New USC research offers an unseen insight into how the brain shifts gears. The researchers discovered that our innate ability to make quick changes in motor function are the result of a unique brain mechanism. In the high-stakes world of the NBA, we watch in awe as our favorite player seamlessly switches moves in the blink of an eye. A perfect layup is suddenly defended. The shooter changes course mid-air, passing to an open teammate for a corner three. Humans have a remarkable ability to rapidly switch between different motor actions when life throws us a curveball. You reach to pull open a door but suddenly see you must push to exit. In traffic, you must ...

Dangers come but dangers also go and when they do, the brain has an “all-clear” signal that teaches it to extinguish its fear. A new study in mice by MIT neuroscientists shows that the signal is the release of dopamine along a specific interregional brain circuit. The research therefore pinpoints a potentially critical mechanism of mental health, restoring calm when it works, but prolonging anxiety or even post-traumatic stress disorder when it doesn’t. “Dopamine is essential to initiate fear extinction,” said Michele Pignatelli di Spinazzola, co-author ...

Images available via the link in the notes section Scientists from China, the UK and the USA have collaborated to analyse the inner workings of Bolivia’s “zombie” volcano, Uturuncu. By combining seismology, physics models and analysis of rock composition, researchers identify the causes of Uturuncu’s unrest, alleviating fears of an imminent eruption. The findings have been published today (28 April) in the journal PNAS. Deep in the Central Andes lies Uturuncu, Bolivia’s “zombie” ...

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 3PM ET ON MONDAY, APRIL 28 IN PNAS ITHACA, N.Y. – Through intensive breeding, humans have pushed breeds such as pug dogs and Persian cats to evolve with very similar skulls and “smushed” faces, so they’re more similar to each other than they are to most other dogs or cats.   For the first time, scientists at Cornell University and Washington University have uncovered examples of how selection pressures from breeding cats and dogs have led to “convergence” – the tendency of unrelated animals and plants to evolve similar characteristics under similar environmental conditions. In this case, the researchers found ...

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 3:00 PM U.S. EDT ON MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2025 In a world where innovation and progress depend on effective teamwork, a new study reveals how sexist behavior within teams sabotages not just individuals, but the very fabric of collaboration. Researchers found that exposure to sexist comments significantly alters how women interact emotionally during teamwork, increasing a key ingredient of successful collaboration: emotional synchrony. Emotional synchrony—shared, temporally aligned facial ...

A small bone found 30 years ago at Dinosaur Cove in south eastern Australia could turn what we know about the evolution of echidnas and platypuses on its head. Up until now, the accepted understanding about these egg-laying monotremes – arguably the most unusual mammals on the planet – was that they were both descended from a land-bound ancestor. And while the platypus ancestors became semiaquatic, the echidnas stayed on the land, or so the story went. But following a UNSW-led analysis of the bone – which was discovered ...

The next great earthquake isn't the only threat to the Pacific Northwest. A powerful earthquake, combined with rising sea levels, could significantly increase flood risks in the Pacific Northwest, impacting thousands of residents and properties in northern California, Oregon, and Washington, according to new Virginia Tech research. A study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that a major earthquake could cause coastal land to sink up to 6.5 feet, expanding the federally designated 1 percent coastal floodplain, an area ...

Scientists at Northwestern University and University of California, Santa Barbara have created the first synthetic fragment of tau protein that acts like a prion. The “mini prion” folds and stacks into strands (or fibrils) of misfolded tau proteins, which then transmit their abnormally folded shape to other normal tau proteins. Misfolded, prion-like proteins drive the progression of tauopathies, a group of neurodegenerative diseases — including Alzheimer’s disease — characterized by the ...

BNT162b2 vaccine not only targets COVID-19 virus, but may also help reduce and control innate inflammation  New findings suggest the vaccine may reduce the production of pro-inflammatory mediators to bacterial, fungal or viral infections by reprogramming innate immune cells to regulate inflammation Trinity researchers have found that the BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine may offer protection beyond its intended, primary target. In a study, recently published in the Clinical Immunology journal, researchers found that the vaccine not only targeted the COVID-19 virus, it also unexpectedly helped to reduce ...

No more rancid hazelnuts: a research team at the URV has developed a method that can identify nuts that have gone bad due to oxidation. The technique uses infrared light to determine the chemical composition of hazelnuts without even removing them from their shells. The new system overcomes the limitations of traditional methods and makes it possible to identify the condition of all the hazelnuts in a packet in a single analysis, without the need to prepare or destroy the sample. The authors argue that the application of this technology would help to improve packaging techniques and distribution ...

New research from The University of Texas at Arlington and the U.S. Department of Agriculture demonstrates how mathematical modeling can predict outbreaks of toxic fungi in Texas corn crops—offering a potential lifeline to farmers facing billions in harvest losses. “Our research focuses on predicting aflatoxin outbreaks in Texas using remote sensing satellites, soil properties and meteorological data,” said coauthor Angela Avila, a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics at UTA. “One of the key challenges is that contamination can be present with no visible signs of fungal infection. This makes ...

April 28, 2025-- Conflicting findings in environmental epidemiology have long stalled consensus on the health effects of toxic chemicals. A new study by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health published in the American Journal of Epidemiology suggests that one major reason for these inconsistencies may be the limited exposure ranges in individual studies—leading to underpowered results and unclear conclusions. Researchers used simulated data to examine how well individual and pooled studies can identify dose-response relationships between chemical exposure and health ...

