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A recent survey commissioned by The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center — Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC — James) focused on Americans' perceptions of testicular cancer. The results suggest more can be done to educate the public about the disease, which affects nearly 10,000 adults in the United States each year according to the American Cancer Society.

The OSUCCC — James survey found that only 13% of U.S. adults — just over 1 in 10 — correctly identified testicular cancer as most commonly affecting men under 40. This is significant, as the disease is most prevalent among men between the ages of 20 and 40.

Additionally, two-thirds (65%) of respondents believe an evaluation should be part of an annual exam after age 40. However, cancer experts note that self-exams are most relevant between the ages of 20 and 40.

"In my experience, a lot of men are surprised that testicular cancer is most common among young men," said Shawn Dason, MD, urologic oncologist at the OSUCCC — James. "It's something you're just not expecting in your twenties or thirties. A lot of young men's focus might be on developing their career, their day-to-day life. That's a very different track of mind than perhaps your health."

Survey results In the survey of 1,008 respondents aged 18 and older, 6 in 10 (63%) correctly identified that testicular cancer is often curable if caught early, and just over half (54%) correctly said that monthly self-checks should be conducted.

"We are really fortunate in testicular cancer that the vast majority of patients are diagnosed at an early stage," said Dason, also an associate clinical professor of urology at Ohio State College of Medicine. "That means the vast majority of patients are actually diagnosed before the cancer has had an opportunity to spread to other parts of the body."

Younger Americans, age 18-29, and adults, age 30-49, were more likely than their older counterparts to say that testicular cancer affects fertility (68% and 61%, respectively). However, younger adults were also more likely than all other age groups to incorrectly agree with the statement that testicular cancer symptoms are always painful (18%).

"Testicular cancer does not typically come with painful symptoms," said Dason. "That's why routine self-exams are so important to detect any lumps or changes to the testicle. If you feel something out of the ordinary, like a lump or bump, or if the testicle changes in size, call your doctor."

This survey was conducted by SSRS on its Opinion Panel Omnibus platform. The SSRS Opinion Panel Omnibus is a national, twice-per-month, probability-based survey. Data collection was conducted from May 2 — May 5, 2025, among a sample of 1,008 respondents. The survey was conducted via web (n=978) and telephone (n=30) and administered in English. The margin of error for total respondents is +/-3.6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All SSRS Opinion Panel Omnibus data are weighted to represent the target population of U.S. adults ages 18 or older.

To learn more about cancer treatment and clinical trials at the OSUCCC — James, visitcancer.osu.eduor call 1-800-293-5066.

Materialsprovided byOhio State University Wexner Medical Center.Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

A new study from the University of Vienna reveals that sea anemones use a molecular mechanism known from bilaterian animals to form their back-to-belly body axis. This mechanism ("BMP shuttling") enables cells to organize themselves during development by interpreting signaling gradients. The findings, published inScience Advances, suggest that this system evolved much earlier than previously assumed and was already present in the common ancestor of cnidarians and bilaterians.

Most animals exhibit bilateral symmetry — a body plan with a head and tail, a back and belly, and left and right sides. This body organization characterizes the vast group known as Bilateria, which includes animals as diverse as vertebrates, insects, molluscs and worms. In contrast, cnidarians, such as jellyfish and sea anemones, are traditionally described as radially symmetric, and indeed jellyfish are. However, the situation is different is the sea anemones: despite superficial radiality, they are bilaterally symmetric – first at the level of gene expression in the embryo and later also anatomically as adults. This raises a fundamental evolutionary question: did bilateral symmetry arise in the common ancestor of Bilateria and Cnidaria, or did it evolve independently in multiple animal lineages? Researchers at the University of Vienna have addressed this question by investigating whether a key developmental mechanism called BMP shuttling is already present in cnidarians.

In bilaterian animals, the back-to-belly axis is patterned by a signaling system involving Bone Morphogenetic Proteins (BMPs) and their inhibitor Chordin. BMPs act as molecular messengers, telling embryonic cells where they are and what kind of tissue they should become. In bilaterian embryos, Chordin binds BMPs and blocks their activity in a process called "local Inhibition." At the same time, in some but not all bilaterian embryonic models, Chordin can also transport bound BMPs to other regions in the embryo, where they are released again – a mechanism known as "BMP shuttling." Animals as evolutionary distant as sea urchins, flies and frogs use BMP shuttling, however, until now it was unclear whether they all evolved shuttling independently or inherited it from their last common ancestor some 600 million years ago. Both, local inhibition and BMP shuttling, create a gradient of BMP activity across the embryo. Cells in the early embryo detect this gradient and adopt different fates depending on BMP levels. For example, in vertebrates, the central nervous system forms where BMP signaling is lowest, kidneys will develop at intermediate BMP signaling levels, and the skin of the belly will form in the area of maximum BMP signaling. This way, the body's layout from back to belly is established. To find out whether BMP shuttling by Chordin represents an ancestral mechanism for patterning the back to belly axis, the researchers had to look at bilaterally symmetric animals outside Bilateria – the sea anemones.

