CORVALLIS, Ore. – A groundbreaking study led by Oregon State University scientists shows that multiple Portland neighborhoods have levels of noise that are likely unhealthy. The research, the first of its kind in the United States, provides a framework for studying noise pollution in other cities in the U.S., which lags behind European nations in examining the effects of noise on human health. The project directed by assistant professor Matthew Bozigar and graduate student Carson Mowrer of the OSU College of Health indicates that the loudest parts of Portland are also the most socially vulnerable, with lower incomes and higher proportions ...

TUCSON, Ariz. — Signs reading “slippery when wet” frequently warn about the dangers of slipping and falling. But floors made slick by dry spills are also a significant hazard – one that’s overlooked and understudied, according to University of Arizona Health Sciences researchers who developed a new way to assess floor slipperiness caused by dry contaminants.  “Most people think materials like oil or soapy water are the main cause of slips,” said study lead Jonathan Lee-Confer, PhD, an assistant professor of physical therapy in the School of Health Professions at the U of A Mel and Enid Zuckerman College ...

Many self-tests available on the UK high street are unfit-for-purpose and need much greater regulation to ensure they are safe and reliable, conclude two studies published by The BMJ today. The findings show that most self-tests lack essential information about who should use them, how to interpret the results, and what actions to take next. Some also contradict evidence-based guidance, “creating risks for misinterpretation and inappropriate healthcare decisions,” say the authors. Self-testing is increasingly popular, with a wide range of tests available to UK consumers without needing healthcare professional involvement. The ...

A comprehensive new study analysing data from over 160,000 adults finds that walking approximately 7,000 steps per day is associated with reductions in the risk of several serious health outcomes, including all-cause mortality (47% reduction), cardiovascular disease (25% reduction), cancer (6% reduction), type 2 diabetes (14% reduction), dementia (38% reduction), depression (22% reduction), and falls (28% reduction).* Unlike earlier studies that mainly focused on heart health or overall death rates, this research, published ...

A new study has found that the bone fracture protection women get from menopausal hormone therapy (MHT, also known as HRT) disappears within a year of stopping treatment. In the new study, published in Lancet Healthy Longevity, experts from the School of Medicine at the University of Nottingham, also found that in most cases, stopping treatment is then followed by some years of elevated fracture risk compared to women who have never used MHT. Fracture risks then falls to be similar to, and then lower than women who have never used ...

Walking 7000 steps a day can lower the risk of an early death by up to 47 percent Health benefits increased with every 1000-step increment up until 7000 steps, at which point the benefits began to taper off   A major new study led by the University of Sydney suggests that walking 7000 steps a day offers similar health benefits across several outcomes as walking 10,000.   Led by Professor Melody Ding from the School of Public Health, the study was published in The Lancet Public Healthand analysed data from 57 studies from ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Speeding up chemical reactions is key to improving industrial processes or mitigating unwanted or harmful waste. Realizing these improvements requires that chemists design around documented reaction pathways. Now, a team of Penn State researchers has found that a fundamental reaction called oxidative addition can follow a different path to achieve the same ends, raising the question of whether this new order of events has been occurring all along and potentially opening up new space for chemical design.  A paper describing the research appeared in the Journal of the American Chemical ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Golf course managers have much more insight into which fungicides to use to suppress turfgrass diseases, such as the common and costly dollar spot disease, without damaging the grass on their fairways, thanks to a new study by researchers at Penn State. The team evaluated variation in turfgrass injury caused by nine commercially available demethylation inhibitor (DMI) fungicides — a class of fungicide widely used in turfgrass management — commonly used ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A total collapse of the roughly 80-mile-wide Thwaites Glacier, the widest in the world, would trigger changes that could lead to 11 feet of sea-level rise, according to scientists who study Antarctica. To better predict fractures that could lead to such a collapse — and to better understand the processes driving changes in Antarctic ice shelves — a team led by researchers at Penn State developed a new method to evaluate cracks that destabilize ice shelves and accelerate those losses. They reported ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A nuclear winter is a theoretical concept, but if the climate scenario expected to follow a large-scale nuclear war, in which smoke and soot from firestorms block sunlight, came to fruition, global temperatures would sharply drop, extinguishing most agriculture. A nuclear winter could last for more than a decade, potentially leading to widespread famine for those who survive the devastation of the bomb blasts. Now, a team led by researchers at Penn State have modeled precisely how various nuclear winter scenarios could impact global production of corn — the most widely planted grain crop in the world. ...

Ivermectin administered to the whole population significantly reduces malaria transmission, offering new hope in the fight against the disease. The BOHEMIA trial, the largest study on ivermectin for malaria to date, showed a 26% reduction in new malaria infection on top of existing bed nets, providing strong evidence of ivermectin’s potential as a complementary tool in malaria control. The results of this project, coordinated by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) -an institution supported by the “la Caixa” Foundation- in collaboration ...

A new United Nations-funded study has highlighted the lasting psychological and social scars left by a state-sponsored witch hunt in The Gambia, more than a decade after it was carried out by former President Yahya Jammeh. The research, led by Professor Mick Finlay of Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in collaboration with the University of The Gambia and Nottingham Trent University, is the first academic study into the stigma associated with government-led witchcraft accusations, and includes interviews with victims and their families from the villages most affected by the campaign. Jammeh’s 22-year dictatorship, which ended in 2016, was marked by human rights ...

