How would you summarize your study for a lay audience? We wanted to study any changes in firearm incidents—both hunting-related and non-hunting-related—brought on by deer hunting season. We looked at four years’ worth of data across 10 states where hunting is popular. We found an unsurprising increase in hunting-related firearm incidents, but we also saw increases in the rates of non-hunting related firearm incidents, including those categorized as suicide, involving alcohol or other substances, domestic violence, home invasion or robberies, and defensive use; meanwhile, there were no changes in incidents involving police officers or children. What ...

HOUSTON – (April 17, 2025) – A team of Rice University researchers has developed a new way to control light interactions using a specially engineered structure called a 3D photonic-crystal cavity. Their work, published in the journal Nature Communications, lays the foundation for technologies that could enable transformative advancements in quantum computing, quantum communication and other quantum-based technologies. “Imagine standing in a room surrounded by mirrors,” said Fuyang Tay, an alumnus of Rice’s Applied Physics Graduate Program and first author of the study. “If you shine a flashlight inside, the light will bounce back and ...

A study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute (Duncan NRI) at Texas Children’s Hospital provides solutions to the pressing need to identify factors that influence Alzheimer’s disease (AD) risk or resistance while providing an avenue to explore potential biological markers and therapeutic targets. The researchers integrated computational and functional approaches that enabled them to identify not only specific genes whose alterations predicted increased AD risk in humans and behavioral impairments in AD fruit ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new smart insole system that monitors how people walk in real time could help users improve posture and provide early warnings for conditions from plantar fasciitis to Parkinson’s disease. Constructed using 22 small pressure sensors and fueled by small solar panels on the tops of shoes, the system offers real-time health tracking based on how a person walks, a biomechanical process that is as unique as a human fingerprint.  This complex personal health data can then be transmitted via Bluetooth to a smartphone for quick and detailed analysis, said Jinghua Li, co-author of the study and an assistant ...

Brazil is the world’s largest producer of soybeans and one of the reasons is the incorporation of bio-inputs, microorganisms that promote biological nitrogen fixation. Without this practice, this essential nutrient would have to be supplemented with fertilizer. By managing fertilizer use, Brazilian growers can save an estimated USD 15 billion per year. The main bio-input used commercially today is bacteria of the genus Bradyrhizobium spp. (rhizobia). In a study supported by FAPESP, this strategy was combined with a new bacterial isolate (PGPR, which stands for plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria). The results were published in the journal Microbiology ...

At the Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies’ 15th annual Undergraduate Design Competition, the future of global health innovation was on full display. Rice University welcomed 22 student teams from 18 universities across eight countries, both in-person and virtually, to present affordable, practical solutions designed to improve health care in low-resource settings at the April 11 event. Far from just another student competition, the event serves as a global stage where future ...

In a physics first, a team including scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has created a way to make beams of neutrons travel in curves. These Airy beams (named for English scientist George Airy), which the team created using a custom-built device, could enhance neutrons’ ability to reveal useful information about materials ranging from pharmaceuticals to perfumes to pesticides — in part because the beams can bend around obstacles.  A paper announcing the findings appears in today’s issue of Physical Review Letters. ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Two women meeting for the first time can judge within minutes whether they have the potential to be friends — guided as much by smell as any other sense, new Cornell University research on friendship formation finds. “The Interactive Role of Odor Associations in Friendship Preferences,” published in Scientific Reports, adds to our understanding of the complex picture of what goes on when meeting someone for the first time — and judging the potential for future interactions. In a study of heterosexual women, the researchers found that personal, idiosyncratic preferences based on a person’s everyday scent, captured on ...

Keeping up with scientific advances and practice changes can be one the biggest challenges in managing a complex disease like multiple sclerosis (MS). The Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers (CMSC) regularly publishes Best Practices statements on aspects of MS care. This month, a new “Best Practices in Multiple Sclerosis Therapies: 2025 Update” has been released on the organization’s website [https://www.mscare.org/best-practices-in-multiple-sclerosis-therapies/] and will be distributed at the upcoming CMSC Annual Meeting, May 28-31, 2025, in Phoenix, ...

Tokyo, Japan – The exponential miniaturization of electronic chips over time, described by Moore's law, has played a key role in our digital age. However, the operating power of small electronic devices is significantly limited by the lack of advanced cooling technologies available.  Aiming to tackle this problem, a study published in Cell Reports Physical Science, led by researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, describes a significant increase in performance for the cooling of ...

Researchers led by Jean-Paul Noel at the University of Minnesota, United States, have decoupled intentions, actions and their effects by manipulating the brain-machine interface that allows a person with otherwise paralyzed arms and legs to squeeze a ball when they want to. Published in the open-access journal PLOS Biology on April 17th, the study reveals temporal binding between intentions and actions, which makes actions seem to happen faster when they are intentional. Separating intentions from actions was made possible because of a brain-machine interface. The participant was paralyzed with damage ...

A new Bluetooth-based positioning system could offer healthcare systems a low-energy, low-cost method of tracking older adults’ mobility, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS Digital Health by Qiyin Fang of McMaster University, Canada, and colleagues. Global Positioning System (GPS) is the dominant positioning technology today, but its use indoors is limited due to the difficulty in communicating with GPS satellites. However, the knowledge of a person’s position is critical for many real-time healthcare applications, ...

