A new generation of CRISPR technology developed at UNSW Sydney offers a safer path to treating genetic diseases like Sickle Cell, while also proving beyond doubt that chemical tags on DNA — often thought to be little more than genetic cobwebs — actively silence genes. For decades, scientists have debated whether methyl groups — small chemical clusters that accumulate on DNA — are simply detritus that accumulates in the genome where genes are turned off, or the actual cause of gene repression. But now researchers at UNSW, working with colleagues in the US at the St Jude Children’s Research Hospital (Memphis), have shown in a paper published recently ...

The number of people living with Parkinson's disease globally has doubled in the past 25 years. Yet the treatment and monitoring of the neurological disease seems many decades behind. Clinicians typically gauge the severity of the disease using subjective rating scales, and a shortage of doctors trained to treat Parkinson's means that people can go months — or years — between clinic visits. This leaves patients in a troubling spot, often unsure how quickly their disease is progressing and whether they are responding appropriately to medications. Now, ...

Australian researchers have found that households with solar panels could boost their returns by selling surplus power directly to their neighbours, known as peer-to-peer (P2P) energy sharing, helping to stabilise the electricity grid and negotiating a better price than retailers currently offer. Worldwide, around 25 million households already rely on solar panels, with forecasts predicting 100 million by 2030. In 2024, the world installed an estimated 597 GW of solar power, a 33% increase compared to 2023. Australia has one of the highest rates of solar panels ...

A striking photograph of two male saiga antelope sparring on the banks of a steppe lake is the winner of the 2025 BMC Ecology and Evolution and BMC Zoology image competition. The annual competition spotlights the beauty, struggles, and survival strategies of remarkable life on earth, while celebrating the researchers striving to understand the natural world in the fields of ecology, evolutionary biology, palaeontology, and zoology. Along with the overall winning image, the judges selected winners and runners-up in four categories: Collective ...

Cancer Research UK-funded scientists have uncovered dementia-like behaviour in pancreas cells at risk of turning into cancer. The findings provide clues that could help in the treatment and prevention of pancreatic cancer, a difficult-to-treat disease linked to 6,900 deaths in the UK every year.* The research was published today (15 August) in the journal Developmental Cell**, and was funded by Cancer Research UK, with additional support from Wellcome, the Medical Research Council, and the Biotechnology ...

The medical pros of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) are being exaggerated while the risks are being downplayed, suggest the findings of a survey on the type of information patients and their relatives/friends recall having been given before the procedure, and published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics. Based on the responses, the researchers calculate that patients were nearly 4 times more likely to recall being told that resulting memory problems were temporary rather than long term. And they were 6 times more likely ...

SGLT-2 inhibitor and GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs should be used in all or almost all adults with type 2 diabetes at higher risk of cardiovascular and kidney complications, and in the majority of adults at moderate risk of complications, say a panel of international experts in The BMJ today. But for those at lower risk, they advise against routinely recommending these drugs, and suggest doctors discuss treatment options with their patients, noting that decisions are likely to be more contextual and based on what’s most important to the individual.  For ...

A large international study has found that spironolactone, a medication for high blood pressure and heart failure, does not reduce the risk of heart-related death or hospitalizations in people with kidney failure receiving dialysis, despite earlier smaller studies suggesting benefit. The findings were published on August 14 in The Lancet and presented at ERA Congress 2025. The study enrolled 2,538 participants from 143 dialysis centres across 12 countries, making it the largest trial to date on spironolactone ...

*Embargoed links to the paper, regional data, and additional quotes are available at the end of this press release*  IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON PRESS RELEASE Peer Reviewed / Observational study / People                        An analysis of suicide rates in England has shown how factors like deprivation and transport density are linked to regional increases in suicide risk. The first of its kind study, led by researchers at Imperial College London, UCL and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), looked at suicide trends in England from 2002 to 2022 combined with the ...

Tiny pond worms could help find new ways to treat schizophrenia, develop understanding around drug addiction and test new medicines for mental illnesses – all while reducing the number of mice and rats used in early medical research.  Scientists from the University of Reading say that planaria - harmless flatworms found in ponds and rivers - react to brain medicines in ways similar to rodents. When given haloperidol, a drug used to treat mental health conditions, the worms became much less active, ...

In Ho Yong Chung’s laboratory, magic is at work — plants turn into plastics. In new research, Chung, an associate professor in the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, showed for the first time the possibility of using lignin, a material found in plant cell walls, and carbon dioxide to create a new kind of polyurethane, a polymer used in various applications for its ability to regulate heat, flexibility during processing and strength as a finished product. The work was published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. “We’ve ...

Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah (the U) announces leadership team appointments overseeing clinical and research efforts in theranostics, an innovative approach to radiation treatment for cancer that combines diagnostics and therapeutics.  Heloisa Soares, MD, PhD, Huntsman Cancer Institute medical oncologist and associate professor of internal medicine at the U, will serve as medical director of the theranostics program.  Theranostics is a powerful new way to both find and treat cancer. It uses radioactive drugs—called radiopharmaceuticals—that ...

Most people picture a doctor checking for a broken bone when they think of an X-ray. But the technology is just as important in places like airport security, manufacturing, quality control and scientific research, each with its own criteria for size and shape.  A team led by Florida State University Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Biwu Ma has developed a new form for X-ray materials that can meet the needs of large-area applications, changing out complex crystal structures for an adaptable and scalable thin-film detector. The work was published in Angewandte Chemie.  “We took a material we developed and made it better,” Ma said. “This ...

