Day January 9, 2026

The brain continuously calculates how likely it is that something will happen within the next three seconds. It uses this assessment to prepare quick and accurate responses. Credit: Max Planck Society Humans respond to environments that change at many different…

When a person suffers a stroke, physicians must restore blood flow to the brain as quickly as possible to save their life. But, ironically, that life-saving rush of blood can also trigger a second wave of damage—killing brain cells, fueling…

When a baby smiles at you, it’s almost impossible not to smile back. This spontaneous reaction to a facial expression is part of the back-and-forth that allows us to understand each other’s emotions and mental states. Faces are so important…

Janine Hauck doesn’t know which tick gave her anaplasmosis and Lyme disease. She just remembers the fatigue, weakness and nausea. The Mt. Lebanon, Pa., resident was an avid hiker, backpacker, dancer, biker and swimmer until she got sick in 2019,…

French athlete Christelle Daunay wins the marathon at the European Athletics Championships in Zurich in 2014. Credit: Erik van Leeuwen, CC BY Running counts among today’s most popular sports. Sometimes the race is on even before the competition itself has…

Systems view of metabolic obesity: integrating multi-organ and multi-omics signatures. Credit: Nature Medicine (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41591-025-04009-7 Researchers at Leipzig University and the University of Gothenburg have developed a novel approach to assessing an individual’s risk of metabolic diseases such as…

In 2005, psychologist Cliff Arnall coined the term “Blue Monday” as part of a marketing campaign for a British travel agency to encourage people to book a holiday during the winter. Using a pseudo-scientific formula, the third Monday in January…

Credit: Karola G from Pexels A simple blood test can tell doctors when it is safe to stop antibiotics in patients recovering from sepsis, a review led by University of Manchester researchers has found. The review including 21 studies involving…

Credit: Pavel Danilyuk from Pexels Self-administered injectable contraceptives have been available in the United States for more than two decades, yet a new study has found only about a quarter of reproductive health experts prescribe it—and many are unaware it’s…

One commercial farm in Queen Anne’s County remains under quarantine for bird flu, Maryland officials said on Jan. 7; however, the rest of the state has no such restrictions. Avian influenza, or bird flu, is a highly contagious airborne respiratory…

Credit: Shiva Kumar Reddy from Pexels A new study from Bar-Ilan University reveals that people with social anxiety, a common condition marked by fear or discomfort in social situations, may actually feel and perform better when they believe that others’…

If Texans are typing “bedbug treatment” into Google more often, North Texas appears to be doing it the most. A new study by Hawx Pest Control, a North Texas pest control company, shows cities across the Dallas-Fort Worth area are…

First author Cynthia Hsu examines a stool culture from a patient on an agar plate. Credit: UC San Diego Health Sciences Researchers at University of California San Diego, Mass General Brigham, and their colleagues have identified specific gut bacteria and…

Many autistic people face challenges in their daily life while navigating a world made for neurotypical people. Think about a trip to your local cafe. You might have patrons crammed into small spaces, bright lights, strong odors and sounds of…

Up to 75% of Australian women report concerns about their body image after giving birth, with many feeling intense pressure to “bounce back” to their pre-pregnancy shape, a pressure that can even trigger eating disorders for the first time, warn…

Credit: Journal of Dentistry (2025). DOI: 10.1016 An artificial saliva in the form of a mouthwash, produced with the CANECPI-5 protein extracted from sugarcane and modified in a laboratory, can aid in treating teeth in patients with head and neck…

In intensive care units, some patients who appear unconscious occupy a gray zone in their relationship to the world. To better diagnose them and predict their recovery potential, Dragana Manasova, Jacobo Sitt, and their colleagues have developed an automated tool…

Assistant professor of exercise science, Megan Rosa-Caldwell. Credit: Whit Pruitt Anorexia nervosa is a psychiatric condition characterized by a fear of weight gain and reduced calorie consumption that can result in dangerous weight loss. This condition is thought to affect…

Candidate protein signatures delineating fallopian tube lavages of high-risk/ovarian neoplasm patients. Credit: Clinical and Translational Medicine (2026). DOI: 10.1002 University of Manchester researchers have shown that analysis of fluid flushed through a fallopian tube holds promise for providing insights into…

Cross-sectional differences in atrophy and copathology between Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) Tau Positron Emission Tomography (Tau-PET) mismatch groups. Credit: JAMA Neurology (2025). DOI: 10.1001 One of the biggest challenges in treating Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is how heterogeneous it is…

Potentially more than 90% of Alzheimer’s disease cases would not occur without the contribution of a single gene (APOE), according to a new analysis led by UCL researchers. The scientists also found that close to half of all dementia cases…

by I. Edwards If you order coffee or tea on a flight, you may want to think twice. A 2026 airline water study found that drinking water quality can vary sharply from one airline to another, and that many carriers…

Overview of the study. Credit: Brain (2025). DOI: 10.1093/brain/awaf331 Artificial intelligence (AI), using a simple blood test combined with standard brain images has, for the first time, been able to identify two biologically distinct types of multiple sclerosis (MS), in…

This two-stage AI model (called cascade U-Net) predicts the radiation dose for a brachytherapy plan. It takes simple images of the tumor, nearby organs and other planning images in order to make a patient-specific prediction. The first stage provides a…

Explainability plots. Saliency maps generated using FullGrad, applied to the trained ConvNeXt Large model, are overlaid on four representative 12-lead ECGs from distinct patients (a–d). Regions highlighted in warmer colors (yellow to red) indicate areas contributing most strongly to the…

A recent lawsuit filed in San Diego Superior Court alleges that Sharp HealthCare recorded conversations between doctors and their patients without written consent, using the information to document visits with an artificial intelligence program developed by a private company in…

A poor night’s sleep portends a bleary-eyed next day, but it could also hint at diseases that will strike years down the road. A new artificial intelligence model developed by Stanford Medicine researchers and their colleagues can use physiological recordings…

For three decades, functional neuroimaging (fMRI) has been shaping the understanding of the human brain. A major obstacle for fMRI research is that information about brain responses is mixed with “noise”: distortions in the measurements caused by head movements of…

In a study led by researchers from Mass General Brigham, children with more adverse prenatal exposures (APEs) showed higher rates of behavior problems that persisted into mid-adolescence, faster cortical thinning across multiple brain regions, and more depressive symptoms than children…

Extra adrenaline can save your life if you experience cardiac arrest. Credit: NTNU Giving adrenaline to hospital patients whose heart has stopped is very effective, and can increase the chance of bringing their heart rate back to normal by a…

dSPN somatic and dendritic excitability changed between off- and on-states in LID mice. Credit: Science Advances (2025). DOI: 10.1126 Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered that targeting neuronal signaling controlling aberrant learning in the striatum may improve the efficacy of a…