The Frontiers Planet Prize names 19 National Champions – scientists offering scalable solutions to help keep humanity safely within planetary boundaries.  Following an independent scientific assessment involving 100 experts, chaired by Professor Johan Rockström, the developer of the Planetary Boundaries framework, the prize ensures faster global scientific consensus around the innovative ideas with greatest potential to drive change.  The Frontiers Planet Prize has today announced 19 National Champions from science ...

April 21, 2025 MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request. Contact: Bethany Mauger: 765-571-0623, maugerbe@msu.edu; Sydney Hawkins: 517-206-0547, sydneyh@msu.edu Images Should farm fields be used for crops or solar? MSU research suggests both Strategic use of solar arrays could provide financial boost, help farmers continue producing crops and even save water EAST LANSING, Mich. – As farmers debate whether fields should be used for agriculture or solar panels, new research from Michigan State University says the answer could be both.  Jake Stid, a graduate student in the College ...

Using pilocarpine eye drops following Kahook Dual Blade (KDB) goniotomy surgery may improve clinical outcomes for patients with glaucoma and reduce the need for future medications, according to new research published by faculty members and trainees in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “The KDB goniotomy is a minimally invasive glaucoma surgery that we do a lot here at the Sue Anschutz-Rodgers Eye Center, and there was some variability in the post-operative eye drop regimen among different providers,” says Julia Xia, MD, a uveitis ...

Stanford Medicine researchers have developed a blood test capable of detecting cancers, the ways cancer resists treatments and tissue injury caused by non-cancerous conditions. The new test analyzes RNA molecules in the bloodstream. This type of RNA is called cell-free RNA because the tiny molecules no longer inhabit a cell. There are always fragments of both DNA and RNA floating in blood — byproducts of natural cell death from all types of tissues and organs throughout the body, including cancerous tumors. The researchers spent more than six years developing novel methods to target messenger RNA in blood and then used it to identify the presence of cancers at different stages, ...

Primary progressive aphasia is a neurological condition that causes a gradual decline in language abilities. There is no cure or medication that can reverse or stop the progression of PPA. The standard practice in the clinical setting is speech-language therapy to help people with PPA maintain their ability to communicate.  University of Arizona neuroscientists have come up with a new treatment approach for PPA that combines traditional speech therapy with noninvasive electrical stimulation of the brain. The technique – called transcranial direct current stimulation – uses a low electrical current applied through electrodes on the scalp.  A ...

By John Lovett University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — While biodegradable plastics currently account for a half percent of the hundreds of millions of tons of plastic produced annually, a growing demand for the alternative reflects consumer awareness and corporate response. Researchers from Brazil, Germany and the United States document a multi-faceted global snapshot of the environmental aspects and trends surrounding single-use plastics in a review article titled “Rethinking single-use plastics: Innovations, policies, consumer awareness and market ...

With the assumption that students are going to use artificial intelligence and large language models such as ChatGPT to do their homework, researchers in the Department of Aerospace Engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign set out to learn how well the free version of ChatGPT would compare with human students in a semester-long undergraduate control systems course. The results: On straightforward math homework, ChatGPT got an A, but with some quirky answers. However, on higher-level problems that require reasoning, it got a D. “We found ChatGPT technology can get ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 21 April 2025    Follow @Annalsofim on X, Facebook, Instagram, threads, and Linkedin         Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf ...

 Use of psilocybin, the hallucinogenic chemical found in what is known as  “magic mushrooms,” has increased significantly nationwide since 2019, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Safety. The study was published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The researchers found that psilocybin use increased across all age groups, with the largest rise in young adults and older adults. “We found that since 2019, the number ...

Just published is the third new study showing that TM is highly effective in reducing stress in a wide array of populations. This meta-analysis included 15 studies with over 1,200 participants from military and civilian backgrounds. Using rigorous meta-analytic methods, the study found a large effect size of 1.01 for TM compared to control groups. An effect size over 0.80 is considered a large effect that the person, their family, and their medical staff would likely notice and discuss. Effective across multiple ethnicities and trauma types TM was consistently effective for people ...

CHICAGO — Five scientists from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center will be recognized with Scientific Achievement Awards and honors at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2025. These awards highlight significant achievements in translational research and oncology leadership from both early career and internationally renowned scientists and clinicians.   The honors include:  AACR-Daniel D. Von Hoff Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education & Training in Cancer Research: ...

Understanding the acceleration of human impacts on the environment is key to addressing the complex planetary and social challenges of the Anthropocene. But even as the inter-relatedness of environmental, political, and social processes becomes clearer, the conditions that produce sustainable outcomes remain little understood.  Now, a new study examines the acceleration of social-ecological changes in the first kingdom in Poland, the Piast dynasty, identifying the factors that contributed to its failure. Using new high-resolution ...

In the largest study of its kind, researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural History have used data from a 120-year-old program managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to quantify the effects of introduced species. The researchers included more than 5 million measurements from individual trees across much of eastern North America and showed the rate at which introduced species are spreading has increased over the last two decades. Additionally, native tree diversity is on the decline in areas where exotic species originally introduced by humans have encroached. This ...

