A Chinese research team has developed a novel system to enable non-invasive and dynamic monitoring of blood sodium levels, which addresses critical needs in managing dehydration, kidney diseases and neuroendocrine disorders.
Findings of the study, conducted by Tianjin University, were recently published in the international journal Optica.
Terahertz radiation — positioned between microwave and mid-infrared bands — offers unique advantages for biomedical sensing: low energy usage, minimal tissue damage and high sensitivity to molecular changes. However, its strong absorption by water and limited penetration capabilities of biological tissues have hindered practical applications.
The team’s breakthrough terahertz optoacoustic systems overcome the two challenges by emitting terahertz waves at frequencies resonant with sodium ions but screening out water absorption signals, according to the paper.
This selectively excites sodium vibrations, generating ultrasound that are captured by transducers for analysis. The conversion to acoustic waves reduces scattering and attenuation, enabling deeper penetration through muscle and bone, as well as successful capture by ultrasound transducers.
Led by Tian Zhen, a professor at Tianjin University, the team achieved label-free, continuous sodium monitoring with validated accuracy in live mice and human volunteers. Their approach promises a painless alternative to needle-based tests, with potential for clinical adoption.
“The system holds promise beyond sodium monitoring,” said Li Jiao, a researcher on the team. “By leveraging terahertz characteristic absorption spectra, it could potentially detect other ions like potassium and calcium, as well as biomolecules such as sugars, proteins and enzymes — significantly expanding its clinical utility.”
New research on Monday contradicted the commonly held idea that males dominate females among primates, revealing far more nuanced power dynamics in the relationships of our close relatives.
“For a long time we have had a completely binary view of this issue: we thought that a species was either dominated by males or females – and that this was a fixed trait,” Elise Huchard, a primatologist at the University of Montpellier in France, told AFP.
“Recently, this idea has been challenged by studies showing that the truth is much more complicated,” said the lead author of a new study published in the journal PNAS.
The French-German team of researchers combed through scientific literature for interactions between male and female primates that revealed their hierarchical relationships.
These included aggression, threats and signs of dominant or submissive behaviour, such as when one primate spontaneously moved out of the way of another.
Related: Wild Chimps Appear to Administer ‘First Aid’ to Each Other
Over five years, the team gathered data from 253 populations across 121 primate species, including a range of monkeys, lemurs, tarsiers, and lorises.
They found that confrontations between members of the opposite sex were much more frequent than had been previously thought. On average, more than half of these interactions within a group involved a male and a female.
Studying primates like slow lorises reveals complexity in how different genders dominate social groups. (praisaeng/Getty Images Pro/Canva)
Males clearly dominating females, which was defined as winning more than 90 percent of these confrontations, was only observed in 17 percent of the populations. Among this minority were baboons and chimpanzees, which are the closest living relatives to humans.
Clear female domination was recorded in 13 percent of the primate populations, including lemurs and bonobos.
This meant that for 70 percent of the primates, either males or females could be at the top of the pecking order.
Battle of the sexes
When male domination was particularly pronounced, it was usually in a species where males have a clear physical advantage, such as bigger bodies or teeth.
It was also more common among ground-bound species, in which females are less able to run and hide compared to their relatives living in the trees.
Females, meanwhile, tended to dominate over societies when they exerted control over reproduction.
For example, the genitals of female baboons swell when they are ovulating. Males jealously guard females during these few days of their menstrual cycle, making sure that other competitors cannot mate with them.
However in bonobos, this sexual swelling is less obvious.
“Males never know when they are ovulating or not. As a result, (the female bonobos) can mate with whoever they want, whenever they want, much more easily,” Huchard said.
Female bonobos mate with whoever they want, whenever they want, far more easily. (mmcclain90/pixabay/Canva)
Female dominance is also more common when females compete with each other, and when males provide more care for the young.
In these species, females are often solitary or only live in male-female pairs. This means that monogamy is closely linked to female dominance.
