HOUSTON – (Jan. 8, 2026) – Diseases that disrupt memory, movement and cognition remain among the most difficult challenges in modern medicine, in part because the brain is still one of the least understood organs in the human body. That challenge is driving new collaborations at Rice University, where the Rice Brain Institute has announced the first research awards issued under its new umbrella. The institute is funding four collaborative projects that unite Rice faculty with clinicians and scientists across the Texas Medical Center. The Rice and TMC Neuro Collaboration ...

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have led the first clinical trial in the world to show that cancer drug treatments can be safely and effectively personalized based on the unique DNA of a patient’s tumor. The study results, published in the January 8, 2026 online edition of Journal of Clinical Oncology found that individualizing multi-drug treatments to each patient’s specific tumor mutations using molecular testing can significantly enhance treatment success. “Every patient and every cancer is unique, and so should how we treat for them,” said Jason Sicklick, MD, senior author of the study, professor of surgery and pharmacology ...

Seattle Public Library, or SPL, is the only U.S. library system that makes its anonymized, granular checkout data public. Want to find out how many times people borrowed the e-book version of Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” in May 2018? That data is available.  The hitch is that the library’s data set contains nearly 50 million rows, and a single title can appear variously. Morrison’s “Beloved,” for instance, is listed as “Beloved,” “Beloved (unabridged),” “Beloved : a novel / by Toni Morrison” and so on.  To track trends in the catalogue over the last 20 years, ...

By Maddie Johnson University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — With an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the United States’ food supply ending up as waste, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, food science and horticulture experts teamed up to study if it could lay the foundation for growing the next bunch of crops.  “It’s capturing food waste that would otherwise go to landfill and produce greenhouse gases and cause harm to the environment in some capacity,” said Matt Bertucci, assistant professor of sustainable fruit and vegetable ...

UCLA has received four grants totaling $7.3 million from the California Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) to support research on a broad range of topics, from the therapeutic potential of cannabinoids to the cardiovascular risks of cannabis use and strategies for addressing California's unregulated cannabis market. The funding will support research by faculty from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, the UCLA College of Letters and Science and the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.  “This ...

Self-administered injectable contraceptives have been available in the United States for more than two decades, yet a new study has found only about a quarter of reproductive health experts prescribe it — and many are unaware it’s even an option.  Researchers surveyed 422 clinicians who regularly prescribe birth control and found that only about a third of those who were aware of the option prescribe it. The providers said they were concerned about their patients’ ability to self-inject, the medication’s ...

When a house catches on fire, we assume that a smoke alarm inside will serve one purpose and one purpose only: warn the occupants of danger. But imagine if the device could transform into something that could fight the fire as well.  In a new study in today’s issue of Science, a multi-institutional team lead by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine has shown in mice that the body’s “pain alarms” ― sensory neurons ― actually have such a dual function. In the event ...

UC Irvine astronomers found an unexpectedly large stream of super-heated gas at nearby galaxy. The team used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and other observatories. Project funding was provided by NASA and the National Science Foundation. Irvine, Calif., Jan. 8, 2026 —University of California, Irvine astronomers have announced the discovery of the largest-known stream of super-heated gas in the universe ejecting from a nearby galaxy called VV 340a. They describe the discovery in Science. The super-heated gas, detected by the researchers in data provided by NASA’s ...

Pioneering research led by Brazilians describes the immune system’s reactions in detail in the first living patient to receive a genetically modified pig kidney transplant. This paves the way for the search for therapies that can prevent organ rejection. The study demonstrates the feasibility of this type of graft but indicates that controlling initial rejection alone is insufficient. This is because even with immunosuppressants, continuous activation of innate immunity – the body’s first line of defense, especially macrophages, which react to any threat – can compromise ...

A recent study led by Colgate Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Cosmin Ilie, in collaboration with Jillian Paulin ’23 at the University of Pennsylvania, Andreea Petric of the Space Telescope Science Institute, and Katherine Freese of the University of Texas at Austin, provides answers to three seemingly disparate, yet pressing, cosmic dawn puzzles. Specifically, the authors show how dark stars could help explain the unexpected discovery of “blue monster” galaxies, the numerous early overmassive black hole galaxies, and the “little red dots” in images ...

According to a new study by researchers at Yale and the University of Missouri, chemical catalysts containing manganese — an abundant, inexpensive metallic element — proved highly effective in converting carbon dioxide into formate, a compound viewed as a potential key contributor of hydrogen for the next generation of fuel cells. The new study appears in the journal Chem. The lead authors are Yale postdoctoral researcher Justin Wedal and Missouri graduate research assistant Kyler Virtue; the senior authors are professors Nilay Hazari of Yale and Wesley Bernskoetter of ...

A group of “gifted word learner” dogs can learn new words that label objects by overhearing their owners talking with each other, according to a new study by Shany Dror and colleagues. These dogs can map a new word to a new object even when the word and object are not presented simultaneously. Together, these abilities put these special dogs at the same word-learning level as 18 to 23-month-old children, Dror et al. conclude. Their findings suggest that humans are not the only animals that can learn new labels by overhearing third-party interactions. The researchers ...

In topological condensed matter physics, where major discoveries could hold big implications for fields like information technology, the reliability of such discoveries could be greatly enhanced by taking several steps, like presenting larger sets of data, say Sergey Frolov and colleagues. Their insights are based in part on four original experiments they did that correspond to either theory predictions or published work. “Overall,” write the authors, “although replication crises are typically perceived to be a problem in fields less quantitative than physics, the overemphasis on smoking- gun claims has the potential to affect the reliability of findings irrespective of field.” ...

