Researchers on the verge of solving Mexican mystery

The Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan in central Mexico.
Photo Credit: Christophe Helmke, University of Copenhagen

More than two millennia ago, Teotihuacan was a thriving metropolis in central Mexico with up to 125,000 inhabitants. The city had gigantic pyramids and was a cultural center in Mesoamerica at the time.

But the city, which today consists of ruins and is a popular destination for both archaeologists and tourists, holds a great mystery. Who were its inhabitants?

Researchers Magnus Pharao Hansen and Christopher Helmke from the University of Copenhagen have presented a possible solution to the mystery in the renowned journal Current Anthropology.

By analyzing the signs on Teotihuacan's colorful murals and many other artefacts, they have concluded that the signs constitute an actual writing system, and they believe that this writing records an early form of the Uto-Aztecan language, which a thousand years later developed into the languages Cora, Huichol, and Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs.

Lockheed Martin Sikorsky Introduces Nomad™ Family of Long-Endurance, Runway-Independent Drones

The Nomad family of VTOL drones can be scaled in size for a variety of sea and land-based missions.
 Image Credit: Courtesy of Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company.

Less than a year after proving the flight efficiency and reliability of a novel rotor blown wing vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) Uncrewed Aerial System (UAS), Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company is unveiling its Nomad™ future family of aircraft.  

The twin proprotor design combines the versatility of a helicopter with the speed and range of a fixed-wing airplane. A Nomad aircraft can take off, hover, and land vertically, plus cruise on the wing for extended periods. Nomads are operated via Sikorsky’s MATRIX™ autonomy technology and predominantly use hybrid-electric propulsion, while larger variants will feature a conventional drivetrain.

Very few regret a legal gender change in Sweden

“We saw that the vast majority of people who go through the process to legally change their gender do not reverse this decision," says Kristen Clark, the study’s lead author.
Photo Credit: Tobias Sterner/Bildbyrån

Fewer than one per cent of people who have changed their legal gender choose to revert to the gender they were assigned at birth. This has been shown in a new study from Uppsala University in which the researchers looked at how stable a gender change is over time.

A new study based on national data from Sweden provides strong evidence that legal gender change in people diagnosed with gender dysphoria is stable over time. Reversal occurs in less than one per cent of cases.

“We saw that the vast majority of people who go through the process to legally change their gender do not reverse this decision. Of the 2,467 people included in the study who had applied for and obtained a change in their legal gender, only 21 changed it back to the gender they had been assigned at birth. The probability that a legal gender change will remain stable after 10 years is therefore estimated at close to 98 per cent,” says Kristen Clark, postdoc at Department of Medical Sciences and the study’s lead author.

Lidocaine poisonings rise despite overall drop in local anesthetic toxicity

UIC researchers have found that poisonings from lidocaine, the most commonly used local anesthetic, increased more than 50% between 2016 and 2020.
Photo Credit: Nappy Studio

Over the last decade, poisonings and deaths linked to the use of local anesthetics have decreased. Even so, poisonings from one commonly used anesthetic, lidocaine, have increased in the United States, according to two new studies from the University of Illinois Chicago.

By analyzing data from reports to national Poison Control Centers and to the Food and Drug Administration from 2010 to 2020, UIC researchers found total reports of poisonings fell 50% in that period. But poisonings from lidocaine increased more than 50% in less than half that time, between 2016 and 2020. The findings are published in Regional Anesthesia & Pain Medicine and the British Journal of Anesthesia.

Local anesthetics, including lidocaine, are widely used in medical care to manage pain before, during and after surgical procedures. General anesthesia acts everywhere in the body and puts patients in a sleep-like state. Local anesthesia controls pain and immobilizes a specific region of the body while a patient remains conscious.

Clam shells sound warning of Atlantic ‘tipping point’

Ocean quahog shells.
Photo Credit Paul Butler

A study of clam shells suggests Atlantic Ocean currents may be approaching a “tipping point”.

Scientists studied records of quahog clams (which can live for over 500 years) and dog cockles – because shell layers provide an annual record of ocean conditions.

