A sticky, toxic by-product that has long plagued renewable energy production may soon become a valuable resource, according to a new review published in Biochar. When biomass such as crop residues, wood, or other organic matter is heated to produce clean energy and biochar, it also generates a thick liquid known as bio-tar. This tar easily clogs pipelines, damages equipment, and poses environmental risks if released into the atmosphere. For decades, researchers have sought ways to eliminate or neutralize it. Now, a team led by scientists at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences argues that instead of being treated as waste, bio-tar can be converted into “bio-carbon”—a ...

Beneath our feet, an invisible world of electron exchanges quietly drives the chemistry that sustains ecosystems, controls water quality, and even determines the fate of pollutants. A new review published in Environmental and Biogeochemical Processes sheds light on how electrons travel through soils and sediments across surprisingly long distances—sometimes spanning centimeters to meters—reshaping our understanding of underground environments and offering new strategies for pollution cleanup. Redox reactions—the give-and-take of electrons between chemical species—are fundamental to life and environmental stability. They govern how nutrients cycle, ...

A British led study published by The BMJ today provides detailed data on the pattern and severity of traumatic injuries and medical conditions seen by international healthcare workers deployed to Gaza during the ongoing military invasion. Healthcare workers describe “unusually severe” traumatic injuries including complex blast injuries, firearm related injuries, and severe burns. Many respondents with previous experience of conflicts reported that the pattern and severity of injuries in Gaza were greater than those they had encountered in previous warzones. It’s thought to be the first study ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. – One-third of Americans will visit an emergency department, or ED, within a month of their death. While EDs are primarily purposed to provide emergent care, they’re increasingly becoming an initial touchpoint for hospice and palliative care, or HPC, referrals and consultations, according to a new study from several researchers at Henry Ford Health + Michigan State University Health Sciences.   The article, which will appear in the November 2025 issue of the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, shares findings from the largest study to date that evaluates hospice and palliative care consultations ...

New research from Portland State University’s Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) shows that transit-oriented developments (TODs) in the Portland metro area generate far fewer car trips than standard estimates suggest—especially at sites that include affordable housing. A 2025 report, "Portland Metro Transit-Oriented Developments (TODs): 2024 Resident Survey Findings (PDF)," builds on a long-running PSU study tracking TOD residents since 2005. Led by Nathan McNeil, Jennifer Dill, and Kyuri Kim, the research surveyed residents at TODs built between 2018 and 2023 across ...

Rice anthropologist among first to use AI to uncover new clues that early humans were prey, not predators Were early humans hunters — or hunted? For decades, researchers believed that Homo habilis — the earliest known species in our genus — marked the moment humans rose from prey to predators. They were thought to be the first stone tool users and among the earliest meat eaters and hunters based on evidence from early archaeological sites. But fossils of another early human species — African Homo erectus — show they lived alongside ...

A new book co-edited by Professor Emeritus Alistair Black and Associate Professor Bonnie Mak (School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Toni Weller (De Montfort University), and Laura Skouvig (University of Copenhagen) provides a field-defining, comprehensive study of information history. The Routledge Handbook of Information History, released last month by Routledge, examines how society, politics, culture, and technology have shaped information practices over millennia. The 638-page volume features more than forty contributors from around the world. Black and Mak each contributed a chapter in the book and jointly authored the opening chapter which ...

Researchers supported by FAPESP have found antibiotic-resistant bacterial clones in wild birds at a rehabilitation center. The identified Escherichia coli clones have been found in community- and hospital-acquired human infections worldwide, and they were present in the intestinal tracts of a vulture and an owl. The impact of these strains on animals is unknown; however, in humans, they are known to cause infections in patients with weakened immune systems for which there are few effective treatment options. The ...

University of Maryland School of Medicine Dean Mark T. Gladwin, MD, announced today that Andreea Creanga, MD, PhD, a distinguished and internationally recognized leader in maternal and perinatal health, has been appointed the new Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health. She will also be installed as the Simon and Bessie Grollman Distinguished Professor. Her appointment is effective December 2025. The Department of Epidemiology and Public Health houses seven divisions ...

Machine-learning models can speed up the discovery of new materials by making predictions and suggesting experiments. But most models today only consider a few specific types of data or variables. Compare that with human scientists, who work in a collaborative environment and consider experimental results, the broader scientific literature, imaging and structural analysis, personal experience or intuition, and input from colleagues and peer reviewers. Now, MIT researchers have developed a method for optimizing materials recipes and planning experiments that incorporates information from diverse sources like insights ...

ALBANY, N.Y. (Sept. 25, 2025) — Researchers at the University at Albany are exploring a new method to improve weather and climate forecasts that relies on a tiny but powerful assistant — stable water isotopes. Water isotopes are the naturally occurring variations of hydrogen and oxygen atoms within water molecules. Isotopes have slightly different masses but the same chemical properties, acting like fingerprints that reveal information about a sample’s origin and history. By measuring differences in isotope masses in rainfall, snow, or even ice, scientists can trace where moisture came from, how it ...

Major themes include advances in actionable biomarkers in pancreatic cancer, proton therapy, artificial intelligence and theranostics MD Anderson researchers will present more than 65 abstracts, including several providing breakthroughs within these themes Recent advances in radiation oncology have led to shorter treatment times, increased early disease detection, and artificial intelligence applications that continue to improve cancer care. Ahead of this week's 2025 American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting, researchers from The University ...

The whole world is buzzing about the potential and pitfalls of artificial intelligence—including those who work in forestry. AI could revolutionize forestry, making it possible to save more lives and ecosystems through faster and more accurate data analysis. But if forestry professionals aren’t careful, AI could also botch critical land-management and policy decisions.  That’s why NAU School of Forestry faculty members Alark Saxena, Luke Ritter and Derek Uhey took it upon themselves to understand foresters’ relationship with AI: how they’re using it now, how they hope to leverage it in the future and what concerns them. ...

