The phrase ‘liquid metal’ may bring to mind something hazardous, like mercury or molten steel. But in the Laboratory of Photonic Materials and Fiber Devices (FIMAP) in EPFL’s School of Engineering, it simply means a mixture of indium and gallium that is nontoxic, remains liquid at room temperature, and shows great promise for developing electronic fibers for wearables and robotic sensors. Unfortunately, as FIMAP head Fabien Sorin explains, liquid metals are extremely difficult to process, and it’s especially hard to produce electronic fibers that combine high and stable conductivity with stretchability. Now, the lab has overcome this ...

A spooky bat has been spotted flying over the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) Paranal site in Chile, right in time for Halloween. Thanks to its wide field of view, the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) was able to capture this large cloud of cosmic gas and dust, whose mesmerising appearance resembles the silhouette of a bat. Located about 10 000 light-years away, this ‘cosmic bat’ is flying between the southern constellations of Circinus and Norma. Spanning an area of the sky equivalent to four full Moons, it looks as if it's trying to hunt the glowing spot above it for food.  This nebula is a stellar nursery, a vast cloud of gas and dust from ...

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is ranked among the top 100 most important chemicals globally. Currently, the anthraquinone oxidation method is the primary method for industrial H2O2 production, yet it faces several major issues, including complex synthesis, high energy consumption. As a more sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative, the artificial photosynthesis of H2O2 from H2O and O2 using semiconductor photocatalysts driven by renewable solar energy has attracted significant attention. A key process in this approach is the two–electron oxygen reduction reaction (2e- ORR). However, most photocatalysts face limitations, ...

New research has shown for the first time that Australian marsupials are contaminated with synthetic ‘forever chemicals’, which are linked to significant health impacts in other animals and humans. University of Melbourne researchers in the Australian Laboratory for Emerging Contaminants (ALEC) and the Melbourne Veterinary School measured the concentrations of human-made per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in possums from the greater Melbourne region, with findings published today in ...

How does the brain take out its trash? That is the job of the brain’s lymphatic drainage system, and efforts to understand how it works have pushed the boundaries of brain-imaging technologies. A new study in iScience by researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina reveals, for the first time in humans, evidence of a previously unrecognized hub in the brain’s lymphatic drainage system – the middle meningeal artery (MMA). Taking advantage of a NASA partnership that provided access to real-time MRI technologies originally developed to study how spaceflight affects fluid dynamics in the human brain, the MUSC research team, ...

People living with HIV who smoke are currently more likely to die from lung cancer than from HIV-related causes. Two cancer control researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina’s Hollings Cancer Center are setting out to change that. With more than $3 million from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute over five years, Alana Rojewski, Ph.D., and Katherine Sterba, Ph.D., both of the department of Public Health Sciences at MUSC, will build and sustain ENHANCE-TTS (ENgaging pHarmacists to AdvANCE Tobacco Treatment Service) delivery programs that promote smoking ...

October 30, 2025 Allergies | Digestive Disorders | Research Ramnik Xavier, MD, PhD, of the Department of Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital, is the senior author of a paper published in Science, “Regional encoding of enteric nervous system responses to microbiota and type 2 inflammation.” Q: How would you summarize your study for a lay audience? The enteric nervous system (ENS) is a vast network of nerves built into the walls of the intestine. While it is well known for its role in regulating digestion and the movement of food through the intestine, researchers are learning that its influence ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — UC Santa Barbara physicists Sebastian Streichan, David Patterson and Andrea Young are among the 22 mid-career researchers to be named Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Experimental Physics Investigators this year. They join 19 other physicists from around the country who will receive $1.3 million in support over five years for their innovative work to advance the frontier of fundamental research in experimental physics. “We once again received proposals from amazing mid-career investigators who are taking their research ...

New research has found that social interactions among meerkats may be crucial to their health and survival – thanks to the sharing of beneficial gut bacteria.   Published in the Journal of Animal Ecology, the study discovered that a meerkat’s social group membership strongly influences its gut microbiome – even more than factors such as age, sex, health, genetic relatedness, diet or environmental conditions such as temperature.   Microbiomes provide many health-related benefits and a healthy microbiome containing beneficial bacteria is vital to an animal’s immunity, behaviour and overall fitness.   Meerkats live in ...

Children born to mothers who had COVID-19 while pregnant face an elevated risk of developmental disorders by the time they turn 3 years old, including speech delays, autism, motor disorders, and other developmental delays, according to new research by investigators at Mass General Brigham. The findings are published in Obstetrics & Gynecology. “These findings highlight that COVID-19, like many other infections in pregnancy, may pose risks not only to the mother, but to fetal brain development,” said ...

Synchronization abounds in nature: from the flashing lights of fireflies to the movement of fish wriggling through the ocean, biological systems are often in rhythmic movement with each other. The mechanics of how this synchronization happens are complex. For instance, in the vasculature of the brain, blood vessels oscillate, expanding and contracting as needed. When there is neural activity, the arterioles expand to increase blood flow, oxygen and nutrients. These oscillations are self-sustained, ...

ALBANY, N.Y. (Oct. 30, 2025) — A University at Albany researcher is teaming up with scientists from five institutions on a $1.2 million National Science Foundation project to better understand monsoon rainfall patterns across Asia, Indonesia and Australia over the last millennium — and how they might look in the future under a changing climate. For decades, scientists have studied natural records around the Eastern Hemisphere tropics to reconstruct past changes in monsoon rainfall. These records, which include stalagmites, corals, ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Most people can get their pets in for veterinary visits relatively quickly, but access to care could use improvement in rural areas, suggests a recent study. “Access to veterinary care appears to be generally pretty good and the wait times aren’t too long, particularly if you compare it to how long people often have to wait to establish primary care, but there’s clearly room for improvement in less populated areas,” said Simon Haeder, the study’s lead author and an associate professor in Ohio State’s College of Public Health. The research appears in ...