CHICAGO — August 14, 2025  — The 66th Supplement to the American Ornithological Society’s (AOS’s) Check-list of North American Birds, published today in Ornithology, includes several significant updates to the classification of bird species found in North America, Central America, and the Caribbean. A few highlights from the supplement, detailed below, include species splits for Myiarchus nuttingi, Vireo gilvus, and Larus argentatus; the addition of subfamilies in the Laridae for white-terns and noddies; and a merging of three families ...

Canadian-grown wheat, canola and peas have some of the lowest carbon footprints in the world—so low that, in some cases, they could be shipped to Europe 17 times before matching the emissions of the same crops grown there.  The study out of UBC Okanagan, published in Nature Food, compared the carbon footprints of these crops from Canada, France, Germany, Australia and the United States using the ISO 14067 standard.   Led by Dr. Nicole Bamber of UBCO’s Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science, the research ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Origin-recognition complex, or ORC, plays an unexpectedly broad role in the regulation of human cell gene expression, according to a study in the journal Cell Reports. “This is the first detailed study of how and where ORC regulates epigenetics and gene expression in human cells,” said Anindya Dutta, Ph.D., leader of the study and chair of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Genetics. “The unanticipated scale and breadth of the regulation opens new chapters in ORC biology.” The six-subunit complex was discovered ...

The next time you breathe, consider this: photosynthesis of algae, powered by iron dust in the ocean, made it possible. Now, a new Rutgers University study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences pulls back the curtain on this vital process. Iron is a critical micronutrient for marine phytoplankton, the microscopic algae that form the foundation of the ocean’s food webs. It is deposited into the world’s oceans as dust from deserts and arid areas as well as from glacial meltwater. “Every other breath you take includes oxygen from the ocean, ...

Scientists from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, working in collaboration with a team from the University of Texas at El Paso, have developed a novel computational framework for understanding how a region of the brain known as the striatum is involved in the everyday decisions we make and, importantly, how it might factor into impaired decision-making by individuals with psychiatric disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use disorder. In a study published in Nature Communications [10.1038/s41467-025-61466-x] on August 14, the team reported that modulating activity ...

Omega fatty acids are important to human health, including their role in metabolizing fats. Deviations in their position in a fatty acid chain can signal enzyme malfunctions or pathological metabolic processes, such as those occurring in cancer and autoimmune disorders. Now, researchers from UC San Diego and the University of Graz (Austria) have presented a new computational method to determine omega positions of lipids — the scientific term for fats — in complex biological samples including human tissues and blood. Until ...

Recent advancements in cancer research are shedding light on a novel therapeutic strategy aimed at overcoming the formidable challenge of cancer stem cells (CSCs). These unique cells are known for their remarkable ability to resist conventional therapies, leading to treatment failures and cancer recurrence. A promising new approach involves targeting ferroptosis, a regulated cell death process driven by iron accumulation and lipid peroxidation, which could significantly improve cancer treatment outcomes.   CSCs ...

Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere will change the way geomagnetic storms impact Earth, with potential implications for thousands of orbiting satellites, according to new research led by scientists at the US. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR). Geomagnetic storms, caused by massive eruptions of charged particles from the surface of the Sun that buffet Earth’s atmosphere, are a growing challenge for our technologically dependent society. The storms temporarily increase the density of the upper atmosphere and therefore the drag on satellites, ...

Researchers in Japan have genetically transferred a unique courtship behavior from one fruit fly species to another. By turning on a single gene in insulin-producing neurons, the team successfully made a species of fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) perform a gift-giving ritual it had never done before. The study, published in the journal Science, represents the first example of manipulating a single gene to create new neural connections and transfer behavior between species.   In nature, most male fruit flies court mates by rapidly vibrating their wings to create sound patterns or “courtship songs." However, Drosophila subobscura ...

A network analysis of more than 26,000 dogs and their health conditions helps reveal which diseases tend to go together, providing data that veterinarians and researchers can use to help treat the problems that dog man’s best friend face, according to a study published DATE in the open-access journal PLOS Computational Biology by Antoinette Fang from the Fred Hutchingson Cancer Center in Seattle, Washington, USA, and colleagues. As both humans and their pups age, conditions and diseases accumulate, but some are more likely to be comorbid—or occur together—than ...

While biofuels may be part of the solution to replace fossil fuels and reduce climate-warming carbon emissions, bioenergy needs a new “climate-smart” policy to ensure that it produces both low-carbon products and promotes carbon sequestration, according to Madhu Khanna and colleagues. In this Policy Forum, Khanna et al. note that current policies to promote bioenergy in the United States, such as the Renewable Fuel Standard and Low Carbon Fuel Standard, do not distinguish between carbon intensities ...

Brian Spears and colleagues built a generative machine learning model that was used to successfully predict the outcome of a recent fusion ignition experiment at the U.S. National Ignition Facility (NIF). Their model predicted, with a probability greater than 70%, that ignition was the most likely outcome of the experiment. The findings could guide researchers working on future inertial confinement fusion experiments, which use energetic lasers to compress and heat a capsule of hydrogen isotopes to create nuclear reactions that produce fusion energy. Ignition ...