Scientific Frontline: 2025

Wednesday, November 19, 2025

Human biology is ill-adapted to modern cities

A new study has found that modern cities are having a huge impact on our health and wellbeing.
Photo Credit: Patrick Robert Doyle

Researchers from Loughborough University and the University of Zurich found that rapid industrialization has reshaped human habitats so dramatically that our biology may no longer be able to keep up.

The paper, published in Biological Reviews, highlights that densely populated, polluted, and industrialized environments are impairing core biological functions essential for survival and reproduction (i.e., the ‘evolutionary fitness’ of our species).

LipiPB Red shows longer fluorescence lifetimes in stable lipid droplets (red) and shorter lifetimes as they undergo degradation (blue). This probe revealed that lipid droplets sequentially degrade, where lipolysis precedes lipophagy.
Image Credit: Issey Takahashi, Nagoya University

A research team has developed a fluorescent probe that allows scientists to visualize how individual lipid droplets break down inside living cells in real time. The probe changes its fluorescence properties depending on the chemical composition of each droplet, which allows researchers to observe not only their location within cells, but also their metabolic activity during lipid breakdown. The findings, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, may contribute to the development of new strategies to treat metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes, as well as cancers associated with abnormal lipid metabolism.

“Lipid droplets are cellular organelles that not only store excess lipids but also play critical roles in lipid metabolism. However, understanding how individual droplets function has been challenging,” Professor Shigehiro Yamaguchi, from the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITbM) at Nagoya University, explained.

The image shows the nanosized atom probe tomography specimens on a silicon microtip coupon.
Photo Credit: © Tong Li

A research team has discovered how to keep a cobalt-based oxide electrocatalyst active and stable. The element chromium plays a crucial role in this process.

Although chromium itself is not an active element, its continuous dissolution enables a reversible surface transformation that keeps the Co-Cr spinel oxide electrocatalyst active and stable. This could significantly improve the efficiency of hydrogen production. These findings stem from researchers at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, the Max Planck Institutes for Sustainable Materials in Düsseldorf and for Coal Research in Mülheim, Forschungszentrum Jülich and the Helmholtz Institute for Renewable Energies in Erlangen-Nürnberg. They report their results in the journal Nature Communications.

Organic electrodes
Electrophysiological recording of retinal activity on a precision setup using controlled red-light conditions that do not alter the retina’s response. The experiment captures how the retina reacts to infrared photovoltaic stimulation
Photo Credit: Technische Universität Wien

In some people, the light receptors on the retina are damaged, but the underlying nerve structure is still intact. In this case, a visual implant could potentially help in the future: Biocompatible, thin photovoltaic films register radiation, convert it into electrical signals, and use these to stimulate living nerve tissue. This has now been achieved for the first time in laboratory tests at TU Wien.

Microplastics hit male arteries hard

Changcheng Zhou Professor, Biomedical Sciences
Photo Credit: Courtesy of University of California, Riverside

A mouse study led by University of California, Riverside biomedical scientists suggests that everyday exposure to microplastics — tiny fragments shed from packaging, clothing, and countless plastic products — may accelerate the development of atherosclerosis, the artery-clogging process that leads to heart attacks and strokes. The harmful effects were seen only in male mice, offering new clues about how microplastics may affect cardiovascular health in humans.

“Our findings fit into a broader pattern seen in cardiovascular research, where males and females often respond differently,” said lead researcher Changcheng Zhou, a professor of biomedical sciences in the UCR School of Medicine. “Although the precise mechanism isn’t yet known, factors like sex chromosomes and hormones, particularly the protective effects of estrogen, may play a role.”

Mattia Poinelli, a UC Irvine postdoctoral scholar in Earth system science and NASA JPL research affiliate, outlines in a newly published study the impact of submesoscale events – small, subsurface ocean eddies and vortices – on Antarctica’s ice sheets. “Despite being largely overlooked in the context of ice-ocean interactions,” he says, “[they] are among the primary drivers of ice loss.”
Photo Credit: Steve Zylius / UC Irvine

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have identified stormlike circulation patterns beneath Antarctic ice shelves that are causing aggressive melting, with major implications for global sea level rise projections.

In a paper published recently in Nature Geoscience, the scientists say their study is the first to examine ocean-induced ice shelf melting events from a weather timescale of just days versus seasonal or annual timeframes. This enabled them to match “ocean storm” activity with intense ice melt at Thwaites Glacier and Pine Island Glacier in the climate change-threatened Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica.

The research team relied on climate simulation modeling and moored observation tools to gain 200-meter-resolution pictures of submesoscale ocean features between 1 and 10 kilometers across, tiny in the context of the vast ocean and huge slabs of floating ice in Antarctica.

