Using a corkscrew, writing a letter with a pen or unlocking a door by turning a key are actions that seem simple but actually require a complex orchestration of precise movements. So, how does the brain do it? According to a new study by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Coimbra, the human brain has a specialized system that builds these actions in a surprisingly systematic way. Analogous to how all of the words in a language can be created by recombining the letters of its alphabet, the full repertoire ...

Roads, buildings and farms are preventing Michigan’s only rattlesnake from finding mates outside of their population. A 15-year study shows that fragmentation into smaller, more isolated patches is likely reducing the threatened snake’s chances of survival.  Michigan State University conservation biologists traced the family histories of more than 1,000 Eastern Massasauga rattlesnakes caught and released in a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-funded project. The new findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, surprised even the researchers – the most inbred snakes were ...

Malaria, caused by Plasmodium falciparum, remains a major global health threat, claiming 600,000 lives annually, mostly young children in sub-Saharan Africa. Immunity to severe malaria develops after repeated infections and is mediated by antibodies blocking the parasite’s highly diversified PfEMP1 adhesion proteins from binding to the human endothelial protein C receptor (EPCR) on blood vessel walls. In the collaborative study, researchers from the National Institute for Medical Research in Tanzania and the University of Copenhagen first identified donors with immune plasma able to ...

SAN ANTONIO — August 18, 2025 — New research led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has confirmed decades-old theoretical models about magnetic reconnection, the process that releases stored magnetic energy to drive solar flares, coronal mass ejections and other space weather phenomena. The data was captured by NASA’s Parker Solar Probe (PSP), which is the only spacecraft to have flown through the Sun’s upper atmosphere. Magnetic reconnection occurs when magnetic field lines in plasma sever and reconnect in a new configuration, releasing large amounts of stored energy. ...

A new study published in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, a journal from The Society of Thoracic Surgeons, has identified early hemodynamic valve deterioration (HVD) in more than 6% of patients just one year after undergoing transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), raising new questions about valve durability in younger, lower-risk populations. The retrospective study, which analyzed 10 years of procedures from 2012 to 2022, evaluated 2,123 patients who had complete echocardiographic follow-up data. Researchers found that patients with 1-year HVD were more likely to be younger and have smaller aortic annuli than those without HVD. Importantly, ...

Just as smart traffic management ensures smooth vehicular movement during peak hours, our body relies on a molecular traffic system to manage the surge in glucose levels after a meal. Pancreatic β-cells play a major role in this system by taking up glucose from the blood and triggering insulin release into the bloodstream. Inside these cells, glucose uptake is managed by glucose transporters (GLUTs) – proteins that move to the β-cell surface when blood glucose levels rise and facilitate the entry of glucose into the cell ...

With a $1 million Impact Award from the U.S. Department of Defense, Tianfu Wu, a University of Houston biomedical engineer, is developing a method to send medication directly to the spleen where certain immune cells cause the disease known as lupus, or Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.  Lupus is a debilitating autoimmune disease characterized by uncontrolled disease activity, frequent flares, long-term immunosuppression, increasing infection rates, cumulative organ damage and decreased quality of life.  The spleen has often been called the security guard of the bloodstream, filtering out old or damaged blood cells while housing millions of white blood cells, or lymphocytes, that carry ...

Innovative intervention delivered by trained community health workers – meaning nonclinical personnel with deep knowledge of the community – increased treatment utilization among participating families with children who have ADHD, according to a pilot study published in the Journal of Attention Disorders. This intervention for parents and caregivers, covering topics that range from education about ADHD to discussions of stigma and barriers to care, intends to reduce inequities in access to evidence-based treatment and boost family engagement in ADHD care. “We know from previous studies that compared to White youth, Black, Hispanic, and Asian ...

Zhengang Lu and Russell Epstein, from the University of Pennsylvania, led a study to explore how people maintain their sense of direction while navigating naturalistic, virtual reality cities.  As reported in their new JNeurosci paper, the researchers collected neuroimaging data while 15 participants performed a taxi driving task in a virtual reality city. Two brain regions represented forward-facing direction as people moved around. This neural signal was consistent across variations of the city with different visual features. The signal was also ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – When it comes to adopting artificial intelligence in high-stakes settings like hospitals and airplanes, good AI performance and a brief worker training on the technology is not sufficient to ensure systems will run smoothly and patients and passengers will be safe, a new study suggests. Instead, algorithms and the people who use them in the most safety-critical organizations must be evaluated simultaneously to get an accurate view of AI’s effects on human decision making, researchers say. The team also contends these evaluations should assess how people respond to good, mediocre and poor technology performance ...

The American Geriatrics Society (AGS) has released a landmark update to its list of alternatives to medications listed in the 2023 AGS Beers Criteria® — the most widely adopted guidelines to help clinicians identify potentially inappropriate medications for older adults. This new effort delivers not only a comprehensive suite of safer pharmacologic options, but also a strong emphasis on effective non-pharmacologic treatments for common conditions impacting frail and aging populations. The AGS panel is comprised of 19 national experts from 14 states, ...

When health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently fired an entire federal vaccine advisory panel, he described the unprecedented move as necessary to rid the committee of industry influence. However, new research from the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics finds that reported conflicts on that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel had been at historic lows for years before Kennedy’s abrupt dismissal. Furthermore, the type of conflict typically considered the most concerning—income ...

