(Toronto, February 5, 2026) JMIR Publications, a leader in open access scholarly publishing, today announced the launch of the new Karma Reviewer Rewards Program. This initiative introduces a specialized, merit-based framework designed to elevate and reward the critical role of peer reviewers in the scientific process. The evolved Karma program marks a strategic shift toward a quality-focused reward model. Moving away from traditional volume-based incentives, the new system ensures that rewards ...

More than 50 skuas in Antarctica died from the high pathogenicity avian influenza virus H5N1 in the summers of 2023 and 2024, marking the first documented die-off of wildlife from the virus on the continent. That is confirmed for the first time in a study led by Erasmus MC in The Netherlands and the University of California, Davis. It published this week in the Nature journal Scientific Reports. A relative of gulls, skuas are predatory, large brown birds living mostly in polar and subpolar environments. Similar ...

New research suggests the liver plays a previously unrecognized role in bone health, but only in males. A McGill University-led study published in Matrix Biology found that a protein made in the liver helps regulate bone growth in male mice, but not in females. The findings may help explain why men with liver disease are more likely to experience bone loss. The protein, known as plasma fibronectin, is naturally present in blood at higher levels in men than in women, declines when the liver is damaged and builds up in bone to modulate bone formation. This suggests men rely more heavily on the protein to maintain bone strength than do women. “About ...

Next month, thousands of scientists from around the world will convene to share new research results from across physics at the American Physical Society’s Global Physics Summit. The conference will be held in Denver and online everywhere March 15-20.   Press registration News media with valid APS press credentials may register for the meeting at no cost. To request press credentials, visit APS’ online newsroom. Registration will remain open throughout the meeting.    Housing information Discounted hotel rates are available for in-person attendees at select hotels near the Colorado ...

Tooling up to diagnose ocean health Field-deployable CRISPR-based biosensing platform could enable facile, real-time monitoring of marine barometer species and ecosystems By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Oceanic ecosystems are increasingly threatened by global warming which causes coral bleaching, species migration and, through the loss of habitats and biodiversity, food web disruptions on major scales. Also, pollutants such as plastics and other marine debris, wastewater, as well as chemical runoffs, including oil spills, cause major ecosystem disruptions. Importantly, given the interconnectedness of all life on the planet, the deteriorating health of our ...

FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla., February 3, 2026 — To kick off Super Bowl LX week and American Heart Month, the Family Heart Foundation, a leading research and advocacy organization, is teaming up with three-time Pro Bowler and former Seattle NFL quarterback Matt Hasselbeck to launch a national campaign focused on raising awareness of high cholesterol as a key risk factor for heart attack and stroke. The campaign, “Tackle Cholesterol: Get into the LDL Safe Zone,” reinforces the importance of early ...

A peer reviewed, randomized controlled study with 199 women living in poverty in the city slums of Uganda was published today in Health Care for Women International. This study was conducted following two extended country-wide lockdowns in Uganda during the Covid 19 pandemic. Researchers found that the Transcendental Meditation® (TM®) technique reduced perceived stress, anger, and fatigue; increased self-efficacy; and improved sleep quality. TM helped these women to improve their mental and physical health and positively impacted their ability to cope in this crisis. “The Covid lockdowns in Uganda, which resulted in food shortages, lack of employment, ...

For decades, gynecological tests have relied on a simplified view of the vaginal microbiome, categorizing bacteria as either “good” or “bad.” New research from University of Maryland School of Medicine scientists challenges that assumption, revealing that bacteria of the same species can behave in fundamentally different ways, with important implications for women’s health. Today, gynecological tests largely focus on detecting two groups of bacteria in the vaginal microbiome: Lactobacillus, generally associated with health, and Gardnerella, which has been linked to Bacterial Vaginosis (BV), increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases, ...

CLEVELAND— More than 30 million people with HIV must take antiretroviral therapy (ART) medications daily to keep the virus under control, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). The drugs are effective but don’t eliminate the virus; HIV remains hidden in “reservoirs” throughout the body, ready to reactivate if treatment stops. But researchers at Case Western Reserve University, in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh, have made a significant breakthrough in HIV treatment. They’ve ...

LOS ANGELES — Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affects more than one million people in the United States, with approximately 90,000 new cases diagnosed each year. Although available treatments can help manage symptoms, there is currently no cure or therapy proven to slow the progression of the disease.   Parkinson’s disease is associated with reduced dopamine release in the brain. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter essential for movement, memory, mood and ...

Alzheimer’s disease is often measured in statistics: millions affected worldwide, cases rising sharply, costs climbing into the trillions. For families, the disease is experienced far more intimately. “It’s a slow bereavement,” says Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Nicholas Tonks, whose mother lived with Alzheimer’s. “You lose the person piece by piece.” There’s a lot of discussion about how the neurodegenerative disorder may be caused by a buildup of “plaque” ...

NLRP3 is a validated anti-inflammatory target that mediates the release of proinflammatory cytokines IL-1β and IL-18, and ISM5059 targets systemic inflammatory conditions by targeting NLRP3 and blocking the inflammatory cascade at its source. Unlike ISM8969, Insilico’s brain-penetrant NLRP3 pipeline already with FDA IND clearance, ISM5059 features a completely different chemical core designed for peripheral-restricted potency. Empowered by AI, ISM5059 demonstrated robust efficacy, excellent safety profiles in preclinical ...

Cardiovascular diseases constitute a major global health concern. Various complications that affect normal blood flow in arteries and veins, such as stroke, blood clot formation in veins, blood vessel rupture, and coronary artery disease, often require vascular treatments. However, existing vascular stent devices often require complex, invasive deployment procedures, making it necessary to explore novel materials and manufacturing technologies that could enable such medical devices to work more naturally with the human body. Moreover, the development of ...