Scanning electron microscopy image of the engineered 3D bone marrow tissue colonized with human blood cells (red).
Image Credit: Andrés García-García, University of Basel, Department of Biomedicine

Our body’s “blood factory” consists of specialized tissue made up of bone cells, blood vessels, nerves and other cell types. Now, researchers have succeeded for the first time in recreating this cellular complexity in the laboratory using only human cells. The novel system could reduce the need for animal experiments for many applications.

The bone marrow usually works quietly in the background. It only comes into focus when something goes wrong, such as in blood cancers. In these cases, understanding exactly how blood production in our body works, and how this process fails, becomes critical.

Typically, bone marrow research relies heavily on animal models and oversimplified cell cultures in the laboratory. Now, researchers from the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel and University Hospital Basel have developed a realistic model of bone marrow engineered entirely from human cells. This model may become a valuable tool not only for blood cancer research, but also for drug testing and potentially for personalized therapies, as reported by a team of researchers led by Professor Ivan Martin and Dr Andrés García-García in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

The Canoe Brook Floating Solar Photovoltaic (FPV) project, the largest in the United States at the time of completion at 8.9 MW, is located on a water storage reservoir is New Jersey.
Photo Credit Prateek Joshi / NREL

Floating solar panels are emerging as a promising clean energy solution with environmental benefits, but a new study finds those effects vary significantly depending on where the systems are deployed.

Researchers from Oregon State University and the U.S. Geological Survey modeled the impact of floating solar photovoltaic systems on 11 reservoirs across six states. Their simulations showed that the systems consistently cooled surface waters and altered water temperatures at different layers within the reservoirs. However, the panels also introduced increased variability in habitat suitability for aquatic species.

“Different reservoirs are going to respond differently based on factors like depth, circulation dynamics and the fish species that are important for management,” said Evan Bredeweg, lead author of the study and a former postdoctoral scholar at Oregon State. “There’s no one-size-fits-all formula for designing these systems. It’s ecology - it’s messy.”

Photo Credit: Courtesy of University of Tokyo

Researchers at the University of Tokyo developed an experimental method to induce a strong physiological response linked to psychological pressure by making participants aim for a streak of success in a task. Their findings suggest this approach reproduces pressurelike conditions in a laboratory setting more effectively than traditional methods, affording easier access to the study of this state. That in turn could open up research into how pressure influences human performance in physical and intellectual tasks.

Whether in an exam hall or on the field, to “crack” under pressure is a common trope. But what’s the reality behind this idea? It’s easy to assume that with greater pressure comes greater chance of losing your composure. To know, then, how to overcome this could yield greater performance benefits. But the path to study such ideas is far from simple. Being rigorous in the field of psychology is extremely difficult, as there are limitless factors that can impact different people in different ways. Previous experimental methods have been limited in that they failed to induce strong physiological arousal.

SwRI turbocharges its hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine

SwRI has a multidisciplinary team dedicated to Hydrogen Energy Research initiatives to deploy decarbonization technologies across a broad spectrum of industries. In 2022, SwRI began modifying a heavy-duty natural gas-fueled engine to run on 100% hydrogen fuel, successfully demonstrated in 2024. SwRI continues to research, design and innovate on H2-ICE technology.
Photo Credit: Southwest Research Institute

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has upgraded its hydrogen-powered heavy-duty internal combustion engine (H2-ICE) with a state-of-the-art turbocharger. The upgrades have significantly improved performance across the board, making the engine competitive with current long-haul diesel engines focused on fuel economy while maintaining near-zero tailpipe emissions.

In 2023, SwRI converted a traditional natural gas-fueled internal combustion engine to run solely on hydrogen fuel with minimal modifications. It was integrated into a Class-8 truck as part of the Institute’s H2-ICE project to demonstrate a cost-efficient hydrogen-fueled engine as an option for zero-tailpipe carbon dioxide heavy-duty transportation.

Photo Credit: Lidia Stawinska

Entomology is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. Its primary goals are to understand the biology, behavior, physiology, ecology, evolution, and classification of insects, as well as their interactions with humans, other organisms, and the environment.

The balloon-borne telescope XL-Calibur was launched on a six-day flight from the Swedish Space Corporation’s Esrange Space Center in July 2024. During that flight, the telescope took measurements from the black hole Cygnus X-1, located about 7,000 light-years away. WashU researchers will use those results to improve computer models for simulating and uncovering further mysteries of black holes.
Photo Credit: NASA/SSC

An international collaboration of physicists including researchers at Washington University in St. Louis has made measurements to better understand how matter falls into black holes and how enormous amounts of energy and light are released in the process.