To test whether sea anemones use Chordin as a local inhibitor or as a shuttle, the researchers first blocked Chordin production in the embryos of the model sea anemoneNematostella vectensis. InNematostella, unlike in Bilateria, BMP signaling requires the presence of Chordin, so, without Chordin, BMP signaling ceased and the formation of the second body axis failed. Chordin was then reintroduced into a small part of the embryo to see if it could restore axis formation. BMP signaling resumed — but it was unclear whether this was because Chordin simply blocked BMPs locally, allowing a gradient to form from existing BMP sources, or because it actively transported BMPs to distant parts of the embryo, shaping the gradient more directly. To answer this, two versions of Chordin were tested — one membrane-bound and immobile, the other diffusible. If Chordin acted as a local inhibitor, both, the immobile and the diffusible Chordin would restore BMP signaling on the side of the embryo opposite to the Chordin producing cells. However, only diffusible Chordin can act as a BMP shuttle. The results were clear: Only the diffusible form was able to restore BMP signaling at a distance from its source, demonstrating that Chordin acts as a BMP shuttle in sea anemones — just as it does in flies and frogs.

A shared strategy across over 600 million years of evolution?

The presence of BMP shuttling in both cnidarians and bilaterians suggests that this molecular mechanism predates their evolutionary divergence some 600-700 million years ago. "Not all Bilateria use Chordin-mediated BMP shuttling, for example, frogs do, but fish don't, however, shuttling seems to pop up over and over again in very distantly related animals making it a good candidate for an ancestral patterning mechanism. The fact that not only bilaterians but also sea anemones use shuttling to shape their body axes, tells us that this mechanism is incredibly ancient," says David Mörsdorf, first author of the study and postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Neurosciences and Developmental Biology at the University of Vienna. "It opens up exciting possibilities for rethinking how body plans evolved in early animals."

Grigory Genikhovich, senior author and group leader at the same department, adds: "We might never be able to exclude the possibility that bilaterians and bilaterally symmetric cnidarians evolved their bilateral body plans independently. However, if the last common ancestor of Cnidaria and Bilateria was a bilaterally symmetric animal, chances are that it used Chordin to shuttle BMPs to make its back-to-belly axis. Our new study showed that."

The study was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), grants P32705 and M3291.

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Air pollution causes health problems and is attributable to some 50,000 annual deaths in the United States, but not all air pollutants pack the same punch.

Scientists have tracked the scope of "PM 2.5" pollution over decades. PM 2.5 is a size of "particulate matter" that is less than 2.5 microns in diameter. But less information was available about its even tinier cousin, described as "submicron" or "PM 1" particulate matter, which is less than 1 micron in diameter. Why does that matter? Because the "little guys" might be the source of worse health effects.

With a study now published inThe Lancet Planetary Health, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have quantified the amount of PM 1 over the United States from the past 25 years.

"This measurement serves as a starting point to understand which pollutants regulators could target to make the most effective health impact," said Randall Martin, the Raymond R. Tucker Distinguished Professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering. "This effort builds upon WashU's strengths in satellite remote sensing and modeling atmospheric aerosols that were leveraged in this study," he added.

Chi Li, research assistant professor in Martin's atmospheric composition analysis group, is the first author of the work. Li said these estimates will enable further investigation into both the health and environmental effects of submicron particles.

Li said the very small particles quantified in this study generally come from direct air emissions, such as the black carbon particles released by diesel engines or the smoke from wildfires. Sometimes PM 1 can also form through secondary processes when sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxides are spit out through fuel combustion and burning coal.

It makes intuitive sense that smaller particles of air pollution could do more damage to the human body because they are able to slip past the body's innate defenses. These submicron particles are at least 6 times smaller than blood cells.

Air particles are not always one single thing, but mixtures of other materials stacked together.

The larger sizes of particles are critically more dominated by components that are not easily modifiable like mineral dust, noted Li.

