Statins have transformed heart health, saving millions of lives by lowering cholesterol and reducing the risk of heart attacks and strokes. But for many patients, these drugs come with a troubling downside: muscle pain, weakness and, in rare cases, severe muscle breakdown that can lead to kidney failure.  University of British Columbia researchers and their collaborators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have now pinpointed the cause. Their findings, published last week in Nature Communications, could pave the way ...

SAN ANTONIO — November 26, 2025 — Engineers at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) have developed a reliable testing methodology to study stochastic pre-ignition (SPI) in hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engines (H2-ICEs), offering the automotive industry tools to address challenges associated with hydrogen fuel and advance cleaner engine technologies. Pre-ignition, where unintentional combustion occurs before spark timing, is disruptive and sometimes detrimental to engine performance and durability. While hydrogen's low ignition threshold is a suspected SPI factor, SwRI explored whether lubricant autoignition contributes to SPI in H2-ICEs. “H2-ICEs ...

A study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has revealed a previously unknown pathway plants use to detect gravity and orient the direction they grow in. Publishing this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study may one day open the door for improvements in crop cultivation. Prior studies have already established that a suite of genes, nicknamed LAZY, control a pathway plants use for detecting gravity. In a typical plant, cells within the stem use LAZY genes to detect the force of gravity. The plant can then guide the stem to grow upwards, branches to grow outwards, and roots to ...

Food quality and safety are crucial. However, conventional food-monitoring methods, including ribotyping and polymerase chain reaction, tend to be destructive and lengthy. These shortcomings limit their potential for broad applications. In this regard, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) sensing, with real-time, non-destructive, and high sensitivity capabilities, is a highly promising alternative. In a new breakthrough, a team of researchers, led by Associate Professor Ji-Hwan Ha from the Department of Mechanical ...

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is an age-related, progressive neurodegenerative disorder. The hallmark of PD pathogenesis is the Lewy bodies (LBs) that accumulate in neurons in the substantia nigra region of the brain, damaging these neurons and leading to the motor symptoms of the disease. α-synuclein (α-syn), a misfolded protein, aggregates and forms fibrils, which leads to the formation of LBs. The exact molecular mechanism behind this aggregation process is yet to be uncovered. With an increasing number of elderly patients suffering from Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases ...

Power transmission lines (TLs) are ubiquitous, spanning diverse landscapes, including forests, agricultural regions, as well as mountains. Therefore, it is crucial to develop novel technologies to monitor their condition in terms of environmental infringement as well as sag estimation. In a breakthrough, a team of researchers, led by Prof. Ki-Yong Oh, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Hanyang University, and Munsu Jeon, a PhD candidate in Mechanical Convergence Engineering at Hanyang University, has presented the first unmanned ...

CHICAGO – The brain’s waste-clearing system significantly declines in function with repeated head impacts, according to a new study of cognitively impaired professional boxers and mixed martial arts fighters. The findings will be presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Sports-related traumatic brain injuries account for up to 30% of all brain injury cases, and boxing and mixed martial arts are major contributors. Repeated head impacts are risk factors ...

CHICAGO – An image-only artificial intelligence (AI) model for predicting the five-year risk of breast cancer provided stronger and more precise risk stratification than breast density assessment, according to a new study being presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Senior author Constance D. Lehman, M.D., Ph.D., professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, said traditional methods of assessing a woman’s risk for breast cancer, including age, family history, genetics and breast density, ...

A large-scale laboratory screening of human-made chemicals has identified 168 chemicals that are toxic to bacteria found in the healthy human gut. These chemicals stifle the growth of gut bacteria thought to be vital for health. Most of these chemicals, likely to enter our bodies through food, water, and environmental exposure, were not previously thought to have any effect on bacteria. As the bacteria alter their function to try and resist the chemical pollutants, some also become resistant to antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin. If this happens in the human gut, it could make infections harder to treat. The new research, ...

EMBARGOED UNTIL 10:00 AM GMT / 05:00 ET WEDNESDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2025 Chemists design OLEDs that electrically flip the handedness of light Researchers from the University of Oxford have for the first time discovered an approach to electrically switch organic LEDs (OLEDs) to emit either left- or right-handed circularly polarized light without changing the light-emitting molecules. This could be useful for a range of technological applications, from more energy efficient OLED displays, to optical information transfer. They describe their results in a study published today (26 Nov) in Nature Photonics. Usually, the handedness of such ...

New York, NY [November 26, 2025]— Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and collaborators have reported early success with a novel mRNA-based therapy designed to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The findings, published in the November 26 online issue of Nature Biotechnology [DOI: 10.1038/s41587-025-02928-x], show that in preclinical studies in mice and human lung tissue in the lab, the therapy slowed bacterial growth, strengthened immune cell activity, and reduced lung tissue damage in models of multidrug-resistant pneumonia. Antibiotic-resistant ...

Researchers have discovered new regions of the human genome particularly vulnerable to mutations. These altered stretches of DNA can be passed down to future generations and are important for how we study genetics and disease.  The regions are located at the starting point of genes, also known as transcription start sites. These are sequences where cellular machinery starts to copy DNA into RNA. The first 100 base pairs after a gene’s starting point are 35% more prone to mutations compared with what you’d expect by chance, according to the study published today in Nature Communications.  “These sequences are extremely prone to mutations and rank among the most functionally ...

