Top Science News

Nov. 20, 2024 — A re-engineered wearable ultrasound patch for continuous and noninvasive blood pressure monitoring has undergone comprehensive clinical validation on over 100 patients, marking a major milestone in wearable technology research. The soft, stretchy patch provides precise, real-time readings of blood pressure deep within the body. It could offer a ...

Nov. 20, 2024 — A new study finds that, in healthy women, some breast cells that otherwise appear normal may contain chromosome abnormalities typically associated with invasive breast cancer. The findings question conventional thinking on the genetic origins of breast cancer, which could influence early cancer detection methods. The study discovered that at least 3% of normal cells from breast tissue in 49 ...

Nov. 19, 2024 — The Aztec skull whistle produces a shrill, screaming sound. A study shows that these whistles have a disturbing effect on the human brain. The Aztecs may have deliberately used this effect in sacrificial ...

Nov. 21, 2024 — Axions are the most likely candidate for enigmatic dark matter that dominates the universe. Astrophysicists are searching for evidence of high-mass axions produced during supernovae. Scientists propose that a quick way to find these axions is to look for a gamma ray burst coincident with a neutrino burst from a nearby core collapse supernova. But we need a fleet of gamma ray telescopes to insure ...

Nov. 21, 2024 — The world's thinnest spaghetti, about 200 times thinner than a human hair, has been ...

Nov. 19, 2024 — A speed record has been broken using nanoscience, which could lead to a host of new advances, including improved battery charging, biosensing, soft robotics and neuromorphic computing. Scientists have discovered a way to make ions move more than ten times faster in mixed organic ion-electronic conductors. These conductors combine the advantages of ...

Nov. 20, 2024 — Trust between humans and robots is improved when the movement between both is harmonized, researchers have ...

Nov. 21, 2024 — A new study has quantified the risk for whale-ship collisions worldwide for four geographically widespread ocean giants that are threatened by shipping: blue, fin, humpback and sperm whales. Researchers report that global shipping traffic overlaps with about 92% of these whale species' ranges. Only about 7% of areas at highest risk for whale-ship ...

Nov. 21, 2024 — A new study estimates that a 1-meter sea level rise by 2100 would affect over 14 million people and $1 trillion worth of property along the Southeast Atlantic ...

Nov. 21, 2024 — Compared to children, adults don't play as much, but social play into adulthood is considered a universal human trait. Play has a role in building tolerance, cohesion, bonding, and cooperation. By comparison, play in adults of other species has been considered rare, and yet a new study shows that some chimpanzees, like people, continue to play often throughout their entire lives and especially ...

Nov. 20, 2024 — Antibacterial drugs are important for treating infections. But increasingly, bacterial resistance to current drugs -- so they don't work well, or even at all -- means new ones are urgently needed. Researchers have demonstrated a potential antibacterial treatment from a modified darobactin, a compound originally from a bacterium. The team reports proof-of-concept animal trials on infections caused ...

Nov. 21, 2024 — Drug discovery researchers have found that a natural fat molecule called 'lipoxin A4' (LXA4) could significantly reduce inflammation and improve function for diabetic ...

Nov. 21, 2024 — A new study analyzed data from participants who have been followed for over 50 years, starting before their births. Researchers found that maternal immune activity during a critical period of sex-dependent brain development in pregnancy affected the offspring's long-term memory circuitry and function in childhood and midlife, with different ...

Nov. 21, 2024 — Researchers have uncovered how different types of brain cells work together to form large-scale functional networks in the human brain -- interconnected systems that support everything from sensory processing to complex decision-making -- paving the way for new insights into brain health and ...

Nov. 21, 2024 — Preschool children who struggle to control their emotions and behaviour have more symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder -- known as ADHD -- at age seven, a study suggests. Children aged between three and seven who are slower at acquiring skills to manage their intense emotions were also found to be at risk of displaying more conduct issues. They were also more likely to show ...

Nov. 21, 2024 — In a groundbreaking new study scientists have revealed that the widely prescribed Parkinson's disease drug entacapone significantly disrupts the human gut microbiome by inducing iron deficiency. The study, provides new insights into the often-overlooked impact of human-targeted drugs on the microbial communities that play a critical role in human ...