The researchers were able to calculate their submicron estimates based on the known ratios of what makes up PM 2.5 particles, which include seven main components such as sulfate, nitrate and mineral dust.

"Putting the seven species together, we can calculate the total PM 1 concentration over the country," Li said.

This research sets the stage for further analysis of where, how and why certain types of particles congregate, and how they can affect the environment and human body.

"When EPA first promulgated a fine PM air quality standard in 1997, there was considerable discussion about regulating PM 1 or PM2.5," said Jay Turner, the James McKelvey Professor of Engineering Education and co-author on the study. "For numerous reasons, including but not limited to the lack of health impacts studies for PM 1 compared to studies for PM 2.5, the latter was chosen. This study provides a comprehensive, nationwide dataset to examine PM1 impacts on health."

A next step will involve working with epidemiologists to assess the association of PM 1 with health outcomes.

The new dataset revealed another notable fact: pollution regulation does help. Across the contiguous U.S., average PM 1 levels in the air people breathe dropped sharply from 1998 to 2022, thanks to decades of environmental regulations like the Clean Air Act. However, this progress has slowed since 2010, mainly because of rising wildfire activity. Future pollution controls will need to address emerging, non-fossil fuel sources, study authors said.

Other countries like China have a head start tracking nationwide PM 1, but now the U.S. can quickly catch up.

"This dataset offers unprecedented information for the United States about an important pollutant for which few other measurements exist," Martin said.

Funding from National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health.

Materialsprovided byWashington University in St. Louis. Original written by Leah Shaffer.Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

The Apollo astronauts didn't know what they'd find when they explored the surface of the moon, but they certainly didn't expect to see drifts of tiny, bright orange glass beads glistening among the otherwise monochrome piles of rocks and dust.

The beads, each less than 1 mm across, formed some 3.3 to 3.6 billion years ago during volcanic eruptions on the surface of the then-young satellite. "They're some of the most amazing extraterrestrial samples we have," said Ryan Ogliore, an associate professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, home to a large repository of lunar samples that were returned to Earth. "The beads are tiny, pristine capsules of the lunar interior."

Using a variety of microscopic analysis techniques not available when the Apollo astronauts first returned samples from the moon, Ogliore and a team of researchers have been able to take a close look at the microscopic mineral deposits on the outside of lunar beads. The unprecedented view of the ancient lunar artifacts was published inIcarus. The investigation was led by Thomas Williams, Stephen Parman and Alberto Saal from Brown University.

The study relied, in part, on the NanoSIMS 50, an instrument at WashU that uses a high-energy ion beam to break apart small samples of material for analysis. WashU researchers have used the device for decades to study interplanetary dust particles, presolar grains in meteorites, and other small bits of debris from our solar system.

The study combined a variety of techniques — atom probe tomography, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy — at other institutions to get a closer look at the surface of the beads. "We've had these samples for 50 years, but we now have the technology to fully understand them," Ogliore said. "Many of these instruments would have been unimaginable when the beads were first collected."

As Ogliore explained, each glass bead tells its own story of the moon's past. The beads — some shiny orange, some glossy black — formed when lunar volcanoes shot material from the interior to the surface, where each drop of lava solidified instantly in the cold vacuum that surrounds the moon. "The very existence of these beads tells us the moon had explosive eruptions, something like the fire fountains you can see in Hawaii today," he said. Because of their origins, the beads have a color, shape and chemical composition unlike anything found on Earth.

Tiny minerals on the surface of the beads could react with oxygen and other components of Earth's atmosphere. To avoid this possibility, the researchers extracted beads from deep within samples and kept them protected from air exposure through every step of the analysis. "Even with the advanced techniques we used, these were very difficult measurements to make," Ogliore said.

The minerals (including zinc sulfides) and isotopic composition of the bead surfaces serve as probes into the different pressure, temperature and chemical environment of lunar eruptions 3.5 billion years ago. Analyses of orange and black lunar beads have shown that the style of volcanic eruptions changed over time. "It's like reading the journal of an ancient lunar volcanologist," Ogliore said.

Materialsprovided byWashington University in St. Louis.Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

What inspired you to become a researcher?

As a child, I was fascinated by reports and documentaries about field research and often wondered what it took to be there and what kind of knowledge was being produced. Later, as an ecologist, I felt the need for approaches that better connected scientific research with real-world contexts. I became especially interested in perspectives that viewed humans not as separate from nature, but as part of ecological systems. This led me to explore integrative methods that incorporate local and traditional knowledge, aiming to make research more relevant and accessible to the communities involved.

