BETHESDA, MD – The Biophysical Society is pleased to announce that Ken A. Dill, of Stony Brook University, USA, will receive the Society’s 2026 Founders Award. Dill will be honored at the Society’s 70th Annual Meeting, being held in San Francisco, California from February 21-25, 2026. Dill is being honored for his work on the protein folding problem and the development of statistical mechanical theories and foundational principles in biophysics. “I am honored to recognize Ken with ...

BETHESDA, MD – The Biophysical Society is pleased to announce that Ashley R. Carter, of Amherst College, USA, has been named the recipient of the 2026 PUI Faculty Award. Carter will be honored at the Society’s 70th Annual Meeting, being held in San Francisco, California from February 21-25, 2026. Carter will be recognized for her remarkable contributions to biophysics research, mentoring of undergraduate students, and leadership in guiding the next generation of scientists to advance the field of biophysics. “Ashley has clearly demonstrated excellence in undergraduate research ...

Myopia, or short-sightedness, is on the rise worldwide and has become a major public health issue—especially in East Asia, where large numbers of school-aged children are affected. Traditionally, factors such as family history, intensive reading, heavy screen use, and limited time spent outdoors have been seen as the main causes. Hua Yan and colleagues suggests another possible cause: poor air quality. The authors studied nearly 30,000 children in Tianjin, China, using explainable automated machine learning tools ...

Martin Wiener, Associate Professor, Psychology, College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS), received funding for the study: “CRCNS US-Israel Research Proposal: NSF-BSF: The Perception of Time and Memorability in the Visual Hierarchy.” Dr. Wiener is collaborating with Ayelet Landau, Associate Professor, Cognitive Science and Psychology, Hebrew University, and Yuval Benjamini, Associate Professor, Statistics and Data Science, Hebrew University.  Dr. Wiener will conduct research at George Mason in consultation with the co-principal investigators, who will be conducting their own ...

Duminda Wijesekera, Professor, Cyber Security Engineering, College of Engineering and Computing (CEC), received funding for: “Operational Technology Digital Twin and Scanning Support.” He will develop two simultaneous strands of work, that will be merged at the end: Conduct LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) mapping of a Steel Plant and specifically high-temperate Infrared ovens used for powder-coating on steel sheets that pass through the mill at high speed; and Develop a digital twin of the factory. Additionally, he will coordinate with Datalytica’s modeling team to optimize camera placement ...

In a mouse model of liver transplantation, UCLA researchers have identified proteins that act as “protective switches” guarding the liver against damage occurring when blood supply is restored during transplantation, a process known as ischemia-reperfusion injury. The finding could increase the supply of donor organs by using molecular therapies to strengthen the liver’s protective pathways. By boosting this protection,  organs that would otherwise be discarded as damaged or suboptimal could be made suitable for transplantation and added to the donor pool, said Kenneth J. Dery, Ph.D, an associate adjunct professor of surgery in the division of liver and pancreas ...

The ability to reliably order groceries or takeout, have rapid package delivery, check the weather forecast, or follow GPS tracking is all a part of the US’s ever-growing satellite and space economy. The continued growth of this economy relies on advancements in propulsion technologies. One such breakthrough is the “Rotating Detonation Engine" (RDE). The RDE offers the ability to deliver satellites to precise orbits in outer space with greater robustness and reduced fuel consumption and emissions than with current conventional engines. However, there are many fundamental scientific challenges that remain ...

A genomic analysis of over 1,200 people from across South Africa reveals how colonial-era European, Indigenous Khoe-San peoples, and enslaved people contributed to the modern-day gene pool in South Africa. Publishing September 23 in the Cell Press journal The American Journal of Human Genetics, the study found that genes inherited from both colonial Europeans and enslaved people are most common in Cape Town and become less frequent with distance from the colony’s epicenter. The results also show that European ancestors were more likely to be male, ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2025 -- Taylor Swift is one of the biggest pop singers in history, influencing millions of fans with her music. Thanks to years of recorded interviews, she is also influencing how we understand the ways that people adopt accents and regional dialects. In JASA, published on behalf of the Acoustical Society of America by AIP Publishing, a pair of researchers from the University of Minnesota analyzed years of Swift’s recorded interviews to track how her dialect has evolved. Authors ...