The scientists pointed a balloon-borne telescope called XL-Calibur at a black hole, Cygnus X-1, located about 7,000 light-years from Earth. “The observations we made will be used by scientists to test increasingly realistic, state-of-the-art computer simulations of physical processes close to the black hole,” said Henric Krawczynski, the Wilfred R. and Ann Lee Konneker Distinguished Professor in Physics and a fellow at WashU’s McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences.

Computer-rendered split image of bacteria on a tooth surface. When microbial communication is “on”, disease-associated species grow (left). Disrupting this communication (right) promotes health-associated bacteria.
Image Credit: University of Minnesota

Like all living things, bacteria adapt to survive. Over time, bacteria have been developing resistance to common antibiotics and disinfectants, which poses a growing problem for healthcare and sanitation. However, many species of bacteria are beneficial and even essential for human health. What if there was a way to change the behavior of bacteria in the body to prevent illness and poor health outcomes?

Bacteria are very “talkative.” Constant streams of communication, known as quorum sensing, occur between and among the 700 species of bacteria that live in a human mouth. A number of them communicate via special molecules called N-acyl homoserine lactones (AHLs).

Joakim Larsson, Professor at the Institute of Biomedicine, Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, and director of CARe, Centre for Antibiotic Resistance Research.
Photo Credit: Johan Wingborg

A global study led by researchers at the Centre for Antibiotic Resistance Research (CARe) in Gothenburg, Sweden shows that municipal wastewater is not always the breeding ground for antibiotic resistance it is often thought to be. By testing wastewater from 47 countries, the team found that while some samples could select for resistant E. coli, the majority instead selected against resistance. These insights reshape our understanding of when and where resistance is likely to evolve and spread.

Municipal wastewater contains a large range of excreted antibiotics and has therefore long been suspected to be a spawning ground for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Now, a study published in Nature Communications led by a team from the University of Gothenburg provides a more nuanced picture.

(From left) Shichen Xu, James Tour, Alex Lathem, Karla Silva and Ralph Abdel Nour.
Photo Credit: Jared Jones/Rice University

A research team at Rice University led by James Tour has developed a two-step flash Joule heating-chlorination and oxidation (FJH-ClO) process that rapidly separates lithium and transition metals from spent lithium-ion batteries. The method provides an acid-free, energy-saving alternative to conventional recycling techniques, a breakthrough that aligns with the surging global demand for batteries used in electric vehicles and portable electronics.

Published in Advanced Materials, this research could transform the recovery of critical battery materials. Traditional recycling methods are often energy intensive, generate wastewater and frequently require harsh chemicals. In contrast, the FJH-ClO process achieves high yields and purity of lithium, cobalt and graphite while reducing energy consumption, chemical usage and costs.

“We designed the FJH-ClO process to challenge the notion that battery recycling must rely on acid leaching,” said Tour, the T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of Chemistry and professor of materials science and nanoengineering. “FJH-ClO is a fast, precise way to extract valuable materials without damaging them or harming the environment.”

Half of the participants received daily treatment with oral insulin, and the other half received placebo.
Photo Credit: Kennet Ruona

An international team of researchers has investigated whether oral insulin can prevent early signs of type 1 diabetes and clinical diagnosis in children with an increased risk of developing the disease. Although treatment with oral insulin could not prevent development of diabetes-related autoantibodies, oral insulin delayed the rate of disease progression in children who developed such autoantibodies. The results from the POInT study are now published in The Lancet.

The POInT study has investigated whether treatment with oral insulin can prevent diabetes-related autoantibodies and type 1 diabetes in children with an increased genetic risk of developing the disease. These autoantibodies are used as biomarkers for type 1 diabetes, and the presence of two or more autoantibodies is called early-stage type 1 diabetes. The international study includes 1,050 children from Sweden, Germany, Poland, Belgium and the United Kingdom. Half of the participants received daily treatment with oral insulin, and the other half received placebo during their first three years of life. In type 1 diabetes, the body’s immune system attacks the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas and destroys them.

Photo Credit: ThisisEngineering

Engineering is the application of scientific principles, mathematical knowledge, economic considerations, and practical experience to invent, design, build, maintain, and improve structures, machines, tools, systems, components, materials, and processes. The primary goal of engineering is to solve practical human problems safely, efficiently, and effectively.

Matthias Hess, with the UC Davis Department of Animal Science, and researchers at UC Berkeley, have identified which microbes in a cow's gut could help reduce methane. It brings them a step closer to engineering gut microbes to create more climate-friendly cows.
Photo Credit: Gregory Urquiaga / UC Davis

Each year, a single cow can belch about 200 pounds of methane. The powerful greenhouse gas is 27 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. For decades, scientists and farmers have tried to find ways to reduce methane without stunting the animal’s growth or productivity.