Can you tell us about the research you're currently working on?

My research focuses on ethnobiology, an interdisciplinary field intersecting ecology, conservation, and traditional knowledge. We investigate not only the biodiversity of an area but also the relationship local communities have with surrounding species, providing a better understanding of local dynamics and areas needing special attention for conservation. After all, no one knows a place better than those who have lived there for generations. This deep familiarity allows for early detection of changes or environmental shifts. Additionally, developing a collaborative project with residents generates greater engagement, as they recognize themselves as active contributors; and collective participation is essential for effective conservation.

Could you tell us about one of the legends surrounding anacondas?

One of the greatest myths is about the Great Snake — a huge snake that is said to inhabit the Amazon River and sleep beneath the town. According to the dwellers, the Great Snake is an anaconda that has grown too large; its movements can shake the river's waters, and its eyes look like fire in the darkness of night. People say anacondas can grow so big that they can swallow large animals — including humans or cattle — without difficulty.

What could be the reasons why the traditional role of anacondas as a spiritual and mythological entity has changed? Do you think the fact that fewer anacondas have been seen in recent years contributes to their diminished importance as an mythological entity?

Not exactly. I believe the two are related, but not in a direct way. The mythology still exists, but among Aritapera dwellers, there's a more practical, everyday concern — mainly the fear of losing their chickens. As a result, anacondas have come to be seen as stealthy thieves. These traits are mostly associated with smaller individuals (up to around 2-2.5 meters), while the larger ones — which may still carry the symbolic weight of the 'Great Snake' — tend to retreat to more sheltered areas; because of the presence of houses, motorized boats, and general noise, they are now seen much less frequently.

Can you share some of the quotes you've collected in interviews that show the attitude of community members towards anacondas? How do chickens come into play?

When talking about anacondas, one thing always comes up: chickens. "Chicken is her [the anaconda's] favorite dish. If one clucks, she comes," said one dweller. This kind of remark helps explain why the conflict is often framed in economic terms. During the interviews and conversations with local dwellers, many emphasized the financial impact of losing their animals: "The biggest loss is that they keep taking chicks and chickens…" or "You raise the chicken — you can't just let it be eaten for free, right?"

For them, it's a loss of investment, especially since corn, which is used as chicken feed, is expensive. As one person put it: "We spend time feeding and raising the birds, and then the snake comes and takes them." One dweller shared that, in an attempt to prevent another loss, he killed the anaconda and removed the last chicken it had swallowed from its belly — "it was still fresh," he said — and used it for his meal, cooking the chicken for lunch so it wouldn't go to waste.

Some interviewees reported that they had to rebuild their chicken coops and pigsties because too many anacondas were getting in. Participants would point out where the anaconda had entered and explained that they came in through gaps or cracks but couldn't get out afterwards because they 'tufavam' — a local term referring to the snake's body swelling after ingesting prey.

We saw chicken coops made with mesh, with nylon, some that worked and some that didn't. Guided by the locals' insights, we concluded that the best solution to compensate for the gaps between the wooden slats is to line the coop with a fine nylon mesh (to block smaller animals), and on the outside, a layer of wire mesh, which protects the inner mesh and prevents the entry of larger animals.

Are there any common misconceptions about this area of research? How would you address them?

Yes, very much. Although ethnobiology is an old science, it's still underexplored and often misunderstood. In some fields, there are ongoing debates about the robustness and scientific validity of the field and related areas. This is largely because the findings don't always rely only on hard statistical data.

However, like any other scientific field, it follows standardized methodologies, and no result is accepted without proper grounding. What happens is that ethnobiology leans more toward the human sciences, placing human beings and traditional knowledge as key variables within its framework.

To address these misconceptions, I believe it's important to emphasize that ethnobiology produces solid and relevant knowledge — especially in the context of conservation and sustainable development. It offers insights that purely biological approaches might overlook and helps build bridges between science and society.

What are some of the areas of research you'd like to see tackled in the years ahead?

I'd like to see more conservation projects that include local communities as active participants rather than as passive observers. Incorporating their voices, perspectives, and needs not only makes initiatives more effective, but also more just. There is also great potential in recognizing and valuing traditional knowledge. Beyond its cultural significance, certain practices — such as the use of natural compounds — could become practical assets for other vulnerable regions. Once properly documented and understood, many of these approaches offer adaptable forms of environmental management and could help inform broader conservation strategies elsewhere.

How has open science benefited the reach and impact of your research?

