Environmental pollutant analysis typically requires complex sample pretreatment steps such as filtration, separation, and preconcentration. When solid materials such as sand, soil, or food residues are present in water samples, analytical accuracy often decreases, and filtration can unintentionally remove trace-level target pollutants along with the solids. To address this challenge, a joint research team led by Dr. Ju Hyeon Kim at the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT), in collaboration with Professor Jae Bem You’s group at Chungnam National University, has developed a microfluidic-based analytical device that enables direct ...

Summary When AI powered prosthetic arms that move autonomously become widespread, understanding how people feel about them and accept them will be crucial. In this study, we used virtual reality to simulate a situation in which a participant’s own arm was replaced by a robotic prosthetic arm, and examined how the prosthesis movement speed affects embodiment, including body ownership, the sense of agency, usability, and social impressions of the robot such as competence and discomfort. We found that both overly fast and overly slow movements reduced body ownership and usability, whereas a moderate speed close to natural human reaching, with a movement duration of about ...

Kyoto, Japan -- Cell and gene therapies, or CGT, have come a long way since they were first introduced. In the last few decades, both cell therapy -- the transplantation of living cells -- and gene therapy -- the use of genetic material to modify cell functions -- have been increasingly incorporated into clinical practice. Various challenges and advances have propelled the use of CGT in innovative treatments for diseases that had otherwise proven difficult to conquer. Yet progress has been uneven across different therapies and regions. To accelerate ...

Scientists have developed a fast and energy efficient way to produce advanced carbon materials capable of capturing carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas driving climate change. The new method dramatically reduces production time while improving adsorption performance, offering a promising pathway toward low cost carbon capture technologies. In a recent study, researchers designed a novel strategy that combines pre oxidation treatment with microwave activation to create nitrogen doped ultramicroporous carbon derived from coal. The material demonstrates exceptional ability to capture and selectively separate carbon dioxide from gas mixtures. “Carbon capture technologies must ...

Microplastics and nanoplastics are now found everywhere on Earth, from ocean depths to agricultural soils and even inside the human body. Yet scientists still struggle to understand what these particles actually do once they enter living organisms. A new study proposes an innovative fluorescence-based strategy that could allow researchers to track microplastics in real time as they move, transform, and degrade inside biological systems. Global plastic production now exceeds 460 million tons annually, with millions ...

Researchers at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have achieved a breakthrough in calcium-ion battery (CIB) technology, which could transform energy storage solutions in everyday life. Utilizing quasi-solid-state electrolytes (QSSEs), these innovative CIBs promise to enhance the efficiency and sustainability of energy storage, impacting a wide range of applications from renewable energy systems to electric vehicles. The findings are published in the international journal Advanced Science titled “High-Performance Quasi-Solid-State Calcium-Ion Batteries from Redox-Active Covalent Organic Framework ...

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL TIME OF SESSION LISTED BELOW   (New York, NY – February 9, 2026) – High-risk pregnancy specialists from the Raquel and Jaime Gilinski Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai are presenting research at the Annual Pregnancy Meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) in Las Vegas until February 13. These presentations include analysis of an AI-assisted tool to diagnosis severe congenital heart defects from fetal scans and a machine learning model that could predict placenta accreta spectrum. The Mount Sinai doctors and ...

Pressure to achieve at school at age 15 is linked to depressive symptoms and risk of self-harm, and the association appears to persist into adulthood, finds a study led by University College London (UCL) researchers. The authors of the new study, published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, say their findings suggest that reducing academic pressure in schools could reduce depression and self-harm among young people. Senior author Professor Gemma Lewis (UCL Psychiatry) said: “In recent ...

Measuring human movement with tracking devices on looser clothing is more accurate than on tight body suits or straps.   The discovery by scientists at King’s College London could mark a potential breakthrough for a range of technologies, including improving accuracy on personal health devices, such as Fitbits and smart watches, to enhancing motion capture for CGI movie characters.  It could also support health and medical research by making it easier to gather data on conditions affecting mobility such as Parkinson’s.   The research, published in Nature ...

When the sun goes down, solar panels stop working. This is the fundamental hurdle of renewable energy: how to save the sun’s power for a rainy day — or a cold night. Chemists at UC Santa Barbara have developed a solution that doesn’t require bulky batteries or electrical grids. In a paper published in the journal Science, Associate Professor Grace Han and her team detail a new material that captures sunlight, stores it within chemical bonds and releases it as heat on demand. The material, a modified organic molecule called pyrimidone, is the latest advancement in Molecular Solar Thermal (MOST) energy ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — A new study published by Mayo Clinic researchers suggests that ovarian cancer cells quickly activate a survival response after PARP inhibitor treatment, and blocking this early response may make this class of drugs work better. PARP inhibitors are a common treatment for ovarian cancer and can be especially effective in cancers with impaired DNA repair. However, many tumors eventually stop responding, even when the drugs initially show results. The new research identifies ...

A new study suggests that young men overwhelmingly support affirmative sexual consent in principle—yet often find its verbal implementation difficult in practice. The research, led by scholars at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and Melbourne University’s Department of General Practice and Primary Care, explores how young heterosexual men interpret and navigate consent during real-world sexual encounters. The findings were published in the Journal of Sex & ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Siemens Healthineers and Mayo Clinic are expanding their strategic collaboration to enhance patient care for neurodegenerative disease and the management of prostate cancer and metastatic liver tumors. The two organizations have signed an agreement that will improve care for people with those diseases and expand access to new imaging and interventional technologies. Initial areas for collaboration include: Neurodegenerative disease: Developing and bringing to clinical use artificial ...