Nov. 21, 2024 — Researchers advocate the use of imagination in tackling the climate crisis. They focus specifically on urbanizing river deltas, which are of great social and economic importance and highly vulnerable to climate ...

Nov. 20, 2024 — A new study shows stimulating the vagus nerve in mice with colitis reduced stress-driven symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease by regulating SUMOylation, an immune response that triggers gut ...

Nov. 20, 2024 — Historical policies shaping educational attainment have enduring benefits for later life memory and risk of dementia, according to a new study. The study compared the differences in years of education based on variations in state schooling mandates with cognitive performance outcomes in residents decades ...

Nov. 19, 2024 — A new study reveals surprising findings about how babies exposed to gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) grow during their first year of ...

Nov. 20, 2024 — Fiber is something that most of us get far too little of. To change that, we need to actually enjoy eating it. Food researchers have now invented a 'disguise' that solves the problem of the dry and gritty mouth feel of ...

Nov. 20, 2024 — People around the world associate a trilled R sound with a rough texture and a jagged shape, and an L sound with smooth texture and a flat shape, according to the findings of a new study. Researchers believe this association may be more universal than the famous bouba/kiki ...

Nov. 21, 2024 — Chlorophyll (a naturally occurring pigment involved in photosynthesis)-inspired molecules hold promise for developing next-generation light-harvesting materials. However, achieving precise control over their assembly is challenging. Researchers have now revealed that attaching dendrons -- branched, tree-like structures -- can aid in self-assembly ...

Nov. 21, 2024 — Protein design aims to create customized antibodies for therapies, biosensors for diagnostics, or enzymes for chemical reactions. An international research team has now developed a method for designing large new proteins better than before and producing them with the desired properties in the laboratory. Their approach involves a new way of using the capabilities of the AI-based software ...

Nov. 18, 2024 — Water scarcity threatens the viability of hydropower and agriculture. A new study in the Andes shows sustainable irrigation and reforestation are the best ...

Nov. 20, 2024 — Researchers used the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument to map how nearly 6 million galaxies cluster across 11 billion years of cosmic history. Their observations line up with what Einstein's theory of general relativity ...

Nov. 19, 2024 — Astronomers have discovered the first pairs of white dwarf and main sequence stars -- 'dead' remnants and 'living' stars -- in young star clusters. This breakthrough offers new insights on an extreme phase of stellar evolution, and one of the biggest mysteries in ...

Nov. 18, 2024 — New research found confined and isolating environments changed the way people smelled and responded emotionally to certain food aromas. The team in this study compared 44 people's emotional responses and perception of eight food aromas in two environmental scenarios: sitting in reclined chairs that mimic astronauts' posture in microgravity; and then in the confined setting of the International ...

Nov. 18, 2024 — Through the intricate study of lava tubes -- caves formed following volcanic eruptions when lava cools down -- an international team of researchers has uncovered clues about Earth's ancient environments that could be significant in the search for life on ...

Nov. 20, 2024 — A new method enables researchers to analyse magnetic nanostructures with a high resolution. The new method achieves a resolution of around 70 nanometers, whereas normal light microscopes have a resolution of just 500 nanometers. This result is important for the development of new, energy-efficient storage technologies based on spin ...

Nov. 20, 2024 — Depression is one of the most common mental illnesses. As many as 280 million people worldwide are affected by this disease, which is why researchers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model that helps to identify depression based on both speech and brain neural activity. This multimodal approach, combining two different data sources, allows a more accurate and objective analysis of a ...

Nov. 20, 2024 — Asking children 'What does a scientist look like?' now results in more illustrations of women and people of color than decades ago. But do generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools also depict the diversity among scientists? Researchers prompted AI image generators for portraits of chemists. They found that none of the collections accurately represents the gender, racial or disability ...

Nov. 19, 2024 — Researchers have created a method that uses artificial intelligence to more accurately predict short-term river discharge using historical data from two hydrometric stations on the Ottawa River along with other weather-based parameters. They built on an existing type of algorithm called group method of data handling, which constructs predictive ...

Nov. 21, 2024 — New research sheds light on how cells repair damaged DNA. For the first time, the team has mapped the activity of repair proteins in individual human cells. The study demonstrates how these proteins collaborate in so-called 'hubs' to repair DNA damage. This knowledge offers opportunities to improve cancer therapies and other treatments where DNA repair is ...

