New archaeological research by Tulane University and the Proyecto Templo Mayor in Mexico reveals how obsidian – a volcanic glass used for tools and ceremonial objects and one of the most important raw materials in pre-Columbian times – moved across ancient Mesoamerica and shaped life in its capital, Tenochtitlan. The study sheds new light on the economic networks, rituals and political influence of the Mexica (Aztec) Empire.   Published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study analyzed 788 obsidian artifacts excavated from the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan, the main temple and core of the Mexica Empire located in ...

A new study has uncovered hidden social patterns in ancient Hebrew kingdoms by analyzing personal names from archaeological findings. Applying diversity statistics typically used in ecological studies, the researchers found that the Kingdom of Israel had a far more diverse onomastic (naming) landscape than Judah—indicating a more open, cosmopolitan society. Over time, name diversity in Judah declined, likely reflecting increasing religious centralization and sociopolitical control. This interdisciplinary approach opens new possibilities for studying ancient cultures using statistical ...

Lower the legal tackle height in women's rugby is providing effectin in reducing head contacts between players, a world-first study suggests.  Changes to the tackle height law in women’s community rugby in Scotland is linked to reductions in head-to-head and head-to shoulder contacts, the study found. A study compared more than 11,000 tackles between the 2022/23 season, before the reduced tackle height law was trialed and the 2023/24 season when it was introduced.   Experts found 21 per cent fewer upright tackles and a 34 per cent increase in tacklers entering the tackle bent at the waist, the recommended ...

New York, NY – The American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR), is proud to recognize the outstanding contributions of Lauren Hunt, PhD, RN, FNP, with the 2025 Terrie Fox Wetle Rising Star Award in Health Services and Aging Research. This award honors a health services researcher in an early or middle phase of his/her career who has already made importantcontributions with work that respects the value of multidisciplinary health services ...

Conditions such as Tourette syndrome (TS), schizophrenia, and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have sex differences with unknown mechanisms. These sex-specific mechanisms may inform the development of more effective treatments. In a new JNeurosci paper, Meghan Van Zandt and Christopher Pittenger used mice to shed light on the mechanisms underlying sex differences in these psychiatric conditions.  Prior to this study, the researchers knew that these neurological disorders are characterized ...

Do your wrinkles always form in the same pattern every time you're in the water for too long? According to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York, the answer is yes. A couple of years ago, Binghamton University Associate Professor Guy German published research about why human skin wrinkles when you stay in the water too long. Received wisdom held that the water swelled your skin and made your fingers wrinkly, but little to no research had been done to prove that. What German and his team at the Biological Soft Matter Mechanics Laboratory found is that blood vessels beneath the skin actually contract after prolonged ...

Hoboken, N.J., May 12, 2025 — Epilepsy, one of the most common neurological disorders characterized by recurrent seizures, affects over 70 million people worldwide. In the United States, about 3.4 million people live with this challenging condition. Around one third of the epilepsy cases cannot be controlled by medications. For those patients, surgical resection of the epileptogenic zone (EZ), an area whose removal can lead to seizure freedom — a period of time when a person with epilepsy experiences no seizures — can be ...

Providing hearing aids and advice on their use may preserve social connections that often wane as we age, a new study shows. Its authors say that this approach could help ease the loneliness epidemic that older Americans face. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than a quarter of seniors say they have little or no contact with others, and a third report feeling lonely. Experts have linked such isolation in part to hearing loss, which can interfere with communication and relationship building. The 2023 U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory named improving social connection as great a priority as targeting tobacco use, ...

After treatment with CAR-T cells — immune cells engineered to attack cancer — patients sometimes tell their doctors they feel like they have “brain fog,” or forgetfulness and difficulty concentrating. A new Stanford Medicine-led study shows that CAR-T cell therapy causes mild cognitive impairments, independent of other cancer treatments, and that this happens via the same cellular mechanism as cognitive impairment from two other causes: chemotherapy and respiratory infections such as flu and ...

To the point Mother-offspring attachment in the wild: Wild chimpanzees develop secure or insecure-avoidant attachments to their mothers, but not disorganised attachments, suggesting that it is not a viable survival strategy in the wild. Attachment types: Chimpanzees with secure attachment are confident, while those with insecure-avoidant attachment are more independent. Disorganised attachment, common in humans and captive chimps, is linked to emotional and mental health issues. Potential parenting lessons: Taking into account the impact of ...

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest that Texas’s abortion restrictions were associated with increases in mental distress among females of reproductive age, especially among younger individuals who may have less ability to overcome barriers to abortion care. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Jusung Lee, PhD, email jusung.lee@utsa.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.9576) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for ...

About The Study: This cross-sectional study of U.S. medical student matriculants found a decrease in the number of matriculants who were first-generation. These students were at significant risk of attrition from medical school, particularly when considering the intersectionality with low-income and underrepresented in medicine identities. These results suggest a need to recruit and retain these students, so that the physician workforce better reflects the backgrounds and experiences of the communities served. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Sophia C. Kamran, MD, email skamran@mgh.harvard.edu. To ...

