New research from The University of Texas at Arlington and the U.S. Department of Agriculture demonstrates how mathematical modeling can predict outbreaks of toxic fungi in Texas corn crops—offering a potential lifeline to farmers facing billions in harvest losses. “Our research focuses on predicting aflatoxin outbreaks in Texas using remote sensing satellites, soil properties and meteorological data,” said coauthor Angela Avila, a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics at UTA. “One of the key challenges is that contamination can be present with no visible signs of fungal infection. This makes ...

April 28, 2025-- Conflicting findings in environmental epidemiology have long stalled consensus on the health effects of toxic chemicals. A new study by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health published in the American Journal of Epidemiology suggests that one major reason for these inconsistencies may be the limited exposure ranges in individual studies—leading to underpowered results and unclear conclusions. Researchers used simulated data to examine how well individual and pooled studies can identify dose-response relationships between chemical exposure and health ...

Planting wildflowers in apple orchards could save farmers up to £3,000 per hectare a year, according to a new study.   Flower strips create a home for a team of helpful insects – like ladybirds, hoverflies, and lacewings – that eat harmful pests such as aphids. This natural team of pest controllers helps keep apple trees healthy with less need for chemical sprays.   This study, published in Journal of Agricultural Economics, builds on previous research from a University of Reading team that found flower strips can ...

Why are some people more helpful than others? In a new JNeurosci paper, Inbal Bartal, from Tel Aviv University, and colleagues used rats to explore why some individuals may be more receptive to the distress of others and how this information leads to helpful behavior. During a task the researchers previously developed, they observed the behaviors and brain activity of helpful rats compared to less helpful rats. In this task that probes helping behavior, rats are given the option to release a distressed peer trapped in a restrainer. Rats were more ...

URBANA, Ill. -- In February, the USAID-funded Feed the Future Soybean Innovation Lab at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign was told to stop work, bringing an abrupt end to 12 years of progress toward developing a global soybean value chain supporting Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Australia. SIL director Pete Goldsmith cobbled together funding from the university to keep the lab afloat until April 15, which was to be its last day.  At the eleventh hour, Founders ...

People’s willingness to do volunteer work or give to charity differs greatly. Besides financial and social incentives, individual differences in people’s personality can explain why some of us are more likely to contribute to community welfare than others. Researchers at the Department of Psychology of the University of Zurich have examined the links between the so-called Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism) and people’s willingness to engage in prosocial behavior. Their analysis was based on 29 international ...

Falling off a horse at high-speed changes the impact to the rider’s head and the parameters for a quality helmet, according to new research from the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab.   Published on April 28 in the Annals of Biomedical Engineering, the findings from researchers Steve Rowson and Lauren Duma indicate that head impacts during falls at high speed generate unique head rotation, which in turn, directly affects helmet behavior.  “Rotational motion of the head is very important,” said Rowson, helmet lab director. “While our testing already incorporated rotational head motion, falling off a horse at high speed can put a large force across the helmet ...

Peking University, April 24, 2025: He Qinglin’s group at the Center for Quantum Materials Science, School of Physics, has reported the first observation of non-reciprocal Coulomb drag in Chern insulators. This breakthrough opens new pathways for exploring Coulomb interactions in magnetic topological systems and enhances our understanding of quantum states in such materials. The work was published in Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-58401-5). Background Coulomb drag arises when a current in one conductor induces ...

A newly published study involving researchers from Karolinska Institutet indicates that prostate cancer can be diagnosed at an early stage through a simple urine sample. With the aid of AI and extensive analyses of gene activity in tumours, they have identified new biomarkers of high diagnostic precision. Prostate cancer is one of the most common causes of male death globally. One of the main diagnostic hurdles is the lack of exact biomarkers able to identify the presence of an early tumour. In this present study, researchers at Karolinska ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – A new study from Cornell University finds AI-based writing assistants have the potential to function poorly for billions of users in the Global South by generating generic language that makes them sound more like Americans. The study showed that when Indians and Americans used an AI writing assistant, their writing became more similar, mainly at the expense of Indian writing styles. While the assistant helped both groups write faster, Indians got a smaller productivity boost, because they frequently had to correct the AI’s suggestions. “This ...

Sydney scientists have revealed why receiving a booster vaccine in the same arm as your first dose can generate a more effective immune response more quickly. The study, led by the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and the Kirby Institute at UNSW Sydney and published in the journal Cell, offers new insight that could help improve future vaccination strategies. The researchers found that when a vaccine is administered, specialised immune cells called macrophages became ‘primed’ inside lymph nodes. These macrophages then direct the positioning of memory B cells to more effectively respond to the booster when given in the same arm. The ...

How would you summarize your study for a lay audience? Our team has been investigating unusual mental and somatic experiences that occur in intensive meditative, spiritual and contemplative practice, such as: The sense that the world is a dream or cartoon An absorbing sense of unity with God Ecstatic thrills running through the body Unusually vivid perceptions Out of body experiences Perceptions of non-physical lights. In a previous study, we found these experiences were surprisingly widespread in general populations, and that while they are usually ...

Some things just go together in your belly: peanut butter and jelly, salt and pepper, bacteria and bacteria-eating viruses. For the bacterial species that inhabit your gut, there’s a frenzy of viruses called bacteriophages that naturally infect them. Although they co-evolved with bacteria, phages get far less glory. They’re harder to classify and so deeply entangled with the bacteria they target that scientists struggle to understand what functions they serve. But what if there was a way to compare the exact same gut microbiome ...