Open science is crucial for making research more accessible. By eliminating access barriers, it facilitates a broader exchange of knowledge — important especially for interdisciplinary research like mine which draws on multiple knowledge systems and gains value when shared widely. For scientific work, it ensures that knowledge reaches a wider audience, including practitioners and policymakers. This openness fosters dialogue across different sectors, making research more inclusive and encouraging greater collaboration among diverse groups.

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Scientists have developed a low-cost, durable, highly-sensitive robotic 'skin' that can be added to robotic hands like a glove, enabling robots to detect information about their surroundings in a way that's similar to humans.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and University College London (UCL), developed the flexible, conductive skin, which is easy to fabricate and can be melted down and formed into a wide range of complex shapes. The technology senses and processes a range of physical inputs, allowing robots to interact with the physical world in a more meaningful way.

Unlike other solutions for robotic touch, which typically work via sensors embedded in small areas and require different sensors to detect different types of touch, the entirety of the electronic skin developed by the Cambridge and UCL researchers is a sensor, bringing it closer to our own sensor system: our skin.

Although the robotic skin is not as sensitive as human skin, it can detect signals from over 860,000 tiny pathways in the material, enabling it to recognise different types of touch and pressure – like the tap of a finger, a hot or cold surface, damage caused by cutting or stabbing, or multiple points being touched at once – in a single material.

The researchers used a combination of physical tests and machine learning techniques to help the robotic skin 'learn' which of these pathways matter most, so it can sense different types of contact more efficiently.

In addition to potential future applications for humanoid robots or human prosthetics where a sense of touch is vital, the researchers say the robotic skin could be useful in industries as varied as the automotive sector or disaster relief. The results are reported in the journalScience Robotics.

Electronic skins work by converting physical information – like pressure or temperature – into electronic signals. In most cases, different types of sensors are needed for different types of touch – one type of sensor to detect pressure, another for temperature, and so on – which are then embedded into soft, flexible materials. However, the signals from these different sensors can interfere with each other, and the materials are easily damaged.

"Having different sensors for different types of touch leads to materials that are complex to make," said lead author Dr David Hardman from Cambridge's Department of Engineering. "We wanted to develop a solution that can detect multiple types of touch at once, but in a single material."

"At the same time, we need something that's cheap and durable, so that it's suitable for widespread use," said co-author Dr Thomas George Thuruthel from UCL.

Their solution uses one type of sensor that reacts differently to different types of touch, known as multi-modal sensing. While it's challenging to separate out the cause of each signal, multi-modal sensing materials are easier to make and more robust.

The researchers melted down a soft, stretchy and electrically conductive gelatine-based hydrogel, and cast it into the shape of a human hand. They tested a range of different electrode configurations to determine which gave them the most useful information about different types of touch. From just 32 electrodes placed at the wrist, they were able to collect over 1.7 million pieces of information over the whole hand, thanks to the tiny pathways in the conductive material.

The skin was then tested on different types of touch: the researchers blasted it with a heat gun, pressed it with their fingers and a robotic arm, gently touched it with their fingers, and even cut it open with a scalpel. The team then used the data gathered during these tests to train a machine learning model so the hand would recognize what the different types of touch meant.

"We're able to squeeze a lot of information from these materials – they can take thousands of measurements very quickly," said Hardman, who is a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of co-author Professor Fumiya Iida. "They're measuring lots of different things at once, over a large surface area."

"We're not quite at the level where the robotic skin is as good as human skin, but we think it's better than anything else out there at the moment," said Thuruthel. "Our method is flexible and easier to build than traditional sensors, and we're able to calibrate it using human touch for a range of tasks."

In future, the researchers are hoping to improve the durability of the electronic skin, and to carry out further tests on real-world robotic tasks.

The research was supported by Samsung Global Research Outreach Program, the Royal Society, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Fumiya Iida is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

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While you're probably not pouring your morning cup for the long-term health benefits, coffee consumption has been linked to lower risk of mortality. In a new observational study, researchers from the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University found the association between coffee consumption and mortality risk changes with the amount of sweeteners and saturated fat added to the beverage.

The study, published online inThe Journal of Nutrition, found that consumption of 1-2 cups of caffeinated coffee per day was linked to a lower risk of death from all causes and death from cardiovascular disease. Black coffee and coffee with low levels of added sugar and saturated fat were associated with a 14% lower risk of all-cause mortality as compared to no coffee consumption. The same link was not observed for coffee with high amounts of added sugar and saturated fat.

