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2026-10-15T06:04:05.231-07:00

Green space is linked with fewer gun-related homicides — but not everywhere

Study uses Google Street View and AI to measure greenery at the scene of fatal shootings

Ohio State University

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Our physical surroundings affect everything from personal well-being to a neighborhood’s safety. A new study from The Ohio State University finds that when it comes to preventing gun violence in a community, green space can help, but its location makes a big difference.

A growing body of research shows that urban green spaces — parks and other areas lined with plants, grass and trees — improve community and individual health outcomes by encouraging physical activity, reducing stress and improving air quality. They’ve also been associated with reduced gun violence and other violent crimes, but the relationship is complex, and not fully understood.

While attending a recent conference, the study’s lead author, Gia Barboza-Salerno, made a point that resonated with fellow researchers who study urban greenery and violence prevention: When it comes to the effects of green space on communities, local context matters.

“It’s not as simple as planting a tree and thinking that alone will solve it,” said Barboza-Salerno, an associate professor in Ohio State’s colleges of social work and public health. “Even though we know urban greenery is a great prevention measure for a lot of reasons, we don’t understand how or whether there’s an interaction between where this greenery is — the local context in which the greenery sits — and a subsequent reduction in violence.”

That question became the basis for a study published this month in Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. Barboza-Salerno’s team looked at how green space, neighborhood disadvantage and gun violence intersect in Cook County, Illinois, which reported the most homicides in the U.S. in 2022.

“Firearm-related violence is a public health crisis in this country, and it disproportionately affects young Black males,” Barboza-Salerno said. According to research cited in the study, racial and ethnic disparities in violence are often linked to factors such as poverty, limited educational and employment opportunities, economic inequality and residential segregation. Urban green spaces may offer protective benefits, but no previous study had specifically investigated greenery near the locations of firearm-related deaths as it would be seen from the street level, from a pedestrian’s point of view, according to the study.

“We really wanted to show in this paper that urban planning is a critical part of public health prevention by evaluating the quality of streets that people traverse daily in their activity spaces,” Barboza-Salerno said.

As director of Ohio State’s Investigating Spatial Structures in Urban Environments (ISSUES) Lab, Barboza-Salerno leads a research group that uses advanced spatial statistics, geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) and machine learning to understand how neighborhood environments shape health, safety and social well-being.

For this study, the team examined 899 firearm homicides and 2,256 natural deaths in the county in 2023 and compared them with natural deaths of people similar in age, sex and race who died nearby. By using Google Street View images and machine learning tools, they measured the amount and types of greenery a person would actually see from the street where each death occurred.

The study found that more visible greenery, tree canopy and green space along walkable streets were linked to lower odds that a death in that location was a firearm-related homicide. But the benefits of green space aren’t universal. Tree cover and greenery offered the most protection in less disadvantaged neighborhoods, while in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, being closer to a park was actually linked to a higher risk of firearm homicide.

The researchers attribute this finding to multidimensional measures of social deprivation, including poverty, structural housing disadvantage, economic inequality, family structure and income, having a stronger impact than a neighborhood’s green spaces.

“Green space is very important and critical for violence prevention, but not all green space matters equally,” Barboza-Salerno said. “Basically, if you lived in a socially advantaged environment, having green space mattered more for reducing violence than in a socially disadvantaged area. Green space should be thought of as a violence-prevention intervention, yet the green space that does the most protective work tends to be concentrated in more advantaged neighborhoods. That’s a double inequity: disadvantaged areas get less quality green space, and the green space they get is less protective without other supports.”

When parks in disadvantaged neighborhoods aren’t well-maintained or used regularly, they can become more of an eyesore than a protective factor, Barboza-Salerno said. Whereas in neighborhoods with more resources, well-kept parks have a beautification effect that can improve how people feel, and strengthen neighbors’ willingness to look out for one another.

“In these very [disadvantaged] areas, there’s a lot of economic disinvestment, and that is the association with violence, not the park per se,” Barboza-Salerno said.

The researchers caution that the study looked only at environments, not individuals. “We only looked at the location of death for the person in the context of the environment at that moment,” said Taylor Harrington, a doctoral candidate in public health and a co-author of the study. “It doesn’t encapsulate their whole lived experience or exposure throughout life up until that point.”

Barboza-Salerno has seen green space work as part of a broader effort. As the lead researcher at the Violence Prevention Collaborative in Boston and Director of Research for the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), Barboza-Salerno partnered with youth development organizations that employed young people to fix up local parks. The work gave them new skills and changed how neighbors perceived them.

Among other things, parks can provide safe places for children to play, socialize and have positive reciprocal interactions. Alongside housing and food security, “it’s one part of a comprehensive community-building approach that needs to be scaled to see effective violence prevention in this country,” Barboza-Salerno said. “If we think carefully about where green spaces are placed and why they make a difference, this could be huge.”

Other Ohio State co-authors of the study are Balaji Ramesh and Jeffrey Wing of the College of Public Health.

Contact: Gia Barboza-Salerno, barboza-salerno.1@osu.edu

Written by Elizabeth Weinstein, weinstein.137@osu.edu

Journal

Urban Forestry & Urban Greening

DOI

10.1016/j.ufug.2026.129597

Method of Research

Imaging analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Street-view measures of urban greenness, area-level deprivation, and the risk of firearm-related homicide: A matched case-control study

Article Publication Date

15-Oct-2026

2026-10-15T06:02:38.815-07:00

Engineers make quality, low-cost carbon fiber from coproducts of paper, energy production

Iowa State University

image:

Iowa State engineers are turning the low-value ingredients in these beakers into the high-value carbon fiber on the lab bench. Left to right are Tannon Daugaard next to spools of carbon fiber; Abdulrahman A. B. A. Mohammed holding a beaker of bio-oil; and Xianglan Bai holding a beaker of lignin.

Credit: Iowa State University/Christopher Gannon.

AMES, Iowa – Xianglan Bai illustrates her development of biobased carbon fiber with two beakers in researchers’ hands.

The first contains low-cost, low-value and plentiful softwood kraft lignin, the tough stuff that strengthens and waterproofs the cell walls of trees and plants. The natural binder is a coproduct of paper production.

The second contains a low-value, watery fraction of bio-oil, a liquid fuel produced by a thermochemical process called fast pyrolysis. The process uses heat to break down corn stalks, wood chips and other biomass to produce a bio-oil for heating that can be divided into fractions with various properties and performance characteristics. (The process also produces a solid biochar that can be used as fertilizer.)

“We’re taking lignin, considered a low-value byproduct of the paper and pulp industry, and aqueous bio-oil, also considered to be a low-value product, and putting them together to come up with a high-value product,” said Bai, an Iowa State University professor of mechanical engineering and an associate director of Iowa State’s Bioeconomy Institute.

“This is where chemistry and materials science beautifully meet,” she said.

‘Real-world solutions’

Carbon fiber is a strong and ultra-lightweight material used in aerospace, transportation, wind energy and infrastructure applications. You’ll also find it in sport and performance industries such as high-end bicycles and motorsports.

It is typically manufactured using petroleum-based materials. But the high costs of those precursors are raising the costs of carbon fiber and limiting its use to premium applications.

The U.S. National Science Foundation, as part of its Translation to Practice program, which aims to “turn scientific discoveries into real-world solutions,” is supporting further development of Bai’s biobased carbon fiber with a four-year, $2 million grant.

It’s the ‘thermo-mechanochemistry’

Bai and her research group have been researching the production of biobased carbon fiber since 2015, with much of the work focused on lignin as a potential source material.

This wasn’t a new idea. Japanese researchers started looking at lignin for carbon fiber back in the 1960s. But the performance of the resulting carbon fiber was inferior to petroleum-based versions.

Even after decades of trying, the biobased carbon fibers didn’t have the performance levels required for use in cars and other performance-critical industries.

With the support of several grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bai and her research team have developed several patented and patent-pending technologies “that enable the production of low-cost, lignin-based carbon fibers with exceptional performance properties,” Bai said.

One example is introducing “thermo-mechanochemistry” of lignin, a new material chemistry her group recently discovered. The process heats lignin and puts the spun fiber under increasing mechanical stress, fundamentally changing its chemical transformation and the evolution of its material structures. The result is much stronger carbon fiber while maintaining costs below $5 per pound.

Researchers measured a tensile strength, or stretching, up to 2.45 gigapascals in the biobased carbon fiber and a tensile modulus, or stiffness, up to 236 gigapascals. That easily meets U.S. Department of Energy carbon fiber recommendations for the auto industry of 1.72 for tensile strength and 172 for tensile modulus while keeping costs from $5 to $7 per pound.

Another example of innovation in Bai’s lab is using watery bio-oil to modify non-softening lignin into melt-spinnable precursors. The modified lignin reduced the stabilization time for spun fiber from tens of hours to two to four hours, reducing production bottlenecks and costs.

Commercial production

The new grant will allow Bai, her research group and industry collaborators to move from batch production in a lab to commercially relevant continuous production.

Additional leaders working on that transition include Tannon Daugaard, an engineer and faculty member for the Bioeconomy Institute and a co-founder of Rise Energy, an Ames-based startup; and Ryan Smith, deputy director of the Bioeconomy Institute, also a co-founder of Rise Energy, which is supplying bio-oil to the project.

Major collaborators include Harper International of New York state, Latis Materials of Maine and Rise Energy.

The result could boost the value of paper and bio-oil production while providing the country with a domestic source of high-performance, biobased carbon fiber.

“Commercializing this breakthrough technology could significantly reduce manufacturing costs,” the researchers wrote in a project summary, “while securing a reliable domestic supply of a critical structural material, thereby strengthening U.S. economic competitiveness.”

Lignin, bio-oil and carbon fiber.

Credit

Iowa State University/Christopher Gannon.

2026-10-15T06:00:32.972-07:00

Footprints in the (white) sand: Humans experienced abrupt environmental shifts during the last ice age

University of Arizona

image:

Kathleen Springer and Jeffrey Pigati collect samples for environmental change analysis from a trench in the White Sands playa.

Credit: Jessica Tierney

Expanded excavations at White Sands National Park in New Mexico have provided researchers an opportunity to refine the age of the oldest human footprints in North America and establish a deeper understanding of the landscape and environmental conditions at the time humans were present there.

The new study, published in Science Advances by a team of researchers including the University of Arizona, the United States Geological Survey and other partners, reveals a dynamic environment indicating the humans who left their tracks along an ancient lake shore experienced abrupt changes in temperature and water availability within their lifetimes.

The research team previously discovered and confirmed the White Sands human footprints to be the oldest evidence of human presence in North America, placing people on the continent thousands of years earlier than once thought.

The research details innovative extraction procedures used to isolate up to 75,000 individual pollen grains per sample and refined dating methods used at the USGS Radiocarbon Laboratory. This resulted in a more precise age of the site and reaffirmed the White Sands footprints date to between 23.5 and 21.7 thousand years ago, or during the Last Glacial Maximum. The new chronology was key to unlocking the rest of the story, which includes a deeper understanding of the abrupt environmental changes that early humans in North America faced.

The researchers used the new chronology to investigate the climate and environmental changes at a timescale equivalent to a human generation, or approximately 50 years, which is rare for terrestrial paleoclimate archives of this time period from the southwestern U.S.

"The White Sands sediments are unique in that they allow us to reconstruct environmental conditions during the last ice age at a very high temporal resolution, so that we can see fluctuations that were relevant for the humans present at that time," said co-author Jessica Tierney, a professor at the U of A Department of Geosciences.

Tierney applied her expertise in the analysis of geochemical signatures captured in sediments, which she combined with fossil pollen from the plants growing in the surrounding landscape, to reconstruct temperature, precipitation, aridity and plant communities. The results show the climate at White Sands was dynamic. Humans witnessed a complete turnover of the landscape from conifer forest to sagebrush and oak steppe and the recession of Lake Otero, a massive lake that would have covered most of what is White Sands National Park during the last ice age. By measuring isotopes – elemental atoms that differ by their number of neutrons, in this case, hydrogen – in leaf waxes of preserved plant material, Tierney's group at the U of A discovered that there were also swings in water availability within a century that included severe aridity during an abrupt warming event also recorded in ice core samples from Greenland.

"This tells us that local changes in aridity at White Sands were quite large and followed global climate shifts," Tierney said.

During the last glacial maximum, when the humans left their footprints in what likely was a muddy plain, temperatures in the Southwest were generally cooler, around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, as opposed to today's annual mean temperatures around 60 degrees in that area, Tierney explained. During the sudden shift documented by pollen in the sedimentary layers, vegetation changed from pine forest to pinyon and juniper, all within about 100 years.

Tierney said that varying amounts of pollen left behind by Ruppia, an aquatic plant that likes to grow in desert streams and springs, indicate Lake Otero's water level went up and down over the course of about 1,500 years.

"Eventually the lake shrunk more and more until it gave way to a flat playa," she said. "And throughout that whole sequence, people were walking there, leaving their tracks alongside those of mammoths, giant sloths and dire wolves."

Having an exquisitely preserved record of the environmental conditions and changes, such as rainfall, temperatures and vegetation in the same place with tracks left by humans and wildlife at the same time is extremely unique for the Southwest, if not globally, Tierney added.

"Even though these footprints have been buried in the gypsum mud for more than 20,000 years, they look like someone walked out on the playa yesterday," Tierney said. "This is an incredibly rare opportunity to be able to do paleoclimate reconstruction and combine it with archeology in the same exact place."

Next, the researchers want to delve deeper into what exactly happened at the time – what mechanisms may have been at work that would have caused a warming event in Greenland to cause drying in the American Southwest.

"This study fulfilled a long-term research goal at White Sands – to expand the originally published footprint site and sample for environmental indicators to help further our understanding of the complete context of conditions at the height of the Last Glacial Maximum," said Kathleen Springer, USGS research geologist and co-lead author on the paper. "It's remarkable that early humans in the region were real-time witnesses to a rapidly changing environment discernible within a human lifetime – that is really food for thought."

Ed Jolie, Clara Lee Tanner Associate Professor of Anthropology at the U of A and a study co-author, said the findings "humanize the deep Indigenous past of the Americas." Jolie, who is Oglala Lakota and Hodulgee Muscogee, is also associate curator of ethnology at Arizona State Museum.

"This research continues to remind scientists and the wider public that these resilient ancient human populations are the ancestors of contemporary Indigenous peoples, providing important scientific evidence in support of sovereign Native nations' oral traditions and reinforcing the fact that we have been here since time immemorial," Jolie said.

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.aeh0707

Article Publication Date

14-Oct-2026

2026-10-15T05:58:55.067-07:00

ITQB NOVA researchers engineer the first bacterial biocatalyst of a toolbox to produce greener pharma and food ingredients

Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica António Xavier da Universidade NOVA de Lisboa ITQB NOVA

image:

ITQB NOVA research team involved in this study

Credit: ITQB NOVA

To produce pharmaceuticals, food ingredients, and flavours and fragrances, it is often necessary to oxidise alcohols. In conventional chemistry, this transformation typically relies on harsh oxidants and elevated temperatures, besides generating toxic waste.

