Pythons don’t nibble. They chomp, squeeze and swallow their prey whole in a meal that can approach 100% of their body weight. But even as they slither stealthily around the forest, months or even a year may pass between massive mouthfuls. This pattern of extreme feasting and fasting taxes their metabolism far beyond what humans experience on a day-to-day basis. Now researchers at Stanford Medicine and the University of Colorado, Boulder, have found that a metabolite that spikes a thousandfold in pythons after a large meal causes obese laboratory mice to shun their food pellets and lose ...

According to a team of researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, Tongji University and collaborating institutions, weaning or switching from milk to solid food in early life doesn’t just change what babies eat, it helps reprogram the gut’s immune defenses to mount faster and stronger responses that can last into adulthood. The researchers report in Nature Microbiology that weaning reshaped the gut microbiome – the vast community of gut microorganisms – in mice, which in turn ‘trained’ intestinal stem cells to respond better to microbes later in life ...

LA JOLLA (March 19, 2026)—The United States and Mexico have been in a historic megadrought since the turn of the century. For more than 25 years, the American Southwest has faced the severe social and economic consequences of this megadrought—including a $1.1 billion agricultural loss in California in 2021 alone. With these conditions persisting, how can we help crops withstand drought while minimizing yield loss? Salk Institute scientists profiled nearly a million cells from the leaves of Arabidopsis thaliana, a small flowering plant that serves as a laboratory stand-in for important ...

University of Colorado Boulder researchers have discovered an appetite-suppressing compound in python blood that helps the snakes consume enormous meals and go months without eating yet remain metabolically healthy. The research, a collaboration with scientists at Stanford and Baylor universities, could inform new weight loss therapies that promote satiety without the nausea and muscle loss that can come with existing drugs. The findings appear in the journal Natural Metabolism on March 19. “This is ...

Barcelona, March 19, 2026 (EMBARGOED) -. Socioeconomic factors are widely recognized as potential modifiers of the relationship between air pollution and mortality, but the available evidence remains limited. In this context, a new study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the ”la Caixa” Foundation, in collaboration with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center–Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS), analysed how socioeconomic ...

University of Oxford press release UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 19 March 2026 at 10:00 (London time), 19 March 2026 at 06:00 (US Eastern Time).. Burkitt lymphoma is an aggressive cancer affecting children in sub-Saharan Africa If treated early, over 90% survive but currently, slow diagnosis results in fewer than 50% of children surviving A new, highly accurate blood test has been shown to cut diagnosis time from 46.8 days (using current methods) to 6.5 days and increases detection rate from 40% to 93.3% This approach could help ensure that children with Burkitt lymphoma begin ...

Nearly a third of Americans over age 50 provide regular care to an adult relative or friend with a health issue or disability, a new poll finds. But many of them don’t know about, or use, local resources that could help them with caregiving. And about 20% of these caregivers are like highwire acrobats working without a net, the poll reveals. They’re taking care of someone else with health needs, but without close friends or family members to pitch in if they needed help with their own health concerns. The new findings from the University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging could inform caregiver-related policy discussions at state and ...

Baby rattlesnake bites are less dangerous than bites from adult rattlesnakes, according to a new study from Loma Linda University that summarizes the origin, transmission, and prevalence of the longstanding myth that baby rattlesnake bites are more dangerous. The myth that baby rattlesnakes can’t control the release of their venom and therefore release it all when biting is refuted by the study. This incorrect belief has led “to negative consequences, including misinformed risk‐taking by those encountering snakes, unwarranted fear among snakebite victims, ...

Sudden drop in milk production, thickened milk, and cows under movment restrictions. Since 2024, American farmers have had bitter experiences with the feared bird flu (H5N1), which in several cases has been introduced to cattle – and then spread rapidly among cattle herds. In some instances, humans have been infected as well. The contagious virus is increasingly being transmitted from wild birds to mammals –such as cattle. The outbreaks in the U.S. raise the question of whether Denmark is sufficiently prepared should the infection spread to Danish cattle. But now there is good news for ...

What has long been interpreted as permanent and irreversible vascular damage may not be exclusively so. In people with Down syndrome—one of the most robust populations for studying Alzheimer’s disease due to the near-universal presence of the characteristic proteinopathies of this dementia from the age of 40—some lesions visible on magnetic resonance imaging do not follow a linear course. A longitudinal study from the Institut de Recerca Sant Pau (IR Sant Pau), published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia, shows that these alterations can fluctuate and even decrease over time in the Down syndrome population. This is especially true once the clinical symptoms ...

Researchers at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) have developed a novel virtual reality (VR) system that could make the treatment of arachnophobia, also known as spider phobia, more targeted and personalised in the future. The “VRSpi” system is a prototype which analyses the EEG data and heart rate of the participants during a confrontation with spiders in a VR environment. Based on this objective measurement data, it adjusts the intensity of the stimuli in real time to the person’s current level of anxiety. This avoids over- or under-stimulation and optimises ...

Every time a tree trunk is sawn, it creates sawdust. Millions of tonnes of sawdust are produced every year worldwide, with most of it is burned to generate energy. This releases the carbon dioxide stored in the wood back into the atmosphere – which is not ideal from an environmental perspective. Now, a team of researchers at the Chair of Wood Materials Science at ETH Zurich and Empa has developed a process that can convert sawdust into a recyclable and environmentally friendly composite using the mineral struvite, a crystalline, colourless ammonium magnesium phosphate. This, in turn, keeps the sawdust in the material cycle for longer.  Struvite has ...