Recent research at University of California, Davis, has shown that feeding cows red seaweed can dramatically cut the amount of methane that is produced and released into the environment. Until now, however, scientists did not fully understand how red seaweed changes the interactions among the thousands of microbes in the cow’s gut, or rumen.

Image Credit: Scientific Frontline

Security researchers have developed the first functional defense mechanism capable of protecting against “cryptanalytic” attacks used to “steal” the model parameters that define how an AI system works.

“AI systems are valuable intellectual property, and cryptanalytic parameter extraction attacks are the most efficient, effective, and accurate way to ‘steal’ that intellectual property,” says Ashley Kurian, first author of a paper on the work and a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University. “Until now, there has been no way to defend against those attacks. Our technique effectively protects against these attacks.”

“Cryptanalytic attacks are already happening, and they’re becoming more frequent and more efficient,” says Aydin Aysu, corresponding author of the paper and an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State. “We need to implement defense mechanisms now, because implementing them after an AI model’s parameters have been extracted is too late.”

Stars Brewing in Cygnus X
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA

The structure of gas and dust resembles a glowing diamond ring. Computer simulations and observations made on board the 'flying observatory' SOFIA are now able to explain the special shape.

An international team led by researchers from the University of Cologne has solved the mystery of an extraordinary phenomenon known as the ‘Diamond Ring’ in the star-forming region Cygnus X, a huge, ring-shaped structure made of gas and dust that resembles a glowing diamond ring. In similar structures, the formations are not flat but spherical in shape. How this special shape came about was previously unknown. The results have been published under the title ‘The Diamond Ring in Cygnus X: an advanced stage of an expanding bubble of ionized carbon’ in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The ring has a diameter of around 20 light years and shines strongly infrared light. It is the relic of a former cosmic bubble that was once formed by the radiation and winds of a massive star. In contrast to other similar objects, the ‘Diamond Ring’ does not have a rapidly expanding spherical shell, but only a slowly expanding ring.

Researchers from TU Dresden during field tests of the laser ice drill on a glacier in Austria
Photo Credit: Technische Universitat Dresden

Researchers at the Institute of Aerospace Engineering at TU Dresden have developed a laser-based ice drilling system that could help to penetrate the kilometer-thick layers of ice on celestial bodies such as Jupiter's moon Europa or Saturn's Enceladus in the future. In this way, underground oceans and possible traces of past life could be investigated in a targeted manner. Initial laboratory and field tests on glaciers in the Alps and the Arctic have shown that snow and ice density can be reliably measured.

Weakly bound KCs molecules are transferred into what is known as their “absolute ground state”.
Image Credit: University of Innsbruck

Researchers from Hanns-Christoph Nägerl's group have produced the world’s first ultracold KCs molecules in their absolute ground state. Starting by mixing clouds of potassium and caesium atoms cooled almost to absolute zero temperature, they were able to use a combination of magnetic fields and laser beams to associate pairs of freely moving atoms into chemically stable molecules.

As many of us remember from chemistry classes, molecules can only be produced in chemical reactions, which always occur at unpredictable, random times. We may also remember that higher temperatures make reactions faster, and sufficiently low temperatures may stop reactions from taking place altogether. These statements do not apply if chemistry is conducted by physicists. In the last 20 years, several different types of molecules have been produced in gaseous mixtures at temperatures close to absolute zero, using methods that narrow the exact time at which the molecules are made to a few microseconds. Until recently, KCs remained a gaping hole in the table of possible element combinations that have already been turned into molecules in this way.

Dr Robert Caine
Photo Credit: Courtesy of University of Sheffield

Wheat crops prioritize water loss during extreme future climate conditions, according to new research from the University of Sheffield

The study, led by Dr Robert Caine and Dr Holly Croft from the School of Biosciences at the University of Sheffield, revealed wheat crops lose many of the key water-saving benefits usually associated with growth at higher atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide when plants were exposed to heatwave conditions.

These findings are vital for understanding how to optimize future wheat crop productivity and water usage. With heatwaves becoming increasingly routine as atmospheric CO2 concentration continues to rise, plant breeders will need to consider how crops use and conserve water when developing new wheat varieties to ensure it can grow effectively and survive extreme weather.

This picturesque vista is the watershed in southwest Iceland, where researchers collected mars rock analog samples.
Image Credit: Michael Thorpe/NASA Goddard

To say that a trip from Earth to Mars is merely a long one would be a massive understatement. On July 30, 2020, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sent its Mars rover “Perseverance” atop an Atlas V rocket to the red planet to collect rock samples, it took the rover nearly seven months to reach its destination. This was only one step in a complex process that will take at least a decade to bring home these samples from Mars. While this is an unusually long wait for a sample shipment, it gives scientists ample time to find the best approach to study these rare and precious rocks.

