Facial reconstruction is one of the most challenging fields in cosmetic and reconstructive surgery. When patients undergo skin transplants to address large facial defects, the surgeon’s goal is to restore both the function and appearance of the face in a way that integrates seamlessly with their natural features. Dr Xusong Luo, Dr Lin Lu and their colleagues at Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital have developed an innovative approach that offers a promising new option for repairing large facial def...
Jul 22, 2025•8 min
Research from Professor Justin J. Joseph at the University of North Alabama examines the influences that impact the behaviour of underrepresented populations. In one study, he explores potential sex differences in the relationship between psychopathy traits, executive functioning, and youth gang membership. In a separate study, Joseph and colleagues investigated how information sources shape perceptions of campus carry policies among students at a Historically Black University.
Jul 21, 2025•15 min
Amino acids are a fundamental building block for fur, muscle, and every other living tissue on Earth. These molecules come in “left-handed” (L) and “right-handed” (D) forms, a bit like gloves that fit different hands or mirror images. Life largely runs on the left-handed set, so biologists once assumed the right-handed versions were irrelevant. Yet nature quietly manufactures these D-amino acids and they can play a role in certain biological processes. In research led by Japanese analytical chem...
Jul 08, 2025•8 min
If you picture doctors making their daily rounds through hospital floors, you might imagine a single doctor standing by a bedside, examining a patient’s chart, or perhaps a group of doctors discussing a case right outside a patient’s room. However, the future of hospital care may well look more like a well-choreographed team effort, with doctors, nurses, pharmacists, students, and patients themselves, all in the same room, and all working as one team. This is exactly what Dr. Sarah Hallen and he...
Jun 27, 2025•7 min
As our world becomes increasingly complex, the need for genuine self-development and "inner work" grows more important. Dr Kerstin Liesenfeld and colleagues at the Liesenfeld Research Institute explore how people develop and maintain authenticity throughout their lives. Their research reveals that authentic development follows distinct patterns and stages, occurring at different rates across various aspects of our personalities. This understanding could help shape more effective approaches to pe...
Jun 20, 2025•23 min
Scientific discovery often unfolds in unexpected ways. What begins as a search for solutions to real-world challenges can lead researchers into unexplored scientific territory, where unconventional ideas emerge and spark debate. This dynamic was at the heart of research by Dr. Arthur W. Snow and Dr. Ramagopal Ananth in the Chemistry Division of the US Naval Research Laboratory. Their study aimed to address a pressing need: replacing fluorocarbon surfactants in firefighting foams. What they disco...
Jun 19, 2025•11 min
In early 2020, the world changed almost overnight. As COVID-19 swept across the world, homes were repurposed as schools, playgrounds and classrooms were abandoned, and family routines changed utterly or vanished. People were forced to adapt to remote working, many lost their jobs, and a significant proportion of us experienced anxiety about the virus that had turned the world upside down. However, amid this pandemonium, one group of people was especially vulnerable: children. We often think of c...
Jun 18, 2025•8 min
Are we primarily motivated by self-interest, or can activities that advance the progress of others provide similar or even greater levels of motivation? Logically, it would seem that people are most motivated to achieve specific goals when they are doing things that benefit themselves. Examples include studying for an exam, doing regular physical exercise, or working toward a career milestone; all activities that have tangible and readily apparent benefits for the individual pursuing them. Conse...
Jun 17, 2025•7 min
In our increasingly interconnected world, sharing knowledge freely and fairly is crucial for ongoing development and progress. Increasing the overall size of our store of knowledge is important in dealing with the challenges we face in the modern world, but determining who can access and add to that knowledge is a key question. Prestigious academic journals and global conferences aim to help disseminate our most important discoveries and innovations, but researchers do not have equal access to s...
Jun 09, 2025•9 min
Thyroid cancer is one of the more common cancers globally, and for most patients, the prognosis is generally favorable with timely and effective treatment. The usual course involves surgery to remove the thyroid gland, followed by radioactive iodine therapy to eliminate any remaining cancerous cells. However, for a subset of patients, the story is far more complicated. When thyroid cancer no longer responds to radioiodine therapy, a condition known as radioiodine-refractory differentiated thyroi...
