Highlights: Wildfires disrupt microbial communities on land, but also alter aquatic systems when dissolved organic matter on burnt lands is carried into rivers, lakes or drinking water supplies. In a new study, researchers found that the impact of wildfires on water systems could lead to nutrient imbalances, depleting oxygen levels or harmful algal blooms. More complex treatment methods may be needed to ensure impacted water is safe for consumption or recreation. Los Angeles, Calif.—Wildfires profoundly influence the unseen microbial world within our waters, directly impacting water quality and ecosystem health, according to a new study ...

Highlights: A new study identified that increased levels of fungal spores in the air were strongly linked to surges in cases of influenza and COVID-19. Monitoring airborne fungal spores could help predict surges of respiratory virus infections, providing an early warning system to public health systems. Los Angeles, Calif.—Monitoring fungal spores in the outdoor air can predict surges in flu and COVID-19 infections, especially during the fall, according to a new study. The study is presented at ASM Microbe ...

Water makes up around 60 percent of the human body. More than half of this water sloshes around inside the cells that make up organs and tissues. Much of the remaining water flows in the nooks and crannies between cells, much like seawater between grains of sand.  Now, MIT engineers have found that this “intercellular” fluid plays a major role in how tissues respond when squeezed, pressed, or physically deformed. Their findings could help scientists understand how cells, tissues, and organs ...

Polymeric membranes are widely used in separation technologies due to their low cost and easily scalable fabrication. However, unlike inorganic nanoporous materials such as metal-organic frameworks and covalent organic frameworks, which feature periodic and ordered channels, polymeric membranes produced through traditional methods—such as phase separation—typically have irregular and disordered pore structures. This structural limitation makes it difficult to accurately separate ions or molecules ...

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which can be harvested from fat and bone marrow, have immune-modulating and anti-inflammatory effects that are beneficial for both human and veterinary medicine. However, MSCs have a limited proliferation capacity, with their quality varying depending on the donor’s age and where they were harvested from. For this reason, a method for producing MSCs using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) is attracting attention as a means to provide a stable supply of homogeneous MSCs. IPSCs have unlimited proliferation capacity and can be differentiated ...

Scientists at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) and Nanjing University in China have developed a new drug delivery system that could improve how treatments of cancers and other diseases are delivered. Their study, published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, describes a new type of nanoparticle made by combining a widely used medical polymer with a natural blood protein. These particles can carry much larger amounts of disease-fighting drugs and remain stable much ...

A Cochrane review has found that virtual reality (VR), when used in addition to standard therapy, can help stroke survivors regain arm movement.  The findings suggests that VR could be a promising tool to boost rehabilitation efforts, particularly by increasing the amount of therapy patients receive. Published today, this is the fourth update of a Cochrane review first released in 2011, and now includes data from 190 trials involving 7,188 participants – with 119 new studies added since the previous version in 2017. The review assessed a wide range of VR technologies, ...

The placenta and the hormones it produces may have played a crucial role in the evolution of the human brain, while also leading to the behavioural traits that have made human societies able to thrive and expand, according to a new hypothesis proposed by researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. Dr Alex Tsompanidis, senior researcher at the Autism Research Centre in the University of Cambridge, and the lead author of this new study, said: “Small variations in the prenatal levels of steroid hormones, like testosterone and oestrogen, can predict the rate of social and cognitive learning in infants and even ...

In a follow up investigation into the multibillion dollar drug ticagrelor, The BMJ has uncovered fresh concerns, this time in key platelet studies used in its FDA approval.  For more than a decade, ticagrelor (Brilinta in the US and Brilique in Europe) has been recommended for patients with acute coronary syndrome - a range of conditions related to sudden reduced blood flow to the heart. Last December, an investigation by The BMJ found serious data integrity problems in the landmark clinical trial (PLATO) that was used to ...

EMBARGO: THIST CONTENT IS UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 2 P.M. U.S. EASTERN STANDARD TIME ON JUNE 19, 2025. INTERESTED MEDIA MAY RECIVE A PREVIEW COPY OF THE JOURNAL ARTICLE IN ADVANCE OF THAT DATE OR CONDUCT INTERVIEWS, BUT THE INFORMATION MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, OR POSTED ONLINE UNTIL AFTER THE RELEASE WINDOW.  Colorado State University researchers have published a paper in Science that describes a new and more efficient light-based process for transforming fossil fuels into useful modern chemicals. In it, they report that their organic ...

Among the biggest culprits of plastic pollution in the ocean and along shorelines are thin plastic shopping bags, which have low recycling rates and often become litter when they blow away in the wind. Once there, they can entangle animals and break down into harmful microplastics. As awareness of this problem has grown, more than 100 countries have instituted bans or fees on plastic bags. But what effect those policies are having on the amount of plastic litter in the marine environment had not been systematically evaluated until now.  A new study ...

Plastic bag regulations – bans and consumer fees – have led to meaningful reductions in plastic litter on U.S. shorelines, according to a new study. Plastic pollution has become a pervasive environmental issue; plastic debris comprises most of the marine litter worldwide and has been shown to pose serious threats to ocean life, ecosystems, and coastal economies.  Much of this pollution originates from land and enters the ocean via rivers, wastewater, or wind. Among the most problematic ...

