The distinctive coloured fur of two of Australia's rarest marsupials could be caused by 'broken' pigment genes, new research from La Trobe University has found. The elusive desert-dwelling marsupial mole and the black-coated morph of the endangered eastern quoll are two of a growing number of marsupials showing common colour oddities. In many species, colour oddities like melanism and xanthism are considered chromatic disorders and are detrimental to an animal’s survival. But in research published ...

As global water resources face increasing pressure from industrial and agricultural activities, scientists are looking for innovative ways to clean and reuse wastewater sustainably. Researchers from Dalhousie University have now developed a simple and eco-friendly method to turn agricultural and forestry waste into powerful magnetic materials that can effectively remove toxic chemicals from water. The study, published in Sustainable Carbon Materials, introduces magnetic carbon adsorbents made from two common waste ...

The World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) priorities are being skewed by its increasing reliance on donations from organisations such as the Gates Foundation (previously known as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), which must be spent on specific health challenges favoured by the donors, suggests a study published in the journal BMJ Global Health. Between 2000 and 2024, more than half of the US $5.5 billion donated by the Gates Foundation to WHO was directed toward vaccine-related projects and polio, while relatively little funding was spent on other issues considered to be important by WHO. The Gates Foundation has become the WHO’s second biggest ...

Around one in ten people worldwide report gastrointestinal and other symptoms such as fatigue and headache after eating foods containing gluten or wheat despite not having a diagnosis of either coeliac disease or wheat allergy, finds a large systematic review and meta-analysis published online in Gut. These people have a condition known as non-coeliac gluten/wheat sensitivity (NCGWS), which appears to be more common in women and associated with irritable bowel syndrome, anxiety and depression.   Symptoms of NCGWS tend to improve when gluten ...

As the saying goes, “The customer is always right.” With the proliferation of artificial intelligence in consumer-facing roles, however, that may not always be so. Some customers have figured out how to game AI chatbots, exaggerating their complaints to get bigger benefits, such as discounts. On the plus side, however, AI customer service can help companies respond better to consumer complaints, saving money and reducing emotional burdens on human employees. A new study by Yifan Yu, a Texas McCombs assistant professor of information, ...

A new approach to hospital discharges at UCLA reduced the time patients spent waiting to leave the hospital by nearly 50% for four common diagnoses and improved length of hospital stay by 2.5 days, according to a new pilot study at UCLA Health. Researchers say the standardized system could also serve as a case study for U.S. hospitals facing insufficient bed capacity and slow patient throughput. In the study published in the journal BMJ Open Quality, the UCLA Health Ronald Reagan Medical Center implemented an 18-month discharge improvement test for four common neurological and medical conditions: transient ...

Sessions focused on the latest advances in cancer vaccines, immunotherapy and immunology research Symposium featured a panel discussion with five Nobel laureates, moderated by TIME Senior Health Correspondent Alice Park HOUSTON, OCTOBER 28, 2025 ― The James P. Allison Institute™ at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center hosted its third annual scientific symposium, “The Multiverse of Mechanistic Processes Impacting Immunity,” on Oct. 24 at the TMC3 Collaborative Building in the Texas Medical Center’s Helix Park. The symposium, with more than 1,500 attending in person and ...

SETI Institute Accelerates the Search for Life Beyond Earth with NVIDIA IGX Thor The new enterprise-ready NVIDIA IGX Thor platform brings real-time AI processing to the Allen Telescope Array, helping scientists detect signals from space faster than ever. October 28, 2025, Mountain View, CA – The SETI Institute announced that it will incorporate the new NVIDIA IGX Thor platform to enhance its real-time search for signals from space at the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) in Northern California. The collaboration brings cutting-edge ...

URBANA, Ill. – Wetlands are an important part of the ecological system, providing a myriad of benefits for people, wildlife, and the environment. They also serve as “nature’s kidneys,” filtering out pollutants from surface water. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign finds that wetlands along the Mississippi River Basin effectively clean up nitrogen runoff from agricultural fields. The researchers also show this can lead to significant savings for local drinking water treatment facilities. Non-point source pollution from ...

During IDWeek 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia, Loren G. Miller, MD, MPH, investigator at The Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, presented landmark findings from the Phase 2a diSArm study. Conducted in collaboration with Armata Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the study demonstrated for the first time in a randomized clinical trial the efficacy of an intravenous bacteriophage therapy in treating complicated Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia (“SAB”). Bacteriophages are virus-like particles that infect bacteria. Bacteriophages may have advantages ...

Wastewater can replace clean water as a source for hydrogen production, eliminating a major drawback to hydrogen fuel and reducing water treatment costs by up to 47%, according to new research from Princeton Engineering. The findings, reported Sept. 24 in the journal Water Research, are a step toward making  hydrogen a practical pathway to decarbonize industries that are difficult to electrify, such as steel and fertilizer production. Z. Jason Ren, the senior study author, said that current electrolytic hydrogen production requires a large amount of ...

The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), in collaboration with the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC), the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), the Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medical Society (PALTmed), and the American Geriatrics Society (AGS), today released Multisociety Guidance for Infection Prevention and Control in Nursing Homes. The new guidance updates earlier guidance, published as the SHEA/APIC guideline: infection prevention and control in the long-term care facility, July 2008.  The updated guidance provides a framework to help nursing homes prevent ...

The industrial sector contributes about 25% of global carbon dioxide emissions, but there has not been enough study on how decarbonization efforts to reach net-zero goals set by the Paris Agreement impact the broader economy. This scarcity of empirical studies could hinder efforts to lower greenhouse gas emissions, Yale School of the Environment economists argue in a paper recently published in Science. “There is vast space for broad-scale work on industrial decarbonization that can leverage research partnerships and new data sources. Quantifying impacts on decarbonizing energy-intensive ...

