EMBARGOED by Nature until 11 a.m. ET, September 17, 2025 Contact: Gina DiGravio, 617-358-7838, ginad@bu.edu BU Study of Young Athletes Finds Neurodegeneration Might Begin Before CTE These results have the potential to significantly change our perspective on contact sports. (BOSTON) This fall, tens of millions of people will be at risk for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head impacts from contact sports like football, soccer, and ice hockey, or military service. Researchers have long ...

Dr. Carl F. Nathan, the R.A. Rees Pritchett Professor of Microbiology at Weill Cornell Medicine, has been awarded the David and Beatrix Hamburg Award for Advances in Biomedical Research and Clinical Medicine by the National Academy of Medicine. Established in 2004, the prestigious award honors innovative biomedical scientists who have advanced global health with an exceptional biomedical research discovery and translation that has fundamentally enriched the scientific community’s understanding of human biology and disease, leading to a significant reduction of disease burden and improvement in ...

WASHINGTON — Researchers have developed a new type of microscope that can acquire extremely large, high-resolution pictures of non-flat objects in a single snapshot. This innovation could speed up research and medical diagnostics or be useful in quality inspection applications. “Although traditional microscopes assume the sample is perfectly flat, real-life samples such as tissue sections, plant samples or flexible materials may be curved, tilted or uneven,” said research team ...

SAN ANTONIO —September 17, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and The University of Texas at San Antonio (UT San Antonio) will flight test novel electrolyzer technology to better understand chemical processes associated with bubble formation in low gravity. Designed to solve future space mission challenges, the project, led by SwRI’s Kevin Supak and UT San Antonio’s Dr. Shrihari Sankarasubramanian, is supported by a $125,000 grant from the Connecting through Research Partnerships (Connect) program, ...

AMHERST, Mass. — University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers and scientists at Embr Labs, a Boston-based start-up, have developed an AI-driven algorithm that can accurately predict nearly 70% of hot flashes before they’re perceived. The work, featured in the journal Psychophysiology, will be incorporated into the Embr Wave, a wearable wrist device clinically proven to manage hot flashes.   In the U.S. alone, an estimated 1.3 million women transition into menopause annually, and 80% of women experience hot flashes — sudden feelings of intense heat, often radiating in the upper body. Most hot flashes occur during this transition, ...

Nearly 3 in 10 adults in the United States have experienced lower back pain in any three-month period, making it the most common musculoskeletal pain. Back pain remains one of the leading causes of disability worldwide, affecting millions and often leading to chronic discomfort, missed work and invasive procedures. Researchers and clinicians are increasingly turning to lumbar spine modeling, which bridges engineering and medicine, creating a virtual, patient-specific model of the lower back. This technology simulates how the spine ...

A researcher at the Hackensack Meridian Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI) and physician-scientist colleagues from Hackensack Meridian Health have shown how a critical pathway is fundamental to the immune system. The results by Hai-Hui “Howard” Xue, Ph.D., and colleagues are published in the latest edition of Science Immunology - and could have implications in cancer immunotherapy and vaccine developments for years to come. Establishing cellular immunity depends on the thymus, a lymph gland located in front of the heart. This gland produces and exports T cells, a workhorse white blood cell, ...

Embargoed until 7 a.m. CT/8 a.m. ET, Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025 DALLAS, Sept. 17, 2025 — Barbara Riegel, Ph.D., R.N., FAHA, Emerita Edith Clemmer Steinbright Professor of Gerontology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, will receive the American Heart Association’s 2025 Clinical Research Prize at the Association’s Scientific Sessions 2025. The meeting, to be held Nov. 7-10, 2025, in New Orleans is a premier global exchange of the latest scientific advancements, research and evidence-based clinical practice ...