A cutting-edge bronchoscope that is guided with the help of a robot can reach very small tumours growing in hard-to-reach parts of the lung, according to results of a gold-standard randomised-controlled trial that will be presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Congress in Amsterdam, the Netherlands [1].   The robot-assisted bronchoscope also uses a specialised CT scanner to find tumours buried in the lungs, enabling doctors to take a biopsy and confirm whether they are cancerous. ...

Babies exposed to dog allergens in the home have a lower risk of developing asthma by the age of five years, according to research that will be presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Congress in Amsterdam, the Netherlands [1]. The researchers also studied babies’ exposure to cat allergens but did not find the same protective effect.   The research was by a team from The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, Canada, led by Dr Makiko Nanishi, and will be presented by Dr Jacob McCoy. Speaking ahead of the Congress Dr McCoy said: “Asthma is a very common chronic respiratory illness in children, with the highest rates in the ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State Professor of German and Linguistics Michael Putnam has spent a good part of his career thinking about language attrition, or “language loss,” among bi- and multilingual speakers. Now, it’s the basis of his latest book. Putnam and David Natvig, associate professor of Nordic linguistics at the University of Stavanger in Norway, are the authors of the new book, “An Introduction to Language Attrition: Linguistic, Social, and Cognitive Perspectives.” Published by Routledge, the book provides ...

Bees and butterflies help produce our food by pollinating the crops farmers grow. In fact, 35% of the world's food crops, including fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, depend on pollinators. But agricultural land is a poor substitute for wild habitat — it often lacks the food and shelter that insect pollinators require. To stay healthy, these creatures need access to pockets of more natural land amid all the agriculture. Currently, pollinators around the world and in Washington are in decline, in part because of the loss of their wild habitat. In a new study, a team of scientists from around the world analyzed a massive dataset ...

Restored mangrove forests could act as important carbon stores, per study examining Vietnamese mangrove carbon since 1900, but they might not have “normal” ecological function   In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Sustainability and Transformation: https://plos.io/3HPdSfr Article title: Land use change drives decadal-scale persistence of sediment organic carbon storage of restored mangrove Author countries: Sweden, China, Vietnam, United Kingdom Funding: This work ...

For decades, gene-editing science has been limited to making small, precise edits to human DNA, akin to correcting typos in the genetic code. Arc Institute researchers are changing that paradigm with a universal gene editing system that allows for cutting and pasting of entire genomic paragraphs, rearranging whole chapters, and even restructuring entire passages of the genomic manuscript. In a paper published September 25, 2025 in the journal Science, the research team shows how bridge recombinase technology can be applied to human cells. The advance allows scientists to manipulate large genomic regions, testing up to a million base pairs in length, by inserting new genes, deleting ...

Roughly half of all FDA-approved drugs from 2000 onward rely on publications funded by grants that would have been cut assuming a 40% reduction in U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding in past decades, say authors of a new Policy Forum. In this piece, Pierre Azoulay and colleagues present an analysis of a hypothetical alternative history.  “Assuming that the near term resembles the recent past,” they say, “our analysis indicates that substantial NIH budget cuts – including those implemented at the funding margin – could curtail research ...

Some termites form symbiotic relationships with fungus. When harmful fungi invade their carefully cultivated crops, these fungus-farming termites fight back with the precision of skilled gardeners, a new study reveals, smothering them in soil clumps enriched with microbial allies that inhibit fungal growth. Fungus-farming termites, like Odontotermes obesus, maintain a vital symbiotic relationship with the fungus Termitomyces, cultivating it in specialized nutritional substrates called combs that provide both a reliable food source for the termites and an ideal habitat for the fungus. ...

A digital reconstruction of the nearly one-million-year-old Yunxian 2 cranium from China, which corrected previous distortions inherent in the fossil, suggests it belonged to the Asian Homo longi clade. This means the cranium represents an early branch of the sister lineage to modern humans that may have included the enigmatic Denisovans. Fossil evidence shows that, during the Middle Pleistocene, multiple Homo lineages with diverse physical forms coexisted. Much of what is known about human evolution and archaic hominins relies on fossil skulls. Yet many specimens from this era are damaged and/or deformed, leading ...

A global experiment looking at how birds respond to 15,000 paper “moths” reveals that no color-changing strategy to deter predators is universally effective; both camouflage and warning coloration succeed under different ecological conditions, the study shows. Predation is a powerful force shaping evolution, driving the development of two major antipredator color strategies: camouflage, which helps prey to blend into their surroundings to avoid detection, and aposematism, in which prey advertise genuine defenses or, in the case of mimics, deceptive protection, using bright and conspicuous warning colors. Both strategies can be effective under different ecological ...

New research in the roundworm C. elegans shows how changes in the parent’s lysosomes that promote longevity are transferred to its offspring. The work describes a new link between lysosomes—cellular organelles once thought to be the cell’s recycling center—and the epigenome—a set of chemical marks that modify gene expression. The study also details a new way that epigenetic information is transmitted from cells in the body to reproductive cells, allowing changes to be inherited without affecting the genetic ...

At a time when conflict and division dominate the headlines, a new study from UCLA finds remarkable similarities in how mice and artificial intelligence systems each develop cooperation: working together toward shared goals. Both biological brains and AI neural networks developed similar behavioral strategies and neural representations when coordinating their actions, suggesting there are fundamental principles of cooperation that transcend biology and technology. Why it matters Cooperation is fundamental to human society and essential for everything from teamwork in the workplace to international diplomacy. Understanding how cooperation emerges and is maintained has profound ...