Does modernization—economic growth, technological advancement, globalization, increased education, and urbanization—reduce cultural differences? Conventional wisdom suggests that as nations get richer and more educated, a globalized, modern culture emerges featuring low birth rates, high divorce rates, and an overall focus on the individual. Thomas Talhelm tests this hypothesis using the World Values Survey, which has collected data in a broad range of countries since 1981. Notably, variation in values between countries in the World Values Survey has grown from 1981–2017. ...

PULLMAN, Wash. — Smoking cannabis can do more than blur memories. It can reshape them. A new Washington State University study found that people who consumed THC were more likely to recall words that were never presented and struggled with everyday tasks such as remembering to do something later. Published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, the study is one of the most comprehensive looks yet at how cannabis affects memory. The findings suggest cannabis can impair not only simple recall, such as remembering a list of words, but also forms of memory people rely on in daily life, like remembering appointments, keeping ...

High temperatures have long been empirically linked to violence, conflict, and aggression at the societal level—a troubling pattern in a warming world. Alessandra Cassar and colleagues sought to explore the effect of high heat on individual egalitarianism, resource maximization, selfishness, spite, and competitiveness. The authors invited university students in Colombia, India, Kenya, Mexico, and the United States to play games that involved making choices about whether to share, whether to reduce another player’s payoff at a cost to oneself, as well as whether or not to compete. ...

Motor imagery (MI) is the mental process of imagining a specific limb movement, such as raising a hand or walking, without physically performing it. These imagined movements generate distinct patterns of brain activity that can be recorded using electroencephalography (EEG). By decoding these signals, researchers can enable direct communication between the brain and computers, making MI-EEG a powerful tool for applications such as motor rehabilitation and the assistive control of wheelchairs and prosthetic devices. However, EEG signals generated during MI vary significantly across individuals ...

With aging populations on the rise, the need for better tools to diagnose and monitor Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common cause of dementia, has never been more urgent. This disease is characterized by the gradual loss of nerve cells, a process known as neurodegeneration, which begins years before the onset of obvious symptoms. One way to detect this damage is to look for signs of injury to nerve cells. A key emerging biomarker of neurodegeneration is neurofilament light chain (NfL), a structural protein component ...

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can trigger dangerous swelling inside the skull, raising intracranial pressure to life-threatening levels even after emergency surgery. In some cases, patients who initially undergo craniotomy to remove a hematoma deteriorate later and require a second, more invasive operation called decompressive craniectomy (DC). Because this escalation often occurs suddenly, clinicians have limited time to respond. Identifying high-risk patients earlier could transform intensive care management, enabling proactive monitoring and timely intervention before irreversible damage occurs. To address ...

Dental pulp injury caused by trauma or deep caries often leads to inflammation, tissue necrosis, and eventual loss of tooth vitality. In severe cases, bacterial invasion and sustained immune responses further compromise the pulp’s microenvironment, disrupting its natural capacity for repair. Although regenerative endodontic approaches aim to restore living tissue, predictable biological repair remains difficult to achieve. Central to successful regeneration is the precise regulation of stem cell signaling pathways that coordinate ...

Materials that encourage mineralization, mimicking the process in the human body, are becoming increasingly important in medicine and technology. This process, which occurs at the interface between inorganic materials and organic coatings, can facilitate the formation of biological tissue, aid in detecting specific ions, and even assist in removing contaminants from water. The process performance depends largely on the material's ability to trigger nucleation, the initial step where minerals begin to form, and to support continued crystal growth. Among the various bioorganic coatings (eco-friendly surface coverings made from renewable biological sources) ...

The genus Gracixalus belongs to the family of Old World Tree Frogs and is geographically dispersed from Myanmar and western Thailand to Laos, Vietnam, and further to southern China. Despite the considerable number of research on the species richness of Gracixalus, little is known about their vocalisations. To remedy this problem, the recently described Gracixalus weii in southwest China has been investigated from a bioacoustic standpoint by researchers led by Caichun Peng of the Guizhou Leigongshan Forest Ecosystem Observation and Research Station.  Published in the open-access scholarly journal Herpetozoa, the research group’s ...

For millions of commuters, the workday doesn’t just begin with a train ride. It also begins with a blast of heat. In one of the largest studies ever conducted on thermal comfort in metro systems, Northwestern University scientists found that subway riders consistently report feeling uncomfortably hot while underground.  Rather than relying on traditional surveys — which are expensive and capture only brief snapshots of conditions in time and place — the team turned to real-world feedback. Searching for comments about thermal discomfort ...

Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are primarily thought of as environmental pollutants, and most research on them focuses on removing them from the environment. Rice researcher James Tour, however, has a different approach. His team, led by postdoctoral associate and Rice Academy Junior Fellow Yi Cheng, developed a process to use PFAS to extract lithium from high-salinity brine pools in a study recently published in Nature Water.  “Extracting lithium from brine can be less environmentally damaging than conventional mining, but it still faces challenges such as selectivity, ...

HERSHEY, Pa. — Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the field and practice of medicine, including legal liability and the perception of who is at fault when a patient experiences harm. “AI holds promise to improve the quality and safety of health care and to reduce errors and patient harm, but the risk of legal liability is a potential barrier for investment and development of this technology as well as the quality of care,” said Michael Bruno, professor of radiology and of medicine at Penn State College of Medicine. Now, Bruno, working alongside a team of researchers from Brown University and Seton Hall University School of Law, ...

A new biotech company forged through an Australian and Danish partnership will accelerate treatments for children and adults with heart disease. Harnessing cellular therapies, the company aims to conduct human clinical trials within three to five years. Ibnova Therapeutics, launched today, has emerged from world-first, collaborative research by Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) in Melbourne and QIMR Berghofer in Brisbane. Within MCRI, this work is supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine (reNEW), which is headquartered ...

