COLUMBUS, Ohio – Young umbrella acacia trees in Africa survive severe drought by putting their natural processes into overdrive when water is in short supply, prioritizing continued growth over water conservation, new research shows. The study is the first genome-scale analysis of any African acacias and focuses on the umbrella acacia, an iconic feature of the African savanna. Researchers compared the genetic response to drought stress of the umbrella acacia (Vachellia tortilis) and one of its hundreds of relatives, the splendid thorn acacia (Vachellia robusta) more commonly found in wetter regions of East Africa. Results showed that ...

Oct. 30, 2025   An App, an Apple Watch and AI: UMass Amherst Creates a New Way for Researchers to Study Sleep Health   The new Apple Watch app will be incorporated into ongoing research examining links between disruptive sleep patterns and Alzheimer’s disease   AMHERST, Mass. — An app that turns consumer Apple Watches into tools for highly sophisticated sleep stage monitoring was developed by team of researchers led by professor Joyita Dutta at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The researchers say the app and corresponding AI code are convenient ...

Sharing happy moments with a partner may be good for older people’s health, lowering the level of the stress hormone cortisol in their bodies, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.   “We know from lots of research that positive emotions like happiness, joy, love and excitement are good for our health -- they’ve even been linked to living longer. But most of this research looks at people’s emotions as if they happen in isolation,” said study lead author Tomiko Yoneda, PhD, of the University of California Davis. “In real life, though, our most powerful positive emotions often happen when we’re connecting ...

Conventional approaches to cyborg insect preparation involve cutting antennae or cerci (sensory appendages) to implant electrodes, or using adhesives (like poly ionic liquid gels) to attach noninvasive films. “The methods have flaws: (1) Invasive implantation irreparably damages sensory organs, reducing the insect’s ability to detect obstacles and navigate; (2) Adhesive-based films degrade over time, cause exoskeleton harm during removal, and require skillful application—extending preparation time and limiting reuse; (3)Ethically, cutting appendages violates the “3Rs” framework (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement) for humane animal research, raising concerns about ...

Gastric cancer remains a major global health challenge, characterized by high mortality and limited therapeutic efficacy, especially in advanced stages. With conventional treatments like surgery and chemotherapy often yielding suboptimal outcomes and significant side effects, there is an urgent need for safer and more effective alternatives. Scleromitrion diffusum (Willd.), a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) herb with a long history of use in oncology, has shown promising clinical potential against gastric cancer. This review systematically explores the ...

Recent research led to impactful achievements in advanced imaging strategies using intelligent micro/nanomotors (MNMs), which offer transformative solutions to traditional bioimaging paradigms by enabling enhanced detection sensitivity and real-time tracking of subcellular events and microenvironmental changes. Nevertheless, full realization of deep-tissue imaging and high resolution remains challenging to achieve, often limited by inherent constraints such as poor penetration depth and signal degradation. Based on research experience in this field, the study ...

To many people, nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, is only known as a party drug or from the dentist. However, the nitrogenous substance also contributes significantly to global warming. As a greenhouse gas, its effect in the atmosphere is almost three hundred times more powerful than that of CO2, and it also attacks the ozone layer. “The emission of this almost forgotten greenhouse gas is decisive for the global climate,” says Dr. Claudia Frey from the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Basel. The biogeochemist ...

Acute lung injury (ALI) is a critical clinical condition characterized by diffuse inflammation of the lung parenchyma and intractable hypoxemia, typically caused by factors, such as trauma, pneumonia, shock, and sepsis. Clinical symptoms of ALI include pulmonary edema, impaired gas exchange, and hypoxemia. m6A methylation regulates gene expression by influencing RNA translation, splicing, stability, and export. This process is dynamically controlled by m6A writers, such as methyltransferase-like 3 (METTL3) and methyltransferase-like 14 (METTL14), which install the m6A mark; m6A erasers such as fat mass and ...

Climate change, expedited by anthropogenic activities, has become a major environmental concern in this century. Governments and organizations worldwide are gradually making substantial efforts to mitigate this challenge. A concrete step in this direction is to develop novel technologies that capture and convert low-concentration carbon dioxide into useful products. Recently, scientists have proposed carbon dioxide methanation in a membrane reactor as a promising approach. Specifically, distribution-type membrane reactors are appealing owing to high catalyst activity through hotspot formation mitigation. Although the effectiveness ...

In rapidly growing cities like Tokyo, incorporating greenery is a challenging task. With limited space for trees or parks, vertical greening—the placement of vegetation on building façades—has become a creative solution to reintroduce nature into crowded urban settings. However, until now, there has been no clear method to assess where this type of greenery is most needed or most effective.   To address this challenge, researchers from Chiba University in Japan have created a data-driven spatial framework that identifies the best locations for vertical greening throughout Tokyo's 23 wards. The study, ...

People with cancer who received diabetes care from clinical pharmacists achieved significantly better blood sugar control, according to new research from the University of California San Diego. The study, published in Diabetes Spectrum on Oct. 30, 2025 found that patients referred to a diabetes management and education clinic led by pharmacists saw meaningful improvements in blood sugar levels over time, underscoring the critical role pharmacists can play in supporting this high-risk group. “Cancer and hyperglycemia can be a harmful combination,” said Christina Mnatzaganian, Pharm.D., health sciences clinical professor at UC San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical ...

A child’s early gut microbiome may influence their risk of developing depression, anxiety or other internalizing symptoms in middle childhood, according to a new UCLA Health study. The effect appears to be related to the way bacteria are linked to communication across emotion-related brain networks.  Published in the journal Nature Communications, the observational study found that young children whose gut microbiome had higher representation of bacteria in the Clostridiales order and Lachnospiraceae family were at higher risk of experiencing ...

