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Science30 Jun 2025

Groundbreaking analysis provides day-by-day insight into prehistoric plankton’s capacity for change

27 June 2025 UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 20:00 UK TIME (15:00 U.S. EASTERN TIME) ON MONDAY JUNE 30, 2025 Groundbreaking analysis provides day-by-day insight into prehistoric plankton’s capacity for change Scientists at the University of Southampton have developed a new way of analysing fossils allowing them to see how creatures from millions of years ago were shaped by their environment on a day-to-day basis for the first time. The research published today [30 June] in Proceedings of the National Academy ...

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Environment30 Jun 2025

Southern Ocean saltier, hotter and losing ice fast as decades-long trend unexpectedly reverses

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 20:00 UK TIME (15:00 U.S. EASTERN TIME) ON MONDAY JUNE 30, 2025 Southern Ocean saltier, hotter and losing ice fast as decades-long trend unexpectedly reverses Researchers have discovered a dramatic and unexpected shift in the Southern Ocean, with surface water salinity rising and sea ice in steep decline. Since 2015, Antarctica has lost sea ice equal to the size of Greenland — the largest environmental shift seen anywhere on Earth in the last decades. The Southern Ocean is also getting saltier, and this unexpected change is making the problem worse. For decades, the ocean’s surface freshened (becoming less salty), helping sea ice grow. Now, scientists ...

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Environment30 Jun 2025

Human fishing reshaped Caribbean reef food webs, 7000-year old exposed fossilized reefs reveal

When we think of fossils, giant prehistoric creatures like dinosaurs may come to mind. But the fossil record also holds the remains of smaller organisms, such as fish and corals, that tell us about our oceans’ past. Scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) recently studied exposed fossilized coral reefs from Panama's Bocas del Toro Province and the Dominican Republic, comparing them with nearby modern reefs. These exceptionally well-preserved reefs date back 7,000 ...

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Science30 Jun 2025

Killer whales, kind gestures: Orcas offer food to humans in the wild

In the study, researchers from Canada, New Zealand and Mexico reported on 34 interactions spanning two decades in which orcas in the wild attempted to offer food to humans. The incidents took place in oceans around the world, from California to New Zealand to Norway to Patagonia. “Orcas often share food with each other – it’s a prosocial activity and a way that they build relationships with each other,” said study lead author Jared Towers, of Bay Cetology in British Columbia, Canada. “That they also share with humans may show their interest ...

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Environment30 Jun 2025

Hurricane ecology research reveals critical vulnerabilities of coastal ecosystems

A recently published article in the journal BioScience reveals that endangered longleaf pine ecosystems—among North America's most biodiverse habitats—face mounting threats from intensifying hurricane regimes driven by climate change. An interdisciplinary team of authors headed by Nicole Zampieri (Tall Timbers and The Jones Center at Ichauway) describe the urgent situation: The North American Coastal Plain was once characterized by extensive longleaf pine savannas covering approximately 36 million hectares. Today, these ecosystems "now occupy ...

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Environment30 Jun 2025

Montana State geologist’s Antarctic research focuses on accumulations of rare earth elements

BOZEMAN – They’re in the headlines every week – critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite and the rare earth elements essential for high-technology and national security applications. While nations and businesses around the globe strategize to secure supplies of the coveted resources, Montana State University geologist Zachary Burton studies how rare earth elements are moved by geochemical and aqueous forces, such as freeze-thaw cycles and snowmelt, to concentrate in different environments. “Rare earth elements aren’t technically rare – they ...

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Medicine30 Jun 2025

Groundbreaking cancer therapy clinical trial with US Department of Energy’s accelerator-produced actinium-225 set to begin this summer

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Isotope Program, within the Office of Science, will supply a U.S. based company with accelerator produced actinium-225 (Ac-225) in support of an upcoming U.S. clinical trial for cancer therapy for the first time. This is a significant milestone in the advancement of radiopharmaceutical development and cancer therapy because it opens a potential new pipeline for this lifesaving isotope. "We are proud to enable U.S. based companies to push past the boundaries on how we combat cancer in this country," said Christopher Landers, Director of the Office of Isotope ...

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Medicine30 Jun 2025

Tens of thousands of heart attacks and strokes could be avoided each year if cholesterol-lowering drugs were used according to guidelines

A new study led by Johns Hopkins researchers has identified a significant gap between the number of U.S. patients for whom cholesterol-lowering drugs such as statins are recommended and the actual number of patients who take them. Coronary artery disease remains a leading cause of death in the U.S. and globally, despite the development of statins and other cholesterol-lowering medications in recent decades. Many adults who should be taking these drugs to lower their low-density-lipoprotein (LDL) levels are not—even though these drugs are considered safe and there is a large body of evidence supporting their effectiveness. In their new study, the researchers sought ...