But there is a more sustainable route: living organisms, including fungi, produce galactose oxidases, proteins that can carry out the same reactions on alcohols and simple sugars under mild conditions, using oxygen.

Researchers from Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica António Xavier of NOVA University Lisbon (ITQB NOVA), in Portugal, have opened a new chapter in the development of this toolbox by describing the first galactose oxidase in bacteria: PsGalOx.

“For several years, the enzyme proved exceptionally difficult to produce in a soluble form, and therefore to characterise,” explains Lígia Martins, leader of the Microbial & Enzyme Technology laboratory at ITQB NOVA. “A major turning point came with the emergence of AlphaFold, an AI system whose structural predictions helped us understand the enzyme’s unusual architecture and identify changes that could improve its production,” she adds.

In the study, published in Chem & Bio Engineering and selected as ACS Editors’ Choice, the research team shows that, unlike the best-characterized fungal galactose oxidases, their bacterial counterparts carry, apart from the catalytic module, two near-identical binding-sugar modules.

This finding led the team to challenge a common simplification that looks at sugar-binding modules often as interchangeable. “Although the duplicated modules share approximately 80% sequence identity, they have evolved distinct functions: one enhances binding to sugars, whereas the other primarily contributes to protein stability,” explains Tomás Frazão, one of the paper’s first authors and a PhD student at ITQB NOVA.

Building on this characterization, the research team recreated natural selection in the lab – a method known as directed evolution -, introducing mutations and screening thousands of bacterial colonies to identify variants with improved performance. The evolution revealed something unexpected: the highly similar sugar-binding modules recombined into single hybrid modules, and the resulting variants produced more soluble protein.

With this, the research team realized something important: increased activity during evolution did not necessarily mean that galactose oxidase had become better at speeding up reactions. Instead, much of the improvement resulted from cells producing more of it. This distinction was key to further improving the enzyme. By the end, the team had developed a variant that was 40 to 1800 times more efficient at processing a range of sugars and alcohols.

As for the future, Lígia Martins explains that their plan is to “continue engineering PsGalOx to act on substrates of practical interest, creating a versatile intermediate for food, pharmaceutical, and materials applications.” Furthermore, the researchers want to explore the evolutionary diversity of these bacterial oxidases. “This will help us to understand how specificity evolved and to identify robust, versatile scaffolds for developing new biocatalysts,” she concludes.

This research was developed in collaboration with ITQB NOVA’s Bioorganic Chemistry Lab, Industry and Medicine Applied Crystallography Lab, former Metalloproteins and Molecular Bioenergetics lab, and Zymvol Biomodeling (SP).

Journal

Chem & Bio Engineering

DOI

10.1021/cbe.6c00167

Article Title

Engineering a Modular Bacterial Galactose Oxidase through CBM Recombination and Second-Shell Substitutions

Article Publication Date

11-Oct-2026

2026-10-15T05:57:54.149-07:00

Many states with higher burden of alcohol use disorder among women have fewer treatment facilities tailored to their needs

A new study found that states in New England, the Midwest, and West had a higher prevalence of alcohol use disorder among women, but fewer services that address women’s unique concerns and common barriers to alcohol treatment.

Boston University School of Public Health

The historical gap in binge drinking, alcohol use disorder (AUD), and alcohol-related deaths between men and women has narrowed substantially over the last several decades in the United States, with binge drinking rates among women ages 18-25 exceeding men’s rates in the same age group for the first time in 2024.

With this rapid increase in risk for AUD and AUD-related complications, women could benefit substantially from alcohol treatment programs that are tailored to their unique needs. But there is a dearth of knowledge on the availability of women-specific alcohol treatment in the US and how these services may differ by state.

A new study led by researchers at Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) now fills this gap, finding that the estimated prevalence of AUD among women—as well as the availability of women-specific alcohol treatment services—vary widely across US states.

Published in Substance Use & Addiction Journal, the results showed that estimated state-level AUD among women ranged from approximately 6-13 percent, with all New England states and several in the West and Midwest exceeding the national average of 8 percent among women. More than 40 percent of addiction treatment facilities did not offer women-specific treatment, and services targeted toward women—especially childcare—were disproportionately unavailable in many states that had higher-than-average estimated AUD prevalence among women. The study was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and is the first to explore state-level differences in AUD among women and the availability of women-specific services in treatment facilities.

“Women are drinking more and experiencing significant health consequences from alcohol use,” says study senior author Dr. Maureen Stewart, research associate professor of health law, policy & management at BUSPH. “At the same time, alcohol treatment rates are abysmally low. Our findings show there is a substantial need for treatment targeted toward women’s unique experiences. Making alcohol treatment more tailored to women’s needs could help women access treatment."

Research shows that alcohol treatment programs that are tailored to women’s needs have had greater success in reducing substance use and mental health symptoms among women than programs that lack these services, she adds. "Knowing the states in which women bear the greatest burden of AUD yet lack access to treatment services for their needs can help direct resources efficiently and reduce the barriers preventing women from accessing treatment."

For the study, researchers from BUSPH, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health (Columbia), and Boston Medical Center’s (BMC) Grayken Center for Addiction utilized publicly available national and state-level data to estimate the state-level prevalence of AUD among women, as well as the state-level prevalence of addiction treatment facilities offering women-specific services in 2024 and the proportion of facilities with these specialized services per 10,000 adult women with AUD.

The estimated prevalence of AUD among women ranged from 6.2 percent of women in Utah to 12.7 percent of women in Washington, DC. The researchers say the disproportionate burden of AUD among women across states in New England, the Midwest, and West, with lower prevalence in southern states, is likely a result of multiple factors, including alcohol taxes and other policies, cultural differences in attitudes towards drinking, persistent stigma towards AUD, and AUD healthcare availability.

“Women’s estimated burden of alcohol use disorder varied substantially from state to state," says study coauthor Dr. Rachel Sayko Adams, research associate professor of health law, policy & management at BUSPH. “These differences highlight the importance of understanding local needs when shaping prevention efforts and designing treatment programs to be more accessible and responsive to women’s needs.”

Among nearly 14,000 alcohol treatment facilities for adults across the nation, only 58.5 percent offered women-specific programming. Twenty-three states and Puerto Rico had fewer than 10 facilities offering women-specific treatment per 10,000 women with AUD. Most of the treatment facilities in states with a higher estimated prevalence of AUD among women had below-average availability of critical services such as trauma therapy, intimate partner violence support, and transportation assistance. Less than half of all treatment facilities offered telehealth services—an accommodation that could be especially valuable for women who lack reliable transportation or struggle with stigma or other fears of seeking in-person treatment.

Only 4.6 percent of addiction treatment facilities provided childcare in 2024.

“For many women, lack of childcare is a persistent barrier to AUD treatment, as women are more likely to be the primary caregivers of their children,” says study lead author Sage Feltus, research associate in the Department of Health Law, Policy & Management at BUSPH. “Parenting women may find it difficult to obtain reliable, affordable, and trustworthy childcare in their communities while they participate in lifesaving AUD treatment, and most treatment centers do not provide childcare options. Supporting women's recovery from AUD would mean providing solutions to the childcare barrier and other barriers women face.”

This insight into women-specific AUD treatment comes amid changing norms of how society views alcohol use among women—now widely accepted and normalized in daily life, despite copious research showing that even moderate amounts of drinking place women at greater risks for developing breast cancer, liver disease, suicidal ideation, and reproductive health complications. In a previous study, the researchers found that women without children by age 35 were at highest risk for binge drinking and AUD, but 35-year-old women with children also remained at an increased risk, perhaps influenced by a proliferation of messaging on social media and in popular culture embraces drinking as a form of stress relief and enjoyment.

“Despite the well-established health risks of drinking, popular culture often presents alcohol as a way for women to celebrate or unwind,” says Dr. Adams. “Women need clear information about alcohol-related health risks and access to treatment that is responsive to their needs.”

The researchers outline several actions that states can take to expand women’s access to tailored AUD treatment, particularly in regions with the greatest need. In addition to incentivizing facilities to provide childcare and telehealth services, they note that states can require health plans to cover alcohol treatment services and medications—perhaps a necessary mandate, as a previous analysis by the researchers found that fewer than half of Medicaid managed care plans provide all AUD medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The team also recommends primary care offices and mental health facilities screen and treat for AUD, as women with AUD are more likely to seek treatment for co-occurring mental health conditions at these healthcare facilities more than at an addiction treatment facility.

The study was coauthored by Dr. Katherine Keyes, professor of epidemiology and Susan Lasker Brody Professor of Population Mental Health at Columbia; Dr. Jake Morgan, research assistant professor of health law, policy & management at BUSPH; and Dr. Miriam Harris, primary care addiction specialist at BMC. This research was supported by the NIAAA under Award Number R01AA029821. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

About Boston University School of Public Health

Founded in 1976, Boston University School of Public Health is one of the top ten ranked schools of public health in the world. It offers master's- and doctoral-level education in public health. The faculty in six departments conduct policy-changing public health research around the world, with the mission of improving the health of populations—especially the disadvantaged, underserved, and vulnerable—locally and globally.

Journal

Substance Use & Addiction Journal

DOI

10.1177/29767342261479908

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

State Variation in the Availability of Women-Specific Alcohol Use Disorder Treatment

Article Publication Date

14-Oct-2026

2026-10-15T05:56:06.463-07:00

Skin has a sex: females and males do not renew their skin in the same way

Université libre de Bruxelles

By filming skin stem cells in living mice over five months, researchers at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, have discovered that in females these cells renew the skin in a more coordinated way than in males. This difference, controlled by sex hormones, goes hand in hand with faster wound healing in female mice. This research could eventually pave the way for future personalized treatments taking into account patients' sex.

For a long time, differences between females and males were mainly associated with the reproductive organs. Yet organs that have nothing to do with reproduction, such as the skin, can also be shaped by sex. This question, essential for better preventing and treating inflammatory diseases and cancer, has long been underestimated by part of the scientific community.

The study, published in the prestigious journal Nature, was led by Prof. Cédric Blanpain, MD/PhD, investigator at the WEL Research Institute, director of the Laboratory of Stem Cells and Cancer and professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles, in collaboration with the team of Prof. Benjamin Simons at the University of Cambridge and other partner institutions.

The researchers used a microscopy technique that makes it possible to film cells through the skin of a living mouse. They were thus able to follow the same stem cells and their descendants for five months, an unprecedented tracking period. Having set out to understand how the skin renews itself, they uncovered an unexpected difference between females and males and then showed that sex hormones are responsible for it.

How the skin renews itself

The outer layer of the skin is constantly being renewed. At the very bottom lie the stem cells, which multiply. Some of their “daughter” cells remain stem cells; others become specialized skin cells that ensure the skin barrier function and are incapable of division (a process called differentiation), move up towards the surface and are eventually shed.

How this process is organized has been debated for decades. By filming the same areas of skin for five months, the team showed that stem cells do not turn directly into mature skin cells: they first go through an intermediate stage, during which they can only divide a limited number of times, before becoming fully specialized.

In females, stem cells are highly synchronized

Even more surprisingly, in females two “sister” cells, born from the division of the same cell, tend to make the same choice at the same time: to divide again or to specialize. Like two rowers synchronizing their strokes, they move in step. In males, each cell follows its own rhythm to a greater extent.

“We initially set out to understand how the skin renews itself, and whether there is a hierarchy with stem cells at the top. We were surprised to discover strong differences in the way stem cells renew the skin in females and males,” explains Doctor Dan Engelman, the first author of the study.

Sex hormones set the tempo

To understand where this difference comes from, the researchers turned to sex hormones. Castration of male mice, which removes the main source of male hormone called testosterone, showed that male sex hormones control the speed at which skin cells differentiate and leave the stem cell layer: after castration, male skin behaves more like female skin, whereas treatment with dihydrotestosterone (DHT), an active form of testosterone, restores the male behaviour.

Conversely, removal of the ovaries (ovariectomy) in females reduces stem cell proliferation, an effect reversed by treatment with oestradiol, the female hormone, and almost abolishes the signature of coordination between sister cells.

In short, testosterone, which is more abundant in males, controls the rate of skin cell maturation, whereas oestrogens, which are more abundant in females, drive stem cell proliferation and contribute to their coordination.

Finally, in human skin reconstructed in the laboratory, testosterone also accelerates stem cell differentiation, suggesting that this mechanism also exist in humans.

Faster wound healing in females

The researchers also observed that a wound on the skin of the back closes markedly faster in female mice, especially during the first few days. This head start is partly explained by an earlier activation of stem cells, which also work in a more coordinated way. The gap then narrows as the wound closes.

Why it matters

Doctors and researchers have long observed that wound healing, the severity of certain inflammatory diseases and the frequency of certain skin cancers differ between men and women, without really understanding why. By identifying cellular and hormonal mechanisms behind these differences in the skin, this study lifts part of the veil.

In the long run, it could pave the way for treatments that take the patient’s sex into account, for example for burns, recovery after surgery or chronic wounds in people with diabetes, which affect millions of people worldwide. It could also inspire new strategies to prevent skin cancers, which are extremely common.

These results also shed light on a long-standing debate among specialists about how the skin renews itself.

“This study is a technological tour de force, and the discovery of differences between male and female skin stem cells is fascinating and entirely unexpected. It sheds light on a series of clinical observations that previously lacked a biological explanation. It opens up a wide range of new questions, spanning from fundamental stem cell biology to clinical issues such as wound healing, cancer development, and autoimmune diseases. Sex is a parameter too often overlooked in biology and medicine. We will now investigate the differences between males and females during the formation and progression of skin cancers, as well as the molecular mechanisms responsible for these differences” says Prof. Cédric Blanpain, who led the study.

Collaborations and funding

This study is a collaboration between the team of Prof. Blanpain (ULB, Belgium) and that of Prof. Simons (University of Cambridge, UK), with the teams of Michele De Luca (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italia), Yulia Shwartz (Broad CIRM Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, US) and Esther Hoste (VIB-Ghent University, Belgium).

This work was made possible by the support of the FNRS (including FRIA fellowships), TELEVIE, the WEL Research Institute, the Fondation contre le Cancer, the Fondation ULB, the Fonds Erasme, the Fondation Julie et Françoise Drion, the Fonds Yvonne Boël, the joint FNRS/FWO EOS (Excellence of Science) programme and the European Research Council (ERC).

Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1103/b3pw-my97

Article Title

Sexual dimorphism in epidermal stem cell dynamics

Article Publication Date

14-Oct-2026

2026-10-15T05:55:58.378-07:00

Scientists alarmed as Super El Niño collides with ‘strange uptick’ in Galapagos iguana trafficking

The only lizard in the world that can live and forage at sea may now be in a fight for survival

Simon Fraser University

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Galapagos marine iguanas soak up the sun on Marchena Island in the Galapagos Archipelago.