About The Study: Nearly 19 million children were estimated to be living in a household with at least 1 parent with substance use disorder, accounting for one-quarter of all U.S. children in 2023. Children in such households are more likely to develop adverse health outcomes than their peers without exposure to parental substance use disorder.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Sean Esteban McCabe, PhD, email plius@umich.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2025.0828) Editor’s ...

About The Study: After the end of emergency allotments nationwide by March 2023, there were significant increases in food insecurity and poor physical health days among Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants. No changes in poor mental health days or poor or fair health status were observed.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Rishi K. Wadhera, MD, MPP, MPhil, email rwadhera@bidmc.harvard.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2025.6010) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, ...

The Food and Drug Administration’s approval in 2023 of lecanemab — a novel Alzheimer’s therapy shown in clinical trials to modestly slow disease progression — was met with enthusiasm by many in the field as it represented the first medication of its kind able to influence the disease. But side effects — brain swelling and bleeding — emerged during clinical trials that have left some patients and physicians hesitant about the treatment. Medications can have somewhat different effects once they are released into the real world with broader ...

Under embargo until 10:00 AM EST May 12, 2025    Who?      500+ public health researchers, thought-leaders, policy-makers & civil society actors. What?     Inaugural Exposome Moonshot Forum. Where?   Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center, Washington D.C. When?    Monday May 12th to Thursday May 15th, 2025: www.exposomemoonshot.org         Background: The Human Genome Project, initiated in 1990 and completed in 2003, was a global scientific effort to map and sequence all genetic material, the information needed to ...

The research by black hole expert Heino Falcke, quantum physicist Michael Wondrak, and mathematician Walter van Suijlekom (all from Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands) is a follow-up to a 2023 paper by the same trio. In that paper, they showed that not only black holes, but also other objects such as neutron stars can 'evaporate' via a process akin to Hawking radiation. After that publication, the researchers received many questions from inside and outside the scientific community about how long the process would take. They have now answered this question in the new article. Ultimate end The researchers calculated ...

•  Early cancer detection and treatment advances have led to more cancer survivors who need outpatient centers to manage their disease as a chronic condition. •  Patients receive highly individualized, integrated, multidisciplinary cancer care in one place — from prevention to supportive care to survivorship. •  Cancer specialists with unsurpassed expertise work together in one convenient location to deliver the most advanced treatments and supportive care, including pain management, behavioral health and ...

University of Colorado Boulder astrophysicist Jeremy Darling is pursuing a new way of measuring the universe’s gravitational wave background—the constant flow of waves that churn through the cosmos, warping the very fabric of space and time. The research, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, could one day help to unlock some of the universe’s deepest mysteries, including how gravity works at its most fundamental level. “There is a lot we can learn from getting these precise measurements of gravitational waves,” said Darling, professor ...

DALLAS, May 12, 2025 — Millions of women may be unknowingly living with risk factors for heart, kidney and metabolic disease – interconnected conditions that together drive risk for cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death among women, according to experts with the American Heart Association, a global force changing the future of health for all. The interplay of heart, kidney and metabolic health is called cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic (CKM) health. CKM health factors include blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, blood glucose (sugar) and kidney function. These ...

People have a lot of misconceptions about what the brain’s left and right hemispheres do, but one well-known aspect of this division may be even more true than people realize: The brain not only splits up visual spatial perception—processing what’s on our left in the right hemisphere and what’s on our right in the left hemisphere—it takes cognitive advantage of that. A new review by MIT neuroscientists explains what the field has learned about this division of labor, the trade-off it involves and how the brain ultimately bridges the divide. “People hear all these myths about the left brain ...

The single-celled parasite Entamoeba histolytica infects 50 million people each year, killing nearly 70,000. Usually, this wily, shape-shifting amoeba causes nothing worse than diarrhea. But sometimes it triggers severe, even fatal disease by chewing ulcers in the colon, liquefying parts of the liver and invading the brain and lungs. “It can kill anything you throw at it, any kind of human cell,” said Katherine Ralston, an associate professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. E. histolytica can even evade the immune ...

Lebanon’s consociational democracy is geared towards maintaining political stability in a society that is deeply divided along religious lines. Under this power-sharing system, seats in the parliament and top government offices are allocated to representatives of the nation’s major religious sects. However, the democratic system is characterized by severe political rivalry, which has often resulted in political vacuums. The lack of political consensus has resulted in major positions such as the seat of president laying vacant for several months and severe delays in government formation. Hezbollah, a major political party in Lebanon, is often ...

Researchers have discovered how to block cells dying, in a finding that could lead to new treatments for neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. The team at WEHI in Melbourne, Australia, have identified a small molecule that can selectively block cell death. Published in Science Advances, the findings lay the groundwork for next-generation neuroprotective drugs for degenerative conditions, which currently have no cure or treatments to stop their progression.  At a glance Researchers ...

LONG BEACH, Wash. — Scientists at Washington State University have found that juvenile European green crabs can do as much damage as adults to shellfish and native sea plants, calling into question current methods to eradicate the invasive crustaceans. Green crabs are a massive threat to Washington state’s shellfish industry as well as its native eelgrass, a plant vital to local seawater ecology. For several years, shellfish growers have been trapping green crabs in huge numbers. Trappers traditionally target ...