Planting wildflowers in apple orchards could save farmers up to £3,000 per hectare a year, according to a new study.   Flower strips create a home for a team of helpful insects – like ladybirds, hoverflies, and lacewings – that eat harmful pests such as aphids. This natural team of pest controllers helps keep apple trees healthy with less need for chemical sprays.   This study, published in Journal of Agricultural Economics, builds on previous research from a University of Reading team that found flower strips can ...

Why are some people more helpful than others? In a new JNeurosci paper, Inbal Bartal, from Tel Aviv University, and colleagues used rats to explore why some individuals may be more receptive to the distress of others and how this information leads to helpful behavior. During a task the researchers previously developed, they observed the behaviors and brain activity of helpful rats compared to less helpful rats. In this task that probes helping behavior, rats are given the option to release a distressed peer trapped in a restrainer. Rats were more ...

URBANA, Ill. -- In February, the USAID-funded Feed the Future Soybean Innovation Lab at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign was told to stop work, bringing an abrupt end to 12 years of progress toward developing a global soybean value chain supporting Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Australia. SIL director Pete Goldsmith cobbled together funding from the university to keep the lab afloat until April 15, which was to be its last day.  At the eleventh hour, Founders ...

People’s willingness to do volunteer work or give to charity differs greatly. Besides financial and social incentives, individual differences in people’s personality can explain why some of us are more likely to contribute to community welfare than others. Researchers at the Department of Psychology of the University of Zurich have examined the links between the so-called Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism) and people’s willingness to engage in prosocial behavior. Their analysis was based on 29 international ...

Falling off a horse at high-speed changes the impact to the rider’s head and the parameters for a quality helmet, according to new research from the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab.   Published on April 28 in the Annals of Biomedical Engineering, the findings from researchers Steve Rowson and Lauren Duma indicate that head impacts during falls at high speed generate unique head rotation, which in turn, directly affects helmet behavior.  “Rotational motion of the head is very important,” said Rowson, helmet lab director. “While our testing already incorporated rotational head motion, falling off a horse at high speed can put a large force across the helmet ...

Peking University, April 24, 2025: He Qinglin’s group at the Center for Quantum Materials Science, School of Physics, has reported the first observation of non-reciprocal Coulomb drag in Chern insulators. This breakthrough opens new pathways for exploring Coulomb interactions in magnetic topological systems and enhances our understanding of quantum states in such materials. The work was published in Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-58401-5). Background Coulomb drag arises when a current in one conductor induces ...

A newly published study involving researchers from Karolinska Institutet indicates that prostate cancer can be diagnosed at an early stage through a simple urine sample. With the aid of AI and extensive analyses of gene activity in tumours, they have identified new biomarkers of high diagnostic precision. Prostate cancer is one of the most common causes of male death globally. One of the main diagnostic hurdles is the lack of exact biomarkers able to identify the presence of an early tumour. In this present study, researchers at Karolinska ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – A new study from Cornell University finds AI-based writing assistants have the potential to function poorly for billions of users in the Global South by generating generic language that makes them sound more like Americans. The study showed that when Indians and Americans used an AI writing assistant, their writing became more similar, mainly at the expense of Indian writing styles. While the assistant helped both groups write faster, Indians got a smaller productivity boost, because they frequently had to correct the AI’s suggestions. “This ...

Sydney scientists have revealed why receiving a booster vaccine in the same arm as your first dose can generate a more effective immune response more quickly. The study, led by the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and the Kirby Institute at UNSW Sydney and published in the journal Cell, offers new insight that could help improve future vaccination strategies. The researchers found that when a vaccine is administered, specialised immune cells called macrophages became ‘primed’ inside lymph nodes. These macrophages then direct the positioning of memory B cells to more effectively respond to the booster when given in the same arm. The ...

How would you summarize your study for a lay audience? Our team has been investigating unusual mental and somatic experiences that occur in intensive meditative, spiritual and contemplative practice, such as: The sense that the world is a dream or cartoon An absorbing sense of unity with God Ecstatic thrills running through the body Unusually vivid perceptions Out of body experiences Perceptions of non-physical lights. In a previous study, we found these experiences were surprisingly widespread in general populations, and that while they are usually ...

Some things just go together in your belly: peanut butter and jelly, salt and pepper, bacteria and bacteria-eating viruses. For the bacterial species that inhabit your gut, there’s a frenzy of viruses called bacteriophages that naturally infect them. Although they co-evolved with bacteria, phages get far less glory. They’re harder to classify and so deeply entangled with the bacteria they target that scientists struggle to understand what functions they serve. But what if there was a way to compare the exact same gut microbiome ...

About The Study: Cohort-specific patterns across states reveal wide disparities in mortality. Some states have experienced little or no improvements in life expectancy from the 1900 to 2000 birth cohorts. Understanding how mortality patterns vary by birth cohort within each state can inform decision-making around resource allocation and public health interventions. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Theodore R. Holford, PhD, email theodore.holford@yale.edu. To ...

About The Study: The results of this study suggest that maternal health was difficult to track due to changes in reporting practices, but public health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic can have large negative impacts. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Seth Flaxman, PhD, email seth.flaxman@cs.ox.ac.uk. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2025.0440) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, ...