Can these results be extrapolated to our own species? There are a great many differences between humans and our fellow primates, Huchard emphasised.
But we would broadly fall into the middle category in which neither males nor females always have strict dominance over the other.
“These results corroborate quite well with what we know about male-female relationships among hunter-gatherers, which were more egalitarian than in the agricultural societies that emerged later” in human history, Huchard said.
The abstract in PubMed or at the publisher’s site is linked when available and will open in a new window.
Parafati M, Thwin Z, Malany LK, Coen PM, Malany S.Microgravity accelerates skeletal muscle degeneration: Functional and transcriptomic insights from an ISS muscle lab-on-chip model.Stem Cell Reports. 2025 Jun 26;102550. Online ahead of print.Note:ISS results. This article may be obtained online without charge.
Journal Impact Factor:5.1
Funding: “We acknowledge the following funding sources: National Institutes of Health grant 5UG3/UH#TR002598 (S.M.), National Institutes of Health grant 5UH3TR002598-05S1 Admin Suppl (S.M.), University of Florida Prosper Bridge Fund (M.P.), Center for the Advancement of Science in Space #UA2019-011 (S.M.), and NASA task order to Space Tango.”
Yang J, Kim HD, Barrila J, Lee SH, Nickerson CA, Ott CM, Israel SA, Choukér A, Yang JY.Navigating mental health in space: Gut-brain axis and microbiome dynamics.Exp Mol Med. 2025 Jun 30. Review. Online ahead of print.PI: J. YangNote:This article may be obtained online without charge.
Journal Impact Factor:12.9
Funding: “J.Y. conceived and wrote the manuscript. H.-D.K. wrote part of the manuscript. J.Y., S.- H.L. and H.-D.K created the figures. J.B., A.C., C.M.O., C.A.N. and S.A.I. revised the manuscript. J.-Y.Y. conceived and supervised manuscript preparation. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. This work was supported by NASA grant 80NSSC19K1597, Brain Pool program funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT through the National Research Foundation of Korea (grant nos. RS-2023- 00263702 and NRF-2018R1A5A2023879) and Learning & Academic research institution for MS and PhD students and Postdocs (LAMP) Program of the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Ministry of Education (grant no. RS2023-00301938). A.C. was supported by the German Space Agency (DLR, grant no. 50WB2222).”
Ulusoy U, Reisman G.Investment construct in human autonomy teaming for deep space habitat operations.Acta Astronaut. 2025 Nov;236:117-27.Note:From the abstract: “Operations in deep space habitats will differ significantly from those in Earth orbit. Astronauts must perform many tasks independently due to communication delays and bandwidth limitations. As intelligent systems (e.g., autonomous agents) are integrated to support astronauts in various tasks, it is crucial that these systems are utilized effectively. Since such systems depend on human interaction to learn, it is essential that astronauts are willing to assist them. This paper proposes a novel approach to explaining the utilization of autonomous agents through a new construct called Investment in human-autonomy teaming.”
Journal Impact Factor:3.4
Funding: “This study is funded by NASA under grant number 80NSSC19K1052 as part of the Habitats Optimized for Missions of Exploration (HOME), which is a NASA Space Technology Research Institute (STRI).”
Brumfield KD, Enke S, Swan BK, Carrasquilla L, Lee MD, Stern DB, Gieser L, Hasan NA, Usmani M, Jutla AS, Huq A, Caviness K, Goodrich JS, Bull R, Colwell RR.Hybridization capture sequencing for Vibrio spp. and associated virulence factors.mBio. 2025 Jun 25;e0051625. Online ahead of print.Note:This article may be obtained online without charge.