Credit: Photo by Juan José Alava

The only lizard in the world that can live and forage at sea may now be in a fight for survival. International scientists warn black-market trafficking of Galapagos marine iguanas is peaking just as the Super El Niño decimates their natural food source.

The 2026/27 El Niño event started warming equatorial waters in May, the same month Ecuadorian officials discovered four Galapagos iguanas being kept in a home near Guayaquil. Shortly after, they found a dozen more at a nearby airport, stuffed in handbags with their limbs bound.

Another 32 were discovered tied up in small plastic containers inside a suitcase in late August. Two weeks later, the El Niño event hit ‘super’ status.

“Marine iguana populations already face threats from chemical spills and plastics pollution, and now this strange uptick in trafficking to supply the exotic pet trade is happening at the same time the Super El Niño is wiping out intertidal macroalgae,” explains Juan José Alava, marine eco-toxicologist at Simon Fraser University and co-author of a letter published in Science.

“That macroalgae is the iguana’s primary food source. They are already shrinking in size and facing mass mortality, either by starvation or by trying to swim longer distances in search of food,” he says. “This species is already very vulnerable to climate change. We wrote this letter to call attention to this added threat of trafficking.”

At least one confiscated iguana was found dead and several more have died from the smuggling attempts, but even those that survive face a long road home, says Alava, a leading researcher in ocean pollution and marine species of the Galapagos Islands.

There are at least 11 known subspecies, each highly evolved to survive on specific islands in the Galapagos Archipelago chain; once rescued and rehabilitated, the iguanas must be DNA-tested to figure out which island they came from so they can be safely returned, he says.

Out of the Galapagos and through the loopholes

Galapagos marine iguanas are classified as Vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, though 10 out of the 11 recognized subspecies are locally categorized as Endangered or Critically Endangered. International trade is strictly banned by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and the species is fully protected under Ecuadorian law.

But the smuggling wasn’t detected within the Galapagos Marine Reserve, which means international traffickers are finding local ways around ecological inspection checkpoints, says Alava.

Iguanas are likely pulled from shorelines and shallow waters around the Galapagos Islands while coastal fishing communities in Ecuador’s main coast, for example, are facing intense economic hardship and extortion from organized crime and may feel pressured to participate in this black market.

Trafficking networks then use local logistics operators and national or international facilitators to make sure the iguanas pass through inspection points and into Ecuador, destined for exports and overseas markets in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and the Pacific, Alava says.

These networks obtain CITES export permits by falsely declare wild-caught Galapagos iguanas as “captive bred” in Uganda, Switzerland, Mali, and Japan—despite there being no authorized breeding facilities in these countries.

The researchers are calling on CITES to close these permitting loopholes, and for countries to strengthen oversight of the permitting system within their borders. Ecuador must also “aggressively combat and litigate organized crime and provide financial support and sustainable alternative livelihoods to coastal citizens,” the researchers write.

Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.aek3898

Article Title

Combat Galapagos marine iguana trafficking

2026-10-15T05:54:05.212-07:00

Worcester Polytechnic Institute researchers identify bamboo as fuel alternative

Bamboo-derived biofuel could rival gasoline and diesel on price, emissions; replace corn ethanol fuel production

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

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Worcester Polytechnic Institute Professor Michael Timko

Credit: Worcester Polytechnic Institute

A new study from researchers, including those in Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Department of Chemical Engineering, has found the fastest-growing plant on Earth may offer a sustainable and cost-effective alternative to petroleum-derived transportation fuels.

The researchers, including Michael Timko, the William B. Smith Professor of chemical engineering and head of the department, and Timothy Woodard, MS’23, PhD ’26, have demonstrated that bamboo could serve as a highly promising raw material for the production of sustainable liquid fuels to power vehicles, planes, and trains. The team’s study, published in the journal Sustainable Energy & Fuels, finds that bamboo can be turned into fuel at a production cost that is competitive to conventional petroleum fuels and with substantially lower greenhouse gas emissions. The study combined laboratory experiments measuring bamboo-to-biocrude conversion efficiency with economic and life-cycle assessment modeling.

“Our study suggests bamboo has a role to play in the future of fuel,” says Timko. “I think this research is especially timely and important because fuel prices are high and the transportation sector produces more greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. than any other. Bamboo would use different land than we are using for food production, so there is no food versus fuel trade-off. Farmers win, consumers win.”

Key factors in the study are the hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) technology that converts biomass to fuel and the choice of feedstock. Using bamboo for fuel can reduce greenhouse gasses in two ways: The process to convert it into biocrude is more efficient than when using other feedstocks, and bamboo itself captures and stores large amounts of carbon both above and below ground. Because of the plant’s fast growth even in poor soil conditions, the study finds that converting bamboo into fuel through HTL could match the level of corn-ethanol production in the U.S. while also using roughly 13% as much cultivated land. Unlike annual crops used for many biofuels, bamboo is a perennial grass that can produce large amounts of biomass with relatively low agricultural inputs. And, compared with other perennial grasses, bamboo has very low ash content (less than 1% by dry weight), meaning that the conversion process generates negligible waste.

Economic modeling indicates that bamboo-based fuel could sell for as little as $2.75 per gasoline-gallon equivalent under mature commercial-scale conditions, accounting for the money required to build and operate the fuel plant, suggesting strong economic competitiveness as the renewable-fuel industry expands.

The team’s analysis also finds that using bamboo as a fuel source creates a level of greenhouse gas emissions 26 times lower than those of conventional petroleum diesel fuel: A life-cycle assessment, considering the ability of bamboo to store large amounts of carbon in its underground rhizomes , finds producing fuel from bamboo and its use would generate a greenhouse gas intensity of 3.5 grams of carbon dioxide-equivalent per megajoule of energy.

In addition, the study suggests bamboo as a strong choice as a fuel source because it can grow faster and on smaller plots of land than other fuel feedstocks. “The U.S. has enormous land area under cultivation for corn ethanol, a fuel which is often blended into gasoline,” says Timko. “Freeing up at least some of that land could allow for more food production and reduce the burden on the environment.” The researchers also point out that bamboo can be cultivated on former industrial land or heavily farmed properties where other crops and vegetation may struggle to grow.

“Bamboo may eventually offer industry a way to generate low-carbon liquid fuels at scale,” says Timko. “With further research and development, bamboo could be a compelling option for decarbonization in sectors that are difficult to electrify, including heavy-duty transport and aviation fuel supply chains.”

Timko and Woodard co-authored the research study with Charles Cai, associate professor in the Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems at Aalto University in Finland, and James Walters, CEO of Avos BioEnergy.

Using a reactor like the one seen in the background, bamboo can be processed into a biocrude.

Credit

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Journal

Sustainable Energy & Fuels

DOI

10.1039/d6se00296j

2026-10-15T05:51:47.356-07:00

Two paths to healthier soils: Scientists reveal how straw and biochar store carbon differently

Adding straw or biochar to manure can help salt-affected soils capture more carbon, but new research reveals that the two materials achieve this through fundamentally different mechanisms

Biochar Editorial Office, Shenyang Agricultural University

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Divergent pathways of straw versus biochar integration with manure to enhance SOC sequestration in coastal saline soils

Credit: Xiaolong Bai, Jie Zhou, Ruixiao Dong, Shang Wang, Mengmeng Chen, Jing Wang, Xiaobin Li, Haoruo Li, Gilles Colinet, Hongyuan Zhang & Yuyi Li

Soils are among the planet's largest carbon reservoirs, yet salinity and land degradation threaten their ability to store carbon and support agriculture. Improving carbon storage in salt-affected farmland could therefore offer a dual benefit: restoring soil health while supporting climate change mitigation.

In a study published in Biochar, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and collaborating institutions discovered that combining manure with straw or biochar significantly increased soil organic carbon, but through two distinct pathways. Straw primarily stimulated microbial activity and carbon transformation, while biochar improved soil structure and the physical protection of carbon.

"Both straw and biochar can improve carbon storage in saline soils, but they work in different ways," said Hongyuan Zhang, a corresponding author of the study. "Understanding these differences is essential for developing soil management strategies that improve fertility and support carbon sequestration."

The researchers conducted a two-year field experiment in China's Yellow River Delta, where high soil salinity and low organic matter levels pose major challenges to agricultural productivity. Four fertilizer treatments were compared, including conventional chemical fertilizer, manure supplementation, and manure combined with either straw or biochar.

The team examined soil carbon, microbial communities, enzyme activities, and soil pore structures to understand how each treatment influenced carbon accumulation.

Both straw and biochar combinations increased soil organic carbon by approximately 19% compared with manure alone in 2023. However, the underlying processes differed substantially.

When straw was combined with manure, it provided readily available organic materials that stimulated soil microorganisms. This increased carbon-cycling enzyme activities and promoted the accumulation of microbial necromass, the remains of dead microorganisms that contribute to soil organic matter.

Compared with manure alone, the straw treatment increased microbial necromass carbon by 10.8% and fungal necromass carbon by 11.2%. These findings suggest that microbial processing plays an important role in transforming straw-derived carbon into soil carbon.

Biochar followed a different route. Rather than primarily stimulating microbial carbon transformation, it enhanced soil aggregation and pore structure, helping protect organic carbon within larger soil particles.

The biochar treatment increased large soil aggregates by 40.9% and improved aggregate stability by 31.9%, compared with manure alone. It also increased soil porosity, creating a more favorable physical environment for carbon retention.

Microbial community analyses revealed another important distinction. Straw reduced the abundance of certain Actinobacteria-dominated microbial groups, while biochar promoted fungal groups dominated by Ascomycota that were positively associated with soil carbon storage.

Together, these findings highlight two complementary carbon sequestration strategies: biological transformation driven by straw and physical protection enhanced by biochar.

The researchers emphasize that longer-term field observations are needed to determine how these mechanisms influence carbon persistence over time.

"Our findings show that selecting organic amendments should involve more than measuring how much carbon they add to soil," Zhang explained. "Understanding how carbon is processed and protected can help guide more effective restoration of degraded agricultural land."

The study provides new insights for improving saline soil management, supporting sustainable agriculture, and strengthening soil-based carbon sequestration strategies.

===

Journal Reference: Bai, X., Zhou, J., Dong, R. et al. Divergent pathways of straw versus biochar integration with manure to enhance SOC sequestration in coastal saline soils. Biochar 8, 139 (2026).

https://doi.org/10.1007/s42773-026-00656-2

===

About Biochar

Biochar (e-ISSN: 2524-7867) is the first journal dedicated exclusively to biochar research, spanning agronomy, environmental science, and materials science. It publishes original studies on biochar production, processing, and applications—such as bioenergy, environmental remediation, soil enhancement, climate mitigation, water treatment, and sustainability analysis. The journal serves as an innovative and professional platform for global researchers to share advances in this rapidly expanding field.

Journal

Biochar

DOI

10.1007/s42773-026-00656-2

Method of Research

Experimental study

Article Title

Divergent pathways of straw versus biochar integration with manure to enhance SOC sequestration in coastal saline soils

Article Publication Date

8-Oct-2026

Turning agricultural waste into soil-building substances: Manganese-modified biochar gives fungi a powerful boost

Biochar Editorial Office, Shenyang Agricultural University

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Manganese-modified biochar enhances white-rot fungi-mediated lignocellulose humification: insights from molecular transformation and multi-omics analyses

Credit: Feng Wang, Linjie Zhang, Feng Zhou, Wenyue Wang, Yinglong Su, Dongmei Zhou, Seungkwan Hong, Min Zhan & Bing Xie

A new study reveals how manganese-modified biochar helps beneficial fungi break down agricultural residues and accelerate the formation of valuable humic substances, offering a promising approach to sustainable organic waste recycling and soil improvement.

Agricultural residues such as wheat straw are produced in enormous quantities worldwide. Although these materials contain valuable organic carbon, their tough plant fibers resist decomposition, making efficient recycling a major challenge. Now, researchers have discovered that combining manganese-modified biochar with white-rot fungi can significantly improve the conversion of agricultural waste into humic substances, which are essential for soil fertility, carbon cycling, and ecosystem health.

The study, published in Biochar, demonstrates that this combination accelerates the breakdown of plant materials while promoting the formation of more complex and stable organic compounds.

"Agricultural waste is not simply something to dispose of. It is a valuable carbon resource that can be transformed into materials that support healthier soils," said the research team. "Our findings reveal how manganese-modified biochar can work together with beneficial fungi to make this transformation more efficient."

Humic substances are important components of soil organic matter. They help improve soil structure, support nutrient retention, and regulate carbon cycling. However, their natural formation is slow. Accelerating this process, known as humification, could provide new opportunities to recycle agricultural residues into valuable soil amendments.

To investigate this possibility, researchers combined manganese-modified biochar, produced from bamboo-derived biochar, with the white-rot fungus Phanerochaete chrysosporium. They then conducted a 35-day fermentation experiment using wheat straw.

The results were striking. With 5% manganese-modified biochar, lignin degradation increased by 93.4%, cellulose degradation by 77.0%, and hemicellulose degradation by 30.9% compared with the fungus-only control. Even more importantly, humic acid content increased by 47.7%, while an indicator of humic substance polymerization rose by 112.4%.

These improvements suggest that the treatment not only accelerates plant fiber decomposition but also promotes the formation of more complex humic materials.

To understand the underlying mechanisms, the researchers combined advanced molecular analysis, interpretable machine learning, and multi-omics techniques.

They discovered that manganese-modified biochar enhances fungal growth and stimulates enzymes responsible for breaking down resistant plant fibers. Manganese-associated oxidation reactions also contribute to this process, helping release smaller organic molecules that serve as building blocks for humic substances.

Molecular analysis further revealed that the treatment promotes specific chemical transformations, including deamination, dealkylation, and lignin breakdown. These changes favor the formation of more aromatic, oxygen-rich, and structurally complex humic-like substances, particularly through pathways involving polyphenols and quinones.

Meanwhile, gene expression and metabolite analyses showed enhanced activity in pathways associated with plant fiber degradation and the production of humification precursors.

Together, these findings reveal a coordinated process in which biochar, manganese, and fungi work synergistically to accelerate organic matter transformation.

The researchers believe this strategy could support more efficient recycling of lignocellulose-rich agricultural wastes and the development of sustainable soil amendment technologies.

However, further research is needed to evaluate manganese release, long-term environmental safety, and economic feasibility under practical operating conditions.

By uncovering the molecular mechanisms behind accelerated humification, this study provides a scientific foundation for transforming agricultural residues into valuable organic resources and advancing sustainable waste management.

