Campo Grande, Brazil — The 15th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) opens here today amid new reports that almost half (49%) of all CMS-listed species have decreasing population trends, and nearly one in four are threatened with extinction.  The State of the World's Migratory Species: Interim Report (2026) paints a stark picture of animals under pressure from a combination of overexploitation, habitat destruction, pollution, climate change, and invasive species.  Over 2,000 participants ...

Lena Ting, from Emory University, and colleagues explored how brain and muscle activity during balance recovery change due to aging and Parkinson’s.  Previously, Ting’s research group revealed that when they pulled a rug out from under young adults to trigger balance recovery, these individuals experienced an immediate involuntary brainstem and muscle response followed by a second wave of activity in the brain and muscle in more difficult balance disturbances. In this new study on older adults with and without Parkinson’s, published in eNeuro, the researchers discovered that these populations ...

During intensive care after preterm births, babies can experience low oxygen in their tissue and cells—or hypoxia. Hypoxia is linked to poor brain health outcomes and life-long memory issues, but the mechanisms are unclear. Researchers led by Art Riddle and Stephen Back, from Oregon Health and Science University, discovered a contributing mechanism by creating a mouse model for mild hypoxia following premature birth. Riddle emphasizes that, “The field has historically focused on how hypoxia injures white matter in the brain and kills neurons. This is the first study to explore how mild hypoxia ...

Fathers in Sweden are less likely to receive a psychiatric diagnosis during their partner’s pregnancy and in the months following the birth of their child. However, diagnoses of depression and stress-related disorders increase a year later, according to a new study published in JAMA Network Open by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Sichuan University in China. “The transition to fatherhood often involves both positive experiences and a range of new stresses,” says Jing Zhou, PhD student at the Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, and co-first author of the paper. “Many ...

Childhood deaths are significantly higher among children who lose a parent to drug overdose, homicide or suicide compared to the general child population, a new University of Michigan study found. The research, published in JAMA Network Open, investigated the link between specific types of parental loss and the subsequent risk of mortality for children in Michigan, said study lead author Sean Esteban McCabe, professor at the U-M School of Nursing.  The study found that bereaved children who experienced a parental death from one of the three preventable causes accounted for 150 excess childhood deaths in the state over the 14-year study period.   "There ...

About The Study: The results this cohort study suggest that children ages 7 to 17 with metabolically healthy obesity at treatment initiation have an increased associated long-term risk of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and dyslipidemia compared with their peers in the general population. Reduction in BMI z score in pediatric obesity treatment was associated with reduced cardiometabolic risk in children with metabolically healthy and unhealthy obesity to the same extent. Therefore, treatment should also be recommended for children with obesity who appear metabolically healthy.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding ...

About The Study: Using Fitbit data in a longitudinal cohort of 3,393 young adolescents, 6 sleep health dimensions were identified: irregularity, timing, duration, social jetlag, weekend oversleep, and continuity. Greater irregularity was associated with higher concurrent transdiagnostic mental health symptoms, whereas shorter duration was associated with higher symptoms at 1-year follow-up. These findings demonstrate the multidimensional nature of adolescent sleep health and can help guide selection of sleep health domains and representative measures to enhance reproducibility and suggest potential intervention ...

About The Study: This systematic scoping review study of prescription drug promotion by influencers found that such promotion carried risks of inaccurate or misleading advice, often amplified through personal and emotionally resonant narratives in an environment with limited oversight and enforcement. Despite the small and fragmented evidence base, these findings highlight the urgent need for updated regulatory guidance, standardized and enforceable disclosure requirements, stronger platform accountability, ...

About The Study: This statewide cohort study found that childhood mortality is significantly higher among children bereaved by parental drug overdose, homicide, and suicide compared with the general child population. Parental homicide was associated with the highest risk of mortality in children and highlights the need for research into potential explanations, such as the impact on family restructuring and mental health. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Sean Esteban McCabe, PhD, email plius@med.umich.edu. To access the embargoed ...

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest large language models (LLMs) can produce contextually appropriate motivational interviewing-consistent responses, but limitations in coherence and stylistic alignment highlight the need for further validation before clinical use. Motivational interviewing, a structured counseling approach, provides an empirically grounded setting for evaluating alignment between LLM-generated and human therapist responses. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Venkat Bhat, MD, MSc, email venkat.bhat@utoronto.ca. To ...

About The Study: In this multicenter randomized clinical trial among older adults with family history of dementia and/or self-reported subjective cognitive decline, exercise, intensive pharmacological reduction of cardiovascular risk factors, or both did not result in statistically significant differences in improvements in cognitive function over 24 months. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Rong Zhang, PhD, email rongzhang@texashealth.org. To access the embargoed study: Visit our ...

About The Study: In England’s health care system, multiple sclerosis prevalence more than doubled while survival rates increased over 30 years. Substantial gradients in tobacco use, abnormal weight, and socioeconomic deprivation persisted and were associated with mortality. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Raffaele Palladino, PhD, MD, email palladino.raffaele@gmail.com. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2026.0352) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional ...

