Excess nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus are among the leading causes of water pollution worldwide, fueling harmful algal blooms and degrading aquatic ecosystems. Now, researchers have developed a sustainable solution by transforming agricultural waste into an advanced biochar material capable of removing these pollutants from wastewater. The new study introduces a calcium hydroxide modified biochar produced from discarded shells of Camellia oleifera, an oil producing tree widely cultivated in China. The research demonstrates that this low cost material can effectively remove ammonium and phosphate from water, two major drivers of eutrophication and ecosystem imbalance. Camellia ...

Mona Lynch, UC Irvine Chancellor’s Professor of criminology, law & society, has been awarded a $178,851 grant from the Russell Sage Foundation to study how California’s landmark Racial Justice Act provides access to racial justice for criminal defendants. The research project, titled “Access to Racial Justice in Criminal Courts,” will examine the implementation and impact of the California Racial Justice Act (CRJA), which prohibits the state from prosecuting, convicting or sentencing criminal defendants based on race, ethnicity or national origin. “Our ...

Aerobic exercise, such as running, swimming, and dancing, may be most effective for relieving the symptoms of depression and anxiety, finds an overarching (umbrella) review and data synthesis of the available evidence, published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. While supervised and group exercise may be best for reducing depression, shorter (up to 8 weeks) lower intensity exercise may be best for relieving anxiety.   But all forms of exercise are as good as, or better than, medication and talking therapies, regardless of age or sex, the findings indicate.   Depression ...

School restrictive smartphone policies may save a small amount of money for schools, primarily by reducing the amount of time staff spend on managing phone-related behaviours, but they make little difference to pupils’ quality of life or mental wellbeing, finds a health economic analysis, published in the online journal BMJ Mental Health.   By the age of 12, most children own a phone and use social media, with teens reportedly spending between 4 and 6 hours a day on their phones and 2–4 hours a day on social ...

Nearly all the world’s 10.6 million children experiencing serious health-related suffering (SHS) live in low- and middle-income countries with little to no access to palliative care specialized care for their illness, according to a comprehensive new report published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health. The study defines SHS as physical, psychological, social or spiritual pain and distress linked to life-threatening or life-limiting conditions, as introduced by the Lancet Commission on Global Access to ...

Cars with self-driving features are supposed to promise a safer and more convenient future. But there’s a problem: human brains weren’t designed for the strange new role these vehicles demand of us. According to Professor of Engineering Psychology Ronald McLeod, cars with autonomous features place unprecedented psychological demands on drivers – demands we are currently drastically unprepared for. McLeod is a world-renowned Human Factors specialist, which involves analysing and understanding ...

-With images-   Scientists have uncovered new DNA-binding proteins from some of the most extreme environments on Earth and shown that they can improve rapid medical tests for infectious diseases.   The international research team, led by Durham University and working with partners in Iceland, Norway and Poland, analysed genetic material from Icelandic volcanic lakes and deep-sea vents more than two kilometres below the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean.   Nature is the world’s largest source of useful enzymes, ...

The UK’s wheat is under threat from a newly identified strain of the yellow rust pathogen, prompting an urgent mobilisation of research institutes to protect harvests. The new strain, identified in 2025, has overcome a key resistance gene that was protecting many major UK wheat varieties from yellow rust infection.     The breakdown of this resistance gene, Yr15, leaves more than 50% of the UK’s wheat acreage vulnerable ...

Falling passionately in love is one of the most talked about human experiences, celebrated in songs, movies, literature and art across cultures. Passionate love is widely considered a hallmark of romantic relationships and has well-documented psychological and behavioral effects. Yet until now, research has overlooked a surprisingly basic question: How many times do people actually experience passionate love over a lifetime?  A new study from researchers at the Kinsey Institute offers the first population-level answer. Published in Interpersona: An International Journal on Personal Relationships, the ...

Eric Gaier, MD, PhD, and Dean Eliott, MD, of the Department of Ophthalmology at Mass Eye and Ear, a member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, are co-authors of a paper published in Ophthalmology Retina, “Substance Use Disorder Interventions and Ophthalmic Outcomes for Injection Drug Use-Associated Endogenous Endophthalmitis.”   Q: What challenges or unmet needs make this study important?  People who use injection drugs are at a higher risk for eye infections, particularly endogenous endophthalmitis—a medical emergency caused by bacteria or fungi entering the bloodstream to reach the inside of the eye. These individuals may present to eye clinics ...

In a winter marked by flu outbreaks, the persistence of Covid-19, and surges of measles cases across the United States, an Annenberg survey finds that a sizable majority of Americans think the three vaccines that combat these potentially deadly illnesses are safe to take, although perceptions of the safety of all three vaccines showed a statistically significant drop over the past three years. Flu levels are rising across the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with visits to emergency departments increasing for children over five. In 2025, measles cases hit their highest level in the United States since 1991, ...

Anxiety disorders — including generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder and phobias — affect as many as one in four people over the course of their lives. They often begin early in life and persist for years, inflicting significant personal, social and economic consequences. Now, a major breakthrough published in Nature Genetics is offering the clearest picture yet of the genetic roots of these conditions. In what is now the largest genome‑wide association study (GWAS) of clinically diagnosed anxiety disorders ever conducted, an international ...

