Good news, everyone!

A multi-institutional study led by researchers at UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and UC San Diego has uncovered new genetic rules that determine how powerful immune cells—known as CD8+ killer T cells—choose between becoming long-lasting, protective defenders or slipping into exhausted, dysfunctional states. The findings, published in Nature, reveal new strategies for sustaining immune memory while preserving the ability to fight cancer and infections, with broad implications for immunotherapy and infectious disease research.

A research team from the Institute of Metal Research (IMR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed an efficient, stable, atomic-scale catalyst for carbon monoxide (CO) oxidation. This advancement offers promising strategies for environmental catalysis and designing low-cost, high-performance catalysts. The study, published as a cover article in Nano-Micro Letters on January 5, addresses a long-standing challenge in catalysis.

Methadone treatment for opioid use—which cuts the risk of death by overdose in half—among individuals insured by Medicaid-insured increased substantially after 2010, according to a new Penn Medicine analysis. But researchers say that since as few as a quarter of people with opioid use disorder receive medication treatment, the study highlights a need for expanded access.

Groundwater is considered the largest reservoir of liquid freshwater on Earth and a habitat for complex microbial communities that drive essential biogeochemical cycles. Until now, the role of viruses that infect microorganisms in this hidden ecosystem was largely unknown. An international research team has, for the first time, created a comprehensive picture of viral diversity and function in a groundwater system.

As people age, muscles naturally lose mass and strength, a condition known as sarcopenia. The decline can make everyday activities harder and increases the risk of falls, disability, and early death. At the moment, the best defense is regular exercise throughout our lives, as effective treatments to slow or prevent muscle atrophy are limited. Progress has been slowed in part because in most vertebrates, aging unfolds over many years, making it difficult for biomedical researchers to study quickly in the laboratory.

A single queen in the tropics; large colonies in deserts; workers with uniform morphology in temperate regions; ant social structures vary according to environmental conditions. This is shown, for the first time at a global scale, by research carried out at the Department of Ecology and Evolution of the University of Lausanne and published in PNAS.

A new study has detected a DNA marker in a gene encoding a key enzyme known as cytochrome P450 that helps mosquitoes to break down and survive exposure to pyrethroids, the main insecticides used for treating bed nets. This new finding, published on the bioRxiv preprint server and slated for publication in Science Translational Medicine, will help to better implement insecticide resistance management strategies and contribute to reducing the burden of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, home to 90% of cases globally.

Dogs who scored well on the Wesen test, which is used to analyze a dog's temperament, tended to have lower levels of cortisol, often called the "stress hormone," and higher levels of serotonin, often called the "happiness hormone," according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS One by Minjung Yoon from Kyungpook National University, Republic of Korea, and colleagues.

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine report in Science Advances a breakthrough in human norovirus (HuNoV) research. Norovirus is a leading cause of acute viral gastroenteritis worldwide with severe outcomes mostly among young children, the elderly, and people with weakened or compromised immune systems.

Around the world, millions of families have suffered forcible separation, through war, trafficking, natural disasters, or socioeconomic crises. In China, family separation is a particularly large-scale and far-reaching problem. Following the enactment of the country's One Child Policy in 1979, many children were abandoned or trafficked and then adopted either domestically or internationally.

What do microplastics, water color, and satellites have in common? Dr. Karl Kaiser, professor of marine and coastal environmental science in the College of Marine Sciences and Maritime Studies at Texas A&M University at Galveston is exploring an innovative idea: using satellites to spot microplastics in the ocean. How? By studying how tiny plastic particles change the way light reflects off the water—and how that changes the color we see from space. If this connection works, it could give scientists a powerful new tool to track microplastic pollution across the globe without ever leaving orbit.

Snakes may well be one of nature's greatest predators, capable of eating whole deer or even crocodiles, but just as impressive is that they can go months, or even a whole year, without a single meal. And now an international team of scientists thinks they know how they do it.

The United States is a rapidly aging country. By the year 2050, nearly 1 in 4 Americans will be 65 or older, and many will live into their 90s and beyond. This leads to health care and social support concerns and also begs the question: What is the quality of life in those later years?

Preventive cholera vaccination programs will restart globally after they were halted for nearly four years due to a vaccine shortage, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

For over a century and a half, life expectancy has steadily increased in the wealthiest countries. Spectacular climbs in longevity have been noted in the 20th century, correlating with the slump in infectious illnesses and advances in cardiovascular medicine.