Journal Impact Factor:5.1
Funding: “This research was supported in part by an appointment to the Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program at University of Maryland, College Park, administered by Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) through an interagency agreement between the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) awarded to K.D.B. and R.R.C. Further support was provided by the National Science Foundation (OCE1839171 and CCF1918749), National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health (R01ES030317A), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NSSC20K0814 and 80NSSC22K1044), awarded to A.H., A.S.J., and R.R.C. This work was also funded in part under agreement no. HSHQDC-15-C-00064 awarded to Battelle National Biodefense Institute (BNBI) by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) for the management and operation of the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC), a Federally Funded Research and Development Center.”
Astrobiology, space biology, space life science, space medicine, Microgravity, ISS,
WASHINGTON: Scientists are tracking a large gas planet experiencing quite a quandary as it orbits extremely close to a young star — a predicament never previously observed.
This exoplanet, as planets beyond our solar system are called, orbits its star so tightly that it appears to trigger flares from the stellar surface — larger than any observed from the sun — reaching several million miles (km) into space that over time may strip much of this unlucky world’s atmosphere.
The phenomenon appears to be caused by the planet’s interaction with the star’s magnetic field, according to the researchers. And this star is a kind known to flare, especially when young.
“A young star of this type is an angry beast, especially if you’re sitting as close up as this planet does,” said Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy astrophysicist Ekaterina Ilin, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.
The star, called HIP 67522, is slightly more massive than the sun and is located about 407 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). This star and planet, as well as a second smaller gas planet also detected in this planetary system, are practically newborns. Whereas the sun and our solar system’s planets are roughly 4.5 billion years old, this star is about 17 million years old, with its planets slightly younger.
The planet, named HIP 67522 b, has a diameter almost the size of Jupiter, our solar system’s largest planet, but with only 5pc of Jupiter’s mass. That makes it one of the puffiest exoplanets known, with a consistency reminiscent of cotton candy (candy floss).
It orbits five times closer to its star than our solar system’s innermost planet Mercury orbits the sun, needing only seven days to complete an orbit. A flare is an intense eruption of electromagnetic radiation emanating from the outermost part of a star’s atmosphere, called the corona. So how does HIP 67522 b elicit huge flares from the star? As it orbits, it apparently interacts with the star’s magnetic field — either through its own magnetic field or perhaps through the presence of conducting material such as iron in the planet’s composition.
“We don’t know for sure what the mechanism is. We think it is plausible that the planet moves within the star’s magnetic field and whips up a wave that travels along magnetic field lines to the star. When the wave reaches the stellar corona, it triggers flares in large magnetic field loops that store energy, which is released by the wave,” Ilin said.
“As it moves through the field like a boat on a lake, it creates waves in its wake,” Ilin added. “The flares these waves trigger when they crash into the star are a new phenomenon. This is important because it had never been observed before, especially at the intensity detected.” The researchers believe it is a specific type of wave called an Alfvn wave, named for 20th century Swedish physicist and Nobel Prize laureate Hannes Alfvn, that propagates due to the interaction of magnetic fields. The flares may heat up and inflate the planet’s atmosphere, which is dominated by hydrogen and helium. Being lashed by these flares could blast away lighter elements from the atmosphere and reduce the planet’s mass over perhaps hundreds of millions of years.
In a breakthrough that could transform the understanding of quantum magnetism, scientists have shown that a spinon, which was once believed to exist only in pairs, can travel alone.
The discovery further enhances understanding of magnetism and could help pave the way for future technologies, including quantum computers and advanced magnetic materials.
When spin flips ripple
Spinons are quasiparticles that arise as quantum disturbances behaving like individual particles within magnetic systems.
They emerge in low-dimensional quantum materials, particularly in one-dimensional (1D) spin chains, where electrons are arranged in a linear sequence and interact through their quantum spins.
In such systems, flipping a single spin doesn’t just affect one electron; it creates a ripple across the chain. This ripple can act as a discrete entity, carrying a spin value of ½. That entity is the spinon.
Today, magnets are central to a wide range of technologies, including computer memory, speakers, electric motors, and medical imaging devices.
The idea of spinons dates back to the early 1980s, when physicists Ludwig Faddeev and Leon Takhtajan proposed that a spin-1 excitation in certain quantum models could fractionalize into two spin-½ excitations.