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Medicine30 Jun 2025

Leading cancer and metabolic disease expert Michael Karin joins Sanford Burnham Prebys

Michael Karin, PhD, has long been fascinated by what happens when inflammation—ideally a short-term burst of biological activity to promote healing or fight infection—turns chronic and potentially deadly. He joined Sanford Burnham Prebys on June 30, 2025, where he will continue investigating how chronic inflammation can promote tumor formation. Karin also will serve as director of the new Center for Metabolic and Liver Diseases. “Michael is a key leader in the molecular mechanisms that underlie metabolism, inflammation and cancer, and his recruitment to our institute is transformational,” said David A. Brenner, MD, president ...

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Medicine30 Jun 2025

Low-intensity brain stimulation may restore neuron health in Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a debilitating neurodegenerative condition that affects a significant proportion of older people worldwide. Synapses are points of communication between neural cells that are malleable to change based on our experiences. By adding, removing, strengthening, or weakening synaptic contacts, our brain encodes new events or forgets previous ones. In AD, synaptic plasticity, the brain’s ability to regulate the strength of synaptic connections between neurons, is significantly disrupted. This worsens over time, reducing cognitive and memory functions leading to reduced quality of life. To date, there is no effective ...

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Social Science30 Jun 2025

Four-day school week may not be best for students, review finds

A new University of Oregon review of 11 studies found little evidence that the four-day school week benefits student academic performance, attendance, behavior or graduation rates. The HEDCO Institute for Evidence-Based Educational Practice at the UO conducted the systematic review, a rigorous analysis of the highest-quality research available on the four-day school week in the United States. “Districts often turn to four-day school weeks to address budget and staffing pressures, but the evidence ...

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Science30 Jun 2025

Using music to explore the dynamics of emotions

How does the human brain track emotions and support transitions between these emotions? In a new eNeuro paper, Matthew Sachs and colleagues, from Colombia University, used music and an advanced approach for assessing brain activity to shed light on the context dependence and fluctuating nature of emotions. The researchers collaborated with composers to create songs that evoked different emotions at separate time points. They then assessed the brain activity of study participants as they listened to these songs. Sachs ...

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Medicine30 Jun 2025

How the brain supports social processing as people age

Because aging weakens cognitive skills, older people can struggle to read difficult social cues. A brain region involved in attention and arousal—the locus coeruleus (LC)—helps with complex tasks, and its connections to the cortex may adapt as humans age to support cognition. To shed more light on this, Maryam Ziaei, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and colleagues explored whether the LC and its cortical pathways change over time to help process faces that are difficult to read. In their new JNeurosci paper, the researchers imaged the brains of young (21 to 29 years old) and old (67 to 75 years old) adults as they looked at faces. Older adults ...

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Science30 Jun 2025

Túngara frog tadpoles that grew up in the city developed faster but ended up being smaller

With 8.2 billion people in the world, cities are constantly expanding, rapidly altering the environment. Animals that undergo complete metamorphosis, such as frogs, may face bigger challenges as they try to survive in new and changing conditions, because their young stages, the eggs and tadpoles, are more vulnerable. Scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama (STRI) compared the development of tadpoles of Túngara frogs (Engystomops pustulosus) in urban and forest conditions. Túngara frogs, whose mating calls sound like they’ve come straight out of a video game, lay their eggs in foam nests inside puddles. The eggs become tadpoles and, ...

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Science30 Jun 2025

Where there’s fire, there’s smoke

Earlier this year, wildfires in southern California killed 30 people, destroyed more than 18,000 homes and burned more than 57,000 acres. The fires were a stark reminders of the threat of worsening climate change, and the increased likelihood of future devastating fires. With these fires comes smoke, which has long-term health effects for the people exposed to it – whether they are close to the source, or many miles away. A Harvard atmospheric modeling team has created an online platform that could help communities identify areas in need of controlled burns ...

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Medicine30 Jun 2025

UCLA researchers uncover key mechanism of brain repair in vascular dementia, revealing promising therapeutic target

A new study from UCLA Health has uncovered how inflammation in brain blood vessels exacerbates damage in vascular dementia and demonstrated that targeting this process with a repurposed drug can promote brain repair and functional recovery in mice. Published in Cell, the research combines laboratory and human data to pinpoint a critical signaling pathway that could lead to the first effective treatment for this understudied form of dementia. Vascular dementia is the second leading cause of dementia. This disease co-occurs with Alzheimer’s disease in the leading cause of dementia, termed “mixed dementia.” There is no drug therapy that ...