===

Journal Reference: Wang, F., Zhang, L., Zhou, F. et al. Manganese-modified biochar enhances white-rot fungi-mediated lignocellulose humification: insights from molecular transformation and multi-omics analyses. Biochar 8, 140 (2026).

https://doi.org/10.1007/s42773-026-00659-z

===

About Biochar

Journal

Biochar

DOI

10.1007/s42773-026-00659-z

Method of Research

Experimental study

Article Title

Manganese-modified biochar enhances white-rot fungi-mediated lignocellulose humification: insights from molecular transformation and multi-omics analyses

Article Publication Date

9-Oct-2026

2026-10-15T05:51:23.782-07:00

Research shows we’re surprisingly close to conserving 30% of the world’s land

University of Kent

In an effort to conserve the world’s plants and animals, governments have pledged to conserve 30% of the planet by 2030. Official figures suggest that attempts to reach this target on land have stalled, but a new study led by the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom shows an incredible 27% of land may already be conserved for biodiversity, if you also count areas that aren’t globally recognised, but still support wildlife. The research, published in Nature, cautions that there’s still work to be done, as many habitats remain overlooked.

Almost every country has agreed to conserve 30% of the land and sea by 2030, as part of international efforts to halt and reverse the biodiversity crisis. But the latest official count shows only 18.5% of the land is reported as being conserved, making the target seem a distant goal. Now, an international team of conservation experts has combined these global measures of protection with national data on conservation areas – in a study that brings the total to 26.8%.

“With four years to go, the terrestrial component of the 30% target seems out of reach. Our analysis suggests that much more of the land is in some type of conservation area than currently recognised” says lead author Helen O'Neill, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute of Zoology, London.

The research shows that we are closer to reaching critical conservation coverage targets than ever before, but huge gaps remain in the world’s network of protected and conserved areas. Many habitats – like grasslands and shrublands, which are home to uniquely adapted wildlife – have limited protection and more must be done to conserve them.

What’s more, for conservation to work, these sites must be well managed. Co-author Heather Bingham, who leads the Protected Planet Initiative at the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge, stresses that “conserving 30% of lands and seas is not sufficient on its own. The target also calls for these areas to be managed effectively for positive biodiversity outcomes, and to be placed where they will have the greatest impact for biodiversity.” This means they must be well connected, encompass diverse ecosystems, and be managed in ways that are fair for local people.

“We need much more effort to officially recognise the existing conservation areas that are currently only recorded in national datasets.” shares Bob Smith, Director of the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent (part of the London and Southeast University Group), Canterbury, and the study's lead investigator. “We also need to focus much more on improving the effectiveness of all conservation areas, as increasing the area of land under conservation will do little unless these sites are effectively and fairly managed.”

Please contact the University of Kent Press Office for interview requests at pressoffice@kent.ac.uk

Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-026-11157-4

Method of Research

Meta-analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Global conservation area coverage substantially exceeds current estimates

Article Publication Date

14-Oct-2026

2026-10-15T05:43:47.798-07:00

A world map of climate policy: Who stands to gain most?

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)

Countries highly vulnerable to the phase-out of oil, gas and coal account for just 6 percent of global economic output, countries in Africa stand to benefit from their vast solar energy potential, and the economic interests of the US, Europe and China are affected by climate policy in surprisingly similar ways. A study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) published in Nature Sustainability now shows, for 169 countries around the world, how the fight against global heating affects national assets – and what geopolitical challenges and opportunities arise as a result.

The unprecedentedly comprehensive dataset compiled by the research team shows how climate policy affects national assets in four ways: (1) it reduces demand of fossil fuels, potentially leading to losses in oil, gas and coal revenues; (2) it reduces climate-related damage to the national economy; (3) it creates new economic opportunities for solar and wind energy development; and (4) it increases the value of a country’s capacity to absorb and store CO₂ from the atmosphere – whether “naturally” via forests or “managed” through the stewardship of natural areas.

“Based on our data analysis, we can map how countries could gain or lose from different aspects of decarbonisation by the end of this century, depending on the level of ambition in climate policy,” reports Guanna Pan, PIK researcher and lead author of the study. “We explore geopolitical tensions that may arise from some countries experiencing losses, but we also show how national interests can foster international cooperation, and how this can be further strengthened through targeted incentives.”

Five groups of countries with similar interests

To better understand potential economic gains and losses across countries, the research team has identified clusters – that is, groups of states in which climate policy generates similar economic opportunities and risks, and potentially shared interests. According to the study, 19 fossil fuel-dependent countries would potentially oppose ambitious measures. By contrast, 51 countries in the Global South have a strong interest in a rapid climate transition as they would otherwise face particularly severe climate damages. Likewise, 13 countries “with high potential for renewable energy” – the majority of which are in Africa – and 17 countries “with high carbon sequestration capacity” would also naturally favour swift action in the fight against global heating.

However, these four clusters do not carry all that much political weight: the group of oil, gas and coal-dependent countries accounts for only 6 percent of global economic output, and the three groups of countries that especially stand to benefit from climate protection account for only 13 percent combined. The remaining 81 percent of economic output is accounted for by the fifth cluster – the 69 “economies with moderate impacts” – which includes the EU, China and the US. In this group of countries, the economic benefits of climate policy are, in absolute terms, considerable in many cases, particularly due to avoided climate damage. Calculated as a percentage, however, it is not as large as in the three clusters of strong winners.

Climate policy safeguards long-term prosperity

In summary, the research team notes that humanity as a whole must take a collective interest in climate action, but that the differences in gains and losses between countries need to be fully understood. The study provides the necessary guidance and concludes with the recommendation that, where interests diverge, climate cooperation should be strengthened through “package deals”. This means that concessions on climate protection for hesitant countries should be linked with promises regarding trade or research and development; it could also mean simply offsetting losses through financial transfers.

“In view of the current resurgence of opposition to a committed climate policy, it is important to recognise that climate policy does not merely devalue certain assets – namely those of fossil fuel suppliers,” emphasises Ottmar Edenhofer, PIK Director and one of the co-authors. “Our study also demonstrates quite precisely how new assets are simultaneously being built up. Overall, climate policy revalues the capital stock of economies in a new and sustainable way, thereby safeguarding long-term prosperity.”

Journal

Nature Sustainability

DOI

10.1038/s41893-026-01971-z

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Quantifying Assets for the Geopolitics of Climate Mitigation

Article Publication Date

15-Oct-2026

2026-10-15T05:43:36.681-07:00

International scientists issue 2026 State of the Climate report, finding climate progress amid intensifying risks

American Institute of Biological Sciences

A new report published in the journal BioScience warns that “Earth’s climate system is moving deeper into uncharted territory,” with seven of 16 climate-related planetary vital signs now at record extremes. The study, co-led by Dr. William J. Ripple of Oregon State University and Dr. Christopher Wolf of Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates, describes the situation plainly: “We are witnessing the rapid destabilization of the Earth’s climate system. This is no longer a warning for the future; it is a diagnosis of the present.”

The vital signs tracked in the report span greenhouse gas concentrations, temperatures, the oceans, ice, Earth’s energy balance, and wildfire. The authors also track indicators of the human activities driving these changes, including energy use, food production, economic growth, and land-use change. Together, these metrics provide a sweeping view of Earth’s changing climate, as well as its consequences and causes.

The authors report that concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide all reached record levels again in 2026. In May 2026, atmospheric carbon dioxide exceeded 428 parts per million, roughly 50% above pre-industrial levels and generally higher than any time in the last 2 million years. Fossil fuel consumption rose by 0.9% in 2025, with oil, coal, and gas all reaching record highs, and annual energy-related carbon dioxide emissions surpassed 41 gigatons for the first time.

The authors note that the rate of global warming appears to have accelerated, from about 0.05°C per decade between 1880 and 1970 to about 0.36°C per decade between 2010 and 2024. “At current rates, 2°C above pre-industrial levels could be reached before 2050,” they write. According to preliminary data, say the authors, glacier thickness and Greenland ice mass are at record lows, while ocean heat content and sea level are pressing record highs.

The report documents the growing human toll of extreme weather over the past year. In October 2025, Hurricane Melissa caused 95 deaths and more than US$12 billion in damages across the Caribbean; in November 2025, a tropical storm and monsoon rains in Indonesia caused 708 deaths; and in June 2026, a severe heatwave in Europe caused approximately 14,000 deaths, according to a preliminary estimate. “All of these events were at least partly attributable to climate change,” the authors note.

The authors also highlight escalating risks from climate tipping elements, including a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and increasing vulnerability of the Amazon rainforest, where “the combined effects of warming and deforestation could push it past an irreversible threshold at just 1.5°C–1.9°C of warming.” They caution that “continued warming and interacting feedbacks may increase the risk of a self-reinforcing ‘hothouse’ trajectory characterized by weakening carbon sinks, accelerating ice loss, ecosystem degradation, and additional greenhouse gas release.”

Despite these worrying trends, the report points to encouraging signs of change. Low-carbon sources provided roughly 43% of global electricity generation in 2025, and solar and wind energy consumption grew by approximately 18%. “In 2025, for the first time in more than a century of coal-dominated electricity generation, renewable energy sources (solar, wind, hydropower, and other renewables) have surpassed coal globally, marking a potentially historic turning point in the transition toward clean energy,” the authors write. Still, the authors stress that growth in energy demand meant renewable expansion “was insufficient to displace fossil fuel consumption.”

The report argues that cutting emissions remains essential, but it must now be accompanied by rapid adaptation.. The authors highlight “fast-track” measures that reduce near-term risks while delivering co-benefits: “mangrove restoration can offer protection against storm surges while enhancing carbon sequestration; shifts toward plant-based diets can reduce the risk of climate-related food system instability while increasing soil carbon and reducing pressure on biodiversity; and distributed solar can reduce the risk of storm-related grid failure while increasing energy security.”

The authors stress the importance of transformative change and collective action, pointing to the emergence of "positive social tipping points." They note that “even relatively small actions, when multiplied across communities and institutions, can contribute to broader societal change and help strengthen public support for climate mitigation and adaptation efforts.”

Ripple, Wolf, and colleagues emphasize that climate change is also a matter of justice: “the communities least responsible for historical emissions, particularly in the Global South and small island states, are bearing disproportionately severe and early consequences.” Yet they maintain that “the future trajectory of both the climate system and human societies has not yet been fully determined. The decisions made during the coming years will strongly influence whether future generations inherit a planet with an unstable climate system or a more resilient and sustainable world.”

The full report is available in BioScience.

Journal

BioScience

DOI

10.1093/biosci/biag125

Article Title

The 2026 state of the climate report: challenges and opportunities

Article Publication Date

14-Oct-2026

2026-10-15T05:43:25.869-07:00

Report: Earth’s climate system increasingly unstable, but signs of positive change emerge

Oregon State University

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Alaska glacier
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Credit: Oregon State University

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The seventh annual report by an international coalition led by Oregon State University scientists says the Earth’s climate system is quickly becoming unstable and that while signs of important societal changes are emerging, greater and faster action is necessary.
“Rapid destabilization is now a diagnosis rather than a warning for the future,” said one of the report’s co-lead authors, William Ripple, distinguished professor emeritus in the OSU College of Forestry. “The accelerating expansion of renewable energy and advances in battery storage are encouraging, but they are only part of the transformation needed to stabilize the climate system. A more resilient and sustainable future depends heavily on big cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, effective adaptation and ecosystem protection.”
Published today in BioScience, “The 2026 state of the climate report: challenges and opportunities” notes that of the 16 climate indicators the coalition tracks, seven are at record extremes and multiple others are also trending in the wrong direction, raising concerns about interacting feedbacks and an increasing risk of crossing critical tipping points.
The purpose of the annual report, Ripple said, is to monitor the Earth’s “vital signs” and to encourage global leaders and policymakers to “move away from the business-as-usual approach that’s persisted despite decades of evidence showing that human activities are driving dangerous changes in the climate.”
The atmospheric carbon dioxide level of 428 parts per million is higher now than at any time in the last 2 million years and roughly 50% greater than it was before the dawn of the Industrial Age in the late 1700s. July 2026 was the hottest month on record in the contiguous United States, and global ocean temperatures also reached a record high in July.
The authors stress that cutting emissions remains essential but is no longer sufficient by itself. They call for rapidly deployable adaptation measures such as urban cooling, wetland and mangrove restoration, wildfire preparedness, water conservation, distributed solar energy and more resilient food systems.
“With low-carbon sources now providing about 43% of global electricity, we may be witnessing the emergence of what we call the ‘Age of Electricity,’” said co-lead author Christopher Wolf, a former Oregon State postdoctoral researcher. “That is a reason for hope, but fossil fuel use and emissions are still at record levels, so the transition needs to accelerate dramatically.”
Human activity, mainly fossil fuel consumption, is taxing the planet’s life-support systems by driving profound shifts in the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere, the authors note, to the point that extreme heat, floods, droughts, storms and wildfires are no longer rare events.
“Climate change is increasingly interacting with global biodiversity loss, freshwater stress, food insecurity, pathogens and geopolitical instability, amplifying risks across interconnected human and natural systems,” the authors write.
They add that communities least responsible for historical emissions, particularly in the Global South and small island nations, are already bearing disproportionately severe consequences.
Also from the report:
The rate of global warming appears to be accelerating, nearly doubling from about 0.19 degrees Celsius per decade from 1970 to 2010 to about 0.36 degrees per decade since then.
A very strong El Niño expected to develop this fall could add substantially to global warming in the coming months, putting 2026 on track to be one of the hottest years on record.
Glacier thickness and Greenland ice mass are at all-time lows. In recent decades, the Greenland ice sheet has experienced intense melting episodes, contributing to a sixfold increase in summer meltwater volume.
Global tree cover loss due to fires reached 10.8 million hectares in 2025, an area roughly the size of Tennessee and the third-highest level on record. Increasing wildfire activity is both a consequence of climate change and a growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Fossil fuel consumption increased by 0.9% in 2025, with oil (+1.0%), coal (+0.4%) and gas (+1.3%) all reaching record highs, and annual energy-related carbon dioxide emissions surpassed 41 gigatonnes for the first time.
And on a positive note, the rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has declined for four consecutive years, and solar and wind energy consumption has increased by about 18%.
“Many climate solutions are already technically feasible and increasingly cost competitive, but because climate change is driven by interconnected energy, economic, ecological and social systems, truly meaningful progress will likely depend on integrated responses across multiple sectors and scales,” Ripple said. “In many emerging economies, climate mitigation must also be pursued alongside pressing development objectives, including expanding access to affordable and reliable energy.”
Improved climate tools, Ripple notes, are already helping policymakers, researchers, educators and the public better understand the complexity of climate solutions. As an example, the authors cite the En-ROADS Climate Solutions Simulator, which allows users to see how combinations of policies, technologies and societal changes could influence future warming, energy systems, economic outcomes and climate risks.
“Achieving the necessary emissions reductions and societal shifts at the speed and scale required depends on deep transformations in energy generation, consumption patterns, food systems, economic priorities and governance structures, in ways that also promote biodiversity protection,” said Wolf, now a scientist with Corvallis-based Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates. “Without those transformations, we won’t be able to stabilize the climate system and reduce the risk of crossing dangerous Earth system tipping points.”
Also collaborating on the report were Jacob Bukoski of the OSU College of Forestry; Jillian Gregg of Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates; Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania; Johan Rockström of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research; Unai Pascual of the Basque Centre for Climate Change; Chi Xu of Nanjing University; Sarah E. Perkins-Kirkpatrick of the Australian National University; Thomas M. Newsome of the University of Sydney; and Anjal Prakash of FLAME University.
The CO2 Foundation provided partial funding.

