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2026-06-23T06:26:18.940-07:00

Researchers discover how our brains react to surprise

University of Sydney

Australian researchers have uncovered what happens behind the scenes in our brain when we’re faced with a predictable situation versus a surprise, giving vital clues in a long-standing mystery in neuroscience.

The researchers found that during surprising events, our brain is wired to direct energy to take in more sensory information from our environment.

This is why we remember unexpected events more vividly and accurately. Our brain then updates its own internal memory.

In comparison, when something is familiar or expected, the brain begins to respond to it before it even happens, which is what saves precious milliseconds. When something predictable appears, the brain makes us respond faster but doesn’t bother encoding it in full detail.

“Our study is a fascinating insight into how the brain uses predictions to help us better perceive and interact with the world,” says senior author Dr Reuben Rideaux from the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney.

“Our brain is constantly under pressure to make decisions, receiving a huge amount of sensory information from our environment. So, it needs to save energy where it can.

“When the brain is faced with a predictable situation, it goes ‘I already know what this is, I don’t need to spend energy processing it carefully.’

“But during unexpected events it’s like a software update or patch. Our brain wants to update our internal memory of the world to make sure we’re prepared for the future, so the energy is dedicated to collect as much information as possible from our environment,” says Dr Rideaux.

The findings, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, resolves a long-standing debate in neuroscience about ‘adaptive efficiency’, how our brain allocates neural energy to meet the pressures of environmental demands.

“The debate had been focused on whether the brain prioritised expected or unexpected information,” said lead author PhD candidate Ziyue Hu, from the School of Psychology.

“We’ve found the answer is both. The brain has its cake and eats it too.”

“It’s incredible because this process all happens in milliseconds. This advances our understanding of how the brain balances speed and accuracy and how prediction and attention shape how we perceive the world.”

Managing surprises

The best real-world example that demonstrates this is professional sport. For high performance athletes, their experience enables them to predict and respond more quickly.

“Imagine a professional tennis player who knows where her opponent’s next serve is going to land. Their experience makes them move towards that spot before the ball is even struck and to get her racket in position to hit it back cleanly. Her brain had already prepared a motor response for the likely location and didn't bother encoding the precise location of the ball that confirmed what it already predicted,” says Dr Rideaux.

“That prediction buys her precious milliseconds, but if you ask her to recall frame by frame, exactly where the ball bounced inside the service box, her memory will be fuzzy.

“But it’s the rare surprise serve down the middle, which she'll remember with vivid spatial precision.”

The research

To study this phenomenon, 40 participants viewed simple visual flashes appearing around a circle while researchers measured their brain activity using EEG (recording brain waves) and tracked their pupil responses.

The research team recorded the participant’s reaction times and accuracy. But crucially, at times the researchers would manipulate and deliberately change the pattern of the flashes.

Participants responded more quickly and accurately to expected events, but when asked to recall the exact location, their memory was worse than after the unexpected flashes.

One surprising finding was our brain reacts to familiar events in two stages.

The first is when the brain first predicts what is about to happen and so prepares and primes our body to react quickly.

The second is when the brain recognises that the event is what it expected, and it saves energy by not processing this information from the environment as deeply.

Both expected and unexpected events were represented in the cortex within 100 milliseconds of participants seeing the flash, but the unexpected events were represented more clearly in the brain waves than the expected ones.

For the next stage of the research, Dr Rideaux’s team is interested in understanding how these mechanisms develop over time, and what ecological factors influence those pathways.

The team is also interested in exploring how these mechanisms can be applied in artificial brains (neural networks and artificial intelligence) to improve their efficiency or performance.

-ENDS-

Research link when published: https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0154-26.2026

Journal

JNeurosci

DOI

10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0154-26.2026

2026-06-23T06:21:28.642-07:00

Like a miniature lunar rocket: Researchers develop modular nanorobot

University of Basel

video:

Animated explainer on the design and functionality of the modular nanorobot

Credit: University of Basel Concept & Information Design: Marina Bräm, viz. bybraem Concept & Motion Design: Adrian Aghenitei

A team at the University of Basel, Switzerland, has developed a versatile nanorobot with propulsion and payload modules. The two reusable modules autonomously self-assemble and could be used in medicine or industry.

Nanorobots sound like science fiction: tiny machines for medicine, the environment, or industry. In fact, nanorobotics has become a rapidly growing field of research. It is considered a promising approach, for example, for delivering active substances to specific locations in the body. Unlike their larger-scale counterparts, they are not made of electronics, computer chips, and software, but rather of biomolecules and nanoparticles.

Researchers led by Prof. Dr. Cornelia Palivan from the University of Basel are now reporting on a sophisticated modular nanorobot with greater functional flexibility than many existing systems. “Previous nanorobots are often designed for a specific task only,” says Cornelia Palivan. “Our modular system, on the other hand, can be adapted to different applications.” The technology could be used not only in medicine but also in industry and environmental technology.

Propulsion module and payload capsule

The nanorobot, which the team describes in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, resembles a lunar rocket with multiple modules. A magnetic propulsion module moves the nanorobot, while a second module serves as a payload capsule, safely transporting therapeutic agents or enzymes to their target location.

In previous work, Palivan’s team developed nanoscale polymer vesicles that protect encapsulated enzymes. Molecules can enter the vesicle through pores, be processed by the enzymes and then their products are released into the environment. The payload capsule of the nanorobot contains four such enzyme-loaded polymer vesicles, providing the desired functionality. Depending on the design, the vesicles inside the payload capsule can also be selectively opened, for example to release bioactive compounds.

A DNA-based molecular Velcro system

The two modules are connected by a DNA-based “Velcro fastener”: complementary DNA strands on both modules ensure that the propulsion module and the payload capsule self-assemble in a programable manner and remain stably coupled.

To enable the nanorobot to dock onto specific cells or materials, the payload capsule is also equipped with additional biomolecules that facilitate docking. In the lab, the team tested this using a human cancer cell line known as HeLa cells. They loaded the nanorobots with fluorescent molecules and observed under the microscope that they accumulated on the surface of the cells.

Targeted attack on cancer cells and other applications

Equipped with the necessary enzymes, the nanorobots successfully produced an anticancer drug which reduced the viability of the HeLa cells to 16 percent within 72 hours. “The drug can have a concentrated local effect if we use our nanorobot to specifically target it to the cancer cells,” explains Dr. Voichita Mihali, the first author of the study.

For other applications outside the medical domain, for example catalysis, another feature might prove particularly valuable: Since the propulsion module is magnetic, the nanorobots can be retrieved and reused after their task is completed. The researchers were also able to separate the two modules, refill the payload capsules, and recombine them with the propulsion modules.

The modular nanorobot represents an important step toward a multifunctional tool for a wide range of applications. Although its use in humans remains a long-term goal, the system can be readily adapted for other domains simply by modifying the payload capsule.

The work was conducted within the framework of the National Center of Competence in Research – Molecular Systems Engineering and the Swiss Nanoscience Institute. The University of Basel team collaborated with researchers from Heidelberg University.

One of the nanorobots, imaged with a Transmission Electron Microscope.

Credit

Voichita Mihali, University of Basel

The nanorobot can attach itself to specific surfaces and carry out enzymatic reactions there. The enzymes (purple) inside the payload capsule convert molecules from the surrounding environment (left, dark gray) into the desired product (right, light gray).

Credit

University of Basel, Marina Bräm viz. bybraem

Illustration of the versatile nanorobot. It is 150 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

Credit

University of Basel, Marina Bräm viz. bybraem

Journal

Advanced Functional Materials

DOI

10.1002/adfm.202600079

Article Title

Multiplex Modular Nanorobotic Systems with Catalytic Activity under Magnetic Navigation

2026-06-23T06:20:46.304-07:00

FUNGUY

Ten new species of Inocybe and one new record for China from the Gaoligong Mountains, Southwestern China

SciOpen

image:

(a, b) Basidiomata. (c) Basidiospore. (d) Cheilocystidia. (e) Pleurocystidia. (f) Caulocystidia. (g) Basidia and basidioles. Scales: a, b = 1 cm; c = 1 μm; d, e, g = 10 μm; f = 20 μm.

Credit: Mycology-An International Journal on Fungal Biology

This study was conducted by the research team of Prof. Zhu-Liang Yang at the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Focusing on the species diversity of Inocybe in the Gaoligong Mountains of southwestern China, the team carried out detailed taxonomic and phylogenetic investigations based on extensive field collections, morphological examinations, and molecular analyses.

Inocybe is a large genus in Inocybaceae, Agaricales, Agaricomycetes, Basidiomycota, Fungi. Species of this genus are widely distributed across the world and represent typical ectomycorrhizal fungi that play important ecological roles in the maintenance and functioning of forest ecosystems. In addition, many species of Inocybe contain toxic compounds such as muscarine and psilocybin, which may cause poisoning in humans or animals. Therefore, accurate species identification is important not only for understanding fungal diversity and evolution, but also for poisoning prevention and the sustainable use of fungal resources.

Although Inocybe has been studied for nearly two centuries, its diversity in the Gaoligong Mountains has remained insufficiently explored. To address this gap, the research team conducted a systematic study of Inocybe specimens collected from this biodiversity hotspot. Molecular phylogenetic analyses based on combined ITS, LSU, and rpb2 sequence data showed that the studied materials formed ten major lineages in the phylogenetic tree.

Based on integrated morphological observations and molecular phylogenetic evidence, the researchers described ten new species from the Gaoligong Mountains: Inocybe hirsuticeps, I. ceratina, I. longistipes, I. gracilipes, I. flocculosipes, I. flavocrocea, I. rufosquamosa, I. aculeata, I. dulongjiangensis, and I. squamulomarginata. In addition, Inocybe albodiscoides was reported as a new record for China. The study also provides a taxonomic key to Chinese species of Inocybe, offering a useful reference for future identification and classification of the genus in China.

Through systematic and taxonomic analyses, this work clarifies six major lineages of Inocybe represented in the studied materials and significantly expands current knowledge of the genus in China. The discovery of ten new species and one newly recorded species highlights the Gaoligong Mountains as an important but still underexplored hotspot of fungal diversity. With continued field surveys and taxonomic studies of macrofungi in China, more previously unknown species of Inocybe are expected to be discovered in the future.

See the article:

Ten new species of Inocybe (Inocybaceae, Agaricales) from the Gaoligong Mountains, Southwestern China

DOI Link:

https://doi.org/10.1080/21501203.2026.2678690

Journal

Mycology: An International Journal on Fungal Biology

DOI

10.1080/21501203.2026.2678690

Article Title

Ten new species of Inocybe (Inocybaceae, Agaricales) from the Gaoligong Mountains, southwestern China

Article Publication Date

11-Jun-2026

2026-06-23T06:19:48.945-07:00

A two-pronged vaccine approach to prevent genital herpes

Yale University

Genital herpes is a lifelong infection. While available treatments can manage symptoms, they cannot cure the infection or prevent transmission. Now, Yale School of Medicine researchers have taken a significant step toward a genital herpes vaccine that in preclinical models prevented infection.

In a study published June 19 in Science Immunology, researchers evaluated a two-part vaccination against genital herpes. With the technique, the first part — a typical intramuscular injection like you would receive for a flu shot, for example — is followed by the introduction of nanoparticles to the vagina, where herpes infection occurs in women.

The idea is the initial injection “primes” the immune system while the second localized treatment “pulls” immune activity right to where infection takes place. This study extends the original “prime and pull” approach by developing a new nanoparticle that effectively induces local immunity.

“We’ve found that, in preclinical experiments, this approach is a safe way to recruit the right immune cells in the right place to generate protective immunity,” said senior author Akiko Iwasaki, Sterling Professor of Immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine.

A two-pronged vaccine for genital herpes immunity

Efforts to develop a genital herpes vaccine have uncovered a key limitation of typical intramuscular injections: They do not establish robust immune cell populations or antibodies against the herpes virus at the vaginal lining where the virus is introduced in women. This limits the extent of immune attack against the herpes virus.

To address this challenge, the Iwasaki lab has explored methods to “pull” an immune response to the vaginal lining. They first tested whether introducing chemokines — proteins that can direct immune cells — to the vagina could establish immunity there. That technique led to only partial protection against herpes as it did not engage necessary immune cells called B cells.

They then evaluated a DNA molecule that stimulates the immune system. While it did reduce the amount of virus at the vagina, it also caused inflammation.

So the researchers wondered if combining the two methods might yield the best of both worlds.

“We had these two really promising strategies in the lab, but each had some shortcoming,” said Sachin Bhagchandani, a postdoc in Iwasaki’s lab and lead author of the study. “So we set out to formulate a particle that could overcome those shortcomings.”

Nanoparticles prevent herpes infection

The result of that work is BEACON (Bioactive Enhanced Adjuvant Chemokine Oligonucleotide Nanoparticles). The researchers made these nanoparticles by linking a piece of immunostimulating DNA to a chemokine.

