A team led by University of Pittsburgh’s Graham Hatfull has developed a method to construct bacteriophages with entirely synthetic genetic material, allowing researchers to add and subtract genes at will. The findings open the field to new pathways for understanding how these bacteria-killing viruses work, and for potential therapy of bacterial infections. As phages’ secrets are revealed, researchers will be able to engineer them with genomes tailor-made to attack specific bacteria, leading to new ways to combat the worsening problem of antibacterial resistance.  Contact ...

Research Highlights: For people who have experienced a heart attack or stroke, or who are at high risk of one and need further cholesterol lowering, a new daily pill may be a more convenient yet similarly effective option to injectable therapies. The oral medication, enlicitide, lowered LDL cholesterol by up to 60% and could eventually offer an option for people whose LDL levels remain above goal despite lifestyle changes and standard cholesterol medications like statins. A longer, ongoing cardiovascular outcomes study will examine whether enlicitide can reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke. Note: The study featured ...

Nancy Brady has been gratified to see the tool she and colleagues pioneered over a decade ago to measure the growth of infants’ pre-speech communication skills translated into several languages and referenced in more than 100 research papers, including a åçnew one published in the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research. Brady, a professor in the University of Kansas Department of Speech-Lanuage-Hearing: Sciences & Disorders, and her now-former graduate student Olivia Boorom were among the co-authors of a new paper ...

Research Highlights: Standard care, which included medication for those eligible, was better than a promising minimally invasive procedure for people with irregular heart rhythms who had high stroke and bleeding risk. The procedure seals off a small pouch of heart tissue, where most blood clots form in people with irregular heartbeat. However, in older people, standard care, including the use of blood thinners when indicated, did a better job at prevention of stroke, blood clots, cardiovascular or unexplained death ...

Cyanobacteria, commonly known as blue-green algae, are found almost everywhere in the world—from hot springs to arctic ice to antioxidant smoothies. Part of their extreme adaptability lies within a unique light-harvesting structure called the phycobilisome. These modular antennae both collect energy from sunlight, and adapt to changing light levels in order to provide a sort of sunscreen for the bacteria.  One important way that phycobilisomes adapt involves an accessory protein to both sense and protect against too much light. ...

The University of Chicago and Caltech announce the recipients of the inaugural Margot and Tom Pritzker Prize for AI in Science Research Excellence, presented during the AI+Science Conference hosted at Caltech on November 10 and 11. This new award recognizes outstanding contributions that jointly advance artificial intelligence and the natural sciences or engineering. “We see AI as a catalyst for human ingenuity—accelerating the scale and pace of discovery in ways that can meaningfully benefit humanity. We hope that this initiative will help scientists to reach farther to explore frontiers once thought unreachable,” said Margot Pritzker and Tom ...

Websites produced for COP conferences emit up to seven times more carbon than average internet pages, new research suggests. Ahead of this year’s United Nations climate summit, COP30, researchers have revealed a sharp increase in the carbon emissions generated by the conference’s websites over time. Analysis indicates that between 1995 – when the first Conference of the Parties (COP) was held – and 2024, average emissions from COP conference websites have risen by more than 13,000%. While ...

NIMS has been developing chemical sensors as a key component of the artificial olfaction technology (olfactory sensors), with the aim of putting this technology into practical use. In this study, explainable AI (XAI) was used to reveal how chemical sensors discriminate among various odorant molecules. The findings may help guide the selection of receptor materials for developing high-performance chemical sensors capable of detecting odorant molecules. The achievement is expected not only to improve the performance of artificial olfaction but also to advance understanding of human olfactory mechanisms. This ...

New research from Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City finds that patients diagnosed with peripheral arterial disease (PAD) who also have atrial fibrillation (AFib) face a significantly higher risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE). The Intermountain study analyzed long-term data of Intermountain Health patients with PAD and found that AFib was present in approximately one in four PAD patients, making this combination far more common than previously recognized. More importantly, Intermountain researchers found the presence of AFib nearly doubles the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events in patients compared to PAD alone. Irregular heart rhythms are called arrhythmias. ...

While some risk factors for cancer can be mitigated through lifestyle choices such as diet or exercise, aging is not one of them. In the case of pancreatic cancer, it also can limit treatment options if a patient is too frail to be safely treated with surgery or other alternatives. Scientists at the NCI-Designated Cancer Center at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute would like to expand options for these patients with personalized treatments. Many stand to benefit from a therapeutic strategy that factors in age. The average age of a patient diagnosed with pancreatic cancer is 70, and nearly two-thirds of cases are in people over the age of ...

A psychedelic found in mushrooms is emerging as a potential treatment for alcohol use disorders. This possibility is due to a compound the body converts the psychedelic into called psilocin, but psilocin’s mechanisms remain unclear. Researchers, led by Sarah Magee and Melissa Herman at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, explored whether psilocin targets neurons in the central amygdala involved in emotional processing and stress to alter alcohol use in their JNeurosci paper. Herman emphasizes that ...

In a new JNeurosci paper, Sarah Jessen and colleagues, from the University of Lübeck, explored how infants track their mothers’ voices compared to unfamiliar voices. The researchers also explored whether this vocal processing affects how babies process new faces.  Brain recordings of babies around 7 months old showed that they were far more attuned to the voices of their mothers than strangers. Additionally, neural tracking of unfamiliar faces was stronger when babies heard a stranger’s voice compared to their mother’s voice at the same time. Whether a face ...

