Healthy, sustainable school meals could cut undernourishment, reduce diet-related deaths and significantly lower environmental impacts, according to a new modelling study led by a UCL (University College London) researcher. The study is part of a new collection of papers published in Lancet Planetary Health by members of the Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition – the independent research initiative of the School Meals Coalition. The papers find that well-designed school meal programmes could be a strategic investment in a healthier, more sustainable future. Drawing together modelling, case studies and evidence from multiple disciplines, ...

A major review of prior research has found no evidence that menopause hormone therapy either increases or decreases dementia risk in post-menopausal women, in a new study led by University College London (UCL) researchers. The findings, commissioned by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity, add much-needed clarity to a hotly-debated topic, and reinforce current clinical guidance that menopause hormone therapy, also called hormone replacement therapy or HRT, should be guided by perceived benefits and risks and not for dementia prevention. The new systematic review and meta-analysis is the most comprehensive and rigorous ...

After traumatic brain injury (TBI), some patients may recover completely, while others retain severe disabilities. Accurately evaluating prognosis is challenging in patients on life-sustaining thery. Though resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) can assess neurological activity shortly after brain injury, it is unknown whether communication across brain regions at this early juncture predicts long-term recovery. Investigators from Mass General Brigham and collaborators in the U.S. and Europe analyzed data from three prospective cohorts comprising 97 patients who underwent rs-fMRI after injury, finding that early communication between three pairs ...

The researchers have succeeded in tracing two classic hallmarks of cancer – the evasion of apoptosis (a form of programmed cell death) and the dysregulation of energy metabolism – back to a common molecular mechanism. The study focuses on the protein MCL1, which is strongly overexpressed in many tumor types and has previously been considered primarily an anti-apoptotic factor of the Bcl-2 protein family. The Dresden researchers now show that MCL1 directly influences the central metabolic regulator mTOR and thus controls the bioenergetics of cancer ...

About 300 years ago, Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus set out on a bold quest: to identify and name every living organism on Earth. Now celebrated as the father of modern taxonomy, he developed the binomial naming system and described more than 10,000 species of plants and animals. Since his time, scientists have continued to describe new species in the quest to uncover Earth's biodiversity. According to a new University of Arizona-led study published in Science Advances, scientists are discovering species quicker than ever before, with more than 16,000 new species discovered each year. ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 22 December 2025    Follow @Annalsofim on X, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and Linkedin              Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization ...

A new systematic evidence review finds that cannabis products that carry relatively high levels of the psychoactive compound tetrahydrocannabinol, commonly known as THC, may provide short-term improvements in pain and function.  However, the review found THC-based products led to an increased risk of common adverse symptoms like dizziness, sedation and nausea.   At the same time, the review found that recent randomized controlled trials involving products mainly or only containing ...

WASHINGTON – Temporal lobe epilepsy, which results in recurring seizures and cognitive dysfunction, is associated with premature aging of brain cells. A new study from researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center found that this form of epilepsy can be treated in mice by either genetically or pharmaceutically eradicating the aging cells, thereby improving memory and reducing seizures as well as protecting some animals from developing epilepsy.  The National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded study appears December 22 in the ...

Adults who experience a head injury face a substantially higher risk of attempting suicide compared to those without such injuries, according to the findings from a new UK-based study. Published in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, the study was led by University of Birmingham researchers. The paper is the first of its kind to examine suicide risk across all types of head injuries in a general population, moving beyond the traditional focus on traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) in military, athletic or hospital settings. The population-based matched cohort study used nationally represented electronic primary healthcare records from more than 1.8 million ...

LA JOLLA, CA—When you take a drug, where in your body does it actually go? For most medications, scientists can make only educated guesses about the answer to this question. Traditional methods can measure the concentration of a drug in an organ like the liver, but they can’t pinpoint exactly which cells the drug binds to—or reveal unexpected places where the drug takes action. “Usually we have almost no idea, after a drug enters the body, how it actually interacts with its target,” says Professor Li Ye, the N. Paul Whittier Endowed Chair at Scripps Research and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. “It’s been a ...

EMBARGOED until Monday, December 22, 2025, at 12:00 P.M. PST SANTA CRUZ, Calif. – Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have already leveraged the vast troves of geolocation data from vessel-tracking systems to pinpoint where whales and other large marine species are endangered by ship traffic and industrial fishing. Now, in a new study led by Heather Welch at UC Santa Cruz's Institute of Marine Sciences, researchers show how the geolocation data generated by satellites for the global ...

Embargoed Until: December 22, 2025 at 3:00 PM U.S. Eastern time. Study provided upon request EMBARGOED: New Evidence Points to Potential Treatment for Vascular Dementia A possible new treatment for impaired brain blood flow and related dementias is on the horizon. Research by scientists at the University of Vermont Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine provides novel insights into the mechanisms that regulate brain blood flow and highlight a potential therapeutic strategy to correct vascular dysfunction. Their preclinical findings, published December 22 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that adding a missing phospholipid back into a person’s ...

LA JOLLA, CA—A new study by Scripps Research reveals that alcohol dependence disrupts two signaling pathways in a stress-related part of the brain—and offers insights on developing drugs to treat this condition. The research, conducted in animal models and published in Frontiers in Pharmacology on November 26, 2025, helps explain why people with alcohol use disorder (AUD) struggle to stay sober, especially under stress. "We think that alcohol dependence changes these systems, and that's why individuals are prone to seek out alcohol even if they've gone without it for some ...

