Vitamin D levels during pregnancy and dental caries in offspring
2025-12-02
About The Study: In this cohort study, maternal plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels throughout pregnancy were inversely associated with odds of offspring early childhood caries. These findings support the potential benefit of vitamin D supplementation before or during pregnancy in reducing the risk and severity of childhood dental caries.
Corresponding author: To contact the corresponding author, Yunxian Yu, M.D., Ph.D., email yunxianyu@zju.edu.cn.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi: ...
For those living with dementia, new study suggests shingles vaccine could slow the disease
2025-12-02
An unusual public health policy in Wales may have produced the strongest evidence yet that a vaccine can reduce the risk of dementia. In a new study led by Stanford Medicine, researchers analyzing the health records of Welsh older adults discovered that those who received the shingles vaccine were 20% less likely to develop dementia over the next seven years than those who did not receive the vaccine.
The remarkable findings, published April 2 in Nature, support an emerging theory that viruses that affect the nervous system can increase the risk of dementia. If further ...
Your pain meds' side effects may be masquerading as heart failure
2025-12-02
Clinicians may fail to recognize common side effects of drugs like gabapentin — which are frequently prescribed for nerve pain — leading them to prescribe unnecessary medications that cause yet more side effects. This phenomenon, known as a “prescribing cascade,” is increasingly seen as a danger to older patients.
In this case, gabapentinoids — which include gabapentin (Neurontin) and pregabalin (Lyrica) — may cause leg swelling, leading doctors to suspect heart failure and then prescribe diuretics that can cause kidney injury, light headedness, and falls.
Researchers tracked the ...
Carbon monoxide, the ‘silent killer,’ becomes a boon for fuel cell catalysts
2025-12-02
Researchers Dr. Gu-Gon Park, Dr. Yongmin Kwon, and Dr. Eunjik Lee from the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Laboratory at the Korea Institute of Energy Research (President Yi Chang-Keun, hereafter “KIER”) have developed a technology that uses carbon monoxide, typically harmful to humans, to precisely control metal thin films at a thickness of 0.3 nanometers. This technology enables faster and simpler production of core–shell catalysts, a key factor in improving the economic viability of fuel cells, and is expected to significantly boost related industries.
Core–shell catalysts refer to catalysts in which the inner core and outer shell are made of different metals. ...
Historical geography helps researchers solve 2,700-year old eclipse mystery
2025-12-02
An international team of researchers has used knowledge of historical geography to reexamine the earliest datable total solar eclipse record known to the scientific community, enabling accurate measurements of Earth's variable rotation speed from 709 BCE. The researchers calculated how the Sun would have appeared from Qufu, the ancient Chinese capital of the Lu Duchy, during the total solar eclipse. Using this information, they analyzed the ancient description of what has been considered the solar corona—the ...
SwRI expands High-Viscosity Flow Loop to test equipment moving heavy oils
2025-12-02
SAN ANTONIO — December 2, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has upgraded its High-Viscosity Flow Loop (HVFL) to meet increased demands in the oil and gas industry. The expanded and upgraded facility now enables SwRI to offer more comprehensive, efficient, and cost-effective heavy oil testing.
Increasing production of heavy oil around the world led SwRI to develop the HVFL in 2015 to gain a better understanding of flow equipment performance in extremely viscous conditions.
“Today, as operators tap into reservoirs with higher gas volume fractions, conventional pumping systems struggle to process the volatile mixture of gas and liquid, demanding ...
Insilico Medicine and Atossa Therapeutics publish AI-driven study in Nature's Scientific Reports identifying (Z)-endoxifen as a potential therapeutic candidate for glioblastoma
2025-12-02
Cambridge, MA — 12/02/2025 — Insilico Medicine (“Insilico”), a global leader in AI-powered drug discovery, and Atossa Therapeutics (“Atossa”) (Nasdaq: ATOS), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel treatments for breast cancer and other serious conditions, announce the publication of a joint study evaluating the potential of (Z)-endoxifen for glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). The peer-reviewed article, now published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, represents one of the most comprehensive AI-enabled analyses to date exploring whether endoxifen, an active metabolite of tamoxifen ...
An overlooked hormone eyed as deadly driver of postmenopausal breast cancer in women with obesity
2025-12-02
WASHINGTON – A new analysis of research into the most common type of breast cancer has zeroed in on an overlooked hormone that may be responsible for the increased risk of breast cancer death in post-menopausal women with obesity. It also raises the possibility that treatment of these aggressive breast cancers could be improved with addition of weight-loss drugs known as GLP-1 receptor agonists.