A new paper in Biology Methods and Protocols, published by Oxford University Press, finds that we can now distinguish wild from farmed salmon using deep learning, potentially greatly improving strategies for environmental protection. Norway is home to the largest remaining wild populations of wild salmon and is also one of the largest producers of farmed salmon. Atlantic salmon abundance in Norway has declined by over 50% since the 1980s and is now at historically low levels. Escaped farmed salmon are an important reason for this decline. Norway produces over 1.5 million ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (Nov 26, 2025) –Although research on sexuality in older adults has been growing in recent years, most of the studies are focused on partnered sexual activity and not on solo sexual behavior, including masturbation or the use of sex toys. A new study specifically investigated sex toy use during partnered sex and masturbation in older adult women. Results of the study are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The Menopause Society. Women are less likely to masturbate than men, and masturbation tends to be negatively associated with age. Women are more likely to use masturbation as complementary ...

Fame itself may be a critical factor in shortening singers’ lives beyond the hazards of the job—at least those in the UK/Europe and North America—suggests research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. These stars seem to die around 4 years earlier, on average, than their peers who haven’t achieved celebrity status, and the effects of fame are on a par with certain other health risks, suggest the researchers. Previously published research indicates that famous singers tend to die earlier than the general public. But it’s far from clear ...

Drinking a maximum of 3-4 cups of coffee a day may slow the ‘biological’ ageing of people with severe mental illness, by lengthening their telomeres—indicators of cellular ageing—and giving them the equivalent of 5 extra biological years, compared with non-coffee drinkers, finds research published in the open access journal BMJ Mental Health.   But no such effects were observed beyond this quota, which is the maximum daily intake recommended by several international health authorities, including the NHS and the US Food and Drug Administration.   Telomeres sit ...

Embargoed copy of the research paper available on request Scientists have developed a new material that converts motion into electricity (piezoelectricity) with greater efficiency and without using toxic lead - paving the way for a new generation of devices that we use in everyday life. Publishing their discovery in Journal of the American Chemical Society today (26 Nov) researchers from the University of Birmingham, University of Oxford, and University of Bristol describe a material that is both durable and sensitive to movement - opening possibilities for a wide range of innovative devices such as sensors, wearable electronics, and self-powered devices.​ Based on bismuth iodide, an inorganic ...

A team of astronomers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) has released new data from an extensive galaxy evolution survey that found a galaxy’s ‘neighbourhood’ plays a major role in how it changes over time. The Deep Extragalactic Visible Legacy Survey, or DEVILS for short, has released its initial data and a series of recent publications explaining how a galaxy’s location in the Universe can significantly influence its evolution. The survey combines data ...

In the early 1930s, Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky observed galaxies in space moving faster than their mass should allow, prompting him to infer the presence of some invisible scaffolding — dark matter — holding the galaxies together. Nearly 100 years later, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope may have provided direct evidence of dark matter, allowing the invisible matter to be “seen” for the very first time. Dark matter has remained largely a mystery since it was proposed so many years ago. Up to this point, scientists have only been able to indirectly observe ...

Key Findings of the Report:  Global Imbalance: Across all three conventions (UNFCCC, UNCCD, CBD), men hold 496 (60%) focal point roles compared to 334 (40%) held by women.  Convention Disparities: The UNCCD has the lowest female representation (35%), while the UNFCCC and CBD stand at 41% and 45%, respectively.  Regional Gaps: Africa faces the steepest challenge, with women representing only 25% of focal points, whereas Eastern Europe leads with 67% female representation.  Exclusive Representation: 51 countries are represented entirely by ...

Six faculty members from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville — five from the Tickle College of Engineering and one from the College of Arts and Sciences — have been named to Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers list for 2025, an honor bestowed on only one in 1,000 of the world’s scientists and social scientists. The designation recognizes researchers whose publications are among the top 1% by citations in their respective fields over the past decade. “Being ...

Researchers at the University of Arizona uncovered a previously unknown population of circulating immune cells that play a critical role in fibrosis, the buildup of scar tissue that can lead to organ failure and disfigurement. The findings, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, add to the understanding of the healing process and could lead to new strategies for preventing or treating fibrosis. Fibrosis contributes to nearly half of all deaths in developed countries, including conditions such as pulmonary fibrosis, renal fibrosis, organ ...

BOZEMAN – In new research published this week, work by a Montana State University scientist aims to explore the gradations in elevation-dependent changes in climate, including in mountainous ecosystems like those in Montana and the Rockies. John Knowles, an assistant professor in MSU’s Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences in the College of Agriculture, is one of nearly two dozen authors from around the world on the new paper, titled “Elevation-dependent climate change in mountain environments.” The work was published Nov. 25 in ...

The University of Tennessee has been awarded a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to prepare Tennessee’s high school students and teachers for careers in the rapidly growing semiconductor industry—one of the most critical sectors of the U.S. economy. The three-year project, Explorations: Tennessee Experiential Learning for Teachers and Students to Empower Pathways into Microelectronics, is funded through NSF’s Experiential Learning for Emerging and Novel Technologies (ExLENT) program. Led by the College of Emerging and Collaborative Studies (CECS) and in close partnership with Tickle College of Engineering’s (TCE) Min ...

As cities continue to expand and face rising environmental pressure, scientists are seeking innovative solutions that can help urban areas become cleaner, greener, and more resilient. A new perspective paper highlights biochar, a carbon rich material made from organic waste, as a transformative tool that could significantly improve the environmental future of cities around the world. The study, published in Biochar X, synthesizes global research and case studies to show how biochar contributes to cleaner air, healthier soils, improved water quality, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. The authors examined applications across major cities such as ...