Cambridge, MA – A longstanding goal of immunotherapies and vaccine research is to induce antibodies in humans that neutralize deadly viruses such as HIV and influenza. Of particular interest are antibodies that are “broadly neutralizing,” meaning they can in principle eliminate multiple strains of a virus such as HIV, which mutates rapidly to evade the human immune system. Researchers at MIT and the Scripps Research Institute have now developed a vaccine that generates a significant population of rare precursor B cells that are capable of evolving to produce broadly neutralizing antibodies. Expanding these cells is the first step toward a successful HIV ...

In a series of tea party-like experiments, Johns Hopkins University researchers demonstrate for the first time that apes can use their imagination and play pretend, an ability thought to be uniquely human. Consistently and robustly across three experiments, one bonobo engaged with cups of imaginary juice and bowls of pretend grapes, challenging long-held assumptions about the abilities of animals. The findings suggest that the capacity to understand pretend objects is within the cognitive potential of, at least, an enculturated ape, and likely dates back 6 to 9 million years, to our common evolutionary ...

Marking a significant step toward a quantum-secure internet, researchers have demonstrated device-independent quantum key distribution over optical fibers spanning 100 kilometers (km). The findings show that cryptographic security can be guaranteed with this method, at the metropolitan scale – which represents a much greater distance than previous efforts – and help to close the gap between proof-of-principle quantum network experiments and real-world applications. Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a leading application of quantum technologies, enabling ultra-secure digital communications. Early forms of QKD derive security using trusted ...

Around the world, the total toxicity and ecological harm from agricultural pesticides are rising, despite recent United Nations commitments to halve pesticide use and risks by 2030. The findings establish a global, toxicity-weighted baseline for pesticide use and identify a subset of pesticides, crops, and countries driving the most biodiversity impacts. The widespread use of agricultural pesticides is a growing threat to global biodiversity. To address this concern, the 15th United Nations Biodiversity Conference set the goal of halving pesticide use and risk by 2030 and recently adopted a new global indicator – total applied toxicity (TAT) – that captures not just ...

A temporary weakening of the atmosphere’s chemical capacity to break down methane, combined with elevated emissions from tropical wetlands, drove the sharp increase in atmospheric methane observed in 2020 to 2021, according to a new study. Methane (CH4) is a significant contributor to atmospheric warming. In the early 2020s, the amount of atmospheric CH4 grew faster than ever before observed, peaking at 16.2 parts per billion per year (ppb yr-1), before declining to 8.6 ppb yr-1 in 2023. It’s hypothesized that this surge was driven by a combination of increased natural emissions and a coincident decrease in the atmosphere’s oxidizing capacity, namely, fewer OH ...

In a Policy Forum, Doni Bloomfield and colleagues discuss the need for expanded – yet tailored and flexible – governance for the biological data used to develop powerful artificial intelligence (AI) models. Rapidly advancing AI systems trained on biological data have enabled researchers to design new molecules, predict protein structure and function, and probe vast and highly complex biological datasets for novel insights that could greatly expand our understanding of nature and human health. However, these same tools could also be misused for dangerous purposes, such as designing harmful pathogens or generating genetic ...

At the 15th UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal, Canada, in 2022, nations committed to reducing the risks associated with pesticide use in agriculture by 50% by 2030. A new study by a research team from RPTUKaiserslautern-Landau, published in the journal Science, reveals that this global target is now under serious threat. Using a novel analytical method, the researchers assessed trends in pesticide toxicity worldwide and found that current trajectories fall far short of the 2030 goal. The study concludes that immediate, coordinated ...

LA JOLLA, CA—One of the biggest hurdles in developing an HIV vaccine is coaxing the body to produce the right kind of immune cells and antibodies. In most vaccines, HIV proteins are attached to a larger protein scaffolding that mimics a virus. Then, a person’s immune system produces a range of antibodies that recognize different bits of those proteins. Often, however, some of those antibodies react not to HIV itself—but to the scaffold used to deliver the vaccine. Now, researchers at Scripps Research and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a new kind ...

Stanford researchers have created the first-ever global map of a rare earthquake type that occurs not in Earth’s crust but in our planet’s mantle, the layer sandwiched between the thin crust and Earth’s molten core. The new map will help scientists learn more about the mechanics of mantle earthquakes, in turn opening a window into the complexities and triggers for all earthquakes. As reported in a study published Feb. 5 in Science, continental mantle earthquakes occur worldwide but are clustered regionally, particularly in the Himalayas in southern Asia and the ...

Chestnut Hill, Mass (2/5/2026) – A combination of weakened atmospheric removal and increased emissions from warming wetlands, rivers, lakes, and agricultural land increased atmospheric methane at an unprecedented rate in the early 2020s, an international team of researchers report today in the journal Science. A sharp decline in hydroxyl radicals – the primary “cleaning agent” that breaks down methane in the atmosphere – during 2020–2021 explains roughly 80 percent of the year-to-year variation in methane accumulation, according to the team, including Boston College Professor of Earth and Environmental Science Hanqin Tian. At the same time, ...

PHILADELPHIA (February 5, 2026) — For many Americans, a routine surgical procedure serves as their first introduction to opioid pain medication. While most stop using these drugs as they heal, a considerable number of "opioid-naïve" patients transition into New Persistent Opioid Use (NPOU)—continuing use long after the typical recovery period. A new systematic review and meta-analysis led by Penn Nursing researchers, published in Pain Medicine, has identified the specific patient-related risk factors that most accurately predict which individuals are at the highest risk for this dangerous transition. The ...

Excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, polluted water, and increasingly strict environmental regulations are driving the search for materials that can efficiently trap pollutants at the molecular level. For more than two decades, this challenge has drawn scientific attention to metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) – highly advanced porous materials widely regarded as one of the most promising tools for tackling climate change and environmental pollution. The importance of this research field was recognised in 2025, when the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to the scientists who developed MOFs. Despite this recognition and their ...

Antonia Seligowski, PhD, of the Neurocardiac Effects of Stress & Trauma Laboratory within the Department of Psychiatry at Mass General Brigham, is the senior author of a paper published in JAMA Network Open, “Hormonal contraceptive use, stress disorders, and cardiovascular and thrombotic risk in women.”   Q: What challenges or unmet needs make this study important? Over 400,000 women in the United States die each year from cardiovascular disease (CVD), the nation’s leading cause of death. Stress is a major risk factor for CVD, and stress‑related psychiatric disorders like anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder ...

BATON ROUGE, La. – Dr. Catherine Prater, postdoctoral researcher at Pennington Biomedical Research Center, has received a two-year fellowship from the American Heart Association. The fellowship includes a grant of more than $150,000 that will support research focused on weight gain markers. Her research project, “Examination of Metabolic Characteristics in the Predisposition for Weight Gain,” will reexamine existing clinical trial data with the goal of improving prediction ...

In a typical online meeting, humans don't always wait politely for their turn to speak. They interrupt to express strong agreement, stay silent when they are unsure, and let their personalities shape the flow of the discussion. Yet, when Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents are programmed to debate or collaborate, they are usually forced into a rigid, round-robin structure that stifles this natural dynamic. Researchers from The University of Electro-Communications and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) have demonstrated that allowing AI agents to break these rules can actually make them smarter. Their new ...

About The Study: Among patients with non–large vessel occlusion acute ischemic stroke and salvageable brain tissue, intravenous tenecteplase, a modified human tissue plasminogen activator, administered 4.5 to 24 hours after onset resulted in a greater likelihood of an excellent functional outcome at 90 days than standard care but had an increased risk of symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Junwei Hao, MD, PhD, email haojunwei@vip.163.com. To ...

Predicting tumour progression is one of the major challenges in oncology. Scientists at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research have discovered that neutrophils, a type of immune cell, undergo reprogramming when they come into contact with the tumour ecosystem and contribute to its progression. They then produce a molecule — the chemokine CCL3 — which promotes cancer growth rather than fighting it. This mechanism appears to be a major variable in tumour biology and could serve ...

The Pauli exclusion principle is a cornerstone of the Standard Model of particle physics and is essential for the structure and stability of matter. Now an international collaboration of physicists has carried out one of the most stringent experimental tests to date of this foundational rule of quantum physics and has found no evidence of its violation. Using the VIP-2 experiment, the team has set the strongest limits so far for possible violations involving electrons in atomic systems, significantly constraining a range of speculative theories beyond the Standard Model, including those that suggest electrons have internal structure, and so-called ‘Quon models.’ Their ...

Pharmaceutical products are essential for health, and they play and will continue to play a key role in disease prevention and treatment. However, they are exerting a major impact on the environment by affecting ecosystems and human health, and contributing to biodiversity loss, antimicrobial resistance and climate change. The main ingredients of medicines designed to achieve the desired health effect, together with their excipients (inert substances mixed with medicines to provide them with consistency, shape, taste, etc.) and packaging materials, are polluting the air, soil and water worldwide. This leads to problems in ecosystems, which then translate into an impact ...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- We’ve all heard the best approach to solve a problem is to “sleep on it.” It turns out there may be more truth to this adage than previously thought. While stories abound of eureka moments surfacing from dreams, scientific evidence has remained elusive, due to the challenge of systematically manipulating dreams. A new study by neuroscientists at Northwestern University validates the possibility of influencing dreams and offers a crucial step to support the theory that dreams in REM sleep — the rapid ...

The mean stress level of fans of the football club Arminia Bielefeld was 41% higher on the day of the German Football Association’s (DFB-Pokal) 2025 Cup final compared to non-match days, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. The authors suggest that this reaction, known as ‘football fever’, may be driven by the intensity of fans’ emotions towards their ...

All life on Earth shares a common ancestor that lived roughly four billion years ago. This so-called “last universal common ancestor” represents the most ancient organism that researchers can study. Previous research on the last universal common ancestor has found that all the characteristics we see in organisms today, like having a cell membrane and a DNA genome, were already present by the time of this ancestor. So, if we want to understand how these foundational characteristics of life first emerged, then we need to be able to study evolutionary history prior to the last universal common ancestor. In a new article ...

About The Study: This cohort study found that individuals diagnosed with cancer in 2020 and 2021 experienced worse short-term survival than those diagnosed between 2015 and 2019, suggesting substantial harms associated with cancer care disruptions during the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Todd Burus, PhD, email tburus@uky.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2025.6332) Editor’s Note: Please ...

About The Study: In this cohort study, infants from vegan households had growth patterns similar to those from omnivorous households, with a higher odds of early underweight that decreased by age 24 months. In the context of developed countries, these findings seem reassuring. Further research should examine vegan diet quality and the impact of nutritional counseling during pregnancy and infancy in supporting optimal infant development. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Kerem Avital, MPH, email kerema@post.bgu.ac.il. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link ...

Korea University College of Medicine recently hosted a special lecture by Professor Adelheid Wöhrer from the Institute of Neuropathology and Neuro-Molecular Pathology at the Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria.   The event was conducted as part of the Research Nexus Program, which seeks to expand global research networks and promote international collaboration. Under the theme Establishing a Model for the Development and Evolution of Refractory Gliomas through Korea–Austria Research Cooperation, researchers from both countries discussed strategies for joint research to better understand the complex developmental and evolutionary mechanisms of treatment-resistant ...