“Sachin led this work, creating a nanoparticle that was stable and effective, which was no small feat,” said Iwasaki, who is also a professor of dermatology and of epidemiology, as well as an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

For the study, the researchers first primed female mice with an intramuscular vaccination against the herpes virus and then applied BEACON and virus antigen intravaginally. They found that BEACON established strong immune cell and antibody responses against the herpes virus in the vaginal tissue and that it lasted long term, at least six months.

When exposed to the herpes virus, mice given the “prime and pull” treatment were highly resistant to infection: 80% displayed no signs of disease over six months. That’s compared with just 40% of mice that received the intramuscular injection alone.

“That showed us that this approach could be profoundly impactful, establishing local immune responses for a significantly long period of time,” said Bhagchandani.

Further, BEACON enabled the researchers to target the right cells for generating immunity, rather than broadly affecting all cells. This meant they needed less of the DNA molecule than they used in previous experiments, and this smaller amount prevented the development of inflammation.

“This formulation is quite remarkable in that way,” said Iwasaki.

A vaccine for humans

The researchers are now evaluating whether this “prime and pull” method can be used to treat infection as well as prevent it. They’re also thinking about what this might look like for people.

“We’re collaborating with the Appel lab at Stanford to see if we can turn BEACON into translatable formulation, such as a vaginal suppository,” said Bhagchandani. “We’re also exploring a nasal approach wherein the ‘pull’ happens in the nose, which would allow this kind of treatment to work for men as well.”

While further down the road, the researchers aim to test this method in human clinical trials, because ultimately, the goal is to develop a vaccine for humans.

“A lot of the suffering patients go through is not just physical; it’s mental and societal,” said Iwasaki. “But viruses are the same — whether it’s the flu or Epstein-Barr virus or herpes simplex, it’s not the person’s fault that they caught it. And yet there’s a lot of stigma. We hope that this kind of strategy will prevent diseases that affect people in a profound way.”

DOI

10.1126/sciimmunol.aea6419

Article Title

Bioactive enhanced adjuvant chemokine oligonucleotide nanoparticles (BEACONs) for mucosal vaccination against genital herpes

Article Publication Date

19-Jun-2026

2026-06-23T06:16:26.531-07:00

UMass Amherst-led team discovers new way to make thermally insulative plastics

Plastics with low thermal conductivity could have aerospace and energy-efficient building applications

University of Massachusetts Amherst

image:

An illustration of THDBT (tetrahydroxy deoxybenzoin triazole) filler aggregates at the molecular level. In this “slow chaos” state, there are fewer vibrational pathways available for heat transport, resulting in lower thermal conductivity. Reproduced from Materials Horizons with permission from the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Credit: Yanfei Xu, UMass Amherst; Reproduced from Materials Horizons with permission from the Royal Society of Chemistry.

AMHERST, Mass. — University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers have demonstrated a possible new avenue for developing flame-retardant and generally low-conductivity (low heat transfer) plastics that retain the benefits of being strong and flexible by limiting the accessibility of heat-carrying vibrational channels of the material. This new design framework has promising applications, including lightweight thermal insulation materials for spacesuits, thermal protection components for spacecraft and advanced building materials that reduce heating and cooling losses.

Thermal conductivity is a measure of how efficiently heat can move across a material. When heat moves quickly, the material is conductive. If heat moves slowly, the material is a good insulator. Conventionally, materials are made more insulative by the introduction of pockets of air, which are poor conductors. While effective for inorganic materials, this method does not work for plastics because it can weaken the material and complicate manufacturing.

Yanfei Xu, corresponding author of the study and assistant professor in the Riccio College of Engineering at UMass Amherst, and her team investigated a new way to reduce conductivity without introducing porosity. Instead, they looked at the material’s vibration on an atomic level. Heat moves when vibrational energy is passed from one atom to another, much like a bucket brigade passes water down a line. Firefighters (here representing the atoms) move the bucket (representing heat) in coordinated movement, efficiently from point A to point B.

To reduce conductivity, Xu and her team used vibrational engineering so that, instead of strong firefighters efficiently passing big buckets from one person to the next, the polymer behaves like a group of disorganized toddlers—no two children are moving in the same direction and the small hands can only carry small cups instead of big buckets.

As a result, the heat moves along the material very slowly. In their initial trial of this new method (tested using a polymer hybrid of polyurethane and tetrahydroxy deoxybenzoin triazole), the researchers found that this “slow chaos,” as Xu describes the polymer’s behavior, reduced conductivity by 17%. The material also demonstrated flame-retardant behavior.

Xu points out that their reduction in thermal conductivity is small in this initial testing, but she is excited about their discovery of a new mechanism for governing thermal conductivity.

“There is a lot of potential,” she says. “By reducing the density of thermally accessible vibrational channels available for heat transport, thermal conductivity is suppressed. The materials remain dense, mechanically compliant and flame-retardant.”

This research, published in Materials Horizons, was featured on the journal’s front cover. The work was conducted in collaboration with scientists from North Carolina State University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Texas A&M University, and Brookhaven, Oak Ridge and Argonne national laboratories.

The research was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Federal Aviation Administration and UMass Amherst.

Journal

Materials Horizons

DOI

10.1039/D6MH00633G

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Suppressing thermal transport in nonporous polymer hybrids by limiting thermally accessible vibrational modes

2026-06-23T06:14:45.185-07:00

Faster aging in younger generations linked to rise in early-onset cancer

Immune system aging linked to earlier lung cancer; fat tissue aging linked to earlier colorectal cancer

WashU Medicine

Cancer is often considered a disease of aging. Older adults are at higher risk because they have had more time to accumulate cellular damage that can trigger tumor formation. But as cancer rates in younger adults rise, with each successive generation facing higher risks than the one before it, researchers are asking whether cellular damage is accumulating faster in recent generations, accelerating their body’s biological aging.

A new study led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis provides evidence that younger generations are indeed aging faster biologically than their older counterparts. The causes remain under investigation around the world, including global efforts led by research members of Siteman Cancer Center, based at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and WashU Medicine, and Cancer Grand Challenges, a global initiative co-founded by the National Cancer Institute and Cancer Research U.K.; but importantly, the new research links this accelerated aging to an increased risk of early-onset cancers in younger generations. In general, early-onset cancers are those diagnosed at age 55 or younger.

The larger the gap between biological age — that is, how old our bodies appear to be — and chronological age — which is how many years we have actually lived — the higher the cancer risk, according to the researchers. They found that people in more recent birth cohorts had larger age gaps than those in older birth cohorts, which may help explain the rise in early-onset cancer in recent generations.

Their study also identified links between faster aging in particular organ systems and increased risks for certain cancers. For instance, an immune system that appears older than its actual age was associated with early-onset lung cancer. Similarly, fat tissue that appears older than its chronological age was associated with early-onset colorectal cancer.

The study, published June 22 in the journal Nature Medicine, suggests that measures of accelerated aging could help identify individuals at higher risk of early-onset cancer and guide new strategies for cancer prevention and early detection.

“Our ultimate goal is to decode how modern environments become biologically embedded to drive cancer risk, transforming prevention from broad recommendations to personalized interventions,” said Yin Cao, ScD, a molecular epidemiologist and an associate professor of surgery and of medicine at WashU Medicine. “This brings us closer to identifying risk earlier and developing prevention strategies that are tailored to an individual’s biology.”

Exploring biological aging

Cao’s team has been at the forefront of identifying individual factors that influence cancer risk across the life course, such as obesity, metabolic dysregulation, alcohol consumption, sedentary behavior, poor diet quality and cesarean delivery. Although these discoveries have revealed important clues to the origins of cancer at younger ages, the contribution of any single factor is modest.

With that in mind, Cao, also a research member of Siteman, and her colleagues have sought ways to capture the influence of multiple risk factors operating together to spur cancer development. With support from Cancer Grand Challenges, Cao, as co-lead of Team PROSPECT, has been able to go after this problem.

For the current study, Cao’s team analyzed data from more than 154,000 young adults in the UK Biobank, a large biomedical dataset containing biological, health and lifestyle data, and from more than 10,000 individuals in the U.S. participating in the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) All of Us Research Program, an effort to build a comprehensive health dataset on more than 1 million people living in the U.S.

To estimate the level of biological aging — or age gap — the researchers, including first author Ruiyi Tian, a doctoral student in the Cao lab, examined aging at two levels: across the body as a whole, known as systemic aging, and within individual organs, known as organ-specific aging. For systemic aging, the researchers used established measures, including clinical biomarker-based measures such as PhenoAge and the Klemera-Doubal Method, as well as a metabolomic age score, which provides a measure of individual metabolism.

PhenoAge, for example, measures nine blood biochemistry markers such as albumin, made by the liver, and creatinine, a waste product removed by the kidneys. For organ-specific aging, the researchers used blood proteomic data, which measure levels of multiple proteins linked to specific organ systems, to estimate biological aging in individual organs.

The researchers calculated the average age gap for each birth cohort and used standard deviation to describe how much each group differed from the study average. Standard deviation is a measure of how spread out data points are around the average.

The researchers found that individuals in the UK born between 1965 and 1974 had systemic aging that was 23% of one standard deviation higher compared with those born between 1950 and 1954, after accounting for chronological age. In other words, people in the younger birth cohort showed a modest shift toward older biological profiles than people in the older birth cohort when at the same chronological age.

The researchers observed a similar pattern in the U.S cohort. Participants born between 1990 and 1999 had systemic aging that was 92% of one standard deviation higher compared with those born between 1965 and 1969.

This increased systemic aging in the younger group was associated with an 8% increased risk of early-onset solid cancers, especially lung, gastrointestinal and uterine cancers. When participants were divided into three groups based on their level of systemic aging, those with the most advanced systemic aging had a 15% increased risk of early-onset solid cancer compared with those with the least advanced systemic aging. According to the analysis, the increased risk persisted even after controlling for inherited genetic risks of cancer and genetic susceptibility to accelerated aging.

By zooming into organ-specific aging, the researchers found that advanced immune system aging was associated with increased risk of early-onset lung cancer, and advanced adipose (fat) tissue aging was associated with increased risk of early-onset colorectal cancer.

“If we can identify younger people with the highest cancer risk when they are still healthy, we can focus on prevention and early-detection strategies for the individuals who will benefit most from early interventions,” Cao said.

This research is part of Team PROSPECT, a Cancer Grand Challenges team co-led by Cao. Cancer Grand Challenges is a global research funding initiative co-founded by Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) that brings together world-leading researchers to take on cancer’s toughest challenges.

“Right now, we don’t have a definitive answer to what’s driving the rise of early-onset cancers around the world, but studies like this are helping us piece together the bigger picture, showing that cancer may be influenced not just by changes inside individual cells, but by wider changes happening across the body as a whole,” said David Scott, PhD, director of Cancer Grand Challenges. “Research on this scale is possible through Cancer Grand Challenges, which brings together scientists from different fields around the world to tackle these complex questions together.”

Cao and her colleagues are leading efforts to transform the understanding of why cancers are increasingly striking younger generations. Their next frontier is to decipher how environmental, lifestyle and societal changes leave lasting biological imprints, including accelerated aging and other markers of heightened susceptibility. By illuminating the pathways through which risk accumulates across the life course, they seek to uncover the origins of early-onset cancers and redefine opportunities for prevention. In parallel, their work will enable more precise approaches to identify those at greatest risk and intervene earlier, shifting the paradigm from reacting to disease to preventing it before it begins.

Tian R, Zong Y, Ren D, Tica S, Hong D, Odulyale O, Buenrostro J, Govindan R, Cao Y. Biological aging and generational shifts in early-onset cancer risk. Nature Medicine. June 22, 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41591-026-04448-w.

This work was part of the PROSPECT team supported by the Cancer Grand Challenges initiative funded by Cancer Research UK, grant numbers CGCATF-2023/100043 and CGCATF-2023/100037; the National Cancer Institute of the NIH, grant numbers OT2CA297577 and OT2CA297576; the French National Cancer Institute; and the Bowelbabe Fund for Cancer Research UK. The project was also supported by grants from NIH/National Cancer Institute, grant number R37CA246175; the NIH/National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, grant number P30DK052574; the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center through the Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Further support was provided by a pre-doctoral fellowship in the Cancer Biology pathway supported by NIH Molecular Oncology Training Grant T32CA113275 to Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis; the Pediatric Gastroenterology Research Training Program grant T32DK077653 to Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis; the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences, grant number UL1TR002345; and the Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

About WashU Medicine

WashU Medicine is a global leader in academic medicine, including biomedical research, patient care and educational programs with 3,100 faculty. Its National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding portfolio is the second largest among U.S. medical schools and has grown 78% since 2016. Together with institutional investment, WashU Medicine commits over $1.6 billion annually to basic and clinical research innovation and training. Its faculty practice is consistently among the top five in the country, with more than 2,550 faculty physicians practicing at 200 locations. WashU Medicine physicians exclusively staff Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals — the academic hospitals of BJC HealthCare — and Siteman Cancer Center, a partnership between BJC HealthCare and WashU Medicine and the only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center in Missouri and southern Illinois. WashU Medicine physicians also treat patients at BJC’s community hospitals in our region. With a storied history in MD/PhD training, WashU Medicine recently dedicated $100 million to scholarships and curriculum renewal for its medical students, and is home to top-notch training programs in every medical subspecialty as well as physical therapy, occupational therapy, and audiology and communications sciences.