In preparation, an international collaboration of scientists has started investigating sedimentary rock samples found in Iceland, a country whose terrain shares some compositional similarities and whose climate may be similar to ancient climates in certain Martian regions. Their results, published today in American Mineralogist, shed light on how high-resolution analyses of these complex, natural minerals can give scientists a deeper understanding of their geological history, both at home on Earth and 194 million miles away on Mars, though this requires careful interpretation. This collaboration is made up of researchers from the University of Maryland, NASA Goddard, Johnson Space Center, University of Göttingen, Chungbuk National University, and the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory.

“Such studies could fundamentally reshape our understanding of extinct megafauna as well as other species, revealing the many hidden layers of biology that have remained frozen in time until now”, says postdoc at the University of Caopenhagen, Emilio Mármol.
Image Credit: Scientific Frontline / stock image

Scientists have taken an important step closer to understanding the mythical mammoths that roamed the Earth thousands of years ago.

For the first time ever, a research team has succeeded in isolating and sequencing RNA molecules from woolly mammoths dating back to the Ice Age. These RNA sequences are the oldest ever recovered and come from mammoth tissue preserved in the Siberian permafrost for nearly 40,000 years. The study, published in the journal Cell, shows that not only DNA and proteins, but also RNA, can be preserved for very long periods of time, and provide new insights into the biology of species that have long since become extinct.

A new theory of molecular evolution

Evolutionary biologist Jianzhi Zhang
Photo Credit: Courtesy of University of Michigan

For a long time, evolutionary biologists have thought that the genetic mutations that drive the evolution of genes and proteins are largely neutral: they’re neither good nor bad, but just ordinary enough to slip through the notice of selection.

Now, a University of Michigan study has flipped that theory on its head.

In the process of evolution, mutations occur which can then become fixed, meaning that every individual in the population carries that mutation. A longstanding theory, called the Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution, posits that most genetic mutations that are fixed are neutral. Bad mutations will be quickly discarded by selection, according to the theory, which also assumes that good mutations are so rare that most fixations will be neutral, says evolutionary biologist Jianzhi Zhang.

The U-M study, led by Zhang, aimed to examine whether this was true. The researchers found that so many good mutations occurred that the Neutral Theory cannot hold. At the same time, they found that the rate of fixations is too low for the large number of beneficial mutations that Zhang’s team observed.

To resolve this, the researchers suggest that mutations that are beneficial in one environment may become harmful in another environment. These beneficial mutations may not become fixed because of frequent environmental changes. The study, supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, was published in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Firetrust Limited

In the modern digital ecosystem, the email inbox remains a central hub for communication. However, it is also the primary attack vector for spam, phishing attempts, and malware. Most email clients and webmail services provide built-in spam filtering, but these are often reactive and imperfect. MailWasher Pro, from Firetrust, is a long-standing "pre-emptive" spam filter that offers a different, more robust solution: it cleans your email before it ever touches your computer.

This review examines the technology, features, and overall value of MailWasher Pro.

Photo Credit: Глеб Коровко

Ecology is the scientific study of the interactions between living organisms and their environment, including both living (biotic) and non-living (abiotic) components. Its primary goals are to understand the principles governing the distribution, abundance, and relationships of organisms, as well as the flow of energy and materials within ecosystems.

Image Credit: Scientific Frontline / stock image

Earth Science is the comprehensive study of the planet Earth, encompassing its physical composition, structure, the processes that shape it, and its history. Its primary goal is to understand the complex, integrated systems of our planet—including its solid land (lithosphere), water (hydrosphere), air (atmosphere), and life (biosphere)—and how they interact, change over time, and affect human life.

Photo Credit: Tomáš Malík

Conservation is the scientific discipline and practice dedicated to the protection, management, and restoration of Earth's biological diversity—including species, their habitats, and ecosystems—to prevent their decline, extinction, and degradation, while ensuring the sustainable use of natural resources. The primary goals of conservation are to maintain the planet's ecological health, preserve evolutionary processes, and secure the vital ecosystem services upon which all life, including humanity, depends.

Computer Science: In-Depth Description

Photo Credit: Massimo Botturi

Computer Science is the systematic study of computation, information, and automation, focusing on algorithmic processes, computational machines, and their application. Its primary goals are to understand the theoretical foundations of what can be computed, to design and implement hardware and software systems for processing information, and to apply computational thinking to solve complex problems across all domains of human endeavor.

