Irvine, Calif. — Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and other institutions have spotted a contradiction in worldwide wildfire trends: Despite a 26 percent decline in total burned area from 2002 to 2021, the number of people exposed to wildfires has surged by nearly 40 percent. The study, published today in Science, revealed another statistic that may come as a surprise to people who rely primarily on Western news sources: While high-profile wildfire disasters in the United States, Canada and Australia often dominate headlines, the researchers found that 85 percent of all human exposures to wildfires during that period occurred in ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A new study provides fresh evidence that ancient interbreeding with archaic human species may have provided modern humans with genetic variation that helped them adapt to new environments as they dispersed across the globe. The study, published in Science, focused on a gene known as MUC19, which is involved in the production of proteins that form saliva and mucosal barriers in the respiratory and digestive tracts. The researchers show that a variant of that gene derived from Denisovans, an enigmatic species of archaic humans, is present in modern Latin ...

New research, published today in the journal Science, shows how lysosomes — organelles that act like cells’ waste disposal system — respond to stress by becoming abnormally bloated, a process called lysosomal vacuolation that is associated with numerous diseases.   Essential for cellular health, well-functioning lysosomes are also linked with healthy aging, so better understanding of the steps involved in vacuolation could eventually inform new therapies to treat diseases or promote healthy aging, according to senior author Jay Xiaojun Tan, Ph.D., assistant ...

A new Stanford study challenges the decades-old view that the rise of land plants half a billion years ago dramatically changed the shapes of rivers.  Rivers generally come in two styles: braided, where multiple channels flow around sandy bars, and meandering, where a single channel cuts S-curves across a landscape. Geologists have long thought that before vegetation, rivers predominantly ran in braided patterns, only forming meandering shapes after plant life took root and stabilized riverbanks.  The new study, which will be published online by the journal Science on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025, suggests the theory that braided rivers ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — When a disease-causing virus or other organism is transmitted from one species to another, most of the time the infection sputters and dies out. On rare occasions, the infection can perpetuate transmission in the new host species and cause a pandemic. For example, scientists are keeping a close eye on H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza, which causes bird flu and has been found in cows and humans. But is there a way to anticipate when infections will die out on their own and when they will persist? New research, led by scientists at Penn State and the University of Minnesota Duluth, identified certain characteristics that could help predict whether ...

Polaritons are formed by the strong coupling of light and matter. When they mix together, all the matter is excited simultaneously – referred to as delocalization. This delocalization has the unique ability to relay energy between matter that is otherwise not possible. Disordered energy is ubiquitous in nature and the universe. Disordered energy is less organized and less available to do work, such as with heat dissipation. Even in plants, disorder can ruin effective energy transfer. In the context of polaritons,  as disorder increases, it can negatively affect light-matter ...

CONTACT:        San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance  Public Relations  619-685-3291  publicrelations@sdzwa.org  sdzwa.org  PHOTOS AND VIDEO: https://sandiegozoo.box.com/s/mu2h8bea811yx58oq11fs4q8l3binow8 SAN DIEGO (Aug. 21, 2025) – Endangered Pacific pocket mice, native to Southern California, were once thought to be extinct until a tiny remnant population was rediscovered in the mid-1990s. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance established a conservation breeding and reintroduction program to save the species from extinction. Though there has been significant success with breeding and reintroduction, the species is ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- A fast radio burst is an immense flash of radio emission that lasts for just a few milliseconds, during which it can momentarily outshine every other radio source in its galaxy. These flares can be so bright that their light can be seen from halfway across the universe, several billion light years away.  The sources of these brief and dazzling signals are unknown. But scientists now have a chance to study a fast radio burst (FRB) in unprecedented detail. An international team of scientists including physicists at MIT have detected a near and ultrabright fast ...

Professor L. Jay Guo’s group from the University of Michigan published a comprehensive review titled “30 years of nanoimprint: development, momentum and prospects” in the inaugural issue of Opto-Electronic Technology, systematically summarizing key developments and future trends in NIL, with a special focus on industry advancements in nano-Si device manufacturing and nanophotonics. The review elaborates extensively on two main NIL methods: thermal NIL (T-NIL) and UV NIL (UV-NIL), examining ...

The research group of Prof. Din Ping Tsai from City University of Hong Kong was invited to publish a review article titled “Progress in Metalenses: From Single to Array” in the first issue of Opto-Electronic Technology in 2025. The article provides a structured overview of recent developments in metalenses, with a focus on the gradual transition from single-device optimization to system-level integration based on increasing structural complexity. The article first reviews the long-standing challenges in metalens research, such as broadening the achromatic bandwidth and increasing the aperture size, and highlights representative studies and key breakthroughs in these areas. In ...

A new dataset, the Extensible Building Damage (EBD) dataset, offers significant improvements in disaster response mapping by combining satellite imagery and deep learning techniques. This dataset, covering 12 natural disasters, uses semi-supervised fine-tuning (SS-FT) to reduce the time and effort traditionally required for manual damage labeling, speeding up disaster recovery efforts globally. Building damage assessments (BDA) are crucial for post-disaster recovery, as they help in identifying areas most in need of urgent assistance. However, current BDA methods suffer from slow dataset development, largely ...

Space-based solar panels could enable solar power to be harvested continuously instead of only when sunlight reaches Earth, reducing Europe’s need for Earth-based wind and solar by 80%, finds a study publishing August 21 in the Cell Press journal Joule. Using energy models, researchers estimate that in 2050, space-based solar power could cut the total costs of Europe’s total grid system by 7%–15%. However, these numbers hinge upon the rapid development of two NASA-designed technologies in order to meet Europe’s goal to achieve net-zero by 2050.   “In space, you potentially have the ability to position solar panels to always face ...