Journal

Nature Medicine

DOI

10.1038/s41591-026-04448-w

Article Title

Biological aging and generational shifts in early-onset cancer risk

Article Publication Date

22-Jun-2026

2026-06-23T06:06:58.571-07:00

Artificial light Is keeping reef fish awake, and the effects may ripple across coral reefs

Bar-Ilan University study finds that coastal light pollution disrupts sleep and is associated with increased markers of DNA damage in the brains of reef fish

Bar-Ilan University

image:

Schools of Chromis viridis hovering near branching corals in the Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea, Eilat,
Israel

Credit: Shachaf Ben-Ezra

Artificial light spilling into coastal waters from cities, ports, roads, and hotels is disrupting sleep in coral reef fish and is associated with changes in markers linked to brain health, according to a new study from Bar-Ilan University.

The study, published in Current Biology, shows that even low levels of nighttime illumination can significantly alter the behavior and physiology of reef fish. Fish exposed to artificial light slept less, showed more fragmented sleep, became more aggressive, and fed at unusual hours, effectively behaving as if night had turned into day.

"Artificial light at night is rapidly expanding across coastal environments worldwide," said Prof. Oren Levy of Bar-Ilan University's Faculty of Life Sciences and the H. Steinitz Marine Biology Laboratory in Eilat, who co-led the study with Prof. Lior Appelbaum and doctoral student Shachaf Ben-Ezra, from the Bar-Ilan Faculty of Life Sciences. "We found that even relatively low levels of illumination can disrupt natural sleep patterns and are associated with changes in markers of neuronal health."

The researchers studied the blue-green damselfish (Chromis viridis), a common reef fish that feeds above coral during the day and shelters in branching corals at night. Using infrared video, machine-learning tracking, lab experiments, and in situ reef studies in the Gulf of Aqaba/Eilat, Israel, they first confirmed that these fish exhibit clear sleep-like states, including inactivity, characteristic posture, and reduced responsiveness.

When exposed to ecologically relevant artificial light at night (ALAN) levels, however, these patterns broke down. Fish no longer remained confined to their usual nighttime territories within the coral, instead expanding their activity range, feeding at unusual hours, interacting more aggressively, and sleeping significantly less.

To assess biological effects, the team examined neurons in a brain region involved in sleep-dependent brain functions. Fish exposed to nighttime light pollution showed elevated levels of markers associated with DNA damage compared with fish under natural dark conditions. While the study does not demonstrate that light directly damages DNA, the findings suggest that sleep disruption may interfere with essential nighttime maintenance and repair processes in the brain. These changes appeared after only a few nights of exposure and persisted during a five-month field experiment conducted directly on a coral reef, suggesting that chronic exposure to artificial light may have lasting biological consequences.

"Sleep is a critical period for biological repair," said Prof. Appelbaum. "Our findings suggest that disrupting sleep with artificial light may have measurable consequences even in wild marine animals."

Approximately 22% of the world's coastal regions and 35% of marine protected areas are already affected by ALAN. In the Gulf of Eilat, where this study was conducted, nighttime light levels near developed coastal areas can reach up to 60 times the brightness of natural starlight due to urban and port development. Previous work from Levy's lab showed that artificial light can affect coral physiology, disrupt the symbiotic relationship between corals and algae, and interfere with the synchronization of coral spawning. The new findings indicate that fish living within those ecosystems are also affected, pointing to broader ecosystem-level consequences.

"Coral reefs depend on tightly connected biological interactions," Levy said. "If artificial light is affecting both corals and the fish that depend on them, the consequences could ripple throughout the reef ecosystem."

The light levels used in the study match those measured near developed coastal areas, underscoring the real-world relevance of the findings. The researchers call for improved coastal lighting practices, including reducing unnecessary nighttime illumination, directing light away from the shoreline and water, adopting smart lighting technologies, and developing guidelines for wavelengths that minimize ecological disruption.

Future research will examine whether these effects are reversible and how widespread they are across marine species.

Photos, video, captions and credits may be found here.

Artificial light at night at the Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea, Eilat, Israel

Credit

Shachaf Ben-Ezra

Artificial light at night at the Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea, Eilat, Israel [VIDEO]

Journal

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2026.05.058

Article Title

Artificial light pollution disrupts sleep and neuronal genomic stability in wild reef fish

Article Publication Date

22-Jun-2026

2026-06-23T06:03:22.093-07:00

Crashing insect populations have resulted in smaller tree swallows that reproduce less

In bringing the role of biodiversity loss into better focus alongside climate change, researchers say that there may be opportunities to better protect wild birds

University of Michigan

image:

Since 1977, tree swallows at Long Point Bird Observatory have been losing mass and producing fewer offspring due to a collapse in the insect population, according to new research led by the University of Michigan.

Credit: Sherri and Brock Fenton

Since the 1970s, the amount of insects at Canada's Long Point Bird Observatory has dropped by more than 60%, according to a new study led by the University of Michigan. Because of this, today's birds are smaller and facing greater challenges to their breeding success compared with previous generations.

The researchers focused on tree swallows, a rapidly declining bird species that feeds on flying insects.

"Tree swallow clutch size is really tightly tied to insect availability," said Charlotte Probst, lead author of the new study and a doctoral student in the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability, or SEAS. "When there's fewer insects available, the birds are smaller and the birds also produce fewer young."

The study also integrates climate data, making it one of the first to consider the role of resource availability alongside climate change in understanding how these pressures are reshaping bird biology. The results show that climate impacts cannot be fully understood without considering biodiversity loss. In the case of tree swallows, finding ways to combat that loss outside of solving climate change could be reasons for cautious optimism, the team said.

"I think this work highlights the significance of biodiversity loss and the complexity of natural systems. We can often lose sight of that and get focused on single processes like climate change," said Brian Weeks, an associate professor at SEAS and senior author of the new study.

"It's clearly important to contextualize climate change within a broader understanding of how humans are altering the environment. In this case, climate change is one thing, and it's shifting the system. But it's not the biggest thing and its consequences cannot be understood without also understanding biodiversity loss."

The study, supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Doug and Nancy Schrank Family Fund, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Phenological mismatch

The populations of flying insectivores, including tree swallows, are declining across North America. One factor that's suspected to be limiting their reproductive success is a mismatched timing between their breeding and when insects emerge for the season.

"Breeding is a really energetically intensive part of the annual cycle for birds. It takes a lot of energy to make eggs and it takes a lot of energy to rear young," Probst said. "In general, birds should want to synchronize their breeding with peaks in insect abundance."

When that timing is off, it becomes what's known as a phenological mismatch and these mismatches are one of the major outcomes of climate change. At Long Point, peak insect abundance happens in May, not long after the weather becomes warm enough for the insects to launch into their active lifecycles. But as winters trend warmer, insects are emerging earlier at a rate that's faster than the birds are tracking it.

"People have known about mismatches in important events for decades and they are very worried about it, understandably so," Weeks said. "Our study shows that you really can't understand the consequences of that without also understanding the context from a biodiversity decline perspective."

The team found that the mismatch between the timing of tree swallow breeding and peak insect emergence has been increasing by more than 3 days per decade since 1977 at Long Point. But, because of the plummeting insect abundance, the costs of this mismatch are actually declining through time.

To understand how disappearing insects could dampen the mismatch impacts, consider a year when peak insect abundance occurs particularly early. This also increases the likelihood of the birds experiencing a cold snap that could spell disaster for their nests, Probst said. Were things the way they were in 1977, the risk might be worth it for the nutritional reward, but that reward is much, much smaller now.

"Now, when insects emerge, it's half as many insects and they emerge in a much flatter process, so you don't get a huge pulse at the beginning," Weeks said. "So the fact that those dates are not coinciding as closely anymore, it doesn't really matter as much."

Fully characterizing what's behind the insect population collapse will require further study, but the decline does not appear to be the result of rising temperatures, the researchers said. They did note, however, that the declines accelerated in the 1990s, which coincides with a surge in the use of neonicotinoid pesticides.

These pesticides are incredibly effective and even small amounts that make it into wetlands could be devastating to the aquatic larvae of insects in the tree swallow diet, including midges and mosquitos, Probst said.

"Although insect decline is also a really complicated problem to solve, in our system, it appears to be something that can be addressed at a very local level," she said. "This is a problem that we can fix on a short timescale and without needing to have the entire global community come together to do something like climate change."

Big data for small birds

The team's findings are based on analysis and modeling using data that exists thanks to the foresight of Long Point Bird Observatory, the oldest continuously operating bird observatory in North America. Under the leadership of the late David Hussel, who helped found the observatory after earning his doctorate at U-M, its staff and volunteers started recording data for the birds and the insects decades ago. The team had access set to tree swallow data sets ranging from 1969 to 2024, while the insect data covered 1977 to 2011.

"Basically, the people at Long Point did an incredible amount of work and we're really lucky to have been able to collaborate with them," Probst said.

It was essential to have robust data covering such a long timespan to understand the relationships between climate, food abundance and what's happening to a single bird species at a particular location, Weeks said.

"Another main takeaway of this is the value of long-term, sustained data collection in an era when there's a rapid reduction in public investment in efforts like this," he said. "When you're trying to model complex relationships, you need a whole bunch of data and it typically takes an effort beyond what an individual person or lab can do."

The team's U-M cohort also included SEAS professor Inés Ibáñez, postdoctoral researcher Scott Yanco, master's student Isaiah Clark and undergraduate researcher Mark Ziebell. Co-authors Matthew Fuirst and Stuart Mackenzie from the Long Point Bird Observatory rounded out the full collaboration.

Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2607714123

Article Title

Resource declines shape phenological and morphological responses to climate change

Article Publication Date

26-Jun-2026

Tree swallows are uniquely suited for a study like this because they will return to nesting sites that researchers have set up for them. Researchers can also peek into nests to count eggs and band chicks without the parents abandoning the nest.

Credit

Sherri and Brock Fenton

Although tree swallow populations are declining, this doesn't appear to be because of upticks in mortality, at least for the Long Point flock. Rather, they are having fewer offspring as a result of the declines in insect abundance.

Credit

Brian Weeks

Long Point Bird Observatory, located in southern Ontario on a piece of land that sticks out into Lake Erie, is the oldest continuously-operated bird observatory in North America. It was founded with help from U-M alumnus David Hussel, who served as its first executive director.

Credit

Charlotte Probst

2026-06-23T06:02:16.415-07:00

Bigger bodies were a late addition for humans

University of Reading

The biggest jump in body size among our ancestors happened around 2 to 2.5 million years ago, with the appearance of Homo rudolfensis or Homo erectus/ergaster, rather than gradually across the whole human family tree.

New research published today (Monday, 22 June 2026) in the journal PNAS, found that some species bucked the trend completely. Homo floresiensis and Homo naledi stayed small, with the early hominin Australopithecus weighing 40kg, on average, and reaching the height of a child. Other branches of Homo grew larger. Homo erectus/ergaster were the first hominins to weigh around 60 kg or more, on average, achieving weights similar to many modern humans.

The University of Reading and University of Oxford findings challenge the idea that bodies simply got bigger and bigger over time in a steady line, eventually leading to modern humans.

Dr Jacob Gardner, lead author at the University of Reading, said: "For years, different studies have come to different conclusions about whether our ancestors steadily grew bigger over time or jumped in size at some key point in our Homo ancestors. We think that's because everyone was looking at slightly different pieces of a much bigger puzzle. When you put all the fossils together, examine multiple competing ideas, and account for how species are related to each other, a clearer picture emerges. The answer is most likely a combination of these ideas.

“The human story is not simply one of constant growth, but also of a major change that happened later, within our own genus, while other branches of the family, including some surprisingly small relatives, went their own way entirely."

Piecing together the human puzzle

Researchers reached these conclusions by looking at body weight from 386 fossils across 21 different species of hominins, the group that includes humans and our extinct relatives. They used statistical models to track how body size changed over millions of years.

Previous studies disagreed because some focused on early relatives such as Australopithecus, others on later members of Homo, and some used different methods to estimate body weight from fossil bones. These studies also did not account for how hominin species were related to one another or the various uncertainties that come with an incomplete fossil record, such as which fossils belong to which species. Bringing all of this together in one model shows that these studies weren't actually disagreeing with each other, they were just looking at different parts of a more complicated story. Body weight steadily increased over time in our earlier hominin relatives, like Australopithecus, but then jumped in size at a key point later in Homo.

The timing of this growth spurt lines up with other changes in later Homo. These ancestors were walking on two legs more efficiently than earlier hominins, eating more meat, and roaming over much larger areas in search of food and suitable habitat. A bigger body may have helped with all of these things, making it easier to travel long distances and survive on a varied diet. The findings suggest that growing larger was closely tied to a wider shift in how these early humans lived.