Photo Credit: Artem Podrez

Chemistry is the scientific discipline dedicated to the study of matter—its composition, properties, structure, and the changes it undergoes during chemical reactions, as well as the energy that is released or absorbed during these processes. The primary goal of chemistry is to understand the behavior of matter at the atomic and molecular level and to use this understanding to discover, create, and manipulate new substances and processes.

Image Credit: Scientific Frontline / AI generated

The term "narcissism" is one of the most frequently deployed yet widely misunderstood concepts in the modern psychological lexicon. Rooted in the Greek myth of Narcissus—the youth who fell in love with his own reflection—its popular use is often pejorative, synonymous with simple vanity or selfishness. In clinical and research contexts, however, the construct is far more complex. Narcissism is not a binary attribute but a self-centered personality style that exists on a continuum, ranging from normal and adaptive traits at one end to a severe, pathological personality disorder at the other.

UH calculates survival needs of deep-diving Hawaiian pilot whales

An aerial view of Hawaiʻi short-finned pilot whales at the surface.
Photo Credit: HIMB Marine Mammal Research Program

For the first time, scientists have calculated a detailed “energetic budget” for Hawaiʻi‘s short-finned pilot whales, revealing what it takes to power their extreme, 800-meter (2,600-feet) dives for food.

A new study led by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) found an average adult whale must eat 142 squid daily to survive, scaling up to 416 million squid annually for the entire population of short-finned pilot whales. This data, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, provides a new benchmark for protecting the historically understudied marine mammals.

“Pilot whales are one of the only oceanic dolphins that regularly dive to extreme depths—up to 1,000 meters—to find prey,” said William Gough, Marine Mammal Research Program (MMRP) postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study. “This deep-diving, high-risk foraging strategy requires a delicate balance between the energy they spend and the energy they acquire. Our study is the first step in quantifying that balance for this specific population.”

Elephant seals on Lagoon Island near Ryder Bay, Adelaide Island.
Photo Credit: Steve Gibbs, BAS

New research reveals 47% decline in breeding female elephant seals at sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia following a highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak.

Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have documented the severe impact of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) on southern elephant seals at South Georgia, revealing a 47% decline in breeding females between 2022 and 2024.

The research, published today in the journal Communications Biology, shows that the world’s largest population of southern elephant seals – which accounts for over half of the global population of breeding age – has suffered unprecedented losses following the arrival of HPAI H5N1 at the remote sub-Antarctic island in late 2023.

Microrobots can be transported and activated in a safe and controlled manner, marking a decisive step forward in the use of these technological devices in targeted medical treatments.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of University of Barcelona

The study, led by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) and published in the journal Science, involves Professor Josep Puigmartí-Luis from the Faculty of Chemistry and the Institute of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry (IQTC) of the University of Barcelona. He is the only researcher from a Spanish institution to sign this paper, which is the result of the European ANGIE project, an initiative coordinated by Professor Salvador Pané (ETH) in collaboration with the Chemistry In Flow and Nanomaterials Synthesis (ChemInFlow) research group, led by Professor Puigmartí.

The new microrobotic platform presents an innovative strategy for administering drugs in a precise and targeted manner. It is scalable and can be applied to numerous situations in which the administration of therapeutic agents is difficult to access, such as tumors, arteriovenous malformations, localized infections, or tissue injuries.

A study of the long-term risk of contracting hantavirus across large geographic areas provides public health officials with information about populations most at risk for contracting hantavirus and the potential drivers of disease risk. Humans become infected with hantavirus when they inhale the airborne particles of feces and urine of disease-carrying rodents.
Photo Credit: Zoshua Colah

In a recent study of the contiguous United States, Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers found that the risk of disease from hantavirus is higher in drier, underdeveloped geographic areas with more socioeconomic vulnerability and increased numbers of unique rodent species. This is the first study to examine the combined effects of multiple variables — including socioeconomic, environmental, land use and rodent species — to determine which are most likely to predict the risk of people contracting hantavirus.

“We ran each of these variables separately — looking at where people are most at risk given just the environmental variables, just the land-use variables, etc. — and then we combined them all,” said Morgan Gorris, a scientist at Los Alamos and lead author on the study published in Transboundary and Emerging Diseases. “This gave us a map of where people are most at risk of being exposed to hantavirus and contracting hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS).”

Biotechnology: In-Depth Description

Image Credit: Scientific Frontline / stock image

Biotechnology is the integration of natural sciences and engineering sciences to apply organisms, cells, parts thereof, and molecular analogues to products and services. Its primary goal is to leverage biological systems and processes to develop technologies and products that help solve problems, improve human health, enhance food production, and create more sustainable industrial and environmental processes.

