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Hydrocephalus is a life-threatening condition that occurs in about 1 in 1,000 newborns and is often treated with invasive surgery. Now, a new study offers hope of preventing hydrocephalus before it even occurs. The paper is published in the journal Molecular Therapy.

Cosmic radio pulses repeating every few minutes or hours, known as long-period transients, have puzzled astronomers since their discovery in 2022. Our new study, published in Nature Astronomy today, might finally add some clarity.

In 2023, more than half of all suicide deaths in the United States involved firearms. "Red flag" laws—also called Extreme Risk Protection Orders or ERPOs—are designed to reduce these deaths by authorizing temporary firearm removal from individuals deemed at high risk of harming themselves or others. ERPO laws had been implemented in 21 states and the District of Columbia as of February 2025.

As green hydrogen emerges as a key next-generation clean energy source, securing technologies that enable its stable and cost-effective production has become a critical challenge. However, conventional water electrolysis technologies face limitations in large-scale deployment due to high system costs and operational burdens.

A new study reveals how bacteria in the gut can help determine whether the amino acid asparagine from the diet will feed tumor growth or activate immune cells against the cancer, according to researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine. This casts the gut microbiome, comprising the trillions of microorganisms that live in the intestine, as a central player in the body's response to cancer and to modern cancer treatments like immunotherapies.

Being more active in the morning or afternoon is not just a matter of personal preference. Chronotype, which is each person's biological tendency to function better at certain times of the day, can play a significant role in preserving muscle mass, as well as its quality and strength, and also in metabolic health. Understanding this relationship can help explain why not everyone responds the same way to the same health routines.

It's common to wonder as tax season ramps up: Are taxes too high? According to a new study by University of Cincinnati economics professor David Brasington, the answer is no, at least when it comes to Ohio's city service taxes. These taxes go toward local services such as funds for the fire department, road repair and park upkeep.

A research team, affiliated with UNIST, has unveiled a flexible photodetector, capable of converting light across a broad spectrum—from visible to near-infrared—into electrical signals. This innovation promises significant advancements in technologies that require simultaneous detection of object colors and internal structures or materials.

Researchers are continually looking for new ways to hack the cellular machinery of microbes like yeast and bacteria to make products that are useful for humans and society. In a new proof-of-concept study, a team from the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology showed they can expand the biosynthetic capabilities of these microbes by using light to help access new types of chemical transformations.

A team of researchers from the University of Stuttgart and the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg led by Prof. Stefanie Barz (University of Stuttgart) has demonstrated a source of single photons that combines on-demand operation with record-high photon quality in the telecommunications C-band—a key step toward scalable photonic quantum computation and quantum communication. "The lack of a high-quality on-demand C-band photon source has been a major problem in quantum optics laboratories for over a decade—our new technology now removes this obstacle," says Prof. Stefanie Barz.

Tau protein aggregation is a shared feature in over 20 neurodegenerative diseases (collectively referred to as "tauopathies"). New research led by Boston Children's Hospital challenges the current "one-size-fits-all" approach to diagnosing and treating these tauopathies. The study is published in the journal Cell.

The precise control of tiny droplets on surfaces is essential for advanced manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and next‐generation lab‐on‐a‐chip diagnostics. However, once droplet volume reaches pico- and nanoliter scales, the droplets become extremely sensitive to microscopic surface irregularities, and friction at the solid‐liquid interface becomes a major obstacle to smooth transport.

Researchers from Regensburg and Birmingham have overcome a fundamental limitation of optical microscopy. With the help of quantum mechanical effects, they succeeded for the first time in performing optical measurements with atomic resolution. Their work is published in the journal Nano Letters.

New technology from University of Houston researchers could improve the way devices manage heat, thanks to a technique that allows heat to flow in only one direction. The innovation is known as thermal rectification, and was developed by Bo Zhao, an award-winning and internationally recognized engineering professor at the Cullen College of Engineering, and his doctoral student Sina Jafari Ghalekohneh. The work is published in Physical Review Research.

Cancer patients who suffer a heart attack face a dangerous mix of risks, which makes their clinical treatment particularly challenging. As a result, patients with cancer have been systematically excluded from many clinical trials and available risk scores. Until now, doctors had no standard tool to guide treatment in this vulnerable group.

