Embargoed for Release Until June 4, 2025    NATIONWIDE STUDY FINDS THAT LEAKS IN NATURAL GAS PIPELINES CONTRIBUTE TO HAZARDOUS PARTICULATE AIR POLLUTION New research finds that methane leaks in energy-intensive states like Texas lower the air quality for people in neighboring states Herndon, VA, June 4, 2025 -- In March 2022, 14 residents of a four-story apartment building in Silver Spring, Maryland, were hospitalized when a gas leak from a cut pipeline caused a major explosion. Every year in the United States, there are hundreds of natural gas (or methane) pipeline leaks -- caused by corrosion, equipment malfunctions, and construction ...

Artificial intelligence is playing an increasingly vital role in modern medicine, particularly in interpreting medical images to help clinicians assess disease severity, guide treatment decisions and monitor disease progression. Despite these advancements, most current AI models are based on static datasets, limiting their adaptability and real-time diagnostic potential. To address this gap, researchers from Florida Atlantic University and collaborators, have developed a novel proof-of-concept deep ...

Midvale, UT (June 4, 2025) – EyeCare4Kids™, a non-profit organization that provides professional eye care services to low-income, visually impaired children and underserved families across the southwest United States and Africa, today announced the promotion of Maggie Cline, MPH, to Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Ms. Cline joined EyeCare4Kids in 2022 and served as Executive Director Utah, where she oversaw the delivery of more than 50,000 vision services annually at school clinics, community centers, and other underserved areas across the state. Ms. Cline succeeds board-certified optician Joseph Carbone, who founded the organization in 2001 and will transition to a role focused on ...

A new study leveraging accelerometer and brain MRI data reveals that moderate levels of physical activity may help slow brain aging. Led by Associate Professor Chenjie Xu from the School of Public Health at Hangzhou Normal University, in collaboration with institutions including Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Tianjin Medical University, the study is published in Health Data Science. Analyzing 16,972 participants from the UK Biobank, researchers applied a LightGBM machine learning algorithm to over 1,400 image-derived phenotypes to predict each individual’s "brain age." The findings indicate a U-shaped association between physical activity (PA) ...

PULLMAN, Wash.--A group of bat viruses closely related to the deadly Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) could be one small mutation away from being capable of spilling over into human populations and potentially causing the next pandemic. A recent study published in the journal Nature Communications examined an understudied group of coronaviruses known as merbecoviruses — the same viral subgenus that includes MERS-CoV — to better understand how they infect host cells. The research ...

One-pot recipes make preparing meals quick and easy. And one-pot 3D-printing could do the same for additive manufacturing. Now, researchers publishing in ACS Central Science have demonstrated a new resin that simultaneously creates solid objects and dissolvable structural supports, depending on what type of light the resin is exposed to. The approach could increase the applications for 3D-printed objects, including tissue engineering scaffolds, joints and hinges. “Vat photopolymerization is known for its fast and high-resolution printing, but one of the most nerve-wracking parts after printing is manually removing supports for intricate interlocking and overhang ...

You may have seen it in the news recently: a baby in Pennsylvania with a rare genetic disorder was healed with a personalized treatment that repaired his specific genetic mutation. The treatment was created using a form of gene editing called base editing —a method created by Alexis Komor when she was a postdoctoral scholar in molecular biologist David Liu’s group at Harvard University. Since that work was published in 2016, Komor, who is now an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California San Diego, has continued to study base-editing tools to better understand and further develop their capabilities. ...

A team led by University of Virginia School of Medicine researcher James Stone, MD, PhD, has received $3.2 million from the federal Department of Defense to enhance a critical tool for protecting the brain health of military personnel.  The project aims to upgrade the Generalized Blast Exposure Value (GBEV) tool that assigns a numerical score to a service member’s history of blast exposures that can be used to assess the potential for adverse health outcomes.  “This will represent a major step forward in how the military monitors, protects and cares for its service members,” said Stone, a UVA Health ...

At home in Australia, Mark Renton started playing football as soon as he could. He figured it would eventually lead to a career prescribing strength training and exercise regimens to athletes. But as an undergraduate, the sports science curriculum included an exercise metabolism course that explored how cells turn energy into movement. This biological focus captured Renton’s imagination, and he became increasingly interested in the mechanisms that underly muscle function, including developing force through contractions that mediate precise movements. Ultimately, Renton wound up earning a doctorate ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study to be presented at the SLEEP 2025 annual meeting found that bedtime procrastination in young adults is associated with specific personality traits, including depressive tendencies. Results show that bedtime procrastination was associated with higher neuroticism and lower conscientiousness and extraversion. These results remained significant after statistically adjusting for chronotype. “Our study demonstrated that individuals who habitually procrastinate their bedtime were actually less likely to report seeking out exciting, engaging, or enjoyable activities,” said lead author Steven Carlson, ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study to be presented at the SLEEP 2025 annual meeting found that bedtime procrastination among college students is socially influenced by the need to belong. Results show that sleep duration was more than an hour shorter on school nights when college students delayed their bedtime for in-person social leisure activities. On these nights, their bedtime was strongly correlated with the timing of their last objectively measured social interaction with friends. Students within the bedtime procrastination social network scored higher on the need to belong compared with students outside the network. The need to belong also predicted tie ...

The Unexpected Planet  Star TOI-6894 is just like many in our galaxy, a small red dwarf, and only ~20% of the mass of our Sun. Like many small stars, it is not expected to provide suitable conditions for the formation and hosting of a large planet.   However, as published today in Nature Astronomy, an international team of astronomers have found the unmistakable signature of a giant planet, called TOI-6894b, orbiting this tiny star.  This system has been discovered as part of a large-scale investigation of TESS (Transiting Exoplanet ...