Photograph of a modern dog skull used for the photogrammetric reconstruction of 3D models in the study.
Photo Credit: C. Ameen / University of Exeter

A groundbreaking archaeological study has revealed when domestic dogs first began to show the remarkable diversity that characterizes them today. By applying cutting-edge shape analysis to hundreds of archaeological specimens spanning tens of thousands of years, researchers have traced the emergence of distinct dog forms deep into prehistory pinpointing the moment dogs began to diversify in size and shape – at least 11,000 years ago.

These findings challenge long-standing assumptions that canine diversity is largely a recent phenomenon shaped by selective breeding which started with the Victorian Kennel Clubs. Instead, the study demonstrates that significant variation in skull shape and size among domestic dogs was already present thousands of years ago, soon after their divergence from wolves.

Fang Liu, assistant professor of chemistry in Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences
Photo Credit: Fawn Hallenbeck/Stanford University

A study led by Stanford and Cornell researchers shows how light could be used to control the behavior of moiré materials, atomically thin layers that gain unusual properties when stacked and offset. The research has implications for developing superconductivity, magnetism, and quantum electronics.

A pulse of light sets the tempo in the material. Atoms in a crystalline sheet just a few atoms thick begin to move—not randomly, but in a coordinated rhythm, twisting and untwisting in sync like dancers following a beat.

Until now, researchers hadn’t been able to directly observe how those layers physically respond to a burst of light. In a recent study, a team led by Stanford and Cornell University researchers showed that the atomic layers can briefly twist more tightly together, then spring back, like a coiled ribbon releasing its energy.

The silvery color of the hatchetfish, which lives in the water column of the deep sea, provides camouflage in dimly lit portions of the ocean.
Photo Credit: Chris Martinez

Fish species living in the deep sea feature a surprisingly large range of body shapes that evolved in different ways and at different rates depending on where the fishes live in the ocean, new research shows.

Overall, the analysis of nearly 3,000 species showed more diversity of body types among the pelagic fishes, those that swim in open water, than among the benthic species spending their life on the ocean floor. Pelagic fish body types span from the round anglerfish to skinny eels, while benthic fishes generally share a common elongated, tapered shape.

“We found that evolution pushes and pulls fish body shape in different directions depending on whether they’re benthic or pelagic,” said lead study author Elizabeth Santos, assistant professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology at The Ohio State University.

“We talk about the deep sea as if it is sort of all one thing, when really it is not – it is actually quite diverse,” she said. “There are very different types of environments in the deep sea that have their own different effects on evolution.”

The STAR detector, which is as large as a house, specializes in tracking the thousands of particles produced by each ion collision at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.
Photo Credit: Kevin Coughlin/Brookhaven National Laboratory

At the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, scientists recreate the ultra-hot conditions of the early universe by smashing particles together at nearly the speed of light. RHIC's collisions delve into mysteries about the properties of matter by melting the colliding particles into a quark-gluon plasma (QGP) — a soup of fundamental particles that are the building blocks of protons and neutrons.

A new analysis of data captured by the STAR detector at RHIC revealed the QGP’s temperature at different stages of its evolution following collisions of gold ions — the nuclei of gold atoms stripped of their electrons. These measurements are key to mapping out how nuclear matter changes as quarks and gluons in the hot soup cool and coalesce to form more ordinary nuclear particles. Studying this phase transition at RHIC is helping physicists understand what happened in the briefest moments at the beginning of the universe, the last time the QGP existed in nature.

Orange cup corals, pictured growing on rocks above, are native to the Pacific Ocean. As they grow, corals incorporate minerals from seawater, leaving a valuable historical record in their skeletons. In this University of Washington-led study, researchers compare preindustrial corals to modern specimens to show how quickly the ocean is acidifying.
Photo Credit: Alexander Vasenin
(CC BY-SA 4.0)

The waters bordering North America could soon be inhospitable to critical marine creatures if the Northeastern Pacific Ocean continues to acidify at the current rate, a new study shows.

Earth’s oceans have become approximately 30% more acidic since the industrial revolution began more than 200 years ago. Acidification changes marine chemistry and depletes key minerals that calcifying organisms, such as corals and clams, need to build their skeletons and shells. The Northeastern Pacific is naturally more acidic than other oceans, fueling debate about how much its chemistry will change in the coming decades.

The study, published in Nature Communications, shows that high baseline acidity makes the water more sensitive to additional carbon dioxide from human activities. Analyses of coral skeletons from the past century revealed that CO2 has been accumulating in North American waters faster than in the atmosphere, driving rapid acidification.