A large-scale analysis of U.S. water quality data reveals that most toxic chemicals remain poorly characterized or undetected in routine monitoring. This is largely due to sparse risk assessment data, as well as detection limits that are too high to capture ecologically relevant concentrations, researchers report. The findings suggest that the true scale of chemical risk to biodiversity and ecosystems may be significantly underestimated. Chemical pollution is widely recognized as a major threat to biodiversity, human health, and the stability of ecosystems worldwide. However, the accelerating rate at which new chemicals are introduced into the environment outpaces the current ability ...

Researchers present a new method to safely and preferentially generate CAR T cells directly inside the body using targeted lipid nanoparticles that deliver mRNA directly to T cells. The approach showed rapid and sustained immune reprogramming in preclinical models, highlighting its promise for treating cancer and autoimmune diseases. Adoptive immunotherapy, which harnesses a patient’s own immune cells to treat disease, holds immense therapeutic potential. Among its most prominent forms is CAR T cell therapy, in ...

In a Policy Forum, Jessica Espey and colleagues argue that waning support for accurate collection and curation of population data worldwide threatens to compromise crucial evidence-based government planning. “We live in an era of seemingly unlimited data, where our digital activities may generate nearly constant information streams, yet some of our most essential infrastructure – demographic information – is deteriorating, introducing known and unknown bias into decision-making,” write the authors. ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Ocean waters are getting greener at the poles and bluer toward the equator, according to an analysis of satellite data published in Science on June 19. The change reflects shifting concentrations of a green pigment called chlorophyll made by phytoplankton, photosynthetic marine organisms at the base of the ocean food chain. If the trend continues, marine food webs could be affected, with potential repercussions for global fisheries. “In the ocean, what we see based on satellite measurements is that the tropics and the subtropics are generally losing chlorophyll, whereas ...

Several hundred thousand chemicals are considered as potentially environmentally relevant. Scientists from the RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau in Germany show that monitoring data for surface waters are only available for a very small fraction of these chemicals. In their article, published in the latest issue of Science, the authors also demonstrate that the environmental risks of highly toxic chemicals might be overlooked, because these chemicals affect ecosystems at concentrations that cannot be detected on a regular basis. “We analyzed a very extensive US database for the presence of chemicals in the US surface waters ...

Researchers are warning that millions of people around the world aren’t being counted in census and survey data, leaving policymakers in the dark about the populations they govern. They say a ‘quiet crisis’ is unfolding with census data due to declining response rates and concerns about the accuracy of the data. In a paper published in Science, researchers from the University of Southampton and Columbia University point to a ‘perfect storm’ of disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, declining confidence in institutions, ...

Two species of worms have retained remarkably similar patterns in the way they switch their genes on and off despite having split from a common ancestor 20 million years ago, a new study finds.  The findings appear in the June 19 issue of the journal Science  “It was just remarkable, with this evolutionary distance, that we should see such coherence in gene expression patterns,” said Dr. Robert Waterston, professor of genome sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle and a co-senior author of the paper. “I was surprised how well everything lined ...

New forests larger than the land area of North America would need to be planted to offset the potential carbon dioxide emissions from the fossil fuel reserves currently held by the world’s 200 largest fossil fuels companies. The finding comes from an analysis published in Communications Earth & Environment, which also suggests that most of the companies would have a negative market valuation if the cost to offset their entire reserves was deducted from their current valuation. Future emissions scenarios usually include both a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions and some offsetting of these emissions. Offsetting is necessary as most scenarios assume that during ...

Long believed to be a single, globally distributed species drifting freely across the open ocean, the bluebottle – also known as the Portuguese man o’ war – has now been revealed to be a group of at least four distinct species, each with its own unique morphology, genetics, and distribution. An international research team led by scientists at Yale University, and Australian researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and Griffith University, uncovered this surprising biodiversity by sequencing the genomes of 151 Physalia specimens from around the world. The study, published in Current Biology, found strong evidence ...

Philadelphia, June 19, 2025 – A novel study aimed at disentangling the neurological underpinnings of depression shows that multiple brain profiles may manifest as the same clinical symptoms, providing evidence to support the presence of both one-to-one and many-to-one heterogeneity in depression. The findings of the study in Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier, highlight the layered and complex interactions between clinical symptoms and neurobiological sources of variation. John Krystal, MD, Editor of Biological Psychiatry, ...

WASHINGTON — Researchers have shown, for the first time, that transmission of ultrastable optical signals from optical clocks across tens of kilometers of deployed multicore fiber is compatible with simultaneous transmission of telecommunications data. The achievement demonstrates that these emerging high-capacity fiber optic networks could be used to connect optical clocks at various locations, enabling new scientific applications. As global data demands continue to surge, multicore fiber is being installed to help overcome the limits of existing networks. These fibers pack multiple light-guiding cores ...

Singapore, 20 June 2025 – The National Heart Centre Singapore (NHCS) and Mayo Clinic have collaborated under a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to accelerate cardiovascular innovation and research, and to foster knowledge for future cardiovascular care worldwide. Advancing Cardiovascular Care, Research and Knowledge Exchange The collaboration brings together Mayo Clinic's expertise with NHCS's deep understanding of Asian cardiovascular health. By establishing a collaborative platform for knowledge exchange, the joint effort will hope to create new opportunities ...

The 2025 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize has been awarded to three scientists whose discoveries culminated in the development of lenacapavir, a medication used to treat and prevent human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the first approved drug to disrupt a viral capsid, a critical piece of the viral machinery that allows it to replicate. Because this therapy — more potent than any other HIV drug — is given only twice a year and can prevent HIV infection, it carries the promise to accelerate the end of the HIV epidemic. The three recipients are: Tomas Cihlar, ...