Australian researchers have uncovered how a particular strain of a diarrhoea-causing parasite managed to infect more animal species, offering new insights into how parasitic infections emerge and spread to people. The WEHI-led study has revealed a genetic shortcut that may help Giardia duodenalis and many other parasites jump to new hosts at the cost of long-term survival. The findings may also help explain how parasites evolve drug resistance, with implications for treatment strategies worldwide. Understanding these dynamics could inform public health surveillance and guide efforts to anticipate zoonotic ...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2026 — Generative AI is becoming ubiquitous in everyday life. Large language models like ChatGPT can help answer questions, write emails, and solve problems at seemingly lightning speed, pulling from enormous datasets to engage in conversations with their users. Generative AI tools are increasingly used in classrooms, too, sometimes to supplement learning and sometimes to cut corners. Because of this, many teachers have expressed concerns about this powerful tool’s impact on student learning and development. In The Physics Teacher, a journal co-published by AIP Publishing and the American Association of Physics Teachers, a physics professor-turned-AI-researcher ...

Two things are clear from a University of Michigan analysis of nearly 200,000 Twitter posts between 2012 and 2022.  One, people are really good at identifying peak pollen season: The largest volume of tweets about pollen often lined up with pollen counters hitting their biggest numbers. And two, liberal users on Twitter were more likely than conservatives to ascribe shifting pollen seasons over the years to climate change. "There is a partisan gap in how we perceive the pollen seasons that are very relevant to our day-to-day life and even our health," said Yiluan Song, the lead author of the new report in ...

At first glance, artificial intelligence looks like a software developer’s dream. A recent McKinsey & Company report found that programmers generated code up to 45% faster with the help of generative AI. But if it’s not used strategically, AI can become a developer’s nightmare. So says Edward Anderson Jr., professor of information, risk, and operations management and Betty and Glenn Mortimer Centennial Professor in Business at Texas McCombs. The problem arises when AI ...

Beijing, China — Biological invasion has become one of the most significant drivers of global ecological disruption, causing billions of dollars in economic losses annually. Yet, for decades, our response to these "alien" species has been largely reactive-acting only after a species has already established itself and caused damage. In a major review published in the journal Biological Diversity, Professor Aibin Zhan from the Research Center for Eco - Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, proposes a paradigm shift. The study introduces a "proactive, predictive, and integrative" framework driven by multi - omics technologies, offering a high - resolution ...

LUCKNOW, India — For centuries, Borago officinalis - commonly known as Borage or the Starflower - has been a staple of traditional medicine. Now, a comprehensive review published in the journal Biological Diversity reveals the scientific "blueprint" behind this plant's diverse therapeutic effects, positioning it as a powerful candidate for modern drug development. The study, led by researchers at the Department of Pharmacology, Integral University, provides an exhaustive analysis of how Borage interacts with the human body at a molecular level. By synthesizing data from both preclinical trials and human clinical ...

Date: January 6, 2026 Source: Editorial Office of Biological Diversity Contact: bd.admin@scbg.ac.cn Biological Diversity, a premier international journal dedicated to the holistic study of life on Earth, has officially launched its global recruitment drive for both the Editorial Board (EB) and the Youth Editorial Board (YEB). To address the complexity of the global biodiversity crisis, the journal is seeking experts across a systematic spectrum of disciplines. This recruitment aims to create a "dual - tier" leadership structure-combining the strategic wisdom of established world - class scientists with the innovative energy ...

Antibiotics that escape into the environment are widely recognized as a growing threat to ecosystems, wastewater treatment performance, and the spread of antimicrobial resistance. A new study shows that certain microbes can act as community protectors by breaking down antibiotics and stabilizing entire microbial ecosystems, offering a new way to rethink environmental risk assessment and pollution management. Researchers investigated how microbial communities respond to sulfamethoxazole, a commonly detected antibiotic in wastewater and natural waters. Their findings reveal that the ability of a community to degrade antibiotics can be more important than the antibiotic ...

Scientists have combined molecular imprinting technology with biochar to create materials that can recognize and capture specific molecules with remarkable precision. Biochar is a porous carbon material made by heating biomass such as crop residues in low-oxygen conditions, and is already valued for its low cost, large surface area, and environmental friendliness.​ Molecular imprinting works by “teaching” a polymer to remember the shape and chemical features of a target molecule, then locking that memory into tiny ...

Rice feeds more than half of the world’s population, but the tiny microbes living on and around rice plants may be just as important as the crop itself. A new study reveals that the specific genetic identity of a rice plant plays a stronger role than whether it is wild or domesticated in determining which microbes it hosts and how those microbes function. The research, published in Agricultural Ecology and Environment, shows that differences among rice genotypes strongly shape microbial communities in both the soil surrounding roots, known as the rhizosphere, and on leaf surfaces, known as the phyllosphere. ...

Finding one tick on your body is scary enough – tick-borne diseases are serious – but what if you found more than 10 on yourself in just one month? That’s the plight of some farmers as the threat of ticks and tick-borne diseases grows, according to new research featuring experts at Binghamton University, State University of New York.  New research led by Mandy Roome, associate director of the Tick-borne Disease Center at Binghamton University, State University of New York, reveals that farmers and outdoor workers in the Northeast are facing an escalating threat of tick-borne diseases, which could be devastating ...

Turning green waste, hay and algae into fully biodegradable plastics for use in medical products, car components, insulation and packaging is the goal of a new Junior Research Group at the University of Oldenburg in the northwest of Germany. Led by chemist Dr Melanie Walther, the team will combine eco-friendly and application-oriented approaches to develop a cost-effective, energy-efficient technology for making innovative plastics based on polybutylene succinate (PBS) which are made entirely out of organic waste. The Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) is providing around 2.7 million euros in funding for the EcoPBS project. “The work of the new Junior Research ...

