In the original form of baseball, all nine players bat and play defense, including the pitcher. The designated hitter system lets a team add a tenth player to the starting lineup—a specialist batter who replaces the pitcher in the batting order. The designated hitter only bats and does not play defense, while the pitcher still pitches but does not bat.  Now, researchers in Japan have analyzed 10 years (2014-2023) of game data from Japan’s Pacific League and found that the presence or absence of the designated hitter (DH) system does not change the relationship between player talent and winning. Published in PLOS One, the study also presents ...

For the first time, an international research team has harnessed artificial intelligence (AI) to decode the rules of an ancient board game, pioneering a new way to reveal long-lost historical secrets. By analysing an engraved limestone object from the Roman Netherlands, the team was able to determine likely game rules, based on its distinctive markings The new research published in Antiquity journal was led by Maastricht University (The Netherlands) and Leiden University (The Netherlands) with input from Flinders University (South Australia), ...

As the demand for green hydrogen production continues to grow, the limitations of freshwater scarcity and anode corrosion in saline water electrolysis become more pronounced. Now, researchers from the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, led by Professor Yichao Lin, Professor Yayun Zhao, and Professor Liang Chen, have presented a breakthrough strategy for stabilizing NiFe-based anodes in highly corrosive chloride-rich environments. This work offers valuable insights into the development ...

A team of international researchers have developed a breakthrough way to observe what is happening inside electronic chips while they are operating — without touching them, taking them apart, or switching them off. The new technique uses terahertz waves, a safe and non-ionising form of electromagnetic radiation, to detect tiny movements of electrical charge inside fully packaged semiconductor devices. For the first time, this allows scientists and engineers to monitor electronic components as ...

GLP-1 medications used to treat diabetes and obesity were associated with a reduced need for hospital care and sickness absence due to psychiatric reasons, a new study shows. The large register-based study was carried out in collaboration between the University of Eastern Finland, Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and Griffith University in Australia. Diabetes and obesity are associated with an increased risk of mental health symptoms, and similarly, individuals with mental disorders have an elevated risk of metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Researchers have long been interested in the connections ...

A blood pressure program adopted across the University of California’s six academic medical centers has effectively lowered hypertension and prevented serious disease or death for thousands of patients, according to a new study led by UC San Francisco.   High blood pressure affects nearly half of Americans and is a leading cause of death, especially in underserved populations. It also can lead to heart disease, heart failure, stroke, kidney disease, and pregnancy complications.  The new tool, one of very few developed for an entire health system to control ...

Research has confirmed for the first time that people with active gambling accounts who receive regular ‘free bets’ and other direct marketing offers place a lot more bets, spend far more, and suffer greater related harms than gamblers who have opted out of such offers. The study, led by Central Queensland University in Australia in collaboration with the University of Bristol in the UK, found that participants who chose not to receive direct marketing, such as emails, push notifications and text messages, from their gambling account placed nearly a ...

In a new, survey-based study of three kinds of “designer” crossbreed dogs, cocakpoos, cavapoos and labradoodles, all three showed more undesirable behaviors than at least one of their purebred progenitor breeds, with cockapoos displaying the most unwanted habits. Gina Bryson of the Royal Veterinary College, U.K., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on March 19, 2026. Cavapoos, labradoodles, and cockapoos are crosses between purebred poodles and cavalier King Charles spaniels, Labrador retrievers, and cocker spaniels, respectively. The popularity of these and other “designer” crossbreeds as pets is rapidly rising around the world, ...

Medieval manuscripts, paintings and chess sets reveal that the so-called ‘game of kings’ defied social structures and racial attitudes by celebrating the intellectual prowess of winners irrespective of their skin colour.   A 13th-century Black chess player is about to defeat his white opponent. He looks relaxed – he has a bottle of red wine within reach and a glass filled to the brim. He sits on a finely decorated bench as an equal to his light-skinned opponent: a cleric. This friendly, intellectual scene appears in a lavish treatise on chess completed in Seville in 1283 CE for King Alfonso X of Castile. This image is a world away from contemporary depictions of ...

Cameras that photograph insects overnight and AI that identifies them are among a new generation of tools that could finally allow scientists to track whether the world's plan to save nature is working for its most overlooked creatures.  A global team of scientists have found that 23 biodiversity targets agreed by world governments to protect and restore nature by 2030 are well-designed and could, if met, help reverse falling insect numbers. However, the researchers highlight that dragonflies and damselflies are the only insect group to have been fully assessed for extinction risk globally, illustrating that very few measurements ...

 A large-scale genetic analysis of East Asian individuals led by Fuu-Jen Tsai of the China Medical University Hospital, finds that people with greater height face a higher risk of endometriosis and atrial fibrillation. They report these findings in the journal PLOS Genetics.  A person’s height is the result of a complex mix of genetic and environmental factors. The genetics underlying height have been linked to multiple health conditions, but these stature-related health risks have not been well explored, especially in East Asian populations.  Researchers performed two genome-wide association studies to find genetic factors linked to a person’s height or to a ...

A team led by La Trobe University has drawn inspiration from nature to develop a breakthrough sensor that can rapidly track tiny molecular changes in blood, paving the way to real-time, personalised medicine. The discovery overcomes one of the biggest barriers in blood testing: that blood quickly clogs most sensors, making accurate instant readings almost impossible over long periods of time. Working in collaboration with CSIRO, the team combined a natural protective coating called lubricin, fast-responding receptors and an ultra‑sensitive, light‑based detection method known as Surface‑Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) to mimic the way real ...

