Seabird poop could have been used to fertilize Peru's Chincha Valley by at least 1250 CE, potentially facilitating the expansion of its pre-Inca society Article URL: https://plos.io/4renTnm Article title: Seabirds shaped the expansion of pre-Inca society in Peru Author countries: Australia, U.S. Funding:  Funding for archaeological fieldwork and isotopic analyses of maize samples was provided to JLB by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (DGE-1144087), the Society of Fellows at Boston University, the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program, the National Geographic Young Explorers Grant Program (9347-13), and the Sigma Xi Grants-in-Aid Research ...

Higher self-reported levels of resilience were linked to lower anxiety and depression and better coping strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study published February 11, 2026, in the open-access journal PLOS One by Joseph Anthony Pettit of Bangor University, U.K., and colleagues. Successfully managing and adapting to life’s challenges often requires resilience. Resilience has been linked to coping better with mental ill-health, lower emotional distress following adversity, and faster recovery from such experiences. However, past research has neglected individual profiles of resilience and ...

A male fruit fly in a laboratory chamber extends his wings and vibrates them to produce his species' version of a love song. A female fly stays nearby listening. Suddenly, a green light flashes across the chamber for a fraction of a second. The male's song cuts off mid-note and his wings fold. The female, not impressed by the interrupted serenade, walks away. The culprit? An AI system that watched the male begin his courtship dance and shut down his song-producing brain cells. Developed by scientists at Nagoya University and their collaborators from Osaka University and Tohoku University, ...

Suicide hotline calls increase with rising nighttime temperatures (by 168% for temperatures in the hottest 99th percentile), which could warrant temperature-triggered staffing protocols.    Article URL: https://plos.io/3Mtdju2 Article Title: Temperature extremes contribute to suicide-related help-seeking through multiple pathways: Evidence from crisis hotline data (2019–2023)  Author Countries: United States Funding: This work was supported by the National Academy of Sciences Gulf Research Program (SCON-10001154 to MS and JR). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. ...

A multi-institutional team of researchers led by Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC has for the first time identified specific patterns of brain chemical activity that predict how quickly individual honey bees learn new associations, offering important insights into the biological basis of learning and decision-making. The findings, which were published in Sciences Advances, found that the balance between the neurotransmitters octopamine and tyramine can predict whether a bee will learn quickly, slowly, or not at all as they associate an odor with a reward.  Because the same ancient ...

Scientists examined engineered mouse models, human neurons and brains of Down syndrome patients, who are at high risk of developing an aggressive form of Alzheimer’s Decades-old, FDA-approved drug restored neuronal function, steering neurons away from producing toxic amyloid‑beta 42 Drug would need to be taken ‘very, very early,’ before brain cells die Existing human clinical data showed drug slowed the progression of Alzheimer’s pathology CHICAGO — While physicians and scientists have long known Alzheimer’s ...

Researchers have identified a new type of visual cell in deep-sea fish larvae that challenges a century of knowledge about vertebrate visual systems. Dr Fabio Cortesi from The University of Queensland’s School of the Environment said the finding could lead to new camera technology and medical treatments. “For more than 150 years, textbooks have taught that vision in most vertebrates is made of cones and rods – cones which work in bright light and rods for dark situations,” Dr Cortesi said. “But our study of deep-sea fish larvae revealed a new cell type – a photoreceptor that optimises vision in gloomy or twilight conditions. “It combines the ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A key problem facing artificial intelligence (AI) development is the vast amount of energy the technology requires, with some experts projecting AI datacenters to be responsible for over 13% of global electricity usage by 2028. According to Xingjie Ni, associate professor of electrical engineering at the Penn State School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the key to addressing this roadblock could lie in computers powered by light instead of circuitry. Ni and his team recently developed a prototype device ...

A new IIASA-led study examines growing critiques of how global climate mitigation scenarios address equity and justice and identifies key conditions for fair, feasible, and politically credible climate action. Global climate mitigation scenarios shape real-world policy choices of who cuts emissions, who pays, and who benefits from climate action. A new IIASA-led essay published in PLOS Climate identifies how these influential tools address equity and justice, with implications for perceptions of fairness and public trust in climate policy. Drawing on a broad grassroots community process, the study identifies practical ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Brain cells are constantly swallowing material from the fluid that surrounds them — signaling molecules, nutrients, even pieces of their own surfaces — in a process known as endocytosis that is essential for learning, memory and basic neural upkeep.   Now, new research by Penn State scientists has revealed this vital process may be governed by a previously unknown molecular gatekeeper: a lattice‑like structure just ...

Throughout the past decade, Northwestern University scientists have uncovered a striking principle of vaccine design: Performance depends not only on vaccine components but also on vaccine structure. After proving this concept across multiple studies, the team developed therapeutic cancer vaccines to tackle one of the most challenging targets yet — HPV-driven tumors. In a new study, the scientists discovered that systematically changing the orientation and placement of a single cancer-targeting peptide can lead to formulations that supercharge the immune system’s ability to attack tumors. The study ...

AURORA, Colo. (February 11, 2026) – Researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz have developed a way to predict how trauma patients will recover, days before complications come to fruition, by analyzing the molecules in their blood. In a first-of-its-kind study, published today in Science Translational Medicine, the team showed that “omics” markers, or biological signals found in blood, can reveal why patients with similar injuries often recover differently, opening the door to more precise, personalized trauma care. Researchers mapped the molecular endotypes and trajectories ...