"Coffee is among the most-consumed beverages in the world, and with nearly half of American adults reporting drinking at least one cup per day, it's important for us to know what it might mean for health," said Fang Fang Zhang, senior author of the study and the Neely Family Professor at the Friedman School. "The health benefits of coffee might be attributable to its bioactive compounds, but our results suggest that the addition of sugar and saturated fat may reduce the mortality benefits."

The study analyzed data from nine consecutive cycles of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 1999 to 2018, linked to National Death Index Mortality Data. The study included a nationally representative sample of 46,000 adults aged 20 years and older who completed valid first-day 24-hour dietary recalls. Coffee consumption was categorized by type (caffeinated or decaffeinated), sugar, and saturated fat content. Mortality outcomes included all-cause, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Low added sugar (from granulated sugar, honey, and syrup) was defined as under 5% of the Daily Value, which is 2.5 grams per 8-ounce cup or approximately half a teaspoon of sugar. Low saturated fat (from milk, cream, and half-and-half) was defined as 5% of the Daily Value, or 1 gram per 8-ounce cup or the equivalent of 5 tablespoons of 2% milk, 1 tablespoon of light cream, or 1 tablespoon of half-and-half.

In the study, consumption of at least one cup per day was associated with a 16% lower risk of all-cause mortality. At 2-3 cups per day, the link rose to 17%. Consumption beyond three cups per day was not associated with additional reductions, and the link between coffee and a lower risk of death by cardiovascular disease weakened when coffee consumption was more than three cups per day. No significant associations were seen between coffee consumption and cancer mortality.

"Few studies have examined how coffee additives could impact the link between coffee consumption and mortality risk, and our study is among the first to quantify how much sweetener and saturated fat are being added," said first author Bingjie Zhou, a recent Ph.D. graduate from the nutrition epidemiology and data science program at the Friedman School. "Our results align with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans which recommend limiting added sugar and saturated fat."

Limitations of the study include the fact that self-reported recall data is subject to measurement error due to day-to-day variations in food intake. The lack of significant associations between decaffeinated coffee and all-cause mortality could be due to the low consumption among the population studied.

Additional authors are Yongyi Pan and Lu Wang, both of the Friedman School, and Mengyuan Ruan, a graduate of the Friedman School.

The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities under award number R01MD011501. Complete information on methodology is available in the published paper. The content is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views the National Institutes of Health.

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Nematodes are the most abundant animal on earth, but when times get tough, these tiny worms have a hard time moving up and out. So, they play to the strength of their clade. If food runs out and competition turns fierce, they slither towards their numerous kin. They climb onto each other and over one another until their bodies forge a living tower that twists skyward where they might hitch a ride on a passing animal to greener and roomier pastures.

At least that's what scientists assumed. For decades, these worm structures were more mythical than material. Such aggregations, in which animals link bodies for group movement, are rare in nature. Only slime molds, fire ants, and spider mites are known to move in this way. For nematodes, nobody had even seen the aggregations — known as towers — forming anywhere but within the artificial confines of laboratories and growth chambers; and nobody really knew what they were for. Did towers even exist in the real world?

Now, researchers in Konstanz, Germany, have recorded video footage of worms towering in fallen apples and pears from local orchards. The team from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) and the University of Konstanz combined fieldwork with laboratory experiments to provide the first direct evidence that towering behavior occurs naturally and functions as a means of collective transport.

"I was ecstatic when I saw these natural towers for the first time," says senior author Serena Ding, group leader at the MPI-AB, of the moment when co-author Ryan Greenway sent her a video recording from the field. "For so long natural worm towers existed only in our imaginations. But with the right equipment and lots of curiosity, we found them hiding in plain sight."

Greenway, a technical assistant at the MPI-AB, spent months with a digital microscope combing through decaying fruit in orchards near the university to record natural occurrences and behavior of worm towers. Some of these whole towers were brought into the lab. What was inside the towers surprised the team. Although the fruits were crawling with many species of nematodes, natural towers were made only of a single species, all at the tough larval stage known as a "dauer."

"A nematode tower is not just a pile of worms," says the first author Daniela Perez, a postdoctoral researcher at MPI-AB. "It's a coordinated structure, a superorganism in motion."

The team observed the natural dauer towers waving in unison, much like individual nematodes do by standing on their tails to latch onto a passing animal. But their new findings showed that entire worm towers could respond to touch, detach from surfaces, and collectively attach to insects such as fruit flies — hitchhiking on mass to new environments.

