The claim sounds almost heretical to modern medicine. In a single week, intensive meditation coincided with neural signatures seen in psychedelic studies and with measurable shifts in the blood that point to plasticity, energy reprogramming, and pain relief. That is the core of a new observational study published November 6, 2025 in Nature Communications Biology by a UC San Diego team working with participants at a seven day retreat led by Joe Dispenza.

It is among the most painful milestones in Alzheimer’s disease: when a patient can no longer recognize their family. Now scientists at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have identified a physical change in the brain that may explain why this happens, and how it might be stopped. The UVA team, led by neuroscientist Harald Sontheimer, found that Alzheimer’s destroys the brain’s protective latticework known as perineuronal nets.

For years, people with fluttering, anxious hearts were told to put down the mug. A new randomized clinical trial flips that advice on its head, finding that a daily cup of caffeinated coffee may actually lower the risk of recurrent atrial fibrillation. Researchers from UC San Francisco, the University of Adelaide, and collaborators in Canada tested the long-standing concern that caffeine is proarrhythmic.

Prostate cancer has found an unlikely accomplice in a hormone system long associated with metabolism. In a new study published in Molecular Cancer, researchers report that thyroid hormone receptor beta, or TRβ, helps drive prostate tumor growth, and that blocking it with an experimental antagonist called NH-3 slows disease in cells and mouse models. The team, led by Umeå University and the Medical University of Vienna, traced a clear mechanistic link: thyroid hormone signaling stabilized the androgen receptor, the core engine of prostate cancer proliferation, while NH-3 treatment degraded androgen receptor protein and dialed down hallmark targets like PSA and NKX.1.

Scientists have long known that sleep is linked to diet and stress, but a new review argues that our gut bacteria may be the missing piece connecting both. In a sweeping synthesis published in Brain Medicine, researchers led by Professor Lin Lu of Peking University Sixth Hospital describe how the gut microbiome communicates directly with the brain to influence sleep quality, circadian rhythms, and even dreams.

For decades, scientists have wondered how our faces became so distinct from those of our ancient cousins. A new study offers an elegant clue, showing that a handful of Neanderthal DNA changes can subtly alter gene activity during facial development, shaping the size of the lower jaw. The research, published today in Development, bridges ancient genomics and developmental biology to trace how small genetic tweaks may have sculpted evolutionary differences in hominin faces.

The chameleons two wandering eyes have teased natural philosophers for millennia. Now high resolution CT scans reveal the hidden hardware: telephone-cord-like optic nerves, coiled inside the skull to give each eye unusual slack. Researchers from the Florida Museum of Natural History and collaborators describe a long, looping optic nerve in three chameleon species that is unlike the straighter, shorter pathways seen across other lizards.

For decades, researchers have searched for the biological roots of alcohol addiction and the damage it leaves behind. Now, a team at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus has found that both might hinge on the same surprising target: an enzyme better known for processing sugar. The study, published in Nature Metabolism, shows that alcohol consumption activates a pathway in the body that converts glucose into fructose.

Servers hum like a distant river, cool air pushed through grates, lights blinking in neat rows. It looks orderly. The impacts are not. A new Nature Sustainability study from Cornell University translates the boom in artificial intelligence into the everyday currency of carbon, water, and where to put the next building. The team compiled industrial, power system, and climate data to project what today’s AI growth means by 2030.

When the Mekong swells each monsoon, the Tonle Sap River is supposed to turn around and push life into Cambodia's great lake. That seasonal reverse flow is fading fast, and new modeling fingers a stark culprit: sand mining. In a paper published today in Nature Sustainability, researchers show that aggressive extraction of construction sand from the Mekong in Cambodia and Vietnam has carved the riverbed lower, weakening the hydraulic push that once inflated Tonle Sap Lake each year.

A single blood draw may soon detect dozens of cancers before symptoms ever appear. In a new study published in CANCER, researchers report that routine liquid biopsy screening could dramatically shift cancer detection toward earlier, more treatable stages across 14 major tumor types. Today, routine screening is recommended for only four cancers: breast, cervical, colorectal, and lung. That leaves roughly 70 percent of new cases discovered only after symptoms emerge, often too late for curative therapy.

More than 788 million adults now live with chronic kidney disease, a number that has more than doubled since 1990 and shows no sign of slowing. The global analysis, published in The Lancet by researchers with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), reveals a relentless rise in kidney-related illness and death across nearly every region of the world.

Emotional strength may be as vital as prenatal vitamins. A new study from the University of California Merced finds that a husband’s optimism, self-esteem, and resilience could help his partner carry their baby to term by lowering her inflammation during pregnancy. Analyzing data from 217 mother-father pairs in the Community Child Health Network, researchers found that when married fathers scored higher on psychological resilience, their partners had lower levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of inflammation tied to preterm birth risk.

