Cells on the inner surface of the intestine are replaced every few days. But, how does this work? It was always assumed that cells leave the intestinal surface because excess cells are pushed out. In a recent publication in the journal Science, researchers of the Hubrecht Institute and AMOLF show that this is not correct. In reality, the situation is exactly the opposite: the cells do not push, but pull at each other. These pulling forces lead to the removal of the weakest cells. This insight gives a new perspective on how a malfunctioning intestine can lead to disease or infection. Pulling rather than pushing The general idea was as follows: old and malfunctioning ...

Researchers led by Ken Shirasu at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS) in Japan have identified an ancient protein that has the potential to help defend plants against tens of thousands of different bacteria and other pathogens. Dubbed “SCORE”, this receptor detects cold-shock protein—variations of which are found in more than 85% of known bacteria, as well as fungi and insects. Experiments published Sep 4 in Science revealed that simply swapping out key sections of SCORE with substitutes can predictably change the type of cold-shock protein, and thus pathogen, it recognizes. This strategy could be used engineer synthetic ...

The humble rodent “thumb” may not seem like an obvious window into evolution, but its keratinized tip – the unguis (hoof, claw, or nail) – turns out to reveal striking insights into rodent history and adaptation, according to a new study. The findings suggest that rodents owe much of their evolutionary success to their thumb-nail (the first digit, D1), an adaptation that gave them dexterous hands for cracking seeds and nuts. The tetrapod (four-limbed vertebrate) hand is a crucial structure for interacting with the environment, and its digits show great evolutionary diversity in both form and function. Among them, the first ...

A new study in mice provides insights into why females in their reproductive years appear to be relatively protected from chronic kidney disease, a leading public health concern. The study reports that estrogen-regulated signaling promotes the regeneration of key filtration cells in female kidneys. The study also links pregnancy complications like preeclampsia to failures in this regenerative process. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) – which affects more than 10% of the global population – is a leading ...

LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, has been called the most precise ruler in the world for its ability to measure motions more than 10,000 times smaller than the width of a proton. By making these extremely precise measurements, the US National Science Foundation-funded LIGO, which consists of two facilities—one in Washington and one in Louisiana—can detect undulations in space-time called gravitational waves that roll outward from colliding cosmic bodies such as black holes. LIGO ushered in the field of gravitational-wave astronomy beginning in 2015 when it made the first-ever direct detection of ...

In a Policy Forum, Ben Belton and colleagues discuss the rapidly growing use of drone technology in agricultural applications and the important, yet understudied, benefits and trade-offs involved. “There are strong indications that drones can raise the efficiency and productivity of farming, improve worker safety, and enhance rural livelihoods, but these impacts have yet to be evaluated rigorously,” Belton et al. write. “Applied interdisciplinary research and corresponding policy responses are urgently needed to steer the global ...

Following injury from a heart attack, immune cells called neutrophils release a peptide that punctures stressed heart cells and destabilizes their electrical activity. This triggers life-threatening arrhythmias. These findings offer a novel explanation – and potential therapeutic target – for these deadly cardiac events. Ischemic heart disease – cardiac damage caused by narrowed coronary arteries – is among the leading causes of death worldwide. It can lead to heart attacks and sudden cardiac death. When a coronary ...

Scientists are using artificial intelligence to understand escalating unrest in Italy’s Campi Flegrei, a volcanic area that is home to hundreds of thousands of people. Like adjusting a camera lens so a blurry image becomes clear, the new approach makes it possible for researchers to identify earthquakes that previous tools could not pick out from massive sets of seismic monitoring data.  The research, a collaboration between Stanford University, Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) - Osservatorio Vesuviano, and ...

An international research team of photovoltaics scientists has taken a crucial step toward the industrialization of perovskite silicon tandem solar cells. They demonstrated that passivation of the perovskite top cell is possible in combination with textured silicon bottom cells featuring large pyramid size, which are the current industry standard for solar cells. Additionally, they discovered that the passivation affects the entire perovskite layer—unlike silicon, where surface treatment only influences the upper layers—leading to further efficiency improvements. The researchers from King Abdullah University of Science and ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — The seas have long sustained human life, but a new UC Santa Barbara study shows that rising climate and human pressures are pushing the oceans toward a dangerous threshold. Vast and powerful, the oceans can seem limitless in their abundance and impervious to disturbances. For millennia, humans have supported their lives, livelihoods and lifestyles with the ocean, relying on its diverse ecosystems for food and material, but also for recreation, business, wellness and tourism. Yet the future of our oceans is worrying, ...

Improving living conditions for Parkinson's patients, and diagnoses for patients suffering from inflammatory processes. The medical field is the common factor in these Politecnico di Milano research projects, which have been awarded two ERC (European Research Council) Starting Grants with a funding of 1.5 million each, for a duration of five years. The prestigious awards were won by researchers Emanuele Riva from the Department of Mechanical Engineering with the LUMEN project and Claudio Conci from the Department of Chemistry, Materials, and Chemical Engineering “Giulio Natta” with the ALFRED project. ...

Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, said: ‘Among the winners in this new round of EU funding are researchers of 51 nationalities. They will be advancing knowledge across a wide range of scientific fields, including cancer, mental health and quantum science. We see leading scientists coming to Europe with these new grants, and many choosing to remain here thanks to this support. This demonstrates Europe’s potential to attract and keep top scientific talent.’ ...

ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan, in collaboration with more than a dozen academic, governmental and community partners across the country, will launch the Center for Land Surface Hazards. CLaSH is a new center aimed at advancing research on the fundamental science processes that cause landsliding, river erosion, debris flows and flooding.       When hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes or other natural disasters tear through communities, the change they wreak upon the landscape can trigger other disastrous events such as landslides and flooding. But it has been difficult to predict how these events connect to ...