In a new JNeurosci paper, Kahori Kita and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University explored how people switch between intuitive motor skills they know and newly learned movement patterns.  Study volunteers frequently made errors switching between more innate movements and new ones. These errors were largely because people persistently stuck to the movement patterns they used before the switch. Notes Kita, “People made similar errors when switching from the intuitive to the new skill, as when switching from the new skill to the intuitive one.” A second group of people learned two new movement-based skills. It was initially even more difficult for these ...

A new native bee species with tiny devil-like “horns” named Megachile (Hackeriapis) lucifer has been discovered in Western Australia’s Goldfields, highlighting how much remains unknown about Australia’s native pollinators. The striking new bee was found during surveys of a critically endangered wildflower Marianthus aquilonarius that grows only in the Bremer Range region, which is between the towns of Norseman and Hyden. Lead author Curtin Adjunct Research Fellow Dr Kit Prendergast, from the Curtin School of Molecular and Life Sciences, said the female bee’s unusual ...

About The Article: This Viewpoint describes the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s intended label updates and removal of black box warnings for menopausal hormone therapy based on current evidence. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Martin A. Makary, MD, MPH, email commissionersoffice@fda.hhs.gov. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2025.22259) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional ...

ST. LOUIS, MO, November 10, 2025 - A new collaborative research team of plant scientists led by Ru Zhang, PhD, associate member, Danforth Plant Science Center has been awarded new funding from the National Science Foundation to investigate how photosynthetic cells retain “heat stress memory” (HSM), a key adaptive mechanism that could help future crops withstand intense and frequent heat waves.  Photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert sunlight into energy, is the key driver of plant growth ...

Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine have developed a new approach for identifying individuals with skin cancer that combines genetic ancestry, lifestyle and social determinants of health using a machine learning model. Their model, more accurate than existing approaches, also helped the researchers better characterize disparities in skin cancer risk and outcomes. Skin cancer is among the most common cancers in the United States, with more than 9,500 new cases diagnosed every day and approximately ...

November 10, 2025— Adults who experience poverty-level family income—whether sustained or intermittent—over two decades spanning young to mid-adulthood face a significantly higher risk of dying prematurely than those who are never in poverty, according to new research led by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. A companion study by the same research team finds that rising unsecured debt—such as credit card debt not tied to an asset—may be one mechanism linking early-life financial hardship to ...

NEW YORK, NY, November 10, 2025 – An interdisciplinary team of scientists at the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) has unveiled a groundbreaking conceptual model and integrative monitoring framework designed to reveal how climate change is stressing life across the planet. Their study, published this week in Cell Reports Sustainability, introduces the concept of the Climate BioStress model and proposes the adoption of an integrative Climate BioStress Sentinel System (CBS3), which could transform how researchers, policymakers, ...

Few primary care practices are designed for the timely detection of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. The limited time that primary care clinicians are able to spend with patients, the need to focus on the health problems which brought the patient to the clinic, as well as the stigma of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are major reasons for lack of recognition of the condition. Researchers have demonstrated that a fully digital artificial intelligence zero-cost method for detecting dementia can be scaled across primary care clinics without ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A federally funded clinical trial to evaluate an intervention to prevent suicides among people recently released from jail reduced suicide attempts by 55%. That’s according to a new study in JAMA Network Open led by researchers from Brown University and Michigan State University. In the United States, one in five adults who attempts suicide has spent at least one night in jail in the year prior. With more than 10 million admissions per year and many stays of just a few days, jails touch a significant number of people at high risk for suicide who are not well connected with other support services. This ...

About The Study: U.S. individuals ages 1 to 19 are now more likely to die by firearm injury than any other cause. While this national shift occurred in 2019, Alaska had already flipped as early as 2004. Over the past 2 decades, more states flipped to firearm mortality as the predominant cause of death in this age group, including nearly half of the states in the most recent era reviewed. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Michael L. Nance, MD, email nance@chop.edu. To ...

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study of homicides among women, state-level firearm ownership was significantly associated with all-cause and firearm-specific homicide among pregnant women, independent of state-level factors. These results suggest that homicide prevention interventions should focus on women, especially during the increased risk period of pregnancy.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Ayesha Dholakia, MD, email ayesha.dholakia@childrens.harvard.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.42447) Editor’s ...

Investigators at Mass General Brigham have found that cases of child abuse and neglect in the United States have declined overall over the last decade, but disparities have persisted and in some cases widened. Poverty, which likely underlies much of the observed gaps, was highlighted as a critically important target for intervention. The research is published in JAMA Pediatrics.   “Poverty is a relentless source of stress that permeates families, creating an environment where the struggles for survival may overshadow the nurturing ...

Osaka, Japan - A research team from The University of Osaka, in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has uncovered a new molecular mechanism underlying chromosome alignment during cell division. The study demonstrates that two motor proteins, KIF18A and CENP-E, act cooperatively to ensure proper chromosome congression. Remarkably, simultaneous inhibition of these proteins selectively kills cancer cells, suggesting a promising therapeutic avenue. Accurate chromosome segregation is essential for healthy cell division; its failure leads to chromosomal instability—a hallmark of cancer. While the kinetochore, a protein complex on chromosomes, coordinates this ...