An international research consortium co-led by scientists from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the University of Toronto and University of Pittsburgh has mapped the functional impact of more than 17,000 variants in a major gene associated with the development of premature atherosclerotic heart disease. The study, reported Oct. 30 in the journal Science, will go a long way to improving the early diagnosis and treatment of familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), a common genetic driver of cardiovascular ...

Christina Wang, MD, and Lynda Polgreen, MD, MS, investigators at The Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, have been awarded $9 million from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to establish the South Los Angeles Community Center of Excellence for Regenerative Medicine (SoLA-CCERM) at The Lundquist Institute. SoLA-CCERM is a pioneering initiative designed to expand access to cutting-edge regenerative therapies and create a robust pipeline of skilled healthcare ...

As someone who studies materials, Lu Li knows people want to hear about the exciting new applications and technologies his discoveries could enable. Sometimes, though, what he finds is just too weird or extreme to have any immediate use. Working with an international team of researchers, Li has made one of those latter types of discoveries, which the group detailed in the journal Physical Review Letters. "I would love to claim that there's a great application, but my work keeps pushing that dream further away," ...

New research from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science shows that the smarter the artificial intelligence system, the more selfish it will act. Researchers in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) found that large language models (LLMs) that can reason possess selfish tendencies, do not cooperate well with others and can be a negative influence on a group. In other words, the stronger an LLM's reasoning skills, the less it cooperates. As humans use AI to resolve disputes between friends, provide marital guidance and answer other social questions, models that can reason might ...

As electric vehicles become more common, the number of used lithium-ion batteries is soaring. These batteries contain valuable metals such as nickel, cobalt, and lithium, but current recycling methods often destroy the complex crystal structure that makes them work efficiently. Now, researchers from Huazhong University of Science and Technology have developed a new molten salt technique that restores the structure and performance of used high-nickel cathode materials, offering a greener and more efficient route to battery recycling. The study, published in Energy & Environment Nexus, introduces a direct regeneration strategy ...

Men, Black Americans, those living in areas with low socioeconomic status more affected  The Illinois data from a diverse population (ethnic/racial, rural/metropolitan) likely reflects national amputation trends  ‘Unless we make changes in how we care for marginalized communities, I don’t anticipate this getting better’ CHICAGO --- Rates of leg and foot amputations in Illinois hospitals increased 65% between 2016 and 2023, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.  Men, Black patients, and those living in areas with low socioeconomic status were disproportionally affected, the study found. The dramatic spike is ...

TAMPA, Fla. (Oct. 30, 2025) — Two companion studies published in Cancer Research from scientists at Moffitt Cancer Center identify distinct but complementary approaches to overcoming drug resistance in KRAS G12C–mutant non-small cell lung cancer.   RAS genes produce proteins that act like on/off switches for cell growth. In healthy cells, this helps regulate normal tissue function. But when RAS is mutated, especially in cancers like non-small cell lung cancer, it can become stuck in the ...

A safer America will require bold investment in discovering, implementing, and scaling solutions that reduce firearm harms—especially those that center the people and communities most affected. That was the clear message from the JAMA Summit on Firearm Violence, which convened 60 leaders from across the nation to chart a roadmap toward reducing firearm violence, injuries, and deaths in the United States to record lows by 2040. The full report findings of the 2025 Summit are published in JAMA this month. Over two days, experts from public health, medicine, law, economics, and industry participated in sessions focused on: Achieving the safest ...

Global environmental DNA (eDNA) surveys significantly expand known geographic and ecological niche ranges of marine fish, highlighting current biases in conservation and ecological modeling   In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology: https://plos.io/42mNz7A  Article title: eDNA surveys substantially expand known geographic and ecological niche boundaries of marine fishes Author countries: France, Switzerland, Tanzania, Indonesia Funding: see manuscript END ...

A new study has identified over 240 scientific publications on animal models of hemorrhagic stroke that contain potentially problematic images, thereby raising concerns about the trustworthiness of the body of literature this field. The findings come from a team led by René Aquarius and Kim Wever at Radboud university medical center in the Netherlands, and are published October 30th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. Researchers often use images in their publications to provide evidence of whether a treatment works, for example, by showing the ...

Cheng Lyu is the winner of the 2025 Eppendorf & Science Prize for Neurobiology for her work in understanding how neural circuits assemble with such remarkable precision during development. Neural circuit assembly is a daunting challenge: young neurons must form specific connections with their correct synaptic partner among billions of others. How does the developing brain achieve such exquisite precision? What happens when it fails? To explore this unknown, Cheng Lyu and her research team turned to the fruit fly Drosophila, ...

A massive March 2025 earthquake in Myanmar tore through nearly 500 kilometers of the Sagaing Fault at extremely high speeds. In a new study – part of a package of four research articles on seismic activity in Myanmar – researchers show that an unusually thick, low-velocity fault zone acted like a high-speed corridor, driving one of the fastest and longest continental ruptures ever recorded. The largest earthquakes that occur within continental crusts can rupture faults extending for hundreds of kilometers and pose significant seismic threats.  Many of these powerful events evolve into supershear ruptures – earthquakes in which the rupture front ...