These were named spinons, which are considered exotic because they behave as if an indivisible quantum of spin has split into two.
However, all experimental observations until now had detected spinons only in pairs, reinforcing the belief that they could not exist independently.
That assumption has now been challenged.
One spin to rule
In a new theoretical study, physicists from the University of Warsaw and the University of British Columbia showed how to isolate a lone spinon using a well-known model of quantum magnetism, the Heisenberg spin-½ chain.
By adding a single spin to this system, either in its ground state or in a simplified model known as the valence-bond solid (VBS), they demonstrated how a single unpaired spin can move freely through the spin chain, acting as a solitary spinon.
What makes the finding more impactful is that it’s not purely theoretical. A recent experiment led by C. Zhao and published in Nature Materials observed spin-½ excitations in nanographene-basedantiferromagnetic chains that reflect the lone spinon behavior described in the study.
This experimental validation confirms that the phenomenon can occur in real quantum materials, not just in simulations.
Understanding how a single spinon can exist has far-reaching implications. Spinons are closely linked to quantum entanglement, a core principle of quantum computing and quantum information science.
They’re also involved in exotic states of matter like high-temperature superconductors and quantum spin liquids.
By gaining better control over spinon dynamics, scientists could open new pathways for developing advanced magnetic materials and potentially qubit systems for quantum computers.
“Our research not only deepens our knowledge of magnets, but can also have far-reaching consequences in other areas of physics and technology”, said Prof Krzysztof Wohlfeld of the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw.
The study was published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, have uncovered how to manipulate electrical flow through crystalline silicon, a material at the heart of modern technology. The discovery could lead to smaller, faster, and more efficient devices by harnessing quantum electron behavior.
Chemical structure of bulk silicon, with the simplest building block of the solid highlighted in blue. (Tim Su/UCR)
At the quantum scale, electrons behave more like waves than particles. And now, scientists have shown that the symmetrical structure of silicon molecules can be fine-tuned to create, or suppress, a phenomenon known as destructive interference. The effect can turn conductivity “on” or “off,” functioning as a molecular-scale switch.
“We found that when tiny silicon structures are shaped with high symmetry, they can cancel out electron flow like noise-canceling headphones,” said Tim Su, a UCR chemistry professor who led the study. “What’s exciting is that we can control it.”
Published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the research breaks ground in understanding how electricity moves through silicon at the smallest possible scale, atom by atom.
The finding comes as the tech industry hits a wall in shrinking conventional silicon chips. Traditional methods rely on carving tiny circuits into silicon wafers or doping, which means adding small amounts of other elements to control how silicon conducts electricity.
These techniques have worked well for decades, but they’re approaching physical limits: you can only carve so small, and added atoms can’t fix problems caused by quantum effects.
By contrast, Su and his team used chemistry to build silicon molecules from the ground up, rather than carving them down. This “bottom-up” approach gave them precise control over how the atoms were arranged and, critically, control over the way electrons move through their silicon structures.
Electrodes along the blue path correspond to a high conducting state. With electrodes along the red paths, an insulating state was observed. (Tim Su/UCR)
Silicon is the second most abundant element in Earth’s crust and the workhorse of computing. But as devices shrink, unpredictable quantum effects, like electrons leaking across insulating barriers, make traditional designs harder to manage. This new study suggests that engineers might embrace, rather than fight, this quantum behavior.
“Our work shows how molecular symmetry in silicon leads to interference effects that control how electrons move through it,” Su said. “And we can switch that interference on or off by controlling how electrodes align with our molecule.”
While the idea of using quantum interference in electronics isn’t new, this is one of the first demonstrations of the effect in three-dimensional, diamond-like silicon — the same structure used in commercial chips.
Beyond ultra-small switches, the findings could aid in the development of thermoelectric devices that convert waste heat into electricity, or even quantum computing components built from familiar materials.