To probe deeper, Perez built a controlled tower using laboratory cultures ofC. elegans. When placed on food-free agar with a small vertical post — a toothbrush bristle — hungry worms began to self-assemble. Within two hours, living towers emerged, stable for over 12 hours, and capable of extending exploratory "arms" into surrounding space. Some even formed bridges across gaps to reach new surfaces.

"The towers are actively sensing and growing," says Perez. "When we touched them, they responded immediately, growing toward the stimulus and attaching to it."

This behavior, it turns out, is not restricted to the so-called "dauer" larval stage seen from the wild samples. AdultC. elegansand all larval stages in the lab also towered — an unexpected twist that suggests towering may be a more generalized strategy for group movement than previously assumed.

Yet despite the architectural complexity of these towers, the worms inside showed no obvious role differentiation. Individuals from the base and the apex were equally mobile, fertile, and strong, hinting at a form of egalitarian cooperation. But so far only, the authors point out, in the controlled conditions of the laboratory. "C. elegansis a clonal culture and so it makes sense that there is no differentiation within the tower. In natural towers, we might see separate genetic compositions and roles, which prompts fascinating questions about who cooperates and who cheats."

As researchers seek to understand how group behavior evolves — from insect swarms to bird migrations — these microscopic worm towers might rise to provide some of the answers.

"Our study opens up a whole new system for exploring how and why animals move together," says Ding who leads a research program on nematode behavior and genetics. "By harnessing the genetic tools available forC. elegans, we now have a powerful model to study the ecology and evolution of collective dispersal."

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New research led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History sheds light on the ancient origins of biofluorescence in fishes and the range of brilliant colors involved in this biological phenomenon. Detailed in two complementary studies recently published inNature CommunicationsandPLOS One, the findings suggest that biofluorescence dates back at least 112 million years and, since then, has evolved independently more than 100 times, with the majority of that activity happening among fish that live on coral reefs.

The new work also reveals that in marine fishes, biofluorescence — which occurs when an organism absorbs light, transforms it, and emits it as a different color — involves a greater variety of colors than previously reported, spanning multiple wavelengths of green, yellow, orange, and red.

"Researchers have known for a while that biofluorescence is quite widespread in marine animals, from sea turtles to corals, and especially among fishes," said Emily Carr, a Ph.D. student in the Museum's Richard Gilder Graduate School and the lead author on the two new studies. "But to really get to the root of why and how these species use this unique adaptation — whether for camouflage, predation, or reproduction — we need to understand the underlying evolutionary story as well as the scope of biofluorescence as it currently exists."

For theNature Communicationsstudy, Carr led a comprehensive survey of all known biofluorescent teleosts — a type of bony fish that make up by far the largest group of vertebrates alive today. This resulted in a list of 459 biofluorescent species, including 48 species that were previously unknown to be biofluorescent. The researchers found that biofluorescence evolved more than 100 times in marine teleosts and is estimated to date back about 112 million years, with the first instance occurring in eels.

The team also found that fish species that live in or around coral reefs evolve biofluorescence at about 10 times the rate of non-reef species, with an increase in the number of fluorescent species following the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction about 66 million years ago, when all of the non-avian dinosaurs died off.

"This trend coincides with the rise of modern coral-dominated reefs and the rapid colonization of reefs by fishes, which occurred following a significant loss of coral diversity in the K-Pg extinction," Carr said. "These correlations suggest that the emergence of modern coral reefs could have facilitated the diversification of fluorescence in reef-associated teleost fishes."

Of the 459 known biofluorescent teleosts reported in this study, the majority are associated with coral reefs.

For thePLOS Onestudy, Carr and colleagues used a specialized photography setup with ultraviolet and blue excitation lights and emission filters to look at the wavelengths of light emitted by fishes in the Museum's Ichthyology collection. Collected over the last decade and a half on Museum expeditions to the Solomon Islands, Greenland, and Thailand, the specimens in the study were previously observed fluorescing, but the full range of their biofluorescent emissions was unknown.

The new work reveals far more diversity in colors emitted by teleosts — some families of which exhibit at least six distinct fluorescent emission peaks, which correspond with wavelengths across multiple colors — than had previously been reported.

"The remarkable variation we observed across a wide array of these fluorescent fishes could mean that these animals use incredibly diverse and elaborate signaling systems based on species-specific fluorescent emission patterns," said Museum Curator John Sparks, an author on the new studies and Carr's advisor. "As these studies show, biofluorescence is both pervasive and incredibly phenotypically variable among marine fishes. What we would really like to understand better is how fluorescence functions in these highly variable marine lineages, as well as its role in diversification."

