From tiny pellets to creepy wave-battered baby dolls, the Texas coast is a notable hot spot for plastic debris. But when researchers from The University of Texas at Austin went searching for microplastics in sediments pulled from the bottom of Matagorda Bay and its surrounding inlets, they didn’t find much. Most of their samples contained only tens to hundreds of microplastic particles for each kilogram of sediment. This is hundreds to thousands of times less than other bayside environments around the world. Their findings, which were published in Environmental Science & Technology, suggest that rather than settling at the bottom ...

A large-scale cohort study led by researchers from Tianjin University, Shenyang Medical College, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong has uncovered strong evidence that loneliness may independently increase the risk of hearing loss. The findings were published in Health Data Science on May 2, 2025. Hearing loss is one of the most prevalent global health conditions, affecting more than 1.5 billion people. While physiological and behavioral risk factors are well-documented, the role of psychosocial factors such as loneliness has been underexplored. This study sought to determine ...

May 2025 — La Jolla, CA / Singapore — A new study published in Aging Cell demonstrates that artificial intelligence can be used not just to accelerate drug discovery, but to fundamentally transform how it’s done—by targeting the full complexity of biological aging. In a collaboration between Scripps Research and Gero, a biotechnology company focused on aging, scientists developed a machine learning model trained to identify compounds that act across multiple biological pathways—a process known as polypharmacology. Instead of seeking a single “magic ...

Clinicians from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and four other institutions have demonstrated that doctors can gain a wealth of knowledge about a patient’s cancer by using multiple laboratory techniques to study tumor tissue taken from needle biopsies of glioblastoma, a highly aggressive form of brain cancer. The work, funded by Break Through Cancer and published in the April 28 issue of Nature Communications, has implications for additional cancer types. Physicians currently limit collection of small ...

< Overview > Researchers at Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan, in collaboration with the Institute of Translational Medicine and Biomedical Engineering (IMTIB) in Argentina and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, have advanced the "PDMS SlipChip," a versatile microfluidic device. By using a low-viscosity silicone oil and fine-tuning the fabrication process, they've made the SlipChip more reliable for cell-based experiments and simpler for creating concentration gradients. This breakthrough tackles previous issues like channel clogging and potential ...

A study by Dartmouth researchers proposes a new theory about the origin of dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance thought to give the universe its shape and structure. The researchers report in Physical Review Letters that dark matter could have formed in the early life of the universe from the collision of high-energy massless particles that lost their zip and took on an incredible amount of mass immediately after pairing up, according to their mathematical models. While hypothetical, dark matter is believed to exist based on observed gravitational effects that cannot be explained by visible matter. Scientists ...

"I'm stunned." says Per Ahlberg of Uppsala University, who coordinated the study; "A single track-bearing slab, which one person can lift, calls into question everything we thought we knew about when modern tetrapods evolved." The story of the origin of tetrapods began with fishes leaving the water, and ended with the descendants of these first colonists on land diversifying into the ancestors of the modern amphibians and amniotes (the group that includes reptiles, birds and mammals). ...

Xiaowei Gu and Joshua Johansen at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science in Japan have discovered key circuitry in the rat brain that allows the learning of inferred emotions. The study reveals how the frontal part of the brain coordinates with the amygdala—a brain region important for simple forms of emotional learning—to make this higher-order emotional ability possible. Published in the scientific journal Nature on May 14, this breakthrough study is the first to show how the brain codes human-like internal models of emotion. What are inferred emotions? Consider a child who often watches a wasp fly in and out of its nest in the woods near her house. One day the child ...

The human gut is home to trillions of microbes that not only aid in digestion but also play a key role in shaping our immune system. These microbes communicate with the body by releasing a range of molecules that influence how immune cells grow and function.  To maintain a healthy balance between host defense and microbial coexistence, the body deploys a variety of defense tools—such as mucus, antimicrobial proteins, antibodies, and complement proteins—to control microbial activity and fend off harmful invaders. But one mystery has lingered: Can our bodies selectively recognize and manage specific bacteria among this incredibly diverse microbial community? In ...

Neuroscientists at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre (SWC) at UCL have discovered that the brain uses a dual system for learning through trial and error. This is the first time a second learning system has been identified, which could help explain how habits are formed and provide a scientific basis for new strategies to address conditions related to habitual learning, such as addictions and compulsions. Published today in Nature, the study in mice could also have implications for developing therapeutics for Parkinson’s. “Essentially, we have found a mechanism that we think is responsible for habits. Once you have developed a preference for a certain action, ...

A new scientific study identified taurine, which is made naturally in the body and consumed through some foods, as a key regulator of myeloid cancers such as leukemia, according to a paper published in the journal Nature. The preclinical research shows that scientists are a step closer to finding new ways to target leukemia, which is one of the most aggressive blood cancers. The Wilmot Cancer Institute investigators at the University of Rochester were able to block the growth of leukemia in mouse models and in human leukemia cell samples by using genetic tools to prevent taurine from entering cancer ...

What: Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have identified a series of changes in the architecture and cell composition of connective tissues of the breast, known as stromal tissue, that is associated with an increased risk of developing aggressive breast cancer among women with benign breast disease, and poorer rates of survival among women with invasive breast cancer. This process, which they call stromal disruption, could potentially be used as a biomarker to identify women with benign breast disease ...