A study led by researchers at Stanford Medicine shows that differences in blood sugar responses to certain carbohydrates depend on details of an individual’s metabolic health status. The differences in blood sugar response patterns among individuals were associated with specific metabolic conditions such as insulin resistance or beta cell dysfunction, both of which can lead to diabetes. The study findings suggest that this variability in blood sugar response could lead to personalized prevention and treatment strategies for prediabetes and diabetes. “Right now, the American Diabetes Association ...

Embargoed until 5:00 a.m. ET, Wednesday June 4, 2025 Even with all its training and computer power, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool like ChatGPT can’t represent the concept of a flower the way a human does, according to a new study.   That’s because the large language models (LLMs) that power AI assistants are based usually on language alone, and sometimes with images.   “A large language model can’t smell a rose, touch the petals of a daisy or walk through a field of wildflowers,” said Qihui Xu, lead author of the study and postdoctoral researcher in psychology at The Ohio State ...

Extractive activity in international waters - including fishing, seabed mining, and oil and gas exploitation - should be banned forever, according to top scientists. The high seas, the vast international waters beyond national jurisdiction, remain largely unprotected and are increasingly threatened. Writing in the journal Nature, Professor Callum Roberts and co-authors argue that stopping all extractive activity in international waters would prevent irreversible damage to marine biodiversity, the climate, and ocean equity. This would ...

A team of international researchers has developed a new biological age “clock” that estimates how well someone is aging, not just how “old” they or their various organs might be. The IC Clock, which is described in a study in Nature Aging, measures intrinsic capacity (IC), the sum of six key functions that determine healthy aging: mobility, cognition, mental health, vision, hearing and nutrition/vitality. “Maintaining function during the aging process is what matters to older adults. Function should inform medical care instead of focusing on getting patients to some disease-free state,” said senior ...

Tokyo, Japan – Water is everywhere and comes in many forms: snow, sleet, hail, hoarfrost… However, despite water being so commonplace, scientists still do not fully understand the predominant physical process that occurs when water transforms from liquid to solid. Now, in an article recently published in the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, have carried out a series of molecular-scale simulations to uncover why ice forms ...

A simple rule that seems to govern how life is organised on Earth is described in a new study published today (Wednesday, 4 June) in Nature Ecology & Evolution. The research team led, by Umeå University and involving the University of Reading, believe this rule helps explain why species are spread the way they are across the planet. The discovery will help to understand life on Earth – including how ecosystems respond to global environmental changes. The rule is simple: in every region on Earth, most species cluster together in small 'hotspot' areas, then gradually spread outward with fewer and fewer species able to survive farther away from these ...

Over 500 million people worldwide suffer from diabetes—a disease that contributes to major complications such as stroke, kidney failure, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease. At the heart of this condition lies the dysfunction of pancreatic islets, the mini-organs called organoids responsible for regulating blood sugar, in both autoimmune type 1 diabetes and stress-induced type 2 diabetes. Replacing these damaged islets with lab-grown, functional islets represents a promising therapeutic strategy. However, the lack of reliable markers to identify truly functional, stem cell–derived islets has hindered the consistent production needed for clinical application. In ...

The host star, TOI-6894, is a red dwarf with only 20% the mass of the Sun, typical of the most common stars in our galaxy. Until now, such low-mass stars were not thought capable of forming or retaining giant planets. But as published today in Nature Astronomy, the unmistakable signature of a giant planet — TOI-6894b — has been detected in orbit around this tiny star. This exceptional system was first identified in data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), as part of a large search for giant planets around small stars, led by Dr. Edward Bryant from UCL’s ...

A new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution has found a simple rule that seems to govern how life is organised on Earth. The researchers believe this rule helps explain why species are spread the way they are across the planet. The discovery will help to understand life on Earth – including how ecosystems respond to global environmental changes. At first glance, Earth seems like a collection of wildly different worlds. Each region has its own species and environmental conditions. Yet, beneath this variety, ...

New research published in Allergy indicates that certain environmental exposures may affect a child’s risk of developing atopic eczema, a condition characterized by dry, itchy, and inflamed skin. In other words, although some people may be genetically predisposed to eczema, certain environmental factors may increase or decrease that risk. For the study, investigators analyzed data from 16 European studies to test for interactions between the 24 most significant eczema-associated genetic variants and 18 early-life environmental factors. They applied their findings to an additional 10 studies and used lab modelling tests to assess their results. The ...

New research in the Journal of Adolescence found that among LGBTQ+ adolescents in the United States, those who experienced more violence because of their identity or more bullying because of their gender expression had more trouble falling asleep, whereas those who experienced more familial warmth had less trouble falling asleep. Gender-based victimization, family rejection, absence of a gender-sexuality alliance, and not having a trusted adult at school were also related to trouble falling asleep for cisgender sexual minority youth (who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth but who are not heterosexual). For gender minority youth, being able to use the restroom that matched ...

Trees are important to the environmental health of cities through their capacity to improve air quality, provide cooling via shade and transpiration, and foster natural beauty. New research in Plant-Environment Interactions reveals how the widespread plant pathogen Phytophthora affects urban trees, specifically Common Lime trees. Using numerous tree sensors, investigators found that infected trees exhibited reduced water use and stem growth compared with healthy trees, but some still managed to maintain ...

Annual flowering seed mixes are often grown in gardens and parks, but the flowers included may not be the most pollinator-friendly. New research in Plants, People, Planet reveals plant species that have the potential to attract a diversity of pollinators. Investigators surveyed 447 scientific papers on plant-insect interactions and conducted field trials of commercially available seed mixes to see which plants pollinators visited the most, focusing on bees and hoverflies. These analyses and tests were used to develop two novel experimental seed mixes that were assessed for insect visitation and ...