The researchers also note that the numerous wavelengths of fluorescent emissions found in this study could have implications for identifying novel fluorescent molecules, which are routinely used in biomedical applications, including fluorescence-guided disease diagnosis and therapy.

Other authors involved in this work include Rene Martin, from the Museum and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Mason Thurman, from Clemson University; Karly Cohen, from California State University; Jonathan Huie, from George Washington University; David Gruber, from Baruch College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York; and Tate Sparks, Rutgers University.

Research in the Solomon Islands was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number DEB-1257555.

The Museum greatly acknowledges the Dalio Foundation for its generous support of the inaugural Explore21 Expedition.

The Museum's Exlopre21 initiative is generously supported by the leadership contributions of Katheryn P. and Thomas L. Kempner, Jr.

The 2019 Constantine S. Niarchos Expedition to Greenland was generously supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

Research in Thailand was funded by the Museum and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant Number DEB-1938103.

Additional funding for this work was provided by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number DGE-1746914.

Materialsprovided byAmerican Museum of Natural History.Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

A USC-led research team has created a series of supercomputer-simulated twins of our Milky Way galaxy — which could help scientists unlock new answers about one of the biggest mysteries in the universe: dark matter, the invisible substance that makes up about 85% of all matter in existence.

The research was led by cosmologist Vera Gluscevic, who is an associate professor at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences; as well as Ethan Nadler, formerly a postdoc at USC and Carnegie Observatories who is now an assistant professor at University of California, San Diego; and Andrew Benson, a staff scientist at Carnegie Observatories.

They called their simulation project "COZMIC" — short for "Cosmological Zoom-in Simulations with Initial Conditions beyond Cold Dark Matter."

Scientists have known for decades that dark matter exists — but until now, they could not study how galaxies are born and evolve in a universe where dark and normal matter interact. COZMIC has made that possible, the team said.

The development of COZMIC and the team's results are described in a trio of studies published on June 16 in The Astrophysical Journal, a publication of the American Astronomical Society.

Scientists know that dark matter is real because it affects how galaxies move and stick together. For example, galaxies spin so fast that they should fly apart, but they don't. Something invisible holds them together; many scientists believe that dark matter is at the heart of this — an idea first suggested in 1933 by a Swiss researcher, Fritz Zwicky. Research on dark matter has evolved ever since.

Dark matter is tricky to study because it doesn't emit any light or energy that can be easily detected. Scientists study dark matter by watching how it affects motions and structures like galaxies. However, that is somewhat like studying someone's shadow without being able to examine in detail the actual person who cast the shadow.

For the suite of studies, the research team took the step of deploying new physics — not just standard particle physics and relativity — and programmed a supercomputer to create very detailed cosmological simulations through COZMIC to test different ideas about what dark matter might be doing.

"We want to measure the masses and other quantum properties of these particles, and we want to measure how they interact with everything else," Gluscevic said. "With COZMIC, for the first time, we're able to simulate galaxies like our own under radically different physical laws — and test those laws against real astronomical observations."

In addition to Glusevic, Nadler and Benson, the team behind COZMIC includes Hai-Bo Yu of UC Riverside; Daneng Yang, formerly of UC Riverside and now at Purple Mountain Observatory CAS; Xiaolong Du of UCLA; and Rui An, formerly of USC.

"Our simulations reveal that observations of the smallest galaxies can be used to distinguish dark matter models," said Nadler.

For the studies with COZMIC, the scientists accounted for the following dark matter behavior scenarios:

While running these simulations, the scientists input new physics into the supercomputer to produce a galaxy whose structure bears the signatures of those interactions between normal and dark matter, said Benson.

Gluscevic added: "While many previous simulation suites have explored the effects of dark matter mass or self-interactions, until now, none have simulated dark matter interactions with normal matter. Such interactions are not exotic or implausible. They are, in fact, likely to exist."

The team says it is a big step forward in figuring out what dark matter really is. They hope that by comparing their twin galaxies to real telescope images, they can get even closer to solving one of space's biggest mysteries.

"We're finally able to ask, 'Which version of the universe looks most like ours?'" Gluscevic said.

The COZMIC team plans to expand their work by directly testing the predictions from their simulations with telescope data so they may discover signatures of dark matter behavior in real galaxies.

This next stage could bring scientists closer than ever to understanding what dark matter is, and how it shapes the cosmos.

Materialsprovided byUniversity of Southern California. Original written by Leigh Hopper.Note: Content may be edited for style and length.