Every year, millions of people are diagnosed with cancer globally; however, current treatments are limited by disease complexity. A study published March 17th in the open-access journal in PLOS Biology by Tianyu Jiang at Shandong University, Qingdao, China and colleagues suggests that Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 (EcN) may be engineered with anticancer agents to treat cancerous tumors in mice. Bacteria inhabit and interact with the human body, playing a major role in both health and disease. However, the therapeutic efficacy of engineered bacteria-based cancer therapies has ...

In a study involving data from thousands of people, the risk of a new coronary heart disease diagnosis was statistically associated with bloodstream levels of nine specific molecules that are produced by gut microbes. Danxia Yu of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, U.S., and colleagues present these findings on March 17th in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine. The human digestive tract naturally contains a large population of microbes. Different people have different proportions of different species of gut microbes, which produce different molecules during their normal, metabolic ...

WASHINGTON — Scientists at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center have uncovered a new dual function for a well-known cancer-related protein called ezrin. This finding could potentially open the door to new treatments for osteosarcoma, the most common bone cancer in children and young adults, as well as other cancers that are ezrin-dependent. The finding appeared March 17, 2026, in the journal Science Signaling. For decades researchers believed that ezrin was only active in its open form at the cell membrane. ...

A robot that can locate lost items on command – this is the latest development at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). It combines knowledge from the internet with a spatial map of its surroundings to efficiently find the objects being sought. The new robot from Prof. Angela Schoellig’s TUM Learning Systems and Robotics Lab looks like a broomstick on wheels with a camera mounted at the top. It is one of the first robots that not only integrates image understanding but also applies it to a clearly defined task. To find a pair of glasses misplaced in the kitchen, for example, the robot has to look around and ...

An international team of researchers, including physicists from HSE MIEM, has demonstrated that nonmagnetic impurities can help more accurately reveal Majorana zero modes—quantum states considered promising building blocks for quantum computing. The researchers found that these impurities shift the energy levels that typically obscure the Majorana signal, while leaving the mode itself largely unaffected, thereby making its spectral peak more distinct. The study has been published in Research. Majorana ...

Scientists at HSE University have identified a molecular mechanism underlying aggressive breast cancer. They found that the signals supporting tumour growth originate not from the tumour itself but from its microenvironment. The researchers also demonstrated that reduced levels of the IGFBP6 protein in the tumour microenvironment lead to the accumulation of macrophages—immune cells associated with a higher risk of cancer recurrence. These findings already make it possible to assess patient risk more accurately and may, in the future, enable the development of drugs that target cells of the ...

Heart disease is the leading cause of adult death worldwide, making cardiovascular disease diagnosis and management a global health priority. An echocardiogram, or cardiac ultrasound, is one of the most commonly used imaging tools employed by physicians to diagnose a variety of heart diseases and conditions.   Most standard echocardiograms provide two-dimensional visual images (2D) of the three-dimensional (3D) cardiac anatomy. These echocardiograms often capture hundreds of 2D slices or views of a beating heart that can enable physicians to make clinical assessments ...

Traumatic muscle injury can be associated with volumetric muscle loss (VML), often leading to permanent functional loss. Until recently, experimental therapies to support muscle regeneration have faced several key limitations, including the challenge of delivering sufficient healing cells to the traumatized area and the inability of conventional tissue transplants to conform to the specific shape of a muscle defect. A recent study, led by senior author Ngan F. Huang, PhD, Associate Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery (Research) in the Stanford Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, highlights a unique approach her research team has developed to address this problem and potentially ...

For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that the properties of the perovskite family of materials can be used to create so-called quantum bits. The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, pave the way for more affordable materials in future quantum computers. According to the researchers from Linköping University, Sweden, behind the study, few within the field believed it would be possible. The reason is that the atoms in perovskite materials should, in theory, interact ...

Superconducting materials could play a crucial role in the energy-efficient applications of the future. However, several technical challenges still stand in the way of their practical use. Now, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed a new material design that addresses a major obstacle in the field: enabling superconductivity to operate at higher temperatures while also withstanding strong magnetic fields. This breakthrough could pave the way for far more energy-efficient electronics and quantum technologies. Digital devices, ...

WASHINGTON, March 17, 2026 — Most people will close their eyes when trying to concentrate on a faint sound. Many of us have been told that keeping our eyes closed helps us hear better — that it frees up our brains’ processing abilities and increases our auditory sensitivity. However, that strategy may sometimes backfire, particularly in environments with a lot of loud background noise. In JASA, published on behalf of the Acoustical Society of America by AIP Publishing, researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University tested whether a person closing their eyes can really hear better in noisy environments. To test this, volunteers listened to a collection of sounds through ...

In a single experiment, scientists can decipher the entire genomes of many patient samples, animal models or cultured cells. To fully realize the potential to study biology at this unprecedented scale, researchers must be equipped to analyze the titanic troves of data generated by these new methods. Scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and the University of California Los Angeles published findings March 17, 2026, in Cell Reports Methods discussing building and testing a new computational tool for tackling massive and complex sequencing datasets. The new resource, ...

Diseases historically absent from the United States have been showing up in Florida, Texas, California and other U.S. states in recent years. To understand why, look to Peru. That’s where researchers from Stanford and other institutions analyzed the connection between a cyclone and a massive outbreak of dengue fever, a mosquito-borne viral disease that can cause fever, rash, and life-threatening symptoms like hemorrhage and shock. Their findings, published March 17 in One Earth, reveal that warmer, wetter weather linked to climate change is making disease epidemics more likely. "Health impacts of climate change aren't something we're waiting for,” ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- When patients undergo general anesthesia, doctors can choose among several drugs. Although each of these drugs acts on neurons in different ways, they all lead to the same result: a disruption of the brain’s balance between stability and excitability, according to a new MIT study. This disruption causes neural activity to become increasingly unstable, until the brain loses consciousness, the researchers found. The discovery of this common mechanism could make it easier to develop new technologies for monitoring patients while ...