The most common and deadly form of this disease in women after menopauses is estrogen receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer. According to Joyce Slingerland, ...
Study links childhood vaccination to lower risk of drug-resistant bacteria
2025-12-02
PULLMAN, Wash. – Children in Guatemala who received a common vaccine that helps prevent pneumonia were less likely to carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria, according to a new study led by Washington State University researchers.
The team examined whether rotavirus (RV) and pneumococcal (PCV13) vaccines reduce gut colonization by a group of bacteria that includes Escherichia coli and resists critical antibiotics used to treat severe infections. Colonization occurs when the bacteria are present in the body, often in the gut, without causing illness, yet they can persist and later cause infections or spread to others.
While rotavirus ...
LLMs choose friends and colleagues like people
2025-12-02
When large language models (LLMs) make decisions about networking and friendship, the models tend to act like people, across both synthetic simulations and real-world network contexts. Marios Papachristou and Yuan Yuan developed a framework to study network formation behaviors of multiple LLM agents and compared these behaviors against human behaviors. The authors conducted simulations using several large language models placed in a network, which were asked to choose which other nodes to connect with, given their number of connections, common neighbors, and shared attributes, ...
Gas stoves and nitrogen dioxide exposure
2025-12-02
Twenty-two million Americans would no longer be breathing in unhealthy levels of nitrogen dioxide if they switched from gas and propane stoves to electric stoves. Robert Jackson and colleagues combined outdoor air quality data with estimates of indoor nitrogen dioxide emissions from stoves in more than fifteen cities. As outdoor air quality improves, stoves become an increasingly important source of exposure. According to the World Health Organization, health risks to the respiratory system increase at levels above ...
Beauty linked with metabolic costs of perceiving images
2025-12-02
Humans may find images that take less energy to process aesthetically pleasing, suggesting that our attraction to beauty is at least partially an energy conservation strategy.
Looking at something can feel effortless, but in energetic terms, it isn’t cheap. The brain uses 20% of the body’s energy, and the visual system accounts for about 44% of that expenditure. Looking at very simple stimuli, like a blank white room, is energy-efficient but boring. Looking at very busy or unusual image can feel tiring and unpleasant. Yikai Tang and colleagues presented 4,914 ...
First Nations Australians twice as likely to be digitally excluded: report
2025-12-02
First Nations Australians are twice as likely as other Australians to be digitally excluded and face barriers to accessing, affording and using the internet. For those living in remote Australia, the barriers are much greater.
Three in four First Nations people living in remote and very remote communities are digitally excluded according to the Mapping the Digital Gap report by RMIT University and Swinburne University of Technology. This means many face significant barriers to accessing and using online services needed for daily social, economic and cultural life.
This 2025 outcomes report draws on three years of ...
Korea University study finds restless legs syndrome linked to Parkinson’s risk—dopamine treatment may be protective
2025-12-02
Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is a common neurological sleep disorder characterized by an uncontrollable urge to move the legs, often worsening at night. Parkinson’s disease (PD), a progressive neurodegenerative disorder, is marked by tremor, rigidity, and slowed movement. Both conditions are associated with dysfunction in the brain’s dopaminergic system, but their causal relationship has remained unclear.
A joint research team from Korea University Ansan Hospital, Pohang Stroke and Spine Hospital, and National Health ...
Pusan National University researchers use AI to create optimized engine components that outperform human designs
2025-12-02
Gerotor pumps for oil circulation and lubrication are crucial components in automotive and hydraulic systems. They possess a compact design, excellent flow rate per rotation, and high suction capability. The gerotor tooth profile plays a significant role in determining the overall performance of hydraulic systems for engine lubrication and automatic transmission. Unfortunately, conventional design methods leverage predefined mathematical curves and iterative adjustments, which compromises their optimization ...
Approximate domain unlearning: Enabling safer and more controllable vision-language models
2025-12-02
Vision-language model (VLM) is a core technology of modern artificial intelligence (AI), and it can be used to represent different forms of expression or learning, such as photographs, illustrations, and sketches. It has high generalization ability, which allows it to accurately recognize objects in images within a domain. However, this generalization ability is at risk. For example, VLM recognizes both real cars and illustrated cars as “cars.” If this is installed in a system, there is a risk that a car illustrated in a roadside advertisement ...
