A new study on ancient societies from around the world is rewriting what we thought we knew about democracy. A team of researchers analyzed archaeological and historical evidence from 31 ancient societies across Europe, Asia, and the Americas and found that shared, inclusive governance was far more common than was once believed. “People often assume that democratic practices started in Greece and Rome,” said Gary Feinman, the study’s lead author and the MacArthur Curator of Mesoamerican ...

Long before pottery, before agriculture, when the first villages took shape, people in the Levant were already molding clay with their hands, carefully, deliberately, and sometimes playfully. Some of those hands belonged to children. Link to pictures:  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17O5vHUq6flnwqxNFzYejs0PqDB6JmBUz?usp=sharing An international team of archaeologist led by Laurent Davin, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Archaeology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Prof. Leore Grosman, has uncovered the earliest known clay ornaments in Southwest Asia, revealing a forgotten chapter in the story of ...

After watching hundreds of mosquitoes buzzing around one of their colleagues and collecting 20 million data points, Georgia Tech and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have created a mathematical model that predicts how and where female mosquitoes will fly to feast on humans. The new study is the first to visualize mosquito flight patterns and provides hard data for improving capture and control strategies. In addition to being a nuisance, mosquitoes transmit diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, and Zika, which cause more than 700,000 deaths every year. The researchers also designed an interactive, public website to show the paths and ...

A new University of Missouri study suggests mental health policies can play a significant role in how Americans choose political candidates. Past scholarly research has found that most Americans say they support mental health policies. Jake Haselswerdt, an associate professor of political science in Mizzou’s College of Arts and Science, wanted to take the topic a step further by asking whether mental health policies actually matter when people choose to vote for a political candidate. Drawing on a nationally representative sample ...

A mosquito finds its target with the help of certain cues in its environment, such as a person’s silhouette and the carbon dioxide they exhale.  Now researchers at MIT and Georgia Tech have found that these visual and chemical cues help determine the insects’ flight paths. The team has developed the first three-dimensional model of mosquito flight, based on experiments with mosquitoes flying in the presence of different sensory cues.  Their model, reported in the journal Science Advances, identifies three flight patterns that mosquitoes ...

A research group led by Professor Cecilia Sahlgren at Åbo Akademi University (Finland) and the InFLAMES Research Flagship has identified a new mechanism directing the adverse remodeling of tumor tissue during breast cancer progression. This discovery could offer new treatment opportunities against aggressive forms of breast cancer which currently lack targeted therapy options. Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women worldwide. Localized, early-stage breast cancer has a good prognosis, ...

Treatments that target a fragment of the mutant protein that causes Huntington's disease might be more effective than treatments, now in clinical trials, that target the whole protein but leave this fragment intact, a new study in mice suggests. "I hope we're wrong, but the science behind our findings is solid," said senior author Jeffrey Carroll, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. "To succeed, we may need to design new treatments that also target this specific region of ...

Seoul National University College of Engineering has announced that a research team led by Prof. Jeonghun Kwak of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, with co-first authors Dr. Juhyung Park and Dr. Sun Hong Kim, has developed a flexible and thin “pseudo-transverse thermoelectric generator” capable of producing electricity from body heat.   The research findings were published on March 18 (ET) in Science Advances, a leading international journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).   Thermoelectric ...

Utilization of biomass as a chemical resource is a promising strategy for establishing a circular economy. Cellulose, a polymer composed of glucose units, is the most abundant form of biomass, and glucose is a versatile feedstock for chemicals. However, cellulose is a highly recalcitrant material due to its extensive hydrogen-bond (H-bond) network. Kobayashi, Nishimura, and their colleagues discovered that simply dipping cellulose in an aqueous NaOH solution below −28 ℃ makes it more reactive. Thereby, the efficiency of saccharification (the process of breaking down cellulose into sugars) ...

Rising temperatures in a Southcentral Alaska river have led to a hungrier population of invasive northern pike, a trend that could imperil native salmon and other fish species. A University of Alaska Fairbanks-led research team analyzed the stomach contents of northern pike caught by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Deshka River during the summers of 2021 and 2022. The team compared the contents to samples from pike collected a decade earlier. Pike of every age class ate more fish as temperatures increased, including a huge 63 percent rise among year-old pike. The study was published in the journal Biological Invasions. “We ...

Groundbreaking research, led by teams at Trinity College Dublin and the FutureNeuro Research Ireland Centre, has pinpointed the mechanism linking some sports injuries to poor brain health in retired athletes.  The research, published today in leading international journal Science Translational Medicine, has identified a breakdown in the blood-brain barrier (BBB) as the key link between repetitive head injuries (RHIs) and long-term brain health issues in this cohort.  The BBB acts as a “security gate”, letting in essential nutrients while ...

Paris – March 18, 2026 — In a special ceremony at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris to mark World Water Day, Professor Kaveh Madani, Research Professor of the City College of New York (CCNY) and Director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), was named the 2026 Stockholm Water Prize recipient, to be officially presented by H.M. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden in August 2026, during World Water Week in Stockholm. The Stockholm Water Prize is the ultimate global recognition for extraordinary achievements in water-related activities. Often described ...

UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, 18 March 2026 — Professor Kaveh Madani, Director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), has been named the 2026 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate. The announcement was made at the World Water Day ceremony at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. The prize will be formally presented by H.M. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden during World Water Week in Stockholm in August 2026.  Often described as the ‘Nobel Prize of Water’, the Stockholm Water Prize is the most prestigious water award and honours outstanding contributions ...

With the prevalence of infectious diseases, the rapid assessment of population-specific immune protection has become important for public health. A study published in Analytical Chemistry and led by Prof. TAN Xiaotian's team from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a new platform, known as Tip Optofluidic Immunoassay Interferon-Gamma Release Assay (TOI-IGRA), which could revolutionize how people monitor their immune health. Evaluating T-cell responses is vital to understanding cellular immunity against intracellular threats such ...

For years, one of the most powerful weapons against certain blood cancers, called CAR-T cell therapy, has required an elaborate process: Doctors extract a patient’s immune cells, ship them to a specialized facility where they’re genetically reprogrammed to fight cancer, then ship them back for infusion back into the patient’s bloodstream. This has revolutionized cancer treatment, but it takes weeks and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, placing it out of reach for many of the patients who need it most.   Now, scientists at UC San Francisco have developed a method ...

The 350-year history of quinine, from Quechua bark to chemotherapy drug – with an important milestone in Jena For over 350 years, quinine and other extracts from the cinchona tree (Cinchona spp.) were the only effective medicines against malaria, a tropical fever caused by single-celled parasites of the genus Plasmodium and transmitted by Anopheles mosquitoes.  The name 'cinchona tree' actually originates from South America and comes from the Quechua term quina-quina, meaning 'bark of barks'. Powdered quina-quina was ...

Two microscopic grains collide and produce a tiny spark. This phenomenon may have provided the energy to kick off life on Earth. But if these solid particles have the same composition, what factor causes the charge to flow in a given direction? In a new study published in Nature, physicists from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) identify the key factor as environmental carbon-based molecules that adhere to the materials’ surface. What do Saharan dust storms, volcanic lightning, and ...

A new interdisciplinary study published in Nature reconstructs over 2,000 years of population history in Argentina’s Uspallata Valley (UV), a southern frontier of Andean farming spread in ancient times, with broader lessons on how agriculture shaped societies and how communities endured crises. By combining ancient human and pathogen genomics with isotopic analyses, archaeology and paleoclimate records–and working in close collaboration with Huarpe Indigenous communities–, the research reveals how local hunter-gatherers adopted agriculture, how more recent intensive ...

Researchers discovered an antioxidant, glutathione, that cancer cells appear to be “addicted to” as fuel, opening new pathways for investigation and a potential drug that can restrict the way tumors use this nutrient. The top-tier scientific journal Nature is publishing the study online on March 18. Isaac Harris, PhD, and a team from the Wilmot Cancer Institute at the University of Rochester conducted the research. Co-corresponding author and co-first author Fabio Hecht, PhD, and co-first author Marco Zocchi, PhD, led the study in the Harris lab in the Department of Biomedical ...

Cancer-fighting T cells do not simply “run out of energy.” They are molecularly reprogrammed. For years, mitochondrial dysfunction has been recognized as a hallmark of exhausted T cells in tumors. Yet how metabolic stress translates into stable transcriptional reprogramming remained unclear. The new study uncovers a decisive molecular bridge. When mitochondria become depolarized, CD8⁺ T cells increase proteasome activity. This heightened protein degradation selectively dismantles mitochondrial hemoproteins, releasing excess regulatory heme. Rather than remaining a byproduct, heme becomes a signal. It translocates to the nucleus, where it binds and destabilizes the transcription ...

Two new studies from investigators at Mass General Brigham challenge a decades-old assumption that the thymus, an organ best known for its role in establishing immune function in childhood, becomes irrelevant in adulthood. Using artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze routine CT scans, researchers uncovered that adults with a healthy thymus had increased longevity and reduced risk for cardiovascular disease and cancer. In a separate study of patients with cancer, the researchers found that thymic health may influence response to immunotherapy—a treatment that depends on the strength of a patient’s immune system. These findings, published in two papers in the same ...

Following a rapid increase in popularity of GLP-1 drugs for diabetes and weight loss, such as semaglutide and tirzepatide, approximately one in eight U.S. adults now take these medications, which also provide cardiovascular benefits. However, when patients stop taking these drugs, they not only regain weight, but, according to a new study, they also incur increased risk of heart attack, stroke and death compared to staying on the medication. In the study, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine ...

Tides not only affect regions along the coast, their periodic fluctuations are carried upstream inland through coastal rivers. River sections particularly affected by these tidal pulses are exposed to an increased risk of flooding. It is therefore important to localize these regions, as well as the extent of the river tide. However, until now, a global and accurate overview has not yet been established. A research team led by TUM has conducted the first global evaluation, based on high-resolution satellite data, and presented it in an interactive map. Over 725 million people worldwide are influenced by river tides The map closes a ...

Cells rely on tiny molecules called microRNAs to tune which genes are active and when. Cells must carefully control the lifespan of microRNAs to prevent widespread disruption to gene regulation. A new study led by researchers at Whitehead Institute and Germany’s Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry reveals how cells selectively eliminate certain microRNAs through an unexpectedly intricate molecular recognition system. The work, published on March 18 in Nature, shows that the ...