Measuring human movement with tracking devices on looser clothing is more accurate than on tight body suits or straps.   The discovery by scientists at King’s College London could mark a potential breakthrough for a range of technologies, including improving accuracy on personal health devices, such as Fitbits and smart watches, to enhancing motion capture for CGI movie characters.  It could also support health and medical research by making it easier to gather data on conditions affecting mobility such as Parkinson’s.   The research, published in Nature ...

When the sun goes down, solar panels stop working. This is the fundamental hurdle of renewable energy: how to save the sun’s power for a rainy day — or a cold night. Chemists at UC Santa Barbara have developed a solution that doesn’t require bulky batteries or electrical grids. In a paper published in the journal Science, Associate Professor Grace Han and her team detail a new material that captures sunlight, stores it within chemical bonds and releases it as heat on demand. The material, a modified organic molecule called pyrimidone, is the latest advancement in Molecular Solar Thermal (MOST) energy ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — A new study published by Mayo Clinic researchers suggests that ovarian cancer cells quickly activate a survival response after PARP inhibitor treatment, and blocking this early response may make this class of drugs work better. PARP inhibitors are a common treatment for ovarian cancer and can be especially effective in cancers with impaired DNA repair. However, many tumors eventually stop responding, even when the drugs initially show results. The new research identifies ...

A new study suggests that young men overwhelmingly support affirmative sexual consent in principle—yet often find its verbal implementation difficult in practice. The research, led by scholars at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and Melbourne University’s Department of General Practice and Primary Care, explores how young heterosexual men interpret and navigate consent during real-world sexual encounters. The findings were published in the Journal of Sex & ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Siemens Healthineers and Mayo Clinic are expanding their strategic collaboration to enhance patient care for neurodegenerative disease and the management of prostate cancer and metastatic liver tumors. The two organizations have signed an agreement that will improve care for people with those diseases and expand access to new imaging and interventional technologies. Initial areas for collaboration include: Neurodegenerative disease: Developing and bringing to clinical use artificial ...

Physicists have long recognized the value of photonic graph states in quantum information processing. However, the difficulty of making these graph states has left this value largely untapped. In a step forward for the field, researchers from The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have proposed a new scheme they term “emit-then-add” for producing highly entangled states of many photons that can work with current hardware. Published in npj Quantum Information, their strategy lays the groundwork for a wide range of quantum enhanced operations including measurement-based quantum computing. Entanglement is a key driver in delivering ...

A federally funded research initiative will enable researchers at Oregon Health & Science University and other organizations to assess the safety and effectiveness of state-regulated access to psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms. The five-year, $3.3 million award is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health — a first. “This is the first federally funded work to study the impact of legal psychedelic services delivered in community settings,” said co-principal investigator Adie ...

As semiconductor manufacturing rapidly expands to meet growing global demand for generative AI and advanced electronics, a new review published in Environmental Science & Technology assesses the current state of science, technology and policy around managing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) waste in the industry and outlines recommendations for a path forward. PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” play a central role in modern chipmaking due to their unique properties and essential function in complex chemical processes like photolithography and etching, yet their links to environmental and health ...

Embargoed until 1:45 PM PST, February 12, 2026 New Research Finds State-Level Abortion Restrictions Associated with Increased Maternal Deaths Las Vegas, NV – The increased number of state-level abortion restrictions in the U.S. was associated with a parallel increase in maternal deaths between 2005 and 2023, according to new research presented today at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) 2026 Pregnancy Meeting™. Researchers found that states with five or more different abortion restrictions had higher rates of maternal deaths from any cause, cardiovascular disease, and violence than those states with fewer restrictions. “Abortion ...

A new collaborative study, led by University of Utah Professor of atmospheric sciences Kevin Perry, provides policymakers, agency leaders, and the public with the most comprehensive assessment to date of potential dust control options for the Great Salt Lake, as declining water levels continue to expose vast areas of lakebed to wind erosion. The study, supported by the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy in collaboration with the Great Salt Lake Commissioner’s Office, Utah Division of Water Resources and Department of Environmental Quality, considers a wide-range of options to engineer dust ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Although modern science has only been around for a few centuries, we’ve become quite adept at training students in the scientific method. But learning how to translate research insights into practical actions often isn’t part of a budding scientist’s curriculum. UC Santa Barbara Assistant Professor Alexandra Phillips has put together a guide to help professors and administrators support their students' interests in ocean policy and build broader ...

In 2016 while hiking on a hillside in Morocco, geologist Rowan Martindale saw something that made her stop in her tracks: a slab of sedimentary rock covered in a wrinkly texture reminiscent of elephant skin.  “I looked at the wrinkles and I was like, ‘These aren’t supposed to be in rocks like this. What the heck is going on?’” said Martindale, an associate professor at The University of Texas at Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences. Rock textures hold clues about the geological activity that shaped them. To Martindale, these wrinkles in time were a textbook example of microbial mat fossils. They captured a teeming ...

New research suggests that exposure to intense wildfire smoke during pregnancy may be associated with increased likelihood of autism in children. The study, by researchers at UC Davis Health and UCLA, was published in the journal Environment International. The study of more than 8.6 million births in California is the largest to date examining how wildfire-specific air pollution may impact early neurodevelopment. Scientists combined detailed wildfire smoke data with state birth records from 2001 to 2019. They matched these with autism diagnoses from California ...