Dr Thomas Puschel, co-author from the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, said: “Our results suggest that human body size evolution was not simply a story of steady growth over time. Although body mass generally increased throughout our evolutionary history, the most significant shift occurred later within the genus Homo. This change coincided with broader developments in how our ancestors moved across landscapes and exploited their environments, pointing to a close relationship between body size and major ecological and behavioural transitions."

Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2521732123

Article Title

Competing models of hominin body size evolution

Article Publication Date

22-Jun-2026

2026-06-23T05:57:47.941-07:00

Harvesting UV Light from sunlight just got ‘solid’

New solid-state material from Kyushu University turns visible light into high-energy UV at sunlight intensity, expanding solar energy potential

Kyushu University

image:

A new solid-state material from Kyushu University turns visible light into high-energy UV at sunlight intensity. By attaching alkyl chains to the sp³ carbon atoms of an organic molecule, the researchers create precisely controlled gaps between neighboring molecules. This spacing enables efficient triplet energy transfer, achieving a quantum yield above 60% in the solid state. When combined with a donor molecule, the system reaches 1.9% visible-to-UV upconversion efficiency.

Credit: Naoyuki Harada / Kyushu University

Fukuoka, Japan—Two cups of warm water don’t make one cup of boiling water. But in the quantum world, multiple low-energy photons can combine to produce a single, higher-energy photon.

A research team at Kyushu University has developed a solid-state molecular material that “upgrades” visible light into ultraviolet (UV) light under ordinary outdoor sunlight, achieving a conversion efficiency of 1.9%. The study was published in Nature Communications on June 23.

Harsh UV light is something most people try to avoid in summer, yet it is indispensable across fields ranging from air purification and resin curing in 3D printing to gel hardening in dental fillings and nail art. Despite its importance, UV accounts for only about 6% of the sunlight reaching Earth’s surface, with only a fraction of that being practically usable.

“What we do here is ‘add together’ the energy from two visible light photons to make one ultraviolet photon. It’s a fascinating process called photo upconversion,” explains Yoichi Sasaki, Associate Professor at Kyushu University’s Faculty of Engineering and the study’s corresponding author.

One mechanism that enables such upconversion is triplet-triplet annihilation (TTA). A “donor” molecule absorbs visible light and excites its electrons into a high-energy triplet state, then passes it to a neighboring “acceptor” molecule. When two triplets meet, they annihilate each other, releasing their combined energy as a UV photon. TTA works well in liquids, where molecules move freely, and triplets collide easily. But those systems often rely on toxic solvents and can evaporate, limiting their practical use. That is why scientists have long searched for solid alternatives.

“In solids, molecules are packed tightly, and the π electron clouds—regions of high electron density hovering above and below each molecular plane—can overlap,” says Sasaki. “When that happens, triplets easily fizzle out before they ever meet. Molecules must be close enough for energy to transfer but separated enough to prevent quenching of excitons.”

The team found their answer in an organic semiconductor called dihydroindenoindenedene (DHI). By attaching alkyl chains to DHI’s sp³ carbon atoms—which have four bonds pointing in fixed 3D directions—the researchers created precisely controlled gaps between neighboring molecules, keeping them close enough for energy transfer without unwanted strong electronic interaction.

The optimized material shows strong light emission, long-lived excited states, and efficient energy transfer, achieving a solid-state fluorescence quantum yield above 60%. With a donor molecule, the system reaches an upconversion efficiency of 1.9%.

“This means roughly two UV photons are produced for every hundred visible-light photons absorbed,” Sasaki adds. “It may sound low, but it runs on natural sunlight alone. Most solid-state materials cannot realize this even at much higher light intensity.”

The material has been filed for a patent. Beyond efficiency, it offers advantages for real-world use, including straightforward synthesis and low-cost starting materials. The team sees potential applications in solar-driven photocatalysis, indoor air purification, and low-intensity 3D printing.

For the research team, the work also carries personal weight.

In 2012, Nobuo Kimizuka, now Professor Emeritus at Kyushu University’s Research Center for Negative Emissions Technologies, pioneered research into photon upconversion via triplet energy migration in self-assemblies, seeking to establish a molecular systems chemistry where self-assembly performs useful functions. His team made steady progress in both solution and gel systems, yet developing efficient solid-state upconversion systems remained challenging. A breakthrough finally came in May 2024, less than a year before Kimizuka’s retirement.

What followed was a sprint driven as much by shared bonds and gratitude as by science. At that time, graduate students Naoyuki Harada, Hayato Shoyama, Nutnicha Boonmong, along with then-Assistant Professor Kiichi Mizukami of Kyushu University’s Faculty of Engineering, worked alongside Sasaki to compress years of work into one.

“We handed the draft to Professor Kimizuka just 11 days before he left the lab, which for us felt like a heartfelt retirement gift,” Sasaki notes.

“This discovery is the culmination of over 14 years of our research and marks a major milestone in photon-upconversion and molecular self-assembly research,” concludes Kimizuka.

###

For more information about this research, see “Sterically protected π-electron systems for efficient solid-state photon upconversion,” Naoyuki Harada, Hayato Shoyama, Nutnicha Boonmong, Kiichi Mizukami, Yuya Watanabe, Pei Zhao, Masahiro Ehara, Yoichi Sasaki, Nobuo Kimizuka, Nature Communications, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-73898-0

About Kyushu University
Founded in 1911, Kyushu University is one of Japan's leading research-oriented institutions of higher education, consistently ranking as one of the top ten Japanese universities in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and the QS World Rankings. Located in Fukuoka, on the island of Kyushu—the most southwestern of Japan’s four main islands—Kyushu U sits in a coastal metropolis frequently ranked among the world’s most livable cities and historically known as Japan’s gateway to Asia. Its multiple campuses are home to around 19,000 students and 8,000 faculty and staff. Through its VISION 2030, Kyushu U will “drive social change with integrative knowledge.” By fusing the spectrum of knowledge, from the humanities and arts to engineering and medical sciences, Kyushu U will strengthen its research in the key areas of decarbonization, medicine and health, and environment and food, to tackle society’s most pressing issues.

Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-026-73898-0

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Sterically protected π-electron systems for efficient solid-state photon upconversion

Article Publication Date

23-Jun-2026

2026-06-23T05:57:01.861-07:00

Seaweed-based ingredient can help turn dirt into 3D-printed walls

University of Colorado at Boulder

image:

Earthen Rituals, exhibited at the 2026 Venice Architecture Biennial, is constructed with 3D-printed earthen materials.

Credit: Alessandro Terranova

An ingredient that gives ice cream a creamier texture could make natural earthen materials like clay and sand easier to 3D-print into durable structures, according to new research led by scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The discovery could help turn construction waste into building materials with lower environmental impact.

“From termite mounds to adobe buildings, humans and animals have been building with earth since the dawn of time,” said Wil Srubar, professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering. “But there hasn’t been a lot of science to how earthen builders design the materials. So, we wanted to use scientific knowledge and tools to understand it.”

In nature, termites construct towering mounds. Wasps build intricate nests, and honeycomb worms create reef-like structures along coastlines. Rather than relying on cement, these organisms use biopolymers, which are large biological molecules that act like glue, often found in saliva, to bind natural materials like soil and clay together.

Inspired by nature’s designs, Srubar and his team, including researchers at Columbia University in New York, set out to investigate which biopolymer could bind earthen materials and make them 3D-printable.

The team tested five biopolymers, including legume-derived guar gum, locust bean gum and cassia gum. These compounds are commonly found in food products like salad dressings to keep oil and water from separating. They also studied sodium alginate, derived from seaweed, and xanthan gum, produced by fermenting sugar.

The researchers found that locust bean gum could hold earthen materials tightly together by binding soil particles into a stronger network. But that same effect made the material harder to push through a 3D-printer nozzle.

Sodium alginate, often found in ice cream and used to make spherical foods like popping boba, produced the opposite effect. Instead of functioning like a glue, the polymer changed the electrical charges on clay particles, causing them to repel one another, similar to how the same poles of two magnets push each other away.

As a result, adding sodium alginate to clay and sand produced materials that allowed the particles to suspend in a stable mixture while still flowing smoothly through a 3D printer.

Then the team searched for the best formulation. To natural earth excavated from a granite quarry near Golden, Colorado, they added just 0.12% of sodium alginate, which produced a material that was both strong and printable. It could withstand 25% more pressure than earth without the biopolymer and could be printed 33% faster.

Using the formula, the team printed an 8-millimeter-thick (0.3-inch) wall that leaned outward at dramatic angles. They found that the structure could remain stable even when tilted to 60 degrees, far steeper than the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

While the current study focuses primarily on improving the printability of earthen materials, Srubar said scientists could use the same framework to test other biopolymers for enhanced properties such as strength and durability.

“There are some good indoor environmental benefits of having earth in a building,” said Samuel Armistead, a research associate in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering. “It can regulate indoor moisture and uptake air pollutants. It can also serve as a thermal insulator, keeping things cool in the summer and warm in the winter.”

Construction projects often generate large amounts of excavated soil when workers dig foundations, basements, or parking structures. Much of that material ends up in landfills.

“Our study suggests that there are ways to reuse waste earth material onsite, and that could largely reduce the environmental footprint of construction,” Armistead said.

Because clay and sand are widely available, Srubar said the team's findings could help builders around the world to tap into local resources.

“Clay and sand are among the most abundant building materials on Earth,” Srubar said. “The science and engineering we're developing can be applied almost anywhere in the world.”

Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-026-71885-z

3D-printed earth-fiber objects by Lola Ben-Alon and the Natural Materials Lab were exhibited at the London Craft Week.

Credit

Dan Weill

2026-06-23T05:55:26.209-07:00

Illinois study explores feasibility of creating sustainable jet fuel from food waste

University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences

image:

Sabrina Summers and Yuanhui Zhang, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, hold vials of the sustainable aviation fuel developed in their lab.

Credit: Marianne Stein/College of ACES

URBANA, Ill. – The aviation industry accounts for a large portion of global greenhouse gas emissions. Biobased, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) can mitigate climate impacts, but transitioning to SAF faces critical supply chain constraints. A research team at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has developed a method to produce jet-grade fuel from food waste, contributing to a circular bioeconomy. In a new paper, published in Nature Sustainability, they focus on technical and economic considerations.

In a previous study, the researchers outlined the process of developing SAF that meets aviation standards. This study follows the same general approach, converting food waste to crude oil through hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL), a process that mimics natural formation of crude oil in a fraction of the time, and refining it with a catalyst.

“However, here we use a simpler approach with less catalytic intensity and greater focus on distillation, which is commonly used for industrial purposes. This is a more economical and environmentally friendly method. But the quality of the fuel is not as good, and it needs to be mixed with regular jet fuel,” said corresponding author Yuanhui Zhang, Founder Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ABE), part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and The Grainger College of Engineering at the U. of I.

Zhang compared this to the use of ethanol for cars; it must be blended with fossil fuel to work in car engines.

“It would be very difficult to produce enough SAF to meet industry needs, so it makes sense to take a biodiesel approach with a percentage blend,” he explained. “Our tests are based on a 50-50 blend, so it will certainly be feasible to use a 10% or 20% blend of SAF with regular fuel.”

The researchers conducted tests on key parameters to ensure their SAF product meets jet fuel standards set by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) and the Federal Aviation Administration.

“We are still doing this work on a very small scale. But my lab is now set up to produce several liters of upgraded fuel, which is enough for diesel engine tests. After that, the next step will be jet engine tests,” Zhang said.

The biggest bottleneck in SAF production is getting the waste from disposal to reclamation and recovery, Zhang noted. Most food waste ends up either in a landfill or a wastewater treatment plant, where it is separated and converted into sludge. Collecting and reusing food waste presents logistical challenges, but the HTL process enables use of treated wastewater as feedstock.

While HTL offers a promising approach to create SAF from wet waste, it leaves a toxic, nutrient-rich byproduct called HTL aqueous phase, or HTL-AP. Zhang and his team explored ways to recover acid and nutrients from HTL-AP through electrochemical (EC) treatment.

The researchers also conducted techno-economic and lifecycle analysis for the integrated process of upgrading the biocrude oil and treating the HTL-AP byproduct. They developed three scenarios for the analysis: A baseline where HTL-AP was sent to a centralized wastewater treatment plant; treatment with EC technology to recover and valorize HTL-AP; and a future scenario based on improved EC technology.

Compared to the baseline scenario, using EC technology nearly tripled the cost per gallon due to higher capital and operating costs. However, technological advances are expected to lower the EC costs, so they become equivalent to baseline in the future.

The team also evaluated global warming potential (GWP), which indicates how much global warming is affected by CO2 emissions. They estimated that both the baseline and the improved EC treatment would be able to achieve negative carbon emissions, leading to lower GWP.

The study outlines a technically feasible and environmentally beneficial pathway for turning urban organic waste into SAF and promoting a circular bioeconomy, the researchers concluded.