Over half of Americans believe tech companies should take action to restrict extremely violent content on their platforms, according to Pew data, yet even trained content moderators consistently disagree in their decisions for how to classify hate speech and offensive images. A new study by Annenberg School for Communication Professor Damon Centola and Stanford University Assistant Professor Douglas Guilbeault (Ph.D. ‘20) has identified a key mechanism to aid content moderators, even those across the political aisle, in reaching consensus on classifying controversial material online: working in teams. In an experiment involving over 600 participants ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – December 22, 2025) G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are proteins triggered by ligands (protein-binding chemicals) from outside cells to transmit signals inside the cell. These signals are transmitted primarily through the activation of G proteins, which produce various physiological effects. Due to their important role in growth, metabolism and neurotransmitter signaling, GPCRs represent outstanding drug targets, including one-third of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved drugs. However, a lack of understanding about how different ligands that bind the same GPCR can cause varying ...

In the past year, two separate experiments in two different materials captured the same confounding scenario: the coexistence of superconductivity and magnetism. Scientists had assumed that these two quantum states are mutually exclusive; the presence of one should inherently destroy the other.  Now, theoretical physicists at MIT have an explanation for how this Jekyll-and-Hyde duality could emerge. In a paper appearing today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team proposes that under certain conditions, a magnetic material’s electrons could splinter into fractions of themselves to form quasiparticles known as “anyons.” ...

Despite the fact that the U.S. is home to over 15 million military veterans that make up more than 6% of the total workforce, little research is available about their quantitative impact on the economy.  “I noticed after publishing a couple papers and a book chapter that no one has done a review in this area,” explained the University of Cincinnati’s Daniel Peat, PhD, who specializes in military-affected individuals in business management. “That’s usually a sign that there’s a bit of an immaturity in the field itself.” That’s why he and his team published a new research ...

Vortex phenomena are widespread in nature, from typhoons to ocean currents. In the field of optics, vortex beams, which carry orbital angular momentum, have spiral wavefronts and ring-shaped intensity distributions, showing great potential in quantum information processing, particle manipulation, and other applications. However, the ring-shaped intensity and orbital angular momentum of traditional vortex beams are influenced by the topological charge, limiting their use in scenarios involving multiple beam superposition. The advent of perfect vortex beams has addressed this issue their ring-shaped ...

In the context of the continuous development of high-speed optical communication, on-chip optical information processing is regarded as the core of next-generation computing architectures. Integrated photonics, as the cornerstone of this transformation, will strongly drive the advent of the all-optical computing era. Among various photonic integration platforms, lithium niobate (LiNbO₃, LN) is hailed as the "optical silicon" due to its unique nonlinear optical properties. However, traditional LN waveguides are limited by low refractive index contrast, weak optical field confinement, and large device size, making it difficult to achieve high integration and limiting further applications. ...

When people learn that surrounding visuals and sounds may signify specific choice outcomes, these cues can become guides for decision making. For people with compulsive disorders, addictions, or anxiety, the associations between cues and choice outcomes can eventually promote poor decisions as they come to favor or avoid cues in a more biased manner. Giuseppe di Pellegrino, from the University of Bologna, led a study to explore associative ...

Every cell depends on proteins to function and stay healthy. These proteins are made inside the cell from amino acids but cannot simply accumulate inside the cell forever. Once they have done their job or become damaged, the cell needs to clear them out. Cells do this by breaking proteins down and recycling them, a process summarily referred to as “protein removal”. But this ongoing and vital "dance" of protein making and protein removal takes energy and coordination, and the cell must constantly strike the ...

About The Study: Compared with maternal vaccination with the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) prefusion F protein (RSVpreF) vaccine, passive infant immunization with nirsevimab was associated with lower risks of RSV-related hospitalization and severe outcomes. These findings reflect the first RSV season with use of these immunization strategies in mainland France; their use should be reevaluated in future studies. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Marie-Joelle Jabagi, PharmD, PhD, email marie-joelle.jabagi@ansm.sante.fr. To access the embargoed study: Visit ...

About The Study: According to the results of this population-based surveillance study, during 2024-2025, both maternal respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine and nirsevimab were estimated to be effective at protecting infants from RSV-associated hospitalizations in their first RSV season, and RSV-associated hospitalization rates in newborns and infants ages 0 to 11 months were reduced by up to half compared to seasons before these products were introduced.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Heidi L. Moline, MD, MPH, email ick6@cdc.gov. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2025.5778) Editor’s ...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- After ChatGPT became available to the public in late 2022, scientists began talking among themselves about how much more productive they were using these new artificial intelligence tools, while scientific journal editors complained of an influx of well-written papers with little scientific value. These anecdotal conversations represent a real shift in how scientists are writing up their work, according to a new study by Cornell researchers. They showed that using large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT boosts paper production, especially for non-native English speakers. But the overall increase in AI-written papers is making it harder for many people – from ...

Forests and plantations play a vital role in carbon sequestration, yet accurately monitoring their growth remains costly and labor-intensive. Researchers have developed an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) model that produces high-resolution canopy height maps using only standard RGB imagery. By integrating a large vision foundation model with self-supervised enhancement, this method achieves near-lidar accuracy, enabling precise, low-cost monitoring of forest biomass and carbon storage over large areas. Monitoring forest canopy structure is essential for understanding global carbon cycles, assessing tree growth, and managing plantation resources. Traditional lidar ...