Study spotlights human toll of abrupt U.S. foreign aid cuts
In January 2025, the Trump administration announced a 90-day freeze on all United States government (USG) foreign aid, which subsequently became a permanent shutdown of USAID in July 2025. New research finds that the abrupt cessation of foreign aid disrupted health and humanitarian systems worldwide, with disproportionate impacts on women, girls and other marginalized populations.
Striped or checkered? Magnetic field influences competing electronic patterns in a graphene-like quantum material
In most everyday materials, such as copper, silver and silicon, the behavior of electrons is relatively predictable. In quantum materials, however, electrons can interact in complex ways, giving rise to collective electronic states with remarkable properties. Understanding how these states emerge—and, ultimately, how to control them—is one of the central challenges in quantum materials research.
In Ghana, one man's race to save critically endangered fish
As dawn breaks over Ghana's Atlantic coast, artisanal fishing boats return to shore with last night's catch—baskets of snapper, crabs, rays and a distinct-looking fish locals call "esene."
Combined nanoparticle and internal laser method could make cancer therapy less invasive
In a promising development for cancer treatment, a collaborative research team has overcome two issues that have prevented photothermal therapy, a much less invasive treatment option than surgery and/or radiation, from becoming more common.
Great Barrier Reef microbiome map reveals more than 500 new bacterial species
In 2012, Nature revealed that humans provide a home to thousands of different species of microbes in a series of papers that opened a path to understanding the impact of the human microbiome on our health.
Global analysis reveals age as overlooked driver of food-related climate emissions
A new international study published in Nature Food reveals that age plays an important but often overlooked role in shaping global food-related greenhouse gas emissions. The study shows that dietary emissions can vary substantially across people's life stages, reflecting differences in nutritional needs, demographic change and evolving dietary patterns. Effective mitigation of dietary emissions therefore requires age-sensitive approaches.
Transmissible cancer cells discovered in fish act more like parasites than traditional tumors
A team of Vermont researchers has discovered that mysterious black skin lesions afflicting catfish in Lake Memphremagog and other New England and Canadian lakes are caused by a transmissible cancer—the first identified in a freshwater fish species. The cancer cells behave more like parasites than conventional tumors, moving from fish to fish.
Reflooding the Aral Sea could prevent massive CO₂ emissions
About 90% of the Aral Sea has dried up. The exposed sediments have already released enormous amounts of carbon dioxide (748 megatons) since 1960. However, through restoration, the lake could once again become a carbon sink. This is shown by a study by the Centre for Advanced Studies of Blanes (CEAB-CSIC), published in Science, in which the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) participated. Hydrological restoration of the desiccated sediments would prevent emissions equivalent to Spain's total emissions over three years—namely, around 605 megatons, according to the research team's calculations.
A strange quantum effect dramatically boosts energy transfer
Electron and proton motion often work together in both living systems and engineered materials. The most familiar example is proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET), a process that plays a central role in bioenergetics, cellular respiration, photosynthesis, and nitrogen fixation. PCET has also influenced the design of many artificial materials used for energy conversion and storage. More recently, scientists identified another related process known as proton-coupled singlet energy transfer (PCEnT).
In Kyushu's decorated tombs, humans were never meant to be individuals
When you first step into Japan's Kyushu tombs, the first thing you notice is nothing at all. "When you enter, you're engulfed by darkness; you can smell earth and stone, and you have the sensation of being enclosed …," said Claudia Zancan, a Ph.D. candidate who examined these sixth to seventh-century tombs. "Without a torch, you can't move at all."