EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4:00 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2025 Highlights: A new guideline by the American Academy of Neurology says psychological interventions are possibly effective in helping people achieve freedom from functional seizures. Functional seizures, previously known as psychogenic nonepileptic seizures or non-epileptic attack disorder, can look or feel like seizures from epilepsy or fainting, but they have their own typical features. The guideline says appropriate treatment may decrease the frequency of functional seizures, decrease anxiety and improve quality of life. The guideline recommends that antiseizure ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4:00 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2025 Highlights: GLP-1 drugs show a potential link to reduced epilepsy risk in people with type 2 diabetes. People taking GLP-1 drugs were 16% less likely to develop epilepsy than those on DPP-4 inhibitors. Semaglutide showed the strongest association with lower epilepsy risk among the GLP-1 drugs studied. The study is preliminary and does not prove causation; randomized, controlled trials are needed to confirm these findings. The drug tirzepatide was not included as it was introduced during the study period. MINNEAPOLIS — A preliminary study of people with diabetes suggests ...

A collaborative team of researchers (that includes students and senior researchers at Arizona State University (ASU), Coastal Carolina University, The University of the South in the US and researchers in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, The University of the West Indies at Cave Hill (Barbados), University of Cape Town (South Africa), Institut Pasteur (France) have identified two previously unknown circoviruses in short-finned pilot whales and orcas from the Caribbean region of the North Atlantic Ocean. The findings represent the first detection of cetacean circoviruses in this region and ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The cannabis marketplace continues to grow and evolve, offering consumers new ways to use cannabis — and new ways to combine it with other substances, such as alcohol. That practice can be particularly detrimental to adolescents, who are known to use both substances in high numbers. And when it comes to cannabis use and binge drinking among high school seniors, modality matters, according to new research from the University at Buffalo finding that differing modes of cannabis consumption may be associated with risky alcohol use behaviors in this population. The study is among the first to evaluate modes of cannabis use on binge drinking outcomes ...

Researchers at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) have developed Spheromatrix, a simple and low-cost technology that enables tumor models to be grown, frozen, and stored for future use in cancer drug testing. Spheromatrix is made from specially engineered filter paper patterned to support the growth of tumor spheroids in a controlled, reproducible manner. Unlike conventional approaches, which are expensive, complex, and cannot be preserved, this platform enables researchers to build biobanks of ...

Canadian researchers want to clarify the concepts related to safe opioid supply to better assess their impact and guide public-health policies. In Canada, thousands of people use contaminated street opioids. To reduce overdoses, the country has been experimenting for the past 10 years with the distribution of pharmaceutical opioids as an alternative to illicit drugs. This method is often referred to as “safe supply” or “safer supply.” What exactly do these terms, which emerged in the late 2010s and are central to Canadian harm reduction policies, mean? In a study published in the International Journal of Drug Policy, ...

New species of tiny pumpkin toadlet discovered in Brazil highlights need for conservation in the mountain forests of Serra do Quiriri Article URL: https://plos.io/48orUxO Article title: A new species of Brachycephalus (Anura: Brachycephalidae) from Serra do Quiriri, northeastern Santa Catarina state, southern Brazil, with a review of the diagnosis among species of the B. pernix group and proposed conservation measures Author countries: Brazil, U.S., Germany Funding: The field work was funded by Fundação ...

Reciprocity matters--people were more supportive of climate policies in their country if they believed other countries were making significant efforts themselves, per survey of 4,000 Chinese, Indian, Japanese and US citizens.   Article URL: https://plos.io/4pfhbgj Article Title: They reduce, we reduce: Perception of other countries’ climate effort predicts support for climate policies   Author Countries: China, Japan, Sweden Funding: The work described in this study was supported by grants awarded to Kim-Pong Tam from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. 16601122 ...

Stanford Medicine investigators have unearthed the biological process by which mRNA-based vaccines for COVID-19 can cause heart damage in some young men and adolescents — and they’ve shown a possible route to reducing its likelihood. Using advanced but now common lab technologies, along with published data from vaccinated individuals, the researchers identified a two-step sequence in which these vaccines activate a certain type of immune cell, in turn riling up another type of immune cell. The resulting inflammatory activity directly injures heart muscle cells, while triggering further ...

Nijmegen, 10 December 2025 - More than a decade after the first Neanderthal genome was sequenced, scientists are still working to understand how human-specific DNA changes shaped our evolution. A new study by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, published in Science Advances, offers an innovative approach: by scanning DNA of hundreds of thousands of people in a population biobank, researchers can identify individuals who carry the very rare archaic versions of these genetic changes, making it possible to directly observe their real-world effects in living humans.   It’s just over a decade since scientists first reported successfully sequencing the virtually ...

Key takeaways Harvard atmospheric scientists directly sampled 5-day old wildfire smoke in the upper troposphere and found large particles that are not reflected in current climate models. The large particles had a measurable cooling effect, with potential implications for future climate predictions Some wildfires are so intense, they create their own weather – thunderstorms driven by heat that hurtle smoke as high as 10 miles into the sky like giant chimneys. When these smoke plumes reach the thin, calm air of the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, they can persist for weeks or even months – yet their ...

With the help of artificial intelligence, an international team of researchers has made the first major inroad to date towards a new and more effective way to fight the monkeypox virus (MPXV), which causes a painful and sometimes deadly disease that can be especially dangerous for children, pregnant women and immunocompromised people. Reporting in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the team found that when mice were injected with a viral surface protein recommended by AI, the animals produced antibodies that neutralized MPXV, suggesting the breakthrough could be used in a new mpox vaccine or antibody ...

Researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of USC have developed a new type of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell that elicits a more controlled immune response to cancer in mice—effectively killing cancer cells, including those that typically escape detection, with fewer toxic side effects. The engineered CAR T cells may someday offer a way to more safely treat blood cancers and reduce the chance of relapse. The results were just published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. CAR T cell therapy ...

New Study Reveals Industrial Revolution’s Uneven Health Impacts Across England Bone chemistry uncovers hidden stories of pollution, gender, and life in industrializing Britain An interdisciplinary team of scientists has uncovered new evidence showing that the health impacts of the Industrial Revolution varied more widely across England than previously believed. The findings, published in the journal Science Advances, challenge the longstanding narrative that industrial cities were uniformly polluted while rural communities remained comparatively untouched ...

In the horticultural world, some vines are especially grabby. As they grow, the woody tendrils can wrap around obstacles with enough force to pull down entire fences and trees.  Inspired by vines’ twisty tenacity, engineers at MIT and Stanford University have developed a robotic gripper that can snake around and lift a variety of objects, including a glass vase and a watermelon, offering a gentler approach compared to conventional gripper designs. A larger version of the robo-tendrils can also safely lift a ...

A fingerprint has been found in the tars used to build the oldest known wooden plank boat in Scandinavia, which provides a direct link to the seaborne raiders who used the boat over 2,000 years ago. By analysing the tar itself, Lund University researchers are closer to solving the long-standing mystery of where the attackers in the boat came from. WATCH VIDEO: Archaeologist describes moment he discovered ancient fingerprint In the 4th century BC, an armada of boats attacked the island of Als off the coast ...

SAN ANTONIO — December 10, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) scientists are collaborating with researchers at UT San Antonio to study how space weathering can alter the lunar surface materials to help interpret regional and global far-ultraviolet (FUV) maps of the Moon. The study looked at how such weathering influences the FUV spectral response. By analyzing just a few grains of returned samples from the Apollo missions, the team gained important insights into the evolution of the lunar surface shaped by solar wind and micrometeoroid impacts over eons, said SwRI’s Dr. Ujjwal Raut. Using modern instruments and investigative techniques, the team gleaned ...

The cosmos has served up a gift for a group of scientists who have been searching for one of the most elusive phenomena in the night sky. Their study, presented today in Science Advances, reports on the very first observations of a swirling vortex in spacetime caused by a rapidly rotating black hole. The process, known as Lense-Thirring precession or frame-dragging, describes how black holes twist the spacetime that surrounds them, dragging nearby objects like stars and wobbling their orbits along the way. The team, led by the National Astronomical Observatories at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and supported by Cardiff University, examined AT2020afhd, a tidal disruption event (TDE) ...

ST. LOUIS, MO., December 10, 2025 -  Andrea Eveland, Ph.D., Principal Investigator and member at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, will lead a multi-institutional project to deepen the understanding of sorghum, a versatile bioenergy crop, and its response to environmental challenges. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program supports the three-year $2.5 million project for Genomics-Enabled Understanding and Advancing Knowledge on Plant Gene Function.  Tailoring crop productivity to variable growing environments, including resilience to and recovery from weather episodes such as flash droughts, is critical ...

December 10, 2025 – A new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior (JNEB), published by Elsevier, evaluated a 12-week home-delivered food and education program among adults in Northwest Arkansas. Participants received diabetes-appropriate grocery boxes along with diabetes self-management education materials in English, Spanish, or Marshallese. The intervention was designed and implemented by researchers at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Institute for Community Health Innovation (ICHI) using ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA - In everyday conversation, it’s critical to understand not just the words that are spoken, but the context in which they are said. If it’s pouring rain and someone remarks on the “lovely weather,” you won’t understand their meaning unless you realize that they’re being sarcastic. Making inferences about what someone really means when it doesn’t match the literal meaning of their words is a skill known as pragmatic language ability. This includes not only interpreting sarcasm but also understanding metaphors and white lies, among many other conversational subtleties. “Pragmatics is trying to reason ...

Plate tectonics can be visualized like large moving parts on the earth’s crust. The constant movement of the plates causes major stresses, and, as a result, deformations or earthquakes occur on the plate boundaries. “Every year the Eurasian and African plates are moving 4-6 mm closer to each other. The boundary between the plates around the Atlantic Ocean and Algeria is very clear, whereas in the south of the Iberian Peninsula the boundary is much more blurred and complex,” explained Asier ...

SAN ANTONIO — December 10, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Trinity University will study Thermus thermophilus, a thermal bacterium with highly stable proteins, to advance scientific understanding of stability mechanisms that could pave the way for advanced treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, ALS and cancer. The project is supported by SwRI and Trinity through a new grant program designed to encourage collaborative research. Thermus thermophilus is extremely heat tolerant and produces thermostable enzymes and proteins. Originally isolated ...

Using lung cancer biospecimens from the Sherlock-Lung study, an international team led by National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers, identified key factors that drive tumor evolution and influence outcomes. Overall, the findings, published Dec. 10, 2025, in Nature, describe a previously unknown origin of some aggressive lung cancers.    From whole-genome sequencing of more than 1,000 lung cancer cases, the team focused on 542 lung adenocarcinomas with diverse clonal architectures. Among them were a collection of aggressive tumors enriched with ...

A single signaling pathway controls whether immune cells attack or befriend cells they encounter while patrolling our bodies, researchers at Stanford Medicine have found. Manipulating this pathway could allow researchers to toggle the immune response to treat many types of diseases, including cancers, autoimmune disorders and those that require organ transplants. The research, which was conducted in mice, illuminates the mechanism of an important immune function that prevents inappropriate attacks on healthy tissue. Called peripheral immune tolerance, ...