Scientists have combined molecular imprinting technology with biochar to create materials that can recognize and capture specific molecules with remarkable precision. Biochar is a porous carbon material made by heating biomass such as crop residues in low-oxygen conditions, and is already valued for its low cost, large surface area, and environmental friendliness.​ Molecular imprinting works by “teaching” a polymer to remember the shape and chemical features of a target molecule, then locking that memory into tiny ...

Rice feeds more than half of the world’s population, but the tiny microbes living on and around rice plants may be just as important as the crop itself. A new study reveals that the specific genetic identity of a rice plant plays a stronger role than whether it is wild or domesticated in determining which microbes it hosts and how those microbes function. The research, published in Agricultural Ecology and Environment, shows that differences among rice genotypes strongly shape microbial communities in both the soil surrounding roots, known as the rhizosphere, and on leaf surfaces, known as the phyllosphere. ...

Finding one tick on your body is scary enough – tick-borne diseases are serious – but what if you found more than 10 on yourself in just one month? That’s the plight of some farmers as the threat of ticks and tick-borne diseases grows, according to new research featuring experts at Binghamton University, State University of New York.  New research led by Mandy Roome, associate director of the Tick-borne Disease Center at Binghamton University, State University of New York, reveals that farmers and outdoor workers in the Northeast are facing an escalating threat of tick-borne diseases, which could be devastating ...

Turning green waste, hay and algae into fully biodegradable plastics for use in medical products, car components, insulation and packaging is the goal of a new Junior Research Group at the University of Oldenburg in the northwest of Germany. Led by chemist Dr Melanie Walther, the team will combine eco-friendly and application-oriented approaches to develop a cost-effective, energy-efficient technology for making innovative plastics based on polybutylene succinate (PBS) which are made entirely out of organic waste. The Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) is providing around 2.7 million euros in funding for the EcoPBS project. “The work of the new Junior Research ...

Scientists at the University of Missouri have identified a small group of unusual objects in the early universe. Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Haojing Yan and his team at Mizzou’s College of Arts and Science spotted these strange objects, which seem like one galactic thing but have the unmistakable fingerprints of something else entirely. These objects have “point-like” features that would normally place them in one of two categories: stars or quasars, which are the brilliant ...

Thyroid cancer is the most common endocrine cancer, affecting more people each year as detection rates continue to rise. During tumor excision, surgeons often struggle to determine exactly how much tissue should be removed, as distinguishing cancer from healthy tissue in real time is challenging and nearby structures are extremely delicate. Today, diagnosis and margin assessment rely on fine-needle aspiration (FNA) and traditional pathology. While accurate, these methods are slow, sometimes inconclusive, and offer no real-time guidance in the operating room. As a result, patients may undergo unnecessary ...

January 6, 2026 — An elevated neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is significantly associated with increased risk of depressive disorder (DD) and may also correlate with suicide risk among individuals with DD, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis published in the November issue of Harvard Review of Psychiatry, part of the Lippincott portfolio from Wolters Kluwer. “Studies demonstrate altered immune responses in DD, including diminished lymphocyte reactivity and dysregulated neutrophil activity,” explain Yongjun Chen, MD, of Shandong University of Traditional ...

  The Seismological Society of America (SSA) will be holding its annual meeting on 14-18 April 2026 at the Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, California. The meeting attracts more than 800 scientists, engineers and policymakers for presentations and posters that cover the latest seismological research from around the globe. The meeting's topics are presented in 53 technical sessions, including topics such as earthquake early warning, seismic ...

Paper Title: Automated diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease using deep learning applied to electrocardiograms Journal: eBioMedicine, Volume 123, January 2026 Authors: Monica Kraft, MD, Health System Chair of the Department of Medicine; Girish N. Nadkarni, MD, MPH, CPH, Chief AI Officer and Chair of the Department of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health; Akhil Vaid, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Data Driven Digital Medicine) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Mount Sinai Health System; and other coauthors. Bottom Line: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary ...

A study led by Maria Carmo-Fonseca at GIMM has helped clarify one of the main limitations of lab-grown heart cells, which are widely used around the world to study heart disease and test new drugs. Although these cells make it possible to investigate the human heart without invasive procedures or animal models, they still fail to fully reproduce the characteristics of real heart cells, which can compromise the accuracy of certain studies. “These cells are extraordinarily useful, but they still behave like very immature cells”, explains ...

A groundbreaking new study from Bar-Ilan University shows that one of sleep’s core functions originated hundreds of millions of years ago in jellyfish and sea anemones, among the earliest creatures with nervous systems. By tracing this mechanism back to these ancient animals, the research demonstrates that protecting neurons from DNA damage and cellular stress is a basic, ancient function of sleep that began long before complex brains evolved.   Although sleep is universal among animals with nervous systems, it poses clear survival risks: during ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Simple pharmaceutical interventions could help older brains cope with memory impairment and recovery after surgery, new studies in mice suggest. In two studies, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign investigated different aspects of cognitive impairment: postoperative impairment — a relatively common phenomenon among older adults — and age-related memory decline, as well as noninvasive methods of restoring function.  “These studies provide a blueprint for further basic science studies that can identify compounds in preclinical tests that may eventually also be testable in humans,” ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — About half of older men suffer from sleep problems, back pain or both, according to Soomi Lee, associate professor of human development and family studies at Penn State. Lee recently led a study to investigate whether one precedes the other and found that back problems can predict sleep problems years later in men over 65 years old. “We know that back pain and sleep are serious issues for older adults,” Lee said. “We studied data collected over several years to understand whether poor sleep could predict back pain or if back pain ...

