Thousands of years ago, European communities used a variety of plant and animal products to create elaborate meals, according to a study published March 4, 2026 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Lara González Carretero of the University of York, U.K. and colleagues. A common technique for interpreting the diets of ancient cultures involves analyzing fatty residues in ancient pottery. This method is limited, however, as it mostly provides insights only into animal remains. In this study, the authors combined multiple techniques, including microscopic examination and ...

As a whole, LGB+ workers in the NHS do not experience pay gaps compared to their heterosexual colleagues, but those who have disclosed their sexual identity are found to have higher pay and not having disclosed identity is specifically associated with a pay penalty Article URL: https://plos.io/3OQxGSF Article title: Pay gaps in the National Health Service: Gender and sexuality. Author countries: Germany, U.K., Australia. Funding: Funding was received from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) [grant number ES/N019334/1].Funding was received from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) [grant number ES/N019334/1].  END ...

When a cocaine addict relapses, it isn’t a matter of personal failure — it’s the biological result of their brain’s rewiring, new research finds. Michigan State University scientists found that cocaine changes how the hippocampus functions, contributing to the ongoing compulsion to seek out the drug. Their National Institutes of Health-supported research, published in Science Advances, not only explains why cocaine addiction is notoriously difficult to treat, but it could also help scientists develop new pharmaceutical therapies. “Addiction is a disease ...

Mosquitoes transmit several pathogens of public health importance, including malaria, dengue, chikungunya and ZIKA. These vector-borne diseases are responsible for millions of cases every year, and hundreds of thousands of deaths. The most effective way to cope with the threat of emerging or re-emerging vector borne diseases is the prevention by rigorous surveillance system, which can help early detection of risk and the initiation of mitigation efforts (e.g. mosquito control). In recent years, numerous technologies have been developed to monitor and control vectors and vector-borne diseases, many of which rely ...

UCLA scientists have developed a next-generation CAR-T cell therapy that can overcome the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, a protective shield that tumors use to weaken immune cells, block their attack and fuel tumor growth.  By equipping CAR-T cells with the ability to block a key tumor-produced protein called VEGF, the researchers gave the engineered immune cells the power not only to attack cancer directly, but also to dismantle the tumor’s defenses and restore the immune system’s ability to fight back.  In preclinical ...

Earth experienced a period of intense, large-scale volcanism during the early Aptian. Around that time, it also experienced widespread ocean deoxygenation during the Oceanic Anoxic Event 1a (OAE1a) as well as the onset of a period of unusual stability in Earth's magnetic field, known as the Cretaceous Normal Superchron (CNS), which lasted about 38 million years. The prevailing hypothesis has been that rapid, volcanism-driven atmospheric CO₂ emissions triggered an immediate and globally synchronous carbon-cycle perturbation across both land and ocean systems, particularly marked by the onset of OAE1a. Proving this hypothesis has been challenging, ...

New 3D reconstructions of a key sensory organ in ctenophores reveal an unexpected structural and functional complexity. The findings suggest that an elementary brain may have already appeared in our most ancient relatives, reshaping our understanding of nervous system evolution in animals. Ctenophores – or comb jellies– are gelatinous animals that appeared in the ocean an estimated 550 million years ago. The delicate animals possess a specialized sensory structure called the aboral organ (AO), which allows them ...

The Tibet ASγ Experiment has successfully, for the first time, measured magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence on scales below one parsec (approximately 3.3 light-years) within the gamma-ray halo surrounding the Geminga pulsar wind nebula (PWN). This observation extends to the highest energies, above 100 tera-electron volts (TeV), providing new insights into the behavior of cosmic rays and magnetic fields within the Milky Way. The findings were published in Science Advances on March 4. The study was conducted by the Tibet ASγ Experiment, including the Institute of High ...

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center report that an artificial intelligence (AI)-based liquid biopsy test using genome-wide cell-free DNA (cfDNA) fragmentation patterns and repeat landscapes can detect early liver fibrosis and cirrhosis, and may also reveal signals of broader chronic disease burden. The research was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health, and the findings, published March 4 in Science Translational Medicine, represent the first time this fragmentome technology, initially studied in cancer, has been ...

HOUSTON (March 4, 2026) – A team of researchers at Texas Children’s Duncan Neurological Research Institute (NRI) and Baylor College of Medicine report in Science Translational Medicine a potential new approach to treat Rett syndrome – offering early promise for a rare neurodevelopmental disorder that currently has no cure. “Rett syndrome is a rare genetic neurodevelopmental condition that causes a regression in development, typically after 6 to 18 months of normal growth, leading to severe impairments in motor skills, speech and communication,” said corresponding ...

Expertise isn’t easy to pass down. Take riding a bike: A seasoned cyclist might talk a beginner through the basics of how to sit and when to push off. But other skills, like how hard to pedal to keep balanced, are more intuitive and harder to articulate. This implicit know-how is known as tacit knowledge, and very often, it can only be learned with experience and time.  But a team of MIT engineers wondered: Could an expert’s unconscious know-how be accessed, and even taught, to quickly bring a novice up to an expert’s level?  The answer appears to be “yes,” at least for a particular type of visual-learning task.  In a study published ...

Just a few days in simulated microgravity can subtly change the way women’s blood clots, sparking bigger questions about health monitoring protocols for astronauts who can spend six months or more in orbit, say Simon Fraser University researchers.  First reported in 2020, an International Space Station mission detected an unexpected blood clot in a female astronaut’s jugular vein. To date, space-health research has had more male participants but with the number of female astronauts on the rise, a new SFU–European Space Agency study examined how microgravity affects blood clotting specifically ...