Journal

BioScience

DOI

10.1093/biosci/biag125

Method of Research

Meta-analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

The 2026 state of the climate report: challenges and opportunities

Article Publication Date

14-Oct-2026

2026-10-15T05:42:41.022-07:00

'Oxford Handbook of Climate Action' rounds up a world's worth of ideas and expertise

Book brings discussion up to date through more than 60 environmental and climate scholars

University of California - Merced

Climate change is a global crisis and the search for solutions is increasingly technological. A new 700-page volume from Oxford University Press demonstrates that moving people, institutions and communities to act may be just as consequential.

Sociology and environmental systems Professor Paul Almeida from the University of California, Merced has edited “The Oxford Handbook of Climate Action,” a reference work that gathers 39 chapters from over 60 top environmental and climate scholars around the world. The book serves as a starting point for readers who want to understand how climate action happens and the forms it takes, whether they're picking up the handbook in Merced or Nairobi.

That worldwide reach is by design. Earlier climate handbooks were written during a prior wave of climate action in the 2000s and 2010s. This current collection updates climate action into the second quarter of the 21st century. All the chapters were written in the last two years and grapple with today's political context, such as climate change denialism, along with new technologies such as carbon capture and storage.

What sets the handbook apart, Almeida said, is its emphasis on combining human-based solutions with emerging climate technologies rather than purely technical ones. Climate change won't be solved by clean energy alone, he said.

"We need to comprehend the social and economic structures that sustain a fossil-fuel-based society and the human-based incentives necessary to transition to a green economy," Almeida said.

“How does the new generation of renewable energy systems and climate technologies benefit frontline communities without reproducing existing systems of stratification and inequality? What kinds of social safety nets can we envision by working with communities and workers in the largest societal transformation since the Industrial Revolution?”

The handbook is organized around three themes:

The major theoretical perspectives driving the field of climate action
Institutional strategies such as renewable energy, reforestation, carbon capture and climate action planning
Grassroots action such as mobilized social movements

A fourth layer of regional chapters spans nearly every part of the globe, from Asia and Africa to Latin America. The contributing scholars affiliate with an impressive array of international institutions, initiatives and organizations including:

Middle East Council on Global Affairs (Qatar)
Asian Institute of Technology (Thailand)
LDC Universities’ Consortium on Climate Change (Bangladesh/Uganda)
Centre for Climate and Resilience Research (Chile)
Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (Spain)
South Korean Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment (South Korea)
Indian Council of Social Sciences Research (India)
Heidelberg University Center for the Environment (Germany)
OGCI China Climate Investments (China)
Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute (Australia)

Among the chapters Almeida points to is one on 350.org, the organization that helped build the modern global climate movement years before Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for Future youth-based protests. The chapter is written by three of the group's founders, who organized as students of author and activist Bill McKibben at Vermont's Middlebury College in the mid-2000s before taking their work international.

Almeida co-authored the introductory chapter with current and former UC Merced graduate students. The chapter classifies how different forms of climate change threats induce climate action.

The handbook grew out of Almeida's own climate-based research. After finishing a solo book on climate action, “Climate Change and Civic Engagement,” he guided the Oxford collective volume through several rounds of review. The solo book, also published this year, focuses more on the United States and California — with a chapter dedicated to the San Joaquin Valley — and is grounded in his scholarly background of implementing in-person representative surveys with community partners and the UC Merced Community and Labor Center on basic climate needs in thousands of households in disinvested census tracts throughout the region.

For UC Merced, the timing of the books fit well with a broader push. In 2022, California Assembly Bill 179 directed about $18 million toward climate action research at the university, with roughly $9 million awarded to UC Merced faculty through competitive grants.

The university sits in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, a region marked by extreme heat, a large outdoor workforce and some of the state's least developed climate action planning — a combination Almeida argues makes it a priority for the kind of social science expertise and research the handbook collects.

Colleagues have taken note. "Almeida's edited volume highlights why the social sciences are indispensable for addressing planetary warming, from understanding human behavior to increasing public participation in climate action," said Gillian Wilson, UC Merced vice chancellor for research, innovation and economic development.

Leo Arriola, dean of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, called the handbook "an essential public good.”

"It reminds us that technological innovation alone is not enough to address the climate crises already felt around the world," Arriola said. "Almeida's handbook provides insights to understanding how people can work together and with their institutions to bring about lasting change."

2026-10-15T05:41:15.463-07:00

Q&A: UW doctoral student on expanding climate models to better capture the complexities of public health

University of Washington

About a decade ago, a group of climate scientists described five scenarios for the future. Called the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), these scenarios suggest how socioeconomic development could evolve in worlds with differing challenges to climate adaptation and mitigation.

One SSP, “Sustainability,” envisions a collective shift toward green energy, reducing economic inequities and investments in research and development. Another, “Regional Rivalry,” paints a picture of a world riven by nationalism and fighting over resources. In that future, high levels of conflict stifle economic development. Rich countries see slower population growth, while birth rates increase in poorer nations.

Scientists and policymakers use SSPs to project how today’s choices affect tomorrow’s world. But for complex subjects like public health, these intentionally simple scenarios don’t capture every complexity. Under the SSP “Fossil-Fueled Development,” for example, the world doubles down on fossil fuels, spurring rapid economic growth. That growth, according to the scenario, would spur investments in education and health. But at the same time, increased emissions would degrade the environment, exacerbating health risks.

That description leaves many public health questions unanswered: Would hospital systems be better prepared to handle the increased volume? Could more frequent heat waves lead people to spend more time inside, amplifying mental health burdens?

Last year, a group of 63 experts in climate change and health met in Vienna to extend the SSPs to better reflect the dynamic nature of public health over the course of the century. Their expanded narratives, published Oct. 5 in The Lancet Planetary Health, provide comprehensive visions of possible population health and health system development and explore how communities might better prepare for shifting future health risks.

Carole Green, a UW doctoral student in environmental and occupational health sciences, attended the workshop and is lead author of the accompanying paper. UW News sat down with Green to talk about where previous climate scenarios fell short, the conference’s work and how we can better prepare to keep each other safe in an uncertain future.

What are the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, and how do we use them?

Carole Green: Shared Socioeconomic Pathways are a narrative framework that can be used in conjunction with pathways of greenhouse gas emissions to project future climate impacts to 2100. The SSPs are basically descriptions of the societal choices that affect the magnitude and pattern of interventions to protect human health and well-being.

The SSPs are essentially five possible alternatives for our future world. These pathways have been expanded to incorporate a wide range of issues of relevance for public health, and have been downscaled to describe what the future might look like in different countries and regions.

SSPs are featured in global processes like United Nations climate conferences, where negotiators come from around the world to debate and agree on approaches to build resilience and sustainability to climate changes. The models help us understand how those choices interact and what the effects might be.

We also use the SSPs in health research to understand the possible magnitude and geographic pattern of health impacts from climate change over the course of this century. Many projects at UW use future warming levels to analyze things like future wildfire impacts on Washington residents (research done by UW’s Climate Impacts Group).

What do the SSPs leave out?

CG: SSPs assume that humans will make socioeconomic changes in the future. The changes described in the pathways originally quantified GDP and population changes. Our work adds complexity, specifically to understand how the future of public health could evolve under these five pathways.

A lot of people are interested in heat waves, for example. Climate modeling alone can capture the planet’s warming, but doesn’t consider issues like how access to hospitals and healthcare could change by 2100. Current heat wave modeling looks at the climate interactions that shape health impacts but don’t explore how concurrent changes in society could interact with climate change to impact people’s well-being.

Once you added complexity into the SSPs, what changed in your understanding of possible futures? Did you learn anything new or surprising?

CG: We learned that the drivers of health impacts are complex, and many are neither entirely good nor bad. Prioritizing sustainability, mitigation and adaptation will not necessarily lead to the best world for each future health outcome, but it definitely affects the future of health and well-being. Health futures we face globally are not predetermined. Different pathways could lead to vastly different health outcomes, with governance, health-system capacity, resources, equity, and cross-sectoral factors such as water and energy playing critical roles.

For example, under one of the scenarios, people don’t prioritize reducing greenhouse emissions, focusing instead on adapting to the changing climate. Strong investment in technology leads to quite a lot of wealth, which can benefit some health outcomes. But it’s not ideal, because people would also have to spend more time indoors because of the growing heat burden and would have to reduce connection to the outdoors and nature. You really don’t want to live in that scenario.

It’s very much a mix, which is challenging.

Now that we have these fleshed-out scenarios, what does that allow us to do?

CG: It allows us to have a more complex understanding of future health risks from climate change. Now we can add a layer of understanding and think about more variables than just warming levels and population numbers. It’s made of a lot of complexities that affect health, and those have their own effects.

In future climate scenarios, what does access to healthcare look like? What is the extent of food insecurity? How are we making sure people have access to clean air and water? When we have some understanding of those interactions, then it can motivate decision-makers to develop appropriate policies.

What comes next?

CG: We will apply these narratives to six different countries where there has been limited research using the SSPs. We’re working in Brazil, Senegal, South Africa, India, Vietnam and the Solomon Islands. We’ve started identifying key leads across these countries, where there is quite an appetite for this research. All countries are required to develop national health adaptation plans and to conduct vulnerability and adaptation assessments. They are also interested in modeling future health risks. We want to explore the extent to which the SSP narratives apply in their country’s context. Do they fit? How would they look different? There’s a lot of interest in building on local knowledge and bringing local experts together to talk about possible futures.

We’re also quantifying specific disease burdens, universal healthcare access, water and sanitation infrastructure and digital health. Some quantifications will look at pairing SSPs with certain warming levels to project impacts.

Last question: This group — including dozens of the world’s leading experts on climate and health — chose you to write the paper. How did that happen?

CG: I am definitely not the leading expert in that room, so it was very much an honor to work on this and lead the writing. A lot of it comes from my advisor, Kristie Ebi, who is very supportive of me and my work. That’s been really meaningful. She encouraged me to take this on.

I often tell people that my job is to listen to experts and write down what they say. It was very meaningful to get to make those connections.

For more information or to reach the researchers, contact Alden Woods at acwoods@uw.edu.

Journal

The Lancet Planetary Health

DOI

10.1016/j.lanplh.2026.101514

Method of Research

Commentary/editorial

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Navigating global health futures under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways

Article Publication Date

5-Oct-2026

COI Statement

All authors declare funding received from Wellcome for travel to the Vienna workshop in June, 2025. BvR, CG, MA, JJH, SP, SS, and KLE declare funding under Wellcome grant 313527/Z/24/Z. JCS declares funding from EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement numbers 101057554 (IDAlert) and 101060568 (BEPREP). AM declares funding from Wellcome grant 225997/Z/22/Z for the CLIMate SEnsitive DISease Forecasting Tool (CLIMSEDIS) project. CC declares support from the Wellcome Trust for the CLIMSEDIS and Wellcome grant 308964/Z/23/Z for A Changing Climate Impact Monitoring and Assessment Toolbox for Irish Seas projects. YP-S declares support from the Wellcome Trust (grant 304972/Z/23/Z). DvV declares funding from the European Research Council under the Horizon Europe programme The Platform for the International Coordination of Automated Frequency Restoration and Stable System Operation (grant agreement ID 819566). KLE additionally declares grants from National Institutes of Health and the World Meteorological Organization; consulting fees from SouthSouthNorth for UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Burroughs Wellcome; honoraria for university lectures; travel support from the Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellowship and the National Academy of Sciences; and unpaid leadership roles with START, the Future Earth Assembly, and the Micronutrient Forum. PP declares travel support to attend the Novo Nordisk Foundation Global Science Summit in June, 2024 and participation in the Healthy Environments and Lives Network International Reference Group and the Global Climate and Health Alliance Board of Directors. All other authors declare no competing interests.

2026-10-15T05:38:26.123-07:00

Rise in private testosterone prescribing risks overtreatment and more strain on the NHS

Experts call for national data on private prescriptions to close the evidence gap

BMJ Group

The rapid expansion of private testosterone prescribing risks extending treatment beyond men with clearly defined need to people with non-specific symptoms and borderline test results, for whom the balance of benefit and long term risk are less certain, warn experts in The BMJ today.

Stephen Atkin and Eric Kilpatrick argue that the complexity of care is seldom covered in commercial testing, so managing the longer term risks of testosterone therapy will likely fall to the NHS.

In 2024, the UK testosterone replacement market was valued at around $205 million and is projected to reach $365 million by 2032. NHS figures show community dispensing increased by 52% from 2020/21 to 2024/25 alongside a ten-fold rise in testosterone gel prescriptions for women aged 50 and older in England between 2015 and 2022.

Private prescriptions are not recorded nationally, so the scale of private testosterone provision is unknown, explain the authors. However, several indicators suggest rapid growth: a proliferation of private and online clinics, subscription pricing of £100-375 a month (to cover ongoing monitoring, remote consultations, and home-delivered medication), and heavy marketing via social media, influencers and outdoor advertising.
The market is potentially large, they add. Declining testosterone and libido are natural aspects of ageing, and up to a fifth of men over 50 may report deficiency symptoms, although under 1% receive treatment in the NHS.

Diagnosis takes time and repeated testing. It is not established how consistently private providers do this, but they warn that rapid access subscription models built around marketing non-specific symptoms “are unsuitable to handle the complexity of the diagnostic process and risk unnecessary lifelong treatment and a resulting NHS monitoring burden.”
For testosterone therapy in men, clinicians rely on professional society guidance with differing thresholds, they write, meaning NHS clinicians may see patients who have already started taking testosterone against a more permissive private threshold.
They point to the longer term risks of testosterone therapy, such as heart and kidney problems that need ongoing monitoring which they say will likely fall to the NHS. There are also concerns about private off-label testosterone prescribing for women, mainly for low libido associated with menopause.
As stated in official guidance, the responsibility of care rests exclusively with any private sector clinician who initiates treatment unless an NHS GP formally agrees to shared care, they explain. In practice, however, patients who started treatment privately may return to their GP informally for tests or managing side effects, leading to the NHS absorbing the workload without any formal agreement.
The authors stress that testosterone replacement remains a valuable treatment for carefully selected patients, but say national data are needed to close the evidence gap on private prescribing of testosterone.

“A reporting framework for private prescribers and dispensing pharmacies could capture indications, patient numbers, monitoring, and transfers of care,” they write. “This would lead to transparent prescribing and demonstrable adherence to evidence based care, protecting patients while preserving access to effective treatment.”