The faba bean is an ancient crop. It is particularly valuable because it is high in protein, and can convert nitrogen from the air into a form that can be used by plants in the soil. This makes it a sustainable alternative to soy, particularly in Europe. However, many varieties are not winter-hardy. In cold regions, they do not survive frost. Firstly, the research team succeeded in significantly improving the reference genome of the faba bean. Various methods, such as optical mapping, were used to assemble the genome’s individual sections more precisely. “Our new ...

Can smartphones or smartwatches help detect early signs of neurological or mental illness? Researchers at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) monitored a group of participants wearing connected devices, and used artificial intelligence to analyse data such as heart rate, physical activity, sleep and air pollution. Their findings show that connected devices can accurately predict emotional and cognitive fluctuations, opening new avenues for the early detection of changes in brain health. The study has been published in npj Digital Medicine. Brain health, encompassing both cognitive and emotional functions, is one of the major public health challenges of the ...

Many of the key proteins for modern medicine and science are poorly soluble. These include numerous signalling proteins and protein hormones, as well as all of the receptors anchored in the cell membranes, which are targeted by around 60 percent of the active ingredients currently used in medicines. If the concentration of these proteins exceeds a certain threshold, they clump together and lose their function.   This clumping makes it impossible to produce these molecules synthetically in the lab. As protein production with specialised synthesis robots always requires multiple fragments to be coupled into a complete protein, ...

In the evolutionary history of life, the ability of a cell to separate its inner world from the external environment was an important turning point. The so-called plasma membrane lets cells control what gets in and out and allows them to communicate and cooperate with one another, creating the conditions for complex, multicellular life. This barrier is fragile. Every day, mechanical stress, environmental changes, and bacterial toxins threaten to puncture the membrane, and if the wounds aren’t sealed and healed quickly, the cell dies. Despite its importance to the survival of our cells, the processes of plasma membrane ...

CAMBRIDGE, Cambridgeshire, UNITED KINGDOM, 10 March 2026 — A comprehensive invited review published today in Brain Medicine confronts one of the most persistent paradoxes in modern medicine: psychiatry remains the only major clinical discipline that diagnoses complex illness primarily through conversation and symptom checklists, while fields such as oncology and cardiology long ago embraced laboratory markers, imaging, and molecular profiling. The review, authored by Dr. Jakub Tomasik, Jihan K. Zaki, and Professor Sabine Bahn at the Cambridge Centre for Neuropsychiatric Research, University of Cambridge, synthesizes emerging research across conceptual frameworks, ...

OSLO, Eastern Norway, NORWAY, 10 March 2026 — An insightful mini-review published in Genomic Psychiatry synthesizes the rapidly expanding landscape of molecular genetic research on common epilepsies, assembling evidence from genome-wide association studies, whole-exome sequencing projects, and advanced statistical modeling to illuminate the polygenic architecture that underpins these heterogeneous neurological disorders. The synthesis, led by Dr. Olav B. Smeland of the Centre for Precision Psychiatry at Oslo University Hospital and the University of Oslo, draws a detailed portrait ...

NEW YORK, New York, UNITED STATES, 10 March 2026 — The drugs have names that sound like small planets: semaglutide, liraglutide, lixisenatide. Collectively they belong to a class of glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) analogs that has reshaped the treatment of obesity and diabetes so thoroughly that the word "blockbuster" barely covers it. And yet for all the billions of dollars spent, for all the prescriptions written, a fundamental question has lingered like a low hum beneath the clinical noise: where, precisely, does GLP-1 live inside the brain, ...

CORK, Munster, IRELAND, 10 March 2026 — Something happens when a rat starts running. Not just the obvious things, the faster heart, the warming muscles, the rhythmic percussion of paws against the wheel. Something quieter. Something that begins in the coiled darkness of the gut and travels, through blood and biochemistry, all the way to the hippocampus, that seahorse-shaped sliver of tissue where memories form and moods take root. A new study published in Brain Medicine, a Genomic Press journal, ...

Scientists have successfully reconstructed videos purely from the brain activity of mice, showing what the mice were seeing, in a new study led by University College London (UCL) researchers. The findings, published in eLife, could help shed light on the intricate workings of how the brain processes visual information and open new avenues for exploring how different species perceive the world. Over recent years, there has been a growing interest in understanding exactly how the human brain interprets ...

A new study led by researchers at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Institute of Science Tokyo challenges a long-standing assumption about Earth's most extreme ice ages. Using numerical geochemical models, the team showed that chemical weathering may have continued beneath thick continental ice sheets during the snowball Earth event, consuming atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) and potentially prolonging the global glaciation. The findings provide a new explanation for the unusually long duration of some ancient global glaciations. "Our results demonstrate that subglacial weathering represents a previously unrecognised feedback mechanism that could account ...

A simple 5-minute test addressing major endometriosis diagnostic delays and treatment, has been developed by University of Queensland researchers. The Simplified Adolescent Factors for Endometriosis (SAFE) score uses a questionnaire to identify at-risk patients and fast track specialist referrals for further investigation. Professor Gita Mishra AO, Centre Director of UQ’s Australian Women and Girls' Health Research Centre, said the test could prevent years of waiting for a diagnosis. “The test uses 6 questions to detect girls or young women at risk ...

A new study led by researchers at Adelaide University and published in Science Advances has revealed why some cancers can grow and survive in the body, while others cannot. It turns out that intense mechanical pressure experienced by early cancer cells as they grow cramped in a restricted space can benefit some cancer cells, rather than impede growth, as might be expected. Scientists found that early breast cancer cells used this ‘squeeze’ to their advantage. Lead researcher Professor Michael Samuel from Adelaide University’s Centre for Cancer Biology and the Basil ...