About The Study: Cohort-specific patterns across states reveal wide disparities in mortality. Some states have experienced little or no improvements in life expectancy from the 1900 to 2000 birth cohorts. Understanding how mortality patterns vary by birth cohort within each state can inform decision-making around resource allocation and public health interventions. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Theodore R. Holford, PhD, email theodore.holford@yale.edu. To ...

About The Study: The results of this study suggest that maternal health was difficult to track due to changes in reporting practices, but public health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic can have large negative impacts. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Seth Flaxman, PhD, email seth.flaxman@cs.ox.ac.uk. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2025.0440) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, ...

Researchers from University of California San Diego have found that children diagnosed with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) are at significantly increased risk of premature death and serious long-term health complications. The findings, published April 22, 2025 in Hepatology, the scientific journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, come from the Longitudinal InVestigation Evaluating Results of Steatosis (LIVERS) study, which followed 1,096 children over an average of 8.5 years. Nearly half of all deaths in the cohort were liver-related, and the overall mortality rate was 40 times higher than that ...

Arc Institute continues its work to generate and share large-scale, high-quality datasets of cell state before and after chemical or genetic perturbations to enable “virtual cell” models and other innovations. Two months after launching the Arc Virtual Cell Atlas comprising over 300 million cells, the initiative is now benefiting from new partnerships with 10x Genomics and Ultima Genomics, industry leaders in advanced tools that make collecting single cell data faster, more scalable, and more affordable for scientists working to improve human ...

A new study led by researchers at the University of Oxford, published today (28 April) in JAMA Pediatrics, offers fresh insight into trends in maternal mortality in the United States. For the first time, the study disentangles genuine changes in health outcomes from shifts caused by how deaths are recorded. Nevertheless, the study confirms the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on maternal death rates for women of all racial and ethnic groups. The study, based on data from 2000 to 2023, investigated how the introduction of a ‘pregnancy checkbox’ ...

“This study demonstrated that the inflammatory response in a subset of anal, penile, and vulvar HSILs was associated with PD-L1 and FOXP3 expression.” BUFFALO, NY – April 28, 2025 – A new research paper was published in Oncotarget, Volume 16, on April 24, 2025, titled “PD-L1 and FOXP3 expression in high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions of the anogenital region.” Researchers Humberto Carvalho Carneiro, Rodrigo de Andrade Natal, José Vassallo and Fernando Augusto Soares from the Instituto D’Or de Pesquisa e Ensino and Rede D’Or studied ...

Background and objectives The role of radiosurgery in the treatment of grade 2 meningioma remains unclear. This study aimed to evaluate the long-term outcomes of gamma knife radiosurgery (GKRS) in patients with grade 2 meningiomas and to identify factors influencing tumor control and survival. Methods In this retrospective study, seventy patients underwent GKRS for grade 2 meningioma between 2007 and 2016. Tumor recurrence was categorized as local, marginal, or distant. Survival curves were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method, while the log-rank test and Cox proportional ...

At a time when we run ourselves ragged to meet society’s expectations of productivity, performance and time optimisation, is it right that our robot vacuum cleaners and other smart appliances should sit idle for most of the day? Computer scientists at the University of Bath in the UK think not. In a new paper, they propose over 100 ways to tap into the latent potential of our robotic devices. The researchers say these devices could be reprogrammed to perform helpful tasks around the home beyond ...

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have uncovered a unique ability of a special subtype of natural killer cells in the immune system, called adaptive NK cells, to remember ovarian tumours and effectively attack them. The discovery, published in Cancer Immunology Research, could pave the way for new, more powerful immunotherapies for difficult-to-treat cancers. NK cells, or natural killer cells, are white blood cells that play a central role in the body’s defence against viral infections and cancer. NK cells can identify and destroy unhealthy-looking cells, such as tumour cells, without prior exposure. Adaptive ...

Background and objectives Proper nutritional management has been shown to reduce complications and lead to better clinical outcomes. However, inaccurate nutritional screening and assessment, inappropriate nutrition support, and deviations from suggested guidelines were observed in clinical practice. We aimed to investigate the nutritional status and support of hospitalized patients with neurological diseases to identify deficiencies in nutritional assessment and treatment. Methods A self-designed questionnaire, developed through a literature review, group discussions, and expert consultation, was converted into an electronic form to conduct a cross-sectional survey ...

A fiber sensor inspired by the shape of DNA, developed by researchers at Shinshu University, introduces a new design for more durable, flexible fiber sensors in wearables. Traditional fiber sensors have electrodes at both ends, which often fail under repeated movement when placed on body joints. The proposed double-helical design, however, places both electrodes on one end, allowing the sensor to endure repeated stretching and movement, effectively addressing a key limitation of conventional wearable sensors. Flexible fiber sensors are widely used in smart wearables, as their compact size ...

28 April, Boston—Molecular testing is transforming post-transplant care, reducing the need for invasive biopsies and personalizing medication regimens to lower the risk of infection and other downstream side effects, according to a presentation by Jeffrey Teuteberg, MD, this morning at the Annual Meeting and Scientific Sessions of the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) “We’ve had a bit of a cookie-cutter approach to post-operative care, managing heart transplant patients in roughly the same way,” said ...