Hydrogels—materials like gelatin that can absorb and hold water—can aid wound healing and enable slow-release drug delivery, but they usually break down in acidic environments like the stomach. Inspired by the properties of gastric mucus, a team of researchers and clinicians led by Zuankai Wang of Hong Kong Polytechnic University have developed an acid-resistant hydrogel called “ultrastable mucus-inspired hydrogel” (UMIH). Publishing September 4 in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports Physical Science, ...

Researchers from University of California San Diego Sanford Stem Cell Institute have discovered that spaceflight accelerates the aging of human hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs), which are vital for blood and immune system health. In a study published in Cell Stem Cell, the team used automated artificial intelligence (AI)-driven stem cell-tracking nanobioreactor systems in four SpaceX Commercial Resupply Services missions to the International Space Station (ISS) to track stem cell changes in real time. The findings show that the cells lost some of their ability to make healthy new cells, became more prone to DNA damage and showed signs of faster aging ...

About The Study: In participants with moderate to severe generalized anxiety disorder, a single dose of MM120 (lysergide D-tartrate) produced a dose-dependent reduction in anxiety. Lysergide, or lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug. An oral pharmaceutical formulation of LSD is MM120. These results support the dose-dependent efficacy of MM120 and inform the dose selection for phase 3 pivotal trials. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Daniel R. Karlin, MD, MA, email medaffairs@mindmed.co. To ...

About The Study: In this study of short message service (SMS) vs human phone advising, a customizable SMS system produced significant 12-month walking increases for aging Latino/a adults comparable to the significant improvements attained by participants in the human advisors group. These results provide support for such mobile health platforms, which can expand program choices for broader segments of the population. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Abby C. King, PhD, email king@stanford.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.28858) Editor’s ...

First-year undergraduates who grew up with overly cautious or controlling parents tend to experience increased anxiety when faced with stresses associated with the transition to university, researchers from McGill University and the University of California (Los Angeles) have found. The researchers asked 240 first-year McGill students to fill out several questionnaires in the first six weeks of the fall semester. The questionnaires used well-established scales to measure the parenting style they were raised with, current anxiety symptoms and different types of stressors they encountered during the transition to university, including housing difficulties, personal loss ...

ANN ARBOR—Seagrass has the potential to be one of the world's most effective sponges at soaking up and storing carbon, but we don't yet know how nutrient pollution affects its ability to sequester carbon. In a pair of studies, U-M researchers evaluated the impact of nitrogen and phosphorus on seagrass, short, turf-like grasses that live in shallow, coastal areas. Examining data gathered from a plot of seagrass enriched with nutrients over a period of nine years, the scientists found that nutrients can increase seagrass's ability ...

For more information, contact: Nicole Fawcett, nfawcett@umich.edu     EMBARGOED for release at 10 a.m. ET Sept. 4, 2025     Study shows how smoking drives pancreatic cancer Researchers trace how chemicals from cigarettes and other environmental toxins lead to higher risk of pancreatic cancer and worse outcomes   ANN ARBOR, Michigan — A new study explains why smokers have a higher chance of developing pancreatic cancer and why they tend to have worse outcomes than nonsmokers.   Researchers from the University of Michigan ...

Osaka, Japan - The research group led by Drs. Mitsuru Arase, Mari Murakami, and Prof. Kiyoshi Takeda (Graduate School of Medicine/ Immunology Frontier Research Center at The University of Osaka) revealed that transcription factors RUNX2 and BHLHE40 play crucial roles in inducing T cells involved in Crohn's disease. Crohn's disease is an intractable disorder characterized by chronic inflammation in the digestive tract. Tissue-resident memory T cells (TRM), which persist in long-term in the ...

The Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) is a global network of scientists sequencing the genomes of Earth’s eukaryotes. They aim to create a digital library of DNA sequences to help us preserve and protect life on Earth, and tackle rapid environmental change and biodiversity loss.  Thanks to major technical advances, high-quality genomes can be produced 10 times faster and at significantly lower cost than before. Now, published in a Frontiers in Science lead article, the EBP Community of Scientists has revealed a refined strategy to scale up the sequencing of 150,000 ...

Canadian researchers show that stress modifies the morphology of brain cells in mice, directly influencing the rodents’ level of physical activity. Astrocytes in the lateral hypothalamus region of the brain, an area involved in the regulation of sleep and wakefulness, play a key role in neuron activity in mice and affect their behaviour, Canadian researchers have found. Led by Ciaran Murphy-Royal of Université de Montréal’s affiliated hospital research centre, the CRCHUM, the scientists detail their finding in a study published in Nature Communications. In ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — The University of Maryland will lead an eight-country research consortium to develop an artificial intelligence-powered early warning system to help communities prepare for and respond to diarrheal disease risks – and potentially other conditions – worsened by extreme weather events. Americans and people around the globe are grappling with increasing incidence of extreme weather, from flooding to droughts. Now, funded by a three-year, $1.9 million joint grant, the Awareness Against Health Threats of Extreme Weather Events (AWARE) project will unite University of Maryland researchers with partners from Nepal, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, ...

WASHINGTON – Sept. 4, 2025 – With so much confusion around what makes a grain food truly healthy, new research now offers a clearer picture: a combination of grain foods can support better nutrition and metabolic health when they deliver on nutrient density. A new study published in Nutrients, which analyzed the diets of more than 14,000 Americans over five years, found that both whole and refined grain foods play a role in improved diet quality, nutrient intake and everyday accessibility.   Conducted by researchers at the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington, the peer-reviewed study analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination ...