For The Better

A study has revealed that fine particulate matter from 1980 to 2020 was associated with approximately 135 million premature deaths globally.

People with an optimistic outlook on the future are less likely to be severe procrastinators, according to new research. While procrastinators often admonish themselves for their ‘bad habit,’ it turns out that their worries for the future are more to b…

Scientists have improved a gene-editing technology that is now capable of inserting or substituting entire genes in the genome in human cells efficiently enough to be potentially useful for therapeutic applications. The advance could one day help resea…

How do pathogens invade the lungs? Using human lung microtissues, a team has uncovered the strategy used by a dangerous pathogen. The bacterium targets specific lung cells and has developed a sophisticated strategy to break through the lungs’ line of d…

Astrophysicists calculate the likelihood that Earth was exposed to cold, harsh interstellar clouds, a phenomenon not previously considered in geologic climate models.

Efforts to tackle false information through fact-checking or media literacy initiatives increases the public’s skepticism toward ‘fake news’. However, they also breed distrust in genuine, fact-based news sources, a new study using online survey experim…

Academics are often accused of ‘splitting hairs’, but a team has now devised a machine to do just that. We all have a bad hair day from time to time, and split ends are a common problem. However, the science behind this kind of hair damage is poorly un…

People who eat a healthy, sustainable diet may substantially lower their risk of premature death in addition to their environmental impact, according to a new study. This large study directly evaluates the impacts of adherence to recommendations in the…

A clinical trial on a two-drug therapy for methamphetamine use disorder reduced use of the highly addictive drug for up to 12 weeks after initiation of treatment. Participants in the ADAPT-2 clinical trial who received a combination of injectable naltr…

When scientists transplanted the gut microbes of aged mice into young ‘germ-free’ mice — raised to have no gut microbes of their own — the recipient mice experienced an increase in inflammation that parallels inflammatory processes associated with ag…

An international research team has discovered the oldest known marine plant using a novel genetic clock. This 1400-year-old seagrass clone from the Baltic Sea dates back to the Migration Period. The research project is a significant step towards better…

The platitude that failure leads to success may be both inaccurate and damaging to society, according to new research.

Immune activation in a pregnant woman can occur in response to metabolic diseases like obesity, infections in pregnancy, exposure to pollution and environmental toxins, or even stress and can have negative effects on fetal brain immune cells (microglia…

After women go through menopause, their risk of heart disease increases dramatically. Researchers studied whether beetroot juice, which is rich in nitrate, can improve how blood vessels function. The results showed that daily consumption of beetroot ju…

Having explored how the heart is formed in utero, a researcher is reporting how cells and molecules act during that early formation and what might cause the heart disease called left ventricular non-compaction or spongy heart, for which patients often …

A new study has found that patients diagnosed with schizophrenia or another psychotic disorder are three times more likely to have Bartonella DNA in their blood than adults without these disorders. The work further supports the idea that pathogens — p…

A multi-institutional team has created atomic optical antennas in solids. The team used germanium vacancy centers in diamonds to create an optical energy enhancement of six orders of magnitude, a regime challenging to reach with conventional atomic ant…

New research supports earlier findings that indicate that anesthesia is no more hazardous for the brain at higher doses than at lower doses.

Wild African elephants address each other with name-like calls, a rare ability among nonhuman animals, according to a new study. Researchers used machine learning to confirm that elephant calls contained a name-like component identifying the intended r…

An international team of planetary scientists has detected patches of water frost sitting atop the Tharsis volcanoes on Mars, which are not only the tallest volcanic mountains on the Red Planet but in the entire solar system.