Generative AIs may not be as creative as we assume. Publishing December 19 in the Cell Press journal Patterns, researchers show that when image-generating and image-describing AIs pass the same descriptive scene back and forth, they quickly veer off topic. From 100 diverse prompts, the AI pairs consistently settled on 12 themes, including gothic cathedrals, natural landscapes, sports imagery, and stormy lighthouses. These recurrent themes likely reflect biases in the ...

A large-scale model study now shows how the global food system can contribute to the fight against global heating. It identifies 23 levers, calculates their effectiveness and concludes: a decisive transformation of this sector alone, without the indispensable energy transition, can limit the global temperature increase to 1.85°C above pre-industrial levels by 2050. In addition, food will become healthier and cheaper, and agriculture will be more compatible with biodiversity conservation. The study was led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and published in Nature Food. The study ...

About The Study: In July 2025, an Executive Order was issued that ended support for Housing First and sought to eliminate discretionary federal spending on such programs. Though not all housing offered on a Housing First basis would end if federal funding for these programs ceased, there will nevertheless be harmful consequences. This study projects that the number of people experiencing homelessness will increase by 5% within a year in addition to the already increasing trend. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Joshua A. Barocas, MD, email joshua.barocas@cuanschutz.edu. To ...

About The Study: In this quality improvement study using a controlled simulation, commercial large language models (LLM’s) demonstrated substantial vulnerability to prompt-injection attacks (i.e., maliciously crafted inputs that manipulate an LLM’s behavior) that could generate clinically dangerous recommendations; even flagship models with advanced safety mechanisms showed high susceptibility. These findings underscore the need for adversarial robustness testing, system-level safeguards, and regulatory oversight before clinical deployment. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding ...

Bromine-based flow batteries operate through the redox reaction between bromide ions and elemental bromine, offering advantages such as abundant resources, high redox potential, and good solubility. However, the substantial bromine generated during the charging process can corrode battery components, shorten cycle life, and increase system costs. Although traditional bromine complexing agents can alleviate corrosion to some extent, they often induce phase separation, compromising electrolyte homogeneity and adding complexity to the system. In ...

AURORA, Colo. (Dec. 18, 2025) – Eliminating federal funding for Housing First programs, initiatives that provide people experiencing homelessness (PEH) with stable housing without requiring sobriety or treatment, could lead to a sharp rise in homelessness nationwide, according to a new study published today in JAMA Health Forum. Researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz estimate that ending support for federally funded permanent supportive housing (PSH) and rapid rehousing (RRH) programs would result in 44,590 additional ...

Australian researchers have discovered that the TAK1 gene helps cancer cells survive attack from the immune system, revealing a mechanism that may limit the effectiveness of immunotherapy treatments. Cancer immunotherapies can work very well, but underperform in some cases due to tumours’ inbuilt survival processes that help them resist attack by the immune system. Researchers at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute (ONJCRI) and WEHI discovered that the TAK1 gene acts like a safety switch that protects cancer cells from the powerful signals generated by ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Marine bacteria are key to determining whether carbon is recycled near the ocean surface or transported to deeper waters, but many operate in constant threat of being infected by viruses called phages, and mutate to fend off those infections. The resulting evolutionary arms race between bacteria modifying themselves and viruses fighting back raises questions: What does it cost a cell to resist infections, and how does that alter how ecosystems function? In a new study, researchers ...

“Epigenetic age is a biological metric of overall health and may predict mental health responses to unprecedented stressors.” BUFFALO, NY — December 19, 2025 — A new research paper was published in Volume 17, Issue 11 of Aging-US on November 18, 2025, titled “Epigenetic age predicts depressive symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging: importance of biological sex.” This study, led by Cindy K. Barha of the University of Calgary and the University of British Columbia, along with Teresa Liu-Ambrose of the University ...

The Bharat Innovates 2026 National Basecamp was formally inaugurated today at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN), marking a significant milestone in India’s efforts to identify, strengthen, and globally position its most promising deep-tech innovations. The three-day National Basecamp, taking place from December 18 to 20, 2025, brings together approximately 400 shortlisted startups and research-led innovations that have been selected through a rigorous, multi-stage national screening process. The shortlisted startups and innovators are some of India’s brightest and most impactful, with the potential to ...

Economists call it “income mobility”. This means how easy or difficult it is for you or your family to go up or down in income compared to others in the community around you. People in Norway have a high level of income mobility. It is quite possible for people to increase their incomes. But also for those incomes to drop. “Your income is the sum of what you earn from work and from capital income,” says Professor Roberto Iacono at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's ...

On December 8, 2025, Space: Science & Technology was officially indexed in the Web of Science: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE). All articles published since 2021 will be progressively included into the SCIE database. The editorial team would love to extend our heartfelt gratitude to the hosts of the journal: Beijing Institute of Technology and the China Academy of Space Technology, as well as to Editor-in-Chief Prof. YE Peijian, member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the entire Editorial Board, all authors and reviewers for their invaluable contributions. We also sincerely thank all ...

AURORA, Colo. (Dec. 19, 2025) – Children’s Hospital Colorado (Children’s Colorado) successfully performed the hospital’s first-ever heart and liver dual organ transplant, with support from dozens of team members across 25 different multidisciplinary care teams. Only 38 other pediatric heart and liver dual organ transplants have been completed in the United States.    “Performing Children’s Colorado’s first-ever heart and liver dual organ transplant is an amazing accomplishment for our Pediatric Transplant Program,” said Dr. Megan Adams, surgical director of the Pediatric Liver Transplant and Kidney Transplant Programs. ...