Because lithium is relatively scarce and sodium is abundant in Earth’s crust, sodium-ion batteries are being investigated as viable cost-effective alternatives to the widely used lithium-ion batteries. In these batteries, the choice of cathode material primarily influences battery capacity and stability. Layered sodium manganese oxides (Na2/3MnO2) have attracted significant attention in recent years as cathode materials for high-capacity sodium-ion batteries without using any rare-earth metals. However, while these materials ...

Modern lifestyles and dietary changes have significantly increased the consumption of high-fat foods, contributing to a steep rise in the prevalence of obesity, diabetes, and metabolic disorders. Furthermore, a high-fat diet (HFD) is linked to cognitive impairments and neurodegeneration and has been shown to worsen the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease—a progressive neurodegenerative condition—in mouse models. Yet, the underlying mechanisms remain largely elusive. Autophagy, a crucial cellular recycling process, helps maintain neuronal health. Recent studies have shown that impaired autophagy contributes to neurodegeneration and cognitive decline. But is autophagy linked ...

LOS ANGELES — Keck Hospital of USC has been named a top performer in Vizient Inc.’s 2025 Bernard A. Birnbaum, MD, Quality Leadership award, recognizing the hospital’s excellence in delivering high-quality care. This is the third year in a row the hospital has been named a top performer, the highest possible recognition. Keck Hospital ranked 12th out of 118 comprehensive academic medical centers nationwide. “Keck Hospital puts quality care above all else, and being recognized as a top performer validates the hospital’s mission to deliver ...

Tulane University researchers have developed an enhanced CRISPR-based tuberculosis test that works with a simple tongue swab, a potential breakthrough that could allow easier, community-based screenings for the world’s deadliest infectious disease. Current TB tests rely on sputum, mucus collected from the lungs and lower respiratory system. While rich in TB bacteria required for testing, collecting sputum is difficult, making it inefficient for large-scale community testing. Sputum testing is also unfeasible in about 25% of symptomatic cases and nearly 90% of asymptomatic cases, a gap which contributes to an estimated 4 million tuberculosis cases going undiagnosed ...

Study participants wore a necklace, wristband and body camera to capture real-world eating behaviors Seeing overeating patterns in the data ‘felt like turning on a light in a room we've all been stumbling through for decades’ Findings lay groundwork for personalized overeating interventions that feel ‘less like a prescription and more like a partnership’ CHICAGO --- What if your smart watch could sense when you're about to raid the fridge, and gently steer you toward a healthier choice instead? Northwestern University scientists are bringing that vision closer to reality with a groundbreaking lifestyle medicine program that uses three wearable ...

Plastic pollution represents a global environmental challenge, and once in the environment plastic can fragment into smaller and smaller pieces. A new study shows for the first time that some of the tiniest particles found in the environment can be absorbed into the edible sections of crops during the growing process. The research used radishes to demonstrate, for the first time, that nanoplastics – some measuring as little as one millionth of a centimetre in diameter – can enter the roots, before spreading and accumulating into the edible parts of the plant. The researchers say the findings reveal another potential pathway for humans and animals to unintentionally consume ...

A new artificial intelligence model found previously undetected signals in routine heart tests that strongly predict which patients will suffer potentially deadly complications after surgery. The model significantly outperformed risk scores currently relied upon by doctors. The federally-funded work by Johns Hopkins University researchers, which turns standard and inexpensive test results into a potentially life-saving tool, could transform decision-making and risk calculation for both patients and surgeons. “We ...

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London have developed and validated a new tool that could help GPs detect ovarian cancer earlier and improve patient outcomes cost-effectively.   Ovatools combines results from a standard blood test which measures the levels of a protein Cancer Antigen 125 (CA125) with a woman’s age, to provide a personalised risk score for ovarian cancer. Two new studies, funded by Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), analysed data from over 340,000 women across England. They show that this approach is accurate, especially for women aged over 50 and represents good value ...