About The Study: In this mixed-methods cohort study of Australian women who inject drugs, violence against women was pervasive and severe, yet rates of seeking health care remained low likely due to intersecting structural and social barriers. Recognition of the burden of violence is a critical first step in ensuring tailored responses to violence that meet the needs of marginalized women. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Ashleigh Cara Stewart, PhD, email ashleigh.stewart@burnet.edu.au. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.2096) Editor’s ...

WASHINGTON, March 17, 2026 — Anyone with a chronic illness understands the struggle of living with a disease that is deeply unpredictable. Many such illnesses are characterized by long periods of remission broken up by sudden, debilitating flare-ups. Sometimes these flare-ups have obvious causes, but often they seem to come out of nowhere, which can be frustrating and unpleasant. The solution might come from a complex field of mathematics called nonlinear dynamics. This field involves changing systems where the relationships between variables ...

About The Study: In this cohort study of individuals living with hypertension, maintaining a healthy lifestyle was associated with lower risk of major cardiometabolic diseases independent of antihypertensive medication use, underscoring the value of adopting multiple healthy lifestyle behaviors. A healthy lifestyle was defined as eating a high-quality diet, not smoking, engaging in moderate-to-vigorous-intensity physical activity, no more than moderate alcohol consumption, and having a healthy body mass index. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Qi Sun, MD, ScD, email qisun@hsph.harvard.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For ...

A unique collection of prehistoric bowhead whale bones, dating back 11,000 years, reveals a previously untold story of the relative impacts of humans on nature. The time series of ancient fossils show that commercial hunting of bowhead whales, which spanned 400 years and ceased less than a century ago in 1931, has left irreversible destructive traces in the species’ genetics. This could have serious consequences for the long-term vulnerability of the species. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen led an international team to study ...

Millions of Americans have thought about shooting someone, a new University of Michigan study finds. And if they didn’t already own a firearm, some of them have thought about getting one to make their thoughts a reality. Over 7% of adults in the United States say that at some time in their life, they have thought about shooting someone else. That percentage corresponds to 19.4 million people. Over 3%, or about 8.7 million adults, said they have thought of shooting someone in the last year. Firearm owners were no more likely to have had these thoughts than those who don’t own firearms, according to the findings published in the journal JAMA Network Open and based ...

(BERGEN, Norway) – Today, the Holberg Prize—one of the largest international prizes awarded annually to an outstanding researcher in the humanities, social sciences, law or theology—named Australian scholar Lyndal Roper as its 2026 Laureate. Roper is the Regius Chair of History at the University of Oxford emeritus. She will receive the award of NOK 6,000,000 (approx. GBP 466,00 / USD 630,000) during a 4th June ceremony at the University of Bergen, Norway. Professor Roper is internationally recognized as one of the leading scholars of early modern European history. Her pioneering ...

Reconnecting Kidney Plumbing, the Zebrafish Way MDI Bio Lab scientists discover how the fish solves a basic challenge in regenerative biology—insights in their newest publication in the journal Development could one day guide human repair. When the human kidney is damaged by conditions such as high blood pressure or the elevated blood sugar levels that accompany diabetes, it can lose some of its nephrons – the kidney’s basic waste-filtering units. Lose enough of them and kidney function falters, leading to the hallmarks ...

Tsukuba, Japan—Noncontact vibration measurement is essential for ensuring the safety and reliability of structures such as buildings, bridges, aircraft, and railway systems. Laser-based systems such as laser Doppler violometers provide accurate results but require expensive equipment and elaborate setup procedures. Camera-based vibration measurement has gained attention as a more affordable alternative. However, conventional cameras generate images by integrating light over a finite exposure time. To capture high-speed vibrations, the exposure time must be shortened, which reduces the amount of detectable light. Accordingly, the illumination must be significantly increased, ...

IgA nephropathy (IgAN) is the most common primary glomerulonephritis worldwide. For decades, the “gut-kidney axis” hypothesis has suggested that the disease begins not in the kidneys, but in the gut mucosa, where an abnormal immune response produces pathogenic galactose-deficient IgA1 (Gd–IgA1). However, current treatments mostly focus on suppressing inflammation in the kidney, failing to stop the production of harmful antibodies at their source. The precise cellular mechanisms within the gut of IgAN patients have remained a black box due to the challenges of obtaining and analyzing intestinal tissue.   In ...

We have identified a macrophage population “Mrep” that plays an essential role in muscle repair. However, in Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP), Mrep functions as a pathogenic cell that triggers heterotopic ossification. These research findings would contribute not only to muscle regeneration therapy but also to the development of novel therapeutic approaches for FOP. Musculoskeletal disorders are a primary cause of disability worldwide, especially in aging societies like Japan. As individuals age, reductions in muscle mass ...

Tsukuba, Japan—Waterpipe tobacco smoking—also known as shisha, hookah, or narghile—is a method in which tobacco is heated with charcoal and the resulting smoke passes through water before being inhaled. Although the practice originated in the Middle East during the late Middle Ages, it poses a significant risk of carbon monoxide exposure because the charcoal used for heating produces CO through incomplete combustion. Within the jurisdiction of Tokyo's Third Fire District Headquarters, which covers three southwestern wards of Tokyo, emergency services recorded approximately one case of acute CO poisoning related to waterpipe ...