Moths detect bat attack signals: Ultrasonic pulse rates drive distinct escape responses
2025-12-02
For many nocturnal moths, hearing sound waves is a matter of survival in night sky. Their ability to detect ultrasonic calls emitted by bats determines whether they escape or become prey. This predator-prey relationship has shaped the behavior, physiology, and sensory systems of both groups. Echolocating bats have developed complex call patterns to track insects in flight, while moths have evolved remarkable countermeasures, including evasive flight and sound-deflection tactics. The luna moth, for instance, spins its long hindwings to deflect the ultrasonic ...
Intimate partner violence injury patterns linked with suicidal behavior
2025-12-02
CHICAGO – Victims of intimate partner violence with suicidal behavior have characteristic injury patterns on medical imaging, according to a new study being presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). The findings open the door to improved screening and earlier intervention to better protect these vulnerable populations, the researchers said.
Intimate partner violence is the physical, emotional or sexual abuse of a person by their partner or spouse. It is an increasingly recognized risk factor for suicidal behavior, and victims of intimate partner violence ...
Blood test shows obesity speeds Alzheimer’s development
2025-12-02
CHICAGO – Researchers have conducted the first study evaluating the impact of obesity on Alzheimer’s disease blood biomarkers (BBMs). BBM values increased up to 95% faster in individuals with obesity than in non-obese individuals, according to a new study being presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
“This is the first time we’ve shown the relationship between obesity and Alzheimer’s disease as measured by blood biomarker tests,” said Cyrus ...
New study supports the value of medical humanities in illuminating the root causes of health care disparities in Washington, DC
2025-12-02
WASHINGTON -- A new study analyzing dozens of published papers over five decades focusing on health care disparities in Washington, DC, found that those that employed medical humanities approaches identified crucial barriers and opportunities for intervention that quantitative studies often miss.
Lead author Sweta Ghatti, a fourth year student at Georgetown School of Medicine, began the study as part of a Mitchell Summer Research Scholarship project addressing health challenges in the District. Ghatti worked closely with senior author Lakshmi Krishnan, MD, PhD, assistant professor ...
Uncovering the principle by which DNA replication initiation sites are determined in the human genome
2025-12-02
When cells proliferate, genomic DNA is precisely duplicated once per cell cycle. Abnormalities in this DNA replication process can cause alterations in genomic DNA, promoting cellular ageing, cancer, and genetic disorders. Therefore, understanding how cells replicate their DNA is crucial for elucidating fundamental biological processes, diseases, and even evolution.
Traditionally, DNA replication has been studied in microorganisms such as E. coli and yeast. In these organisms, the location where DNA replication begins (replication origin) is determined by a specific DNA sequence. However, in most eukaryotic cells, including human cells, the DNA sequence itself ...
Urban sprawl could deny 220 million people access to clean water by 2050
2025-12-02
[Vienna, 02 December, 2025] — A new study analyzing over 100 cities across Asia, Africa, and Latin America has quantified the stark consequences of urban sprawl on water and sanitation access, finding that how cities grow might determine whether hundreds of millions of people have access to these basic necessities.
The analysis, conducted by researchers at the Complexity Science Hub (CSH) and the World Bank, examined infrastructure data and economic indicators, including information on the footprint of 183 million buildings and 125,000 household surveys, to understand the relationship between urban form and access to clean water and sanitation.
The ...
Researchers unveil first high-resolution maps of China's forest diversity patterns
2025-12-02
A research team led by the South China Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with multiple domestic and international research institutions, has made progress in investigating forest diversity patterns across China. The findings were published in Nature Ecology & Evolution on December 2.
China is recognized by Conservation International as one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries. To effectively meet its commitments under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, it is crucial for China to clarify the fine-scale spatial patterns ...
Sun-watcher SOHO celebrates thirty years
2025-12-02
On 2 December 1995 the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) blasted into space – on what was supposed to be a two-year mission.
From its outpost 1.5 million km away from Earth in the direction of the Sun, SOHO enjoys uninterrupted views of our star. It has provided a nearly continuous record of our Sun’s activity for close to three 11-year-long solar cycles.
"It is testament to the ingenuity of our engineers, operators and scientists, and to international ...
Largest study of nose microbiome helps highlight those at risk of staph aureus infection
2025-12-02
People who persistently carry Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) in their nose have fewer species of other bacteria, while certain bacteria may help to prevent S. aureus colonisation.
These are the findings of the largest-ever study of the nasal microbiome, published today (2 December) in Nature Communications.
Researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, University of Cambridge, Imperial ...
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