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a debilitating condition that affects more than 246 million people worldwide, yet scientists have struggled to identify consistent brain markers that could improve diagnosis and treatment. Finding reliable neurobiological markers for MDD has been hampered by the methodological differences observed across neuroimaging studies. Traditional brain imaging studies have produced conflicting results, often due to differences in methods and analysis pipelines. This inconsistency has made it difficult to pinpoint reliable neurobiological signatures of depression. Against this backdrop, a new study led by Research Fellow Siti Nurul Zhahara ...

For Dementia Patients, Easy Access to Experts May Help the Most  Programs that match caregivers with patient navigators yield better outcomes than Alzheimer’sdrug – but combining the two may be best.   A Medicare-covered program that offers support and medical advice for caregivers of patients with dementia may bring more benefit than a costly Alzheimer’s medication, new research finds.  UC San Francisco researchers compared outcomes for patients in collaborative care programs with those taking lecanemab, one of two approved drugs that have been shown to slow progression of Alzheimer’s in some patients.   UCSF ...

YouTube is a great place to find all sorts of wildlife content. It is not, however, a good place to find viewers encouraging each other to preserve that wildlife, according to new research led by the University of Michigan. Out of nearly 25,000 comments posted to more than 1,750 wildlife YouTube videos, just 2% featured a call to action that would help conservation efforts, according to a new study published in the journal Communications Sustainability. "Our results basically show that people like to watch videos of zoos and safaris and ...

Researchers at UC San Francisco have uncovered a new clue to how Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) could contribute to multiple sclerosis (MS), a chronic autoimmune disease that affects nearly one million Americans.  The study, published Feb. 5 in Nature Immunology, found that certain types of CD8+ “killer” T cells — immune cells that destroy damaged or infected cells — are more abundant in people with MS. Some of these killer T cells target EBV, which suggests that the virus may trigger the damaging immune ...

Mass General Brigham investigators have developed a robust new artificial intelligence (AI) foundation model that is capable of analyzing brain MRI datasets to perform numerous medical tasks, including identifying brain age, predicting dementia risk, detecting brain tumor mutations and predicting brain cancer survival. The tool. known as BrainIAC, outperformed other, more task-specific AI models and was especially efficient when limited training data were available. Results are published in Nature Neuroscience.  “BrainIAC has ...

A new U of T Scarborough study finds that being mentally sharp can translate into a productivity boost equivalent to about 40 extra minutes of work each day. The study, published in the journal Science Advances, followed participants over a 12-week period and found that day-to-day fluctuations in mental sharpness helped explain why people sometimes fail to follow through on their goals. On days when participants were mentally sharp, they were more likely to set goals and complete them, whether it was finishing assignments or even just cooking ...

COVID-19 vaccination is not the cause behind a decrease in childbirth, according to a study from Linköping University, Sweden. The results speak against rumours about vaccination and reduced fertility. The findings have been published in the journal Communications Medicine. “Our conclusion is that it’s highly unlikely that the mRNA vaccine against COVID-19 was behind the decrease in childbirth during the pandemic,” says Toomas Timpka, professor of social medicine at Linköping ...

Key takeaways   New research published in the European Heart Journal - Digital Health shows that an AI-enabled digital stethoscope more than doubles sensitivity for detecting moderate to severe valvular heart disease in a real-world clinical setting compared to a traditional stethoscope. A total of 357 patients of 50 years old or over were examined with both the traditional and the AI-enabled digital stethoscope and the results were compared.  The AI-stethoscope demonstrated significantly higher sensitivity in detecting the heart sound patterns that indicate valvular heart disease, with 92.3% sensitivity compared with 46.2% with the traditional stethoscope. Valvular ...

Insulated joints are little known, but many railway lines could not be used without them. They divide the rail network into electrically separated sections and register when a train enters and leaves a section. Only when the section is free again the next train is allowed to enter. Around 33,000 insulated joints are currently installed in Austria, but they wear out quickly on heavily used lines. Together with ÖBB and Martin Schienentechnik, Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) has now developed a prototype for significantly more robust insulated joints using improved materials and new geometries. According to current research findings, ...

When startups scale quickly, founders often make hurried hiring decisions that unintentionally disadvantage women, according to new study from the Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden. The study shows how the pressures of rapid growth increase the likelihood that founders rely on mental shortcuts and make biased decisions.  Drawing on large‑scale Swedish data, the study shows that scaling—when companies hire far more people than their usual growth trend would predict—puts pressure on founders to decide swiftly, which increases the use of mental shortcuts. These ...

A supermassive black hole with a case of cosmic indigestion has been burping out the remains of a shredded star for four years — and it’s still going strong, new research led by a University of Oregon astrophysicist shows. Already, the jet shooting out of the black hole is a contender for one of the brightest, most energetic things ever detected in the universe. Scientists have now collected enough data on the unusual occurrence to predict that the stream of radio waves belching from the black hole will keep increasing exponentially before peaking in 2027. “This is really unusual,” said Yvette Cendes, an ...

An international study investigating the genomic diversity of the Sudanese population reveals that the Copts originating in Egypt –who settled in the country between the seventh and eleventh centuries– have acquired a genetic variant that protects them from contracting malaria. “The acquisition of this variant has taken place very quickly, in just 1,500 years, after a group of Copts mixed with Sudanese populations with sub-Saharan characteristics”, explains David Comas, principal investigator at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE: CSIC-Pompeu Fabra University) and a full ...