Researchers led by Masako Tamaki at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science in Japan report a link between deep sleep and cerebrospinal fluid, the clear liquid that surrounds and supports the brain and spinal cord. Recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesof the United States of America, the study demonstrates how changes in cerebrospinal fluid signals during sleep—as measured by MRI—are time-locked to slow brain waves and other neural events. These findings offer a clue as to why stable sleep is important for normal brain ...

Restoring degraded peatlands could play a vital role in tackling climate change, according to a new study led by researchers from Bangor University and the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. The study shows that combining rewetting with biochar and iron sulphate additions can significantly slow down carbon loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from drained agricultural peat soils. Peatlands, though covering less than 3% of the Earth’s surface, store more carbon than all the world’s forests combined. However, decades of ...

Cancer cells are known to reawaken embryonic genes to grow. A new study reveals the disease also hijacks the proteins, or “editors”, that control how those genes are read. The findings, published today in the journal Nucleic Acids Research, help explain why tumours grow so fast and adapt so well, and may point the way to new treatments. Embryonic cells have to grow fast and must be able to transform into many different tissue types. The cells rely on genetic programmes that are eventually switched off as tissues mature. Cancer reawakens these programmes, giving the disease embryonic-like potential to fuel growth. Researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation ...

A landmark international study led by the University of Zurich has shown that artificial intelligence can assess patient risk for the most common type of heart attack more accurately than existing methods. This could enable doctors to guide more personalized treatment decisions for patients. Doctors caring for patients with the most common form of heart attack – the so-called non-ST-elevation acute coronary syndrome (NSTE-ACS) – have so far relied on a standardized scoring system. Using the GRACE score, they can estimate risk and determine the optimal timing for catheter-based treatment. This score is widely used and increasingly integrated into international clinical ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Sea ice coverage in the Arctic Ocean is at one of its lowest levels on record, yet there’s no unanimity on when that ice will disappear completely during summer months. Understanding the traits and movements of the remaining ice is a persistent challenge for scientists, but a study by researchers at Penn State has provided a new tool to explore ice characteristics and interactions along with coastal conditions. Using radar images, fiber-optic sensing and seismic sensors, the team in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS) identified different ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The faster a child takes bites during a meal or snack, the greater risk they have for developing obesity, according to researchers in the Penn State Department of Nutritional Sciences. But research into this association is often limited to small studies in laboratory environments, largely because counting a child’s bite rate is difficult; it requires someone to watch videos of a child eating and manually record each bite. To make bite rate counting possible for larger studies and in ...

Chemistry researchers at the University of Utah have uncovered an enzyme, dubbed PapB, that can “tie off” therapeutic peptides—protein-like drugs—into tight rings, a process known as macrocyclization. This enzymatic trick could help drug developers make stronger, longer-lasting versions of GLP-1 medications, such as semaglutide—the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy—used to treat diabetes and obesity, according to a study published this week. Creating cyclic peptides is valuable because these ring ...

A new species of bacteria has been discovered off the coast of Oʻahu, shedding light on how unseen microbial life connects Hawaiʻi’s land and sea ecosystems. Researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa identified Caulobacter inopinatus, a previously unknown species of bacteria found in seawater collected near a beach on Oʻahu’s south shore. The finding—published October 16 in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology—was unexpected because all other known species ...

DALLAS, Oct. 16, 2025 — Today on World Restart a Heart Day, the American Heart Association, a relentless force changing the future of health for everyone everywhere, launches a new financial grant program to equip 40 high school and college Heart Clubs across the country with CPR training and resources. These grants will make it easier for students and educators to learn lifesaving skills and add more people to the Heart Association’s Nation of Lifesavers™ movement, which aims to double survival ...

DALLAS, October 16, 2025 — To boost awareness of CPR, the American Heart Association and NFL (National Football League) are unveiling the 2025 Nation of Lifesavers™ Player Ambassador Class on World Restart a Heart Day, which takes places annually on Oct. 16. The Ambassador class is made up of 30 current NFL players who are dedicated to promoting this lifesaving skill. Ambassadors support the American Heart Association’s call to action to learn CPR by amplifying public service announcements (PSAs), social media content and local community education events. Two of the ambassadors will take the field tonight for Thursday Night ...

A study led by University of Arizona researchers shows that decades of groundwater pumping by humans has depleted Tucson-area aquifers far more than natural climate variation. Published in the journal Water Resources Research, the study provides the first multi-millennial reconstruction for the region that places human impacts on groundwater into long-term context. "This is the first time we've been able to get a record of the water table through time," said Jennifer McIntosh, senior author and the Thomas Meixner Endowed Chair of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences in the College of Science. Since the ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A new twist on a classic material could advance quantum computing and make modern data centers more energy efficient, according to a team led by researchers at Penn State.    Barium titanate, first discovered in 1941, is known for its powerful electro-optic properties in bulk, or three-dimensional, crystals. Electro-optic materials like barium titanate act as bridges between electricity and light, converting signals carried by electrons into signals carried by photons, or particles of light.   However, despite its promise, barium titanate never became the industry standard for electro-optic devices, such as modulators, switches and ...

The drug development pipeline is a costly and lengthy process. Identifying high-quality “hit” compounds—those with high potency, selectivity, and favorable metabolic properties—at the earliest stages is important for reducing cost and accelerating the path to clinical trials. For the last decade, scientists have looked to machine learning to make this initial screening process more efficient. Computer-aided drug design is used to computationally screen for compounds that ...