URBANA, Ill. – Hydrological models represent water movement in natural systems, and they are important for water resource planning and management. But the models depend on reliable input data for weather factors, and precipitation can be very difficult to measure and represent accurately. A new study from an international research team describes a novel method to better represent precipitation uncertainty in hydrological models, thereby improving their performance.  “Precipitation is very variable in space and time. There may be a single weather station collecting data in a large area, but turbulent ...

March 18, 2026--Worse financial well-being in midlife and older age —and especially declines over time—are associated with lower memory scores and faster cognitive decline, reports a new study at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The population experiencing significant financial deterioration showed memory decline equivalent to roughly five additional months of aging per year. The study is among the first to examine the cognitive consequences of poor financial well-being. The findings are published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Lower average financial well-being ...

Why this matters: HPV-positive head and neck cancer cases have increased at epidemic rates in the United States over the past few decades.   The study solves a major mystery in cancer immunology by uncovering how HPV hides cancer cells from the immune system by using MARCHF8 to destroy MHC-I, which serves as a warning flag for the immune system.   The discovery opens a potential path to new cancer therapies, pointing to the development of drugs that block MARCHF8 to treat patients who currently have no effective ...

Highlights: Type 1 diabetes is associated with a higher risk of dementia. This study shows an association and does not prove that diabetes causes dementia.  Type 1 diabetes is rare, accounting for about 5% of diabetes cases. People with type 1 diabetes were nearly three times as likely to develop dementia as those without diabetes. People with type 2 diabetes were twice as likely to develop dementia as people without diabetes. MINNEAPOLIS — Having type 1 diabetes is associated with a higher risk of developing dementia, according to a study published March 18, 2026, in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Type 2 diabetes ...

Hoboken, NJ., March 18, 2026— In the iconic Star Wars series, captain Han Solo and humanoid droid C-3PO boast drastically contrasting personalities. Driven by emotions and swashbuckling confidence, Han Solo often ignores C-3PO’slogic-driven caution. That human-droid relationship is exemplified in Solo’s famous statement, "Never tell me the odds!” as he dismisses C-3PO’s advice against navigating an asteroid field with a 3,720-to-1 chances of survival, odds that had been painstakingly calculated by the ...

Michelle Ng Gong, M.D., M.S., has been appointed chair of the Montefiore Einstein Department of Medicine. Dr. Gong, who was selected after a national search, has served as interim chair since May 2025. “It’s a privilege to lead this department and its outstanding community of clinicians, researchers, educators, trainees, and staff,” said Dr. Gong, a professor of medicine and of epidemiology & health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “I look forward to advancing our exceptional clinical care, research discoveries, ...

As World Tuberculosis Day 2026 approaches, an international group of authors describe how ending tuberculosis requires a whole-of-society approach, more effectively engaging policymakers, funding bodies and affected communities along with doctors and researchers.   ### Article URL: https://plos.io/46U4Mrb Article Title: Pursuing policymakers, payors and public – expanding the beginning and end of the tuberculosis care cascade to reflect whole-of-society ambitions  Author Countries: India, Kenya, Nigeria, ...

A new study on ancient societies from around the world is rewriting what we thought we knew about democracy. A team of researchers analyzed archaeological and historical evidence from 31 ancient societies across Europe, Asia, and the Americas and found that shared, inclusive governance was far more common than was once believed. “People often assume that democratic practices started in Greece and Rome,” said Gary Feinman, the study’s lead author and the MacArthur Curator of Mesoamerican ...

Long before pottery, before agriculture, when the first villages took shape, people in the Levant were already molding clay with their hands, carefully, deliberately, and sometimes playfully. Some of those hands belonged to children. Link to pictures:  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17O5vHUq6flnwqxNFzYejs0PqDB6JmBUz?usp=sharing An international team of archaeologist led by Laurent Davin, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Archaeology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Prof. Leore Grosman, has uncovered the earliest known clay ornaments in Southwest Asia, revealing a forgotten chapter in the story of ...

After watching hundreds of mosquitoes buzzing around one of their colleagues and collecting 20 million data points, Georgia Tech and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have created a mathematical model that predicts how and where female mosquitoes will fly to feast on humans. The new study is the first to visualize mosquito flight patterns and provides hard data for improving capture and control strategies. In addition to being a nuisance, mosquitoes transmit diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, and Zika, which cause more than 700,000 deaths every year. The researchers also designed an interactive, public website to show the paths and ...

A new University of Missouri study suggests mental health policies can play a significant role in how Americans choose political candidates. Past scholarly research has found that most Americans say they support mental health policies. Jake Haselswerdt, an associate professor of political science in Mizzou’s College of Arts and Science, wanted to take the topic a step further by asking whether mental health policies actually matter when people choose to vote for a political candidate. Drawing on a nationally representative sample ...

A mosquito finds its target with the help of certain cues in its environment, such as a person’s silhouette and the carbon dioxide they exhale.  Now researchers at MIT and Georgia Tech have found that these visual and chemical cues help determine the insects’ flight paths. The team has developed the first three-dimensional model of mosquito flight, based on experiments with mosquitoes flying in the presence of different sensory cues.  Their model, reported in the journal Science Advances, identifies three flight patterns that mosquitoes ...

A research group led by Professor Cecilia Sahlgren at Åbo Akademi University (Finland) and the InFLAMES Research Flagship has identified a new mechanism directing the adverse remodeling of tumor tissue during breast cancer progression. This discovery could offer new treatment opportunities against aggressive forms of breast cancer which currently lack targeted therapy options. Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women worldwide. Localized, early-stage breast cancer has a good prognosis, ...