New York, NY [August 28, 2025]—When genetic testing reveals a rare DNA mutation, doctors and patients are frequently left in the dark about what it actually means. Now, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have developed a powerful new way to determine whether a patient with a mutation is likely to actually develop disease, a concept known in genetics as penetrance. The team set out to solve this problem using artificial intelligence (AI) and routine lab tests like cholesterol, blood counts, and kidney function. Details of the findings were reported ...

On Aug. 28, scientists from Washington and Lee University, the National Park Service and the University of Wyoming published research in Science magazine shedding new light on the value of bison recovery efforts in Yellowstone National Park. Bill Hamilton, John T. Perry Jr. Professor in Research Science at Washington and Lee University, and Chris Geremia, a researcher with the National Park Service at Yellowstone, served as co-first authors, with co-author Jerod Merkle, associate professor and Knobloch Professor in Migration Ecology and Conservation at the University of Wyoming. While momentum is building to restore bison ...

Mars’s interior more like Rocky Road than Millionaire’s Shortbread, scientists find New research published in the journal Science reveals the Red Planet’s mantle preserves a record of its violent beginnings. The inside of Mars isn’t smooth and uniform like familiar textbook illustrations. Instead, new research reveals it’s chunky - more like a Rocky Road brownie than a neat slice of Millionaire’s Shortbread. We often picture rocky planets like Earth and Mars as having smooth, layered interiors - with crust, mantle, and core stacked like the biscuit base, caramel middle, and chocolate topping of a millionaire’s shortbread. But the ...

For decades, the Tijuana River has carried millions of gallons of untreated sewage and industrial waste across the U.S.-Mexico border. The river passes through San Diego’s South Bay region before emptying into the ocean, recently leading to more than 1,300 consecutive days of beach closures and water quality concerns. Residents of South Bay communities have long voiced concerns about the foul smells emanating from the river, reporting health issues including eye, nose and throat irritation, respiratory issues, fatigue ...

In a first-of-its-kind experiment, engineers at the University of Pennsylvania brought quantum networking out of the lab and onto commercial fiber-optic cables using the same Internet Protocol (IP) that powers today’s web. Reported in Science, the work shows that fragile quantum signals can run on the same infrastructure that carries everyday online traffic. The team tested their approach on Verizon’s campus fiber-optic network. The Penn team’s tiny “Q-chip” coordinates quantum and classical data ...

New research finds the human brain has a built-in pain map that activates in different areas when relieving face, arm or leg pain. But placebo pain relief only works where the brain expects it. Further research may help to unlock safer, targeted pain treatments.   Researchers from the University of Sydney have used placebo pain relief to uncover a map-like system in the brainstem that controls pain differently depending on where it’s felt in the body. The findings may pave the way for safer, more targeted treatments for chronic pain that don’t rely on opioids.    Like a highway, the brainstem connects the brain to the spinal cord and manages all signals ...

MIT researchers have developed a technique that enables real-time, 3D monitoring of corrosion, cracking, and other material failure processes inside a nuclear reactor environment.  This could allow engineers and scientists to design safer nuclear reactors that also deliver higher performance for applications like electricity generation and naval vessel propulsion.  During their experiments, the researchers utilized extremely powerful X-rays to mimic the behavior of neutrons interacting with a material inside a nuclear reactor.  They found that adding a buffer layer of silicon dioxide between the material and ...

BATON ROUGE, La – Metabolic health before and during pregnancy may have a bigger influence on risks for mother and baby than simply controlling weight gain. Data from a recent paper by Pennington Biomedical researchers indicates that pregnant women with metabolically unhealthy obesity were more likely to develop gestational diabetes than those who were metabolically healthy. The paper, “Metabolic Health and Heterogenous Outcomes of Prenatal Interventions: A Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Clinical Trial,” was published in the Journal of American ...

UC San Diego Health is the first health system in the world to perform an anterior cervical spine surgery using a fully personalized implant designed for a patient’s unique anatomy.  The first surgery, performed in July 2025, was an anterior cervical procedure, which involves making an incision in the front (anterior) of the neck, removing a damaged disc, and fusing the adjacent vertebrae together.  The procedure includes a standard artificial disc, placed in the space where a damaged disc has been removed. Traditional implants are one-size-fits-all, which ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Quantum Research Sciences (QRS), a leading Indiana-based software  company, has been awarded a U.S. Air Force contract to develop an artificial intelligence-driven platform called ACID-R, or Automated Commercial Industry Data-Repository. The platform is designed to help the Air Force efficiently identify and leverage needed technologies from the private sector. It harnesses AI without the risk of hallucination, or AI-fabricated false information, to quickly deliver details on commercial, ...

Nearly 20 years ago, a man named Timothy Ray Brown who was living with HIV and cancer, underwent two courses of stem cell transplantation to treat his acute myeloid leukemia. By using donor cells that lacked a key molecule needed for HIV to enter and infect immune cells, the procedures not only led to remission of his cancer, but also cured him of HIV. Now, a scientific team co-led by Dr. Lishomwa Ndhlovu at Weill Cornell Medicine and Dr. Jonah Sacha at Oregon Health & Science University have received an NIH MERIT Award to ...

Over the past 50 years, rates of obesity and type-2 diabetes have soared, while sperm quality has plummeted. Driving these changes could be the increasing popularity of ultra-processed foods, which have been linked to a range of poor health outcomes. However, scientists still aren’t sure whether it’s the industrial nature of the ingredients themselves, the processing of the foods, or whether it’s because they lead people to eat more than they should. An international team of scientists has now discovered that people gain more weight on an ultra-processed diet compared to a minimally processed diet, even when they eat the same number of calories. ...

