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It was like a horror movie. The invisible polio virus would strike, leaving young children on crutches, in wheelchairs or in a dreaded "iron lung" ventilator. Each summer, the fear was so great that public pools and movie theaters closed. Parents canceled birthday parties, afraid their child might be the next victim. A U.S. president paralyzed by polio called for Americans to send dimes to the White House to support the nonprofit National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his lawyer, Basil O'Connor. Celebrities from Lucille Ball to Elvis were enlisted to promote this "March of Dimes," and mothers went door to door raising funds to conquer this dreaded disease.

A new study published by JMIR Serious Games reports that popular video games, such as the Super Mario Bros. and Yoshi games, may offer meaningful emotional benefits for young adults. The research, titled "Super Mario Bros. and Yoshi Games' Affordance of Childlike Wonder and Reduced Burnout Risk in Young Adults: In-Depth Mixed Methods Cross-Sectional Study," found that these lighthearted, familiar games can spark a sense of childlike wonder that boosts overall happiness, which in turn reduces burnout risk.

You may have noticed people out and about with little stickers on their faces. Perhaps you've seen moons, stars, clouds or even smiley faces adorning people's cheeks and chins. Maybe you wear them yourself. While some people do wear them as accessories, these colorful stickers are medicated "pimple patches," designed to treat spots or acne.

Luxury pet pampering packages at hotels, menus with dog-friendly roast dinners and £6,000 animal-friendly charter flights. Pet travel isn't just a trend, it's something of a transformation. This is the "pawprint economy"—and it's booming.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Exdensur (depemokimab-ulaa) as an add-on maintenance treatment for severe asthma with an eosinophilic phenotype in adult and pediatric patients aged 12 years and older.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captured two nearby dwarf galaxies interacting with each other in this image released on Dec. 2, 2025.

In the last decade, the drive to understand who we are and where we've come from has been accelerated by DNA testing.

Health isn't what it used to be—namely the absence of being sick.

Health experts typically advise getting your COVID-19 and flu vaccine by the end of October. However, if you've missed that window, you can still get them well into the respiratory virus season and see a benefit.

In clinical practice guidelines issued by the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association and published online Dec. 18 in both the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and Circulation, recommendations are presented for the management of adults with congenital heart disease (ACHD).

People stop reading in adulthood for lots of reasons. But it's never too late to turn the page on old habits and start again.

Healthy, sustainable school meals could cut undernourishment, reduce diet-related deaths and significantly lower environmental impacts, according to a new modeling study led by a UCL (University College London) researcher.

A major review of prior research has found no evidence that menopause hormone therapy either increases or decreases dementia risk in postmenopausal women, in a new study led by University College London (UCL) researchers.

Despite its tropical climate and floodplain location, Bangladesh—one of the world's most densely populated nations—seasonally does not have enough freshwater, especially in coastal areas. Shallow groundwater is often saline, a problem that may be exacerbated by rising sea levels.

When you walk around the Groupama Stadium in Lyon (France), you can't miss them. Four majestic lions in the colors of Olympique Lyonnais stand proudly in front of the stadium, symbols of the influence of a club that dominated French football in the early 2000s.

When people think of the European Middle Ages, it often brings to mind grinding poverty, superstition and darkness. But the reality of the 1,000-year period from 500 to 1500 was much more complex. This is especially true when considering the peasants, who made up about 90% of the population.

Stripe patterns are commonly seen in nature—for instance, birds and fish move in coordinated flocks and schools, fingerprints form unique designs, and zebras can be identified by their distinctive stripes.

A research group has developed a novel and highly accessible technology for producing uniform biomolecular condensates using a simple, low-cost vibration platform.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), in collaboration with the Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Guangzhou), has launched the world's first Deep Ocean Omics (DOO) database.