Nov. 21, 2024 — Taking anti-obesity drugs has led some U.S. adults to throw away more food than they tossed before starting the medications, a new study has ...

Nov. 18, 2024 — Climate change is a persistent and growing challenge to plant life on our planet. Changes to the environment that plants are unaccustomed to affect how they grow, putting much at risk. Increasingly, plant scientists are trying to determine how these environmental changes will impact plant life and whether plants will be able to acclimate to a new status ...

Nov. 21, 2024 — The fact that plastics pollute the environment and generate problems has been well-researched in many areas. However, there is little information on the impacts of plastics on climate and biodiversity. Researchers have analyzed the impacts of plastics on the three planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental pollution. They are calling for plastics regulations that ...

Nov. 20, 2024 — New research suggests that while manatees are an indelible part of Florida's seascape, they might also be relatively new residents in the Sunshine ...

Nov. 20, 2024 — The tropical coastlines of Southeast Asia are home to some of the most important and biodiverse marine ecosystems on the planet. But as well as being essential to communities along these coastlines, fishing and tourism were found -- in new research conducted by an international study team -- to be among the most damaging from an environmental ...

Nov. 20, 2024 — Sustainable rates of groundwater withdrawal in Oregon's Harney Basin were surpassed 20 years prior to the time declining groundwater levels were generally recognized, a new analysis ...

Nov. 20, 2024 — Wings may be the obvious choice when studying the connection between dinosaurs and birds, but a pair of paleontologists prefer drumsticks. That part of the leg, they say, is where fibular reduction among some dinosaurs tens of millions of years ago helped make it possible for peacocks to strut, penguins to waddle, and turkeys to ...

Nov. 18, 2024 — The history of a major animal group, composed of millions of species of insects, arachnids, and nemotodes, has been elusive -- until now. A team has now identified the oldest known ecdysozoan in the fossil record and the only one from the Precambrian ...

Nov. 15, 2024 — Scholars for the first time identified chemical signatures of the components of a liquid concoction contained in a Bes mug. A new technique helped identify a sample flavored with honey, sesame seeds, pine nuts, licorice and grapes -- commonly used to make the beverage look like ...

Nov. 14, 2024 — New research exploring the roots of modern Japanese populations has linked the genetic signature of Jomon hunter-gatherers to a higher body mass index (BMI) among individuals, underlining that ancient human ancestors can leave a genetic legacy with impacts on health in modern day ...

Nov. 20, 2024 — Children living in war-torn countries not only suffer from poor mental health outcomes, but war may cause adverse biological changes at the DNA level, which could have lifelong health impacts, according to a ground-breaking ...

Nov. 12, 2024 — Linguistics and computer science researchers have discovered some of the root causes of why AI large language models perform poorly in human-like ...

Nov. 19, 2024 — Researchers examined the Senboku Hottokenai Network Project through a combination of case study and action research methodologies. The results of this study shed new light on the importance of community-led co-creation in transdisciplinary ...

Nov. 19, 2024 — Unlike kids in the United States, hunter-gatherer children in the Congo Basin have often learned how to hunt, identify edible plants and care for babies by the tender age of six or seven. This rapid learning is facilitated by a unique social environment where cultural knowledge is passed down not just from parents but from the broader community. The research helps explain how many cultural traits ...

Nov. 14, 2024 — Researchers find a link between early vocabulary composition and later language development in children with cochlear ...

Nov. 12, 2024 — Contrary to popular belief, children aren't better at learning new skills than adults. Indeed, young adults seem to learn faster than kids -- but also tend to forget more quickly. Here, better sleep seems to advantage ...

Nov. 6, 2024 — A new study shows how students can better understand and interpret conditional ...

Nov. 18, 2024 — It turns out gaming is good for you! New research indicates massive multiplayer online gamers learn by gaming and their skills in the workplace are enriched by those seemingly endless hours previously thought of as frittering away ...

Nov. 16, 2024 — Employees struggle when supervisors swing between good and bad ...

Nov. 13, 2024 — Working days lost to long covid could be costing the economy billions of pounds every year as patients struggle to cope with symptoms and return to work, finds a new ...

Nov. 14, 2024 — Physical cash not only influences how much we spend but also fosters a profound sense of psychological ownership that digital payments cannot replicate, according to new ...