The placenta and the hormones it produces may have played a crucial role in the evolution of the human brain, while also leading to the behavioural traits that have made human societies able to thrive and expand, according to a new hypothesis proposed by researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. Dr Alex Tsompanidis, senior researcher at the Autism Research Centre in the University of Cambridge, and the lead author of this new study, said: “Small variations in the prenatal levels of steroid hormones, like testosterone and oestrogen, can predict the rate of social and cognitive learning in infants and even ...

In a follow up investigation into the multibillion dollar drug ticagrelor, The BMJ has uncovered fresh concerns, this time in key platelet studies used in its FDA approval.  For more than a decade, ticagrelor (Brilinta in the US and Brilique in Europe) has been recommended for patients with acute coronary syndrome - a range of conditions related to sudden reduced blood flow to the heart. Last December, an investigation by The BMJ found serious data integrity problems in the landmark clinical trial (PLATO) that was used to ...

EMBARGO: THIST CONTENT IS UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 2 P.M. U.S. EASTERN STANDARD TIME ON JUNE 19, 2025. INTERESTED MEDIA MAY RECIVE A PREVIEW COPY OF THE JOURNAL ARTICLE IN ADVANCE OF THAT DATE OR CONDUCT INTERVIEWS, BUT THE INFORMATION MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, OR POSTED ONLINE UNTIL AFTER THE RELEASE WINDOW.  Colorado State University researchers have published a paper in Science that describes a new and more efficient light-based process for transforming fossil fuels into useful modern chemicals. In it, they report that their organic ...

Among the biggest culprits of plastic pollution in the ocean and along shorelines are thin plastic shopping bags, which have low recycling rates and often become litter when they blow away in the wind. Once there, they can entangle animals and break down into harmful microplastics. As awareness of this problem has grown, more than 100 countries have instituted bans or fees on plastic bags. But what effect those policies are having on the amount of plastic litter in the marine environment had not been systematically evaluated until now.  A new study ...

Plastic bag regulations – bans and consumer fees – have led to meaningful reductions in plastic litter on U.S. shorelines, according to a new study. Plastic pollution has become a pervasive environmental issue; plastic debris comprises most of the marine litter worldwide and has been shown to pose serious threats to ocean life, ecosystems, and coastal economies.  Much of this pollution originates from land and enters the ocean via rivers, wastewater, or wind. Among the most problematic ...

A large-scale analysis of U.S. water quality data reveals that most toxic chemicals remain poorly characterized or undetected in routine monitoring. This is largely due to sparse risk assessment data, as well as detection limits that are too high to capture ecologically relevant concentrations, researchers report. The findings suggest that the true scale of chemical risk to biodiversity and ecosystems may be significantly underestimated. Chemical pollution is widely recognized as a major threat to biodiversity, human health, and the stability of ecosystems worldwide. However, the accelerating rate at which new chemicals are introduced into the environment outpaces the current ability ...

Researchers present a new method to safely and preferentially generate CAR T cells directly inside the body using targeted lipid nanoparticles that deliver mRNA directly to T cells. The approach showed rapid and sustained immune reprogramming in preclinical models, highlighting its promise for treating cancer and autoimmune diseases. Adoptive immunotherapy, which harnesses a patient’s own immune cells to treat disease, holds immense therapeutic potential. Among its most prominent forms is CAR T cell therapy, in ...

In a Policy Forum, Jessica Espey and colleagues argue that waning support for accurate collection and curation of population data worldwide threatens to compromise crucial evidence-based government planning. “We live in an era of seemingly unlimited data, where our digital activities may generate nearly constant information streams, yet some of our most essential infrastructure – demographic information – is deteriorating, introducing known and unknown bias into decision-making,” write the authors. ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Ocean waters are getting greener at the poles and bluer toward the equator, according to an analysis of satellite data published in Science on June 19. The change reflects shifting concentrations of a green pigment called chlorophyll made by phytoplankton, photosynthetic marine organisms at the base of the ocean food chain. If the trend continues, marine food webs could be affected, with potential repercussions for global fisheries. “In the ocean, what we see based on satellite measurements is that the tropics and the subtropics are generally losing chlorophyll, whereas ...

Several hundred thousand chemicals are considered as potentially environmentally relevant. Scientists from the RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau in Germany show that monitoring data for surface waters are only available for a very small fraction of these chemicals. In their article, published in the latest issue of Science, the authors also demonstrate that the environmental risks of highly toxic chemicals might be overlooked, because these chemicals affect ecosystems at concentrations that cannot be detected on a regular basis. “We analyzed a very extensive US database for the presence of chemicals in the US surface waters ...

Researchers are warning that millions of people around the world aren’t being counted in census and survey data, leaving policymakers in the dark about the populations they govern. They say a ‘quiet crisis’ is unfolding with census data due to declining response rates and concerns about the accuracy of the data. In a paper published in Science, researchers from the University of Southampton and Columbia University point to a ‘perfect storm’ of disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, declining confidence in institutions, ...

Two species of worms have retained remarkably similar patterns in the way they switch their genes on and off despite having split from a common ancestor 20 million years ago, a new study finds.  The findings appear in the June 19 issue of the journal Science  “It was just remarkable, with this evolutionary distance, that we should see such coherence in gene expression patterns,” said Dr. Robert Waterston, professor of genome sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle and a co-senior author of the paper. “I was surprised how well everything lined ...

New forests larger than the land area of North America would need to be planted to offset the potential carbon dioxide emissions from the fossil fuel reserves currently held by the world’s 200 largest fossil fuels companies. The finding comes from an analysis published in Communications Earth & Environment, which also suggests that most of the companies would have a negative market valuation if the cost to offset their entire reserves was deducted from their current valuation. Future emissions scenarios usually include both a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions and some offsetting of these emissions. Offsetting is necessary as most scenarios assume that during ...