Staying cool during heatwaves is challenging for small creatures, but the problem could be even more extreme for nocturnal creatures that are unable to move to cooler locations while slumbering. ‘Roosting bats may face lethally high body temperatures during extremely hot days’, says Ruvinda de Mel, from the University of New England, Australia. And bat boxes are often designed to retain heat to keep bats cozy, which could place the animals at even greater risk during heatwaves, depending on the box’s position ...

Researchers at the University of Chicago have found that patients with violent injuries often face legal and financial needs that can have an impact on their recovery—and that providing legal help at the bedside can make a measurable difference. The study, published in JAMA Network Open, evaluated the Recovery Legal Care program at the University of Chicago Medical Center, the nation’s first medical-legal partnership embedded in a trauma center. The team of UChicago investigators, led by ...

In the hunt for new therapeutics for cancer and infectious diseases, lasso peptides prove to be a catch. Their knot-like structures afford these molecules high stability and diverse biological activities, making them a promising avenue for new therapeutics. To better unleash their clinical potential, a team from the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology developed LassoESM, a new large language model for predicting lasso peptide properties. The collaborative study was recently published in Nature Communications. Lasso peptides are natural products made by bacteria. To produce these peptides, bacteria use ribosomes to build chains of amino acids that are then folded by biosynthetic ...

A new study from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis provides some answers. Published Sept. 15 in Nature Mental Health, it mined an enormous set of data collected from pre-teens and teens across the U.S. and found that social conflicts — particularly family fighting and reputational damage or bullying from peers — were the strongest predictors of near- and long-term mental health issues. The research also revealed sex differences in how boys and girls experience stress from ...

Key Takeaways An evaluation of 50 surgical QI projects found that only one scored above 70% on criteria for a well-conducted effort, with major deficits in the critical early "front-end" planning stage. The new EPoSSI framework provides a structured, nine-step guide and checklist to help clinicians systematically plan projects before launch. In testing, using the full EPoSSI tool (diagram and guidance table) led to an increase in planning comprehensiveness, with participants meeting 100% of scoring criteria compared to just 24% without the framework. CHICAGO ...

Political attitudes and opinions can and do shift, sometimes drastically. Recent psychological research from Washington University in St. Louis offers insight into how emotional responses to threats contribute to shifts in political attitudes. One striking example of how emotions drive political shifts is that people tend to become more supportive of conservative views during times of external, or foreign, threat. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, for example, national polls showed that support for President George W. Bush — a moderately conservative Republican — soared by 39 points to a record-breaking ...

Dr. Lauren Henderson, a physician-scientist whose research focuses on children with difficult-to-treat juvenile idiopathic arthritis and other autoimmune disorders, has been awarded the 10th annual Gale and Ira Drukier Prize in Children’s Health Research, Weill Cornell Medicine announced today.            The Drukier Prize honors an early-career pediatrician whose research promises to make important contributions toward improving the health of children and adolescents. Dr. Henderson is an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and a pediatric rheumatologist ...

The University of North Florida has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to advance laser-based measurement technology to find more accurate and reliable chemical measurements across diverse scientific fields.  Dr. Willis Jones, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, will lead the study that will pursue groundbreaking advances in laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), a powerful but often limited analytical technique.   LIBS uses a high-powered laser to create a small plasma that reveals the elemental compositions of solids, liquids and gases with minimal preparation. While powerful, the method is hindered by ...

EMBARGO: THIS CONTENT IS UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 2 P.M. U.S. EASTERN STANDARD TIME ON OCT. 16, 2025. INTERESTED MEDIA MAY RECIVE A PREVIEW COPY OF THE JOURNAL ARTICLE IN ADVANCE OF THAT DATE OR CONDUCT INTERVIEWS, BUT THE INFORMATION MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, OR POSTED ONLINE UNTIL AFTER THE RELEASE WINDOW. A global research effort led by Colorado State University shows that extreme, prolonged drought conditions in grasslands and shrublands would greatly limit the long-term health of crucial ecosystems that cover nearly half the planet. ...

Non-hibernating pikas' protein restriction tweaks their gut microbiome to help them survive the winter, when winter-active herbivores often struggle to find dietary protein In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology: https://plos.io/4nI13TV Article title: Increased urea nitrogen salvaging by a remodeled gut microbiota helps nonhibernating pikas maintain protein homeostasis during winter Author countries: China, Israel Funding: see manuscript END ...

Like us humans, insects possess sensory organs responsible for vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. For vision, insects primarily rely on compound eyes. But what about hearing? For example, crickets develop tympanal organs on their forelegs, which function like a human’s eardrum to detect sound. They use these “ears on the legs” to listen to courtship songs and sense approaching enemies.   The tympanal organs have evolved in insects repeatedly. For example, cicadas, grasshoppers, moths and mantises have tympanal ears on their abdomen or thorax. Uniquely, stinkbugs of the family Dinidoridae, encompassing around 100 species representing ...

Sleep-like slow-wave patterns persist for years in surgically disconnected neural tissue of awake epilepsy patients, according to a study published October 16th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Marcello Massimini from Universita degli Studi di Milano, Italy, and colleagues. The presence of slow waves in the isolated hemisphere impairs consciousness, however, whether they serve any functional or plastic role, remains unclear. Hemispherotomy is a surgical procedure used to treat severe cases of epilepsy in children. The ...