An international team of scientists, led by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s S. Kathleen Lyons, is providing a new framework — Earth system engineering — for examining how organisms, including humans, have fundamentally altered ecosystems on a global scale across hundreds, thousands or millions of years. The framework was published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution and builds on ecosystem engineering, which describes how organisms change their physical environment to thrive. Earth system engineering is a novel approach that distinguishes ...

In a bold step toward climate action, leading microbiology societies and organizations have unveiled their first joint global strategy to harness the power of microbial science in addressing the climate crisis. This landmark strategy has been published across 6 scientific journals, including FEMS Microbiology Ecology, mBio, Microbiology Australia, Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Research, Sustainable Microbiology and The ISME Journal. On May 23, 2025, leaders from microbiology organizations from around the world gathered in Washington, D.C., for the Global Strategy Meeting on Microbes and Climate Change. The goal was to unite ...

A new study published in the journal Nature Communications by researchers from the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in the Republic of Korea reveals that Global Warming is accelerating the risk of multi-year droughts that can lead to extreme water scarcity, threatening water demands in cities, agriculture, and livelihoods worldwide, already within the coming decades. The study uses the latest generation of climate model simulations to determine the time when local water demands will exceed the regional water supply from precipitation, rivers, and reservoirs. This time is commonly referred to as the Day Zero Drought ...

“This data provides the first evidence of selective cell response to senolytic treatment among senescent cell subpopulations.” BUFFALO, NY — September 23, 2025 — A new research paper was published in Volume 17, Issue 8 of Aging-US on August 7, 2025, titled “Senescent cell heterogeneity and responses to senolytic treatment are related to cell cycle status during senescence induction.” This study, led by first authors Francesco Neri and Shuyuan Zheng, together with corresponding authors Denis Wirtz, Pei-Hsun Wu, and Birgit Schilling from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, the USC Leonard Davis School ...

(TORONTO, September 23, 2025) JMIR Publications, a leading open-access digital health research publisher, and Iowa State University are pleased to announce that they have modified their long-standing partnership from a multi-payor model to JMIR’s Flat-Fee Unlimited Open Access Publishing model. Iowa State is the first research university in the United States to take advantage of JMIR’s flat-fee unlimited publishing partnership, which removes researchers’ financial burden. They join dozens of research institutions around the world whose researchers are benefiting from zero-charge publishing. As an independent open-access publisher, JMIR Publications is dedicated to removing ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Screening women with dense breasts with both molecular breast imaging (MBI) and digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) increased overall invasive cancer detection while modestly increasing the recall rate compared with screening only with DBT, according to a new study published today in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).   “To our knowledge, this is the first multicenter, prospective evaluation of MBI as a supplement to DBT in women with dense breasts,” said lead author Carrie B. Hruska, Ph.D., professor of medical physics ...

As climate change accelerates, the world is experiencing more frequent extreme weather events and rising temperatures. This is driving up the demand for cooling to make cities liveable, especially in fast-growing megacities with populations exceeding 10 million. While cooling is essential, it also creates a challenge, as conventional cooling systems consume vast amounts of energy and contribute to carbon emissions, creating a vicious cycle that worsens global warming. To break this cycle, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), Aalborg University and Aarhus University in Denmark have embarked on a new five-year research initiative, supported by US$9.4 ...

Air pollution may be harming children’s eyesight with cleaner air helping to protect and even improve their vision - especially in younger children, a new study reveals. Researchers have discovered that exposure to lower levels of air pollutants - specifically nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) - is associated with how well children can see without glasses. Their findings suggest that reducing exposure to these pollutants could help slow the progression of myopia or short-sightedness - when distant objects appear blurry. The condition is becoming more common in children, especially in East Asia. Publishing their findings ...