They studied these natural archives to understand long-term patterns in Atlantic Ocean currents such as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and the subpolar gyre (SPG).

Recent studies have debated possible AMOC and SPG tipping points – transitions that would transform climate patterns. For example, AMOC collapse would have far-reaching global effects, from harsher winters in north-west Europe to shifts in global rainfall patterns, while a weakening of the SPG would be less catastrophic but still bring substantial impacts, including more frequent extreme weather in the North Atlantic region.

How Black Holes Produce Powerful Relativistic Jets

A chain of plasmoids is created on the equatorial plane along the current sheet, where the particle density (left part) is higher. Here, magnetic reconnection takes place, accelerating particles to very high energies (right). Particles also reach relativistic speeds along the spin axis and eventually form the jet powered by the Blandford–Znajek mechanism. Gray: Magnetic field lines.
Image Credit: Meringolo, Camilloni, Rezzolla (2025)

A hundred years before the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration released the first image of a black hole in 2019 – located at the heart of the galaxy M87 – astronomer Heber Curtis had already discovered a strange jet protruding from the galaxy’s center. Today, we know this to be the jet of the black hole M87*. Such jets are also emitted by other black holes. Theoretical astrophysicists at Goethe University have now developed a numerical code to describe with high mathematical precision how black holes transform their rotational energy into such ultra-fast jets.

For nearly two centuries, it was unclear that the bright spot in the constellation Virgo, which Charles Messier had described in 1781 as “87: Nebula without stars,” was in fact a very large galaxy. As a result, there was initially no explanation for the strange jet discovered in 1918 emerging from the center of this “nebula.”

At the heart of the giant galaxy M87 lies the black hole M87*, which contains a staggering six and a half billion solar masses and spins rapidly on its axis. Using the energy from this rotation, M87* powers a particle jet expelled at nearly the speed of light, stretching across an immense 5,000 light-years. Such jets are also generated by other rotating black holes. They contribute to disperse energy and matter throughout the universe and can influence the evolution of entire galaxies.

Chemists create red fluorescent dyes that may enable clearer biomedical imaging

Caption:MIT chemists have created a fluorescent, boron-containing molecule that is stable when exposed to air and can emit light in the red and near-infrared range. The dye can be made into crystals (shown in these images), films, or powders. The images at top were taken in ambient light and the images at bottom in UV light.
Image Credit: Courtesy of the researchers
(CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

MIT chemists have designed a new type of fluorescent molecule that they hope could be used for applications such as generating clearer images of tumors.

The new dye is based on a borenium ion — a positively charged form of boron that can emit light in the red to near-infrared range. Until recently, these ions have been too unstable to be used for imaging or other biomedical applications.

In a study appearing today in Nature Chemistry, the researchers showed that they could stabilize borenium ions by attaching them to a ligand. This approach allowed them to create borenium-containing films, powders, and crystals, all of which emit and absorb light in the red and near-infrared range.

That is important because near-IR light is easier to see when imaging structures deep within tissues, which could allow for clearer images of tumors and other structures in the body.

“One of the reasons why we focus on red to near-IR is because those types of dyes penetrate the body and tissue much better than light in the UV and visible range. Stability and brightness of those red dyes are the challenges that we tried to overcome in this study,” says Robert Gilliard, the Novartis Professor of Chemistry at MIT and the senior author of the study.

Researchers revive yoghurt made from... ants

Photo Credit: David Zilber

An old traditional recipe for yoghurt made from ants has been recreated by researchers at the University of Copenhagen. In a new study, they show how ants and the bacteria that live on them can transform milk into yoghurt. This provides new knowledge about the food traditions of the past and one of today's major food trends, and the study may also inspire new sustainable foods.

Take four live forest ants. Put them in a jar of warm milk. Cover with a piece of cloth, then place the jar in a colony overnight. Voila! Now you have tasty yoghurt. This is how yoghurt was made for generations in many parts of Turkey and the Balkans. Today, the tradition has largely died out. But what is actually the science behind the method? And what can modern research learn from this method?