“This gives us a fundamentally new way to think about switching and charge transport,” Su said. “It’s not just a tweak. It’s a rethink of what silicon can do.”
Paleontologists have described a new species of the ankylosaurid dinosaur genus Zhongyuansaurus using a specimen found in China’s Henan province.
Life reconstruction of Zhongyuansaurus junchangi. Image credit: Connor Ashbridge / CC BY 4.0.
Ankylosaurids (family Ankylosauridae) were herbivorous quadruped dinosaurs known for their robust, scute-covered bodies, distinctive body armor, leaf-shaped teeth, and club-like tails.
The earliest-known ankylosaurids date to around 122 million years ago, and the youngest species went extinct 66 million years ago during the end-Cretaceous extinction.
The newly-identified species belongs to a previously monospecific ankylosaurid genus called Zhongyuansaurus.
Named Zhongyuansaurus junchangi, it lived in what is now China during the Albian age of the latest Early Cretaceous.
The dinosaur’s fossilized remains were collected from the upper part of the Haoling Formation at Zhongwa village in Henan province, China.
“The fossils are preserved within an area of about 9 m2,” said Dr. Ji-ming Zhang from the Henan Natural History Museum and colleagues.
“They are disarticulated and show no overlapping preservation, suggesting they belong to a single individual.”
“The specimen includes one right mandible, 14 free caudal vertebrae, seven fused terminal caudal vertebrae forming a rod-like structure, four ribs, 10 haemal arches, one left humerus, one slender metatarsal, and 41 osteoderms of various sizes and shapes.”
Right mandible of Zhongyuansaurus junchangi. Image credit: Zhang et al., doi: 10.19800/ j.cnki.aps.2023037.
Zhongyuansaurus junchangi is characterized by a unique autapomorphy: at least five caudal armor plates arranged in a shingle-like pattern with a distinctive swallowtail shape.
“Additionally, it exhibits relatively slender mandibular bones compared to the more robust mandibles of advanced Ankylosaurinae,” the paleontologists said.
“The anterior tip of the coronoid process extends only to the last two alveoli, differing from Shamosaurus.”
“The distal caudal vertebrae are adorned with small osteoderms, and the humerus has a midshaft circumference-to-total-length ratio of 0.46, distinguishing it from Zhongyuansaurus luoyangensis.”
“The discovery of Zhongyuansaurus junchangi provides new insights into the evolution of ankylosaurs in the Lower Cretaceous strata of Ruyang and enhances the species diversity of the Ruyang dinosaur fauna,” the researchers concluded.
Their paper was published in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Sinica.
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Ji-ming Zhang et al. 2025. New ankylosaurid material from the Lower Cretaceous of the Ruyang Basin, Henan Province. Acta Palaeontologica Sinica 64 (1): 60-73; doi: 10.19800/ j.cnki.aps.2023037
The melting of glaciers and ice caps by the climate crisis could unleash a barrage of explosive volcanic eruptions, a study suggests.
The loss of ice releases the pressure on underground magma chambers and makes eruptions more likely. This process has been seen in Iceland, an unusual island that sits on a mid-ocean tectonic plate boundary. But the research in Chile is one of the first studies to show a surge in volcanism on a continent in the past, after the last ice age ended.
Global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels is now melting ice caps and glaciers across the world. The biggest risk of a resurgence of volcanic eruptions is in west Antarctica, the researchers said, where at least 100 volcanoes lie under the thick ice. This ice is very likely to be lost in the coming decades and centuries as the world warms.
Volcanic eruptions can cool the planet temporarily by shooting sunlight-reflecting particles into the atmosphere. However, sustained eruptions would pump significant greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide and methane. This would further heat the planet and potentially create a vicious circle, in which rising temperatures melt ice that leads to further eruptions and more global heating.
Pablo Moreno-Yaeger, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, who led the research, said: “As glaciers retreat due to climate change, our findings suggest these volcanoes go on to erupt more frequently and more explosively.”