The bacterium known as Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an unwelcome visitor in the human body. Serious infections can result when a bunch of these bugs settle together on a surface to form a biofilm — a community of microbes like the slime on spoiled food, but in this case residing inside a person. The grouped-up bacteria attack the lungs of patients with cystic fibrosis and conditions that require the use of ventilators, such as severe COVID-19. Worse still, the World Health Organization lists Pseudomonas among the antibiotic-resistant bacteria presenting the biggest threat to human health. Now, however, new findings from researchers led by the California NanoSystems ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The “baby boom” of ochre sea stars that followed a population crash a decade ago is enabling the species to recover on the Oregon Coast, according to new research by scientists at Oregon State University and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. The study, published in Ecosphere, does not determine whether the boom was triggered by the wasting disease epidemic that pushed ochre sea stars to the brink of extinction in Oregon, or simply a fortunate coincidence. But either way, a study of multiple sites along the coast revealed many encouraging signs for ochre sea star populations. “Wasting ...

A team of U.S. scientists has discovered the oldest directly dated ice and air on the planet in the Allan Hills region of East Antarctica. The 6-million-year-old ice and the tiny air bubbles trapped inside it provide an unprecedented window into Earth’s past climate, according to a new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The oldest ice sample from Allan Hills dated by researchers clocks in at 6 million years, from a period in Earth’s history where abundant geological evidence indicates much warmer temperatures and higher sea levels compared to today. The research was led by Sarah Shackleton ...

A female mosquito only gets one shot to get reproduction right: She mates just a single time in her entire life. With the stakes so high, it would make sense for these insects to be quite choosey when it comes to selecting a mate. And yet a long-standing assumption in the field was that males controlled the process, and females were simply passive recipients of sperm. “There’s an inherent contradiction in this assumption,” says Rockefeller University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute mosquito expert Leslie Vosshall. “If females have no say, then multiple males ...

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — October 28, 2025 — Today, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) and NVIDIA announced an expanded collaboration to accelerate life science research by driving development and adoption of virtual cell models through tools, data, models, and benchmarks delivered through CZI’s virtual cells platform (VCP). Core to this collaboration is an effort to scale biological data processing to petabytes of data spanning billions of cellular observations, enabling next-generation model development that will unlock new ...

(Toronto and Little Rock, October 16, 2025)  JMIR Publications, a premier open access publisher of digital health research, and The MidSouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society (MCBIOS), a leading professional organization for computational biology and bioinformatics, today announced a strategic, long-term partnership. This agreement formally designates JMIR Bioinformatics and Biotechnology as the official journal of MCBIOS. This landmark Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) creates a stable, high-impact venue for MCBIOS members to publish their research, particularly the output from the Society's annual conference. Both organizations are ...

Ottawa, October 28, 2025 – Scientists from the Canadian Museum of Nature have announced the discovery and description of an extinct rhinoceros from the Canadian High Arctic. The nearly complete fossil skeleton of the new species was recovered from the fossil-rich lake deposits in Haughton Crater on Devon Island, Nunavut and is the most northerly rhino species known. Rhinoceroses have an evolutionary history that spanned over 40 million years, encompassing all continents except South America and Antarctica. The “Arctic rhino” lived about 23 million years ago, during the Early Miocene and is most ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 28, 2025 – Copper intrauterine devices are a common contraceptive due to their long-acting effects and affordability. However, the first few months of use are associated with several side effects. When a copper IUD is first implanted in the uterus, it undergoes a chemical reaction with uterine fluid. This reaction corrodes its surface, causing a burst of copper ions, which can lead to symptoms such as menstrual irregularity, increased menstrual cramps, and pelvic inflammatory disease. In Biointerphases, an AVS journal published ...

In a new paper published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the international LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration reports on the detection of two gravitational wave events in October and November of last year with unusual black hole spins. An observation that adds an important new piece to our understanding of the most elusive phenomena in the universe. Gravitational waves are “ripples” in space-time that result from cataclysmic events in deep space, with the strongest waves produced by the collision of black holes.  Using sophisticated algorithmic techniques and mathematical models, researchers are able to reconstruct ...

Could yeast and humans be any more different? Going by looks alone, probably not. But peering into our genomes reveals surprising similarities. That’s because we share a common ancestor called LECA (last eukaryotic common ancestor). Before this single-celled organism died off around 2 billion years ago, it passed down Dicer, a key protein humans and certain yeasts still rely on today.  “Dicer is ancient,” explains Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Rob Martienssen. “The mechanisms behind how it directly interacts with RNA are well understood. How it does this in the context of the whole genome, and how that affects genome stability, is still ...

Climate change is driving many of Australia’s native reptiles toward extinction, and the answers to their future survival may lie in the fossil record. New research published today in Current Biology originates from an international collaboration with Museums Victoria Research Institute and the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. The study reveals that the endangered Australian Mountain Dragon (Rankinia diemensis) has been driven into increasingly smaller and more isolated populations over thousands of years as a result of changing climate conditions. The study combines fossil evidence from natural history museums with genetic data ...

New open-source American College of Lifestyle Medicine program brings culinary skills and nutrition education into medicine Dr. Michelle Hauser of Stanford University School of Medicine created a program that features almost 15 hours of video instruction on cooking skills, kitchen knowledge and healthy, delicious recipes. The resources are accompanied by a curriculum for clinicians or can be used independently by individuals who want to improve their nutrition.  The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) has launched a complimentary Culinary Medicine Program (CMP) ...