 As modern medicine leaps forward in its ability to quickly and more-affordably run genetic disease risk tests, ethical questions have swirled about how best to inform people about risk findings they may have had no idea were coming. What information should stay in de-identified research databases? What should be uploaded into electronic medical records? Who should have access to those records? How much do people want to know about potential bad news in their genetic blueprint? And how should counseling be handled? Over the past six years, a team of Cincinnati Children’s and University of Cincinnati experts led by Leah Kottyan, PhD and Lisa Martin, PhD, has been part of ...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) has more than doubled in recorded prevalence in England from 2000 to 2020, increasing by 6% per year, largely due to improved diagnosis and longer life expectancy, finds a new study by University College London (UCL) and Imperial College London researchers. The team found that survival of people with MS improved significantly over time thanks to advances in treatments and care, although they also identified inequalities, with higher mortality in deprived areas. In the study published in JAMA Neurology, the researchers ...

A machine learning-based computational approach to accelerate therapeutic discovery Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease characterized by recurrent intestinal inflammation, abdominal pain and diarrhoea. Although current treatments, including 5-aminosalicylic acid, antibiotics and biologics, can control or ameliorate symptoms, many patients experience incomplete responses or adverse effects. The search for safer and more effective therapies remains a major challenge. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), naturally occurring ...

Biological invasions are a major driver of biodiversity loss and invasive pollinators can reshape native plant-pollinator networks. A new study published in the journal NeoBiota, reveals that invasive pollinators are fundamentally reshaping native plant-pollinator networks in Chile, leading to a "silent takeover" that threatens the stability of one of the world's most unique biodiversity hotspots. Chile functions as a “biogeographical island,” isolated by the Andes Mountains, the Atacama Desert, and the Pacific Ocean. While this isolation has created a highly specialized ecosystem, ...

Key Points: A new study shows that field-portable assays are effective at identifying microbes directly in the field in real time, making it easier to study and explore caves. The researchers established a roadmap for thoroughly studying cave life, emphasizing the need to sample widely and from different materials. They also discovered that cave microbial communities change predictably from cave entrances to darker areas. The findings have implications on community ecology and public health for detecting and cataloging cave microbiomes, which may include human pathogens. Washington, D.C.—A new study has demonstrated that we now have the tools to study the incredibly ...

Past behavior matters, especially in law enforcement where certain pre-hire misbehavior by law enforcement candidates sharply increases the likelihood of police misconduct once they are hired, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. The researchers analyzed pre-hire data and disciplinary records for 6,075 officers at more than 150 municipal, county, state and federal law enforcement agencies across the United States, tracking them for up to five years. They identified which background warning signs most accurately predicted later misconduct. Officers who had a prior record of ...

Natural hazards cause enormous damage to infrastructure systems that societies depend on every day. When these systems fail, the consequences can ripple through economies and communities. Researchers are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to help governments and emergency managers restore critical infrastructure faster and more effectively. A new review published in Civil Engineering Sciences examines how machine learning (ML) methods are being applied to support infrastructure recovery following natural hazards. The study was conducted by researchers from University College London and Tsinghua University and systematically analyzed 57 academic studies to understand ...

Cambridge, MA (March 23, 2026) — A team of astronomers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and Smithsonian have for the first time used galactic archaeology, the study of detailed chemical fingerprints in deep space, to trace the history of a galaxy outside the Milky Way. The study, published today in the journal Nature Astronomy, demonstrates a new way to reconstruct the evolution of distant galaxies, and opens up a new field of astronomy, called “extragalactic archaeology.”  “This is the first time that a chemical archaeology ...

Atrial fibrillation (AFib) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia worldwide and a major contributor to heart failure (HF), affecting over 64 million people globally. Steatotic liver disease (SLD) encompasses a spectrum of liver disorders characterized by excessive fat accumulation in the liver, including metabolic dysfunction-associated SLD (MASLD), MASLD with increased alcohol intake (MetALD), and alcoholic liver disease (ALD). Recent research indicates that these SLD subtypes are closely linked to the development and progression of both ...

In nature, a certain size is often a prerequisite for biomolecules to perform their specific functions. For example, for proteins or DNA to fulfil their vital tasks, they must be folded in a precise manner – and this requires a certain minimum length. Chemists in the laboratory have long been able to achieve the step-by-step construction of proteins and nucleic acids with defined lengths and compositions using solid-phase synthesis. Now, for the first time, German and Korean researchers have presented a comparable synthesis ...

Trying to persuade people to abandon deeply held views often backfires, leaving groups entrenched and unable to move forward. A new study by researchers at the University of Bath in the UK proposes a strategy that is both surprising and more effective: encourage neutrality. The researchers, led by Professor Kit Yates from the Department of Mathematics, found that when individuals are encouraged to step back and adopt a neutral position – for example by abstaining in a vote – groups become more responsive, decisions become easier to reach, and shifts in consensus happen more smoothly. Neutrality does not stall ...

Researchers from the Earlham Institute, in collaboration with The Department of Biology at the University of Oxford, discovered three previously unrecognised lineages of the protist Bodo, each with its own bacterial endosymbiont (a symbiotic organism living within the body of its host). Bodo is a genus of heterotrophic (a living organism that obtains nutrition from other plants, animals, or microorganisms) protists that are common in fresh and brackish waters and soil. They are the closest known free-living relatives of Trypanosoma, a parasitic protist that causes major human diseases including Human African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness). Until ...

Key points Study offers insight into the experiences of foreign volunteer fighters in Ukraine for the first time. US and UK veterans who have volunteered in Ukraine report extremely intense combat exposure and limited training or preparation. Many experience significant combat trauma-related distress, alcohol misuse and untreated physical injuries, yet struggle to access appropriate healthcare in Ukraine or on returning home. Existing military and civilian support systems appear to be ill-equipped to recognise ...