Proteins are among the most important molecular building blocks of life. They are chains of amino acids assembled in our cells by ribosomes, the molecular "protein factories" of our bodies. The genetic code of our genome serves as a blueprint, guiding the step-by-step translation into a specific sequence of amino acids that defines each protein.

RIKEN researchers have discovered how right-handed molecules in our cells can give rise to cells that are not symmetrical about their central axes. This discovery is a key step toward determining why most of our organs lack left–right symmetry.

Most of the plastic products we use are made through injection molding, a process in which molten plastic is injected into a mold to mass-produce identical items. However, even slight changes in conditions can lead to defects, so the process has long relied on the intuition of highly skilled workers.

A new study led by researchers at UH Mānoa Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) ToBo Lab has revealed that giant clam populations in American Sāmoa are far more stable and abundant than previously thought, demonstrating the effectiveness of traditional, community-based resource management.

In an opinion piece published in Microbiology Australia, a James Cook University team led by Dr. Yaoqin Hong recently introduced a new theory to help scientists engineer biofilms, which are the gluey scaffolds made by bacteria and microbes to house and protect cells from environmental extremes.

University of Arizona researchers in the Gutruf Lab have developed a comfortable, easy-to-use wearable device that incorporates artificial intelligence to detect subtle warning signs of frailty, signifying a leap forward in elderly care.

Whether you're a scientist brainstorming research ideas or a CEO hoping to automate a task in human resources or finance, you'll find that artificial intelligence (AI) tools are becoming the assistants you didn't know you needed. In particular, many professionals are tapping into the talents of semi-autonomous software systems called AI agents, which can call on AI at specific points to solve problems and complete tasks.

Temporal lobe epilepsy, which results in recurring seizures and cognitive dysfunction, is associated with premature aging of brain cells.

When experimental results don't match scientists' predictions, it's usually assumed that the predictions were wrong. But new research into materials that pull carbon dioxide directly from the air shows how such mismatches can instead be powerful clues, leading to discoveries that reshape how future materials are designed.

A new study by Scripps Research reveals that alcohol dependence disrupts two signaling pathways in a stress-related part of the brain—and offers insights on developing drugs to treat this condition.

When you take a drug, where in your body does it actually go? For most medications, scientists can make only educated guesses about the answer to this question. Traditional methods can measure the concentration of a drug in an organ like the liver, but they can't pinpoint exactly which cells to which the drug binds—or reveal unexpected places where the drug takes action.

A research team at the Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI) and the Faculty of Medicine at Kanazawa University has developed a new class of engineered extracellular vesicles (EVs) capable of inducing antigen-specific regulatory T cells (Tregs), the immune cells that play a central role in suppressing excessive immune responses. The findings, now published in Drug Delivery, may pave the way for next-generation therapies for autoimmune and allergic diseases, where unwanted immune activation must be precisely controlled.

To reduce mortality rates, fall and tumble rates, and delirium incidence among hospitalized patients, it is crucial for nurses to learn Evidence-Based Practice (EBP). To achieve this, developing effective EBP education programs is essential. However, traditional EBP education programs have faced challenges, such as not covering all aspects of the EBP process and lacking rigorous evaluation methods for these programs.

How does mimicry affect the way we judge other people? Whose behavior do we imitate, and in what situations? It turns out that we are more likely to mimic people who express joy, and we perceive those people as more attractive and more trustworthy. Scientists, including researchers from SWPS University, published a paper on this topic in the journal Emotion.

For people, matching what they see on the ground to a map is second nature. For computers, it has been a major challenge. A Cornell research team has introduced a new method that helps machines make these connections—an advance that could improve robotics, navigation systems, and 3D modeling.

Vitamin D supplementation is associated with significantly lower risks of type 2 diabetes and depression in certain ethnic groups in the U.S., according to an analysis of nationally representative health data.

Google's corporate parent on Monday announced an agreement to buy data center energy specialist Intersect for $4.75 billion as part of its effort to secure the vast amounts of electricity needed to power artificial intelligence technology.