Journal

The BMJ

DOI

10.1136/bmj-2026-101080

Method of Research

Commentary/editorial

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Implications of commercial testosterone prescribing for the NHS

Article Publication Date

14-Oct-2026

2026-10-15T05:37:02.094-07:00

Medical device adverse event reports are often incomplete, inaccurate, and delayed

Bulk summary reports often fail to promptly spot potential safety signals Improvements needed to safeguard patients and meet FDA standards

BMJ Group

Permitting medical device manufacturers to submit bulk summary reports of adverse events to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), rather than reporting individual cases, often fails to promptly detect potential safety signals, finds a study published by The BMJ today.

This is a public health concern, argue the researchers, and they call for immediate improvements to better protect patient safety and meet FDA standards.

US regulations require medical device makers to report malfunctions and adverse events to the FDA's Manufacturer And User Facility Device Experience (MAUDE) database within 30 days to inform safety measures, such as product recalls, as part of the postmarket surveillance process.

MAUDE requires complete and accurate reporting to be effective, but earlier programs, notably the Alternative Summary Reporting (ASR) programme, let manufacturers submit millions of adverse events as bulk summaries rather than as individual reports in order to “reduce the burden on industry.”

Although the FDA ended the ASR programme in 2019 due to concerns that it masked safety signals, similar summary reporting exemptions remain in use, but their accuracy, completeness, and compliance with FDA rules are unclear.

To address this, researchers analysed all adverse event summary reports submitted to MAUDE over a six-year period (July 2019 to June 2025) for evidence of incomplete device problem identification, undercounting of adverse events, failure to correctly identify reports as summary reports, and delays in serious adverse event reporting.

A total of 6,308 summary reports were submitted to the FDA during the study period containing 159,503 adverse events, mostly involving high risk devices.

Of these, 57% identified no device or use problem, 38% reported insufficient information, 11% were incorrectly identified as non-summary reports, 7% incorrectly listed one event in the ‘number of events’ field, and 55% exceeded the FDA’s 30-day reporting deadline.

The researchers acknowledge the inherent limitations of passive adverse event reporting and the lack of publicly available information on the specific requirements governing summary reporting exemptions.

However, they say identifying and correcting the existing flaws highlighted in this study are vital, particularly given that the number of summary reports submitted to the FDA - and the number of adverse events contained within them - more than doubled between 2020 and 2024.

“Immediate improvements are needed to better protect patient safety and adhere to transparency principles outlined by the FDA,” they write. “Making serious adverse event reports fully visible and accessible is critical to patient safety.”

In a linked editorial, Koji Todaka at Kyushu University Hospital in Japan, says these findings raise concerns about transparency in a system intended to support public scrutiny of medical device safety.

To preserve public trust in postmarket surveillance, he says regulators should require accurate and timely summary reporting, standardised device identification, and clear links to registries. He also suggests that researchers integrate spontaneous reports, registries, and linked healthcare data rather than treating any single source as definitive.

He also notes that the FDA is currently transitioning to a new Adverse Event Monitoring System (AEMS), designed to consolidate existing reporting systems and publish adverse event reports in real time.

“Transparency builds trust, evidence improves safety, and both are essential to effective postmarket surveillance and safer medical devices,” he concludes.

Journal

The BMJ

DOI

10.1136/bmj-2026-100812

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Evaluation of the accuracy, completeness, and compliance of current summary reporting of adverse events to the Food and Drug Administration using the manufacturer and user facility device experience (MAUDE) database: cross sectional study

Article Publication Date

14-Oct-2026

2026-10-15T05:35:16.012-07:00

Forecasters predict Democrats to take House but race for Senate hard to call

Cambridge University Press

In a forecasting special issue of PS: Political Science & Politics for the US midterm elections, all forecasters predict that the Democrats will capture the House of Representatives, but are split on who will emerge victorious in the Senate.

Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association (APSA), the special issue includes 17 studies showcasing a range of forecasting approaches and methodologies, from traditional political economy models to controversial betting markets and AI ‘synthetic personas’.

The US Congressional Midterm elections take place on 3 November 2026. They will see all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 Senate seats contested, with control of Congress potentially decided by a handful of highly competitive races.

More broadly, the collection explores how political dynamics are reshaping both elections and the tools used to understand them, and asks whether traditional models can still make accurate predictions in a time of heightened polarisation and political change.

Dr John Kenny, co-Guest Editor of the special issue from the University of Mannheim and University of Southampton, said: “Midterm elections have historically seen the president’s party lose support, driven by economic concerns and falling approval ratings.

“But the political landscape in 2026 is somewhat atypical. Increased polarisation and widespread redistricting have introduced new uncertainties, creating challenges for predicting whether this election will follow established patterns or whether it will mark a significant shift in American politics.”

Predictions for 2026

Many of the studies in the special issue have made predictions on the outcomes of the midterm elections taking place on 3 November 2026.

The verdict was unanimous on a Democrat victory in the House race, with 12 out of 12 predictions in their favour.

Predictions for the Senate race were less clear. Some forecasts are calling it for the Republicans and others are predicting a Democrat victory. All are expecting a close and contentious electoral victory.

Dr Debra Leiter, co-Guest Editor from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said: “With such a narrow Republican majority, Democrats require only modest gains to retake the House, but the Senate will be harder to flip due to the number of Republican-held seats considered secure. Record breaking spending, open-seat contests created by a wave of retirements, and unexpected candidate choices are expected to increase competitiveness across key battleground states.

“Coupled with the unique circumstances of the 2026 election, it’s a tough one to call. Will we see a return to the fundamentals of American election forecasting, or will it prove a challenge to the widespread beliefs about American electoral behaviour?”

Highlighted papers

Roberto Cerina. ‘Polling Without People: Can Silicon Samples of CASM-Inspired LLM Personae Mimic Human Respondents in Pre-Election Polling?’

Contact: Dr Robert Cerina, University of Amsterdam
r.cerina@uva.nl

Roberto Cerina explores whether AI-generated ‘synthetic personas’ can replicate human responses in pre-election polling. Cerina created detailed large language model personas based on factors such as age, gender, education and political identity.

The model’s key innovation is its ability to simulate media consumption. Using up-to-date news feeds, personas were exposed to current events and asked how those developments influenced their political preferences. This helps to overcome a limitation of conventional AI models, whose knowledge is restricted by training cut-off dates.

The model forecasts a Democratic victory in the House, with 58.4% of the national vote and around 292 seats. Though the forecast may overestimate Democratic support, the approach offers a transparent way to understand why voters change their preferences. The paper argues AI polling could be a complement to traditional surveys, offering more frequent, granular insights into public opinion.

Thomas Gruca and Thomas Rietz. ‘Forecasting 2026 Congressional Control: A Comparison of IEM and Kalshi Prediction Markets’

Contact: Professor Thomas Rietz, University of Iowa
thomas-rietz@uiowa.edu

Thomas Gruca and Thomas Rietz examine the Iowa Electronic Market (IEM), a classic futures election market, alongside Kalshi, one of the fastest growing online betting markets. They demonstrate the stability of IEM forecasts, in contrast to the greater instability of the Kalshi markets.

In separate markets, the IEM predicts that the most likely outcomes are a Democratic House victory and a Republican Senate majority. Kalshi markets predict the most likely outcomes are a Democratic House and Senate majority, but less consistently. In combined control markets, both indicate the most likely joint outcome is a Democratic sweep. While both produce similar predictions, the IEM markets have an established history of effective and reliable forecasts that may be less prone to certain kinds of market manipulation.

The most recent IEM prediction gave a 60 per cent chance that Democrats would take the House.

Kalshi predicted similar outcomes, but the chance of the Democrats taking the House was significantly higher at close to 90 per cent.

Both markets predict a Democratic Senate.

Peter Enns, Leigh Farah, Claudia Miner, Thomas Gareau-Paquette. ‘A District-Level Forecast of the 2026 U.S. House of Representatives Midterm Elections’

Contact: Professor Peter Enns, Cornell University
pe52@cornell.edu

Peter Enns et al. recognise that observers of the US midterm elections are likely focused on who will win the majority, yet 435 separate district contests will determine political authority in the House. Their model takes key election factors in each of these districts, including this year’s unique mid-decade redistricting, candidate success measures such as fundraising, and both national level and state level vote intention, to produce a forecast model that mixes national and localised information together in a new and effective way.

Based on 10,000 simulations using data from 100 days before the election, the forecast gives Democrats a 90 per cent chance of taking the House, with an expected total of 235 seats.

Charles Tien and Michael Lewis-Beck. ‘Political economy forecasts: the 2026 midterms’

Contact: Professor Charles Tien, Hunter College, CUNY
ctien@hunter.cuny.edu

Professor Michael Lewis-Beck, University of Iowa
michael-lewis-beck@uiowa.edu

Charles Tien and Mike Lewis-Beck unveil a new forecast of the 2026 elections based on the long-running Political Economy Model. The model draws on three key predictors: economic performance, presidential approval ratings and the historical impact of midterm elections. The paper argues that voters reward governing parties when conditions are favourable, and punish them when they are not.

With President Donald Trump’s approval rating at around 35%, the model predicts Republicans will lose 33 House seats and lose their narrow majority. It also predicts the Democrats will pick up enough seats to retake the Senate. The forecast reflects the powerful historical tendency for presidents’ parties to suffer losses at midterms.

Stephen Quinlan and Michael Lewis-Beck: ‘Demslide or Republican resilience? A political history forecast of the 2026 US congressional elections’

Contact: Stephen Quinlan
stephenpfquinlanwork@gmail.com

Professor Michael Lewis-Beck, University of Iowa
michael-lewis-beck@uiowa.edu

Drawing on decades of US political history, Stephen Quinlan and Mike Lewis-Beck have developed a forecasting model that examines the structural and historical conditions that have consistently influenced election outcomes over time. When one party controls the presidency, Senate and House simultaneously, voters have tended to impose an electoral penalty on the governing party.

With Republicans currently controlling all three branches, the model suggests conditions are favourable for Democratic gains. However, increasing political polarisation and a declining number of competitive House districts may limit gains. The researchers' central forecast projects Democrats winning 231 House seats and 50 Senate seats, giving them a 78% chance of recapturing the House and a 66% chance of winning control of the Senate.

Jack Rametta and Christopher Hare: ‘How Model Choice Obscures Forecast Uncertainty: The Rashomon Effect and the 2026 Senate’

Contact: Dr Christopher Hare, UC Davis
cdhare@ucdavis.edu

Jack Rametta and Christopher Hare have developed a forecasting model to predict US Senate election outcomes that reflects the growing nationalisation of congressional elections, where local candidate appeal and the incumbency advantage are increasingly outweighed by broader political forces such as presidential approval, partisanship and economic conditions.

The researchers argue that elections that were once shaped more heavily by state-level dynamics are now closely tied to voters’ perceptions of national political performance. As a result, even well-regarded incumbents can struggle to withstand unfavourable national trends.

As of late September, the forecast predicts Democrats will take 50 seats in the Senate, but given the high uncertainty, the forecast ranges from 45 to 56 seats. Democrats are slightly more likely than not to secure a Senate majority, though the race remains highly competitive.

Olivia Quinn, Amanda Brush and Eric R. A. N. Smith: ‘Updating the Fundamentals: Forecasting the 2026 Midterm Election Post Gallup’

Contact: Dr Olivia Quinn, UC Santa Barbara
oquinn@ucsb.edu

The recent discontinuation of Gallup’s Presidential Approval polls, an 88-year tradition, poses a problem for many election forecasting models. Olivia Quinn, Amanda Brush and Eric R. A. N Smith show that these models can continue without it. They develop a proxy measure from RealClearPolitics’ poll average and use it to predict what will happen on election night.

As of the most recent quarter, their Congressional seat change forecast predicts sizable Democratic gains in both chambers, with Republicans predicted to lose nine seats in the Senate and 42 seats in the House.

Notes to Editors:

For general enquiries about the issue, please contact:

Dr Matt Midgley, Cambridge University Press & Assessment

+44 (0)1223 342979

matthew.midgley@cambridge.org

To speak to the guest editors, please contact:

Dr Debra Leiter, University of Missouri-Kansas City
leiterd@umkc.edu

Dr John Kenny, University of Mannheim/University of Southampton
J.P.Kenny@soton.ac.uk

Publication:

The Special Issue Forecasting the 2026 US Midterm Elections of PS: Political Science & Politics is published on behalf of the American Political Science Association by Cambridge University Press.

All papers in the special issue will be available here when published: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/accepted-manuscripts

Studies listed below and highlighted in this press release are strictly embargoed until Thursday 15 October 2026 at 00:01 UK time / 14 October at 19:01 US Eastern Time.

Roberto Cerina. ‘Polling Without People: Can Silicon Samples of CASM-Inspired LLM Personae Mimic Human Respondents in Pre-Election Polling?’.
https://DOI.org/10.1017/S1049096526103084
Thomas Gruca and Thomas Rietz. ‘Forecasting 2026 Congressional Control: A Comparison of IEM and Kalshi Prediction Markets’. https://DOI.org/10.1017/S1049096526103023
Peter Enns, Leigh Farah, Claudia Miner, Thomas Gareau-Paquette. ‘A District-Level Forecast of the 2026 U.S. House of Representatives Midterm Elections’. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096526103072
Charles Tien and Michael Lewis-Beck. ‘Political economy forecasts: the 2026 midterms’. https://DOI.org/10.1017/S104909652610290X
Stephen Quinlan and Michael Lewis-Beck. ‘Demslide or Republican resilience? A political history forecast of the 2026 US congressional elections’. https://DOI.org/10.1017/S104909652610300X
Jack Rametta and Christopher Hare: ‘How Model Choice Obscures Forecast Uncertainty: The Rashomon Effect and the 2026 Senate’. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096526103059
Olivia Quinn, Amanda Brush and Eric R. A. N. Smith: ‘Updating the Fundamentals: Forecasting the 2026 Midterm Election Post Gallup’. https://DOI.org/10.1017/S1049096526103047

About Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the academic and Bibles publisher of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. It publishes books and journals, serving customers in higher education through research, education products and services. It is part of the University of Cambridge, delivering trusted research and learning materials that spread knowledge, spark curiosity and aid understanding of the world we live in.
cambridge.org/universitypress

About American Political Science Association (APSA)
Founded in 1903, the American Political Science Association is the leading professional organization for the study of political science and serves more than 11,000 members in more than 80 countries. With a range of programs and services for individuals, departments, and institutions, APSA brings together political scientists from all fields of inquiry, regions, and occupational endeavors within and outside academe to deepen our understanding of politics, democracy, and citizenship throughout the world.