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Technology30 Jun 2025

Why Human empathy still matters in the age of AI

A new study finds that people value empathy more when they believe it comes from a human—even if the actual response was generated by AI. Across nine studies involving over 6,000 participants, the research reveals that human-attributed responses are perceived as more supportive, more emotionally resonant, and more caring than identical AI-generated responses. A new international study led by Prof Anat Perry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and her PhD student – Matan Rubin, in collaboration with Prof. Amit Goldenberg researchers from Harvard University and Prof. Desmond C. Ong from the University of Texas, finds that people place greater emotional value on empathy ...

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Medicine30 Jun 2025

COVID-19 and cognitive change in a community-based cohort

About The Study: This cohort study of older participants found accelerated decreases in cognition among individuals hospitalized for SARS-CoV-2 infection, but not nonhospitalized infection, in comparison with individuals not yet infected. These findings suggest that avoiding severe SARS-CoV-2 infection could help preserve cognitive function among older adults. Corresponding Authors: To contact the corresponding authors, email Ryan T. Demmer, PhD, MPH, (demmer.ryan@mayo.edu) and Elizabeth C. Oelsner, MD, DrPH, (eco7@cumc.columbia.edu). To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.18648) Editor’s ...

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Medicine30 Jun 2025

Intent to test for COVID-19 in the postpandemic era

About The Study: Nearly one-third of U.S. adults would not or might not test for suspected COVID-19, largely because they do not see value in testing, according to the results of an online national survey. Test hesitancy may delay oral antiviral initiation and could result in missed opportunities to limit transmission. Efforts are needed to increase awareness of the value of testing. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Kimberly A. Fisher, MD, email kimberly.fisher2@umassmed.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this ...

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Medicine30 Jun 2025

Landmark study investigates potential of Ambroxol, a cough medicine, to slow Parkinson’s-related dementia

LONDON, Ont. – Dementia poses a major health challenge with no safe, affordable treatments to slow its progression. Researchers at Lawson Research Institute (Lawson), the research arm of St. Joseph’s Health Care London, are investigating whether Ambroxol - a cough medicine used safely for decades in Europe - can slow dementia in people with Parkinson’s disease. Published today in the prestigious JAMA Neurology, this 12-month clinical trial involving 55 participants with Parkinson’s disease dementia (PDD) monitored memory, psychiatric symptoms and GFAP, a blood marker linked to ...

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Medicine30 Jun 2025

Finding suggests treatment approach for autoimmune diseases

An engineered protein turns off the kind of immune cells most likely to damage tissue as part of Type-1 diabetes, hepatitis, multiple sclerosis, shows a new study in mice. In these autoimmune diseases, T cells mistakenly target the body’s own tissues instead of invading viruses or bacteria as they would during normal immune responses. Treatments focused on T cells have been elusive because blocking their action broadly weakens the immune system and creates risk for infections and cancer. Published online June 30 in the journal Cell, the study revealed that holding closely together two protein groups (signaling complexes) on ...

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Medicine30 Jun 2025

A new “link” to triple-negative breast cancer

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers among women in the United States. Thanks to decades of fundamental research, it’s also one of the most curable. The exception is a particularly aggressive variant known as triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). It accounts for 10 to 15 percent of all breast cancer cases. It disproportionately affects younger and African American women. No effective therapies exist. A new discovery by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor David Spector and graduate student Wenbo Xu—published in Molecular Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research—could help ...

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Science30 Jun 2025

Cool is cool wherever you are

From Chile to China, cultures vary greatly around the globe, but people in at least a dozen countries agree about what it means to be cool, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. The researchers conducted experiments with almost 6,000 participants from countries around the world and found that cool people have surprisingly similar personalities. Even though Eastern and Western cultures often differ in many cultural attitudes, cool people were universally perceived to be more extraverted, hedonistic, powerful, adventurous, open and autonomous. “Everyone wants to be cool, or at least ...

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Space30 Jun 2025

Meteorological satellites observe temperatures on Venus

Imaging data from Japan’s Himawari-8 and -9 meteorological satellites have been successfully used to monitor temporal changes in Venus’ cloud-top temperature, revealing unseen patterns in the temperature structure of various waves. A team led by the University of Tokyo collated infrared images from 2015–25 to estimate brightness temperatures on day to year scales. The results demonstrate that meteorological satellites can serve as additional eyes to access the Venusian atmosphere from space ...

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Medicine30 Jun 2025

New hope for brain cancer: FAU awarded grants for glioblastoma treatment

Florida Atlantic University researchers have secured two key grants to investigate targeting a gene for the first time as a new approach to treat glioblastoma, a very aggressive and fast-growing type of brain cancer. Malignant gliomas, such as glioblastoma multiforme and astrocytomas, are the most common type of primary brain tumor in the United States. They make up about 78% of all malignant brain tumors. Although these tumors are not very common, especially in the U.S., they cause a high number of cancer deaths because they are so aggressive. These awards, granted by the Florida Department of Health’s Cancer Connect program for $562,000 and the Palm Health Foundation for ...

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