A team of biologists, food scientists and anthropologists from the University of Copenhagen and DTU, among others, set out to investigate this in collaboration with chefs from the Michelin-starred restaurant The Alchemist. No one has ever described the biology behind this mysterious recipe.

New mechanism revealed: How leukemia cells trick the immune system

Thoas Fioretos, Niklas Landberg, and Carl Sandén are the research team behind the study now being published in Nature Cancer.
Photo Credit: Tove Smeds

A research team at Lund University in Sweden has discovered a mechanism that helps acute myeloid leukemia cells to evade the body’s immune system. By developing an antibody that blocks the mechanism, the researchers could restore the immune system’s ability to kill the cancer cells in laboratory trials and in mice. The discovery is published in Nature Cancer.

Immunotherapy has improved the treatment for many cancers, but progress has been limited in leukemia. Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is particularly intractable, with a five-year survival rate of just over 30 per cent. The existing treatments are often aggressive and may include both strong chemotherapy and stem cell transplantations.

“We wanted to see if we could find surface proteins unique to leukemia stem cells, and which would therefore act as interesting targets for a targeted treatment. If such proteins were not present on healthy blood stem cells it might be possible to attack the tumor – without harming the healthy blood system,” says Thoas Fioretos, research group leader and professor of clinical genetics at Lund University, and senior consultant at Skåne University Hospital.

Scientists Have Created New Lanthanum Complex Promising for Anti-cancer Therapy

Lanthanum complexes demonstrate antioxidant activity, anti-inflammatory effect, acceleration of tissue regeneration and anesthesia.
Photo Credit: Louis Reed

As a result of the joint work of an international group of scientists from Russia (Ural Federal University), Bulgaria (Medical University, Sofia), and Spain (Complutense University of Madrid, Rey Juan Carlos University), a new lanthanum (III) complex with a luminescent triazole ligand has been obtained that is able to selectively regulate the level of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in cells. The result opens up prospects for the development of new anti-cancer and anti-infective drugs. The interim results of the study were published in the journal Molecules.

“New lanthanum complexes demonstrate a wide range of biological effects such as antioxidant activity, anti-inflammatory effect, acceleration of tissue regeneration and anesthesia. In a study that we conducted together with biologists from the Medical University of Sofia, we found out that both lanthanum complexes of La(III) and free organic ligands can affect the level of reactive oxygen species. At the same time, we found that they have a dual effect: in some tests, they act as antioxidants, protecting healthy cells, in others, as pro-oxidants, contributing to the death of tumor cells. This specific focus of action makes them promising candidates for the development of new drugs for cancer,” said Natalia Belskaya, Professor at UrFU Department of Technology pf Organic Synthesis.

Finding treasures with physics: the fingerprint matrix

Left: Artistic impression of metal spheres buried in small glass beads. Middle: Conventional ultrasound picture. Right: With the new technology, the positions of the metal spheres can be precisely determined.
Image Credit: © TU Wien / Arthur Le Ber

How do you find objects buried in sand or hidden in thick fog? A team from the Institut Langevin (Paris) and TU Wien (Vienna) has developed an astonishing method.

Can we reveal objects that are hidden in environments completely opaque to the human eye? With conventional imaging techniques, the answer is no: a dense cloud or layer of material blocks light so completely that a simple photograph contains no information about what lies behind it.

However, a research collaboration between the Institut Langevin and TU Wien has now shown that, with the help of innovative mathematical tricks, objects can be detected even in such cases – using what is known as the ‘fingerprint matrix’. The team tested the newly developed method on metal objects buried in sand and in applications in the field of medical imaging. A joint publication on this topic has just appeared in the journal Nature Physics.

Rare glimpse at understudied ecosystem prompts caution on deep-sea mining

Some of the animals identified in the deep-sea that spend their life in the benthic boundary layer.
Photo Credit: Gabrielle Ellis

An enormous but poorly understood region of the global ocean–referred to as the abyssal benthic boundary layer–lies a few meters above the seafloor and has only been sampled a handful of times. A study by oceanographers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa provided the first in-depth look at this habitat, revealing a dynamic community that may be more sensitive to seasonal changes than previously understood. The research, published in Limnology and Oceanography, also concluded that deep-sea mining could have significant and unavoidable impacts on biodiversity, regardless of the time of year.