Scientists have long sought to make semiconductors—vital components in computer chips and solar cells—that are also superconducting, thereby enhancing their speed and energy efficiency and enabling new quantum technologies. However, achieving superconductivity in semiconductor materials such as silicon and germanium has proved challenging due to difficulty in maintaining an optimal atomic structure with the desired conduction behavior. In a newly published paper in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Obesity is a global epidemic affecting millions of people every day and is associated with comorbidities ranging from heart disease and Type 2 diabetes to osteoarthritis and social stigma. While lifestyle factors, like diet and exercise, affect obesity, years of genetic research have identified about 20 genes that have a high effect on the likelihood of a person developing the condition.  Now, a new study published today (Oct. 30) in Nature Communications, by researchers at Penn State, involving about 850,000 adults ...

One of the most common antidepressants, sertraline, contributes to a modest improvement in core depression and anxiety symptoms, including low mood, within two weeks, finds a new analysis of a major clinical trial led by UCL researchers. The study, published in Nature Mental Health, analysed the findings of the PANDA trial, which first published results in 2019 and found that sertraline may have an earlier impact on anxiety than depressive symptoms.* Researchers have now conducted a network analysis of the results, which is an innovative statistical method that allowed them to explore how specific symptoms respond to treatment. The ...

Scientists have paved the way for next-generation quantum circuits by successfully making a semiconducting element commonly used in electrical devices superconducting. A research team from The University of Queensland’s School of Mathematics and Physics and Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology and New York University have shown germanium can conduct electricity without resistance. The discovery, which had eluded physicists for more than 60 years, unifies the building blocks of classical electronics and quantum ...

Australian researchers have created tiny compartments to help supercharge photosynthesis, potentially boosting wheat and rice yields while slashing water and nitrogen use. Researchers from Associate Professor Yu Heng Lau’s group at the University of Sydney and Professor Spencer Whitney’s group at Australian National University have spent five years tackling a fundamental problem: how can we make plants fix carbon more efficiently? The team engineered nanoscale ‘offices' that can ...

New research has found that microbial communities in soil have the capacity to remember and adapt to past environmental events, helping plants to withstand drought stress. Experts from the University of Nottingham's School of Biosciences in collaboration with scientists from the University of Kansas found that soil microbes carry a long-term memory of past climate, and that this memory can shape how some plants respond to new droughts. The findings have been published today in Nature Microbiology. Droughts ...

URBANA, Ill. — Airplane travel is more popular than ever, and our desire for fast transportation means jet fuel has become a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have discovered a novel way to address that problem—by converting food waste into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) that meets industry standards without relying on fossil fuel blends. Their process, described in a new Nature Communications study, could help the aviation industry meet its ambitious ...

Press release under embargo until 30/10/25 10:00 UK time  We learn physical skills by feeling rewarded, even in the absence of a reward, finds new study  People master new physical skills, such as sports, crafts or controlling a vehicle while driving, by blending lessons learnt from both feedback on the amount of error they had in failures and the rewards of successes, even when reward cues are removed, according to a new study led by Dr Shlomi Haar from the University of Surrey.  Using a high-tech virtual reality pool setup, researchers from Surrey and Imperial College London had 32 participants play pool on a physical table while wearing a virtual ...

As AI—and the ethical debate surrounding it—accelerates, scientists argue that understanding consciousness is now more urgent than ever. Researchers writing in Frontiers in Science warn that advances in AI and neurotechnology are outpacing our understanding of consciousness—with potentially serious ethical consequences. They argue that explaining how consciousness arises—which could one day lead to scientific tests to detect it—is now an urgent scientific and ethical priority. Such an understanding would bring major implications for AI, prenatal policy, animal welfare, medicine, mental health, law, and emerging neurotechnologies such as brain–computer ...

Greenhouse gas emissions from many wastewater treatment plants may be more than twice as large as previously thought. This is shown in a new study from Linköping University, where the researchers used drones with specially manufactured sensors to measure methane and nitrous oxide emissions. “We show that certain greenhouse gas emissions from wastewater treatment plants have been unknown. Now that we know more about these emissions, we also know more about how they can be reduced,” says ...

Dance as a performative art form alleviates perceived symptoms of depression, helps to understand its root causes and promotes self-actualisation, a recent study from the University of Eastern Finland found. The multidisciplinary research collaboration brought together perspectives from psychology and social psychology, as well as from dance as a performative art form, which is rarely included in interventions related to depression. “Depression is a major public health concern, and there is an urgent need for adjunct treatment methods. Robust evidence regarding adjunct treatments for depression already exists for physical exercise, for example. ...

Pumpkins, squash, zucchini and their relatives accumulate soil pollutants in their edible parts. A Kobe University team has now identified the cause, making it possible to both make the produce safer and create plants that clean contaminated soil. The gourd family of plants comprising pumpkins, zucchini, melons, cucumbers and more are known to accumulate high levels of pollutants in their edible parts. Kobe University agricultural scientist INUI Hideyuki says: “The pollutants don’t easily break down and thus pose a health risk to people who eat the fruit. Interestingly, other plants don’t ...

A quick, purification-free method was developed by researchers at Institute of Science Tokyo, to capture the detailed 3D structures of flexible sugar molecules. By growing crystals of galectin-10 protein using a cell-free crystallization process and soaking them in sugar solution, the researchers were able to trap and analyze the molecular arrangement of sugars and their interactions with the protein. This offers a powerful tool to accelerate research in drug discovery and molecular biology. Sugars, or saccharides, do much more than sweeten food. In living organisms, these molecules decorate the surfaces of cell and also act as vital messengers in processes such as infection control and tissue ...