GLP-1 receptor agonists like Ozempic can be a lifeline for people with diabetes — helping stabilize blood glucose and lose weight which contributes to diabetes complications. But not everyone benefits equally. Scientists monitoring 92 individuals with diabetes in Japan over their first year of taking GLP-1 drugs found that people’s reasons for overeating may affect the success of these therapies. Individuals who overeat in response to the sight or smell of tasty food were most likely to respond well to the drugs in the long term, whereas individuals who overeat for emotional reasons ...

PHILADELPHIA – Today, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) released the 15th edition of its annual Cancer Progress Report. A cornerstone of the AACR’s educational and advocacy efforts, this comprehensive report provides the latest statistics on cancer incidence, mortality, and survivorship and highlights how federal investments in basic, translational, and clinical cancer research and cancer-related population sciences have led to impressive scientific advances that are improving health and saving lives. The AACR Cancer Progress Report 2025 features a special section that explains how advances in understanding blood cancers over the past decade have contributed ...

Kyoto, Japan -- Online platforms promise connection, yet the social comparison, digital surveillance, and public criticism they foster can also heighten emotional instability. Recently, these platforms have even intensified global challenges by fueling misinformation-driven unrest and deepening emotional divides. These dynamics have been linked to rising levels of distress, fear, and trauma, often shaped by collective outrage and transient narratives. While current psychiatry offers various approaches to address individual distress, the field remains relatively under-equipped to understand ...

A team of researchers, led by the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute), explored the cellular and molecular interactions revealing how lymph nodes play a crucial role in the fight against chronic infection and cancer. The research, published across two papers in Nature Immunology, showed that lymph nodes provide the right environment for stem-like T cells, an important type of immune cell, to survive, multiply and produce killer cells that can fight cancer or viruses. In other immune organs, such as the spleen, these cells don’t develop ...

In a world first, researchers at Nagoya University in Japan have successfully developed a resonant tunnel diode (RTD) that operates at room temperature made entirely from Group IV semiconductor materials. The development of an RTD that operates at room temperature means the device could be deployed at scale for next-generation wireless communication systems. The use of only non-toxic Group IV semiconductor materials also supports more sustainable manufacturing processes. This research marks a pivotal step toward terahertz wireless components that deliver unprecedented speed and data handling capacity with superior energy efficiency. “Compared ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — With CO2 emissions continuing unabated, an increasing number of policymakers, scientists and environmentalists are considering geoengineering to avert a climate catastrophe. Such interventions could influence everything from rainfall to global food supplies, making the stakes enormous. In brief, manipulating other aspects of Earth’s climate system might reduce some effects of climate change. But the wondrous complexity of our planet complicates every one of these proposals. Climate scientists at UC Santa Barbara analyzed two approaches ...

Australian researchers have discovered that sleepy lizards (Tiliqua rugosus) can recognise the smell of smoke as a sign of approaching fire and attempt to escape, but they do not respond to the sound of fire. The study, published this month in Biology Letters, provides the first empirical test of an amusing anecdote: when zookeepers at a US zoo burnt their lunch, they noticed they were not alone in smelling the acrid smoke. Captive sleepy lizards became agitated by the smell wafting through the building, while other reptiles remained calm. Despite being mostly captive-bred, the lizards tongue-flicked, paced, and tried to escape—behaviour researchers now show ...

(Paris, France, Wednesday, 17 September 2025) A new international study presented today at the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (EADV) Congress 2025 reveals that adults with atopic eczema (AE) are significantly more likely to experience suicidal thoughts, with researchers uncovering the key factors driving this elevated risk.1 As one of the largest global investigations to examine the link between AE and suicidal ideation, the “Scars of Life” study surveyed 30,801 adults across 27 countries in 2024. Among ...

Maintaining weight loss with regular exercise rather than the glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA) liraglutide, a drug used to treat type 2 diabetes and obesity, seems to reduce atherosclerosis development in adults with obesity—a leading underlying cause of cardiovascular disease. The study of adults with obesity but not diabetes is by researchers from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and is presented at this year’s Annual Meeting of The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), Vienna ...