A new study led by Mass General Brigham researchers reveals that ambient documentation technologies – generative artificial intelligence scribes that record patient visits and draft clinical notes for physician review before incorporating into electronic health records – led to significant reductions in physician burnout. The findings, published in JAMA Network Open, draw on surveys of more than 1,400 physicians and advanced practice providers at both Mass General Brigham based and Atlanta’s ...

Space-based solar power has the potential to reduce Europe’s need for land-based renewable energy by up to 80% - a potential game-changer for reaching net-zero by 2050. For the first time, researchers from King’s College London have assessed the possible impact that generating solar energy in space could have for Europe. They found it could cut energy battery storage needs by more than two-thirds. The study, published in Joule, analysed the potential of a design by NASA for solar generation, ...

For much of the 20th century it was thought that the adult brain was incapable of regeneration. This view has since shifted dramatically and neurogenesis – the birth of new neurons – is now a widely accepted phenomenon in the adult brain, offering promising avenues for treating many neurological conditions. One of the main challenges in the field has been identifying neural stem and progenitor cells (NPCs) responsible for generating these new neurons. NPCs are rare, diverse and difficult to isolate from other brain cells due to overlapping molecular signatures. As a result, understanding their biology – and particularly their role in human brain disorders – ...

About The Study: This retrospective cohort study found that taking glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) was associated with a reduced overall risk of cancer, including lower risks of endometrial, ovarian, and meningioma cancers, among patients with obesity or overweight. However, taking GLP-1RAs may be associated with an increased risk of kidney cancer, highlighting the need for longer-term follow-up to clarify the underlying mechanisms and clinical implications of these findings. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, ...

About The Study: In this secondary analysis of a randomized clinical trial, a telephone-based weight loss intervention induced significant weight loss in patients with breast cancer with overweight and obesity across demographic and treatment factors. Further follow-up of the Breast Cancer Weight Loss trial will evaluate whether the weight loss intervention improves disease outcomes. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Jennifer A. Ligibel, MD, email jennifer_ligibel@dfci.harvard.edu. To access the embargoed ...

Researchers developed the first genome-wide CRISPR screening tool for primary human natural killer (NK) cells Study revealed critical regulators of NK cell activity that can be targeted to improve chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) NK cell therapies Findings open new avenues for developing more effective CAR NK cell therapies for many cancers HOUSTON, AUGUST 21, 2025 ― Natural killer (NK) cells became markedly better at killing cancer cells after scientists removed key gene targets identified through a new genome-wide CRISPR screening tool, according to new research from The University of Texas MD Anderson ...

A recent study published in Current Pharmaceutical Analysis introduces a robust and validated reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) method for the analysis of orlistat, a widely used anti-obesity drug. The method, developed by researchers from KIET School of Pharmacy in India, ensures accurate quantification and is fully compliant with International Council for Harmonisation (ICH) guidelines. The research team, led by Kandasamy Nagarajan, optimized the chromatographic conditions to achieve high sensitivity and precision. "Our method uses an XBridge C8 column and acetonitrile as the mobile phase, providing sharp peaks ...

From virtual counselors that can hear depression creeping into a person’s voice to smart watches that can detect stress, artificial intelligence is poised to revolutionize mental health care for patients with breast cancer. In a new paper, UVA Cancer Center’s J. Kim Penberthy, PhD, and colleagues detail the many ways artificial intelligence could help ensure patients receive the support they need. AI, they say, can identify patients at risk for mental-health struggles, get them treatment earlier, provide continuous psychological monitoring and even ...

1. Summary The National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), in cooperation with the Ministry of the Environment of Japan (MOE) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), has been observing atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases by utilizing the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) Series, with the aim of advancing climate change science and contributing to the evaluation of climate change policies and initiatives. The Global Observing SATellite for Greenhouse gases and Water cycle “IBUKI GW” (GOSAT-GW)1, developed jointly by MOE, NIES, ...

Key Takeaways Harvard physicists have developed a computational method that can uncover the rules that cells use to self-organize, translating the complex process of cell growth into an optimization problem a computer can solve. The technique they use is automatic differentiation, originally built for training neural networks, but used in this context for predicting how small changes in genes or cellular signals affect the final design.   Scientists could someday use such predictive models in real biological experiments to design living tissues with specific functions or shapes. One of the most fundamental processes in all of biology ...

“[…]age estimation on blood stains from cancer patients might not result in significantly higher estimation errors, except for very aggressive forms of cancer.” BUFFALO, NY — August 21, 2025 — A new research paper was published in Volume 17, Issue 7 of Aging (Aging-US) on July 17, 2025, titled “The influence of cancer on a forensic age estimation tool.” In this study by Charlotte Sutter, Daniel Helbling, Cordula Haas and Jacqueline Neubauer from the Zurich Institute of Forensic Medicine, University ...

WASHINGTON — Researchers have developed a technique to fold glass sheets into microscopic 3D photonic structures directly on a chip — a process they call photonic origami. The method could enable tiny, yet complex optical devices for data processing sensing and experimental physics. “Existing 3D printers produce rough 3D structures that aren’t optically uniform and thus can’t be used for high-performance optics,” said research team leader Tal Carmon from Tel Aviv University in Israel. “Mimicking the way a pinecone’s scales bend outward to release ...

Dr. Matthew Greenblatt will receive the prestigious Paul-Gallin Trailblazer Prize for Physician-Scientists in recognition of his discovery of distinct types of bone-building stem cells in different parts of the body. These unique cells have the ability to create copies of themselves as well as develop into specialized cells that perform distinct functions in the body. Each year, the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health awards the Paul-Gallin Trailblazer Prize to an early- to mid-career physician-scientist who is translating their basic science discoveries into new ways to diagnose, prevent, treat, or cure disease ...