A study by researchers from the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute gauges how an initiative in New York's Hudson Valley is helping farmers and community organizations build more equitable regional food systems and advance food sovereignty, a movement focused on local control over food systems and fair conditions for both producers and consumers.

Newcastle University engineers are at the forefront of adhesive technology that promises to change how we recycle. They have developed a reversible glue that sticks things together like any other glue but can debond on demand. The glue's reversible nature means it can be used in a multitude of applications, from laminates to bottle labels. Dissimilar materials that are glued together can be easily separated, enabling their reuse, repurposing, or recycling.

Results from the largest-ever clinical trial of its kind found administering a synthetic protein can reduce bleeding and improve outcomes for certain patients at the highest risk of continued bleeding following a type of stroke called an intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH).

Plants are a rich and renewable source of compounds used in medicines, food ingredients, and cosmetics. Since growing an entire plant just to extract a few specific compounds is rather inefficient, scientists are turning to plant cell cultures as a more sustainable alternative.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and its Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy have released updated consensus guidelines and an associated reproducibility study to standardize how pathologists assess tumor response to neoadjuvant therapy (administered prior to surgery) across a dozen solid tumor types.

Satellites and spacecraft in the vast region between Earth and the moon and just beyond—called cislunar space—are crucial for space exploration, scientific advancement and national security. But figuring out where exactly to put them into a stable orbit can be a huge, computationally expensive challenge.

How far back does the rich history of Italian olives and oil stretch? My new research, published in the American Journal of Archaeology, synthesizing and reevaluating existing archaeological evidence, suggests olive trees have been exploited for more than 6,000 years. The first Italian olive oil was produced perhaps 4,000 years ago.

Swinburne researchers have turned old, unwanted mattresses into safe and sustainable building insulation materials using fungi. The team grew a common fungus together with shredded mattress foam to create a new material that is solid and lightweight. Their research is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

A team led by UCL researchers with Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) and Moorfields Eye Hospital, found B cells—alongside T cells—play a key role in arthritis-related eye disease (JIA uveitis), a condition that can cause long-term vision loss in children. The study challenges how the disease has been previously understood, and could open the door to new treatments that help protect children's sight.

A UCLA research team has identified the best design for a promising new type of immunotherapy that could be mass-produced to treat multiple solid tumors. The study focused on engineered invariant natural killer T cells, or NKT cells—powerful immune cells with a unique ability to infiltrate solid tumors—and systematically compared four targeting systems, called chimeric antigen receptors, or CARs, that direct these cells to attack cancer.

An international research team has uncovered new insights into healthy brain aging. The researchers found that aging leads to the accumulation of defective energy molecules in the brains of aged mice, like humans, and identified the responsible genetic sequence. Importantly, no evidence was found that this accumulation would impair brain function, highlighting that age-related brain changes are not necessarily harmful.

Imagine diagnosing one of the most challenging neurological diseases with just a quick finger-prick, a few drops of blood and a test sent in the post. This may sound like science fiction, but we are hoping our research could soon help it become a reality.

The world is looking for more clean water. Intense storms and warmer weather have worsened droughts and reduced the amount of clean water underground and in rivers and lakes on the surface.

Although women have always been part of the mapping landscape, their contributions to cartography have long been overlooked.

A good home, or Minosin Kikiwa in Cree, is the foundation of dignity in later life, according to the Indigenous seniors who spoke to us. Yet "every year the rent goes sky-high and it's tough to be homeless," an anonymous participant said.

Informing people about political deepfakes through text-based information and interactive games both improve people's ability to spot AI-generated video and audio that falsely depict politicians, according to a study my colleagues and I conducted.

When floodwaters washed away Woudou Oumar's home in northern Cameroon, he and his family lost not only shelter but hope. Then a government-supported cash transfer arrived. "The money transfer was a real boost for me and my family," he says, explaining how he rebuilt his house, bought seeds for farming, paid for his daughters' schooling, covered his son's medical care after the disaster, and became more hopeful.

Scientists at Rutgers University–Newark have developed a first-of-its-kind RNA-based nanotechnology that assembles itself inside living human cells and can be programmed to stop propagation of harmful cells. The findings, recently published in Nature Communications, represent a major breakthrough in biomedical research. The researchers are now in the midst of testing the technology on human cancer cells as a potential cure for the disease but have not yet finished the study or published results.