Americans are more likely to discuss climate change with family and friends if they feel worried or at risk, perceive society as supportive of pro-climate behaviors or see global warming depicted in the media, according to a study published April 17, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS Climate by Margaret Orr from George Mason University College of Humanities and Social Sciences in Fairfax, Virginia, and colleagues. Curbing global warming’s effects requires systemic changes and government policies to reduce carbon emissions. Among individual climate actions (e.g., ...

How do we learn something new? How do tasks at a new job, lyrics to the latest hit song or directions to a friend’s house become encoded in our brains? The broad answer is that our brains undergo adaptations to accommodate new information. In order to follow a new behavior or retain newly introduced information, the brain’s circuity undergoes change. Such modifications are orchestrated across trillions of synapses — the connections between individual nerve cells, called neurons — where brain communication takes place. In an intricately coordinated ...

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 19:00 BST / 14:00 ET THURSDAY 17 APRIL 2025 Sugar-mimicking molecule central to virulence of a common crop disease, study finds In plants, the space between cells is a key battleground during infection. To avoid recognition in this space, a strain of the bacterial tomato disease Pseudomonas syringae manipulates plants by producing a substance called glycosyrin. This substance suppresses the immune response and allows the bacteria to remain unnoticed. A new study led by the University of Oxford has revealed ...

Shedding light on how the brain fine-tunes its wiring during learning, a new study finds that different dendritic segments of a single neuron follow distinct rules. The findings challenge the idea that neurons follow a single learning strategy and offer a new perspective on how the brain learns and adapts behavior. The brain's remarkable ability to learn and adapt is rooted in its capacity to modify the connections within its neural circuits – a phenomenon known as synaptic plasticity, in which specific synapses are altered to reshape neural activity and support behavioral change. Neurons, unlike most other cell types, are characterized by their intricate, ...

Solid-state lithium batteries fail for the same reason over-bent paperclips snap – metal fatigue in the anode itself, according to a new study. The findings, which show that this fatigue follows well-documented mechanical behavior, provide a quantitative framework for predicting the cycle life of solid-state batteries, enabling new pathways for designing longer-lasting and safer energy storage systems. Solid-state lithium metal batteries (SSBs) promise both high energy and improved safety by combining a lithium ...

NASA’s Curiosity rover has uncovered a hidden chemical archive of ancient Mars’ atmosphere, which suggests that large amounts of carbon dioxide have been locked into the planet’s crust, according to a new study. The findings provide in situ evidence that a carbon cycle once operated on ancient Mars and offer new insights into the planet’s past climate. The Martian landscape shows clear signs that liquid water once flowed across its surface, which would have required ...

Based on data from over 1000 regional studies combined with machine learning, researchers estimate that as many as 1.4 billion people live in areas with soil dangerously polluted by heavy metals like arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, chromium, copper, nickel, and lead. The study reveals a global risk, but also a previously unrecognized high-risk, metal-enriched zone in low-latitude Eurasia, in particular. The growth in demand for critical metals means toxic heavy metal pollution in soils is only likely to worsen. “We hope that the global soil pollution data presented in this report will ...

Research from NASA’s Curiosity rover has found evidence of a carbon cycle on ancient Mars, bringing scientists closer to an answer on whether the Red Planet was ever capable of supporting life. Lead author Dr. Ben Tutolo, PhD, an associate professor with the Department of Earth, Energy and Environment in the Faculty of Science at the University of Calgary, is a participating scientist on the NASA Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover team. The team is working to understand climate transitions and habitability on ancient Mars as Curiosity explores Gale Crater. The paper, published this week in the journal Science, reveals that ...

Philadelphia, April 17, 2025 – Researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn Medicine) have successfully employed an algorithm to identify potential mutations which increase disease risk in the noncoding regions our DNA, which make up the vast majority of the human genome. The findings could serve as the basis for detecting disease-associated variants in a range of common diseases. The findings were published online today by the American Journal of Human Genetics. While certain sections ...

About The Study: Among U.S. adults ages 20 to 59, the prevalence of obesity by body mass index (BMI) only was nearly identical with the obesity prevalence after confirmation of excess adiposity. Approximately 98% of individuals identified as having obesity based on BMI had excess adiposity. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Michael Fang, PhD, MHS, email mfang9@jh.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2025.2704) Editor’s Note: Please ...

About The Study: The results of this cohort study suggest that treating hearing loss might delay dementia for a large number of older adults. Public health interventions targeting clinically significant audiometric hearing loss might have broad benefits for dementia prevention. Future research quantifying population attributable fractions should carefully consider which measures are used to define hearing loss, as self-reporting may underestimate hearing-associated dementia risk. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Cleft lip and cleft palate are among the most common birth defects, occurring in about one in 1,050 births in the United States. These defects, which appear when the tissues that form the lip or the roof of the mouth do not join completely, are believed to be caused by a mix of genetic and environmental factors. In a new study, MIT biologists have discovered how a genetic variant often found in people with these facial malformations leads to the development of cleft lip and cleft palate. Their findings suggest that the variant diminishes cells’ supply of transfer RNA, a molecule ...

A new discovery could pave the way for more effective cancer treatment by helping certain drugs work better inside the body. Scientists at Duke University School of Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and University of Arkansas have found a way to improve the uptake of a promising class of cancer-fighting drugs called PROTACs, which have struggled to enter cells due to their large size. The new method works by taking advantage of a protein called CD36 that helps pull substances into cells. By designing drugs to use this CD36 pathway, researchers delivered 7.7 to 22.3 times more of the drug inside cancer cells, making ...