openRxiv has officially launched as an independent nonprofit to oversee bioRxiv and medRxiv, the world's leading preprint servers for life and health sciences. openRxiv ensures that researchers worldwide can continue to share discoveries rapidly and openly. With a researcher-led governance model, openRxiv strengthens the foundation of preprint sharing, empowering scientists to communicate findings at the speed of discovery. "We want openRxiv to be a home for all scientists—whether they're early-career researchers, established scholars, or from institutions large and small ...

A study of over 32,000 people living in Tamil Nadu, India suggests scrub typhus infection may affect up to 10% of rural populations annually and is a leading yet under-recognised cause of hospitalisations for fever across India. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, was conducted as part of a collaboration between the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and the Christian Medical College Vellore, India. Scrub typhus is a potentially life-threatening infection caused by the bacterium Orientia tsutsugamushi, which belongs to the rickettsia family. It is spread to humans through the bite of infected larval mites or chiggers. Chiggers are found ...

University of Arizona neuroscientists studying the brains of songbirds have found that aging alters the gene expressions that control the birds' song. The finding could lead to earlier diagnoses and better treatments for human neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease, which are known to hinder vocal production in their early stages. The study, published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging, found that networks of interacting genes, in a region of the bird's ...

Spatial transcriptomics is a cutting-edge technique that characterizes gene expression within sections of tissue, such as heart, skin or liver tissue. These snapshots provide insights into how spatial organization affects cellular functions across the spectrum of biology and disease. Up to now, researchers conducting spatial transcriptomics have had to choose between two options based on their needs: genome-wide coverage or single-cell resolution. To solve this tradeoff, scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the University of ...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- In a scene toward the end of the 2006 film, “X-Men: The Last Stand,” a character claps and sends a shock wave that knocks out an opposing army. Sunny Jung, professor of biological and environmental engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, was intrigued. “It made me curious about how the wave propagates when we clap our hands,” Jung said. Jung is senior author of a study, published March 11 in Physical Review Research, that elucidates the complex physical mechanisms and fluid dynamics involved in a handclap, with potential applications in bioacoustics ...

MINNEAPOLIS — The American Academy of Neurology (AAN), the American Epilepsy Society (AES) and the Epilepsy Foundation of America (EFA) have issued a consensus position statement on seizures, driver licensure and medical reporting. The position statement is published on March 12, 2025, online in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). It was developed with the Ethics, Law, and Humanities Committee, a joint committee of the AAN, the American Neurological ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4:00 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2025 MINNEAPOLIS — For college athletes with concussion, brain changes may remain visible in brain scans up to a year after they are cleared to return to play, according to a study published on March 12, 2025, online in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). “Concussion can have long-term effects on brain health, and there is growing evidence that brain recovery may persist months to years, even after symptoms like headache, fatigue and balance problems resolve,” said author Nathan Churchill, PhD, of ...

For those looking to climb the corporate ladder in the U.S., here’s an idea you might not have considered: debate training. According to a new research paper, people who learn the basics of debate are more likely to advance to leadership roles in U.S. organizations, compared to those who do not receive this training. One key reason is that being equipped with debate skills makes people more assertive in the workplace.  “Debate training can promote leadership emergence and advancement by fostering individuals’ assertiveness, which is a key, valued leadership characteristic in U.S. organizations,” says MIT Associate Professor Jackson Lu, one of the scholars ...

A new analysis reveals complex linkages among the United Nations’ (UN’s) 17 Sustainable Development Goals—which include such objectives as gender equality and quality education—and finds that no country is on track to meet all 17 goals by the target year of 2030. Alberto García-Rodríguez of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on March 12, 2025. In 2015, UN member countries adopted the Sustainable Development ...

Spinal cord injuries are life-altering, often leaving individuals with severe mobility impairments. While rehabilitation robotics—devices that guide movement during therapy—have improved training for those with spinal cord injuries, their effectiveness remains limited. Without active muscle engagement, robotic-assisted movement alone does not sufficiently retrain the nervous system. A team at .NeuroRestore, led by Grégoire Courtine and Jocelyne Bloch, has now developed a system that seemlessly integrates an implanted spinal cord neuroprosthesis with rehabilitation robotics. The researchers’ device delivers well-timed electrical pulses to stimulate ...

A new study reveals that a region in China's Turpan-Hami Basin served as a refugium, or "Life oasis" for terrestrial plants during the end-Permian mass extinction, the most severe biological crisis since the Cambrian period. The research, published in Science Advances, challenges the widely held view that terrestrial ecosystems suffered the same catastrophic losses as marine environments during this period. The discovery, led by Prof. LIU Feng from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology (NIGPAS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, provides the first conclusive fossil evidence ...

A new study from the University of Nottingham has revealed that poor sleep quality may increase susceptibility to conspiracy beliefs, with depression likely playing a key role in this relationship. Experts from the University’s School of Psychology examined the link between sleep quality and conspiracy beliefs in two studies involving over 1,000 participants. Their findings, published in the Journal of Health Psychology, indicate that individuals with poorer sleep quality over the past month were more likely to endorse conspiracy theories, particularly after exposure to conspiratorial content. Conspiracy theories claim that powerful, secretive ...

Adolescent boys who experience violence have up to 8 times the odds of perpetrating physical and sexual intimate partner violence that same day, per South African study collecting real-time data over mobile phones     Article URL: https://plos.io/4brsDzz Article title: Measuring real-time violence exposure and its impact on intimate partner violence perpetration among adolescents Author countries: US, South Africa Funding: Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health under Award R01MH119878. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors ...