Thursday, 19 March 2026 – Today, the European Psychiatric Association (EPA) announces the move into full implementation of the 2026 Presidential Task Forces of its Action Plan, from protecting vulnerable groups to accelerating precision psychiatry, under President Professor Andrea Fiorillo. The Plan underpins the scientific sessions of the upcoming 34th European Congress of Psychiatry, held 28–31 March in Prague, marking the first congress of Professor Fiorillo’s presidency. The ...

A research team led by researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, has, for the first time, successfully decoded leg movements directly from the remaining nerves in people with above-knee amputations. Using novel implantable neurotechnology and an AI method based on the nervous system’s own “language”, the researchers could do what was previously impossible and interpret detailed movements – even the will to wiggle toes. This technology opens the way to future leg prostheses that feel and act more like a natural part of the body. Helping amputees regain a functional and independent ...

Ludwig Kappos, MD, a leading physician-scientist at the University Hospital Basel in Basel, Switzerland has been awarded the 2026 John Dystel Prize for Multiple Sclerosis Research – one of the field’s highest honors. Dr. Kappos serves as director of the Research Center for Clinical Neuroimmunology and Neuroscience Basel and has played a central role in advancing MS research and treatment over the past several decades. Dr. Kappos will deliver the Dystel Prize lecture and formally receive the award at the ...

Powerful electronics don’t have to come at an environmental cost.  Scientists at Osaka Metropolitan University have developed high-performance, lead-free piezoelectric thin films directly on standard silicon wafers. Their results mark a significant step toward production of environmentally friendly energy-harvesting devices that are compatible with conventional semiconductor manufacturing.  Piezoelectric materials generate electric charge from mechanical stress and deform when exposed to an electric field. These materials are common, present for example in ...

Changing how people shower, report leaks and flush toilets could help close England’s projected five billion litre daily water shortfall – but only if the water sector builds the evidence base to make it work, according to a new report led by the University of Surrey. The report has been published to coincide with World Water Day on Sunday 22 March. The report, Promoting domestic water efficiency via behaviour change, draws on input from more than 100 professionals across 60 organisations in the UK water sector, gathered between October 2024 and April 2025. It was co-authored with researchers from Swansea University, the University ...

In the original form of baseball, all nine players bat and play defense, including the pitcher. The designated hitter system lets a team add a tenth player to the starting lineup—a specialist batter who replaces the pitcher in the batting order. The designated hitter only bats and does not play defense, while the pitcher still pitches but does not bat.  Now, researchers in Japan have analyzed 10 years (2014-2023) of game data from Japan’s Pacific League and found that the presence or absence of the designated hitter (DH) system does not change the relationship between player talent and winning. Published in PLOS One, the study also presents ...

For the first time, an international research team has harnessed artificial intelligence (AI) to decode the rules of an ancient board game, pioneering a new way to reveal long-lost historical secrets. By analysing an engraved limestone object from the Roman Netherlands, the team was able to determine likely game rules, based on its distinctive markings The new research published in Antiquity journal was led by Maastricht University (The Netherlands) and Leiden University (The Netherlands) with input from Flinders University (South Australia), ...

As the demand for green hydrogen production continues to grow, the limitations of freshwater scarcity and anode corrosion in saline water electrolysis become more pronounced. Now, researchers from the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, led by Professor Yichao Lin, Professor Yayun Zhao, and Professor Liang Chen, have presented a breakthrough strategy for stabilizing NiFe-based anodes in highly corrosive chloride-rich environments. This work offers valuable insights into the development ...

A team of international researchers have developed a breakthrough way to observe what is happening inside electronic chips while they are operating — without touching them, taking them apart, or switching them off. The new technique uses terahertz waves, a safe and non-ionising form of electromagnetic radiation, to detect tiny movements of electrical charge inside fully packaged semiconductor devices. For the first time, this allows scientists and engineers to monitor electronic components as ...

GLP-1 medications used to treat diabetes and obesity were associated with a reduced need for hospital care and sickness absence due to psychiatric reasons, a new study shows. The large register-based study was carried out in collaboration between the University of Eastern Finland, Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and Griffith University in Australia. Diabetes and obesity are associated with an increased risk of mental health symptoms, and similarly, individuals with mental disorders have an elevated risk of metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Researchers have long been interested in the connections ...

A blood pressure program adopted across the University of California’s six academic medical centers has effectively lowered hypertension and prevented serious disease or death for thousands of patients, according to a new study led by UC San Francisco.   High blood pressure affects nearly half of Americans and is a leading cause of death, especially in underserved populations. It also can lead to heart disease, heart failure, stroke, kidney disease, and pregnancy complications.  The new tool, one of very few developed for an entire health system to control ...

Research has confirmed for the first time that people with active gambling accounts who receive regular ‘free bets’ and other direct marketing offers place a lot more bets, spend far more, and suffer greater related harms than gamblers who have opted out of such offers. The study, led by Central Queensland University in Australia in collaboration with the University of Bristol in the UK, found that participants who chose not to receive direct marketing, such as emails, push notifications and text messages, from their gambling account placed nearly a ...

In a new, survey-based study of three kinds of “designer” crossbreed dogs, cocakpoos, cavapoos and labradoodles, all three showed more undesirable behaviors than at least one of their purebred progenitor breeds, with cockapoos displaying the most unwanted habits. Gina Bryson of the Royal Veterinary College, U.K., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on March 19, 2026. Cavapoos, labradoodles, and cockapoos are crosses between purebred poodles and cavalier King Charles spaniels, Labrador retrievers, and cocker spaniels, respectively. The popularity of these and other “designer” crossbreeds as pets is rapidly rising around the world, ...