Jun 06, 2025•26 min
Research from Troy Norris at the WellBalance Institute for Positive Wellbeing reveals how a novel approach to measuring wellbeing can lead to more effective personalized interventions. The Wellbeing Balance and Lived Experiences (or WellBalance) Model and Assessment extends traditional wellbeing measures by evaluating both positive experiences and the feelings they generate, enabling tailored approaches to enhance individual flourishing based on specific life circumstances.
Jun 03, 2025•21 min
While checklists are often a vital tool for medical procedures, there has so far been little guidance on how they should be designed and applied in real medical scenarios. Now, a team including Dr. Alex Chaparro, a researcher at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, has developed an algorithm which can help medical experts to decide when a checklist is the best-suited tool for the task at hand; and if so, which type of checklist should be applied, based on the user’s technical experience. The ap...
May 27, 2025•7 min
Research from Professor Mamta Jain at UT Southwestern Medical Center and her colleagues reveals how electronic alerts, patient navigation, and mailed outreach can significantly increase hepatitis C screening and treatment in traditionally difficult-to-reach populations. Their work demonstrates that while electronic reminders are effective, combining multiple approaches with adequate clinical staffing and resources leads to the greatest improvements in patient care across all stages of the hepati...
May 14, 2025•12 min
Research from Dr Aikaterini-Christina Koula at Manchester Metropolitan University reveals how legal systems are increasingly being weaponized to silence human rights defenders, particularly in Europe. Her work introduces a taxonomy of violations perpetrated through the legal system and demonstrates how these tactics deviate from human rights standards, offering valuable insights for academics, practitioners, and defenders alike.
May 12, 2025•14 min
Corn is a cornerstone of modern agricultural food production, particularly in North America. Humans have selectively bred such crops over generations to create better yields, improved appearance and flavor and enhanced disease resistance. However, what if we could skip these arduous rounds of selective breeding and improve a crop’s stability and reliability regardless? Deep within the genetic blueprint of every maize kernel, scientists are aiming to achieve just this. In a recent groundbreaking ...
May 09, 2025•9 min
Research from Professor Rumi Kato Price at the Washington University School of Medicine and her colleagues, Professors Sheldon Zhang and Annah Bender, reveals how research-driven, standardized indicator approaches can better identify human trafficking victims than traditional legal and prosecutorial frameworks. Their work in Cape Town, South Africa demonstrates that trafficking victimization exists on a spectrum rather than as a binary classification, with implications for improving identificati...
May 07, 2025•15 min
Research from Professor Germaine A. Hoston at the University of California, San Diego, reveals how traditional Chinese philosophical idealism influenced the development of Chinese Marxism. Her findings demonstrate that despite their rejection of China's feudal past, key Chinese Marxist theorists like Li Dazhao and Mao Zedong incorporated elements of Neo-Confucian idealism into their revolutionary philosophy. This "sinification" of Marxism drew particularly on concepts of consciousness, will, and...
May 06, 2025•9 min
Sitting directly over a complex network of fault lines, Haiti is one of the most earthquake-prone nations on Earth. In 2021, the Nippes earthquake became the latest to devastate the country, and today, researchers are still piecing together the timeline of seismic events which unfolded during the earthquake. Through their research, Professor Jeremy Maurer and colleagues at Missouri University of Science and Technology have described how the Nippes earthquake originated, shifted, and ruptured a m...
May 01, 2025•7 min
Research from Professors Tristan Nighswander and Ariel Roddy at Northern Arizona University examines the effects of pre-employment training on employment outcomes for previously incarcerated individuals through the lens of two economic theories. Their findings reveal that while training significantly improves employment outcomes for the general population, it shows no meaningful benefit for those with incarceration histories. Even more surprisingly, high-ability individuals (defined through scor...
Apr 30, 2025•11 min
We can imagine our health as a jigsaw, with each individual piece representing a different aspect of our medical history. These pieces might include blood test results, X-ray images or the notes taken by a doctor as we describe our symptoms. These jigsaw pieces are ultimately recorded and stored in electronic health records (or EHRs). EHRs are a valuable resource, providing an overview of someone’s health and they could have the potential to allow clinicians and researchers to unlock new medical...
