For the more than 242 million years that lizards and snakes appear in the fossil record, they show up as mostly pieces of lizard jaws and snake vertebrae. Exactly why these parts survive as fossils has been a mystery—until now. In a new study published in Paleobiology, Dr. Hank Woolley from the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County’s Dinosaur Institute looks at the entire history of squamates (the reptile group that includes lizards, snakes, and mosasaurs among others) to understand why only certain parts show up—the bias of the record—and to quantify that bias for the first time. ...

The visitor chairs in America’s health care clinics are getting put to good use, according to a new poll of older adults. In the last year, 38% of people age 50 and over said another adult attended at least one of their health care appointments, including 4% who said someone attended a telehealth appointment with them. And 34% have accompanied another person over 50 to at least one appointment, including 4% who attended another older adult’s telehealth visit, according to new findings from the University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging. The vast majority of these older adults said ...

Global electricity use is increasing rapidly and must be addressed sustainably. Developing new materials could give us much more efficient solar cell materials than at present; materials so thin and flexible that they could encase anything from mobile phones or entire buildings. Using computer simulation and machine learning, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have now taken an important step towards understanding and handling halide perovskites, among the most promising but notoriously enigmatic materials. Electricity use is constantly increasing ...

Researchers including those from the University of Tokyo build on past studies and introduce new methods to explore the nature and role of subsurface fluids including water in the instances and behaviors of earthquakes and volcanoes. Their study suggests that water, even heavy rainfall, can play a role in or even trigger seismic events. This could potentially lead to better early warning systems. The study improves models of seismic activity and can even help identify optimal sites for drilling to tap sources of supercritical geothermal energy. As far ...

Scientists have mapped underappreciated scaffolding cells in skin, known as fibroblasts. They show for the first time how fibroblasts go ‘rogue’ in many different diseases affecting multiple organs – from acne and psoriasis, to rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease. Researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the Universities of Cambridge and Newcastle, and their collaborators combined single-cell sequencing and spatial genomics datasets with machine learning to identify eight different types of fibroblasts. They show how the fibroblasts ...

A major UK study has revealed that the early warning signs of multiple sclerosis (MS) - including pain, mood changes, and neurological symptoms such as numbness and tingling – may appear years before diagnosis and affect all communities in similar ways.   Researchers at Queen Mary University of London analysed electronic health records of more than 96,000 people, including 15,000 people with MS, making this one of the largest and most diverse investigations into the MS prodrome – the constellation of non-specific symptoms experience by people with MS before a diagnosis– ...

5G has been part of our lives and the market for several years, while the industry is already looking ahead to its successor, 6G. But can we say it is fully implemented? An international team led by Northeastern University, with participation from IMDEA Networks, TU Berlin, University of Porto, University of Oslo, Politecnico di Torino, Technical University of Denmark, and Hewlett Packard Labs, sought the answer. Over the course of a year, they measured performance in several cities across Europe and North America. The conclusion: ...

Using magnetic cameras, researchers at Linköping University have examined blood flow in an artificial heart in real time. The results make it possible to design the heart in a way to reduce the risk of blood clots and red blood cells breakdown, a common problem in today’s artificial hearts. The study, published in Scientific Reports, was done in collaboration with the company Scandinavian Real Heart AB, which is developing an artificial heart. “The heart is a muscle that never rests. ...

“This concerns the biosynthesis of a molecule that has a very long history with humans,” explains Prof. Dirk Hoffmeister, head of the research group Pharmaceutical Microbiology at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (Leibniz-HKI). “We are referring to psilocybin, a substance found in so-called ‘magic mushrooms’, which our body converts into psilocin – a compound that can profoundly alter consciousness. However, psilocybin not only triggers psychedelic experiences, ...

A research team in South Korea has developed a next-generation sensor material capable of integrating the detection of multiple light wavelengths. A joint research team led by Dr. Wooseok Song at the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT) and Professor Dae Ho Yoon at Sungkyunkwan University successfully developed a new broadband photodetector material that can sense a wider range of wavelengths compared to existing commercial materials, and achieved cost-effective synthesis on a 6-inch wafer-scale substrate. Photodetectors ...

WASHINGTON – Consuming some types of fruits and vegetables can increase the levels of harmful pesticides detected in people’s bodies, according to a new peer-reviewed study by Environmental Working Group scientists. Pesticides have been linked to cancer, reproductive harm, hormone disruption and neurotoxicity in children. Residues of these chemicals are often detected on produce, creating exposure concerns for consumers. The new study may help inform future research into how dietary exposure to pesticides through fruit and vegetables might affect human health. “The findings reinforce that what we eat directly affects the level of pesticides ...

The Family Heart Foundation, a leading research and advocacy organization, announced the online publication of recommendations from a multidisciplinary panel in the Journal of Pediatrics to promote the early identification of children living with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH). A common life-threatening genetic condition that causes high cholesterol from birth, FH can lead to premature heart attacks and heart disease, if it is not diagnosed until adulthood. Despite national guidelines established in 2011 by the National Heart, Lung and Blood ...

The trillions of microbes that live in the human gut may play a bigger role in health than previously thought, according to a new research by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. The article, published in September 2025 in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, explores how gut bacteria interact with human genes in ways that could shape disease risk, aging and even future medical treatments. The review highlights how the gut microbiome (the collection of bacteria, viruses and fungi that live in the digestive system) can affect epigenetics, the process that turns genes on or off without changing the DNA itself. These changes happen through chemical tags ...