The lower hinge of immunoglobulin G (IgG), an overlooked part of the antibody, acts as a structural and functional control hub, according to a study by researchers at Science Tokyo. Deleting a single amino acid in this region transforms a full-length antibody into a stable half-IgG1 molecule with altered immune activity.

Cells operate on rules not vibes, including when on the precipice of persisting or perishing. Yet, with prior research methods, scientists studying this phenomenon had to infer how cells choose to sustain themselves or self-destruct based on the output of their protein factories. While much more advanced than a pundit's vibe check, these analyses were constrained by the inability to account for the activity of these proteins after their construction.

From TVs and smartwatches to rapidly emerging VR and AR devices, micro-LEDs are a next-generation display technology in which each LED—smaller than the thickness of a human hair—emits light on its own. Among the three primary colors required for full-color displays—red, green, and blue—the realization of high-performance red micro-LEDs has long been considered the most difficult.

Industrial dye pollution remains one of the most persistent and hazardous challenges in global wastewater management. The dyes from textile and chemical manufacturing sectors are difficult to remove, non-biodegradable, and can be toxic to plants, animals, and humans. However, conventional treatment technologies for dyes often fail to efficiently purify the wastewater without significant trade-offs.

A novel apparatus at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has made extremely precise measurements of unstable ruthenium nuclei. The measurements are a significant milestone in nuclear physics because they closely match predictions made by sophisticated nuclear models.

For the first time, scientists have used ultraviolet (UV) light, a low-cost and readily available energy source, to successfully synthesize more sustainable and recyclable polymer materials. Led by green chemistry experts at Flinders University, the development is a major step in making polymers high in sulfur content for more sustainable plastic alternatives using waste materials.

Research on the perception of color differences is helping resolve a century-old understanding of color developed by Erwin Schrödinger. Los Alamos scientist Roxana Bujack led a team that used geometry to mathematically define the perception of color as it relates to hue, saturation and lightness.

In a study led by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Levent Beker from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Koç University, researchers have developed a specialized wound dressing that incorporates a sensor that continuously measures the pH level of the wound environment. This technology aims to facilitate the monitoring of the healing process, particularly in chronic wounds. The study is published in the journal ACS Sensors.

Antibodies are the immune system's precision tools for recognizing and neutralizing viruses, bacteria and other foreign substances that can make us ill. These proteins circulate in the bloodstream and are built from chains of amino acids. Yet pinning down the exact amino acid sequence of an antibody is surprisingly tough.

If you say a few words, generative AI will understand who you are—maybe even better than your close family and friends. A new University of Michigan study found that widely available generative AI models (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, LLaMa) can predict personality, key behaviors and daily emotions as or even more accurately than those closest to you. The findings appear in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

Bees navigate their surroundings with astonishing precision. Their brains are now inspiring the design of tiny, low-power chips that could one day guide miniature robots and sensors.

Researchers have discovered that natural "sunscreen" compounds found in algae and cyanobacteria may also support skin and heart health. By comparing two mycosporine-like amino acids, the team showed for the first time that these molecules can block a key enzyme involved in blood pressure control in laboratory tests, while also offering antioxidant and anti-aging effects. The findings open new possibilities for cosmetics and functional foods based on nature-derived ingredients.

Scientists have uncovered a 400-million-year-old genetic secret that gave spiders the ability to produce silk and weave their webs. Spiders didn't begin their journey on Earth in the same way as they are known today. Arthropods such as our eight-legged weaver owe much of their evolutionary success to the slow, repeated modification of appendages. One of the crucial changes that allowed spiders to survive and diversify into more than 53,000 species was the spinnerets, a silk-spinning organ found on the underside of a spider's abdomen.

The class of anti-inflammatory drugs known as TNF-inhibitors has brought relief to many sufferers of rheumatoid arthritis, but they don't work for up to 4 of every 10 patients.

Since it was first detected in the U.S. in 2014, H5N1 avian influenza, commonly known as bird flu, has jumped from wild birds to farm animals and then to people, causing more than 70 human cases in the U.S. since 2022, including two fatalities. The virus continues to circulate among animals, giving it the opportunity to develop the ability to spread among humans and potentially cause another pandemic.

