Aleksey Maro knows far more than he cares to know about the urination habits of chimpanzees. But if you want to measure the alcohol intake of chimps in a Ugandan rain forest, where a breathalyzer is impractical, collecting urine for analysis is your only choice. Last year, Maro and adviser Robert Dudley, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology, documented that the fruits chimps eat in the wild contain enough alcohol from fermentation to provide around 14 grams per day — the equivalent of two standard drinks. But the proof is in the urine. To perfect his urine sampling techniques, Maro, a UC Berkeley graduate student, worked alongside Sharifah ...

SAN ANTONIO, Feb. 24, 2026 – Positioning The University of Texas at San Antonio as a national anchor for aging and longevity science, its Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies will receive up to $38 million in federal funding for the first nationwide clinical study in healthy longevity. The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, announced the contract to the Barshop Institute at UT Health San Antonio, the academic health center of UT San Antonio, cementing its standing as the nation’s leading authority in longevity science. The first-of-its-kind study will evaluate ...

A reserach team led by Professor Huang Zhang at Harbin University of Science and Technology recently made significant progress in the research of zinc-iodine aqueous batteries. They proposed an electrolyte additive strategy based on tetramethylammonium iodide (TMAI), which, through the synergistic effect of anions (I-) and cations (TMA+), simultaneously solved three core challenges in zinc-iodine batteries: sluggish iodine reaction kinetics, polyiodide shuttle effect, and zinc dendrite growth. This research not only achieved ...

An international team of archaeologists and scientists has reconstructed the diets of prehistoric communities from north-central Poland, shedding new light on how people adapted to changing environments and shifting social landscapes over three millennia between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. The researchers analysed human remains from 60 individuals, dated between around 4100 and 1230 BC. This long timespan encompassed key periods of Central European prehistory, including the arrival of groups with steppe ancestry from the East and the first widespread use of millet in the region. Archaeological traces of these societies are often scarce: their lightly built ...

Pre-pregnancy parental overweight and obesity is linked to the next generation’s heightened risk of developing fatty liver disease, a potential precursor to cirrhosis and liver failure, suggests research published online in the journal Gut.   If both parents are overweight or obese before they conceive, that child’s subsequent odds of developing MASLD by the age of 24 are more than 3 times higher, most of which is influenced by cumulative excess weight (BMI) during childhood, the findings indicate.   Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, recently renamed metabolic dysfunction associated steatotic liver disease, or MASLD ...

Untreated obstructive sleep apnoea may be costing the UK and US economies billions of pounds/dollars in lost productivity every year, with a considerable proportion of working age adults experiencing symptoms indicative of the breathing disorder, suggests an analysis published online in the journal Thorax.   Around 1 in 5 adults in both countries may have obstructive sleep apnoea, the analysis suggests. And the time has now come to trial workplace screening in those most at risk of harm from the daytime sleepiness associated ...

Researchers at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), working with international collaborators and youth and family caregivers, have developed a child- and youth-centred global standard for reporting paediatric randomized controlled trials (RCTs) protocols and final reports. Co-published today in The BMJ, JAMA Pediatrics and The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, the SPIRIT-Children and Adolescents (SPIRIT-C) 2026 and CONSORT-Children and Adolescents (CONSORT-C) 2026 guidelines introduce new recommendations to improve ...

A new study published in the journal Addiction shows that cannabis use among Swedish adolescents appears to follow the same population-level pattern previously observed for alcohol. The findings suggest that changes in average cannabis use among young people are reflected across the entire group—from those who use infrequently to those who use frequently. The study is based on extensive data from the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs’ (CAN) national school surveys and includes more than 250,000 students aged 15-18 years (in grade ...

A key goal in ageing research is not just to extend life, but to ensure more people live longer and healthier lives with less variation in age-at-death; a concept known as “squaring the survival curve.” Using a recent meta-analysis, Dr Tahlia Fulton and Associate Professor Alistair Senior from the University of Sydney School of Life and Environmental Sciences re-examined how dietary restriction and two related drugs, rapamycin and metformin, affect variation in age-at-death in vertebrates. While two of the treatments increased average lifespan, all three increased variance. This means current lifespan-extending interventions do not "square ...

Since their so-called “Golden Age” in the 1940s, comics have often been treated as a universal visual language: stories told in panels and speech bubbles that function much the same wherever they appear. Now, a new volume of comics studies is challenging that assumption. Comics and the Global South brings together work from Latin America, Africa, Asia and beyond to argue that comics from these regions need to be read on their own cultural terms. Doing so, the book suggests, will unsettle long-held ...

By Leah Shaffer Natural muscle fibers are made up of spring-like proteins that can contract and stretch without losing their original form, dissipate mechanical energy as heat and maintain incredible tensile strength for all sorts of physical functions. Engineers at Washington University in St. Louis have replicated these proteins using synthetic biology approaches to create a new category of biomaterials for use in medicine, textiles and agriculture. “Many muscle proteins share similar immunoglobulin-like structures while bearing diverse amino acid sequences. These natural materials provide great ...

Wildfires have increased in frequency and severity over the past few decades. More fires are burning at the wildland-urban interface (WUI), where homes and other buildings meet the natural landscape — but our understanding of emissions from structure fires is still growing. New research led by the University of Colorado Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) shows that common synthetic materials used in homes, like plastics and insulation, can release harmful compounds into the air when they burn.  But synthetic materials make up only a small fraction of a home. Timber and wood ...

