What causes us to sleep? The answer may lie not only in our brains, but in their complex interplay with the micro-organisms spawned in our intestines. New research from Washington State University suggests a new paradigm in understanding sleep, demonstrating that a substance in the mesh-like walls of bacteria, known as peptidoglycan, is naturally present in the brains of mice and closely aligned with the sleep cycle. Those findings serve to update a broader hypothesis that has been in development at WSU for years—proposing that sleep arises from communication between the body’s sleep regulatory systems and the multitude of microbes living inside us. “This ...

About 12 million adults in the United States are affected by PTSD, impacting between 4% and 8% of the adult population – and up to 30% of military personnel and veterans. Strikingly, 63% of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder also suffer from alcohol use disorder (AUD) and/or chronic pain. These conditions frequently overlap, with individuals who have AUD or chronic pain often also experiencing PTSD. When these disorders co-occur, they tend to worsen one another, making effective treatment significantly more challenging. Currently, no approved ...

Researchers from University of California San Diego School of Medicine have found that testing for lipoprotein(a) — a genetic risk factor for heart disease — remains uncommon in the United States, despite modest increases over the past decade. The findings were published on Sept. 26, 2025 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Advances. Lipoprotein(a) — or Lp(a) — is a type of cholesterol particle in the blood. Elevated levels are strongly linked to a higher risk of heart attack, stroke and aortic valve disease. Roughly 20% of the U.S. population has elevated Lp(a), yet testing rates have historically been low. In the ...

WASHINGTON (September 24, 2025) — Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) remain the leading cause of disease burden , causing one in three deaths worldwide as a result of population growth, population aging and exposure to a broad range of risks, including increasing rates of obesity and diabetes, according to the latest Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study special report published today in JACC, the flagship journal of the American College of Cardiology. “This research provides countries with ...

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (09/24/2025) — Researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have successfully 3D printed lifelike human tissue structures that can be used for medical training for surgeons and doctors. The study was recently published in Science Advances, a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Previous methods have made stiff, simple tissues, but this new technique can mimic the complex, directional strength and stretchiness found in real tissues like skin or other organs. In this paper, the researchers discovered a method to control the shape and size of the tiny ...

Leishmaniasis, a neglected tropical disease prevalent across 90 countries, affects approximately 12 million people worldwide, with 350 million more at risk of infection. Caused by unicellular parasites known as Leishmania protozoa, the disease commonly manifests as skin sores that can develop into deep ulcers. Beyond the physical damage to the skin, leishmaniasis can leave permanent scars on patients’ faces, hands, and feet, often leading to social stigma and psychological trauma. Unfortunately, the disease predominantly strikes poor communities, where medical care is often out of reach. While various treatments for leishmaniasis do exist, they face severe limitations. Current drugs, ...

For the more than 242 million years that lizards and snakes appear in the fossil record, they show up as mostly pieces of lizard jaws and snake vertebrae. Exactly why these parts survive as fossils has been a mystery—until now. In a new study published in Paleobiology, Dr. Hank Woolley from the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County’s Dinosaur Institute looks at the entire history of squamates (the reptile group that includes lizards, snakes, and mosasaurs among others) to understand why only certain parts show up—the bias of the record—and to quantify that bias for the first time. ...

The visitor chairs in America’s health care clinics are getting put to good use, according to a new poll of older adults. In the last year, 38% of people age 50 and over said another adult attended at least one of their health care appointments, including 4% who said someone attended a telehealth appointment with them. And 34% have accompanied another person over 50 to at least one appointment, including 4% who attended another older adult’s telehealth visit, according to new findings from the University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging. The vast majority of these older adults said ...

Global electricity use is increasing rapidly and must be addressed sustainably. Developing new materials could give us much more efficient solar cell materials than at present; materials so thin and flexible that they could encase anything from mobile phones or entire buildings. Using computer simulation and machine learning, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have now taken an important step towards understanding and handling halide perovskites, among the most promising but notoriously enigmatic materials. Electricity use is constantly increasing ...

Researchers including those from the University of Tokyo build on past studies and introduce new methods to explore the nature and role of subsurface fluids including water in the instances and behaviors of earthquakes and volcanoes. Their study suggests that water, even heavy rainfall, can play a role in or even trigger seismic events. This could potentially lead to better early warning systems. The study improves models of seismic activity and can even help identify optimal sites for drilling to tap sources of supercritical geothermal energy. As far ...

Scientists have mapped underappreciated scaffolding cells in skin, known as fibroblasts. They show for the first time how fibroblasts go ‘rogue’ in many different diseases affecting multiple organs – from acne and psoriasis, to rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease. Researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the Universities of Cambridge and Newcastle, and their collaborators combined single-cell sequencing and spatial genomics datasets with machine learning to identify eight different types of fibroblasts. They show how the fibroblasts ...

A major UK study has revealed that the early warning signs of multiple sclerosis (MS) - including pain, mood changes, and neurological symptoms such as numbness and tingling – may appear years before diagnosis and affect all communities in similar ways.   Researchers at Queen Mary University of London analysed electronic health records of more than 96,000 people, including 15,000 people with MS, making this one of the largest and most diverse investigations into the MS prodrome – the constellation of non-specific symptoms experience by people with MS before a diagnosis– ...