Think lighthouse, not laser. In a study out of Rice University, researchers show that carefully randomized radio waves can help next-generation wireless devices find each other almost instantly at terahertz frequencies, with angle estimates finer than one tenth of a degree. The promise of 6G rests on higher frequencies that carry far more data, but those same signals fade fast and need tight, line-of-sight alignment.

As Europe prepares for the leap to 6G, researchers, policymakers and citizens are working together to make sure that the next digital revolution is not just faster, but also ethical, sustainable and inclusive. By Anthony King What if tomorrow’s super-fast, super-connected digital world could be shaped by public values – right from the start? Dr ... Read more The post Putting people first: Europe’s 6G push for connectivity that serves society appeared first on Horizon Magazine Blog.

EU-funded researchers are exploring how undersea communication cables can double-up as environmental and seismic sensors – a potential game-changer for early warning systems. By Michael Allen Beneath the world’s oceans, a silent revolution is underway. More than 1.48 million kilometres of underwater fibre-optic cables carry almost all global internet and telephone traffic. Now researchers are ... Read more The post Turning undersea cables into a global natural hazard and environmental monitoring system appeared first on Horizon Magazine Blog.

For decades, scientists have hunted for the biological spark that ignites Alzheimer's disease. A sweeping new review now points skyward: the air we breathe may be quietly reshaping the brain, even in childhood. The report, published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease by the Alzheimer's Research and Prevention Foundation (ARPF), argues that air pollution and climate stress are major, yet modifiable, drivers of neurodegeneration, and that prevention must begin long before memory fades.

Exercise is supposed to help prevent diabetes, not lose its punch because of a drug meant to do the same thing. Yet new research from Rutgers University suggests that the popular diabetes medication metformin could be dulling the body's most powerful natural defense against the disease: exercise. In a 16-week clinical trial published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, researchers found that metformin blunted key improvements in blood vessel function, aerobic fitness, and blood sugar regulation that usually follow a regular exercise program.

In clinics from Dakar to Durban, a snakebite can turn a family’s future on its head in a single night. A new study in Nature now points to a way out: a product-ready, fully recombinant antivenom designed to protect across Africa’s entire roster of medically important elapids, including cobras, mambas, and rinkhals. The team immunized an alpaca and a llama with venoms from 18 African elapid species, then built massive phage display libraries to fish out nanobodies, tiny VHH antibodies known for stability and deep tissue reach.

In the flooded grasslands of Bolivia’s Llanos de Moxos, the land itself keeps a memory. Beneath its shimmering wetlands and winding channels, archaeologists have uncovered traces of communities that thrived here for more than a thousand years, long before European contact reshaped the continent. New findings published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology reveal how Indigenous societies engineered monumental earthworks, raised fields, and canal networks across the Great Tectonic Lakes of Exaltación.

A quiet signal in the blood may tell a decades-ahead story. In a 25-year study of nearly 6,000 British civil servants, UCL researchers report that higher midlife levels of cardiac troponin I, a marker of subtle heart injury, were linked to faster cognitive decline, smaller brain volumes on MRI, and a higher risk of dementia later in life. The work, published in the European Heart Journal, followed participants who were free of cardiovascular disease and dementia at the outset, aged 45 to 69.

The headline finding is stark enough to stop a cosmologist mid scroll. A new analysis of Type Ia supernova data, corrected for a subtle but powerful age bias, says the universe may already have shifted from accelerating to decelerating expansion. The work, led by researchers at Yonsei University and released with the Royal Astronomical Society, ... Read more The post Evidence Mounts That Cosmic Expansion Is Slowing Already appeared first on European Space Agency Tracker.

They are small, secretive, and, too often, invisible to science until it is too late. A new global review led by the University of Oxford warns that island reptiles face a double peril: higher extinction risk and far less research attention than their mainland relatives. Published in Conservation Science and Practice, the study quantifies a pattern conservationists have long suspected but rarely measured across regions and families.

Plant more trees, admit fewer patients. That is the striking, data-rich takeaway from a new multicountry analysis in The BMJ that tracks more than 11 million hospital admissions for mental disorders across two decades and seven nations. The signal is hard to ignore: in many settings, greener surroundings aligned with fewer psychiatric hospitalizations. The research team examined monthly hospital admissions from 6,842 locations in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, New Zealand, South Korea, and Thailand between 2000 and 2019.

High on the misty slopes of Tanzania, a toad the size of a thumb pads along a wet leaf, its skin a patchwork of tawny browns and ash gray. No ponds are needed here. Instead of laying strings of eggs, the female toad will deliver tiny, fully formed toadlets that hop off into the forest. ... Read more The post Three New Tree Toads Give Birth, Skipping The Tadpole Stage appeared first on Wild Science.