Researchers have developed a new way to compress the memory used by AI models to increase their accuracy in complex tasks or help save significant amounts of energy.

Every year, Santa Claus races around the globe in a matter of hours to bring presents to children all over the world.

Patients who start their blood pressure treatment with angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) drugs continue with the same medicine to a greater extent than patients who start out with other drugs. Choosing the right drug from the outset can therefore improve both health and quality of life—as well as bringing down health care costs. This is shown in a new study based on data from 340,000 patients. The research is published in the journal eClinicalMedicine.

A new study by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai suggests that artificial intelligence (AI) could help predict which critically ill patients on ventilators are at risk of underfeeding, potentially enabling clinicians to adjust nutrition early and improve patient care. Details of the study were published in the December 17 online issue of Nature Communications.

Disruptions to our circadian clocks—the internal molecular timekeepers "ticking" in nearly every cell of our body throughout the day—can lead to a wide range of health problems, from sleep disturbances to diabetes and cancer. But there has been no certainty about the identity of the body's substances that can "shift" these clocks forward or backward and, when altered, potentially cause such disruptions.

A possible new treatment for impaired brain blood flow and related dementias is on the horizon. Research by scientists at the University of Vermont Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine provides novel insights into the mechanisms that regulate brain blood flow and highlights a potential therapeutic strategy to correct vascular dysfunction.

Two complementary studies reveal how an insufficient supply of energy in macrophages, key immune cells in artery walls, drives the progression of atherosclerosis—and how this knowledge could lead to better diagnostics and future therapies. The University of Eastern Finland was centrally involved in both studies.

Scientists at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) have achieved a historic breakthrough in nuclear energy by launching full-scale production of enriched fuel salt for the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE)—the world's first test of a molten chloride salt fast reactor.

Scientists in China have unveiled a new AI chip called LightGen that is 100 times faster and 100 times more energy efficient than NVIDIA chips, the leading supplier of AI chips worldwide. Instead of using electricity to move information, this new optical chip relies on light to perform complex generative tasks.

A single laundry load containing synthetic clothing can release thousands of plastic microfibers from nylon, acrylic and polyester materials. Lab testing of an SA-made washing machine filter at Flinders University shows it can be a useful new way to help protect waterways from polyester and other synthetic microparticles.

Ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft plan to bring robotaxi services to London next year in separate partnerships with Chinese tech giant Baidu, the companies said Monday.

Solar cells, devices that can generate electricity from sunlight, are already helping to reduce fossil fuel emissions in many countries worldwide. In recent years, energy engineers have been assessing the potential of materials other than silicon for the development of efficient, durable and more affordable solar cells.

"It makes me feel like I am right there on Country." This was the response of a student after they used a new virtual reality (VR) tool I codeveloped to help Indigenous people around Australia learn on Country.

A research team led by Prof. Ye Jichun from the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with partners, has proposed a synergistic technical solution enabling industrial tunnel oxide passivating contact (TOPCon) solar cells to simultaneously achieve high efficiency, low cost, and excellent bifacial power generation performance.

A research team from the Xinjiang Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has developed a basalt fiber/cotton fiber composite yarn that integrates weavability with multiple functional properties. The study was published in Composites Communications.

A new approach is making it easier to visualize lifelike 3D environments from everyday photos already shared online, opening new possibilities in industries such as gaming, virtual tourism and cultural preservation.

In Nature Communications, a research team affiliated with UNIST present a fully biodegradable, robust, and energy-efficient artificial synapse that holds great promise for sustainable neuromorphic technologies. Made entirely from eco-friendly materials sourced from nature—such as shells, beans, and plant fibers—this innovation could help address the growing problems of electronic waste and high energy use.

NUS researchers have developed a vapor-deposition method that dramatically improves the long-term and high-temperature stability of perovskite-silicon (Si) tandem solar cells. The findings were published in Science.