After rising for decades in the United States, opioid overdose deaths have been declining dramatically since 2023, with the annual rate of fentanyl overdose deaths dropping by more than a third by the end of 2024. What’s behind this sudden decline? In this Policy Forum, Kasey Vangelov and colleagues evaluate the evidence for an international supply shock in fentanyl in 2023 and conclude that it could be responsible for the steep decline in overdose deaths. Studying the ups and downs of an illegal drug economy is difficult, but the researchers use data from several sources, ...

“Honey, will you take Luna to the P-A-R-K?” both parents and dog owners know that some words should not be spoken, but only spelled, to prevent small ears from eavesdropping on the conversation. At the age of 1.5 years toddlers can already learn new words by overhearing other people. Now, a groundbreaking study published in Science reveals that a special group of dogs are also able to learn names for objects by overhearing their owners’ interactions. Similarly to 1.5 -year-old toddlers, that are equally good in ...

Every time we smile, grimace, or flash a quick look of surprise, it feels effortless, but the brain is quietly coordinating an intricate performance. This study shows that facial gestures aren’t controlled by two separate “systems” (one for deliberate expressions and one for emotional ones), as scientists long assumed. Instead, multiple face-control regions in the brain work together, using different kinds of signals: some are fast and shifting, like real-time choreography, while others are steadier, like a held intention. Remarkably, these brain patterns appear before the face even moves, meaning the brain starts ...

Embargoed: Not for Release Until 2:00 pm U.S. Eastern Time Thursday, 08 January 2026. A group of scientists, including Sergey Frolov, professor of physics at the University of Pittsburgh, and coauthors from Minnesota and Grenoble have undertaken several replication studies centered around topological effects in nanoscale superconducting or semiconducting devices. This field is important because it can bring about topological quantum computing, a hypothetical way of storing and manipulating quantum information while protecting it against errors.  In all cases they found alternative explanations of similar ...

Key points   Researchers have revealed trillions of microbes live in the bark of every tree Tree microbes clean the air by removing greenhouse and toxic gases  This suggests planting trees offers climate benefits beyond CO2 removal   Australian researchers have discovered a hidden climate superpower of trees. Their bark harbours trillions of microbes that help scrub the air of greenhouse and toxic gases. It’s long been known that trees fight global warming by consuming ...

IDH-mutant glioma, caused by abnormalities in a specific gene (IDH), is the most common malignant brain tumor among young adults under the age of 50. It is a refractory brain cancer that is difficult to treat due to its high recurrence rate. Until now, treatment has focused primarily on removing the visible tumor mass. However, a Korean research team has discovered for the first time that normal brain cells acquire the initial IDH mutation and spread out through the cortex long before a visible tumor mass harboring additional cancer mutations forms, opening a new path for early diagnosis and treatment to suppress ...

Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) have uncovered previously unobserved oscillation states – so-called Floquet states – in tiny magnetic vortices. Unlike earlier experiments, which required energy-intensive laser pulses to create such states, the team in Dresden discovered that a subtle excitation with magnetic waves is sufficient. This finding not only raises fundamental questions in basic physics but could also eventually serve as a universal adapter bridging electronics, spintronics, and quantum devices. The team reports its results ...

When a baby smiles at you, it’s almost impossible not to smile back. This spontaneous reaction to a facial expression is part of the back-and-forth that allows us to understand each other’s emotions and mental states. Faces are so important to social communication that we’ve evolved specialized brain cells just to recognize them, as Rockefeller University’s Winrich Freiwald has discovered. It’s just one of a suite of groundbreaking findings the scientist has made in the past decade that have greatly advanced the neuroscience ...

Active galactic nuclei, energetic and luminous regions powered by an accreting supermassive black hole at the center of some galaxies, can launch a jet that drives a gas outflow, shaping star formation in their host galaxy. Justin Kader and colleagues have observed this phenomenon in the nearby active galaxy VV 340a. Kader et al. observed the jet and galaxy across infrared, optical, radio, and sub-millimeter wavelengths, using the James Webb Space Telescope, Keck-II telescope, the Jansky Very Large Array and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. The researchers combined these observations with modeling, to show that the low-power radio jet emitted ...

This news release is embargoed until 8-Jan-2026 at 12:00 PM EST Research led by Daniel Ivanov, a physics and astronomy graduate student in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at Pitt, uncovered a contender for one of the earliest observed spiral galaxies containing a stellar bar, a sometimes-striking visual feature that can play an important role in the evolution of a galaxy. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, also has a stellar bar. This finding helps constrain the timeframe in which ...

Researchers examined the diet and plastic ingestion of green sea turtles inhabiting waters around the Ogasawara Islands, Japan, and detected plastics in 7 of the 10 individuals studied. By integrating genetic, isotopic, and plastic analyses, they estimated that the ingested plastics originated from areas beyond the turtles’ migratory range, indicating the influence of transboundary marine pollution. Plastics have been found in a wide range of marine organisms, from pelagic fishes and whales to even zooplankton. Among these organisms, sea turtles are frequently ...

About 1 in 5 patients with cancer who undergo genetic testing are incidentally found to have mutations in their blood called clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP). A study from Vanderbilt Health researchers reveals that it puts them at increased risk for heart disease following cancer treatment.   The findings, published Jan. 8 in JAMA Oncology, support the potential benefits of screening patients for CHIP before they undergo cancer treatment so they can be more closely monitored for heart complications. CHIP is a condition, not a disease, characterized by age-related variants in blood stem cells, and it is typically asymptomatic.   The researchers were able ...