida Flood Hub for Applied Research and Innovation, corresponding author of the article ...

VIEW EMBARGOED ARTICLE Before 2017, abortions were generally performed as procedures in fewer than 100 hospitals and clinics mostly in urban centres, leading to delayed care, particularly for people living in rural areas. Medication abortions, mainly via off-label use of methotrexate, were infrequent. Researchers looked at population data from ICES to examine abortion service availability changes in Ontario from January 2017 to December 2022. Between 2017 and 2022, there were more than 226 000 abortions provided to 175 091 people. The proportion ...

The Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials (President Seog-Hyeon Ryu, hereinafter referred to as KIMM) has signed international cooperation agreements with research institutions in Slovenia, a manufacturing technology powerhouse in Eastern Europe, and Germany, a leading country in advanced technologies in Europe. These agreements focus on virtual reliability prediction and carbon-free high-temperature heat pump technologies, while also expanding the foundation for international joint research on autonomous machining systems. As part of KIMM’s global cooperation initiative “With KIMM, to the World,” this partnership ...

An Amsterdam UMC-led study has found that migrants, this case from West Africa to Europe, experience a ‘clear change’ in their microbiome composition as compared to their non-migrant peers in West Africa, which expose them to an increase of cardiovascular disease. These peer-reviewed findings are published today in the journal Gut Microbes demonstrating that participants who lost specific groups of microbes or acquired specific new groups of microbes had higher rates of cardiovascular ...

The viability of hospital-based emergency care in the U.S. is at risk, threatened by issues such as patients with increasingly complex needs and falling payments for physicians, according to a new RAND report. Many of the problems facing emergency medicine are expanding in scale, including long emergency department wait times, boarding patients in emergency department beds and a high amount of uncompensated care.  The issues are in focus as the use of hospital emergency departments return to levels seen before restrictions prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic limited use of emergency departments, according to researchers. “Urgent action is needed to sustain hospital emergency ...

Long-term exposure to high levels of air pollution may harm the brain health of older adults in England, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The research, published in The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, found that exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is linked to lower scores in key cognitive abilities, particularly language skills. NO₂ mainly enters the atmosphere through fuel combustion, originating from emissions of vehicles like cars, trucks, and buses, as well as power plants and off-road machinery. PM2.5 pollution in outdoor air often originates from the ...

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 23.30 UK TIME ON SUNDAY 6TH APRIL 2025 New study investigates effects of ADHD medications on the heart  A new study led by the University of Southampton has found that medications for ADHD have overall small effects on blood pressure and heart rate after weeks or a few months of use. There have been concerns about the side effects of ADHD medications but the new findings, coupled with other studies, suggest that the benefits of taking these medications outweigh the risks, while highlighting the need for careful monitoring. The study, published in ...

A scientific initiative to combat harmful Prymnesium algal blooms in the Broads is gaining fresh momentum, thanks to a renewed collaboration between the University of East Anglia (UEA), the Environment Agency, the Broads Authority, and the Norfolk pike angling community. Prymnesium algal blooms can occur on the Broads and produce toxins that threaten fish stocks, local biodiversity, and East Anglia’s thriving angling industry, which contributes more than £100 million annually to the local economy. The golden algae Prymnesium parvum is therefore of significant research interest to ...

Australia’s exposure to extreme heat continues to grow while the country has emerged as a global hotspot for climate change litigation, according to the latest MJA–Lancet Countdown report. Released today, the report reveals Australia has experienced a 37 per cent increase in excess heat factor over the past 20 years. Lead author and Director of the Lancet Countdown Centre in Oceania, Professor Paul Beggs from Macquarie University, says these findings underscore the importance of long-term tracking of climate hazards and exposures in Australia. “The frequency of health-damaging heat has increased substantially since the 1970s," says Professor Beggs. The ...

EMBAROGED UNTIL SUNDAY 6TH APRIL AT 08:00 CEST  YOUNG FEMALES MORE LIKELY TO EXPERIENCE HIGHER SOCIAL ANXIETY DUE TO EXCESSIVE SMARATPHONE USE THAN OTHER GENDERS  Sunday 6th April 08:00 CEST - A new study presented today at the European Psychiatric Association Congress 2025 reveals that gender plays a significant role in excessive and problematic (psychological or behavioural dependence)1 smartphone use, with young females more likely to experience higher social anxiety than other genders. In the study, it was also found that gender was significantly linked to the amount of time spent using smartphones ...

Whooping cough, or pertussis, was once a leading cause of death for children in the U.S. and worldwide before the introduction of vaccines in the 1940s. In the decades since, the bacterial disease was nearly eradicated in the U.S., with fatalities falling to double digits each year. But the disease has made a troubling comeback in recent years as vaccine coverage declined after the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2024, several outbreaks left public health officials and hospitals scrambling to accommodate a sudden influx of patients, primarily infants, who are often too young to be vaccinated and suffer the most severe symptoms. Now, new research from The University of Texas at Austin could aid ...

MADISON — Fast-charging lithium-ion batteries are ubiquitous, powering everything from cellphones and laptops to electric vehicles. They’re also notorious for overheating or catching fire. Now, with an innovative computational model, a University of Wisconsin–Madison mechanical engineer has gained new understanding of a phenomenon that causes lithium-ion batteries to fail. Developed by Weiyu Li, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at UW–Madison, the model explains lithium plating, in which fast charging triggers metallic lithium to build up on the surface of a battery’s anode, causing the battery to ...

It's no coincidence that our bodies feel a little creakier as we age. The trillions of cells that make up our skeleton age too, and some change in ways that weaken the very structure of our bones. Scientists and researchers around the globe are investigating a series of mysteries about what happens to our bones over time. In a new study, a team led by The University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with Mayo Clinic and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center just made a major break in the case. New research found that osteocytes undergo dramatic structural and functional changes ...

University of New Mexico researchers studying the health risks posed by gadolinium, a toxic rare earth metal used in MRI scans, have found that oxalic acid, a molecule found in many foods, can generate nanoparticles of the metal in human tissues. In a new paper published in the journal Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a team led by Brent Wagner, MD, professor in the Department of Internal Medicine in the UNM School of Medicine, sought to explain the formation of the nanoparticles, which have been associated with serious health problems in the kidneys and other organs. “The worst disease caused by MRI contrast agents is nephrogenic systemic ...

A new study from the University of Maine’s Aquaculture Research Institute (ARI) and Darling Marine Center is helping to refine best practices for growing Atlantic sea scallops (Placopecten magellanicus), a species of increasing interest to Maine’s aquaculture sector. Published in the academic journal Aquaculture, the research compares two scallop farming methods, ear-hanging and lantern net culture, over a complete grow-out cycle to determine which approach yields the best results for commercial growers. The study, led by UMaine ...

A new pilot study from UBC Okanagan and Thompson Rivers University examined how medically supervised cannabis use in a residential recovery home may support people in treatment for substance use challenges.  Participants reported that cannabis helped them manage pain, anxiety, depression and sleep issues—key symptoms that can complicate recovery.  "Our findings suggest medical cannabis could play a meaningful role in reducing cravings and improving retention in recovery programs," says ...