A new study has uncovered a hidden step that helps the deadliest malaria parasite survive and multiply inside the human body. Researchers studying Plasmodium falciparum found that the parasite relies on a brief but essential stage, nicknamed the "Crown" stage, to make sure a crucial internal structure is passed on correctly when it divides. The discovery offers a fresh look at how the parasite reproduces and could point to new ways to stop malaria by disrupting this process.

Instructors cracking a joke here and there could make students feel better about the class as a whole, according to new research from the University of Georgia published in the Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education. Unlike lectures with packed auditoriums, smaller lab courses can make it easier for teachers and students to get to know each other. A few jokes during class could help students feel more relaxed and eager to participate, the new study suggests.

Caltech scientists have developed a way to guide light on silicon wafers with low signal loss approaching that of optical fiber at visible wavelengths. This accomplishment paves the way for a new generation of ultra-coherent and efficient photonic integrated circuits (PICs), which will have a profound impact in a variety of on-chip applications, including precision measurements, such as optical clocks for timing and gyroscopes for rotation, as well as AI data-center communications and even quantum computing.

Dyscalculia, characterized by deficits in number sense and calculation skills, affects approximately 5%–7% of the population and often persists into adulthood. A team from the University of Barcelona and the University of Vic—Central University of Catalonia (UVic-UCC) has developed and validated a digital game to address mathematical difficulties in children with this disorder in the early and middle stages of primary education.

New tools unlock new discoveries in science. So when a new type of non-destructive technology becomes widely available, it's inevitable that planetary scientists will get their hands on it to test it on some meteorites. A new paper, available on the arXiv preprint server, by Estrid Naver of the Technical University of Denmark and her co-authors, describes the use of two of those (relatively) new tools to one of the most famous meteorites in the world—NWA 7034—also known as Black Beauty.

Journalism in the United States is in crisis: Local newspapers are shuttering at an alarming rate, large cities that were once served by multiple daily local newspapers now barely sustain one or two major outlets, and the government has made concentrated attacks against public media. A new report from the Roosevelt Institute, co-authored by Victor Pickard, C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the Annenberg School for Communication, traces the roots of these crises and offers an evidence-based roadmap to rebuild public media.

From autonomous cars to video games, reinforcement learning (machine learning through interaction with environments) can have an important impact. That may feel especially true, for example, when you're a passenger late for dinner in an autonomous car that has learned the efficient way home. Work in Jr-Shin Li's lab develops mathematically rigorous and computationally efficient techniques to transform extremely complex reinforcement learning problems into a manageable domain.

A new study conducted at Tel Aviv University introduces an innovative approach to treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), generating particular interest in light of the sharp rise in the number of individuals coping with the condition following the events of October 7 and the Gaza war. According to the study's preliminary findings, treatment using noninvasive brain stimulation succeeded in significantly reducing intrusive memories, such as flashbacks and intrusive thoughts, which are considered among the most severe and treatment-resistant symptoms of PTSD.

Did you skip your last high school reunion? If so, you may want to reconsider when the next anniversary rolls around. The experience could lead to increased feelings of gratitude, according to a new study led by Jeffrey Green, Ph.D., a professor of psychology in Virginia Commonwealth University's College of Humanities and Sciences.

The aviation industry accounts for a significant share of global carbon emissions. In response, the international community is expanding mandatory use of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), which is produced from organic waste or biomass and is expected to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional fossil-based jet fuel. However, high production costs remain a major challenge, leading some airlines in Europe and Japan to pass SAF-related costs on to consumers.

Researchers from the Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and the Institute of Neurophysiology at Uniklinik RWTH Aachen in Germany have deciphered the molecular signature of so-called sleeping nociceptors—a type of pain-sensing nerve cell that normally remains quiet and does not respond to touch or pressure, but can become overactive and drive chronic pain.

A key molecular mechanism drives the growth of liver cell cancer while simultaneously suppressing the body's immune response to the tumor. This has been published in the journal Nature by a team led by researchers from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), the University Hospital of Tübingen, and the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, California. However, the results also show that this very mechanism could help identify patients who respond particularly well to immunotherapy in the future, thus opening up new therapeutic approaches.

Instagram is one of Australia's most popular social media platforms. Almost two in three Aussies have an account.

Empirical research is being carried out for revolutionary air conditioning technology that will contribute to solving environmental issues. At the forefront of these endeavors is Nagahiro Tsuyoshi, project professor and director of the Center for Smarttech System Co-creation in the Carbon Neutral Promotion Headquarters.