Scientists at the University of Missouri have identified a small group of unusual objects in the early universe. Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Haojing Yan and his team at Mizzou’s College of Arts and Science spotted these strange objects, which seem like one galactic thing but have the unmistakable fingerprints of something else entirely. These objects have “point-like” features that would normally place them in one of two categories: stars or quasars, which are the brilliant ...

Thyroid cancer is the most common endocrine cancer, affecting more people each year as detection rates continue to rise. During tumor excision, surgeons often struggle to determine exactly how much tissue should be removed, as distinguishing cancer from healthy tissue in real time is challenging and nearby structures are extremely delicate. Today, diagnosis and margin assessment rely on fine-needle aspiration (FNA) and traditional pathology. While accurate, these methods are slow, sometimes inconclusive, and offer no real-time guidance in the operating room. As a result, patients may undergo unnecessary ...

January 6, 2026 — An elevated neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is significantly associated with increased risk of depressive disorder (DD) and may also correlate with suicide risk among individuals with DD, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis published in the November issue of Harvard Review of Psychiatry, part of the Lippincott portfolio from Wolters Kluwer. “Studies demonstrate altered immune responses in DD, including diminished lymphocyte reactivity and dysregulated neutrophil activity,” explain Yongjun Chen, MD, of Shandong University of Traditional ...

  The Seismological Society of America (SSA) will be holding its annual meeting on 14-18 April 2026 at the Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, California. The meeting attracts more than 800 scientists, engineers and policymakers for presentations and posters that cover the latest seismological research from around the globe. The meeting's topics are presented in 53 technical sessions, including topics such as earthquake early warning, seismic ...

Paper Title: Automated diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease using deep learning applied to electrocardiograms Journal: eBioMedicine, Volume 123, January 2026 Authors: Monica Kraft, MD, Health System Chair of the Department of Medicine; Girish N. Nadkarni, MD, MPH, CPH, Chief AI Officer and Chair of the Department of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health; Akhil Vaid, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Data Driven Digital Medicine) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Mount Sinai Health System; and other coauthors. Bottom Line: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary ...

A study led by Maria Carmo-Fonseca at GIMM has helped clarify one of the main limitations of lab-grown heart cells, which are widely used around the world to study heart disease and test new drugs. Although these cells make it possible to investigate the human heart without invasive procedures or animal models, they still fail to fully reproduce the characteristics of real heart cells, which can compromise the accuracy of certain studies. “These cells are extraordinarily useful, but they still behave like very immature cells”, explains ...

A groundbreaking new study from Bar-Ilan University shows that one of sleep’s core functions originated hundreds of millions of years ago in jellyfish and sea anemones, among the earliest creatures with nervous systems. By tracing this mechanism back to these ancient animals, the research demonstrates that protecting neurons from DNA damage and cellular stress is a basic, ancient function of sleep that began long before complex brains evolved.   Although sleep is universal among animals with nervous systems, it poses clear survival risks: during ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Simple pharmaceutical interventions could help older brains cope with memory impairment and recovery after surgery, new studies in mice suggest. In two studies, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign investigated different aspects of cognitive impairment: postoperative impairment — a relatively common phenomenon among older adults — and age-related memory decline, as well as noninvasive methods of restoring function.  “These studies provide a blueprint for further basic science studies that can identify compounds in preclinical tests that may eventually also be testable in humans,” ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — About half of older men suffer from sleep problems, back pain or both, according to Soomi Lee, associate professor of human development and family studies at Penn State. Lee recently led a study to investigate whether one precedes the other and found that back problems can predict sleep problems years later in men over 65 years old. “We know that back pain and sleep are serious issues for older adults,” Lee said. “We studied data collected over several years to understand whether poor sleep could predict back pain or if back pain ...

PHILADELPHIA – On Jan. 5, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) dramatically reduced the number of recommended childhood vaccinations from 17 to 11, citing practices in other wealthy nations, including Denmark, Germany, and Japan. The CDC said that parents could choose to have their children receive some previously recommended vaccines, including those for flu, rotavirus, Covid-19, meningitis, and hepatitis A and B, after “shared clinical decision-making.” The CDC’s announcement followed other similar moves by federal health officials. In December, the CDC’s ...

BALTIMORE, Jan. 6, 2026—A new study published in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science has found that some of the most widely considered online advertising safety and fairness policies may actually boost ad platform revenues while improving fairness outcomes. The policies at the center of the study are around ads that are designed to help ensure that women, minorities and other protected classes are not disproportionately excluded from job, education and financial opportunities. The study, “Is Fair Advertising Good for Platforms?,” by Di Yuan of Auburn University, ...

Researchers at CU Boulder have created tiny, microorganism-inspired particles that can change their shape and self-propel, much like living things, in response to electrical fields. One day, these shape-shifting “active particles” could be used as microrobots that deliver medications inside the human body, particularly in areas that are hard for drugs to reach on their own, or for building large-scale dynamic materials that are responsive and self-healing. The findings are described ...

Johns Hopkins University geneticists and a small army of researchers across the country, including students, are working to catalog the vast and largely unknown soil microbiome of the United States. The project, one of the biggest microbiome studies ever attempted, that’s tapping the latest DNA-analysis technology, has already resulted in the discovery of more than 1,000 new strains of bacteria and never-before-seen microbes—still just a tiny fraction of the microbial dark matter. “This scientific void we’re trying to fill on microbial diversity could only be accomplished by having this network of scientists and students across the United States,” ...