Dr. Leonardos Gkouvelis, researcher at LMU's University Observatory Munich and member of the ORIGINS Excellence Cluster, has solved a fundamental mathematical problem that had obstructed the interpretation of exoplanet atmospheres for decades. In a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, Gkouvelis presents the first closed-form analytical theory of transmission spectroscopy that accounts for how atmospheric opacity varies with pressure—an effect that is crucial in the scientific exploration of real atmospheres but had until now been considered mathematically intractable.

A tiny roundworm has helped University of Queensland scientists uncover minuscule structures in skin tissue that may protect the body's ability to feel temperature, touch and pain. The research is published in Science Advances.

Using data collected by NASA's Parker Solar Probe during its closest approach to the sun, a University of Arizona-led research team has measured the dynamics and ever-changing "shell" of hot gas from where the solar wind originates.

A baby's babbling may sound like nonsense, but it's actually an extended act of trial-and-error learning. As babies produce different sounds, their brains note which attempts succeed and which ones fail. Over time, that feedback leads to improvements and, eventually, fluid speech.

As the sun rises over the Kalahari Desert, meerkat groups emerge from their burrows and gather closely, turning their bodies toward the warmth of the early light. These quiet morning moments are more than a way to warm up; they offer a revealing glimpse into the social lives of these highly cooperative mammals.

A large share of medicines developed today may never reach patients for a surprisingly simple reason: they cannot dissolve well enough in water. For most treatments, the oral route remains the gold standard because it is convenient and familiar. However, for a pill to work, its active ingredients must first dissolve in the fluids of the gastrointestinal tract before they can be absorbed into the bloodstream.

Astronomers at Texas A&M University have discovered a rare, tightly packed collision of galaxies in the early universe, suggesting that galaxies were interacting and shaping their surroundings far earlier than scientists had predicted. Using observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the researchers identified an ongoing merger event of at least five galaxies about 800 million years after the Big Bang, along with evidence that the collision was redistributing heavy elements beyond the galaxies themselves.

Genetic ancestry plays a key role in determining the behavior of head and neck tumors and may help explain why African-American patients survive for half as long as their counterparts of European ancestry, according to a new review study led by researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine's (UMSOM) Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS) and the University of Maryland Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center (UMGCCC).

New research conducted by paleontologists from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the CNRS (France) documents the earliest occurrence of a fossilized regurgitation produced by a strictly terrestrial predator from the early Permian Bromacker locality. Led by MfN doctoral researcher Arnaud Rebillard, the international team identified the bone content preserved within the regurgitation and discovered remains belonging to three animals of different species and body sizes.

We build AI systems to mimic the human brain: writing emails, answering questions and predicting what comes next. But new research aims to turn that relationship around—using large language models (LLMs) to explore how our brains anticipate and process stories.

Musical chills are pleasurable shivers or goosebump sensations that people feel when they resonate with the music they're listening to. They reduce stress and have beneficial side effects, but they are difficult to induce reliably. Now, researchers from Japan have developed a practical system that uses in-ear electroencephalography sensors to measure the brain's response to music in real time and provide music suggestions that enhance chills.

Hydrogen-powered vehicles used on ground operations could help slash carbon emissions and support airports to reach net-zero targets, new research suggests. The Newcastle University research shows that key airport stakeholders have positive attitudes towards hydrogen-powered ground support equipment (GSE). This highlights their environmental, operational, and health benefits, including zero direct emissions at the point of use, less smell and reduced noise, making them a promising option for supporting airport decarbonization.

If you name it, you can tame it. That's a new tool for fighting cigarette cravings, according to assistant research psychologist Golnaz Tabibnia.

Anxiety is the second leading cause of disability and mortality worldwide. Roughly a third of adults in the United States will experience an anxiety disorder within their lifetime, and the median age of onset is 17 years old. Anxiety increases the risk for multiple other problematic outcomes, including depression and suicide.

A team of researchers have identified a fundamental mechanism that links the 24-hour circadian cycle to the precise repair of DNA breaks. This study, conducted by researchers from the Andalusian Center for Molecular Biology and Regenerative Medicine (CABIMER) and the University of Seville, in collaboration with the Virgen Macarena University Hospital, focused on the circadian protein Cryptochrome1 (CRY1), suggests that the time of day when radiotherapy is administered can significantly influence the effectiveness of treatment for certain types of cancer. The paper is published in Nature Communications.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems, such as the models underpinning the functioning of ChatGPT and various other online platforms, has grown exponentially over the past few years. Current hardware and electronic devices, however, might not be best suited for running these systems, which are computationally intensive and can drain huge amounts of energy.