About The Study: Among patients with severe chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps treated with a daily intranasal corticosteroid, stapokibart, a novel monoclonal antibody, reduced polyp size and severity of nasal symptoms at 24 weeks. Corresponding Authors: To contact the corresponding authors, email Luo Zhang, MD, (dr.luozhang@139.com) and Chengshuo Wang, MD, (wangcs830@126.com). To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2025.12515) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions ...

A new study reports evidence of a link between prenatal exposure to the widely used insecticide chlorpyrifos (CPF) and structural abnormalities in the brain and poorer motor function in New York City children and adolescents. The findings are the first to demonstrate enduring and widespread molecular, cellular, and metabolic effects in the brain, as well as poorer fine motor control among youth with prenatal exposure to the insecticide. The study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Children’s ...

About The Study: Study participants with hearing loss with hearing aids showed reduced risk for dementia among those younger than age 70 at the time of hearing evaluation, when followed up for up to 20 years. This finding highlights the importance of early intervention for hearing loss for possible prevention of dementia. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Sudha Seshadri, M.D., email seshadri@uthscsa.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi: 10.1001/jamaneurol.2025.2713) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including ...

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study of U.S. individuals obtaining oral contraception, the oral contraceptive pill was accessed over-the-counter (OTC) by many who previously used no method or less-effective contraception. These findings suggest that OTC access may improve equitable access to contraception. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Maria I. Rodriguez, M.D., M.P.H., email rodrigma@ohsu.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.27438) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional ...

Two years ago, the Food and Drug Administration approved the sale of an over-the-counter birth control pill for the first time in the United States without a prescription. A nationwide study published today reveals the decision has dramatically improved access to contraception, especially among women who otherwise would have had no birth control at all, either because they lack insurance or routine access to health care. The study was conducted by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University. Published in the journal ...

Researchers have identified key factors that influence the flavour of chocolate during the cocoa bean fermentation process, a discovery that could offer chocolate producers a powerful tool to craft consistently high-quality, flavour-rich chocolate. Scientists from the University of Nottingham’s School of Biosciences examined how cacao bean temperature, pH, and microbial communities interact during fermentation and how these factors shape chocolate flavour. The team identified key microbial species and metabolic traits associated with fine-flavour chocolate and found that both abiotic factors (such as temperature and ...

SAN ANTONIO — August 18, 2025 — A Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) review of data collected from near-Earth asteroids Bennu and Ryugu supports the hypothesis that they were originally part of the Polana collisional family in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The study compared spectroscopy data from Polana with spacecraft and laboratory data from Bennu and Ryugu samples, discovering similarities in their near-infrared spectrum sufficient to support the theory that they originate ...

On Japan’s desert islands, researchers uncovered a peculiar bathroom ritual among seabirds. Reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on August 18, the team found that streaked shearwaters (Calonectris leucomelas) poop while flying—not while floating on water—and they do so every 4 to 10 minutes. This habit may help the birds stay clean and fertilize the ocean below.  But the team didn’t set out to document the seabirds’ bathroom habits. “I was studying how seabirds run on sea surface to take off,” says Leo Uesaka, the lead author from the University ...

SAN ANTONIO — August 18, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has developed and tested a micrometeoroid and orbital debris (MMOD) detection and characterization system designed for satellites and spacecraft to monitor impacts from space debris. The system provides critical post-impact data, ensuring awareness of an impact even when damage is not immediately apparent. Space debris around Earth is a growing problem, a result of commercial satellites exploding, anti-satellite missile tests and accidents that contribute to a growing junk field. Depending ...

To the point Exploratory behavior: Grackles who were trained to be more flexible were more exploratory after the training than untrained grackles. This indicates that the more an individual investigates a novel object, the more it can learn and adapt its behavior accordingly. Range expansion: Grackles in an edge population disperse farther than those in a more central population. This suggests that the rapid geographic range expansion of great-tailed grackles is associated with individuals differentially expressing dispersal behaviors. Key traits: Flexibility, exploration, and dispersal are key ...

Flowers, specialized plant structures consisting of colorful petals and green sepals, play a key role in plant propagation. In addition to their ornamental value, flowers have gained emotional and cultural significance over the years. African violet, scientifically known as Streptocarpus sect. Saintpaulia ionanthus Wendl., is a remarkable ornamental plant with unique color patterns in its flowers owing to the accumulation of anthocyanins—a chemical substance that imparts different colors. Among the diverse varieties of Saintpaulia flowers, the white-striped petal variety has been exclusively bred for their aesthetic appeal and horticultural value. Until recently, scientists ...

Metal oxide materials with nanoscale pores have been applied and studied in a wide range of fields, including as catalysts, adsorption and separation materials, and energy materials. Among them, single-crystalline nanoporous metal oxides—with interconnected nanopores in a single crystal—are especially lucrative. They have recently attracted attention as unique materials that combine the desirable properties of nanoporous materials, such as high specific surface area and large pore volume, with those of single crystals. While metal oxide nanoporous structures have been conventionally synthesized by replicating the nanostructure ...

A team of scientists at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research has discovered that inactivation of a stress pathway makes ER+ breast cancer cells ignore stress signals, allowing them to evade treatment. A study led by researchers at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research has uncovered why some breast cancers become resistant to treatment, potentially opening the door to more effective therapies for patients. Published today in the Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research, the study reveals how disruption to a cellular stress response system involving the JNK pathway allows estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer cells to evade ...