5G has been part of our lives and the market for several years, while the industry is already looking ahead to its successor, 6G. But can we say it is fully implemented? An international team led by Northeastern University, with participation from IMDEA Networks, TU Berlin, University of Porto, University of Oslo, Politecnico di Torino, Technical University of Denmark, and Hewlett Packard Labs, sought the answer. Over the course of a year, they measured performance in several cities across Europe and North America. The conclusion: ...

Using magnetic cameras, researchers at Linköping University have examined blood flow in an artificial heart in real time. The results make it possible to design the heart in a way to reduce the risk of blood clots and red blood cells breakdown, a common problem in today’s artificial hearts. The study, published in Scientific Reports, was done in collaboration with the company Scandinavian Real Heart AB, which is developing an artificial heart. “The heart is a muscle that never rests. ...

“This concerns the biosynthesis of a molecule that has a very long history with humans,” explains Prof. Dirk Hoffmeister, head of the research group Pharmaceutical Microbiology at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (Leibniz-HKI). “We are referring to psilocybin, a substance found in so-called ‘magic mushrooms’, which our body converts into psilocin – a compound that can profoundly alter consciousness. However, psilocybin not only triggers psychedelic experiences, ...

A research team in South Korea has developed a next-generation sensor material capable of integrating the detection of multiple light wavelengths. A joint research team led by Dr. Wooseok Song at the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT) and Professor Dae Ho Yoon at Sungkyunkwan University successfully developed a new broadband photodetector material that can sense a wider range of wavelengths compared to existing commercial materials, and achieved cost-effective synthesis on a 6-inch wafer-scale substrate. Photodetectors ...

WASHINGTON – Consuming some types of fruits and vegetables can increase the levels of harmful pesticides detected in people’s bodies, according to a new peer-reviewed study by Environmental Working Group scientists. Pesticides have been linked to cancer, reproductive harm, hormone disruption and neurotoxicity in children. Residues of these chemicals are often detected on produce, creating exposure concerns for consumers. The new study may help inform future research into how dietary exposure to pesticides through fruit and vegetables might affect human health. “The findings reinforce that what we eat directly affects the level of pesticides ...

The Family Heart Foundation, a leading research and advocacy organization, announced the online publication of recommendations from a multidisciplinary panel in the Journal of Pediatrics to promote the early identification of children living with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH). A common life-threatening genetic condition that causes high cholesterol from birth, FH can lead to premature heart attacks and heart disease, if it is not diagnosed until adulthood. Despite national guidelines established in 2011 by the National Heart, Lung and Blood ...

The trillions of microbes that live in the human gut may play a bigger role in health than previously thought, according to a new research by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. The article, published in September 2025 in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, explores how gut bacteria interact with human genes in ways that could shape disease risk, aging and even future medical treatments. The review highlights how the gut microbiome (the collection of bacteria, viruses and fungi that live in the digestive system) can affect epigenetics, the process that turns genes on or off without changing the DNA itself. These changes happen through chemical tags ...

Long baleen whale mothers are more likely to have female calves than males, according to a new study led by the University of Washington. The findings contradict a popular evolutionary theory postulating that strong mammals benefit more from birthing males.  In 1973, Robert Trivers and Dan Willard proposed that fit female mammals can improve their odds for grandchildren by having males. Large strong mothers will raise large strong calves that can outcompete other males for mates. But, according to the theory, female fitness is less consequential. The studies backing this argument focused ...

What if we told you that the plastic shopping bag from last week’s grocery run could one day help detect toxic metals in drinking water? Sounds like science fiction? Think again. A dazzling new breakthrough led by Dr. Indriana Kartini from the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, is doing exactly that—turning plastic waste into glowing nanomaterials that can sense pollution in water. And yes, it’s as cool as it sounds. The Plastic Problem, Reimagined Every year, millions of tons of plastic bags pollute our oceans, clog landfills, and linger in ecosystems for centuries. But what if this stubborn ...

How fat is distributed in people’s bodies could make a difference to their risk of certain cancers, according to new research led by the University of Bristol.  The international study is published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) today [24 September]. Scientists have already shown that having obesity increases a person’s risk of developing certain cancers. Obesity is usually measured using body mass index (BMI), but growing evidence – particularly from heart health research – suggests that BMI ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – September 23, 2025) Natural systems such as CRISPR-associated transposons (CASTs) offer a targetable, one-step way to edit genomes. However, adapting them for biomedical applications has been challenging. To address this limitation, scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital designed a screening approach to measure efficiency and specificity for thousands of CAST variants accurately. This high-throughput approach allowed the researchers to rapidly optimize promising candidate ...

Drinking any amount of alcohol likely increases the risk of dementia, suggests the largest combined observational and genetic study to date, published online in BMJ Evidence Based Medicine. Even light drinking—generally thought to be protective, based on observational studies—is unlikely to lower the risk, which rises in tandem with the quantity of alcohol consumed, the research indicates. Current thinking suggests that there might be an ‘optimal dose’ of alcohol for brain health, but most of these studies have focused on older people and/or didn’t differentiate between former and lifelong non-drinkers, complicating efforts ...

BMJ Group has retracted research suggesting that small daily quantities of apple cider vinegar might help people who are overweight or obese to lose weight. The small clinical trial was published in the open access journal BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health in March 2024 and its findings press released. The study findings generated widespread international attention at the time, and continue to be frequently referred to in media coverage. The retraction was prompted by concerns raised about the quality of the work, ...