A new paper in Nicotine and Tobacco Research, published by Oxford University Press, finds that people experiencing more economic disadvantages are more likely to smoke cigarettes, have higher levels of tobacco addiction, and find it harder to quit than those who are most advantaged. This pattern was consistent across different forms and severity of disadvantage. Despite decades of work by policymakers and reductions in smoking rates, tobacco use is still a leading cause of preventable mortality worldwide. In England, official estimates suggest 11.9% ...

Embargoed until 9:45 AM PST, February 11, 2026     No Association Between mRNA COVID-19 Vaccination During Pregnancy and Autism in Children, New Research Shows  Las Vegas, NV – The mRNA COVID-19 vaccine is not associated with autism or other neurodevelopmental problems in children whose mothers received the vaccine immediately before or during pregnancy, according to new research ...

In the rapidly evolving world of two-dimensional materials, a small twist can have outsized consequences. Since the discovery that rotational misalignment between atomically thin crystals can reshape their electronic behaviour, moiré engineering has become a powerful design principle for quantum matter. Writing in Nature Nanotechnology, researchers now show that magnetism, too, can defy conventional expectations: in twisted antiferromagnetic layers, spin order need not be confined to the moiré unit cell, but can expand into unexpectedly large, topological textures that span hundreds of nanometres. Most moiré phenomena inherit their defining length ...

Microbes could help oak trees cope with environmental change. Publishing February 11 in the Cell Press journal Cell Host & Microbe, a study observing oaks growing in a natural woodland found that the trees’ above- and below-ground microbiomes were resilient to drought, nutrient scarcity, and exposure to pathogenic beetles and bacteria. The trees showed subtle changes to their root-associated ...

About The Study: No difference was detected in opioid use disorder treatment engagement on day 7 between the 7-day extended-release and sublingual buprenorphine groups. Both buprenorphine formulations were well tolerated; precipitated withdrawal was rare despite a high prevalence of fentanyl. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Gail D’Onofrio, MD, email gail.dononfrio@yale.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2025.27019) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, ...

Lung cancer patients who have never smoked make up a significant and growing share of global lung cancer cases, yet remain an understudied group, according to a new review written by UCL (University College London) researchers. In 2020, lung cancer in never-smokers (LCINS) was the fifth most common cause of cancer death worldwide (the most common cause was tobacco-related lung cancer). Published in Trends in Cancer, the review calls for increased funding for the screening and study of lung cancer in never-smokers (LCINS), which is accounting for an ever-larger proportion of cases as smoking rates decline. Evidence from studies of several thousand lung cancer patients ...

The visual system is hierarchically organised into different areas. The lower visual areas see small parts of the visual field, and they are sensitive to very simple features, such as edges and their orientation. Higher up the hierarchy, the visual areas start encoding more abstract representations of the world, expanding their visual field to respond to stimuli such as objects and faces.   At the same time, the areas that see “the big picture” send back information to the lower visual areas, called ...

Could a smart watch act as an early‑warning system for depression relapse? New research from McMaster University suggests that disruptions in a person’s sleep and daily activity routine, as detected through a simple wrist-worn device, can signal when there is increased risk of relapsing into major depression. The new research highlights a simple, yet powerful way to passively monitor relapse risk in people living with major depressive disorder (MDD), often detecting the probability of a relapse weeks or months before the episode occurs. Approximately 60 per cent of people with MDD relapse within five years, even with treatment.  “Advances ...

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest that reducing air pollution levels may help to delay and mitigate physical disability in aging adults. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Sara D. Adar, ScD, email sadar@umich.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.58699) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. #  #  ...

About The Study: In this cohort study using a national dataset, historically Black college or university attendance was associated with better cognition compared with predominantly white institution attendance for aging Black adults, which held for those attending college before and after legal racial segregation and sanctioned racial discrimination in education. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Marilyn D. Thomas, PhD, MPH, email marilyn.thomas@ucsf.edu. To access the embargoed ...

“This is a crucial advance,” explains Ramón Aguado, a CSIC researcher at the Madrid Institute of Materials Science (ICMM) and one of the study's authors. “Our work is pioneering because we demonstrate that we can access the information stored in Majorana qubits using a new technique called quantum capacitance,” continues the scientist, who explains that this technique “acts as a global probe sensitive to the overall state of the system.” To better understand this achievement, Aguado explains that topological qubits are “like safe boxes for quantum ...

Chestnut Hill, Mass. (2/11/2026) – Human activity has lessened the resilience of modern coral reefs by restricting the food-fueled energy flow that moves through the food chains of these critical ecosystems, an international team of researchers report in the journal Nature. Examining otoliths – fish ear stones that are preserved in marine sediments across millennia – the team developed and applied a nitrogen isotope method to 7,000-year-old fossils in order to reconstruct ancient reef food webs directly for the first time, according to Boston College Senior Research Associate Jessica Lueders-Dumont, a lead researcher on the project. The new analysis highlights underappreciated ...

A team led by investigators at Mass General Brigham and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has shown that a single injection of an oncolytic virus—a genetically modified virus that selectively infects and destroys cancer cells—can recruit immune cells to penetrate and persist deep within brain tumors. The research, which is published in Cell, provides details on how this therapy prolonged survival in patients with glioblastoma, the most common and malignant primary brain tumor, in a recent clinical trial. “Patients with glioblastoma have not benefited from immunotherapies that have transformed patient care in other cancer ...