2026-10-15T05:34:17.765-07:00

Fingerprint authentication without storing fingerprints

POSTECH researchers propose a new approach to biometric security using ultrasonic metasurfaces

Pohang University of Science & Technology (POSTECH)

image:

Comparison between conventional store-and-compare fingerprint authentication and direct ultrasound-based authentication

Credit: POSTECH

A research team led by Professor Junsuk Rho of the Departments of Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and the Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology at POSTECH, together with Dr. Seokho Lee and integrated M.S.–Ph.D. student Beomseok Oh of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, has developed a new biometric authentication technology that can identify users without storing their fingerprint information as digital data. The study was published in the international journal Nature Sensors.

Fingerprint recognition is widely used in everyday applications, from unlocking smartphones to financial transactions and access control. Unlike passwords, however, fingerprints cannot easily be changed once compromised. Conventional biometric authentication systems first convert a fingerprint into digital data and then compare it with previously stored fingerprint information. Even when the stored information is encrypted, the authentication process still requires access to biometric data, leaving potential security vulnerabilities.

Rather than seeking a safer way to store fingerprint information, the researchers approached the problem by eliminating the process of digitally storing and comparing fingerprints itself. Instead of sending fingerprint data to a computer for analysis, the system completes the required computation through the physical interaction between ultrasound and the fingerprint. To achieve this, the team proposed a metasurface-driven loop-diffractive neural network, or loop-DNN. A metasurface is an artificial structure capable of precisely controlling the direction, intensity, and phase of ultrasound and, in this study, functions similarly to elements in an artificial neural network.

The researchers designed the system so that ultrasound passing through the metasurface is directed to different locations depending on the fingerprint. When a registered fingerprint is presented, the acoustic energy is concentrated in a “registered” region, whereas an unregistered fingerprint directs the energy toward a “non-registered” region. Authentication can therefore be determined simply by comparing the signal intensities in the two regions, without reconstructing a fingerprint image or extracting fingerprint features through separate digital computation. The researchers further controlled the phase, amplitude, and switch states of the ultrasound, allowing a single metasurface to process fingerprint information with expanded degrees of freedom for wave manipulation. Whereas conventional diffractive neural networks mainly modulate phase, this work additionally controls the intensity and transmission (on/off) of the ultrasound, enabling more versatile use of the waves.

In experiments using fingerprints from four individuals, the system achieved an accuracy of 97.92% across a total of 192 validation samples. Additional numerical analysis using an international fingerprint recognition database demonstrated an accuracy of up to 99.75% for a single registered user. The researchers also observed a general improvement in recognition performance as the design degrees of freedom of the metasurface increased.

The significance of this study lies in shifting biometric authentication from a “store-and-compare” approach to one based on “physical computation and direct decision-making.” Because fingerprint information does not need to be stored separately, the approach could reduce the risk of biometric data leakage. The technology may ultimately find applications in fields requiring high levels of security, including finance, healthcare, and defense, as well as in automobiles, smartphones, and wearable devices.

For practical implementation, however, the current experimental system operating at approximately 40 kHz must be miniaturized toward the MHz frequency range used in industrial sensors, and the technology must be further developed to support multiple registered users. The research team plans to advance the platform by combining multilayer metasurfaces with digital technologies.

Professor Junsuk Rho, who led the study, said, “Rather than developing a faster algorithm or stronger encryption technology, this study changes the starting point of biometric authentication itself. By eliminating the need to separately store biometric information, we expect this approach to develop into a new authentication method that can reduce the risk of fingerprint information being exposed through hacking.”

This research was supported by the POSCO Holdings N.EX.T Impact Program, the Mid-Career Researcher Program of the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Research Foundation of Korea, the Future-Pioneering Convergence Technology Program, the Doctoral Student Research Incentive Program of the Ministry of Education and the National Research Foundation of Korea, and the InnoCORE Program of the Ministry of Science and ICT.

Journal

Nature Sensors

DOI

10.1038/s44460-026-00102-7

Article Title

All-wave computational ultrasonic fingerprint identification with metasurface-driven loop-diffractive neural network

2026-10-15T05:33:18.710-07:00

Global guidelines needed to address inequities in endometriosis care

University of Queensland

Adolescents, gender-diverse people and those with lived experience are underrepresented in endometriosis guidelines worldwide, a University of Queensland study has found.

The global study, with researchers from the World Health Organization, World Endometriosis Society senior board members, and patient group representatives, analysed endometriosis guidelines from 47 countries including 19 published in languages other than English.

Professor Gita Mishra, from UQ’s Australian Women and Girls' Health Research Centre, said 70 per cent of the reviewed guidelines were not informed by people with lived experience of endometriosis.

“A significant proportion of guidelines did not involve people living with endometriosis in its development– particularly in developing countries with substantial gaps in Africa and Eastern Mediterranean,” Professor Mishra said.

“Our findings show the development of standardised international guidelines informed by patients is essential to ensure consistency in diagnosis, treatment and self-care.

“This is important, as we found considerable variation in recommendations for diagnosis, treatment, fertility care and non-medical management of endometriosis worldwide.

“Additionally, most guidelines originate from high-income settings, particularly Europe.

“Yet some countries have no guidelines, meaning women aren’t screened or cared for endometriosis at all.”

Endometriosis is an often-crippling condition where tissue, similar to the inner lining of the uterus, grows outside of it, and has no cure.

It is estimated to affect about 10 per cent – or 190 million – women of reproductive age worldwide.

Data from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health further found 1 in 7 Australian women live with the condition.

“We were surprised to find 1 quarter of the guidelines we reviewed had not been informed by adolescents, despite symptoms and diagnostic delays often beginning during teenage years,’’ Professor Mishra said.

“Further, only 1 in 5 of the guidelines explicitly acknowledge gender diverse individuals – exposing persistent gaps in inclusivity.”

Dr Dereje Gete from UQ’s School of Public Health said identifying gaps in existing guidelines was a critical first step towards addressing global inequities in endometriosis care.

“Different countries face different challenges, including access to treatment, but minimum standardised guidelines are an important starting point in addressing healthcare inequities,” Dr Gete said.

“In countries without guidelines, even raising awareness of endometriosis, its symptoms and how it can be managed is a step forward.’’

Dr Gete said all international guidelines were informed by gynaecologists, yet fewer than half included input from general practitioners.

“This needs to change – general practitioners are often the patient’s first port of call and play a pivotal role in early symptom recognition and referral,” he said.

Professor Mishra said despite global inconsistencies, Australia was leading the way with the 2025 publication of the Australian Living Evidence Guideline: Endometriosis.

Researchers will next work with the World Health Organization to develop standardised global guidelines.

Read the research in Communications Medicine.

Journal

Communications Medicine

DOI

10.1038/s43856-026-01907-w

Method of Research

Systematic review

Article Title

Global inequities and fragmentation in guidelines for endometriosis: a scoping review

2026-10-15T05:31:54.746-07:00

TU Graz uncovers major security flaws in data migration tools

Digital security breach when changing mobile phones

Graz University of Technology

image:

Florian Draschbacher from the Institute of Information Security at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz).

Credit: Lunghammer - TU Graz

The standard data migration tools offered by major Android manufacturers such as Samsung, Google and Xiaomi pose significant security risks, as researchers from the Institute of Information Security at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) and Zentrum für sichere Informationstechnologie (A-SIT) have revealed in a recent study. Their research revealed that critical vulnerabilities in all the tools examined allowed attackers within Wi-Fi range to spy on private user data such as call logs, photos and login details.

Security risk associated with phone cloning

So-called phone clone tools or data migration tools are designed to make it easier to switch from an old smartphone to a new device. The aim is to transfer all data, settings and apps seamlessly from the old device to the new one. These tools usually establish a direct Wi-Fi (WLAN) connection between two smartphones without the need for an external server. However, research carried out by the Graz-based IT security researchers Florian Draschbacher, Lukas Maar, Lorenz Schumm, Rene Denifl, Lukas Treffner and Stefan Mangard now shows that this convenience comes at a huge cost to security.

In all the data migration apps examined from seven Android manufacturers – Google, Samsung, Vivo, Xiaomi, Oppo, Huawei and Honor – the team found vulnerabilities that would allow them, as attackers, to manipulate the transfer or eavesdrop on it. They simply had to be within radio range of the devices – indoors, that’s around 20 to 45 metres. Using inexpensive equipment costing less than 100 euros, they were able to eavesdrop on the data transfer. Places where large numbers of new mobile phones are set up every day, such as specialist electronics shops or mobile phone shops, are particularly vulnerable to such attacks.

Digital life in the spotlight

The potential risk posed by these vulnerabilities is enormous, as almost the entire contents of a smartphone are transferred during a data migration. As part of their investigation, the researchers were not only able to access text messages, contacts and photos, but also to extract highly sensitive information such as health data, login details for saved Wi-Fi (WLAN) networks and app passwords. In some cases, it was even possible to inject malware directly into the new device via app packages that had been tampered with during the transfer.

Billions of users affected – manufacturers respond

The significance of the discovery is evident from the installation figures. The apps examined have been downloaded more than 12 billion times in total and come pre-installed on almost every Android device. “Because these apps are pre-installed and are very convenient for transferring data to a new mobile phone, these security vulnerabilities have a huge impact,” says Florian Draschbacher. The team at TU Graz had already reported the vulnerabilities to the manufacturers in advance as part of a responsible disclosure process. They had confirmed the severity of the issues (including five security alerts classified as high). All seven manufacturers have now released security updates to address the reported vulnerabilities. The researchers urge users, before migrating data between two smartphones, to “ensure that the latest version of the data migration app is installed on both devices, and to always install all relevant updates.” In some cases, this may require updating the entire operating system.

The following Android manufacturers and data transfer apps were examined:
Google Android: Android Switch
Samsung: Smart Switch
Vivo: EasyShare
Xiaomi: Mi Mover
Oppo: Clone Phone
Huawei: Phone Clone
Honor: Device Clone

About the study:
The paper “Clone2Pwn: A Systematic Security Analysis of Data Migration Tools in the Android Ecosystem” was authored by researchers from TU Graz and A-SIT Austria and published at the European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS) 2026.

Successful cybersecurity research at TU Graz

This study is the latest in a series of globally significant cybersecurity risks that have been identified by the Institute of Information Security at TU Graz. For example, a team from the institute was involved in the discovery of the security vulnerabilities Meltdown and Spectre, which affected the vast majority of modern computer processors. In 2024, researchers discovered SnailLoad, which allows users’ online activities to be monitored by comparing the latency times of internet connections with the digital fingerprint of online content. They also discovered the attack method Collide+Power, in which an analysis of a computer processor’s energy consumption makes it possible to read data from its memory. However, the institute is also conducting research in the opposite direction. The Ascon algorithm developed by Maria Eichlseder, Christoph Dobraunig, Florian Mendel and Martin Schläffer, was designated the international standard for lightweight cryptography in 2023. In April 2026 TU Graz opened the Cybersecurity Campus Graz, a new facility dedicated to cutting-edge research and teaching in the field of IT security.

2026-10-15T05:30:13.556-07:00

Drowned 5,000 years old forests reborn as thriving peat reefs and biodiversity hotspots off Mozambique

Diffusion PR

image:

Peat reef habitat fauna, a bluebanded snapper taken by Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies (BCSS) Ocean Observatory

Credit: Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies (BCSS) Ocean Observatory

Bazaruto Archipelago, Mozambique: Researchers from the Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies (BCSS) Ocean Observatory have documented ancient forests that grew on the Mozambican coast thousands of years ago and have been found beneath the sea, where they now serve as hotspots teeming with marine life similar in biodiversity to coral reefs. The discovery raises the question of how many more of these hidden peat reefs exist around the world’s coastlines and how to evaluate them as a carbon store and develop policies to protect them and their biodiversity.

The paper in Scientific Reports published today by the BCSS Ocean Observatory, working in collaboration with researchers from UK, US and Canadian universities and research institutions, has documented submerged “peat reefs” in the shallow waters of the Bazaruto Archipelago (Western Indian Ocean). It is believed to be the first ecological study of peat reefs anywhere in the tropics, and globally from a biodiversity angle.

The research follows two papers published in Frontiers in Marine Science that described the capabilities of the BCSS Ocean Observatory, which enabled this research. Established in Mozambique’s Bazaruto Archipelago in 2017, BCSS is Africa’s first permanent Ocean Observatory and has generated more than 22 million measurements across over 30 chemical, environmental and biodiversity variables, spanning six interconnected ecosystems and 14 long term monitoring stations across an approximately 6,850 km² monitoring area in the greater Bazaruto seascape – from mangroves, seagrass meadows, peat and coral reefs to lagoons, seamounts and the open ocean.

Thousands of years in the making

The reefs are made of peat: compressed, carbon-rich remains of coastal swamps and forests. As sea levels rose over the past few thousand years, and continue to rise, the sea flooded these landscapes. Waves later stripped away the sand above them, leaving firm peat platforms exposed on the seabed. The substrate was then colonized by marine life, which biodiversity is comparable to neighbouring coral reefs.

Radiocarbon dating (14C) shows the peat formed between roughly 300 and 5,000 years ago. Chemical analysis confirms it mostly came from coastal land plants and trees. Some peat samples contain up to 40% organic carbon by dry weight. However, more work needs to be done to determine if these systems can function as a long-term legacy carbon store, and what is their role in the blue-carbon storage

A potential blue-carbon store

This carbon has been stored and sequestered underwater for thousands of years and on land (blue-carbon), peat swamps can hold 1,000–2,000 tonnes of carbon per hectare below ground, but no one yet knows how much the reefs hold, or whether they are storing or releasing it today. The paper itself says the peat reefs' present-day role in carbon cycling remains unresolved and requires dedicated measurements of peat thickness, bulk density, areal carbon stocks, burial or erosion rates, and greenhouse-gas fluxes.

That makes the carbon question a direct scientific consequence of the discovery. Scientists have spent decades working out what warming and disturbance mean for ancient carbon locked in tundra, peatlands and mangroves. Tropical peat reefs are at a much earlier stage of understanding, but they now raise a similar question beneath the sea: what is stored there, how stable is it, and what happens if these newly recognised ecosystems are lost, eroded or disturbed?

The authors also call for research to establish whether these systems primarily function as long-term legacy carbon stores, whether living communities contribute to new carbon burial, and how these processes interact as the environment changes. From there, we can explore whether we can classify peat reefs as “blue carbon” habitats like mangroves or seagrass.

A reef with no coral

The team surveyed three peat reefs and a nearby true coral reef, comparing seabed cover, invertebrates, small fish and larger animals such as sharks, rays and turtles.

The peat reefs host no living coral at all but are still teeming with life. Instead, seagrass and seaweeds grow directly on the peat. The crevices and ledges shelter spiny lobsters, oysters, barnacles and juvenile fish, including young snappers and grunts usually linked to coral reefs, likely providing refuge from predators.