Irvine, Calif., March 4, 2026 — Cataracts are a leading cause of blindness worldwide and are considered a priority disease by the World Health Organization. In a new study, researchers at the University of California, Irvine uncovered how a subtle chemical change in an eye lens protein can make the protein more likely to clump together over time, suggesting an early step in cataract formation. The research, published in Biophysical Reports, focuses on proteins called crystallins, which help keep the eye lens clear. These proteins are meant to last a lifetime. But unlike most cells in the body, the lens cannot replace damaged proteins, so chemical changes can gradually accumulate ...

All-solid-state batteries (ASSB) are widely recognized as a safer and potentially more energy-dense alternative to conventional lithium-ion technologies. Their performance critically depends on fast ionic conduction within solid electrolytes. Traditional methods to identify such materials involve labour-intensive synthesis and characterization processes, often hampered by the limitations of existing computational models in accurately capturing disordered, high-temperature ionic behaviours. The detection and prediction of liquid-like ion motion in crystalline materials has remained a major challenge, particularly because conventional computational ...

Philadelphia, March 4, 2026 – The use of generative artificial intelligence (AI), able to produce text, images and video on demand, has grown exponentially in recent years. While its applications for personal and professional use continue to expand, many have questions about how children might be interacting with this technology. In a new state of the review article, researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) describe the potential benefits and risks to children and adolescents and how these might vary over different age groups. Their findings were published today ...

Nijmegen, 27 February 2026 - Think about the last time you told a story to a friend. You probably adjusted it halfway through. You saw their eyebrows lift. You noticed them lean in, or glance away. You clarified a detail. You sped up the ending. That constant fine-tuning is not a bonus feature of communication: it ís communication. And you can read all about this real-time coordination process in a new review by Judith Holler and Anna K. Kuhlen (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics), published in Nature Reviews Psychology. Holler ...

The DNA foundation model Evo 2, first released in February 2025 as a preprint, is now published in the journal Nature. Trained on the DNA of over 100,000 species across the entire tree of life, Evo 2 can identify patterns in gene sequences across disparate organisms that experimental researchers would need years to uncover. The machine learning model can accurately identify disease-causing mutations in human genes and is capable of designing new genomes that are as long as the genomes of simple bacteria. Evo 2 was developed by scientists from Arc Institute and NVIDIA, convening collaborators across Stanford University, UC Berkeley, ...

Cambridge scientists have shown that when tumours first emerge, interactions with healthy cells in the underlying supportive tissue determine their ability to survive, grow, and progress to advanced stages of disease. The study, carried out in mice and further validated using human tissue, may explain why some tiny, newly-formed tumours disappear, while others manage to survive and eventually grow into cancer. Tumours arise when our DNA accumulates errors, or mutations, causing the cells to grow faster and ignore signals that would otherwise instruct ...

LOS ANGELES — Scientists at City of Hope®, one of the largest and most advanced cancer research and treatment organizations in the U.S. and a leading research center for diabetes, the Broad Institute and Keio University have discovered how specific gut bacteria work together with diet to flip a metabolic switch — transforming energy‑storing white fat into calorie‑burning beige fat in mice.  The study, published today in Nature, shows that a low‑protein ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Alzheimer's-related brain changes progressed up to 20 times faster in women who also had abnormal levels of a Parkinson's-related protein, according to a Mayo Clinic study published in JAMA Network Open. The same pattern was not observed in men. The findings suggest that when alpha-synuclein — a protein linked to Parkinson's disease — accumulates alongside Alzheimer's pathology, it may drive faster disease progression in women. That interaction could help explain a long-standing disparity: women make up nearly two-thirds of ...

About The Study: Among metabolic and bariatric surgery (MBS)-eligible patients in a national sample, semaglutide and tirzepatide prescriptions increased dramatically between 2018 and 2025, whereas MBS use rates declined substantially beginning in 2023. Stratification by procedure type and body mass index (BMI) category suggests that recent shifts in MBS use may be more pronounced in certain patient subgroups (e.g., those seeking sleeve gastrectomy or with lower BMIs). Corresponding Author: To ...

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study of 62,685 participants from the All of Us Research Program, loneliness partially mediated the association between anxiety symptoms and suicidal ideation as well as depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation. Targeting and reducing loneliness may present a transdiagnostic approach to arrest the progression from anxiety and depressive symptoms toward suicidal ideation.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Katherine Musacchio Schafer, PhD, email katherine.m.schafer@vumc.org. To ...

About The Study: Compared with usual care, use of the PETRUSHKA tool increased the number of patients still taking their antidepressant at 8 weeks and improved depressive and anxiety symptoms at 24 weeks. However, lack of a double-blind design and the large amount of missing data limit the validity of these results. The PETRUSHKA tool is a web-based clinical decision-support system combining clinical and demographic predictors with patient preferences to personalize antidepressant treatment.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Andrea Cipriani, MD, PhD, ...

People may be frustrated by the lack of detail when weather forecasters say “there will be thunderstorms popping up, but we don’t know where”. Now a key finding in a study by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), published in the journal Nature, is set to improve the certainty about the location of upcoming storms on hot days. Climate change is bringing more intense rainfall, and improving forecasting and warnings to communities globally will save the lives of people and livestock as well as better protect property and infrastructure. Thunderstorms caused around 30,000 ...

A research team funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has developed a versatile machine learning model that could one day greatly expand what medical scans can tell us about disease. Scientists used their tool, named Merlin, to assess 3D abdominal computed tomography (CT) scans, accomplishing tasks as simple as identifying anatomical features to as complex as predicting disease onset years in advance. Despite being developed as a general-purpose CT model, Merlin surpassed a gauntlet of similar automated tools in tasks they were specifically built to handle.   The team trained their model on a unique set of patient CT scans ...