Long baleen whale mothers are more likely to have female calves than males, according to a new study led by the University of Washington. The findings contradict a popular evolutionary theory postulating that strong mammals benefit more from birthing males.  In 1973, Robert Trivers and Dan Willard proposed that fit female mammals can improve their odds for grandchildren by having males. Large strong mothers will raise large strong calves that can outcompete other males for mates. But, according to the theory, female fitness is less consequential. The studies backing this argument focused ...

What if we told you that the plastic shopping bag from last week’s grocery run could one day help detect toxic metals in drinking water? Sounds like science fiction? Think again. A dazzling new breakthrough led by Dr. Indriana Kartini from the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, is doing exactly that—turning plastic waste into glowing nanomaterials that can sense pollution in water. And yes, it’s as cool as it sounds. The Plastic Problem, Reimagined Every year, millions of tons of plastic bags pollute our oceans, clog landfills, and linger in ecosystems for centuries. But what if this stubborn ...

How fat is distributed in people’s bodies could make a difference to their risk of certain cancers, according to new research led by the University of Bristol.  The international study is published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) today [24 September]. Scientists have already shown that having obesity increases a person’s risk of developing certain cancers. Obesity is usually measured using body mass index (BMI), but growing evidence – particularly from heart health research – suggests that BMI ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – September 23, 2025) Natural systems such as CRISPR-associated transposons (CASTs) offer a targetable, one-step way to edit genomes. However, adapting them for biomedical applications has been challenging. To address this limitation, scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital designed a screening approach to measure efficiency and specificity for thousands of CAST variants accurately. This high-throughput approach allowed the researchers to rapidly optimize promising candidate ...

Drinking any amount of alcohol likely increases the risk of dementia, suggests the largest combined observational and genetic study to date, published online in BMJ Evidence Based Medicine. Even light drinking—generally thought to be protective, based on observational studies—is unlikely to lower the risk, which rises in tandem with the quantity of alcohol consumed, the research indicates. Current thinking suggests that there might be an ‘optimal dose’ of alcohol for brain health, but most of these studies have focused on older people and/or didn’t differentiate between former and lifelong non-drinkers, complicating efforts ...

BMJ Group has retracted research suggesting that small daily quantities of apple cider vinegar might help people who are overweight or obese to lose weight. The small clinical trial was published in the open access journal BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health in March 2024 and its findings press released. The study findings generated widespread international attention at the time, and continue to be frequently referred to in media coverage. The retraction was prompted by concerns raised about the quality of the work, ...

There’s been a significant rise in the use of low and alcohol-free drinks to curb alcohol intake among ‘risky drinkers’ over the past 5 years in England, Wales, and Scotland, finds research published in the open access journal BMJ Public Health. The proportion of those using them to make serious attempts to cut down their alcohol intake rose from 35% in 2020 to 44% in 2024, while those using them in any attempt to cut down increased from 26% to 39%. The trends were especially noticeable ...

Frequent exercise doesn’t just strengthen the heart – it also changes the nerves that control it, according to new research which could guide more targeted and effective care for common heart problems. The study, led by the University of Bristol (UK), shows for the first time that moderate aerobic training reshapes nerves that drive the heart, and affects them on each side of the heart differently. The research is published in the journal Autonomic Neuroscience today (Wednesday, 24 September). Findings ...

Saturday 27th September marks the centenary of the birth of Sir Robert Edwards, who with colleagues Patrick Steptoe and Jean Purdy oversaw the conception and birth of the world’s first IVF baby in 1978.(1) It was a breakthrough in reproductive medicine which would bring immeasurable benefits to people with infertility and whose demographic importance today is greater than ever. Now, from various reports published by this journal, we can confidently say that the global impact of IVF continues to grow in terms of children conceived and the extent of its use. There are few causes of infertility which today are not amenable to treatment while ...

(Barcelona, Spain, Wednesday, 24 September 2025) New research presented at the 41st Congress of the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ECTRIMS 2025) demonstrates that ocrelizumab provides superior control of multiple sclerosis (MS) relapses compared with fingolimod, natalizumab, and alemtuzumab.1 Ocrelizumab, a monoclonal antibody targeting CD20+ B cells, was evaluated using real-world data from three large MS registries: MSBase, OFSEP, and the Danish MS Registry. The analysis compared ocrelizumab-treated patients ...

BETHESDA, MD – The Biophysical Society is pleased to announce that Wonhwa Cho, of the University of Illinois Chicago, USA, has been named the recipient of the 2026 BPS Award in the Biophysics of Health and Disease. Cho will be honored at the Society’s 70th Annual Meeting, being held in San Francisco, California from February 21-25, 2026. Cho will be recognized for mechanistic elucidation of lipid-protein interactions foundational to lipid-targeted drug discovery. “Wonhwa has pioneered new and innovative experimental approaches to overcome obstacles ...

You can’t see nanoplastics with the naked eye, but they’re everywhere — including your body. Tinier than the better-known microplastics, these plastic particles range from one nanometer to one micrometer in size; a human hair, by comparison, is about 100 micrometers thick. “Nanoplastics are present in drinking water, food and the air, and have been detected in both tap water and bottled water,” explained Binghamton University Assistant Professor of Chemistry Huiyuan Guo. “They are widely detected in the environment.” Guo and Associate Professor of Biological Sciences ...