OKLAHOMA CITY – When mothers eat a diet high in fat and sugars, their unborn babies can develop liver stress that continues into early life. A new study published in the journal Liver International sheds light on changes to the fetus’s bile acid, which affects how liver disease develops and progresses. Bile acids typically help with digestion and absorb dietary fats in the small intestine, but when they reach excessive levels, they become toxic and can damage the liver. While the mother can detoxify the acids, the fetus lacks that ability. Bile acids may re-circulate to the mother for detoxification, but if they don’t, they build ...

More than 3 billion years ago, Mars intermittently had liquid water on its surface. After the planet lost much of its atmosphere, however, surface water could no longer persist. The fate of Mars’ water—whether it was buried as ice, confined in deep aquifers, incorporated into minerals or dissipated into space—remains an area of ongoing research, one of particular interest to LASP Senior Research Scientist Bruce Jakosky, former principal investigator of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission. Last week, in a letter to the editor ...

MADISON — Inside the human eye, the retina is made up of several types of cells, including the light-sensing photoreceptors that initiate the cascade of events that lead to vision. Damage to the photoreceptors, either through degenerative disease or injury, leads to permanent vision impairment or blindness.  David Gamm, director of UW–Madison’s McPherson Eye Research Institute and professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences, says that stem cell replacement therapy using lab-grown photoreceptors ...

High-grade glioma, an aggressive form of pediatric and adult brain cancer, is challenging to treat given the tumor location, incidence of recurrence and difficulty for drugs to cross the blood-brain barrier. Researchers from the University of Michigan, Dana Farber Cancer Institute and the Medical University of Vienna established a collaborative team to uncover a potential new avenue to address this disease. A study, published in Cancer Cell, shows that high-grade glioma tumor cells harboring DNA alterations in the gene PDGFRA responded to the drug avapritinib, which is already approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration to treat gastrointestinal ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), in partnership with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), has developed StarBurst, a small satellite (SmallSat) instrument for NASA's StarBurst Multimessenger Pioneer mission, which will detect the emission of short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), a key electromagnetic (EM) signature that will contribute to the understanding of neutron star (NS) mergers. NRL transferred the instrument to NASA on March 4 for the next phase, environmental ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – March 13, 2025 – A study from researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine highlights a new approach in addressing conductive hearing loss. A team of scientists, led by Mohammad J. Moghimi, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical engineering, designed a new type of hearing aid that not only improves hearing but also offers a safe, non-invasive alternative to implantable devices and corrective surgeries.  The study recently published in Communications Engineering, a Nature Portfolio journal.  Conductive ...

Envision a world where unmanned aircraft deliver goods to your front door and transport passengers in flying taxis, cargo planes cross continents carrying vital trade goods, and fighter jets patrol battle zones—all without a human pilot at the controls. Those scenarios might seem a bit far-fetched now, but researchers are working diligently to develop these aircraft and ensure they operate safely. That’s why NASA has awarded a $1 million grant through its University Leadership Initiative (ULI) to a team from The University of Texas at Arlington Research ...

You may scarcely notice it, but much of what you do every day requires your brain to engage in perceptual learning. To safely cross an intersection or quickly retrieve something from your bag, you depend upon your brain to first assign meaning to sensory input from your eyes or fingertips. Usually, it’s effortless. Research from The Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology shows a gene called Syngap1 enables touch-based perception, while certain mutations can lead to mixed signals. The research was made possible through grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute ...

Teeth recovered from a beloved zoo elephant that died in 2008 are helping University of Utah geologists develop a method for tracking the movements of large herbivores across landscapes, even for animals now extinct, such as mastodons and mammoths. Outlined in recently published findings, the technique analyzes isotope ratios of the element strontium (Sr), which accumulates in tooth enamel. For large plant-eating land mammals, the relative abundance of two strontium isotopes in teeth and tusks ...

For cancers of organs like the liver, the long-term impact of our diet has been well studied — so much so that we have guidance about red meat, wine and other delicacies. A new study from researchers at University of Florida Health looks at another kind of organ whose cancer risk may be affected by poor diet: the lungs. The study was funded by several National Institutes of Health grants and a collaboration between the University of Kentucky's Markey Cancer Center and the UF Health Cancer Center. “Lung ...

The early mammals that lived alongside the dinosaurs upwards of 150 million years ago (mya) were likely covered in dark and dusky greyish-brown fur, according to a quantitative reconstruction of Mesozoic mammal coloration, hinting at their shrouded and nocturnal nature. The findings, drawn from a comparative analysis of fossilized melanosomes, provide insights into the ecology and evolutionary history of early mammals. From communication to camouflage, animal coloration plays an important role in numerous behavioral ecological ...

The deliberate destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine during the Russo-Ukrainian war unleashed a hidden environmental crisis, destroying ecosystems and releasing polluted sediments into downstream water systems, according to a new study. The findings provide critical new insights into the prolonged ecological risks of strategic dam destruction during warfare and the effects that may persist for years beyond war. “Our work highlights the far-reaching environmental consequences of the [Kakhovka Dam] destruction and raises concerns not only about the use of water as a weapon, but also about ...

The U.S. National Institutes of Health’s recent decision to impose a 15% cap on facilities and administrative (F&A) cost reimbursements threatens to undermine the quality and sustainability of university research by slashing indirect funding by $4 billion. In a Policy Forum, Jeongwon Choi and colleagues argue that this policy is fundamentally flawed, as it disregards the essential role of indirect costs, such as infrastructure, utilities, and administrative support, in enabling scientific research. The current system, governed by rigorous federal oversight and audits, ensures that F&A reimbursements are fair and necessary, varying across institutions based on actual costs. NIH’s ...

As the planet warms, Antarctica’s ice sheet is melting and contributing to sea-level rise around the globe. Antarctica holds enough frozen water to raise global sea levels by 190 feet, so precisely predicting how it will move and melt now and in the future is vital for protecting coastal areas. But most climate models struggle to accurately simulate the movement of Antarctic ice due to sparse data and the complexity of interactions between the ocean, atmosphere, and frozen surface.  In a paper published March 13 in Science, researchers at Stanford University used machine learning to analyze high-resolution ...

WEHI researchers have made a huge leap forward in the fight against Parkinson’s disease, solving a decades-long mystery that paves the way for development of new drugs to treat the condition.  First discovered over 20 years ago, PINK1 is a protein directly linked to Parkinson’s disease – the fastest growing neurodegenerative condition in the world. Until now, no one had seen what human PINK1 looks like, how PINK1 attaches to the surface of damaged mitochondria, or how it is switched on.    In ...

Researchers have advanced a decades-old challenge in the field of organic semiconductors, opening new possibilities for the future of electronics. The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge and the Eindhoven University of Technology, have created an organic semiconductor that forces electrons to move in a spiral pattern, which could improve the efficiency of OLED displays in television and smartphone screens, or power next-generation computing technologies such as spintronics and quantum computing. The semiconductor they developed emits circularly polarised ...

Geological resources such as critical metals and minerals, essential for the diffusion of technologies such as renewable energy and energy storage towards a decarbonized society, are indispensable for supporting modern life in the form of various products and services. Their demand is expected to increase in the coming years owing to global population as well as economic growth. Thus far, scientists and policymakers have primarily discussed geological resource availability from the viewpoint of reserves and resources in the ecosphere and technosphere. However, resources such as ...

When we observe distant celestial objects, there is a possible catch: Is that star I am observing really as reddish as it appears? Or does the star merely look reddish, since its light has had to travel through a cloud of cosmic dust to reach our telescope? For accurate observations, astronomers need to know the amount of dust between them and their distant targets. Not only does dust make objects appear reddish (“reddening”), it also makes them appear fainter than they really are (“extinction”). It’s like we are looking out into space through a dirty ...

A 40-year study by Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) researchers has found that active young adults who underwent total knee replacement were unlikely to require knee replacement revision in their lifetime, according to a new study shared today in a podium presentation at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons 2025 Annual Meeting.1 “As an increasing number of younger adults in their 40s and 50s consider total knee replacement, many wonder how long knee implants last before requiring a revision procedure,” ...

ROCHESTER, Minnesota — Mayo Clinic researchers have found a new way to more precisely detect and monitor brain cell activity during deep brain stimulation, a common treatment for movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease and tremor. This precision may help doctors adjust electrode placement and stimulation in real time, providing better, more personalized care for patients receiving the surgical procedure. The study is published in the Journal of Neurophysiology.  Deep brain stimulation (DBS) involves implanting electrodes in the brain that emit electrical pulses to alleviate symptoms. The electrodes remain inside the brain connected to a battery implanted near ...

CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina—Researchers conducting a clinical trial of immunotherapy drugs for people with head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) found that patients responded better to a combination of two immunotherapies than patients who received just one immunotherapy drug. The scientists also analyzed immune cells in each person’s tumor after one month of immunotherapy to see which type of immune cells were activated to fight their cancer, suggesting that some of the cells and targets they identified could help individualize treatment benefit. The findings appeared March 13, 2025 in Cancer Cell. HNSCCs occur in the oral cavity, pharynx, hypopharynx, larynx, nasal ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Converting one type of cell to another — for example, a skin cell to a neuron — can be done through a process that requires the skin cell to be induced into a “pluripotent” stem cell, then differentiated into a neuron. Researchers at MIT have now devised a simplified process that bypasses the stem cell stage, converting a skin cell directly into a neuron. Working with mouse cells, the researchers developed a conversion method that is highly efficient and can produce more than 10 neurons from a single skin cell. If replicated in human ...

About The Study: High sugar-sweetened beverage intake was associated with a significantly increased risk of oral cavity cancer in women, regardless of smoking or drinking habits, yet with low baseline risk in this study. Additional studies are needed in larger cohorts, including males, to validate the impact of these findings. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Brittany Barber, MD, MSc, email bbarber1@uw.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2024.5252) Editor’s ...

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study of area deprivation, vaccination access, and human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination status in Osaka City, Japan, higher socioeconomic status and higher medical facility access were associated with higher cumulative HPV vaccination uptake. These findings suggest that further strategies, including a socioecologic approach, are needed to increase HPV vaccination and reduce disparities in uptake. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding ...

After surgical removal of the prostate to treat prostate cancer, clinicians monitor Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) levels. Persistently elevated PSA levels indicate residual cancer and are linked to worse outcomes. But in a paper published in JAMA Oncology, Mass General Brigham researchers found that the current standard monitoring time of one-and-a-half to two months following surgery is too short to accurately identify recurrence and inform treatment decisions. Rather, PSA levels should be measured for at least three months to avoid overtreatment. “Checking ...