A team of Australian and international scientists has, for the first time, created a full picture of how errors unfold over time inside a quantum computer — a breakthrough that could help make future quantum machines far more reliable.   The researchers, led by Macquarie University’s Dr Christina Giarmatzi, found that the tiny errors that plague quantum computers don’t just appear randomly. Instead, they can linger, evolve and even link together across different moments in time.   “We can think of it as quantum computers retaining memory of the errors, which ...

Researchers at the Max Delbrück Center have found that a cellular housekeeping mechanism called autophagy plays a major role in ensuring that T stem cells undergo normal cell division. The findings, published in “Nature Cell Biology,” could help boost vaccine response in older adults. When killer T cells of our immune system divide, they normally undergo asymmetric cell division (ACD): Each daughter cell inherits different cellular components, which drive the cells toward divergent fates – one cell becomes a ...

Scientists have discovered a genetic process which could unlock new ways to treat mysterious and deadly fungal infection which has shut down multiple hospital intensive care units. Candida auris is particularly dangerous for people who are critically ill, so hospitals are vulnerable. While it seems to live harmlessly on the skin of increasing numbers of people, patients on ventilators are at high risk.  Once infected, the disease has a death rate of 45 per cent, and can resist all major classes of antifungal drugs, making it extremely difficult to treat and eradicate from wards, once patients are infected. The disease was only detected in 2008, and its origins remain ...

A groundbreaking discovery  led by the University of St Andrews has found a way to turn ordinary household plastic waste into the building block for anti-cancer drugs.   Household PET (polyethylene terephthalate) waste, such as plastic bottles and textiles, can be recycled in two main ways: mechanically or chemically. Chemical recycling breaks down PET’s long polymer chains into individual units called monomers or into other valuable chemicals.  Published today (Thursday 18 December) ...

Researchers from Miguel Hernández University of Elche (UMH) in Spain have identified an effective strategy to reduce structural liver damage and improve hepatic vascular function in cirrhosis. The study, published in Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy, also reveals a key inflammatory mechanism that contributes to liver injury and could be targeted to develop new treatments for a disease responsible for more than one million deaths worldwide each year. The work was led by Rubén Francés ...

FRANKFURT. While the spread of raccoons in Europe is often discussed, their companion tends to remain unnoticed: The raccoon roundworm Baylisascaris procyonis arrived in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century with the first raccoons from North America. Since their release or escape from fur farms, raccoons have spread uncontrollably across large parts of Central Europe – and their parasite with them. Germany is now considered the main distribution area for both species in Europe.   Dangerous ...

Programmable photonics promise faster and more energy-efficient computing than traditional electronics by using light to transmit signals. However, current systems are limited by the need for precise on-chip power monitors. Researchers from the School of Engineering at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have developed a germanium-ion-implanted silicon waveguide photodiode. This novel photodetector achieves high responsivity, ultra-low optical loss, and minimal dark current, significantly enhancing the performance of on-chip light monitoring. It provides core ...

NEW ORLEANS — Camp Mystic in Texas flooded on July 4, killing 27 people, including 25 children. Over 200 millimeters (over seven inches) of rain fell over the area in 12 hours, and the Guadalupe River rose nearly 8 meters (26 feet) in just 45 minutes. New research recreated the flood conditions and found multiple spots upstream where local communities could have placed water level monitors to give early warnings about rising water.  Researchers presented the findings on Thursday, 18 December at AGU25, joining more than 20,000 scientists discussing the latest Earth and space science research.  The flooding of the camp occurred ...

Drones have been used to successfully collect samples from the exhaled breath - or “blow” - from wild humpback, sperm and fin whales in northern Norway, hailing a new era of non-invasive health monitoring for these marine giants in Arctic regions. This approach for pathogen screening has confirmed for the first time that a potentially deadly whale virus, known as cetacean morbillivirus, is circulating above the Arctic Circle. Experts say this new use of drones could support conservation strategies by detecting early emerging threats of the virus, which has been connected to numerous ...

A new analysis of sewer drains from the Roman fort of Vindolanda, close to Hadrian’s Wall, has shown that the occupants were infected by three types of intestinal parasite – roundworm, whipworm, and Giardia duodenalis. These parasites are all spread by ineffective sanitation, with contamination of food, drink or hands by human faeces. Roundworms are 20-30cm long and whipworms about 5cm long. Giardia are microscopic protozoan parasites that cause outbreaks of diarrhoea. This is the first evidence for Giardia duodenalis in Roman Britain. Vindolanda was located near to Hadrian’s wall in northern ...

University of Cambridge media release   Pinochet’s prisoners were tormented with music but still found solace in it, a new book reveals   UNDER STRICT EMBARGO UNTIL 19:01 US (ET) ON THURSDAY 18TH DECEMBER 2025 / 00:01AM (UK TIME ON FRIDAY 19TH DECEMBER 2025   110 years after Augusto Pinochet’s birth, Chile has just elected a new far-right President, José Antonio Kast, who has praised the dictator's legacy. At the same time, a new book exposes the brutal and tender realities of political imprisonment during the dictatorship (1973–1990) through the power of music.   Music and Political ...

URBANA, Ill. – Fertility rates in much of Sub-Saharan Africa remain high, despite declining child mortality and improved access to contraceptives and female education — factors that generally lead to smaller families and improved economic conditions in developing countries. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign looks at men’s and women’s desired fertility in rural Tanzania, gauging some of the factors that influence how many children they want.  “This conversation ...