BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL, September 30, 2025 – A new study from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) sheds light on how a firstborn child's behavior after the arrival of a sibling can predict the quality of their sibling relationship over time. The research, published in Social Development (https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.70008), highlights the crucial role of maternal reflective functioning in mitigating negative outcomes, particularly for children exhibiting internalizing behavioral problems. The study, co-authored by Prof. Naama Atzaba-Poria and Dr. Porat Yakov from BGU's Department ...

As sand temperatures continue to rise, concerns about the future of sea turtles are growing. Hotter nests not only skew sex ratios – producing more females – but also reduce hatchling survival, slow growth, and increase the likelihood of physical deformities. Yet one important and often overlooked question remains: does this heat also affect cognitive ability – how well hatchlings can learn, adapt and respond to the rapidly changing world they face from the moment they emerge? A new study by researchers at Florida Atlantic University’s Charles E. Schmidt College of ...

The Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security (CIAS) at The University of Texas at San Antonio has received a $100,000 grant from Craig Newmark Philanthropies to support a pioneering program that provides low- and no-cost cybersecurity services to organizations in need while cultivating hands-on workforce development opportunities for UT San Antonio students. CIAS Community Cybersecurity Clinic (C4) strengthens community safety and resilience by offering organizations cybersecurity services, such as training, reputation ...

Our Milky Way galaxy never sits still: it rotates and wobbles. And now, data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope reveal that our galaxy also has a giant wave rippling outwards from its centre. We’ve known for about a hundred years that the galaxy’s stars rotate around its centre, and Gaia has measured their speeds and motions. Since the 1950s, we've known that the Milky Way's disc is warped. Then in 2020 Gaia discovered that this disc wobbles over time, similarly to the motion of a spinning top.   And now it has become clear that a great wave ...

Binghamton University has been named one of the nation’s best universities and best values in the 2026 U.S. News & World Report rankings, recognized for its strong academic quality and affordability. The newly released list by U.S. News & World Report places Binghamton University as the #35 best college in the nation for value, up three spots from the 2025 list, and well above the 2024 list, when Binghamton was ranked #85 in that category. Looking at public universities specifically, Binghamton was ranked the #3 best value institution in the nation and the #1 best value ...

Tokyo, one of the world’s most densely populated megacities, sits on a highly active seismic zone where the threat of major earthquakes is ever-present. One of the most destructive aspects of seismic events in Tokyo is a geological phenomenon known as soil liquefaction. This occurs when the intense shaking from an earthquake causes saturated, loosely packed soil to temporarily lose its strength and stiffness, essentially causing the ground to behave like a liquid. The devastating effects of soil liquefaction have been documented many times, such as in the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, and the recent 2024 Noto Peninsula ...

Childhood asthma, a chronic inflammatory condition affecting millions worldwide, may be shaped not only by genetics and environment but also by what children prefer to eat. A new study published on 4 September 2025 in Pediatric Investigation has found that dietary preferences for pickled, smoked, and fried foods are linked to an elevated risk of asthma among first-grade children in Shanghai. Researchers surveyed 8,412 children aged about 6.6 years across 42 public schools in Minhang District, Shanghai. ...

Oral cancer is one of the most common head and neck cancers worldwide, with hundreds of thousands of new cases diagnosed every year. Despite advances in surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy, survival rates remain poor. One of the main challenges is that tumors quickly adapt and develop resistance to drugs that previously controlled them. A key factor behind this resistance is hypoxia—or the shortage of oxygen that develops inside tumors as they grow. Hypoxia not only promotes aggressive cancer behavior but also makes treatments less effective. Scientists have long suspected that hypoxia interacts with critical growth pathways in cancer cells, but ...

Meeting global energy demands while mitigating environmental harm remains a major challenge, as many current solutions rely on expensive and toxic noble metals. In a recent study, researchers from Japan successfully developed a novel copper–cobalt oxide composite anchored on nitrogen-doped carbon nanostructures. Synthesized via a simple method, this material excels in energy storage, environmental remediation, and water splitting—offering a low-cost and sustainable alternative to conventional catalysts across multiple applications. The world is currently grappling ...

PASADENA, CA, and CAMBRIDGE, MA – September 30, 2025 – The Giant Magellan Telescope today announced that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has joined its international consortium, constructing the $2.6 billion observatory in Chile. The Institute’s participation is enabled by a transformational gift to MIT from philanthropists Phillip (Terry) Ragon ’72 and Susan Ragon. “MIT is a world-renowned academic institution whose excellence in science, engineering, and discovery makes it a natural partner for us,” said Dr. Robert Shelton, President of the Giant Magellan Telescope. “MIT brings critical expertise ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — New research offers potential good news for those who’ve lapsed at the gym. The study found that mice that voluntarily ran on an exercise wheel for four weeks, stopped for four weeks and ran again for another four weeks saw unexpected gains. The second bout of wheel running led to a bigger increase in the size of muscle fibers than the first, even though the retraining effort was less intense than the initial bout, researchers report. The findings are detailed in the American Journal of Physiology: Cell ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA —The Public Library of Science (PLOS) today announced a publishing agreement with Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), enabling its researchers to have unlimited publishing in all PLOS Journals. MAHE is participating in our Community Action Publishing, Global Equity and Flat Fee models that shift publishing costs from authors to research institutions. The publishing agreement runs through 2026. “Manipal Academy of Higher Education, recognized as an Institute of Eminence by the Government of India, is proud to partner with PLOS under an institutional agreement, which aligns seamlessly with our commitment to fostering open, accessible, and impactful ...