The Krebs cycle is a series of chemical reactions that occur in the cells of living beings. It can produce energy from the degradation of certain types of molecules (lipids, sugars, proteins). This energy is then used by the cell to produce the energy essential to cell function. These fine layers of ice form on dust grains in space, and are irradiated by ultraviolet radiation and cosmic rays. Organic molecules that play a role in the chemical processes behind the origins of life. At the Nice Institute of Chemistry (CNRS/Université Côte ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In 2024, more than 50 million people in the United States lived in counties with no air-quality monitoring, according to a new study from researchers in the Penn State College of Health and Human Development. Rural counties — especially counties in the Midwest and South — were less likely to have an air-quality monitoring site. Air quality measures are used to estimate people’s exposure to air pollution, which makes monitoring a critical public health tool, according to Nelson Roque, assistant professor of human development and family studies and ...

DDT residues persist in trout in some Canadian lakes 70 years after insecticide treatment, often at levels ten times that recommended as safe for the wildlife which consumes the fish     Article URL: https://plos.io/4lp9Fhx Article title: Legacy DDT and its metabolites in Brook Trout from lakes within forested watersheds treated with aerial applications of insecticides Author countries: Canada Funding: This research was supported by funding from the New Brunswick Wildlife Trust Fund (JK; F000-201; www.nbwtf.ca), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Capitalizing on the flexibility of tiny cells inside the body’s smallest blood vessels may be a powerful spinal cord repair strategy, new research suggests. In mouse experiments, scientists introduced a specific type of recombinant protein to the site of a spinal cord injury where these cells, called pericytes, had flooded the lesion zone. Once exposed to this protein, results showed, pericytes change shape and inhibit the production of some molecules while secreting others, creating “cellular bridges” that support regeneration of axons – the long, slender extensions of nerve cell bodies that transmit messages. Researchers ...

Honolulu, Hawaii — The Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) are proud to announce the recipients of the prestigious PAS Trainee Travel Grants, recognizing 33 exceptional trainees for their contributions to pediatric research. Each award includes complimentary registration to the PAS 2025 Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, and a $500 travel grant to support their participation. These awards aim to encourage emerging talent and recognize excellence in pediatric research. Awardees were selected based on the quality of their submitted abstracts, with ...

Lucid dreaming is a surreal phenomenon in which people are consciously aware that they are in a dream. Çağatay Demirel, from Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radboud University Medical Center, and colleagues shed light on the neural correlates of lucid dreaming in their JNeurosci paper.   The researchers used a rigorous processing pipeline as they collected and assembled data from multiple labs to create what is, according to the authors, the largest sample size to date for this field of research. Comparisons of brain activity during lucid dreaming, rapid eye movement sleep, and wakefulness revealed distinct activity patterns for ...

One in ten people will have at least one seizure in their life, but effective treatments for seizures remain very limited, in part due to incomplete understanding of the brain mechanisms involved. Now, research in fruit flies has uncovered a role for two specific brain proteins that are necessary during brain development to prevent seizures. The two proteins, Imp and Sdc, are found in the developing brains of both flies and mammals, and are involved in the growth and development of neurons and brain circuits. A reduction of either protein during development makes flies prone to seizures without otherwise affecting their ability to move, the researchers found. ...

Tracing its roots to fundamental research conducted at Princeton, a new startup is upending decades-old approaches for the way the world extracts lithium and other materials, including nitrate and potash, that power today’s clean energy technologies and support modern agriculture. The company, Princeton Critical Minerals (formerly PureLi), which emerged from the University’s ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship, has developed a technology for boosting minerals production from evaporation ponds. These ponds currently generate around 40% of the world’s lithium and most of its naturally occurring nitrate. The technology is a black disc with a special, ...

There has been a troubling rise in adolescent mental health struggles and suicide rates over the past decade, with a dramatic increase following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This crisis has been accompanied by an increased demand for pediatric inpatient psychiatry units (IPUs) across the United States. However, despite the growing need, which has reached the point of bed shortages, the effectiveness of IPUs on teen mental health outcomes remains understudied. This study, led by Dr. Patricia Ibeziako from Boston Children’s Hospital, reviewed the electronic medical records ...

Newly published results of a randomized, controlled clinical trial in Japan among more than 170 children aged 1 to 6 who underwent surgery, show that by using EEG readings of brain waves to monitor unconsciousness, an anesthesiologist can significantly reduce the amount of the anesthesia administered to safely induce and sustain each patient’s anesthetized state. On average the little patients experienced significant improvements in several post-operative outcomes, including quicker recovery and reduced incidence of delirium. “I think the main takeaway is that in kids, using the EEG, we can reduce the amount of anesthesia we give them and maintain the same level of unconsciousness,” ...

For the first time, wild chimpanzees have been pictured eating and sharing fruit containing alcohol. A research team led by the University of Exeter set up cameras in Guinea-Bissau’s Cantanhez National Park. Footage of chimps sharing fermented African breadfruit – confirmed to contain ethanol (alcohol) – raises fascinating questions about if and why chimps deliberately seek out alcohol. Humans are believed to have consumed alcohol far back into our evolutionary history, with benefits for social bonding. And the new study suggests our closest relatives might be doing something ...

The percentage of children under 18 years old with anxiety and depression increased steadily from 2016 to 2022, according to publicly available data from the National Survey of Children’s Health that were analyzed by researchers from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. In contrast, there was no increase during that timeframe related to physical health problems, such as asthma, severe headache or migraine, and heart conditions. Results were published in JAMA Pediatrics. “Our findings underscore the critical need to prioritize youth mental health, which continued to worsen even as ...