Exposure to wildfire smoke during the final months of pregnancy may raise the risk that a child is later diagnosed with autism, according to a new study led by Tulane University researchers. The study, published in Environmental Science & Technology, analyzed more than 200,000 births in Southern California from 2006 to 2014. Researchers found that children whose mothers were exposed to wildfire smoke during the third trimester were more likely to be diagnosed with autism by age 5. The strongest association was observed among mothers exposed to more than 10 days of wildfire smoke during the final three months of pregnancy. In that group, children ...

Rice University’s SynthX Center, directed by Han Xiao, has received an up to five-year, $18 million award from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) Lymphatic Imaging, Genomics and pHenotyping Technologies (LIGHT) program to develop innovative solutions for lymphatic diseases. This project award has the potential to transform the diagnosis and treatment of complex lymphatic anomalies (CLAs) and lymphedema, which are rare conditions that arise from abnormal growth of lymphatic vessels and can affect multiple organs.  LIGHT is led by ...

January 20, 2026, Mountain View, CA and Houston, TX  — The SETI Institute announced that alliant Global CEO, Dhaval Jadav, joined its Board of Directors. Dhaval brings a deep lifelong passion for space science, a strong commitment to STEM education, and a shared belief in the SETI Institute’s mission to explore one of humanity’s most profound questions: Are we alone in the universe? This marks the beginning of a strategic partnership that gives the SETI Institute the ability to leverage alliant’s resources ...

Political published writing retains an “important and complex role” in the national conversation – despite huge social and technological changes this century, a new book shows.  Books and magazines have been so fundamental and intrinsic to the political process, and, hidden in plain sight, they are in danger of being overlooked, experts demonstrate.  The persistence of long-form political writing, through the advent of TV and radio, and then through the internet age, is a phenomenon that cannot be taken for granted.  Writing Politics in Modern Britain: Genre and Cultures of Publishing since 1900, is edited by Professor Gary Love, from the Norwegian University ...

Weill Cornell Medicine has received a $5.2 million, initial two-year award  from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) Lymphatic Imaging, Genomics, and pHenotyping Technologies (LIGHT) program to develop a comprehensive and innovative approach to diagnosing lymphatic disease. LIGHT is led by ARPA-H Program Manager Kimberley Steele, M.D., Ph.D. The lymphatic system is a network of vessels, nodes and organs that drains excess fluid from tissues, filtering out waste and ...

A hundred years ago, quantum mechanics was a radical theory that baffled even the brightest minds. Today, it’s the backbone of technologies that shape our lives, from lasers and microchips to quantum computers and secure communications. In a sweeping new perspective published in Science, Dr. Marlan Scully, a university distinguished professor at Texas A&M University, traces the journey of quantum mechanics from its quirky beginnings to its role in solving some of science’s toughest challenges. “Quantum mechanics started as a way to explain the behavior of tiny particles,” said Scully, who is also affiliated with Princeton University. “Now ...

An interdisciplinary team including researchers at McGill University has found a range of unexpected chemical contaminants in human milk samples from Canada and South Africa. The chemicals include traces of pesticides, antimicrobials and additives used in plastics and personal-care products. The findings were published across five papers. “It is important to note that these chemicals were detected at low concentrations, and we do not fully understand the health effects of many of them. So, despite these findings, breast milk remains ideal for infants, as it has the nutrients infants need ...

According to new research from the University of Delaware, nearly 40% of American adults ages 18 to 64 with arthritis — almost 10 million people — say the medical condition is limiting their ability to work.  Co-author Daniel White, associate professor of physical therapy at UD, analyzed findings from the 2023 National Health Interview Survey, which was recently published in the journal Arthritis Care & Research. White says the number is likely much higher than 40%. “We ...

Women are underrepresented in academia, especially in STEMM fields, at top institutions, and in senior positions. This study analyzes millions of biomedical and life science articles, revealing that female-authored articles spend longer under review than comparable male-authored articles, across most fields. In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology: https://plos.io/3KIf8CF Article title: Biomedical and life science articles by female researchers spend longer under review Author countries: United States Funding: This work was partially funded by a Data Analytics grant (to ...

Babies of every species from mouse to human rapidly forget things that happen to them—an effect called infantile amnesia. A type of brain immune cell called microglia might control this type of forgetting in young mice, according to a study published January 20th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Erika Stewart, from Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, and colleagues. Infants and young children are growing rapidly and taking in vast amounts of information as they grow. However, there is a lack of episodic memory from this early period of development ...

Scientists have found that blocking microglia (specialist immune cells in the brain) prevents infant forgetting (“infantile amnesia”) and improves memory in mice, suggesting that microglia may actively manage memory formation and dictate what, and when, we forget. Infants of many species from mouse to human rapidly forget things that happen to them—a phenomenon called infantile amnesia -- but until now we have known little about how this happens. The new discovery, just published in leading international journal PLOS Biology, now offers strong support ...

For decades, the ability to visualize the chemical composition of materials, whether for diagnosing a disease, assessing food quality, or analyzing pollution, depended on large, expensive laboratory instruments called spectrometers. These devices work by taking light, spreading it out into a rainbow using a prism or grating, and measuring the intensity of each color. The problem is that spreading light requires a long physical path, making the device inherently bulky. A recent study from the University of California Davis (UC Davis), reported in Advanced Photonics, tackles the challenge of miniaturization, aiming to shrink a lab-grade ...