Graduate student and lead author, Summer Manestar, holding the UX11 unmanned aerial vehicle that was used in the study.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Florida Atlantic University

Researchers from the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science used drones and field surveys to study how environmental and human factors affect loggerhead sea turtle nest site selection on a high-density beach in Boca Raton. The team looked at beach slope, sand texture, and proximity to structures like dune stairs – wooden stairways that let people safely cross sand dunes without damaging them. Understanding these factors is important because where turtles nest directly affects hatchling survival and sex ratios.

The study found that successful nests were more likely on steeper parts of the beach and farther from dune stairs, while false crawls – when sea turtles come ashore but do not lay eggs – were more common in flatter areas or near stairs. These findings give researchers new tools for monitoring nesting activity and help guide efforts to protect Florida’s critical sea turtle habitats.

Invasive Argentine ants prevent bees from eating
Photo Credit: David Rankin / University of California, Riverside

When bumble bees fight invasive Argentine ants for food, bees may win an individual skirmish but end up with less to feed the hive.

Bumble bees are already under pressure from habitat loss, disease, and pesticides. Former UC Riverside entomology graduate student Michelle Miner wondered whether aggressive ants might be adding to that stress.

“With how important bumble bees are as pollinators, it made sense to try and understand more about what’s going on in these tiny nectar wars, because they could have a big impact,” Miner said.

Her research, newly published in the Journal of Insect Science, analyzed over 4,300 individual behaviors from more than 415 bumble bees.

The research team included, front row, from left: graduate student Junyao Zhu, biochemistry professor David Shapiro, and senior researcher Chengiian Mao; back row, from left: graduate students Abigail Spaulding, Xinyi Dai and Qianjin Jiang.
Photo Credit: Fred Zwicky

A naturally occurring protein that tends to be expressed at higher levels in breast cancer cells boosts the effectiveness of some anticancer agents, including doxorubicin, one of the most widely used chemotherapies, and a preclinical drug known as ErSO, researchers report. The protein, FGD3, contributes to the rupture of cancer cells disrupted by these drugs, boosting their effectiveness and enhancing anticancer immunotherapies.

The new findings were the happy result of experiments involving ErSO, an experimental drug that killed 95-100% of estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer cells in a mouse model of the disease. ErSO upregulates a cellular pathway that normally protects cancer cells from stress, said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign biochemistry professor David Shapiro, who led the new work with Illinois graduate student Junyao Zhu. But when that protective pathway is ramped up, the system goes awry.

Photo Credit: Chris LeBoutillier

Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels are projected to rise by 1.1% in 2025 – reaching a record high, according to new research by the Global Carbon Project.

The 2025 Global Carbon Budget projects 38.1 billion tons of fossil carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions this year.

Decarbonization of energy systems is progressing in many countries – but this is not enough to offset the growth in global energy demand.

With projected emissions from land-use change (such as deforestation) down to 4.1 billion tons in 2025, total CO2 emissions are projected to be slightly lower than last year.

With the end of the 2023-24 El Niño weather pattern – which causes heat and drought in many regions – the land “sink” (absorption of CO2 by natural ecosystems) recovered this year to the pre-El Niño level.

Biomedical: In-Depth Description

Photo Credit: Navy Medicine

Biomedical science is the broad field of applied biology that focuses on understanding health and disease. Its primary goal is to use biological principles and scientific research to develop new therapies, diagnostic tools, and strategies for preventing and treating human illnesses.

Image Credit: Scientific Frontline / stock image

Biology is the natural science dedicated to the study of life and living organisms, encompassing their physical structure, chemical processes, molecular interactions, physiological mechanisms, development, and evolution. The primary goal of biology is to understand the structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, and distribution of living things.

Tumor and peritoneal metastases are shown in yellow.
Image Credit: UCR/Pellecchia lab

Last year, researchers at the University of California, Riverside, developed a novel “molecular crowbar” strategy to degrade the oncogenic enzyme Pin1, a protein that is overexpressed in many tumors including pancreatic cancer. They designed compounds that bind to Pin1 and destabilize its structure, causing its cellular degradation.

This approach not only targets cancer cells directly but also addresses tumor-supporting cells like cancer-associated fibroblasts and macrophages where Pin1 is active, potentially overcoming the treatment resistance posed by the fibrous tumor microenvironment in pancreatic cancer.

The UCR team led by Maurizio Pellecchia, a distinguished professor of biomedical sciences in the School of Medicine, has now collaborated with a team of scientists led by Dr. Mustafa Raoof at City of Hope in Duarte, California, to further test these degraders in pancreatic and gastrointestinal cancers with the goal of developing a new class of therapeutics that can “remove” harmful proteins rather than just block them.

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