A team of McGill University researchers, working with colleagues in the United States and South Korea, has developed a new way to make high-performance lithium-ion battery materials that could help phase out expensive and/or difficult-to-source metals like nickel and cobalt. The team’s breakthrough lies in creating a better method of producing “disordered rock-salt” (DRX) cathode particles, an alternative battery material. Until now, manufacturers struggled to control the size and quality of DRX particles, which made them unstable and hard to use in manufacturing settings. The researchers addressed that problem ...

New research reveals that tiny amounts of PFAS—widely known as “forever chemicals”—cross the placenta and breast milk to alter infants’ developing immune systems, potentially leaving lasting imprints on their ability to fight disease. University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) researchers tracked 200 local healthy mother–baby pairs, measuring common PFAS compounds in maternal blood during pregnancy and then profiling infants’ key T‑cell populations at birth, six months, and one year. By age 12 months, babies whose mothers had higher prenatal PFAS exposure exhibited ...

Ithaca, NY—A new study published in the journal Global Change Biology reveals that colonial-era landscape modifications have resulted in a devastating 80% loss of grassland habitat and significant declines in grassland bird populations in India's Nilgiri hills over the past 170 years. An international research team—led by scientists from Columbia University, the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Tirupati, and 10 other institutions—analyzed an extensive dataset comparing historical land cover ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4:00 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 2025 MINNEAPOLIS — Despite evidence of the risk of malformations at birth, or birth defects, use of some antiseizure drugs during pregnancy has persisted, according to a study published on July 23, 2025, in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Use has also increased for drugs where there is not enough evidence to know if they are safe during pregnancy. People with a low level of resources had a disproportionately higher use of these drugs than people with a higher level of resources. “These medications can be used for ...

Efforts to enhance peat accumulation in European peatlands, which contain around half of Europe’s soil carbon, will require a combination of warm temperatures and a specific depth of the water table, according to a study published July 23, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Graeme Swindles of Queen’s University Belfast, U.K. and colleagues. Peatlands form via the buildup of plant matter, and they serve an important role in carbon sequestration, containing around half of Europe’s soil organic carbon and five times more carbon than its forests. ...

Per analysis of heterosexual users of a Czech dating app, men tended to pursue women who were more desirable than themselves, but most instances of reciprocated interest occurred between men and women with more similar levels of desirability. Renata Topinkova of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, and Tomas Diviak of the University of Manchester, U.K., present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on July 23, 2025. A growing number of couples meet through online dating apps. Prior research has suggested that married couples often share similar characteristics – such as age, ethnicity, or political ideology – and some similarities have ...

Gender disparities in Italian medical academia have persisted or worsened since 2014, with a continued "leaky pipeline" of women not progressing to senior roles Article URL: http://plos.io/44pi26f Article title: Gender differences in the Italian academic landscape: Examining inequalities within the medical area in the last decade Author countries: Italy Funding: This work was partially funded by the University of Catania, Italy, Department of Medical and Surgical Science and Advanced Technologies ‘GF ...

A treasure trove of exceptionally preserved early animals from more than half a billion years ago has been discovered in the Grand Canyon, one of the natural world’s most iconic sites. The rich fossil discovery – the first such find in the Grand Canyon – includes tiny rock-scraping molluscs, filter-feeding crustaceans, spiky-toothed worms, and even fragments of the food they likely ate. By dissolving the rocks these animals were fossilised in and examining them under high-powered microscopes, researchers led by the University of Cambridge were able to get a highly detailed picture of a unique period in the evolution of life on Earth. The fossilised animals date ...

Why do so many people relapse after quitting cocaine? A new study from The Hebrew University reveals that a specific “anti-reward” brain circuit becomes hyperactive during withdrawal—driving discomfort and pushing users back toward the drug. Surprisingly, this circuit may also serve as a built-in protective mechanism, offering new hope for addiction treatment. Cocaine addiction has long been understood as a tug-of-war between reward and restraint. The rush of dopamine keeps users hooked, while withdrawal triggers anxiety, depression, and despair. But a new ...

Footprints of a multispecies herd of dinosaurs discovered in Canada demonstrate the social interaction between different dinosaur species 76 million years ago, according to findings in a new study published today [23 July] in the journal PLOS One. The new tracksite is the first discovery of its kind in Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada. The Park is world-famous for its abundant fossils but dinosaur footprints were virtually unknown. The discovery, made during an international field course in July 2024, includes footprints from multiple dinosaur species walking alongside each other – providing the first ...

Adolescents who use either e-cigarettes or conventional tobacco products (CTP)—like cigarettes, cigars, hookah and pipes—are significantly more likely to report symptoms of depression and anxiety than teens who don’t use tobacco products at all, according to a study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS Mental Health by Noor Abdulhay of West Virginia University, USA, and colleagues. Tobacco use and mental health challenges are known to have a complex, bidirectional relationship. Understanding the interplay between adolescent ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The fatality rate for H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza in humans historically has been high, with more than half of people dying. Why, then, is the current H5N1 bird flu outbreak — which has caused massive die-offs in wild birds, farmed poultry and even wild mammals — causing mostly mild symptoms in the people it has infected? New research, led by scientists at Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh and published today (July 23) in the journal Science Translational Medicine, indicates that immunity to a seasonal influenza virus known as pandemic H1N1 that began circulating ...

Optical coherence tomography (OCT), a tool routinely used to diagnose and plan treatment for eye diseases, has now been modified to collect images of the inner ear. A proof-of-concept study led by researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of USC found that OCT imaging can measure fluid levels in the inner ear, which correlate with a patient’s degree of hearing loss. The findings were just published in Science Translational Medicine. “These findings are exciting because hearing loss can happen very suddenly, and we often don’t know ...