Critically endangered hawksbill turtles migrate up to 1,000km from nesting to foraging grounds in the Western Caribbean, riding with and against ocean currents to congregate in popular feeding hotspots     Article URL: https://plos.io/41LfJZK Article title: Inter-nesting area use, migratory routes, and foraging grounds for hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) in the Western Caribbean Author countries: US, Honduras, Costa Rica Funding: Funding for this project was provided by the Boyd Lyon Sea Turtle Fund to QDB, ...

ALBANY, N.Y. (March 12, 2025) — University at Albany researchers at the RNA Institute are pioneering new methods for designing and assembling DNA nanostructures, enhancing their potential for real-world applications in medicine, materials science and data storage. Their latest findings demonstrate a novel ability to assemble these structures without the need for extreme heat and controlled cooling. They also demonstrate successful assembly in unconventional “buffer” substances including nickel. These developments, published today in the journal Science Advances, unlock new possibilities in DNA nanotechnology. DNA ...

PM2.5 exposure may be associated with increased skin redness in Taiwanese adults, suggesting that air pollution may contribute to skin health issues. #### Article URL: https://plos.io/4iDTuuo Article Title: Association between PM2.5 and skin redness features in Taiwan   Author Countries: Taiwan, United States Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Today, Breakthrough Discoveries for thriving with Bipolar Disorder (BD²) announced four new national institutions to receive $2.3 million each to join the BD² Integrated Network, a collaborative research and clinical care model that will improve care, interventions, and outcomes for people living with bipolar disorder. University of Cincinnati/Lindner Center of HOPE, University of California San Diego, The University of Texas at Austin, and The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research join the six inaugural institutions in the network. Working in partnership with clinicians, researchers, and people living ...

Older adults who lack internet access are at a significantly higher risk of developing depressive symptoms, especially those with limited familial support or lower income levels, according to a new study published in Health Data Science. Conducted by an international team of researchers, this study analyzed data from five major aging cohort studies covering 24 countries, revealing a strong link between digital exclusion and mental health. The researchers, led by Dr. Yinzi Jin from Peking University, investigated how digital exclusion—defined as the lack of internet access—affects the mental health of older adults. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), ...

Quantum annealing processors outperform classical supercomputers in solving real-world scientific simulations of quantum spin dynamics, researchers report in a new study, achieving results far beyond the capacity of conventional computational methods, which may require impossible time and energy to match. The results provide a challenge to classical computing, where method improvement has in the past tempered claims of quantum advantage. Only in recent years have quantum computers begun to live up to their lofty promises, with quantum processing units (QPUs) with diverse architectures – such as photonic, neutral-atom, and ...

How UV Radiation Triggers a Cellular Rescue Mission Ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun is a well-known cause of DNA damage, which can lead to diseases like skin cancer. But how do our cells repair this damage to protect us? Researchers from Sabanci University, Veysel Oğulcan Kaya and Ogün Adebali, have uncovered a fascinating answer: when DNA is damaged by UV light, our cells reorganize their genetic material in 3D space to prioritize repair, in what might be called a “cellular rescue mission.” A New Look at DNA Repair DNA, the blueprint of ...

Until now, doctors knew hepatic stellate cells mainly as drivers of liver fibrosis. The actual functions of this cell type have hardly been studied to date. Researchers from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), the Mannheim Medical Faculty and Columbia University in New York have now published in the journal Nature that hepatic stellate cells control liver metabolism as well as liver regeneration and size. The results of the study could contribute to new therapeutic approaches for liver diseases. The liver is a central organ for carbohydrate and protein metabolism as well as for the detoxification ...

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers worldwide, with a five-year survival rate of 13%. This poor prognosis stems from both late detection and the cancer’s notorious capacity to adapt and resist therapy. Now, a study led by researchers at the University of Verona, University of Glasgow, and the Botton-Champalimaud Pancreatic Cancer Centre uncovers a hidden driver of this adaptability: extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA). A New Player in Pancreatic Cancer The team found that some pancreatic cancer cells gain a major survival edge by carrying copies of critical cancer genes—such as ...

Since the groundbreaking discovery of graphene in 2004, the dizzying pace of progress in two-dimensional (2D) materials has ushered in a new era of fundamental research and technological innovation. Although nearly 2,000 2D materials have been theoretically predicted and hundreds have been created in laboratory settings, most of these 2D materials are limited to van der Waals (vdW) layered crystals.  Scientists have long been keen to develop atomically thin 2D metals, thereby expanding ...

MIS-C is a serious inflammatory shock that affects children. It can occur several weeks after a COVID infection and can be life-threatening. Until now, however, the precise cause of the condition was unknown. Researchers at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the German Rheumatology Research Center (DRFZ), an institute of the Leibniz Association, have identified that reactivation of a pre-existing, dormant infection with the Epstein-Barr virus triggers an excessive inflammatory response. The researchers have detailed their findings in an article in Nature.* These insights open the door to new treatment methods, potentially not limited to MIS-C. The majority of children ...

Delft, The Netherlands: Quantum Internet Alliance (QIA) researchers at TU Delft, QuTech, University of Innsbruck, INRIA and CNRS recently announced the creation of the first operating system designed for quantum networks: QNodeOS. The research, published in Nature, marks a major step forward in transforming quantum networking from a theoretical concept to a practical technology that could revolutionize the future of the internet.   “The goal of our research is to bring quantum network technology to all. With QNodeOS we're taking a big step forward. We're making it possible – ...