Beavers could engineer riverbeds into promising carbon dioxide sinks, according to a new international study led by researchers at the University of Birmingham. The new paper, published in Communications Earth & Environment today, has for the first time calculated the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted and sequestered due to engineering work done by beavers in suitable wetland areas. The research was led by the University of Birmingham, Wageningen University, the University of Bern, and numerous international partners and the study was conducted in a stream corridor in northern Switzerland which has seen ...

As human-caused climate change continues to raise temperatures across the globe, understanding how birds regulate their temperature is vital for their conservation. But how much heat birds emit—an invisible spectrum of radiation known as mid-infrared—has never been studied, until now. Published in the journal Integrative Organismal Biology, a groundbreaking collaboration between material engineers and museum biologists explored the impact of mid-infrared on birds for the first time in history, ...

PULLMAN, Wash. — Entomologists have discovered a new species of mining bee that has an unusually tight relationship with cenizo, the official state shrub of Texas. Silas Bossert, assistant professor in Washington State University's Department of Entomology, worked with colleagues in Texas and Kansas to identify and describe the new mining bee, Andrena cenizophila. Published in the Journal of Melittology, their findings offer new insights into the diverse group of native pollinators. The new bee species’ name, “cenizophila,” means lover of cenizo, the native ...

Researchers from King’s College London and the University of Surrey have developed a new technique to measure the content of individual human cells infected with bacteria that model tuberculosis – and it is already revealing biological changes that conventional analysis would miss. Using the new method, the researchers have shown how bacteria used to model tuberculosis (TB) infection influences the metabolism of the human cell. The findings could help to understand why some human cells are vulnerable to infection while others remain uninfected. Abigail Cook, ...

Burnout is at an all-time high, with some studies saying two-thirds of employees now cite job burnout as a major challenge[1]. Overwork and chronic stress do not just drain energy, they can erode health, contributing to a wide range of psychological and physical problems, including depression, anxiety, cardiovascular disease and even increased stroke risk. Shaina Siber offers solutions rooted in science in her new book, Using ACT and CFT for Burnout Recovery: The Beyond Burnout Blueprint, with strategies to help people in high pressure situations break the cycle of exhaustion. What is burnout The term “burnout,” ...

Plastic trash has reached the world’s most remote locations, from the bottom of the Mariana Trench to the summit of Everest. Hundreds of plastic-eating microbes that could help us clean up have been discovered over the past quarter of a century, but there is a long way to go before they can be put to work in natural environments: microbial digestion of plastic is still slow, requires high temperatures, and only proceeds efficiently in bioreactors. Moreover, most plastic-eating microbes discovered so far can only digest a single kind of plastic. One solution would be to combine ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (March 18, 2026)—Life’s Essential 8 (LE8) and Life’s Crucial 9 (LC9) from the American Heart Association are industry-accepted metrics that summarize overall cardiovascular health. A new study documented inverse associations between these indicators and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in postmenopausal women. Adiposity and systemic inflammation showed partial statistical mediation of these associations. Results of the study are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The Menopause Society. Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in women worldwide. Due ...

A paper titled "Tip-enhanced sum frequency generation spectroscopy using temporally asymmetric pulse for detecting weak vibrational signals," published on February 19, 2026 by a research team from the Institute for Molecular Science (Atsunori Sakurai, Shota Takahashi, Tatsuto Mochizuki, and Toshiki Sugimoto) and Tohoku University (Tomonori Hirano and Akihiro Morita), has been selected as a "Featured Article" in The Journal of Chemical Physics, published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP), in recognition of its particularly noteworthy ...

As the demand for high-performance electrochemical energy storage continues to grow, the limitations of conventional material-level capacitance measurements in predicting practical device energy densities become more pronounced. Now, researchers from the State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surface at Xiamen University and Imperial College London, led by Professor Qiulong Wei, have presented a breakthrough study establishing clear relationships between activated carbon properties and supercapacitor device performance. This work offers valuable insights into the development of next-generation supercapacitor technologies that ...

As the demand for high-energy-density lithium-ion batteries continues to grow, the limitations of conventional silicon-based anodes in terms of initial coulombic efficiency, structural instability, and complex prelithiation methods become more pronounced. Now, researchers from the School of Chemistry and Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Tel Aviv University, led by Professor Fernando Patolsky, have presented a breakthrough laser-driven, ambient, solid-state, in situ prelithiation technique ...

Panic buying doesn’t just respond to shortages - it creates them. And according to a University of the Sunshine Coast behavioural scientist, the lessons learned during COVID-19 remain critical for preventing future buying frenzies.  Dr Karina Rune, a researcher in health and behavioural sciences at UniSC, says panic buying is driven less by who people are and more by how risk and social behaviour are communicated during times of uncertainty.  “We saw this clearly during COVID,” said Dr Rune, whose collaborative ...

Severe U.S. drought undermined Gulf fisheries, raising food security concerns Reduced Mississippi river flow weakened the base of the marine food web, triggering cascading fishery losses A severe and prolonged U.S. drought in the late 1980s played a central role in one of the largest fisheries declines ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a new study published in Nature Communications. The research, led by scientists at the University of Haifa and co-authored by Ben Kirtman, a climate scientist ...

Weight loss drugs have been linked to an increased risk of premature births among women who took them inadvertently just before or during early pregnancy to treat pre-existing diabetes. However, a large study of over 750,000 pregnancies found that there was no link to preterm births or other obstetric complications if the medication was being used to lose weight. The authors of the study, published today (Wednesday) in Human Reproduction Open [1], one of the world’s leading reproductive medicine journals, say their findings suggest that it is diabetes rather than ...