Physicists have long recognized the value of photonic graph states in quantum information processing. However, the difficulty of making these graph states has left this value largely untapped. In a step forward for the field, researchers from The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have proposed a new scheme they term “emit-then-add” for producing highly entangled states of many photons that can work with current hardware. Published in npj Quantum Information, their strategy lays the groundwork for a wide range of quantum enhanced operations including measurement-based quantum computing. Entanglement is a key driver in delivering ...

A federally funded research initiative will enable researchers at Oregon Health & Science University and other organizations to assess the safety and effectiveness of state-regulated access to psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms. The five-year, $3.3 million award is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health — a first. “This is the first federally funded work to study the impact of legal psychedelic services delivered in community settings,” said co-principal investigator Adie ...

As semiconductor manufacturing rapidly expands to meet growing global demand for generative AI and advanced electronics, a new review published in Environmental Science & Technology assesses the current state of science, technology and policy around managing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) waste in the industry and outlines recommendations for a path forward. PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” play a central role in modern chipmaking due to their unique properties and essential function in complex chemical processes like photolithography and etching, yet their links to environmental and health ...

Embargoed until 1:45 PM PST, February 12, 2026 New Research Finds State-Level Abortion Restrictions Associated with Increased Maternal Deaths Las Vegas, NV – The increased number of state-level abortion restrictions in the U.S. was associated with a parallel increase in maternal deaths between 2005 and 2023, according to new research presented today at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) 2026 Pregnancy Meeting™. Researchers found that states with five or more different abortion restrictions had higher rates of maternal deaths from any cause, cardiovascular disease, and violence than those states with fewer restrictions. “Abortion ...

A new collaborative study, led by University of Utah Professor of atmospheric sciences Kevin Perry, provides policymakers, agency leaders, and the public with the most comprehensive assessment to date of potential dust control options for the Great Salt Lake, as declining water levels continue to expose vast areas of lakebed to wind erosion. The study, supported by the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy in collaboration with the Great Salt Lake Commissioner’s Office, Utah Division of Water Resources and Department of Environmental Quality, considers a wide-range of options to engineer dust ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Although modern science has only been around for a few centuries, we’ve become quite adept at training students in the scientific method. But learning how to translate research insights into practical actions often isn’t part of a budding scientist’s curriculum. UC Santa Barbara Assistant Professor Alexandra Phillips has put together a guide to help professors and administrators support their students' interests in ocean policy and build broader ...

In 2016 while hiking on a hillside in Morocco, geologist Rowan Martindale saw something that made her stop in her tracks: a slab of sedimentary rock covered in a wrinkly texture reminiscent of elephant skin.  “I looked at the wrinkles and I was like, ‘These aren’t supposed to be in rocks like this. What the heck is going on?’” said Martindale, an associate professor at The University of Texas at Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences. Rock textures hold clues about the geological activity that shaped them. To Martindale, these wrinkles in time were a textbook example of microbial mat fossils. They captured a teeming ...

New research suggests that exposure to intense wildfire smoke during pregnancy may be associated with increased likelihood of autism in children. The study, by researchers at UC Davis Health and UCLA, was published in the journal Environment International. The study of more than 8.6 million births in California is the largest to date examining how wildfire-specific air pollution may impact early neurodevelopment. Scientists combined detailed wildfire smoke data with state birth records from 2001 to 2019. They matched these with autism diagnoses from California ...

NYU researchers have found a “microbial signature” of pediatric Crohn's disease that differs from the makeup of gut bacteria in children with other gastrointestinal conditions, with Crohn’s patients harboring more pro-inflammatory bacteria and less protective bacteria. The study of recently diagnosed children, published in the journal Physiological Reports, also reveals different bacteria in those with more severe Crohn’s disease symptoms and activity. Crohn's disease is a chronic inflammatory disorder of the gastrointestinal tract, and rates of pediatric diagnoses have markedly grown over the ...

For more than a century, the American chestnut, once a dominant tree across eastern North American forests, has been devastated by an invasive fungal disease that killed billions of trees in the early 1900s. A new study published in Science shows that modern genomic tools can dramatically accelerate restoration while preserving the species’ ecological identity. The research demonstrates that genomic selection, a method widely used in agriculture and animal breeding, can predict disease resistance in chestnut trees using DNA data alone. By allowing breeders to identify promising seedlings before years of field testing, the approach shortens breeding ...

Astronomers have watched a dying star fail to explode as a supernova, instead collapsing into a black hole. The remarkable sighting is the most complete observational record ever made of a star’s transformation into a black hole, allowing astronomers to construct a comprehensive physical picture of the process. Combining recent observations of the star with over a decade of archival data, the astronomers confirmed and refined theoretical models of how such massive stars turn into black holes. The team found that the star failed to explode as a supernova at the end of its life; instead, the star’s core ...

An elephant’s trunk looks rugged, but it is also one of the most sensitive touch organs in the animal kingdom. New research reveals that this sensitivity is partly powered by whiskers whose material structure changes from base to tip. This unique property amplifies sensory signals, allowing elephants to feel their surroundings through their trunks with remarkable precision through material design alone. In mammals, whiskers – elongated keratin rods akin to stiff hairs – are especially sophisticated sensory tools. Although the keratin from which they are made cannot detect touch itself, whiskers are embedded in follicles surrounded by densely packed sensory ...