Saitama, Japan: Plants lack nerves, yet they can sensitively detect touch from other organisms. In the Venus flytrap, highly sensitive sensory hairs act as tactile sensing organs; when touched twice in quick succession, they initiate the closure cascade that captures prey. However, the molecular identity of the touch sensor has remained unclear. Assistant Professor Hiraku Suda and Professor Masatsugu Toyota at Saitama University, Saitama, Japan, together with colleagues and in collaboration with the research group of Professor Mitsuyasu Hasebe at the National Institute for Basic Biology (NIBB), Okazaki, Japan, have revealed that an ion channel named DmMSL10, enriched at the ...

Reducing industrial animal use can help to shrink our carbon footprint and boost health—but doing so means we need nutritious meat alternatives that are also tasty and affordable.   This is according to a new Frontiers in Science article in which researchers reveal how hybrid foods, which combine proteins from different sources, could be part of the solution.   The researchers say that by using combinations of different proteins from plants, fungi, insects, microbial fermentation, and cultivated meat, we could create ...

The interior of the mysterious far side of the moon may be colder than the side constantly facing Earth, suggests a new analysis of rock samples co-led by a UCL (University College London) and Peking University researcher. The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, looked at fragments of rock and soil scooped up by China’s Chang’e 6 spacecraft last year from a vast crater on the far side of the moon. The research team confirmed previous findings that the rock sample was about 2.8 billion years old, and analysed the chemical make-up of its minerals to estimate ...

Income inequality in society has been linked to structural changes in the brains of children who go on to experience poorer mental health. A King’s College London study is the first to reveal how an unequal distribution of wealth in society is associated with altered connections and reduced surface area in the brains of children. Published in Nature Mental Health today, the research also linked these changes with poorer mental health outcomes. Despite evidence that individual wealth impacts brain development, this is the first time societal inequality has been linked to changes in ...

***SUMMARY YOUTUBE VIDEO LINK***: https://youtu.be/eNjkmeJ-lvE Summary: “Mind reading” evokes images of futuristic scanners, but a study published in Nature Neuroscience demonstrates that a simple video may be enough. Using machine learning techniques, a team at the Champalimaud Foundation in Portugal, showed that mice’s facial movements reflect their hidden thoughts. According to the authors, this discovery could offer unprecedented insight into brain function, but also signals a need to consider safeguards for mental privacy. It’s easy to read emotions on people’s ...

Çağan Şekercioğlu was an ambitious, but perhaps naive graduate student when, 26 years ago, he embarked on a simple data-compilation project that would soon evolve into a massive career-defining achievement. With the help of countless students and volunteers, the University of Utah conservation biologist has finally released BIRDBASE, an encyclopedic dataset of traits covering all the bird species recognized by the world’s four major avian taxonomies. Described this week in a study published in the journal Scientific Data, the dataset covers 78 ecological traits, including ...

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have developed a powerful new data analysis method named COOKIE-Pro (Covalent Occupancy Kinetic Enrichment via Proteomics) that provides a comprehensive, unbiased view of how a class of drugs, called covalent inhibitors, interacts with proteins throughout the cell. This innovative technique, detailed in Nature Communications, promises to accelerate the design of more effective and safer therapeutics by precisely measuring both the binding strength and reaction speed of these drugs against thousands of potential targets simultaneously. “Covalent inhibitors, which ...

Magic mushrooms may not be the answer to postpartum depression, new research from the University of California, Davis suggests.  In a first-of-its-kind study appearing in Nature Communications, an interdisciplinary team from the university’s Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics (IPN) dosed mouse mothers with psilocybin and found that the drug amplified anxiety and depressive-like symptoms associated with perinatal mood disorders — mental health conditions that can ...

When a patient enters the emergency department in critical condition, doctors must quickly run through a crucial list of questions: Does the patient have an infection? If so, is it bacterial or viral? Do they require treatment? Can the patient recover at home safely or do they need to be hospitalized? Even when an infection is diagnosed, the treatment plan isn’t always clear. Some sepsis patients, for instance, recover well with steroid treatment, while others react poorly and their condition declines. But clues ...

Egg whites may be perfect for a health-conscious breakfast, but egg yolks turned out to be the key ingredient for cultivating bird embryonic stem cells (ESCs) in the lab. Using a growing medium of egg yolk along with a few other key factors, a USC Stem Cell-led team of scientists has succeeded in deriving and maintaining authentic ESCs from chickens and seven other bird species. These bird ESCs hold tremendous promise for applications ranging from studying embryonic development to producing lab-grown poultry to reviving endangered or even extinct birds. The study appears today in Nature Biotechnology. “A true embryonic ...

The introduction of work requirements for certain adults enrolled in the US health insurance program Medicaid has so far failed to boost insurance coverage or employment rates, finds a study published by The BMJ today. It shows that health insurance coverage and employment did not increase after Georgia implemented Medicaid expansion with work requirements. Work requirements are due to be rolled out across the US in 2026 as part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” Georgia was the first state to expand Medicaid with work requirements under the Pathways to Coverage program in 2023, but little is ...

Prescribing the biologic drug sotatercept alongside standard treatment for the most severe form of pulmonary hypertension significantly reduces the likelihood of worsening disease when added within the first year after diagnosis, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Within the first year of receiving a pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) diagnosis, patients who took sotatercept in addition to standard-of-care therapy reduced the risk experiencing deterioration in health — such as less ability to exercise, worsening symptoms and unplanned hospitalizations ...

A new commentary paper in Nicotine and Tobacco Research, published by Oxford University Press, argues that recent cuts to the National Institutes of Health, including about $2 billion in terminated research grants and a $783 million cut to research funding linked to diversity and inclusion initiatives, will have a dramatically negative effect on efforts to combat tobacco usage and health disparities in the United States. The health and economic burdens of commercial nicotine and tobacco use are high, contributing to about 480,000 premature US deaths ...