The paper, “A circular hydrothermal refinery for sustainable aviation fuel from food waste,” is published in Nature Sustainability [DOI: 10.1038/s41893-026-01848-1].

Research in the College of ACES is made possible in part by Hatch funding from USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. This study was also supported by the National Science Foundation (award no. 1804453), the Department of Energy (project no. DE-EE0009269), and the 2115 Talent Development Program of China Agricultural University.

Journal

Nature Sustainability

DOI

10.1038/s41893-026-01848-1

Article Title

A circular hydrothermal refinery for sustainable aviation fuel from food waste

Article Publication Date

3-Jun-2026

2026-06-23T05:54:06.680-07:00

Researchers find evidence of daily body clock for humidity

Some insects' days are governed by humidity. Does it affect us, too?

University of Cincinnati

image:

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati found that fruit flies and other insects have a daily body clock tied to humidity.

Credit: Andrew Higley

In a novel experiment at the University of Cincinnati, researchers isolated kissing bugs, fruit flies, mosquitoes and spider beetles in a climate- and light-controlled environment and found that they responded predictably to cycles of humidity in the same way they do temperature and daylight. After the humidity cue was removed, the insects continued to respond to the cyclical fluctuations of humidity and dryness established in the experiment.

“They take humidity cues as a biological clock,” UC Professor Joshua Benoit said.

The study was published in the Nature journal Biological Timing and Sleep. It was supported with grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Circadian rhythms can affect everything from body temperature to hormones. But few studies have examined circadian rhythms for humidity, said lead author Shyh-Chi Chen, a former researcher in Benoit’s lab.

“Light and temperature are well-known environmental factors that can entrain the circadian clocks,” said Chen, now an assistant professor at Georgia College & State University. “Humidity, like light and temperature, fluctuates daily.”

For people, extremely high or low humidity is a mere annoyance. But for insects, it can mean life or death, Chen said.

“This could be critical for terrestrial organisms, as their survival depends on staying hydrated or avoiding dehydration,” Chen said.

So it’s useful for creatures to anticipate when conditions will be optimal to forage or otherwise expend energy, he said.

While the results were statistically significant, insects are less connected to humidity than daylight and temperature, researchers said. And mosquitoes showed the least behavioral connection to humidity.

Many animals respond to predictable cycles, such as the lunar calendar which also governs the tides, or the solar calendar, which governs the hours of daylight. UC researchers discovered that monarch butterflies rely on daylight as a sun compass to navigate on their epic continental migration.

Could mammals like us also take our cues from cycles of humidity?

Researchers said it’s possible, but the effects are probably far too miniscule to notice.

“While our current study focuses on animal models, it opens a fascinating door to human biology,” Chen said. “Although mammalian circadian biology is heavily dominated by the light-dark cycle, the potential for subtle, multisensory integration — including humidity — cannot be ruled out.”

Journal

npj Biological Timing and Sleep

DOI

10.1038/s44323-026-00082-4

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Humidity as a potential zeitgeber for circadian entrainment of insect systems

Article Publication Date

22-Jun-2026

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati found that mosquitoes and other insects have a daily body clock tied to humidity.

Credit

Andrew Higley

2026-06-23T05:50:33.018-07:00

MUTUAL AID

Communication cues and signals are key to interspecies cooperation

Oregon State University

NEWPORT, Ore. – Even in the animal world, teamwork requires communication – just ask the fish, dolphins, birds and butterflies who rely on other species for help with food, protection from prey and even parasite removal.

A new review of the behaviors of animals who engage in interspecies cooperation, a type of behavior where animals from different species work together for mutual benefit, shows that the information exchanged through cues and signals play an important role in this unique kind of teamwork.

Researchers reviewed a dozen documented types of interspecies cooperation, ranging from fish that clean other fishes to ants that guard butterfly larvae and humans who work with honeyguide birds to find bee nests. They found a striking commonality across many of these interactions.

“We found that communication through cues and signals plays an important role in this relatively rare interaction; this helps animals work together in the moment,” said Kyra Bankhead, a doctoral student at Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute and one of the study’s co-authors.

“Animals can use sounds, movements or other signals to inform decisions about whether, when or how to cooperate with one another.”

The findings were just published in the journal Animal Behaviour. The work was led by Mauricio Cantor, a behavioral ecologist with OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute; Katie Dunkley of the University of Oxford; Dominic Cram of the University of East Anglia; and Jessica van der Wal of the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Within-species cooperation is well-documented and widespread, but less is known about interspecies cooperation, where animals must communicate effectively across species boundaries while coordinating complementary actions.

“We often think of communication as something that happens between members of the same species, but many animals also exchange information with entirely different species to achieve shared goals,” said Cantor, who has extensively studied the cooperative fishing behavior of dolphins and humans.

“These interactions remind us that cooperation is not limited to families, social groups or even members of the same species,” he said. “Studying how animals communicate across species boundaries helps us understand how cooperation evolves, and more generally, how interactions between species help shape the natural world.”

Animals tend to cooperate across species boundaries in a few areas: cooperative foraging or hunting, where animals work together to increase success; food-for-cleaning services, where a cleaner such as a fish or shrimp removes parasites from the bodies of “client” species, which aids the health of the client; food-for-protection services, where food is exchanged for protection from predators; and shelter-for-protection, where shelter is provided in exchange for predator protection services.

This new review of these behaviors clarifies the vital role communication plays in these interactions at three stages: identifying and/or attracting partners; initiating cooperation; and maximizing benefits of cooperation through coordination and preventing harm by one partner to the other.

For example, when humans and dolphins work together to find and collect fish, a dolphin gives the human a visual cue that discloses where the fish school is, indicating the right time and place to cast a fishing net, which aids the dolphin in catching its own fish as the net traps the fish.

While the new paper offers additional insights into interspecies communication, additional study is needed to better understand this behavior, the researchers said. Those questions include: how do naturally occurring cues and signals in interspecies cooperation compare to those in trained cooperative interactions, such as between humans and trained dogs, birds or other animals? And to what degree are these cues and signals learned or passed down through genetics?

“We still have many unanswered questions about this behavior, and hope this work will spur further research,” Bankhead said.

Journal

Animal Behaviour

DOI

10.1016/j.anbehav.2026.123611

Method of Research

Systematic review

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

The ecology and evolution of cues and signals in animal interspecies cooperation

Article Publication Date

18-Jun-2026

How animals communicate to work together across species boundaries

files.libcomhttps://files.libcom.org › files › Peter%20Kropotkin-%20Mutual%20Aid;%20A%20Factor%20of%20Evolution.pdf

2026-06-23T05:42:23.639-07:00

New global study reveals link between local-scale species changes and global extinction risk

University of St. Andrews

image:

An assembly of tropical fish

Credit: University of St Andrews

New research from the University of St Andrews has shown that higher extinction risk is associated with higher frequency of decreasing local prevalence of species, in an analysis of one of the most comprehensive long-term databases ever created, BioTIME – a major tool to study biodiversity change also developed at the University of St Andrews.

Published today (23 June) in Nature Communications, researchers from the School of Biology alongside a team of international partners, analysed over 60 000 populations of 2362 species across 978 marine and terrestrial assemblages. These populations have been sampled comprehensively over at least 20 years.

An assemblage refers to a group of species from the same taxonomic group that co-occur within the same geographic location and time period, such as, a bird or fish assemblage. Analysing assemblage-level data allows us to systematically quantify change over time for many species and populations, and identify which ones might be faring better, i.e. assessing the “winners and losers” amidst ongoing global change.

The analysis matched each population’s temporal prevalence trend with each species’ extinction risk from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. The picture that emerged was of complex links between the two factors, but a clear signal also emerged that decreasing temporal trends were associated with higher extinction risk compared to the other trends. Overall, fewer than 10% of populations showed either increasing or decreasing prevalence over time

Joint lead Author, Dr Faye Moyes from the School of Biology at the University of St Andrews, said: “Our results highlight the importance of assemblage level monitoring in conservation strategies and shows the value of long-term time series such as those in BioTIME. “

Joint lead Author, Laura Antão, based at the University of Turku in Finland, added “We have assessed for the first time whether there is a consistent signal between population temporal trends and a species extinction risk status using assemblage monitoring data, rather than ‘dedicated’ species-level assessments. Finding a clear signal that decreasing prevalence is usually associated with a higher risk of extinction is a strong indication that we can detect impacts even for species that are not currently classified as at risk”.

As global environmental change continues to accelerate, extinction risks are rising and assemblages are being reorganised across taxa, biomes and realms. The team also revealed complex links between local temporal prevalence and extinction risk categories: some populations of threatened species could have stable or increasing trends, while non-threatened species could be decreasing. A better understanding of the processes that underpin such biodiversity changes is crucial for improving predictions and conservation strategies.

Professor Anne Magurran, a senior author of the study, added: “These temporal trends could serve as early‑warning indicators and help target both new monitoring efforts and conservation actions. For instance, stable populations of at-risk species are of key conservation interest, while declining trends might highlight species that are missing from extinction risk assessments”.

Professor Maria Dornelas added: “Because the task of assessing biodiversity change is gigantic, and we cannot travel in time to collect more data in the past, we want to use all information available. These two large biodiversity databases have only limited overlap and this study shows us how we can leverage both to expand our understanding of biodiversity change.”

ENDS

Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-026-74132-7

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Linking species local trends from assemblage monitoring to global extinction risk

Article Publication Date

23-Jun-2026

2026-06-23T05:42:09.437-07:00

Can use of popular weight loss medications reduce behaviors linked to violent crime?

Wiley

Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) are widely prescribed for diabetes and obesity, but studies have found evidence that the medications may also influence behavior, such as supporting impulse control and reducing substance use and alcohol consumption by potentially interacting with the brain’s reward and stress systems. New research in Criminology adds to this growing evidence.

When investigators analyzed data from a 2025 nationally representative US survey involving 821 adults who had ever used GLP-1 medications, they found that while impulsivity and alcohol use were strongly associated with committing violent crime, these associations were significantly weaker among current GLP-1 RA users compared with former users. So even when a GLP-1 RA user drinks or acts impulsively, the situation is less likely to escalate into engaging in violent criminality. More thorough analyses showed that this finding was especially consistent related to impulsivity, but less so with alcohol use.

The findings suggest that GLP-1 RAs may lessen the extent to which certain established risk factors translate into violent behavior.

“As GLP-1 medications become increasingly widespread, understanding their broader behavioral effects becomes an important public health and criminological question that requires careful study,” said corresponding author Daniel C. Semenza, PhD, of Rutgers University.

URL upon publication: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9125.70058

Additional Information
NOTE: The information contained in this release is protected by copyright. Please include journal attribution in all coverage. For more information or to obtain a PDF of any study, please contact: Sara Henning-Stout, newsroom@wiley.com.

About the Journal
Criminology is devoted to the study of crime and deviant behavior. Interdisciplinary in scope, the journal publishes articles that advance the theoretical and research agenda of criminology and criminal justice.

About Wiley     
Wiley is a global leader in authoritative content and research intelligence for the advancement of scientific discovery, innovation, and learning. With more than 200 years at the center of the scholarly ecosystem, Wiley combines trusted publishing heritage with AI-powered platforms to transform how knowledge is discovered, accessed, and applied. From individual researchers and students to Fortune 500 R&D teams, Wiley enables the transformation of scientific breakthroughs into real-world impact. From knowledge to impact—Wiley is redefining what's possible in science and learning. Visit us at Wiley.com and Investors.Wiley.com. Follow us on Facebook, X, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Journal

Criminology

DOI

10.1111/1745-9125.70058

Article Title

GLP-1 receptor agonist use and violent crime among US adults

Article Publication Date

17-Jun-2026

Researchers link use of GLP-1 medications to lower risk of violence

A Rutgers study finds that treatments such as Ozempic and Wegovy may diminish the link between impulsivity and violent behavior

Rutgers University

The use of GLP-1 medications commonly prescribed for weight loss or managing diabetes may have effects that extend beyond metabolic health, including on behaviors linked to violence, according to Rutgers researchers.

Their study, published in Criminology, examined whether the use of GLP-1 receptor agonist medications, such as Ozempic and Wegovy, influences violent criminal behavior among adults by moderating the effects of impulsivity and alcohol intake.

Researchers analyzed data from a 2025 survey of 7,521 U.S. adults and focused their primary analyses on 821 individuals who had ever used a GLP-1 medication. The study compared current GLP-1 users with former users and examined whether medication use changed the relationship between violent behavior, impulsivity and alcohol use. Violent behavior was measured using a validated self-reported offending scale assessing behaviors such as fighting, assault and robbery.

“The strongest finding in the study was that the well-established link between impulsivity and violent behavior was substantially weaker among current GLP-1 users compared to former users,” said Daniel Semenza, the lead author of the study as well as the director of research at the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at the Rutgers School of Public Health and an associate professor with the Rutgers School of Public Health. “As GLP-1 drugs become increasingly widespread, it is important to understand all of their potential behavioral effects, including those relevant to public safety,” Semenza said.