About The Study: In patients with overweight/obesity and/or diabetes, glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonist (GLP1-RA) treatment is not associated with increased risk of psychiatric adverse events or worsening depressive symptoms relative to placebo and is associated with improvements in quality of life, restrained eating, and emotional eating behavior. These findings provide reassurance regarding the psychiatric safety profile of GLP1-RAs and suggest that GLP1-RA treatment contributes to both physical and emotional well-being. Corresponding Authors: To contact the corresponding authors, email Aureliane C. S. Pierret, ...

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study of cannabis use in veterans ages 65 to 84, use was common, and more than one-third who used in the past 30 days had any cannabis use disorder. The prevalence of past 30-day cannabis use was close to tobacco use prevalence, and risk factors for cannabis use were similar to those observed in other populations. Frequent and inhaled cannabis use was associated with higher odds of any cannabis use disorder. Routine health screening for cannabis use in Veterans Health Administration clinical settings is necessary ...

A first-of-its-kind study in Nature finds that with bold and coordinated policy choices—across emissions, diets, food waste, and water and nitrogen efficiency—humanity could, by 2050, bring global environmental pressures back to levels seen in 2015. This shift would move us much closer to a future in which people around the world can live well within the Earth’s limits. “Our results show that it is possible to steer back toward safer limits, but only with decisive, systemic change,” says lead author Prof Detlef Van Vuuren, a researcher at Utrecht University and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL). The ...

We've all heard that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions need urgent solutions, but what if we could turn this greenhouse gas into useful chemicals or fuels? Electrochemical CO2 conversion—the process of transforming carbon dioxide into valuable products—is a promising path toward greener energy and reducing emissions. The catch? Existing methods either don't last long or consume too much energy, limiting their real-world use. Low-temperature CO2 conversion, for instance, typically lasts less than 100 hours and reaches efficiencies below 35%. The process can be more practical at higher temperatures—between 600 and 1,000 degrees Celsius—but ...

The South Asian Summer Monsoon (SASM) is the world’s most significant monsoon system, providing approximately 80% of the region’s annual rainfall—influencing agriculture, water security, and the livelihoods of over a billion people across the Indian Peninsula, the western Indochina Peninsula, and the southern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Due to the monsoon’s broad effects on the region, making accurate projections of its dynamics under climate warming is crucial. However, current projections—that SASM rainfall ...

Coral larvae are picky about where they attach and settle down. One of the ways they decide is by “smelling” chemicals in the water that are associated with healthy reefs.  Now, researchers at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Jacobs School of Engineering have developed a gel using nano-particles that slowly release some of coral larvae’s favorite “smells.” When the researchers applied the gel, called SNAP-X, to surfaces in lab experiments it increased coral ...

Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and the Royal Veterinary College of London have worked together on a pioneering project worldwide to generate 3D reconstructions of the hearts of different animals and simulations of their blood flow using advanced computational techniques to date only applied to humans. So far, 3D images of cats’ hearts have been generated, but soon the same will be done for dogs, pigs and sheep. The project focuses on reconstructing the animals’ left atrium, the part of the heart where thrombi (or blood clots) that can lead to a heart attack ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – In a new special report, researchers address the cybersecurity challenges of large language models (LLMs) and the importance of implementing security measures to prevent LLMs from being used maliciously in the health care system. The special report was published today in Radiology: Artificial Intelligence, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). LLMs, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini, are a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that can understand and generate ...

Newly discovered evidence of Australia’s earliest species of tree frog challenges what we know about when Australian and South American frogs parted ways on the evolutionary tree. Previously, scientists believed Australian and South American tree frogs separated from each other about 33 million years ago. But in a study published today in Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology, palaeontologists from UNSW Sydney say the new species, Litoria tylerantiqua, is now at about 55 million years old, ...

New Haven, Conn. — The 2025 Gruber Genetics Prize is being awarded to geneticist and molecular biologist Rotem Sorek, Ph.D., of the Weizmann Institute of Science, for his discoveries in the immune system of bacteria. Using a novel approach that combined computational approaches with an experimental system, Sorek and his colleagues conducted wide scale screens of tens of thousands of bacterial genomes, identifying an astounding number of defense systems used against infection by viruses called phages. This led to ...

New Haven, Conn. — The 2025 Gruber Foundation Cosmology Prize recognizes Ryan Cooke and Max Pettini both for their determination of a key value in the composition of the universe moments after it came into existence and for perfecting the method that allowed them to make that measurement. Cooke and Pettini will equally share the $500,000 award and each will receive a gold laureate pin at a ceremony that will take place later this year. The citation honors them for “bringing the light element abundances and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) into the realm of precision cosmology.” BBN is a theoretical model of the nuclear reactions in the first ...

New Haven, Conn. — The 2025 Gruber Neuroscience Prize will be awarded to Edward F. Chang, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), in recognition of his pioneering research uncovering how the human brain enables speech. His work has not only revealed how the brain encodes the sounds and movements of spoken language, but has also led to the development of the first successful speech neuroprosthesis to restore communication in individuals with paralysis. Dr. Chang’s research stands out for both its technical sophistication and its profound clinical impact. It combines high-precision ...

From the IU Innovation and Commercialization Office Most dental offices are independent practices and often don’t have access to a patient’s medical history. For providing dental care, it is critical that dentists have up-to-date medical and medication histories of their patients to reduce risk during procedures and ensure the success of the treatment. Thankam Thyvalikakath, DMD, MDS, PhD, professor and associate dean of dental informatics and digital health at the IU Indianapolis School of Dentistry and research scientist at the Regenstrief Institute, and Shuning Li, PhD, M.S., M.S., an assistant research scientist at the IU Indianapolis ...