UN Headquarters, New York – Amid chronic groundwater depletion, water overallocation, land and soil degradation, deforestation, and pollution, all compounded by global heating, a UN report today declared the dawn of an era of global water bankruptcy, inviting world leaders to facilitate “honest, science-based adaptation to a new reality.” “Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era,” argues that the familiar terms “water stressed” and “water crisis” fail to reflect today’s reality in many places: a post-crisis condition marked by irreversible losses of natural ...

Researchers at the John Innes Centre and the Earlham Institute are pioneering powerful single-cell visualisation techniques that could unlock higher yields of global wheat.   Firmly in their sights is the longstanding question that has perplexed the wheat research community: Why do grains at the bottom of the spike fail to achieve full size compared to those higher up?    Previous studies have analysed wheat tissue in bulk (taking dissected tissue pieces in their entirety), limiting image resolution, and increasing the likelihood of unclear results.   In ...

Quantum mechanics is rich with paradoxes and contradictions. It describes a microscopic world in which particles exist in a superposition of states—being in multiple places and configurations all at once, defined mathematically by what physicists call a ‘wavefunction.’ But this runs counter to our everyday experience of objects that are either here or there, never both at the same time. Typically, physicists manage this conflict by arguing that, when a quantum system comes into contact with a measuring ...

January 20, 2026 -- A new study from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health finds that community water fluoridation (CWF) is not associated with significant changes in birth weight—a widely accepted indicator of infant health and a predictor of later-life outcomes. The findings provide reassurance about the safety of fluoridated drinking water during pregnancy. The results are published in JAMA Network Open. Community water fluoridation is one of the most widely implemented public health interventions in the United States and has long been promoted ...

BELLINGHAM, WA, USA – January 19, 2026 – SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, is celebrating the inaugural Biophotonics Discovery's Impact of the Year Award as well as its first recipient, Stanford University Associate Professor of materials science and engineering, Guosong Hong. Hong was officially honored at the Biophotonics Focus: Light-Based Technologies for Reproductive, Maternal, and Neonatal Health plenary during SPIE Photonics West on Sunday evening. Hong is being honored in the technology development category for “significantly advancing the field of biophotonics,” ...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20, 2026 — The ice in your freezer is remarkably different from the single crystals that form in snow clouds, or even those formed on a frozen pond. As temperatures drop, ice crystals can grow in a variety of shapes: from stocky hexagonal prisms to flat plates, to Grecian columns. Why this structural roller coaster happens, though, is a mystery. When first observed, researchers thought it must relate to a hypothesis proposed by famed physicist Michael Faraday — ice below its melting point has a microscopically thin liquid layer of water across its surface. This “premelting ...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20, 2026 — Holding an egg requires a gentle touch. Squeeze too hard, and you’ll make a mess. Opening a water bottle, on the other hand, needs a little more grip strength. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are approximately 50,000 new amputations in the United States each year. The loss of a hand can be particularly debilitating, affecting patients’ ability to perform standard daily tasks. One of the primary challenges with prosthetic hands is the ability to properly tune the appropriate grip based on the object being handled. In ...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20, 2026 — People with from spinal cord injuries often lose some or all their limb function. In most patients, the nerves in their limbs work fine, and the neurons in their brain are still operational, but the damage to their spinal cords prevents the two areas from communicating. In APL Bioengineering, by AIP Publishing, researchers from universities in Italy and Switzerland conducted an initial feasibility study to explore whether electroencephalography (EEG) could be a useful tool for connecting brain signals with limb movements. When a patient tries to move their paralyzed limb, ...

About The Study: This cohort study of more than 11 million births found no association of community water fluoridation with adverse birth outcomes. These findings provide reassurance about the safety of community water fluoridation during pregnancy and underscore the value of rigorous causal designs in evaluating potential adverse effects of public health interventions. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Matthew Neidell, PhD, email mn2191@columbia.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.54686) Editor’s ...

About The Study: This comparative effectiveness study found that initiation of sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitor (SGLT2i) vs glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA) treatment in individuals with type 2 diabetes was associated with a lower 5-year risk of chronic kidney disease and a lower 5-year count of acute kidney injury. These findings underscore the potential of SGLT2i treatment for primary prevention of kidney disease in individuals with type 2 diabetes.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Simon K. Jensen, PhD, email skj@clin.au.dk. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link ...

About The Study: The findings of this case-control study suggest that air pollution, even at relatively low levels typical of Sweden, may contribute both to the risk of developing motor neuron disease and disease prognosis after motor neuron disease diagnosis. Corresponding Authors: To contact the corresponding authors, email Jing Wu, PhD, (jing.wu@ki.se) and Fang Fang, MD, PhD, (fang.fang@ki.se). To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2025.5379) Editor’s ...

About The Study: In this decision analytical modeling study of breast cancer screening, population risk-based screening using 5-year invasive breast cancer risk was associated with similar or greater benefits than age-based screening as well as reduced false-positive recalls. As personalized medicine advances, risk-based screening is poised to become a cornerstone of breast cancer prevention, offering a more nuanced and tailored approach to patient care. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Oguzhan Alagoz, PhD, email alagoz@engr.wisc.edu. To ...

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) women are significantly more likely to have alcohol involved at the time of suicide compared with heterosexual women, according to a new study from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The findings are published in JAMA Network Open. The researchers found that lesbian and gay women had a 15 percent higher likelihood of detectable blood alcohol content, a 17 percent higher chance of intoxication, and a 38 percent higher probability of any alcohol involvement at the time of death. Statistical interaction tests confirmed that associations between alcohol involvement and suicide varied ...