The cactus on your windowsill may grow slowly, but new research shows that cacti are surprisingly fast at creating new species.  Biologists have long thought that pollinators and specialised flowers drive the formation of new plant species. But scientists at the University of Reading found that in cacti, the secret lies in how quickly flowers change shape, rather than how big the flowers grow or which animal pollinates them.  Researchers studied flower length data for more than 750 ...

UCLA Health will host its first-ever Brain Health Summit on March 20-21, bringing together leading scientists, policymakers, philanthropists and community advocates from across the country to address one of the most pressing and underfunded challenges in public health. Disorders affecting the brain and nervous system — from neurological, neurodevelopmental, and mental health conditions — impact more than 180 million Americans and are the leading cause of disability in the country, according to a 2025 study published in JAMA Neurology. Yet federal neuroscience research funding has seen significant 2023, leaving scientists, ...

Melbourne, Australia [18 March 2026] – For 15 years, the Gilead Australia Medical Fellowships have supported Australian led clinical research focused on generating evidence to support improved patient outcomes in real world healthcare settings. Since its inception, the program has awarded more than $4 million* to Australian led research initiatives,  focusing on strengthening models of care, addressing unmet medical needs, and reducing barriers to diagnosis and treatment across communities throughout Australia. The Fellowships support research projects across priority disease areas including HIV, chronic viral hepatitis, ...

Fashion insiders and beauty magazines have long cited the “20-year-rule” — the idea that clothing trends often resurface every two decades.  According to Northwestern University scientists, that observation isn’t just anecdotal. It’s a mathematical reality. In a new study, the Northwestern team developed a new mathematical model showing that fashion trends tend to cycle roughly every 20 years. By analyzing roughly 37,000 images of women’s clothing spanning from 1869 to today, the team found that styles rise in popularity, fall out of favor and then eventually experience renewal. Along with supporting common ...

The combined Mediterranean and blood pressure lowering diet (MIND) may slow the structural changes related to brain ageing, finds research published online in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.    This diet is associated with less tissue loss over time, especially grey matter—the brain’s information processing hub, with a key role in memory, learning, and decision-making—and less ventricular enlargement, which reflects brain atrophy, where tissue loss is accompanied ...

Detection of a bowel cancer marker (CDH1) in wastewater may offer a new community level early warning system for the disease, suggests a proof of concept study published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.   Wastewater surveillance could complement traditional screening methods and could help target areas for cost-effective, practical community screening, particularly amid rising rates of the disease among young people, say the researchers.   In the USA alone, there are an estimated 154,000+ new cases of bowel cancer every year, making this the third most common cancer and the second leading cause of ...

Green investors often boast that they can support sustainability without sacrificing returns. But new research from Texas McCombs suggests otherwise. It also offers governments opportunities to raise more money from those investors for sustainable projects. In Germany’s sovereign bond market, buyers are quietly paying a premium for green bonds — by accepting lower yields on them. So finds Aaron Pancost, assistant professor of finance, who calls the difference a “greenium.” Pancost’s central ...

A new study from the University of British Columbia has found that artificial turf fields across Metro Vancouver leach 6PPD-quinone, a chemical known to kill coho salmon, into municipal stormwater systems—and the contamination persists long after the fields are installed. Researchers traced the pollution to crumb rubber infill made from recycled tires, a material widely used on synthetic turf fields. The team found it consistently released 6PPD-quinone and other contaminants across fields of different ages. “An average turf field contains about 125 tonnes of crumb rubber, roughly 20,000 tires,” said Katie Moloney, a PhD student ...

A new study has introduced a more accurate way to evaluate how biochar interacts with water, offering important insights for agriculture, soil management, and environmental sustainability. Biochar, a carbon-rich material produced from biomass, is widely used to improve soil quality and water retention. However, understanding how biochar affects soil water behavior has long been challenging due to limitations in existing measurement methods. Researchers have now developed a new approach called the dynamic contact angle method, which provides ...

A new study has found that biochar made from agricultural waste such as chestnut shells and vine prunings could help deliver beneficial compounds more effectively in animal feed, offering a promising alternative to antibiotics in livestock production. The research, published in Biochar, explores how biochar can act as a carrier for lysozyme, a natural antimicrobial enzyme commonly found in egg whites. Scientists developed a simple and environmentally friendly method to attach lysozyme onto biochar particles and tested how well the system works under conditions ...

Health promotion, education, and behavior assistant professor Leila Larson conducts her nutrition-focused maternal and child health research all over the world, and South Carolinians will soon benefit from her expertise. With funding from the USC Collaborative for Health Equity Research (CHEER), an equity-driven pilot project program recently established by the USC Office of the Provost, Larson has launched a new study focused on pica (i.e., the craving and consumption of non-food items, like ice, and sometimes earth, like clay or soil). “Pica impacts pregnant women across the globe, including ...

A two-drug combination frequently used in anti-aging research causes brain damage in mice, University of Connecticut researchers report in the March 16 issue of PNAS. The findings should make doctors cautious about prescribing the drug combo prophylactically, but also suggest new ways to understand multiple sclerosis. “When you administer this cocktail to an animal, young or old, the myelin is damaged, which makes it disappear. Even worse in the young animals” than in the aged ones, says UConn School of Medicine immunologist ...