PHILADELPHIA – On Jan. 5, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) dramatically reduced the number of recommended childhood vaccinations from 17 to 11, citing practices in other wealthy nations, including Denmark, Germany, and Japan. The CDC said that parents could choose to have their children receive some previously recommended vaccines, including those for flu, rotavirus, Covid-19, meningitis, and hepatitis A and B, after “shared clinical decision-making.” The CDC’s announcement followed other similar moves by federal health officials. In December, the CDC’s ...

BALTIMORE, Jan. 6, 2026—A new study published in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science has found that some of the most widely considered online advertising safety and fairness policies may actually boost ad platform revenues while improving fairness outcomes. The policies at the center of the study are around ads that are designed to help ensure that women, minorities and other protected classes are not disproportionately excluded from job, education and financial opportunities. The study, “Is Fair Advertising Good for Platforms?,” by Di Yuan of Auburn University, ...

Researchers at CU Boulder have created tiny, microorganism-inspired particles that can change their shape and self-propel, much like living things, in response to electrical fields. One day, these shape-shifting “active particles” could be used as microrobots that deliver medications inside the human body, particularly in areas that are hard for drugs to reach on their own, or for building large-scale dynamic materials that are responsive and self-healing. The findings are described ...

Johns Hopkins University geneticists and a small army of researchers across the country, including students, are working to catalog the vast and largely unknown soil microbiome of the United States. The project, one of the biggest microbiome studies ever attempted, that’s tapping the latest DNA-analysis technology, has already resulted in the discovery of more than 1,000 new strains of bacteria and never-before-seen microbes—still just a tiny fraction of the microbial dark matter. “This scientific void we’re trying to fill on microbial diversity could only be accomplished by having this network of scientists and students across the United States,” ...

ST. LOUIS, MO, January 6, 2026 — A collaborative team of researchers from the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, the University of Florida, Gainesville and University of Iowa have developed groundbreaking tools that allow grasses—including major grain crops like corn—to act as living biosensors capable of detecting minute amounts of chemicals in the field. Principal Investigators Dmitri Nusinow, PhD, and Malia Gehan, PhD, led the effort to engineer grasses that produce a visible purple pigment, anthocyanin, ...

Overdose prevention sites and supervised consumption sites in Toronto are not associated with long-term increases in local crime, McGill University researchers have found. Over 10 years, crime reports remained stable or declined in neighbourhoods where sites opened, the researchers said. Their findings land amid debates across Canada about how harm reduction services intersect with public health and safety. “Opposition from the public and policymakers has often centred on neighbourhood safety and decline. We wanted to find out whether the data supported those claims,” said Dimitra Panagiotoglou, an associate professor in McGill’s ...

Weight says a lot. In the kitchen, it could mean cooking with too little or too much of an ingredient. For scientists, a molecule’s weight can help determine its makeup. This, in turn, can shed light on whether a potential drug is acting on the body or not working at all. Weight can even reveal what tumors are made of, potentially influencing treatment options. For measures like this and more, researchers turn to a technique called mass spectrometry. “A mass spectrometer is essentially a very precise scale,” says Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Research Associate Professor Paolo ...

About The Study: This population-based cohort study found that U.S.-born individuals had significantly higher odds of infant mortality compared with non–U.S.-born individuals, particularly among full-term births and among those self-identifying as Black, Hispanic, white, or more than 1 race. Sudden unexpected infant death was a major contributor to these disparities. Investigation into the underlying factors contributing to these disparities is needed. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Giulia M. Muraca, MPH, PhD, email muracag@mcmaster.ca. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.52230) Editor’s ...

About The Study: In this cohort study, exposure to Migrant Protection Protocols was associated with higher rates of trauma during migration among asylum seekers. Such policies may be associated with adverse health outcomes for asylum seekers, with potential downstream implications for U.S. public health and security. The Migrant Protection Protocols were introduced in January 2019 and changed U.S. asylum procedures by requiring certain asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while awaiting immigration proceedings. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Kyle Joyner, MD, email kyle.joyner@med.usc.edu. To ...

By Chris Woolston The giant planet Jupiter has nearly 100 known moons, yet none have captured the interest and imagination of astronomers and space scientists quite like Europa, an ice-shrouded world that is thought to possess a vast ocean of liquid salt water. For decades, scientists have wondered whether that ocean could harbor the right conditions for life, placing Europa near the top of the list of solar system bodies to explore. A new study led by Paul Byrne, an associate professor of Earth, environmental, and planetary sciences, throws cold water on the idea that Europa could ...

SAN ANTONIO — January 6, 2026 – Southwest Research Institute has upgraded its nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) laboratory to offer robust chemical analysis of organic compounds used in drug discovery and development. Through internally funded research, SwRI used the new laboratory to compare quantitative NMR (qNMR) to high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), a conventional method used to determine the purity of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). SwRI’s research found that qNMR can be ...

Researchers are trying to understand why some wild species do better than others over time, as the environment changes. Researcher Kenneth Aase's research focuses on a new mathematical approach that could shed light on this question, which in turn could move us closer to understanding the loss of biological diversity. Aase is a statistician and a PhD research fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU's) Department of Mathematical Sciences. He is associated with the GPWILD ...