Researchers found that higher impulsivity and alcohol use were strongly associated with violent behavior overall, but those relationships were significantly weaker among current GLP-1 users. The association between impulsivity and violent behavior was about 62% weaker among current users compared with former users. The relationship between alcohol use and violent behavior was about 52% weaker among current users, although those findings were less consistent across sensitivity analyses.

“Our findings are consistent with these medications working like cognitive behavioral therapy, weakening the path from impulse to action rather than eliminating impulsivity itself,” said Christopher Thomas, an assistant professor at Rutgers University-Camden and the coauthor of the study.

The study was observational and cross-sectional, meaning causal conclusions cannot be drawn, the researchers said. They emphasized the need for future longitudinal and experimental studies to determine whether GLP-1 medications reduce violence risk and to better understand the mechanisms involved.

Journal

Criminology

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

GLP-1 receptor agonist use and violent crime among US adults

Article Publication Date

17-Jun-2026

britannicahttps://www.britannica.com › biography › Cesare-Lombroso

Cesare Lombroso | Cesare Lombroso | Italian, Psychiatrist,...

Cesare Lombroso was an Italian criminologist whose views, though now largely discredited, brought about a shift in criminology from a...

nlm.nihhttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › articles › PMC3814446 ›

Cesare Lombroso: an anthropologist between evolution and...

Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909) was a prominent Italian medical doctor and intellectual in the second half of the nineteenth century. He became...

simplypsychologyhttps://www.simplypsychology.org › lombroso-theory-of-crime-criminal-man-and-atavism.html

Cesare Lombroso

Cesare Lombroso was a 19th-century Italian criminologist often called the father of modern criminology. He believed criminals were “born,”...

museolombroso.unitohttps://www.museolombroso.unito.it › en › museum › protagonists › cesare-lombroso ›

Cesare Lombroso

As an Italian army surgeon, Lombroso took part in the fight against “brigandage”, a long and bloody civil war fed by Bourbonic and clerical...

sheffield.achttps://digitalmedia.sheffield.ac.uk › media › Inside+Lombroso's+Museum › 1_3oi6ds88

Inside Lombroso's Museum - The University of Sheffield Kaltura...

Throughout his lifetime, Cesare Lombroso collected skulls, skeletons, brains, wax models and various other types of objects as part of his...

marxistshttps://www.marxists.org › subject › anarchism › lombroso.htm

Anarchy and its Heroes by Cesare Lombroso 1897

Cesare Lombroso 1897 · Source: excerpt from Alexandre Bérard’s, Les mystiques de l'anarchie. Lyon, A.-H. Storck, 1897; Translated: for marxists.org by...

research.kuleuvenhttps://research.kuleuven.be › portal › en › project › 3H190582

Research Portal - Italian Criminal Anthropology and the Legacy...

Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), the founding father of modern criminology, is best known for his theory of the “criminal man”. In a nutshell,...

jewishencyclopediahttps://www.jewishencyclopedia.com › articles › 10096-lombroso-cesare

LOMBROSO, CESARE - JewishEncyclopedia.com

Lombroso's name is chiefly connected with two theories: (1) that genius is a peculiar, psychical form of larvate epilepsy; (2) that there is a...

daily.jstorhttps://daily.jstor.org › criminal-minds-try-criminal-bodies ›

Criminal Minds? Try Criminal Bodies - JSTOR Daily

As Musumeci argues, “Lombroso embarked on a frantic search over the bodies and faces of prisoners and lunatics, in order to find the stigmata of deviance,...

psychiatryonlinehttps://psychiatryonline.org › doi › 10.1176 › ajp.161.4.624

Cesare Lombroso, M.D., 1835–1909 | American Journal of Psychiatry

Lombroso moved to Turin University. In 1876, he produced his best-known work, L’uomo delinquente (4), and thus, he can be regarded as the founder of modern...

2026-06-23T05:37:46.572-07:00

UT San Antonio study: As FDA approved semaglutide for weight management, calls to poison control centers skyrocketed in the U.S.

Prior to 2021, poison control centers nationally received roughly 1,000 to 1,500 cases per year. After mid-2021, these volumes nearly doubled, and by 2023 poison centers logged more than 8,000 GLP-1RA-related calls

University of Texas at San Antonio

When semaglutide’s popularity exploded following FDA approval for weight management in 2021, so too did a wave of calls to poison control centers.

At the time, Jordan Miller ’25 was a UT San Antonio undergraduate student. She set out to discover if the spike in calls was a result of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s expanded approval or simply a coincidence.

Originally developed to treat type 2 diabetes, Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists (GLP-1RAs) became a cultural phenomenon after the FDA first approved them for chronic weight management in 2021. As sales soared, poison control centers across the country were also experiencing a massive increase in incoming calls — and there was a clear category that stood out.

“One of them was this quite odd category of semaglutide,” said David Han, Miller’s research mentor and Romo Endowed Professor in the UT San Antonio Department of Statistics & Data Science. “We suspected that the call volume was skyrocketing because of the misuse and mishandling of this drug and that it may be attributed to the FDA approval of this drug for weight management.”

Under Han’s guidance and supported by the Provost’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship, Miller and Long School of Medicine colleagues Robert S. Miller, Pharm.D, senior specialist in poison information, and Shawn M. Varney, MD, professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and medical director of the South Texas Poison Center, studied the data.

Jordan Miller later presented the team’s findings at UT San Antonio’s Los Datos conference, where she took home first prize.

Most cases stemmed from unintentional dosing or therapeutic errors rather than deliberate misuse, but the UT San Antonio researchers found the massive increase jarring nonetheless.

“In that figure that tracks the increase by specific drug, I wasn’t expecting semaglutide to be so incredibly dominant,” Jordan Miller recalled. “I figured that it would lead the pack, but it was staggering. On the other hand, it makes sense with all the media attention.”

Han says the research is a living example of what data science is meant to do — moving beyond numbers and into the world.

“This work demonstrates the quantified impact of these drugs on public health,” he said. “Statistics, data science, analytics, machine learning and AI are meant to help people. We use them to transform data from any field into meaningful insight and informed action. Without that focus, it becomes hollow – numbers without real impact.”

The project by Miller, now a UT San Antonio graduate student in mathematics, began with a simple question she almost didn’t ask.

“You lose nothing by asking,” she said. “If you have a professor, you really get along with or admire, you lose nothing by asking them what they’re working on or if they have space for a research assistant. I got really lucky with Dr. Han saying, ‘I’m here to help — you pick what you want to work on.’”

Miller’s research confirmed that the FDA’s semaglutide approval was a clear inflection point. The volume and nature of calls before and after approval told two very different stories. The pool of people using GLP-1RA drugs to treat diabetes is one thing; the population now using them for weight loss is an entirely different scale.

“When the GLP-1[RA] drugs are being sold to diabetic patients, that’s a completely different story versus when the drug is used for weight management,” Han explained. “So, we had to quantify this evidence to show that it stemmed from the FDA approval and how to contain the risk. We need to better educate the public because how this drug behaves in our body and its long-term safety are not yet fully understood.”

The errors driving the spike in calls to poison control centers were, in many cases, preventable. Semaglutide is a weekly injection, not a daily one. Patients are also supposed to begin at a low dose before gradually increasing their use. Two of the most common mistakes were captured in the data. Patients were injecting daily instead of weekly, and they were starting at the full dose immediately.

“Can you imagine something you’re supposed to trickle up to, and you’re going full blast and seven times more often than you’re supposed to?” Jordan Miller said.

The solution, both Miller and Han agree, lies in education—from the prescriber’s office to the pharmacy counter.

The team’s research was featured as the cover story in Significance, a flagship magazine of the Royal Statistical Society and the American Statistical Association. It is also published in the Journal of Medical Toxicology, the official journal of the American College of Medical Toxicology.

Journal

Journal of Medical Toxicology

2026-06-23T05:36:25.893-07:00

People lack critical information about wildfire smoke risks

New research reveals gaps in wildfire smoke education, highlights need to better protect vulnerable populations

COPD Foundation

Miami (June 23, 2026) – Wildfire smoke can trigger breathing problems and flare-ups for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), yet many people are not receiving the trusted health information they need to stay safe, according to a new study in the May 2026 issue of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases: Journal of the COPD Foundation, a peer-reviewed, open access journal.

Wildfire smoke negatively affects air quality across the United States and is a leading cause of pollution. Wildfire smoke is especially dangerous for people with COPD, often triggering breathing difficulties and exacerbations. COPD, which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis, affects more than 30 million Americans and is the fourth leading cause of death worldwide.

In this new study, researchers interviewed people living with COPD who were enrolled in Kaiser Permanente Northern California and lived near significant wildfire events in the past to explore participants’ understanding of wildfire smoke, protective behaviors, and information sources.

Interview responses revealed most people rely on smartphone apps and online information for air quality information; have not had conversations with their doctors about how air quality negatively affects their health; lack knowledge about mitigation strategies (indoor air purifiers, vehicle air recirculation button); and prefer real-time guidance from their health care team when air quality becomes a health risk.

“Some patients are already monitoring air quality but not all,” said Laura C. Myers, M.D., MPH, of Kaiser Permanente Northern California and senior author of the study. “We need to make sure that people with COPD receive accurate, actionable guidance from trusted sources in real-time so they can take actions to protect themselves. Patient-centered approaches to wildfire preparedness can help the most vulnerable people prepare for and respond to air quality events before their symptoms get worse.”

To access current and past issues of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases: Journal of the COPD Foundation, visit journal.copdfoundation.org.

###

About the COPD Foundation
The COPD Foundation is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help millions of people live longer and healthier lives by advancing research, advocacy, and awareness to stop COPD, bronchiectasis, and NTM lung disease. The Foundation does this through scientific research, education, advocacy, and awareness to prevent disease, slow progression, and find a cure. For more information, visit copdfoundation.org, or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Journal

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases Journal of the COPD Foundation

DOI

10.15326/jcopdf.2025.0682

Article Title

Understanding COPD Patients’ Perspectives on Utilizing Strategies to Limit Their Exposure to Wildfire Smoke

2026-06-23T05:36:00.000-07:00

High-severity fires burn 30 times more acreage than 40 years ago, researchers find

University of California - Los Angeles

Key takeaways

From 1985-2024, high-severity forest fire increased thirtyfold in California, outpacing restorative fire, a UCLA study found.
Increases in fire severity correlate with drying trends linked to climate change, especially in densely forested areas.
Severe fires kill trees instead of giving them a chance to recover, changing the face of California’s landscape.

Forest fires now burn ten times more acreage annually than in 1985, while wildfire severity has gotten even worse. In California, 30 times more acreage burned from high-severity, forest-killing fires, according to new UCLA research.

In the 1980s and 1990s, California’s forest fires burned mostly at low or moderate severity, generally benefiting ecosystems. But as fires have grown in size, severe fires causing widespread tree death have overtaken beneficial fire as the most common fire type in California’s forests.

The study, published June 22 in the journal PNAS, found that the changes are tied to the increasingly warm and arid environment. These aridity-driven changes were also stronger in more densely forested areas, said UCLA bioclimatologist and senior author Park Williams.

“These high-severity, forest-replacing fires used to be uncommon, and now it’s the dominant fire type,” said Williams, a UCLA professor of geography. The research showed that the yearly forest area burned by severe fires increased at a much faster rate than the area burned by beneficial, lower-severity fire from 1985 to 2024, even as both fire types increased. “Fire is a natural process that can be healthy for ecosystems, but most of California’s tree species have a difficult time coming back following fires that kill huge swaths of trees.”

The biggest fire year in terms of forest area burned in the Western U.S. in modern history was 2020, and then 2021 quickly became the second biggest year on record, Williams said. CalFire data showed that 8 of the 10 largest fires to take place in California’s last 100 years all happened within the last 10 years.

Low-severity blazes started to be outnumbered in California in 2012, said lead author Mitchell Hung, an earth-systems researcher who completed the fire study as a graduate student at UCLA.

“From 2012 to 2024, high-severity fire beat out low-severity fire every single year,” said Hung, now a doctoral student at Stanford. “There’s a clear trend.”

Burn severity has quantitative measures, such as how much tree canopy burns away, or how badly the soil chars. To Hung, it also has a telltale look that he associates with painful trips through Yosemite National Park.

“I’ve driven through Yosemite a fair number of times, where often I’ll round a bend and see this huge field of burned snags,” Hung said. “Post-fire snags are the remnants of trees after everything has burned away but the trunk. They’re like tree gravestones.”

Why this is happening

The researchers found two main causes for the increase in fire severity. The first was fuel density. The UCLA study showed that severe burning increased the most rapidly in forests with the highest biomass density — that is, the densest plant life, with understories often full of highly flammable brush. This suggests fire prevention efforts, which have allowed many of California’s forest areas to accumulate high fuel densities, have contributed to the current problem, the researchers observed in the paper.