Brazilian researchers have developed a ceramic clay that is lighter than that normally used in civil construction by adding algae from the Sargassum genus to the manufacturing process. These brown algae, also known as sargassum, are common in the central Atlantic Ocean. However, they have been washing up in large quantities on beaches in the Caribbean, the United States, and northern Brazil, where they have become problematic. Their accumulation on beaches can harm human health due to the gases emitted during decomposition, as well as damage tourism, fishing, ...

URBANA, Ill. — Many modern cancer treatments are highly effective at reducing or eliminating tumors, but they can also cause severe gastrointestinal symptoms that impact patients’ quality of life or lead to discontinuation of treatment. A new analysis from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers reveals the nutrition therapies that are most effective at minimizing GI distress.  “Understandably, there’s a major focus on eliminating the tumor, but alleviating symptoms that impact the continuation of treatment and helping the ...

Chicago, August 28, 2025 — Barbara Casadei, M.D., D.Phil., FRCP, FMedSci, FESC, Head of the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI) and British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at Imperial College London has been appointed as the next Editor in Chief of JAMA Cardiology. Dr. Casadei will assume the role of editor in chief of JAMA Cardiology in early 2026.  Dr. Casadei will succeed Robert Bonow, MD, MS, who is the founding editor in chief of JAMA Cardiology and the Max and Lilly Goldberg Distinguished Professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.   With extensive experience in cardiovascular research, Dr. Casadei leads ...

DETROIT — Researchers at Wayne State University are pursuing new therapies for treating chemical injuries to the eyes with the help of a two-year, $400,400 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). Dr. Sukhvinder Singh, a research scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Ashok Kumar, professor of ophthalmology, visual and anatomical sciences at Wayne State University’s School of Medicine, has been awarded the grant, “Harnessing Immunometabolism to Ameliorate the Pathology of Ocular Chemical Injuries,” to support innovative studies into developing novel therapies ...

Researchers have reported results from the first-ever clinical trial of a new class of targeted therapy in pet cats with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC)—a cancer which is notoriously deadly and difficult to treat. Publishing in the Cell Press journal Cancer Cell on August 28, the study found that 35% of the cats who received treatment had their disease controlled with minimal side effects—and the drug will likely be effective for humans with HNSCC as well.  “There are two major findings from this study,” says senior author Daniel Johnson of the University of California, San Francisco Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. “It showed ...

Traumatic injuries of the central nervous system (CNS)—such as traumatic brain injury (TBI) and traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI)—are characterized by oxidative damage and neuroinflammation. Current treatment relies mainly on supportive care and surgical intervention, with a lack of effective drugs to directly target the underlying damage. For example, neural stem cell (NSC)-based therapy has shown therapeutic potential, but pathological microenvironments negatively impact NSC survival and directed differentiation, compromising therapeutic outcomes. Similarly, antioxidant treatment ...

About The Study: In this retrospective cohort study, modest amounts of medical debt in collections persisted for years after cancer diagnosis. Total debt in collections was present at higher amounts for certain cancer subpopulations. The persistence of adverse financial outcomes after cancer diagnosis, despite high rates of insurance coverage in Massachusetts, warrants further research and consideration of broader systemic reforms. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Benjamin C. James, MD, MS, email bjames1@bidmc.harvard.edu. To ...

About The Study: This cohort study found that glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA) prescriptions were associated with a lower risk of uveitis compared with controls. These findings suggest potential anti-inflammatory benefits beyond glycemic control, warranting further investigation into their role in ocular inflammatory diseases. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Sumit Sharma, MD, email sumitsharma.md@gmail.com. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2025.2822) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional ...

AURORA, Colo. (August 28, 2025) – A new study from University of Colorado Anschutz and Denver Health researchers, published today in JAMA Network Open, introduces a more individualized approach to restarting methadone treatment for people with opioid use disorder. The findings suggest that tailoring methadone doses to each patient’s unique circumstances can improve care without compromising safety. Methadone is a proven medication that can cut the risk of death from opioid use disorder by about 50%. The researchers considered that current treatment protocols ...

“Burnout is highly prevalent among oncology healthcare professionals in Morocco, particularly among young female nurses.” BUFFALO, NY — August 28, 2025 — A new research paper was published in Volume 12 of Oncoscience on July 31, 2025, titled “Burnout among oncology nurses and technicians in Morocco: Prevalence, risk factors, and structural equation modeling.” In this study, Imane Errami, Saber Boutayeb, and Hassan Errihani from the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy at University Mohammed V of Rabat investigated ...

WASHINGTON—People who skip breakfast and eat late dinners may have an increased risk of developing osteoporosis, according to a new study published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society. Lifestyle habits, such as exercise, alcohol consumption and smoking, are known to increase people’s risk of osteoporosis, however little is known about the association between osteoporotic fracture and diet. “This study aimed to examine the association between lifestyle habits such as diet, and the risk of osteoporotic fracture,” ...

Pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough, is a vaccine-preventable disease which continues to circulate even in areas where vaccination coverage is high, and outbreaks may still occur. A study published in Eurosurveillance and conducted at Meyer Children’s Hospital in Florence, Italy, has found a sharp increase in hospitalisations for pertussis among children and adolescents (patients aged 16 years or under) in 2024. The findings highlight the critical role of not only adhering to vaccination schedules but also administering doses at the earliest opportunity to ensure a further reduction in cases and hospitalisations ...

In a world where the demand for healthier diets is on the rise, a new review published in Engineering explores how innovative food processing technologies can enhance the utilization of nutrients in staple food crops. The study, titled "Innovative Food Processing Technologies Promoting Efficient Utilization of Nutrients in Staple Food Crops," delves into the challenges of traditional food processing methods and highlights the potential of modern techniques to improve nutritional profiles ...