Kyoto, Japan -- Black holes embody the ultimate abyss. They are the most powerful sources of gravity in the universe, capable of dramatically distorting space and time around them. When disturbed, they begin to "ring" in a distinctive pattern known as quasinormal modes: ripples in space-time that produce detectable gravitational waves. In events like black hole mergers, these waves can be strong enough to detect from Earth, offering a unique opportunity to measure a black hole's mass and shape. However, precise calculation of these vibrations through theoretical methods ...

Whales are swimming further than previously estimated - up to 20% more - according to a new study published in Ecology. Co-authored by Griffith University’s Dr Olaf Meynecke, the study reveals traditional methods for calculating animal movement may be drastically underestimating the actual distance travelled, particularly for marine species such as whales. “For years, we've tracked whales using satellite tags, plotting their movements across oceans,” Dr Meynecke said. “But this research shows we’ve been looking ...

Kyoto, Japan -- In 1978, cane toads, which are native to South and Central America, were introduced for pest control to Ishigaki island in Okinawa prefecture in Japan. These poisonous toads secrete deadly toxins, killing enough of the predators in their new territories that they have been designated an invasive species. However, one predator on Ishigaki has proven resistant to the cane toads' poison. The crested serpent eagle, common across Asia but considered critically endangered in Japan where only about 200 individuals reside, has been observed feeding on the toads on the ...

Cyberstalking is increasing at a faster rate than traditional stalking and is disproportionately affecting young people, women, and members of the lesbian, gay and bisexual community, according to a new study led by researchers from UCL. The study, published in the British Journal of Criminology, is the first to use nationally representative data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) to examine the prevalence and perception of cyberstalking over an eight-year period (2012–2020). It revealed that while cyberstalking remains less common than physical stalking, the proportion of ...

CPADS integrates data from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and the Genomics of Drug Sensitivity in Cancer (GDSC) databases, encompassing over 29,000 samples across 44 cancer types and involving 288 drugs. It provides five main analysis modules: differential expression analysis, correlation analysis, pathway analysis, drug analysis, and gene perturbation analysis. These modules enable users to explore gene expression changes, correlations between genes or drugs, pathway enrichment, drug sensitivity, and the ...

A large new meta-analysis of more than 800,000 participants to be presented at this year’s Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Vienna, Austria (15-19 September) shows that high adherence to three well-established healthy eating patterns is linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, regardless of one’s ethnicity. The study is led by PhD student and Gates Cambridge Scholar Ms Jia Yi Lee, Professor Nita Forouhi, and colleagues from the MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, UK. The study investigated three healthy dietary patterns: the ...

Over 80% of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) – the third-leading cause of cancer deaths globally – emerges from advanced liver fibrosis or cirrhosis. A comprehensive review in Hepatology International synthesizes decades of research to reveal how scarred liver tissue becomes a breeding ground for cancer. The study identifies hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) as central villains. When activated by chronic injury (e.g., hepatitis, alcohol abuse), these cells deposit stiff scar tissue and secrete molecules ...

In light of the potential and challenges surrounding the combination of FMT and ICIs in tumor immunotherapy, this study aims to comprehensively evaluate the clinical efficacy, safety, and potential predictive factors of this combination therapy through a systematic literature review and meta-analysis. Specifically, this study will focus on the therapeutic efficacy, survival outcomes, safety. Furthermore, subgroup analysis will focus on how different factors, including ICI strategies, FMT donor sources, FMT administration routes, and tumor types that influence treatment outcomes. Through this comprehensive analysis, ...

Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) – critical but enigmatic players in tumors – exhibit "paradoxical" effects on immunotherapy, according to a new review in Clinical and Translational Discovery. While most CAFs suppress immune cells to accelerate cancer progression, certain subtypes actively restrain tumors. This duality stems from CAFs’ extreme heterogeneity, explaining why depleting all CAFs sometimes backfires by accelerating metastasis.   CAFs sabotage immunotherapy through multiple mechanisms: ...

Gen-AI is increasingly recognized for its potential in healthcare, particularly in complex radiological interpretations. However, the clinical utility of Gen-AI requires thorough validation with real-world data.  Among 184 confirmed malignant lung tumor cases, diagnostic accuracy varied significantly across three models. Gemini achieved highest accuracy, followed by Claude-3-opus, both exceeding 90%, while GPT scored lowest at 65.22%. Statistical analysis confirmed Gemini's diagnostic accuracy in single-image tasks significantly exceeded Claude and GPT. However, Gemini's ...

Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can be used to write convincing but biased peer reviews that are nearly impossible to distinguish from human writing, a new study reveals. This poses a serious threat to the integrity of scientific publishing, where peer review is the critical process for vetting research quality and accuracy. In a study evaluating the risks of AI in academic publishing, a team of researchers from China tasked the AI model Claude with reviewing 20 real cancer research manuscripts. ...

T cell senescence occurs in the TME, affecting cancer prognosis and immunotherapy efficacy. The TME induces T cell senescence through multiple pathways, including persistent stimulation by tumor-associated antigens, metabolic pathway alterations, activation of chronic inflammatory responses, proliferation of immunosuppressive cells, and T cell damage caused by tumor radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Senescent T cells exhibit characteristics such as genomic instability, protein imbalance, functional subgroup distribution and proportion imbalance, mitochondrial dysfunction with metabolic disorders, and epigenetic changes. Additionally, in the TME, crosstalk between senescent T cells and other immune ...

In low-resource settings, babies born with gastroschisis — a congenital condition in which the developing intestines extend outside the body through a hole in the abdominal wall —face life-threatening challenges. While survival rates in high-income countries now exceed 90% thanks to advanced medical tools and neonatal care, infants in resource-constrained medical settings still face high mortality rates, partially because of a lack of access to the lifesaving equipment needed to treat the condition. A team of engineers ...

Drivers are not the only ones to blame for roadway fatalities. That's the crux of a review article in the New England Journal of Medicine written by a pair of Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) researchers invited to share their insights on the strategies aimed at progressing toward a future with zero traffic deaths. Utilizing publicly available data, research publications, and their own expertise, Charlie Klauer and Zac Doerzaph evaluated the safety treatments and countermeasures that apply to what is known as the Safe System Approach, a framework that broadly embraces the concept that road users are not solely responsible ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE Wednesday, July 30, 2025 5 p.m. Eastern Time   Media Contact: NIH Office of Communications and Public Liaison (301) 496-5787   Beta-HPV can directly cause skin cancer in immunocompromised people NIH case study finds virus drives creation of cancer cells in context of defective T cells   Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have shown for the first time that a type of human papillomavirus (HPV) commonly found on the skin can directly cause a form of skin cancer called cutaneous squamous cell ...

Multi-institutional team, including physicians and researchers who successfully proposed updates to national guidelines, share important next steps for reevaluating how occupational impairment is determined   Last July, a team of physicians and researchers successfully proposed modifications to the American Medical Association (AMA) Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, advocating against the use of race in lung function testing. In a new publication in The New England Journal of Medicine, the team describes the history of how race and pulmonary function testing have been used to quantify lung function impairment, which often determines ...

Each year, thousands of patients worldwide receive CAR-T cell therapy for blood cancers, achieving remarkable success in treating previously incurable conditions. However, concerns about secondary primary malignancies (SPMs) following this revolutionary treatment have prompted global regulatory attention. In a study published in eClinicalMedicine, a group of researchers from China examined the largest dataset to date analyzing secondary cancer risks after CAR-T therapy. "CAR-T therapy has transformed the treatment landscape for refractory blood cancers, ...

Tumor hypoxia refers to the gradual decrease in ATP production when oxygen levels drop below a critical threshold, contributing to malignant tumor development. Studies show hypoxia-induced changes play an indispensable role in tumor progression, enabling tumors to become invasive or metastatic. However, hypoxia's effects vary across tumor types, and these mechanistic differences remain unclear. To address this, we developed THER (https://smuonco.shinyapps.io/THER/), an online tool that allows analysis of hypoxia-associated transcriptomic data without requiring programming skills. THER contains 63 preprocessed datasets from ...

July 30, 2025, NEW YORK – Obesity elevates the risk for at least 13 major cancers, including those of the breast, colon and liver. It also impairs immune responses that target tumors and are stimulated by cancer immunotherapies. But it has long been unclear whether these effects stem from the sheer adiposity—or mass of fat—in people living with obesity or from the specific dietary fats they consume. Now, a decade-long study led by Ludwig Princeton’s Lydia Lynch and reported in the current issue of Nature ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4:00 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, JULY 30, 2025 MINNEAPOLIS — Women are less likely than men to receive drugs for multiple sclerosis (MS) between the ages of 18 to 40, during women’s childbearing years, even when those drugs have been shown to be safe for use during pregnancy or to have a prolonged effect against the disease even when stopped before conception, according to a study published on July 30, 2025, in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. “We found that women were less likely to be treated with a disease-modifying ...

Interpreting the fine print of a chest CT report can make or break a patient’s surgical plan, yet radiologists worldwide face ballooning workloads and widening expertise gaps. A new study from Zhujiang Hospital of Southern Medical University analyzed 13,489 real-world chest CT reports and found that state-of-the-art LLMs can shoulder much of that burden—when asked the right way. ''We discovered that modern language models can act as a dependable second set of eyes for radiologists,'' said Dr. Peng Luo, lead author and physician at Zhujiang Hospital. ''With carefully worded multiple-choice ...

Researchers in China have developed a powerful machine learning model that can help determine which patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) are likely to respond well to radiotherapy—a common treatment for this type of cancer. The study, conducted by scientists at Zhujiang Hospital and Nanfang Hospital of Southern Medical University, introduces a predictive tool known as the NPC-RSS (Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma Radiotherapy Sensitivity Score). Using transcriptomic data and a rigorous machine learning framework ...

 Lung adenocarcinoma remains one of the most challenging cancers to diagnose accurately, with pathologists spending countless hours examining tissue samples under microscopes to determine cancer grades and predict patient outcomes. A new study published in the International Journal of Surgery demonstrates how generative artificial intelligence could fundamentally change this process, offering both speed and precision that rivals human expertise. Dr. Anqi Lin and his research team at Southern Medical University's ...

New research published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) finds that prolonged and/or repeated exposure to gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) anesthetic agents (sevoflurane, propofol) for infants in the first two months of life resulted in an accelerated maturation of brain electrical activity patterns evoked by visual stimuli when recorded at 2-5 months of age, compared to infants who did not have early general anesthesia exposure. These findings may suggest the use of non-GABA-active anesthetics for the newborn ...

New measurements of fine microplastic particles suspended in the air in homes and cars suggest that humans may be inhaling far greater amounts of lung-penetrating microplastics than previously thought. Nadiia Yakovenko and colleagues at the Université de Toulouse, France, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on July 30, 2025. Prior research has detected tiny fragments of plastic known as microplastics suspended in the air across a wide variety of outdoor and indoor environments worldwide. The ubiquity of these airborne pollutants has raised concerns about their potential health ...