“We all remember Smokey Bear — ‘Only you can prevent forest fires’,” said Hung. “That had an inadvertently damaging effect on these ecosystems, which evolved alongside more frequent, less severe fires to keep them healthy. Preventing a fire often just prevents it in the short term, but kicks the can to a later point when there’s even more fuel to burn.”

With the increase in fire severity causing extensive tree death rather than benefiting the forests, California’s forest ecosystems are vulnerable to shifting toward grass and shrub plant types. When severe fires open up massive gaps in a forest and bake the soils, the nearest living seed source is often too far away for a new generation of trees to quickly regrow, Williams said.

“The shift in fire types means land cover is changing,” Williams said. “Are we going to get rapid regeneration of dense forests, or will we go decades or longer without forests returning? Changes in vegetation cover will then circle back to affect future fire. A shift from forest to grass would alter how tightly connected future fires are to droughts, heat waves or wind events. If we want to understand how fire will continue to change in the future, we need to understand how fire is changing vegetation ecosystems.”

As forests burn, the state also loses the benefits that forests provide, such as cleaning the air, regulating the climate, supporting water management by reducing storm run-off and flooding, and even economic benefits like the timber and tourism industries, Hung said. In contrast, high-severity fires generate massive amounts of air pollution and increase flood risk.

“The loss of these forests isn’t just, ‘I can’t take a pretty picture,’” Hung said. “There are profound socioeconomic impacts. Real dollars are being lost each year due to high-severity forest fire. Studies suggest the loss of forests will put more stress on water management, which has already come under strain in recent years from prolonged drought.”

Environmental dryness is the second driver of increasingly severe fires, the researchers found. A measure called the vapor-pressure deficit measures the gap between how much moisture the air can hold versus how much moisture it has. The bigger the deficit, the drier the air, and the more water the air can absorb from plants and soil.

“Climate change has made the atmosphere warmer, and a warmer atmosphere has a larger water-holding capacity,” Hung said. “When the weather is hot and dry, the vapor-pressure deficit is high, which leads the atmosphere to act like a sponge, soaking up surface water. In general, the warmer and drier the atmosphere, the more high-severity fire we saw over the last 40 years.”

What can be done to help

The researcher’s conclusions show that the state can make some headway in protecting California’s forests with changes in forest management, such as doing more manual clearing of underbrush and conducting more prescribed burns, Hung said.

“Among the largest drivers of burn severity are the warming and drying of the atmosphere, which no amount of forest thinning can change,” Hung said. “But even though forest management alone can’t solve the problem statewide, for individual locations, making good forest management decisions can help alleviate the risk of high-severity fire.”

The research was supported in part by the MacArthur Foundation, the Moore Foundation, USGS, the National Park Service, and the UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge. This paper is a contribution of the Western Fire and Forest Resilience Collaborative.

Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

2026-06-23T05:34:46.429-07:00

Synchronized heart rates as a marker for social engagement

PNAS Nexus

image:

“Audio Explorers” walking around New York while collecting data.

Credit: Photo by Demant, published with permission.

When people are close—both physically and emotionally—their heart rates begin to align, rising and falling together. Could such cardiac alignment be used as a way to measure social engagement and connection in everyday settings? Hanlu He and colleagues used data collected by 72 students visiting New York City as part of an audio engineering competition. The students collected data with hearing aids that recorded ambient noise, Garmin wristbands that measured heart rate, and mobile phones that recorded GPS data. Participants were classified as physically close when they were within 20 meters of one another. Participants’ heart rate synchrony was stronger when they were together, especially during close-proximity interactions and joint attention to shared stimuli, such as attending the same lecture. People who were socially familiar with one another before the trip had significantly higher levels of synchrony. Complex interaction environments with challenging listening conditions were associated with reduced heart rate synchrony, suggesting that listening conditions might influence the degree of physiological alignment. Noise and difficulty hearing target sounds could cause stress or increase the demand for auditory perception and compensation, reducing cognitive resources for interpersonal dynamics. Alternatively, conversation or the shared attention to an auditory stimulus could be part of what drives heart rate synchrony. According to the authors, interpersonal physiological synchrony emerges in naturalistic social settings and can be used as a reliable marker of real-world social engagement.

Noise levels (represented by sound pressure level, in decibels) logged each minute and pooled across students.

Credit

Jeppe Høy Christensen

Journal

PNAS Nexus

Article Title

Heart rate synchrony as a marker of real-world social engagement

Article Publication Date

23-Jun-2026

COI Statement

J.H.C. and J.M.S. are employed by Oticon A/S. Oticon A/S sponsored the study trip but had no other commercial involvement in the design or conduct of the study.

2026-06-23T05:30:27.224-07:00

Restoring African landscapes with indigenous food-bearing trees

PNAS Nexus

image:

Natal orange, Nkhata Bay, Malawi, November 2021.

Credit: Emilie Vansant

Deforestation is a major problem across Africa. It is widely recognized that deforestation harms biodiversity, but tree loss also harms dietary quality, as nutritious fruits, nuts, seeds, and leaves disappear from the landscape. Over $1 billion has been pledged for landscape restoration in Africa, but Emilie C. Vansant and colleagues report in a Perspective that many projects tend to focus on planting fast-growing, exotic tree species rather than native species. Such low-diversity plantations are vulnerable to pests, wildfires, droughts, and other extreme weather events, and introduced species can sometimes outcompete local vegetation.

The authors see the growing momentum around landscape restoration as a missed opportunity to restore native biodiversity, and in doing so, to restore sources of nutritious foods that are embedded in local cultures and traditional knowledge systems. The authors focus on Malawi as a case in point, as the country has pledged to restore more than 40% of its total land area. Increases in food prices in recent years have made a healthy diet unaffordable for 92% of the Malawian population, according to United Nations data.

Through knowledge co-creation workshops and consultations with representatives from 21 civil society organizations engaged in community-based restoration projects, the authors found that although the idea of planting and naturally regenerating native food trees is very appealing to people, technical knowledge on these trees is harder to access than knowledge about more common exotic species. In response, the authors worked with local experts to co-produce an illustrated tree-planting guide for indigenous edible tree species, such as wild loquat, Mbula plum, and sour plum. According to the authors, the goals of landscape restoration and combating malnutrition can both be served by planting and caring for native food trees.

Journal

PNAS Nexus

Article Title

Restoring indigenous trees can help combat malnutrition in Africa

Article Publication Date

23-Jun-2026

Tree seedlings, Nkhata Bay, Malawi, March 2025

Credit

Emilie Vansant

The authors worked with the local experts to co-produce an illustrated tree-planting guide for indigenous edible tree species, such as wild loquat, Mbula plum, and sour plum.

Credit

Vansant et al

Workshop activities around centering nutrition in landscape restoration were held in Ekwendeni, Malawi, in March 2025.

Credit

Emilie Vansant

A baobab tree in a farmer’s field, Mulanje, Malawi, November 2021.

Credit

Emilie Vansant

2026-06-23T05:26:24.188-07:00

A mini robot to simplify dental treatment

University of Basel

image:

A miniature robot developed at the University of Basel could help prepare teeth for a crown.

Credit: University of Basel, Catherine Weyer

Researchers at the University of Basel have developed a miniature dental robot that could one day automatically prepare teeth for crowns. The technology could help reduce the number of appointments needed for dental treatment.

A routine check-up at the dentist ends with bad news: tooth decay has left a large cavity, and the tooth needs a crown. The treatment requires several follow-up appointments. During the first appointment, the dentist removes the decay, fills the cavity and prepares the tooth for the crown. She then takes an impression and fits a temporary crown. The permanent crown is produced based on the impression and can only be placed at a later appointment.

In future, this process could become much faster thanks to a small dental robot developed by researchers at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Basel. The prototype is about the size of a wine cork, measuring just 43 by 26 by 28 millimeters. Its motors and control system are located outside the robot and connected to it via flexible drive shafts, cables and tubes. “It is designed to be small enough to fit comfortably into an open mouth,” says Dr Yukiko Tomooka, first author of the paper in IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics, in which the research team presents the robot.

Fewer appointments at the dentist

The prototype, called “MIR” — short for “Miniature Intraoral Robot” — is designed to prepare teeth precisely according to a digital plan. The idea is that, after a scan during the first appointment, dentists could plan exactly how the robot should remove the tooth material and order the crown straight away, rather than waiting until a second appointment.

The scan is used not only to plan the crown, but also to produce a custom-fitted dental splint to which the mini dental robot is attached. “Even if the patient turns their head, the MIR moves with them,” says Tomooka.

Remarkably precise dental robot

The researchers tested their dental robot on tooth models made of synthetic resin and on a ceramic material with a hardness similar to that of tooth enamel. The robot prepares the tooth in two steps: first, it uses a wide drill to reduce the tooth surface, removing material from above. In the second step, a longer, thinner drill works on the sides of the tooth.

What is remarkable is how precisely the dental robot already works, even though it does not yet have any sensors to measure or even correct its position directly. In tests, the positional error was less than 0.2 millimeters, which will be further reduced after sensors are integrated into the system.

In addition to precision, the researchers are also measuring the forces generated during drilling. In the tests, these remained below five newtons, roughly equivalent to the gravitational force of a half-liter bottle of water. The team is also investigating the noise produced by the system in order to better assess its suitability for use in dental practice.

Sensors and camera to follow

Further work is still needed before MIR can be used in dental practices. As a next step, the researchers plan to integrate sensors and a camera into the robot so that the system can monitor its position and the progress of the treatment. “Even after a power outage, MIR would know where it is and where it needs to continue based on the sensor data,” explains research group leader Professor Georg Rauter. The aim is to achieve this without making the mini robot any larger.

Rauter’s team regularly works closely with practicing physicians and dentists to develop robots for medical applications. The dental robot was developed as part of an Innosuisse-funded project in collaboration with the Center for Dentistry at the University of Zurich, Basel-based Camlog Biotechnologies GmbH and the University of Bern.

Journal

IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics

DOI

10.1109/TMRB.2026.3682629

The dental robot is mounted on a custom-fitted dental splint. Even if the patient moves their head, the robot can keep working precisely where it ought to.

Credit

University of Basel, Catherine Weyer

The dental robot in action [VIDEO]

2026-06-23T05:24:24.301-07:00

Airflow mystery solved at America’s Underground Lab

An engineering team at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) monitoring air flow through the complex system of 370 miles of tunnels and shafts did not understand why underground air patterns changed during times of heavy rain

South Dakota Science and Technology Authority

image:

Jason Connot, a mining engineer at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF), standing in the former blacksmith shop 1100 feet below ground at SURF.

Credit: Stephen Kenny / SURF

Successfully operating in a deep underground space requires the mitigation of two factors: air and water.

Adequate airflow is needed for workers to survive in the tunnels and shafts far below the surface. Additionally, water that percolates down from rainfall or that flows in at any intersections to aquifers must be pumped out.

Large underground operations, like mines, often have whole teams of engineers and technicians that specialize in air and water flow. This is also true for a scientific laboratory like the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF). Mining does not occur at SURF today, but mining engineers are still vital for the safe operation of underground tunnels and shafts that make up the vast facility.

At SURF, the ventilation system is led by Jason Connot, a mining engineer who has worked at the facility since 2019. Connot and others noticed something strange about underground airflow patterns during periods of heavy rain—sometimes they moved backwards.

“We noticed our fan would go haywire at 5 Shaft. Some areas would show reduced or even reversed airflow during large rain events,” Connot said.

At SURF air primarily enters two main shafts and is ventilated out through two separate shafts. 5 Shaft, normally exhaust air—except in cases of heavy rain where water is discharged down into to the deep pool through 5 Shaft.

“At first, we didn’t know what was going on with the airflow in large rain events,” Connot said. “We could all see these airflow changes occurring throughout the underground, and we were like, why is this happening?”

Engineers survive on data-driven decisions; Connot and the team didn’t have the data they needed to solve the problem until Maestro air flow sensors were installed on the 2000 Level to control an automated regulator.

Prior to this, a set of airflow sensors installed by Steve Gabriel a Spearfish Highschool science teacher and his class first captured an event on the 4850L during a test of the shaft deluge system. “We felt that airflow increase on the 4850 Level during that test. That's what made the correlation and triggered everything,” Connot said. Gabriel led his students to build and deploy a series of air flow monitors at SURF, before joining the team at the facility as a full-time ventilation technician.

In heavy rain, inflows can overwhelm the underground water pumping system, so engineers divert extra water down 5 Shaft to the deep pool, later to be pumped out. This process is kind of like an overflow spillway for a dam that gets too full. The team hypothesized that extra water falling down 5 Shaft was acting kind of like a syringe pushing fluid down into a needle.

But they needed proof.

Connot did some digging and found a few references in the scientific literature documenting this same phenomenon in large municipal sewer systems. The literature included some math on the fluid dynamics of these unique conditions. Connot and team members from South Dakota Mines modified the equations to fit SURF’s conditions, and the math lined up.

“When we added our numbers and parameters to the model, everything came out spot on, Connot said. “You would not think the weight of water droplets could move so much air.”

This finding has implications for a range of underground operations worldwide, and not just for high rain events.

“If there's ever a fire, mining engineers will sometimes turn a valve on up top and just dump water down the shaft. Knowing this can change the air flow is critical information for everyone. We tested this, we've seen it occur,” Connot said.

Because SURF is a dedicated science and engineering research facility, Connot and the engineering team had the time to study and understand this problem. “This is not the kind of study you’d always have time to do in an operational mine,” Connot noted.

Bryce Pietzyk agrees. Pietzyk is the director of underground operations at SURF.

“One thing I really like about working with Jason is he really wants to dive into the kind of details needed to understand complex operations systems such as this. No one had previously taken the time to grasp this issue—but it's absolutely critical, and that’s why the whole team supported this study,” Pietzyk said. “Thanks to this work, we're able to be way ahead of airflow issues, predict what will happen, and configure ventilation controls in the right manner.”

Connot’s research paper, Effects of Water Inflows on a Mine Ventilation System: A Case Study is published in Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration, DOI 10.1007/s42461-026-01586-0:.

Dr. Andrea Brickey is Connot’s advisor and a professor in the Department of Mining Engineering and Management at South Dakota Mines. “As an advisor, one couldn’t ask for a better graduate student than Jason,” Brickey said. “He identified a phenomenon impacting ventilation systems and his curiosity drove him to want to determine how to predict that behavior. He succeeded, and his work is helping SURF and an entire industry.”

Pietzyk gives additional praise to Connot for completing this master’s thesis on top of his normal job at SURF.

“Jason is an engineer who goes above and beyond,” Pietzyk said. “The work he did to complete this research shows he really cares about this facility. He kept it all together while doing his full-time engineering job, commuting from Rapid City, completing his Master’s Degree, and raising a family. He deserves credit for this, it’s really an amazing effort.”

Jason Connot stands in a drift near the shaft to the surface at the Sanford Underground Research Facility.

Credit

Photo by Matthew Kapust / SURF

DOI

10.1007/s42461-026-01586-0:

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Effects of Water Inflows on a Mine Ventilation System: A Case Study

2026-06-23T05:22:32.342-07:00

Digital health tools are reshaping healthcare in the United States

NYU Langone Health / NYU Grossman School of Medicine

At least 12 percent of Americans now communicate with their healthcare providers about appointments, test results, and ongoing treatments via secure online patient portals and health apps, a new study shows.

Meanwhile, traditional, in-person visits to the doctor’s office have rebounded since the pandemic. And although digital medicine has become a routine part of healthcare, it is supplementing rather than replacing in-person care. This evolution, researchers say, is reshaping how hospitals and clinics operate daily.

These are the main conclusions of the study, which was led by researchers at NYU Langone Health and represents the largest review ever performed on communications recorded by Epic electronic health records. The team’s analysis involved more than 140 million patient records from 2,067 hospitals and 47,100 health clinics in the US. As part of the study, the researchers evaluated over 8 billion patient-provider interactions that took place between January 2020 and December 2025.

Publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) online June 22, the study team found that online portal messages more than doubled between 2020 and 2025 (by 153 percent). By contrast, total telephone calls decreased by 6 percent over the same period. The number of Americans with an active Epic health record went from 94 million in 2020 to 140 million in 2025. Thirty percent of active patients on Epic (42 million) sent a portal health app message to their clinician during the first three months of 2025.

Patient portal visits, however, are not replacing in-office visits, which have returned to an average of between two and three per year per patient. Messages from patients to healthcare providers have doubled since the pandemic, from an average pace of 2.2 per year in early 2020 to 5.4 per year in late 2025.

“Our study shows that use of patient portals, health apps, and messaging are now a routine part of everyday patient care across America, not simply side channels used occasionally,” said study senior investigator Michal A. Mankowski, PhD.

Dr. Mankowski, an assistant professor in the Department of Surgery at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said the study demonstrates that patients now have much more direct access to physicians and other clinicians.

“Our findings reveal that while digital health tools have become a core part of healthcare, delivery is becoming more continuous, timeless, and no longer tied to scheduled appointments during routine work hours,” said Dr. Mankowski.

Among the study’s other findings was that since 2020, Americans have, as logged in Epic record systems, booked at least 1.77 billion in-person visits to health clinics, sent 1.34 billion messages to their healthcare providers, and received some 3.25 billion online portal messages from providers. Also documented in Epic were 1.59 billion telephone calls and 146 million virtual telehealth portal visits.

Study co-investigator Dorry L. Segev, MD, PhD, said that the digital delivery of healthcare does not replace the old ways of working; it just adds another layer of more steps to existing workflows. To manage this new patient reality, hospitals, clinics, and healthcare workers have to plan future staffing and support.

“Modern delivery of healthcare means increasingly that healthcare providers will have to balance their digital workload on top of their traditional clinical workload,” said Dr. Segev, a professor and vice chair in the Department of Surgery at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. “Clinical staff will need to be trained in mastering the tools of messaging in healthcare; in using AI support programs, including chatbots that can frame content to minimize its complexity; and in making the most effective use of clinician time needed for online billing and online counseling,” said Dr. Segev, who is also a profession in NYU Grossman’s Department of Population Health.

Already, he noted, NYU Langone uses AI support tools to speed up drafting of physician and provider notes.

Dr. Segev said the team next plans to look more specifically at digital-use trends within healthcare systems, including NYU Langone, to break down any regional and outpatient clinic-specific shifts that could affect operational planning.

For the study, the team used Epic Cosmos, a national dataset of the electronic health records of more than 300 million American patients. The dataset includes information from a majority of hospitals and clinics that use Epic, the nation’s largest vendor of electronic health record systems, which had no role in performing the study.

Funding support for the study was provided by NYU Langone.

Along with Drs. Mankowski and Segev, NYU Langone researchers involved in the study were lead investigator Jane J. Long, MD, and co-investigators Mara A. McAdams DeMarco, PhD; Mark D. Schwartz, MD; Joshua Chodosh, MD; and Eric K. Oermann, MD.

Dr. Mankowski was recently elected to serve on the governing board of Epic Cosmos. Dr. Schwartz reported being president-elect of the Society of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Segev has received consulting and/or speaking honoraria from Sanofi, CareDx, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Roche, Optum, OrganOx, Hansa, and Biosidus and is a journal editor for Springer. None of these activities are related to the current JAMA study. NYU Langone is managing the terms and conditions of these relationships in accordance with its policies and procedures.

###

About NYU Langone Health

NYU Langone Health is a fully integrated health system that consistently achieves the best patient outcomes through a rigorous focus on quality that has resulted in some of the lowest mortality rates in the nation. Vizient Inc. has ranked NYU Langone No. 1 out of 118 comprehensive academic medical centers across the nation for four years in a row, and U.S. News & World Report recently ranked four of its clinical specialties No. 1 in the nation. NYU Langone offers a comprehensive range of medical services with one high standard of care across seven inpatient locations, its Perlmutter Cancer Center, and more than 330 outpatient locations in the New York area and Florida. The system also includes two tuition-free medical schools, in Manhattan and on Long Island, and a vast research enterprise.

Media contacts:

At NYU Langone Health

David March

David.March@NYULangone.org

212-404-3528

Casey Nicholl (on June 22 only)

Casey.Nicholl@NYULangone.org

646-983-4920

Shira Polan (before and after June 22)

Shira.Polan@NYULangone.org

At DKC News

NYUResearch@dkcnews.com

Study DOI

10.1001/jama.2026.8690

Journal

JAMA

DOI

10.1001/jama.2026.8690

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Trends[JR1.1] in Patient Portal Messages, Office Visits, and Telephone Encounters

Article Publication Date

22-Jun-2026

COI Statement

Funding support for the study was provided by NYU Langone. Along with Drs. Mankowski and Segev, NYU Langone researchers involved in the study were lead investigator Jane J. Long, MD, and co-investigators Mara A. McAdams DeMarco, PhD; Mark D. Schwartz, MD; Joshua Chodosh, MD; and Eric K. Oermann, MD. Dr. Mankowski was recently elected to serve on the governing board of Epic Cosmos. Dr. Schwartz reported being president-elect of the Society of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Segev has received consulting and/or speaking honoraria from Sanofi, CareDx, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Roche, Optum, OrganOx, Hansa, and Biosidus and is a journal editor for Springer. None of these activities are related to the current JAMA study. NYU Langone is managing the terms and conditions of these relationships in accordance with its policies and procedures.

2026-06-23T05:18:24.468-07:00

Underwater expedition charts seaweed forests in the remote waters of southern Patagonia

Pensoft Publishers

image:

Marine expedition to Bahía Inútil (Intuil Bay).

Credit: James Alfaro

At the icy, wind-swept tip of South America lies Inútil Bay, a remote marine environment in the Tierra del Fuego archipelago that has long guarded its underwater secrets due to severe logistical and meteorological challenges. A multi-institutional team of researchers have successfully conducted the first comprehensive exploration of the intertidal and subtidal rocky ecosystems of Inútil Bay.

The expedition, supported by the Marine Program of Rewilding Chile, brought together specialists from CADIC-CONICET and the Universidad Nacional de Tierra del Fuego (Argentina) to conduct the first survey of benthic macroalgae in a region that had never been systematically studied before.

The findings from this survey, recently published in the Biodiversity Data Journal, provide a missing piece in the biogeographical puzzle of sub-Antarctic coastal environments. Benthic marine macroalgae act as important ecosystem engineers, modifying the physical structure of coastal habitats to create complex environments that support rich marine food webs and exceptionally high levels of biodiversity.

Beyond their role as local habitat providers, these extensive algal communities contribute significantly to global climate mitigation, while also serving as sensitive indicators of environmental health and human-induced disturbances.

Operating across six distinct sampling locations along both the northern and southern coasts of the Inutil bay, the research team deployed scientific diving techniques, including the use of 25-metre line transects and photo-quadrats to document all macroalgae species distributions.

This field methodology culminated in the documentation of 72 distinct macroalgal taxa, providing a major expansion of the known phytogeographic characterisation of the Magellanic region (Chile). The survey recorded 32 taxa in the variable intertidal zone and 58 taxa in the subtidal depths, comprising a diverse assortment of green, brown, and red algae.

While canopy-forming kelp species such as Macrocystis pyrifera and Lessonia flavicans dominated the underwater landscape alongside widespread species like Ptilonia magellanica, the researchers also catalogued rare and highly unusual specimens, for example, Microzonia velutina, a little brown macroalga.

All collected specimens are preserved at the Rewilding Chile Herbarium in Puerto Varas, ensuring that this dataset remains available to support future monitoring of these ecosystems, the detection of invasive species, and conservation planning in southern Patagonia.

At the same time, we are making progress on a collaborative alliance with the National Museum of Natural History of Chile, where we have already deposited an icefish larva (Champsocephalus esox) collected on a previous expedition and the Microzonia velutina.
The Research Team

Original source:

Kaminsky J, Palacios M, Rodríguez M, Hüne M (2026) Sub-Antarctic subtidal and intertidal macroalgae in rocky ecosystems of Inútil Bay, Tierra del Fuego in Southern Patagonia. Biodiversity Data Journal 14: e183377. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.14.e183377

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Biodiversity Data Journal

DOI

10.3897/BDJ.14.e183377

Method of Research

Survey

Article Title

Sub-Antarctic subtidal and intertidal macroalgae in rocky ecosystems of Inútil Bay, Tierra del Fuego in Southern Patagonia

Microzonia velutina - a brown algal species.

Marine expedition at Intuil Bay.

Credit

Mariano Rodríguez

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment

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One of the nanorobots, imaged with a Transmission Electron Microscope.

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The nanorobot can attach itself to specific surfaces and carry out enzymatic reactions there. The enzymes (purple) inside the payload capsule convert molecules from the surrounding environment (left, dark gray) into the desired product (right, light gray).

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Illustration of the versatile nanorobot. It is 150 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

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Artificial light at night at the Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea, Eilat, Israel

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Tree swallows are uniquely suited for a study like this because they will return to nesting sites that researchers have set up for them. Researchers can also peek into nests to count eggs and band chicks without the parents abandoning the nest.

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Although tree swallow populations are declining, this doesn't appear to be because of upticks in mortality, at least for the Long Point flock. Rather, they are having fewer offspring as a result of the declines in insect abundance.

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Long Point Bird Observatory, located in southern Ontario on a piece of land that sticks out into Lake Erie, is the oldest continuously-operated bird observatory in North America. It was founded with help from U-M alumnus David Hussel, who served as its first executive director.

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3D-printed earth-fiber objects by Lola Ben-Alon and the Natural Materials Lab were exhibited at the London Craft Week.

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Researchers at the University of Cincinnati found that mosquitoes and other insects have a daily body clock tied to humidity.

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How animals communicate to work together across species boundaries

Peter Kropotkin Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

(PDF) Peter Kropotkin’s 1902 Mutual Aid theory today