NYU researchers have found a “microbial signature” of pediatric Crohn's disease that differs from the makeup of gut bacteria in children with other gastrointestinal conditions, with Crohn’s patients harboring more pro-inflammatory bacteria and less protective bacteria. The study of recently diagnosed children, published in the journal Physiological Reports, also reveals different bacteria in those with more severe Crohn’s disease symptoms and activity. Crohn's disease is a chronic inflammatory disorder of the gastrointestinal tract, and rates of pediatric diagnoses have markedly grown over the ...

For more than a century, the American chestnut, once a dominant tree across eastern North American forests, has been devastated by an invasive fungal disease that killed billions of trees in the early 1900s. A new study published in Science shows that modern genomic tools can dramatically accelerate restoration while preserving the species’ ecological identity. The research demonstrates that genomic selection, a method widely used in agriculture and animal breeding, can predict disease resistance in chestnut trees using DNA data alone. By allowing breeders to identify promising seedlings before years of field testing, the approach shortens breeding ...

Astronomers have watched a dying star fail to explode as a supernova, instead collapsing into a black hole. The remarkable sighting is the most complete observational record ever made of a star’s transformation into a black hole, allowing astronomers to construct a comprehensive physical picture of the process. Combining recent observations of the star with over a decade of archival data, the astronomers confirmed and refined theoretical models of how such massive stars turn into black holes. The team found that the star failed to explode as a supernova at the end of its life; instead, the star’s core ...

An elephant’s trunk looks rugged, but it is also one of the most sensitive touch organs in the animal kingdom. New research reveals that this sensitivity is partly powered by whiskers whose material structure changes from base to tip. This unique property amplifies sensory signals, allowing elephants to feel their surroundings through their trunks with remarkable precision through material design alone. In mammals, whiskers – elongated keratin rods akin to stiff hairs – are especially sophisticated sensory tools. Although the keratin from which they are made cannot detect touch itself, whiskers are embedded in follicles surrounded by densely packed sensory ...

Astronomers have caught a massive star in the Andromeda Galaxy quietly dying, collapsing into a black hole without producing a supernova, leaving behind little more than a fading trace. The findings provide some of the strongest evidence yet that so-called “failed supernovae” can produce stellar-mass black holes. Near the end of their lives, massive stars can become unstable and swell in size, producing noticeable changes in brightness over timescales humans can observe. In many cases, these stars die in brilliant supernovae, which are extremely luminous and easy to detect. However, ...

China’s Yangtze River – in ecological decline for decades – is showing early signs of recovery following the introduction of a sweeping 10-year commercial fishing ban, researchers report. According to the findings, fish biomass has more than doubled, endangered species are rebounding, and the world’s largest river system may be beginning a cautious ecological comeback. Rapid economic development in China since the 1950s has resulted in severe declines in freshwater biodiversity in the Yangtze River, the largest and ...

After more than a century of devastation from deadly blight, the iconic American chestnut tree could be brought back from the brink of extinction thanks to novel genomic tools and carefully bred hybrids, a new study finds. The study included experiments that suggest that breeding trees with an average of 70 to 85% American chestnut ancestry can result in trees with significant levels of blight and root rot resistance. The demise of the American chestnut tree is among the most striking examples of how ...

Scientists have identified a crucial mechanism that allows plants to shape their vascular systems, determining whether they grow soft edible storage organs or develop the rigid woody tissue characteristic of trees. Published today in Science, research led by the University of Cambridge and University of Helsinki, reveals the regulatory dynamics that guide xylem formation, offering new insights into how plants build both structural and storage tissues. Understanding how plants fine-tune their vascular development offers a promising path for future work aimed at optimising growth traits that ...

In 2014, a NASA telescope observed as the infrared light emitted by a massive star in the Andromeda galaxy gradually grew brighter. The star glowed more intensely with infrared light for around three years before fading dramatically and disappearing, leaving behind a shell of dust. Although a telescope captured the phenomenon at the time, it took years for scientists to notice it. Now, a research team led by Kishalay De, a Columbia astronomy professor, has an explanation of what they saw: It was a star collapsing and giving birth to a black hole—an event that ...

Some genetic mutations that are expected to completely stop a gene from working surprisingly cause only mild or even no symptoms. Researchers in previous studies have discovered one reason why: cells can ramp up the activity of other genes that perform similar functions to make up for the loss of an important gene’s function. A new study from the lab of Whitehead Institute Member Jonathan Weissman now reveals insights into how cells can coordinate this compensation response. Cells are constantly reading instructions stored in DNA. These instructions, called genes, tell them how to make the many proteins that carry out complex processes needed to sustain life. ...

The Yangtze River Basin, a global biodiversity hotspot, has endured severe ecological degradation over several decades due to intense human activity, leading to a marked decline in aquatic biodiversity. In order to halt this 70-year trend, the Chinese government instituted a comprehensive 10-year fishing ban on the Yangtze River in 2021. The initial effects of the ban have now been evaluated. In a recent study, researchers led by Prof. CHEN Yushun from the Institute of Hydrobiology (IHB) of the Chinese ...

Amsterdam, 12 February 2026 – An international research team of Amsterdam UMC, VU LaserLab, the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and the University of Edinburgh have gained new insights into the dynamics of myelin swellings in the brain. Myelin swellings are considered as the precursor of lesions in the brain of people with multiple sclerosis (MS). The results have been recently published in the leading magazine Science. MS is characterised by lesions in the brain and the spinal cord. Aside from these inflammations, damage can also be visible in the myelin; the protective layer surrounding nerve ...