Long believed to be a single, globally distributed species drifting freely across the open ocean, the bluebottle – also known as the Portuguese man o’ war – has now been revealed to be a group of at least four distinct species, each with its own unique morphology, genetics, and distribution. An international research team led by scientists at Yale University, and Australian researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and Griffith University, uncovered this surprising biodiversity by sequencing the genomes of 151 Physalia specimens from around the world. The study, published in Current Biology, found strong evidence ...

Philadelphia, June 19, 2025 – A novel study aimed at disentangling the neurological underpinnings of depression shows that multiple brain profiles may manifest as the same clinical symptoms, providing evidence to support the presence of both one-to-one and many-to-one heterogeneity in depression. The findings of the study in Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier, highlight the layered and complex interactions between clinical symptoms and neurobiological sources of variation. John Krystal, MD, Editor of Biological Psychiatry, ...

WASHINGTON — Researchers have shown, for the first time, that transmission of ultrastable optical signals from optical clocks across tens of kilometers of deployed multicore fiber is compatible with simultaneous transmission of telecommunications data. The achievement demonstrates that these emerging high-capacity fiber optic networks could be used to connect optical clocks at various locations, enabling new scientific applications. As global data demands continue to surge, multicore fiber is being installed to help overcome the limits of existing networks. These fibers pack multiple light-guiding cores ...

Singapore, 20 June 2025 – The National Heart Centre Singapore (NHCS) and Mayo Clinic have collaborated under a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to accelerate cardiovascular innovation and research, and to foster knowledge for future cardiovascular care worldwide. Advancing Cardiovascular Care, Research and Knowledge Exchange The collaboration brings together Mayo Clinic's expertise with NHCS's deep understanding of Asian cardiovascular health. By establishing a collaborative platform for knowledge exchange, the joint effort will hope to create new opportunities ...

The 2025 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize has been awarded to three scientists whose discoveries culminated in the development of lenacapavir, a medication used to treat and prevent human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the first approved drug to disrupt a viral capsid, a critical piece of the viral machinery that allows it to replicate. Because this therapy — more potent than any other HIV drug — is given only twice a year and can prevent HIV infection, it carries the promise to accelerate the end of the HIV epidemic. The three recipients are: Tomas Cihlar, ...

For the first time, researchers have studied what happens in the brains of people who have migraines when they haven’t slept enough. Migraine is characterized by pulsating headaches, photophobia, vomiting, nausea and increased sensitivity to sound. The disease affects about fifteen per cent of the Norwegian population, which roughly the same as the global incidence. Migraine is the leading cause of disability in people between the ages of 16 and 50. "These are important years in one’s life when it comes to school, higher education ...

Synthetic chemicals and plastics are useful and indispensable in our lives. On the other hand, the world is grappling with plastic pollution—clogging oceans, threatening wildlife, and leaching into ecosystems. While eco-friendly alternatives are on the way, researchers have been trying to identify the various effects of the synthetic plastics present within the ecosystem.   Bisphenol A (BPA) is a common chemical used in synthetic plastics and is known to act as an endocrine disruptor. Upon ...

Three dimensional immunohistochemistry (3D-IHC) has transformed our ability to visualize the spatial arrangement of cells and molecules in intact tissues. However, traditional methods are often time-consuming and suffer from poor antibody penetration, which limits their effectiveness in deep tissues. This bottleneck has posed significant challenges in neuroscience, pathology, and biomedical imaging, where rapid and detailed mapping of large tissue volumes is essential.   To address these issues, researchers at Juntendo University in Tokyo, Japan, Assistant Professor Kenta Yamauchi ...

WASHINGTON, DC – June 19, 2025 – Self-esteem scores more than doubled within one year of weight-loss surgery, according to a new study* presented today at the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) 2025 Annual Scientific Meeting. Researchers from Geisinger Medical Center found that after bariatric surgery self-esteem scores rose to 77.5 from 33.6 – a more than 40-point increase. The higher the score on a scale from 0 to 100, the higher the level of self-esteem and quality of life. The amount of weight loss appears to fuel the increase in self-esteem -- scores were highest among those who lost the most weight despite demographics differences including ...

Scientists at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology have discovered a key connection between high levels of iron in the brain and increased cell damage in people who have both Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease. In the study, researchers found that the brains of people diagnosed with Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease (DSAD) had twice as much iron and more signs of oxidative damage in cell membranes compared to the brains of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease alone or those with neither diagnosis. The results point to a specific cellular death process that is mediated by ...

Viruses are entirely dependent on their hosts to reproduce. They ransack living cells for parts and energy and hijack the host’s cellular machinery to make new copies of themselves. Herpes simplex virus-1 (HSV-1), it turns out, also redecorates, according to a new study in Nature Communications. Researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona have discovered the cold sore virus reshapes the human genome’s architecture, rearranging its shape in three-dimensional space so that HSV-1 can access host genes most useful for its ability to reproduce. “HSV-1 ...

Peatlands across the Arctic are expanding as the climate warms, new research shows. Scientists used satellite data, drones and on-the-ground observations to assess the edges of existing peatlands (waterlogged ecosystems that store vast amounts of carbon). The study – led by the University of Exeter – found peatlands in the European and Canadian Arctic have expanded outwards in the last 40 years. While this could slow climate change by storing carbon, the researchers warn that extreme future warming could cause widespread loss of peatlands – releasing that carbon and further accelerating the climate crisis. “The ...