Andean glaciers advanced during an acute period of climate change at the end of the last Ice Age, new research has found. An international team of glaciologists, led by Aberystwyth University, made the discovery as part of a new project into tropical glaciers in Peru. The finding challenges long-held assumptions about glacier behaviour during this period. The findings, published in Scientific Reports, shed new light on how glaciers respond to shifting climate patterns and may help improve predictions of future climate impacts. The study focused on the Younger Dryas period, a time of sudden and dramatic climate change that occurred approximately 12,900 ...

A new study, led by federal agencies in collaboration with the University of Colorado Denver, shows that the whitebark pine tree—an iconic, high-elevation tree that stretches from California’s Sierra Nevada through the Cascades and Rockies and into Canada—could lose as much as 80 percent of its habitat to climate change in the next 25 years.   The loss could have a cascade of effects, impacting wildlife and people.  The threatened whitebark pine tree is a crucial food source for squirrels and grizzly bears. It also acts as a natural snow ...

A new artificial intelligence breakthrough developed by researchers in the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Florida Atlantic University offers a smarter, more efficient way to manage complex systems that rely on multiple decision-makers operating at different levels of authority. This novel framework, recently published in IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics: Systems, could significantly impact the future of smart energy grids, traffic networks and autonomous vehicle systems – technologies that are becoming increasingly central to daily life. In many real-world systems, decisions ...

Mindfulness meditation may help people struggling with concurrent depression and Internet gaming disorder, according to a study. Guang-Heng Dong and colleagues treated 59 people with depression and Internet gaming disorder (IGD)—which is characterized by excessive and dysregulated video game playing. About a third of people struggling with IGD also suffer from depression. For some, gaming becomes the only way to feel pleasure in an otherwise painful or colorless world. Of the 59 participants, 27 engaged in progressive muscle relaxation ...

A scaling law relates the expected number of mutants to the total population size of cells in a spatially constrained but growing population, which could help clinicians predict when cancers or bacterial infections might develop resistance to treatment. Given a small number of cells in a population subject to a strong fitness pressure, such as a drug intended to kill the cells, mutations are likely to arise. However, it is difficult to predict when those mutations might arise and become common in ...

Foreign exchange (FX) is often described as the world’s deepest and most liquid marketplace, but beneath the headline numbers lies a complex microstructure that shapes how prices form, how liquidity concentrates, and how risk truly behaves across time. At its core, forex is a decentralized, quote-driven market where tiered participants—interbank dealers, non-bank liquidity providers, prime brokers, hedge funds, corporates, and retail aggregators—interact across electronic communication networks and single-dealer platforms. Price discovery unfolds through a constant negotiation of bid–ask quotes, with top-of-book spreads reflecting not only raw competition among market makers but also inventory constraints, latency advantages, and anticipated information flow.

Aviation accounts for approximately 12% of global carbon dioxide emissions. With intensifying climate change and environmental issues, the aviation industry is searching for greener propulsion systems. For unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which have wide applications in military, logistics, and agriculture, research has turned towards hydrogen propulsion systems. Hydrogen is a clean fuel that produces only water during combustion, representing a promising alternative to conventional fossil fuels. However, hydrogen has low volumetric energy density, meaning larger volumes are required to produce the same energy as conventional ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Illinois once harbored more than 8 million acres of wetlands. By the 1980s, all but 1.2 million wetland acres had been lost, filled in for development or drained to make way for agriculture. Now, thanks to a 2023 Supreme Court decision, roughly 72% of the remaining 981,000 acres of Illinois wetlands are no longer protected by the federal Clean Water Act, putting communities at risk of losing the flood control, groundwater recharge, water purification and natural habitat these wetlands provide, researchers report. A patchwork of state and county-level wetland regulations offer some protection ...