A little-known fact: In the year 1900, electric cars outnumbered gas-powered ones on the American road.  The lead-acid auto battery of the time, courtesy of Thomas Edison, was expensive and had a range of only about 30 miles. Seeking to improve on this, Edison believed the nickel-iron battery was the future, with the promise of a 100-mile range, a long life and a recharge time of seven hours, fast for that era.  Alas, that promise never reached fruition. Early electric car batteries still suffered from serious limitations, and advances in ...

SAN FRANCISCO (Feb. 10, 2026) — Dementia Care Aware (DCA) is collaborating with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) to support its March 2026 Action Community, a community learning experience that helps health systems across the country implement the 4Ms Framework of an Age-Friendly Health System. DCA is a national organization dedicated to improving dementia detection and care by providing health care teams the education, tools and support necessary to offer high-quality dementia care. This new collaboration advances DCA’s and IHI’s shared goals ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE In a lab-grown cell study focused on potential new treatment targets for halting the spread of most pancreatic cancers, Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists report they have found that a gene called KLF5 (Krueppel-like factor 5) fuels the growth of such spreading tumors not by acquiring abnormal changes in the cancer cells’ DNA code itself but by altering chemical changes and organization of DNA, or epigenetics, that turns genes on and off.  “Epigenetic alterations are underappreciated ...

Israel E. Wachs, the G. Whitney Snyder Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Lehigh University, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), one of the highest professional honors in the field of engineering. Wachs was recognized “for establishing fundamental structure–activity/selectivity rules governing molecular engineering of mixed oxide catalysts” that guide the rational design of solid catalysts (materials that accelerate and control chemical reactions) for air pollution ...

Stimulating two brain areas, nudging them to collectively fire in the same way, increased a person’s ability to behave altruistically, according to a study published February 10th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Jie Hu from East China Normal University in China and colleagues from University of Zurich in Switzerland. As parents raise their kids, they often work to teach them to be kind and to share, to think about other people and their needs—to be altruistic. This unselfish attitude is critical if a society is ...

A study comparing one- and three-month antibiotic treatments to prevent active tuberculosis (TB) finds that a high percentage of patients successfully completed both regimens and suffered few adverse side effects. A team led by Richard Chaisson, of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, U.S.A., reports these findings February 10th in the open access journal PLOS Medicine. After someone is exposed to TB, the World Health Organization has traditionally recommended six to nine months of antibiotic treatment to prevent an active infection from developing, but many individuals fail to complete the long course of medication. Studies have shown that ...

When food is scarce, stress hormones direct the immune system to operate in “low power” mode to preserve immune function while conserving energy, according to researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine. This reconfiguration is crucial to combating infections amid food insecurity. When food is scarce, stress hormones direct the immune system to operate in “low power” mode to preserve immune function while conserving energy, according to researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine. This reconfiguration is crucial to combating ...

AMHERST, Mass. — Building on their groundbreaking 2018 research into how some of the body’s cells, such as neurons and cardiac tissue, communicate via ions that flow through cellular channels, chemists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst demonstrated a “leakiness” to a particularly mysterious type of channel, known as a “big potassium,” or BK channel. This leakiness is key to further study the body’s electrical infrastructure, which, when it goes haywire, can result in maladies like epilepsy and hypertension. Instead of electron-carrying wires, electricity flows through our bodies in ion-carrying cellular ...

Nearly 30 years ago, researchers began studying the gene Astn1, which encodes the cell adhesion protein astrotactin 1 in mice, and its role in brain development. During this time, they learned a great deal about the function of astroactin 1 in neuronal migration and the developmental problems that emerge when the protein fails. This story has now come full circle – the findings in mice are helping to provide answers to undiagnosed human conditions. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children Hospital and collaborating institutions have ...

When banks crowd a lending market, you can forget the traditional relationship of supply and demand, in which increased supply normally leads to lower prices. So finds new research from Cesare Fracassi, associate professor of finance at Texas McCombs. Paradoxically, a larger number of banks in a market sends the price of a loan up — as measured by the interest rate charged by the lender. For every six additional banks in a county, he finds, interest rates are 7 basis points higher. A basis point is one-hundredth of 1%. “The usual story we tell says the more suppliers of a product are out there, the better it is,” Fracassi says. “It’s ...

Shima Mohebbi, Assistant Professor, Systems Engineering and Operations Research (SEOR), George Mason University; Milos Manic, Professor, Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU); and Babak Aslani, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, SEOR, George Mason, are studying agentic artificial intelligence (AI)-driven cybersecurity for critical manufacturing.  The Commonwealth of Virginia is home to nearly 5,000 small- and medium-sized critical manufacturing entities, which collectively ...

When Asian American Olympians Chloe Kim and Eileen Gu competed in their first Winter Games, they were treated differently by the U.S. media, a new University of Michigan study suggests.   Snowboarder Chloe Kim was celebrated as a "typical American teenager" by the media for competing for the United States in her first Olympics in 2018, while four years later, freestyle skier Eileen Gu was cast as an "ungrateful traitor" after opting to represent China instead of the U.S.   Study corresponding author Doo Jae Park, a lecturer in sport management at the U-M School of Kinesiology and faculty affiliate ...

Research led by Simon Grelet, Ph.D., at the University of South Alabama that uncovered a previously unknown way nerves fuel cancer spread has been recognized as one of Science magazine’s Top 10 Scientific Breakthroughs of 2025. The honor, announced in the Dec. 18, 2025 issue of Science, highlights major advances across all scientific disciplines. Published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the peer-reviewed journal is regarded as the world’s leading research authority, making the selection a significant distinction for both Grelet ...