The research, which was presented at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Prague, and is in the final stages of review with an academic journal, involved camping high in the Andes, among active and dormant volcanoes.
Detailed work on one volcano, called Mocho-Choshuenco, used radioisotope dating to estimate the age of volcanic rocks produced before, during and after the last ice age, when the 1,500-metre-thick Patagonian ice sheet covered the area. Analysis of the minerals in the rocks also revealed the depth and temperature at which the rocks formed.
This data revealed that thick ice cover had suppressed the volume of eruptions between 26,000 and 18,000 years ago, allowing a large reservoir of magma to build up 10-15km (6.2-9.3 miles) below the surface. After the ice melted, from about 13,000 years ago, the pressure on the magma chamber was released, gasses in the liquid or molten rock expanded and explosive eruptions followed.
“We found that following deglaciation, the volcano starts to erupt way more, and also changes composition,” said Moreno-Yaeger. The composition changed as the magma melted crustal rocks while eruptions were suppressed. This made the molten rock more viscous and more explosive on eruption.
Iceland has experienced eruptions linked to the melting of its glaciers and ice caps. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
“Our study suggests this phenomenon isn’t limited to Iceland, where increased volcanicity has been observed, but could also occur in Antarctica,” he said. “Other continental regions, like parts of North America, New Zealand and Russia, also now warrant closer scientific attention.”
Previous research has shown volcanic activity increased globally by two to six times after the last ice age, but the Chilean study was one of the first to show how this happened. A similar phenomenon was reported via the analysis of rocks in eastern California in 2004.
A recent review by scientists found there had been relatively little study on how the climate crisis had been affecting volcanic activity. They said more research was “critically important” in order to be better prepared for the damage caused by volcanic eruptions to people and their livelihoods and for possible climate-volcano feedback loops that could amplify the climate crisis. For example, more extreme rainfall is also expected to increase violent explosive eruptions.
NASA recently captured a light phenomenon known as an “atmospheric sprite” over Mexican territory, near the border with the United States. This event, which looks like an inverted red lightning strike, was photographed from the International Space Station (ISS).
Sprites — more formally, transient luminous events or TLEs — are rare electrical discharges that occur between 50 and 90 km above the Earth’s surface, in the mesosphere.
Just. Wow. As we went over Mexico and the U.S. this morning, I caught this sprite.
Sprites are TLEs or Transient Luminous Events, that happen above the clouds and are triggered by intense electrical activity in the thunderstorms below. We have a great view above the clouds, so… pic.twitter.com/dCqIrn3vrA
— Nichole “Vapor” Ayers (@Astro_Ayers) July 3, 2025
Unlike traditional lightning, which shoots downward, sprites shoot upward from the tops of storm clouds, forming branching, reddish or bluish structures that can extend up to 96 km above the storm. They typically last only fractions of a second, making them difficult to observe from the ground.
The geographic location and frequency of convective thunderstorms make Mexico’s skies an ideal environment for the sprite phenomenon.
“Just. Wow. As we went over Mexico and the U.S. this morning, I caught this sprite,” Nichole Ayers, the astronaut who took the photograph, wrote in her official Instagram account, accompanied by the image taken from space.
The ISS offers a privileged view for capturing these phenomena, as they can be observed from space above the clouds.
According to Ayers, sprite images help scientists better understand the formation of these electrical events, their relationship to storms, and their impact on the upper atmosphere. They also contribute to improving weather and atmospheric electrical activity models.
Ayers’s image aligns with NASA’s “Spritacular” project, an initiative that seeks to collect images of these events.
Sprites were first photographed in 1989, and although pilots had previously reported them, they remain enigmatic and little-studied due to their transience and altitude. The recent image captured by NASA represents an important contribution to atmospheric science and the understanding of these electrical phenomena.
Launch Roundup: Falcon 9 set to fly 500th orbital mission during quiet week – NASASpaceFlight.com
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