Amazon.com Inc. is in talks to invest as much as $50 billion in OpenAI and expand an agreement that involves selling computer power to the AI startup, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. OpenAI is also weighing a deal in which Amazon would use the startup's artificial intelligence models, which power the popular ChatGPT chatbot, in its products and platforms, the person said. Amazon's employees could also access the model for their work.

Apple's iPhone sales soared to a new quarterly record during the holiday season, despite artificial intelligence blunders that prompted the technology trendsetter to get a helping hand from Google.

AI can help displaced people avoid exploitation, but humans must call the shots, warn experts. For Susan Achiech, life began in Kenya's Kakuma refugee camp, where her South Sudanese parents fled to for safety in the early 1990s. Now 26, she lives in Canada, running her own gaming company, Tech Femme Algorithms, while working as an insurance advisor and studying gaming programming.

Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory are developing the next generation of solid-fuel ramjet (SFRJ) propulsion, addressing one of the field's most persistent challenges: understanding and predicting what happens inside an operating combustor.

New technologies developed to extract oil and gas from deep within Earth have also opened the door to accessing super-high temperature heat just about anywhere. These enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) could play a valuable role in the global transition to clean, renewable energy and for powering new data centers by significantly reducing land requirements and infrastructure needs and eliminating the need for other constant sources of electricity, such as coal and nuclear, according to a recent Stanford University study.

MIT researchers have designed silicon structures that can perform calculations in an electronic device using excess heat instead of electricity. These tiny structures could someday enable more energy-efficient computation. In this computing method, input data are encoded as a set of temperatures using the waste heat already present in a device.

When it comes to powering aircraft, jet engines need dense, energy-packed fuels. Right now, nearly all of that fuel comes from petroleum, as batteries don't yet deliver enough punch for most flights. Scientists have long dreamed of a synthetic alternative: teaching microbes to ferment plant material into high-performance jet fuels. But designing these microbial "mini-factories" has traditionally been slow and expensive because of the unpredictability of biological systems.

The world may be running out of sand suitable for concrete. Researchers are therefore testing a possible solution for using desert sand as a material. Ren Wei and several researchers at NTNU and the University of Tokyo have made a prototype of a new material: botanical sand concrete. It combines desert sand with plant-based additives and is made by pressing desert sand and tiny pieces of wood together, along with heat. Their paper is published in the Journal of Building Engineering.

US self-driving car company Waymo said Thursday it is working with UK partners to launch driverless robotaxis in London, which are expected to begin operating later this year.

Achieving high reliability in AI systems—such as autonomous vehicles that stay on course even in snowstorms or medical AI that can diagnose cancer from low-resolution images—depends heavily on model robustness. While data augmentation has long been a go-to technique for enhancing this robustness, the specific conditions under which it works best remained unclear—until now.

Researchers have developed a new method for 3D printing objects with very different properties, including levels of hardness and transparency, on a pixel-by-pixel basis while using commonly available materials and inexpensive 3D printers. The method, described in the journal Science by researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, Sandia National Laboratories and two other national laboratories, could lend itself to the creation of realistic models of body parts for medical students to practice surgery on or new types of personal protective gear.

Since it was invented in the 1980s, 3D printing has moved from the laboratory to the factory, the home and even outer space.

The promise of smart wearables is often talked up, and while there have been some impressive innovations, we are still not seeing their full potential. Among the things holding them back is that the chips that operate them are stiff, brittle, and power-hungry. To overcome these problems, researchers from Tsinghua University and Peking University in China have developed FLEXI, a new family of flexible chips. They are thinner than a human hair, flexible enough to be folded thousands of times, and incorporate AI.

Recent research in Sweden and Finland shows how used concrete's lifespan can be extended another 50 to 100 years when incorporated into new construction. A team from KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Tampere University report they have developed a framework that enables builders to reuse structural elements confidently, saving resources and reducing the climate footprint of construction.

Some blind and low-vision fans will have unprecedented access to the Super Bowl thanks to a tactile device that tracks the ball, vibrates on key plays and provides real-time audio.