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New research presented at this year's European Congress on Obesity (held online, 10-13 May) shows that the obesity drug semaglutide reduces appetite, food cravings and energy intake in people given a meal where they could eat as much as they liked. The study is by Dr Dorthe Skovgaard, Novo Nordisk A/S (the manufacturer of the drug), Søborg, Denmark, and colleagues.

Could bees and birds help us understand the principles of physics? Albert Einstein thought so, according to a long-lost letter that reveals he predicted a link between physics and biology seven decades before the evidence emerged.

Two-thirds of California prisoners who were offered a COVID-19 vaccine accepted at least one dose, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Meradeth Snow, a University of Montana researcher and co-chair of UM's Department of Anthropology, was part of an international team that used human "paleofeces" to discover that ancient people had far different microorganisms living in their guts than we do in modern times.

A new, noninvasive method for measuring brain blood flow with light has been developed by biomedical engineers and neurologists at UC Davis and used to detect brain activation. The new method, functional interferometric diffusing wave spectroscopy, or fiDWS, promises to be cheaper than existing technology and could be used for assessing brain injuries, or in neuroscience research.

A portable, rapid testing platform can detect gonorrhea infections in patient samples in under 15 minutes, far faster than standard-of-care tests that can take hours or days.

A national report from the University of New Hampshire shows close to one and a half million children each year visit a doctor, emergency room or medical facility as a result of an assault, abuse, crime or other form of violence. This is four times higher than previous estimates based only on data from U.S. emergency rooms for violence-related treatment.

In a study recently published in Nature, University of Minnesota Medical School researchers found that senescent immune cells are the most dangerous type of senescent cell.

In 2020, stores sold out of garden seed, coops and rabbit cages. Meat shortages led many to wonder what to eat for protein when supply chains are disrupted and some people turned to gathering eggs, raising animals and growing their own food. A team from Michigan Tech and the University of Alaska assessed backyard protein sources: They looked at how a typical household with a typical backyard can raise chickens, rabbits or soybeans to meet its protein needs.

in a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers at the University of Missouri have found a way to study uterine fluid in the lab, thereby avoiding invasive procedures during pregnancy, while at the same time developing a potential model for using precision medicine to improve pregnancy outcomes.

Two Concordia researchers and their colleagues study the 2020 influenza figures from Canada, the United States, Australia and Brazil and show there is a clear relationship between COVID-mitigation measures such as hand-washing, masking and social distancing and the spread of the annual flu. They write that these preventive measures all but eliminated the flu in countries where it can kill tens of thousands of people a year, even as cases of COVID-19 soared.

Research published in Nature reveals insights into how the body maintains balance with "good" gut bacteria that allows these microbes to flourish in the intestine but keeps them out of tissues and organs where they're not supposed to be.

An immune system that mistakes our good gut bacteria for an enemy can cause a dangerous type of inflammation in the intestines called colitis. An immune system that looks the other way while gut microbes spill past their assigned borders is equally dangerous. Understanding how the immune system learns to make a brokered peace with its microbial residents, called the microbiota, is therefore an important area of research.

While standing dead trees in ghost forests did not release as much greenhouse gas emissions as the soils, they did increase GHG emissions of the overall ecosystem by about 25 percent.

UCLA scientists have identified 'words' immune cells use to call up immune defense genes -- an important step toward understanding their language. The scientists also discovered that in an autoimmune disease, Sjögren's syndrome, two of these words are used incorrectly, activating the wrong genes and triggering the disease. Senior author, UCLA Professor Alexander Hoffmann, compares decoding the language of immune cells to when archaeologists discovered the Rosetta stone and could begin to read Egyptian hieroglyphs.

A new study by the University of Georgia revealed that more college students change majors within the STEM pipeline than leave the career path of science, technology, engineering and mathematics altogether

The research group created a virus capable of acting on specific adult brain regions, helping to elucidate the role of key neurons in the prefrontal cortex. They tested the technique on mice.

Scientists use a swathe of modern techniques to map, in unprecedented detail, the molecular changes in the brain of mice that grew up in stimulating surroundings. These can be pinpointed to specific 'epigenetic' modifications to the genome within neurons and glia cells. These then regulate the activity of a minority of genes, especially within genomic regions implicated in cognitive mental health in humans. Published by the open access publisher Frontiers, the study may yield new leads in the search for mental health therapies.

A Rutgers study finds that symbiotic bacteria that colonize root cells may be managed to produce hardier crops that need less fertilizer.

Scientists at Scripps Research have unveiled a new Ebola virus vaccine design, which they say has several advantages over standard vaccine approaches for Ebola and related viruses that continue to threaten global health. In the new design, described in a paper in Nature Communications, copies of the Ebola virus outer spike protein, known as the glycoprotein, are tethered to the surface of a spherical carrier particle.