Despite looking nothing like coral reefs, the peat reefs share much of their fish wildlife and biodiversity, while the invertebrate animals fixed to the seabed are completely different. Dozens small fish species as well as larger species like sharks, rays and turtles were recorded on both reef types. Each peat reef held 26 to 36 small fish species, with the diversity mix of species comparable to the coral reef. Herbivorous megafauna such as green turtles and dugongs, both found in the area, could also graze the seagrass patches.

The peat reefs also live a harder life. Sitting just 2–4 metres deep and regularly exposed by the tides, they swing between 24.5 and 28.6°C within a day and receive far more sunlight than the deeper coral reef. Storms and cyclones regularly bury, uncover and break them apart. Many of them actually disappear due to erosion and sand movements.

“What was once a forest floor is now a nursery for reef fish. We were surprised by how much life these ancient peat deposits support, and how many species move between them and the coral reefs nearby. This coastline has very little natural hard seabed, mostly shifting sand. When rising seas expose these old peat layers, they create rare, solid habitat where marine life can settle, hide and feed.” said Dr Mario Lebrato, lead author and co-founder of the Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies (BCSS) Ocean Observatory.

Legacy of coastal carbon

Coastal planners and conservationists rarely map or protect peat reefs, and similar habitats may lie undiscovered across Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and West Africa. As coral reefs decline, these overlooked habitats could offer backup refuges for some species.

These findings indicate that peat reefs should be included in coastal habitat maps, conservation plans and assessments of legacy coastal carbon. This study is an important starting point for considerations on how to incorporate these habitats within wider blue economy policies.

Dr Mario Lebrato continued, “The existence of tropical peat reefs underscores the resilience and adaptive reinvention potential of coastal ecosystems under pressure from sea-level rise and shoreline change. Their contribution to biodiversity, fisheries habitat, and potential legacy-carbon preservation should be recognised in coastal management and conservation strategies, particularly in regions where coral reef health is declining. The ability to demonstrate the vitality of these habitats as a result of our continuous observation excites me for the prospect of implementing conservation policy that protects similar regions around the world.”

--ENDS--

About BCSS

The Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies (BCSS) is Africa's first permanent, multi-ecosystem Ocean Observatory, based on Benguerra Island in Mozambique's Bazaruto Archipelago National Park on the southeastern coast of Africa. Founded in 2017, BCSS runs long-term research across six marine and coastal ecosystems, from coral reefs and seagrass meadows to mangroves, seamounts and the open ocean. These habitats are home to species like whale sharks and hammerhead sharks, black marlin, and marine mammals like dugongs and migrating humpback whales. Through its "Resort to Research" funding model with sister property Kisawa Sanctuary, BCSS is run in partnership with local communities to understand, safeguard, and advance marine science in Eastern Africa. BCSS has monitored over 6,000 km² of ocean and provides free, open-access data from the observatory to inform conservation, marine policy and the blue economy across the Western Indian Ocean. For more information, visit bcssmz.org.

The paper:

Lebrato M., Shannon J., Russell T., Jordan A., Jije-Goncalves M., da Graça M., Caputo M., Lillis A. Ancient terrestrial forests reborn as modern marine ecosystems under shifting sea levels., Scientific Reports, 12.10.2026

Collaborating Institutions: Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies (BCSS) and Kisawa Sanctuary, Mozambique; University of Southampton; University of Plymouth; Heriot-Watt University; Newcastle University; University of New England (Maine, USA); Sound Ocean Science (Canada).

The foundational BCSS Ocean Observatory scientific publications are available here:

Africa´s first permanent ocean observatory, Frontiers in Marine Science
Africa´s first long-term ocean observatory in the Bazaruto Archipelago, Frontiers in Marine Science

Further scientific publications from the BCSS Ocean Observatory are available here. Key highlights include:

Pink whipray cleaning undocumented behaviour, ESA Ecology

Tagging vulnerable deep water sharks, Scientific Reports
Tracking Humpback Whale breeding migrations, Proceedings of the Royal Society
Environmental influences on sharks & rays habits, Frontiers in Marine Science
Observing shark and reef fish behaviour in coral communities, Scientific Reports
Climate-driven ocean warming and tuna fisheries, Frontiers in Marine Science
Citizen science addressing conservation gaps in sharks & rays, Frontiers in Marine Science

Images

Map of BCSS location
Aerial photo of Mozambican coastline
Peat reef marine life
Peat reef deposits
Coral reef marine life
Dr Mario Lebrato headshot

Media contacts

Tom Gilby, Ivana Farthing at Diffusion

bcss@diffusionpr.com

Journal

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-026-65430-7

Article Title

Ancient terrestrial forests reborn as modern marine ecosystems under shifting sea levels

Article Publication Date

12-Oct-2026

Peat reef habitat exposed by the tides; Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies (BCSS) Ocean Observatory

Credit

Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies (BCSS) Ocean Observatory

2026-10-15T05:25:03.041-07:00

Unexpected discovery of new mechanism which helps deadly fungus Candida auris evade treatment

New research has revealed an unexpected new mechanism through which the killer fungus Candida auris is resisting antifungal drug treatment.

University of Exeter

image:

Image of the plate showing different rates of cell growth

Credit: University of Exeter

New research has revealed an unexpected new mechanism through which the killer fungus Candida auris is resisting antifungal drug treatment.

A team led by the University of Exeter and City St George’s, University of London, discovered that the fungus creates multiple versions of its entire genome, including mutating a gene which plays a role in cell wall integrity, called “Crazy-one” (CRZ1).

The study is now published in Nature Communications. The research was primarily funded by the Medical Research Council, with support from the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre: Exeter.

Study authors say their findings unlock a brand new mechanism that allows Candida auris to adapt to antifungal treatment and survive, which could lead to new ways to tackle the fungus.

Candida auris was only described for the first time in 2008, and its origins remain a mystery. Since it emerged, outbreaks have been reported on every continent, in more than 60 countries in total, including the UK. It has been named a global public health threat, and is on the World Health Organization’s critical priority fungal pathogens list.

Study first author Dr Hugh Gifford, Clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter’s MRC Centre for Medical Mycology, is also an intensive care physician. He said: “Candida auris is rare in the general population, but it’s a deadly threat to patients in intensive care units. It clings to patient skin and surrounding equipment, and can be transmitted from person to person – it’s incredibly hard to eradicate. If infection enters a vulnerable patient’s blood stream, there is a 45 per cent death rate.

“Outbreaks in intensive care units have been costly and highly disruptive. One unit in the UK had to close and undergo complete refurbishment to stop the outbreak, while another outbreak was estimated to cost £1 million to control. “

The research team was initially testing for drug resistance when a researcher accidentally left plates of cells incubating for longer than the required test period. The researcher returned to find that cells had unexpectedly grown during this additional time period. They were surprised to find that further testing showed the deadly fungus had survived antifungal treatment by creating multiple versions of its own genome, thereby increasing its chances of mutating to evade the drug and survive.

Dr Sarah Murphy, former postdoctoral researcher at City St George’s University of London and co-first author said “We initially set out to investigate why antifungal drugs weren’t working to kill Candida auris, despite laboratory tests showing that they were not resistant and that the drugs should have been effective. We were surprised to discover an entirely new mechanism for this fungus to survive – particularly with luck playing a big part of the discovery. We tested the fungus against very high concentrations of antifungal drugs. We were amazed to find there was a tiny population of cells that appeared over several days and continued to grow. Our discovery means we need to now look at new ways of treating people and eradicating this deadly fungus from hospitals.”

Expanding further on the finding, Dr Hugh Gifford said: “This study had a number of surprising elements. Firstly, we did not identify any of the DNA mutations that we might have expected. Antifungal drugs target the enzymes that make cell walls, so that fungi die by shriveling, exploding, or not being able to grow. Somehow, these fungi had survived antifungal drugs, and we needed to find out why. We were surprised to find that surviving cells had made multiple copies of its entire genome. This is a trick that other fungi have used in the past, but not one that is well known in C. auris. In fact, there were two populations, some growing slowly, others growing more rapidly. We call it ‘bet-hedging’ when a bug uses multiple tactics to increases its chances of developing resistance and evading treatment.”

The team found that the more rapidly growing cells contained a wide range of mutations in a gene that has been studied in other organisms for its role in governing cell wall synthesis, called “Crazy-one” (CRZ1). Further tests confirmed the rapid growth of CRZ1 mutants, and that their cell walls appeared to be unaffected by antifungal drugs.

Researchers are now looking at options including the use of antifungal drugs in combination, which is being addressed via the Exeter-led UKRI funded Fungi-CARE programme, also in partnership with colleagues at City St George’s.

Senior author Professor Tihana Bicanic, Professor of Infectious Diseases and Mycology at the School of Health & Medical Sciences at City St George’s, University of London, said: “We now believe that fungal infections are more complicated than previously thought. Multiple populations may exist during infection. New and emerging human fungal infections, like Candida auris, essentially have a Swiss Army Knife of innovation with their own genome, leading to stepwise adaptation and drug resistance. The implication of these results are that we now know a new mechanism of evolution that weakens our antifungal drug arsenal. So, we are sounding the alarm for the need to make better antifungal drugs and urgently address our ability to prevent fungal deaths.”

The study is titled ‘FKS1/2-variant independent mechanisms underlying the 1 emergence of resistance in echinocandin-refractory 2 Candida auris infections’ and is published in Nature Communications.

Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-026-76954-x

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Cells

Article Title

FKS1/2-variant independent mechanisms underlying the emergence of resistance in echinocandin-refractory Candida auris infections

Article Publication Date

15-Oct-2026

2026-10-15T05:23:30.595-07:00

Aston University research finds vegan honey could be made with similar antimicrobial properties to mānuka honey

Aston University

Dr Jonathan Cox, senior lecturer in biosciences, led the research to test specially made formulations of vegan honey against bacteria
There is much research interest in mānuka honey as an alternative to antibiotics as bacteria develop resistance but honeybees are declining
The work helps identify which honey-associated antimicrobial factors contribute most strongly to activity.

Vegan honey alternatives could be engineered to have similar antimicrobial properties to prized mānuka honey from New Zealand, according to research at Aston University.

Vegan honey alternatives, based on sugar syrup, mimic the natural consistency, carbohydrate structure (sugar and inulin) and taste of honey while containing no bee-derived components. They are gaining popularity with the rise of veganism, and the decline of honeybee populations, which is impacting honey supplies.

Mānuka honey, from New Zealand, is made by bees that pollinate the mānuka bush and it is known for its unique antibacterial properties. It is expensive and as a natural product, can vary between batches. Dr Jonathan Cox, senior lecturer in biosciences at Aston University, wanted to investigate whether the key antimicrobial components of medical honey could be recreated in a fully vegan, synthetic formulation. The broader aim was to understand which components are responsible for the antibacterial activity and whether a sustainable, reproducible alternative to natural honey could be developed.

Previous research from Dr Cox’s group showed that mānuka honey is active against Mycobacterium abscessus, a highly drug-resistant bacterium that can cause difficult-to-treat lung, skin and soft tissue infections. New treatment options are urgently needed. They tested their vegan honey formulations against a culture of this bacterium, both for their ability to stop bacterial growth, and to kill bacteria outright.

Two components of mānuka honey proved to be particularly effective when added to the vegan honey formulations - methylglyoxal (MGO) and hydrogen peroxide. The most effective vegan honey formulations against M. abscessus were those containing combinations of MGO and enzyme-based systems that generate hydrogen peroxide within the honey. The best formulations could kill M. abscessus.

The findings suggest that some of the beneficial antimicrobial properties of medical honey can potentially be reproduced without using bee-derived products.

Dr Cox says that the next steps in the research will be to optimise the formulations and better understand how the different antimicrobial components work together. He also suggests that future work could test the efficacy of the vegan honey formulations against other clinically important disease-causing bacteria.

Dr Cox adds:

“Longer term, this research could help support the development of sustainable honey-inspired antimicrobial products for wound care or other topical applications, without relying on bee-derived ingredients.

“The work also provides insight into how natural honey functions, which may help guide the design of next-generation antimicrobial therapies.”

To read the full paper, ‘Modifications to a vegan artificial honey result in inhibitory activity against Mycobacterium abscessus’ in PLOS One, visit journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0356687.

Journal

PLOS One

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0356687

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Cells

Article Title

Modifications to a vegan artificial honey result in inhibitory activity against Mycobacterium abscessus

2026-10-15T05:22:13.540-07:00

Research institutions are converging on what they study

Complexity Science Hub

image:

Each dot is a research institution. The further right and up, the more closely new hires and departing researchers match the institution's research topics. The gray lines mark the median values. Colors show citation impact: gray dots are institutions below the global average, while orange, blue and yellow indicate increasingly high impact. Highly cited institutions cluster in the top right, with one notable exception: the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Over the past two decades, research organizations worldwide have tended to become more alike in their research topics. At top institutions, new hires also fit particularly well into the existing research profile, a recent study by the Complexity Science Hub (CSH) finds.

IN SHORT:

The study traces the careers of 9.3 million researchers at 3,965 institutions worldwide between 2000 and 2020.
Growing similarity: Over two decades, research institutions have become more alike in their research topics.
Close fit: New hires usually work on topics that closely match their institution's existing research, down to very specific niches. The median score is 0.84 (on a scale from 0 to 1).
Prestige matters: The more prestigious an institution, the more closely new hires' topics match its existing research.
Every hire is a choice: The method can help universities, funders, and policymakers assess whether hiring strategies fit the research profiles they aim for.

Where researchers go, their knowledge goes. And that shapes where innovation happens. “Recruiting researchers is one way institutions gain new knowledge and steer their research in particular directions,” explains Vito D. P. Servedio, senior scientist at CSH.

To learn more about whom institutions hire, how many new research topics those hires bring, and how institutions develop thematically over time, a team from CSH, in collaboration with Leiden University, reconstructed the career paths of 9.3 million researchers across 3,965 institutions worldwide. To do so, they analyzed 25 million scientific publications and traced the publication histories of their authors between 2000 and 2020. The study has been published in the journal Scientometrics.

INSTITUTIONS ARE BECOMING MORE ALIKE

Compared with one another, research institutions grew more similar in their research topics, the team found.

Servedio found this surprising. “I expected institutions to develop more distinct profiles,” he says. “Diversity in research can be valuable, because we often don't know what knowledge we'll need next.”

NEW HIRES FIT IN

Within institutions, new hires generally fit well with the existing research profile. “The research topics of newcomers closely match those of the scientists already there,” Servedio says. On a scale from 0 (no overlap) to 1 (identical topics), the median topic alignment is 0.84. In other words, at half of the institutions studied, alignment is even higher than 0.84. At the other half, it is lower.

“We're not talking about broad fields like molecular biology or quantum physics,” study author and CSH president Stefan Thurner notes. “We're talking about very narrow, specific research topics.” The team used an established classification distinguishing between 4,163 of them.

Journal

Scientometrics

DOI

10.1007/s11192-026-05815-7

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Scientific mobility, prestige and topic alignment in research institutions