How do evolutionarily conserved pathogen effectors maintain structural stability while engaging diverse host targets? In a new study published in Molecular Plant Microbe Interactions® (MPMI), researchers at the University of Pretoria’s Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI) define a conserved subset of Phytophthora RxLR effectors in which short linear motifs (SLiMs) are embedded within folded WY domain cores. Phytophthora species rank among the world’s most destructive plant pathogens, causing ...

Scientists share their work by publishing articles in journals, such as Nature, Science or PLOS Biology. One major part of the publishing process involves having these manuscripts reviewed by unpaid peers. These scientists specialize in the same topic and volunteer to make sure the science is sound and the authors haven't missed anything critical in their data analysis. The peer review process has reached a critical point where there are too many manuscript submissions and not enough peer reviewers. Carl Bergstrom, University of Washington professor of biology, and ...

Depending on others for something you need may feel like a risky proposition—and perhaps a human one. It is actually a survival strategy found in the microbial world, and far more frequently than one might expect. Discovering why is key to understanding how microbes form stable communities across medical, industrial, and ecological settings. A new study by bioengineering professor Sergei Maslov, computational scientist Ashish George, and biology professor Tong Wang explores why interdependence can be such a winning move for microbial communities. Their work, published this week in Cell Systems , demonstrated ...

ORANGE, Calif. — Feb. 24, 2026 — A new peer-reviewed study led Dr. Hesham El-Askary, Ph.D., professor of computational and data science at Chapman University, concludes that the saddle dam of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam shows significant vulnerabilities that if breached could threaten downstream communities, property, and infrastructure if urgent monitoring and mitigation steps are not taken.  The study integrates satellite data, hydrological modeling, and advanced geospatial analysis to identify several warning ...

By Maddy Frank Love is in the air for the vinegar fly. Drosophila melanogaster has long been a model for understanding how brains translate sensory information into courtship behavior. Male flies perform a multitude of romantic actions — orienting, tapping, chasing and singing — directed toward eligible females. While researchers know that things like pheromones and sound play essential roles in these rituals, the influence of vision has been thought to be fairly simple in comparison: spot the female, track her and follow. A study published in February in G3 from Yehuda Ben-Shahar, a professor of biology in Art & Sciences ...

February 24, 2026— Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health has received an award as part of the PROactive Solutions for Prolonging Resilience (PROSPR) program within the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to accelerate research on the biological hallmarks of aging. The project led by Daniel Belsky, PhD, associate professor of Epidemiology, will help identify interventions that can extend healthy years of life in humans. While ...

Research shows nighttime drops in oxygen force fish to use more energy and could affect the health of entire reef ecosystems Abu Dhabi, UAE: A new study from NYU Abu Dhabi has found that small coral reef fish in the Arabian Gulf are facing a hidden but growing source of stress. When oxygen levels drop at night, a common occurrence on some of the world’s hottest reefs, these fish must use extra energy just to recover the next day. Over time, this additional strain could impact their growth, survival, and the overall balance of reef ecosystems. The research shows that even short nighttime drops in oxygen force the Gulf blenny, ...

Key points The COVID-19 pandemic had an immediate effect on how educators at museums and science centers interacted with their audiences. Many began offering online programming for the first time while simultaneously grappling with budget shortfalls, staff layoffs and low morale. Two inquiry-based studies had previously tracked the application of distance learning in museums. In a third study, recently published in the Quarterly Review of Distance Education, researchers assess the state of online museum programming three years after the pandemic’s onset to find out what worked ...

Beaver dams are critical to river health and a source of biodiversity. They create wetlands, slow water and improve water quality. They also reduce flood peaks and delay runoff. But beaver dams are often blamed when extreme rainstorms cause flooding — especially when they fail. This blame had serious consequences following the extraordinary rainstorms that hit Quebec’s Charlevoix region in 2005 and 2011 in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Irene. Flooding along the Port-au-Persil watershed caused considerable damage to a riverside inn downstream, leading its owners to successfully sue the Charlevoix-Est Regional County ...

Simon Fraser University researchers have uncovered concerning fibreglass contamination in a key estuary on Vancouver Island, raising concerns about how an as-yet overlooked contaminant could affect aquatic birds, marine life and coastal communities that rely on shellfish and seafood. A new SFU study found fibreglass particles buried in the sediment and biofilm layers of the Cowichan Estuary, a 400-hectare intertidal ecosystem used by the Cowichan Tribes First Nations for generations. The areas is an internationally designated important bird area ...

A new study published in Ecological and Evolutionary Physiology reveals a surprising link between cellular aging markers and survival in black-legged kittiwakes (members of the gull family). In “Who’s coming home? Shorter early-life telomeres predict return to the natal colony in an Arctic seabird” authors Jingqi Corey Liu, Olivier Chastel, Christophe Barbraud, Claus Bech, Pierre Blévin, Paco Bustamante, Børge Moe, Elin Noreen, and Frédéric Angelier found that kittiwake chicks with shorter telomeres were more likely to return to their birthplace as adults, contradicting predictions that longer telomeres would indicate better ...

Biologists have long wondered why caribou are the only deer in the world in which females, like males, have antlers. A study of shed antlers collected from calving grounds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge provides a new answer. Calving grounds are areas where migratory females give birth every year and also where they shed their antlers. Researchers at the University of Cincinnati found evidence that caribou, particularly moms with newborns, gnaw on antlers that were shed years earlier to supplement their diets with crucial minerals. The study ...

A new study sheds light on the behavior of yeast cells in the gut, paving the way for new lines of yeast that more efficiently produce therapeutic drugs tailored to address specific diseases. “Yeast is promising as a drug-delivery platform,” says Nathan Crook, corresponding author of the study and an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University. “Previous work has shown that yeast cells can be modified to produce specific molecules in the gut, such as therapeutics that ...