Apr 29, 2025•8 min
Associate Professor Yassir Mahgoub and his team at Penn State University have uncovered an important link between melancholia – a severe form of depression that often doesn’t respond to treatment – and catatonia – a condition characterized by abnormal movements and associated with schizophrenia. The researchers analyzed case studies involving six patients who had been hospitalized for severe depression. All six patients experienced significant relief from their depressive symptoms by taking lora...
Apr 25, 2025•8 min
Our gut contains a sleepless army, creating a hostile environment for pathogens, and helping to fortify our body’s immune defences. It may surprise you to learn that this army isn’t even human in nature, but is bacterial. The trillions of bacteria that naturally live in our gut, known as the gut microbiota, form an important component of our overall immunity against infectious disease. While bacteria can also cause disease, beneficial bacteria naturally colonise available spaces in our body, suc...
Apr 24, 2025•10 min
A recent paper from Professor William Gardner at Texas Tech University and Professor Kelly Davis McCauley at West Texas A&M University challenges a critique that characterized authentic leadership theory as “wrong” and "perilous." Their analysis demonstrates how misrepresentations of the theory can undermine valuable leadership approaches, while highlighting the empirical support and practical benefits of leaders striving for authenticity in organizational settings.
Apr 23, 2025•11 min
Cancer is a daunting healthcare challenge, and is still affecting millions worldwide, despite the enormous research resources that have been directed at finding effective treatments over the past decades. Many anti-cancer treatments remain poorly specific for the tumours they are intended to treat, and often suffer from modest efficacy and serious off-target effects. Part of the problem is the inherent variability between many tumours and their resulting unpredictable responses to standard chemo...
Apr 17, 2025•7 min
When most of us think about poultry, our minds often turn to chickens, the staple of farms and dinner tables worldwide. However, Nigeria is home to several other fascinating types of poultry beyond the humble chicken that have played significant roles in the country’s agriculture, culture, and economy. While these poultry species are firmly embedded in the Nigerian agricultural system, the history of how and when these animals came to be domesticated and where these populations originally derive...
Apr 16, 2025•12 min
Research from Dr Christopher W. B. Stephens and Sue Miller at the Susanna Wesley Foundation, Southlands College, Roehampton, reveals how university chaplains can effectively evaluate and demonstrate their impact within higher education institutions. Their work shows how chaplains can meet institutional demands for accountability while maintaining the unique spiritual and pastoral nature of their work, offering insights into evaluating the distinctive aspects of chaplaincy services.
Apr 14, 2025•12 min
In recent years, natural products such as kratom, which derives from a Southeast Asian tree called Mitragyna speciosa, and cannabidiol (or CBD) which derives from the Cannabis plant, have gained significant popularity for their potential to relieve anxiety, manage pain, and enhance mood. While both substances are often praised by users for their plant-based origins, and are often considered safer than synthetic pharmaceuticals as a result, the scientific community is working to uncover the compl...
Apr 11, 2025•9 min
We think of our brains as safe and secure within our skulls, and not easily influenced unless we consume a mind-altering substance, suffer a traumatic injury or undergo invasive brain surgery. However, recent research shows that our brain activity can be influenced non-invasively using nothing but sound and that this technique could have therapeutic potential. As a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley, Dr. Ben Sorum began to think about these types of question while in the Lab of Dr. Stephen G...
Apr 11, 2025•10 min
In recent years, plant-based diets have gained significant traction, not just among vegetarians and vegans but also among individuals looking to improve their health and reduce their environmental impact. Increasing public awareness of the role of animal food production in driving climate change, along with the potential health risks of consuming large amounts of animal foods has powered this phenomenon. However, one of the ongoing debates in nutrition revolves around protein, a crucial nutritio...
Apr 09, 2025•9 min
Words change their meanings over time, but tracking these changes has traditionally required painstaking manual analysis by linguists. In recent years, researchers have been using computational models to automatically detect when semantic change happens, and how much of a change has occurred. Recent research led by Associate Professor Nina Tahmasebi and her colleagues in the Change is Key! program introduces innovative computational methods for detecting qualitative features of semantic change, ...
Apr 07, 2025•11 min