“Given the remoteness of this environment, we have extraordinarily limited knowledge of the animals that inhabit this zone,” said Gabrielle Ellis, lead author of the study and recent oceanography graduate from the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. “This study represents a significant contribution to our understanding of the benthic boundary layer community, and it starts to unravel temporal dynamics in the abyss.”

Sudan Ebola virus can persist in survivors for months

Image Credit: AI Generated

More than half of survivors of the Sudan Ebola virus still suffer serious health problems two years post-infection and the virus can persist in semen and breast milk for months after recovery, according to the first study examining the virus’s long-term effects.

The study, led by researchers at Washington State University, found 57.5% of the survivors of an outbreak in Uganda from 2022–23 reported ongoing and debilitating health issues that interfered with their daily lives. The detection of traces of the virus in semen and breast milk also raised concerns about the potential for sexual and mother-to-child transmission. The findings were recently published in the journal BMC Medicine.

“This is the first time anyone has been able to closely follow Sudan Ebola survivors over the long term, and the results show the virus continues to affect people’s lives well after an outbreak ends,” said lead researcher Kariuki Njenga, a professor in the WSU College of Veterinary Medicine’s Paul G. Allen School for Global Health and senior scientist at WSU Global Health – Kenya. “Just as concerning is the fact we detected the virus in semen and breast milk, which shows there is a risk survivors could pass on Ebola months after recovery.”

What Is: Microplastics

Microplastic
Credit: Scientific Frontline

The Invisible Tide of Plastic

The modern era has been defined, in part, by the versatility and ubiquity of plastic. Yet, this celebrated 20th-century material has given rise to a paradoxical form of pollution—one so pervasive and minute that its scale was largely unrecognized until recently. Microplastics, the synthetic dust of our industrial age, represent a global environmental challenge of unprecedented complexity. These tiny particles, born from the fragmentation of larger debris and the intentional design of microscopic products, have infiltrated every corner of the planet. Scientific expeditions have confirmed their presence from the summit of Mount Everest to the abyssal depths of the Mariana Trench. More alarmingly, this invisible tide has crossed the final frontier, entering the human body itself, with researchers detecting microplastic particles in human blood, lung tissue, and even the placenta.

The ubiquity of microplastics signals a fundamental disruption of planetary systems. They are not merely inert debris but active agents in the environment, interacting with ecosystems and organisms in complex and often detrimental ways. Their journey spans the globe, carried by ocean currents, river systems, and atmospheric winds, connecting the most remote wilderness to the most densely populated urban centers in a shared system of contamination. This report provides a definitive, evidence-based synthesis of the current scientific understanding of microplastics. It aims to dissect the full scope of this issue, beginning with a fundamental definition of the pollutant and a detailed accounting of its myriad sources. It will then trace the environmental fate and transport of these particles through aquatic, terrestrial, and atmospheric systems. Finally, the report will conduct an exhaustive analysis of their multifaceted impacts on ecological integrity and human health, concluding with a critical evaluation of the policies, technologies, and strategies required to mitigate this pervasive threat.

3D-printed shelters increase baby coral survival rates

Researchers place the modules onto experimental tables in Kāneʻohe Bay.
Photo Credit: Jessica Reichert

To dramatically increase coral survival rates, scientists at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) have developed innovative 3D-printed ceramic structures that provide crucial protection for baby corals. These new designs offer a low-cost and scalable solution to enhance reef recovery worldwide.

The discovery, published in Biological Conservation, addresses a critical challenge in reef restoration—the low settlement and survival rates of juvenile corals, which often die before adulthood due to predation, being overgrown by algae or being swept away by waves.

“We developed structures that help baby corals find safe homes in the reef,” said Josh Madin, principal investigator at HIMB’s Geometric Ecology Lab and co-author of the study. “Our new designs, with small spiral-shaped shelters called ‘helix recesses,’ give young corals the protection they need during this critical stage.”