New research that surveyed more than 440 project managers worldwide has highlighted the critical connection between mindfulness and the adoption of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in the workplace. Lead author of the study, Dr. Eden Li from the School of Business and Law at Edith Cowan University (ECU) said that effective GenAI adoption requires not only technical skills but also mindfulness to navigate its complexities and challenges.

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are breathing new life into the scientific understanding of neptunium, a unique, radioactive, metallic element—and a key precursor for production of the plutonium-238, or Pu-238, that fuels exploratory spacecraft.

As the world races to electrify everything from cars to cities, the demand for high-performance, long-lasting batteries is soaring. But the uncomfortable truth is this: many of the batteries powering our "green" technologies aren't as green as we might think.

Mechanical engineers at Duke University have demonstrated a proof-of-concept method for programming mechanical properties into solid Lego-like building blocks. By controlling the solidity of hundreds of individual cells in specific patterns, the approach could allow futuristic robotics to alter their mechanical properties and functionalities on the fly.

Metamaterials are composites with a very precisely controlled structure. It is this structure that determines the properties of the metamaterial, not the substances it is made of. Typically, a metamaterial consists of repeating identical blocks called unit cells. New research by Ph.D. student Shyam Veluvali, Prof. Anastasiia Krushynska, and colleagues from the University of Groningen, UMCG, and Karlstad University in Sweden show that the overall mechanical response of metamaterials depends on how many unit cells are joined together, and how they are arranged.

A research team led by Professor Junsuk Rho at POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology) has developed a secure hologram platform that operates solely based on the wavelength of light and the spacing between metasurface layers. The technology makes hacking and counterfeiting virtually impossible, and is expected to be widely adopted for security cards, anti-counterfeiting, and military communications. The paper is published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

The plastic bottle you just tossed in the recycling bin could provide structural support for your future house. MIT engineers are using recycled plastic to 3D print construction-grade beams, trusses, and other structural elements that could one day offer lighter, modular, and more sustainable alternatives to traditional wood-based framing.

Friendly robots, the ones people love to love, are quirky: R2-D2, C-3PO, WALL-E, BB-8, Marvin, Roz and Baymax. They're emotional, prone to panic or bossy, empathetic and able to communicate like humans do—even when they communicate in only beeps and bloops. At Purdue University, Sooyeon Jeong, robot communication and behavior expert, is working to make robots as friendly and helpful as possible in nonfictional settings.

If you break open a chicken bone, you won't find a solid mass of white material inside. Instead, you will see a complex, spongelike network of tiny struts and pillars, and a lot of empty space.

As the International Olympic Committee (IOC) embraces AI-assisted judging, this technology promises greater consistency and improved transparency. Yet research suggests that trust, legitimacy, and cultural values may matter just as much as technical accuracy.

More than 35 years after the first website went online, the web has evolved from static pages to complex interactive systems, often with security added as an afterthought. To mitigate risks, developers use security headers that instruct browsers how to handle content securely. Early on, browser support was inconsistent.

Self-driving car star Waymo on Monday said it raised $16 billion in a funding round that valued the Alphabet subsidiary at $126 billion.

Thermoelectric conversion devices offer a promising route for sustainable heat-to-energy conversion. They are particularly attractive for recovering energy from waste heat, such as that produced by conventional fossil fuel-based engines, improving their overall energy efficiency.

The runaway success of the Switch 2 console drove up Nintendo's net profit by more than 50% in the nine months to December, the Japanese video game giant said Tuesday.

Plants grown for biofuel have the potential to power our travel industry, but an important fraction of their chemical power has remained stubbornly difficult to recover. New research from the Center for Advanced Biofuel and Bioproduct Innovation on the University of Illinois campus has demonstrated a way to preserve native lignin structure, a key component of plant matter for conversion to other valuable products, putting an improved pathway for biofuel and bioproduct production within reach.

As we shift toward more sustainable fuels, natural gas and biogas, which mainly contain methane (CH4), have become important sources of energy and raw materials for chemical production. However, these gases also contain impurities that must be removed before use. One major contaminant is carbon dioxide (CO2), which reduces the energy content of the gas and can cause corrosion in pipelines.

Tending crops by day and then logging on for a night shift of data labeling, 27-year-old Chandmani Kerketta is part of a rising rural Indian workforce helping power an artificial intelligence revolution.