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Rethinking restroom equity: How mixed-gender designs improve access in public venues

Next time you're at a concert, sports game, or crowded event, your restroom experience might be a lot better thanks to new research published in the Management Science. The study offers a game-changing approach to restroom inclusivity by combining unisex (all-gender) restrooms with traditional men's and women's facilities, making venues more efficient and welcoming for everyone.

This crystal sings back: Study sheds light on magnetochiral instability

Researchers from The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have reported the first observation of a dynamic magnetochiral instability in a solid-state material. Their findings, published in Nature Physics, bridge ideas from nuclear and high-energy physics with materials science and condensed matter physics to explain how the interplay between symmetry and magnetism can amplify electromagnetic waves.

Organisms in the Atacama Desert soil are remarkably diverse, study shows

A new study shows that resilient and remarkably diverse populations of organisms can persist in the soil despite harsh and extremely dry conditions. An international team led by researchers from the University of Cologne, has examined tiny nematodes in the Chilean Atacama Desert. Along with the polar regions, the Atacama Desert is considered one among the most arid regions in the world.

Circular economy startups can create new opportunities in resistant markets

A new study published in Business Strategy and the Environment, from the University of Eastern Finland offers a fresh perspective on how circular economy startups succeed in developing their business in markets where consumer demand for sustainable products is equivocal, institutional support is lacking and dominant players are slow to adapt.

Catastrophic heat wave wiped out 2 endangered corals in the Florida Keys... now what?

Once a picturesque garden beneath the sea, some stretches of the Florida Coral Reef have now become graveyards. Unburied coral skeletons stand as haunting remnants of the catastrophic marine heat wave that swept through in the summer of 2023, leading to the total functional collapse of endangered elkhorn and staghorn corals.

Asexual yam species employs mimicry to trick birds and spread farther

Evolutionarily speaking, the ultimate goal of a lifeform is to reproduce and stave off extinction. Many plants and animals have evolved unique tricks to do so. One of these tricks is mimicry, which might be used to trick other species into believing it is dangerous in order to avoid becoming a meal, or to increase the likelihood of reproduction.

SARS-CoV-2 peptide fragments selectively dysregulate specific immune cell populations via Gaussian curvature targeting

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 2, January 2026. SignificancePrevious work has demonstrated that the proteome of SARS-CoV-2 can potentially be a rich source of AMP-like viral fragments, exemplars of which are associated with severe COVID-like inflammation in vitro and in vivo. Here, we demonstrate that …

The major ion chemistry of seawater was closely coupled to the long-term carbon cycle during the Cenozoic

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 2, January 2026. SignificanceDetermining past changes in the composition of seawater is important as seawater chemistry can be thought of as an integrated record of geological processes that drive the carbon cycle. In addition, seawater major ion chemistry data are …

Static and dynamic rough energy landscapes can lead to identical diffusivity

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 2, January 2026. SignificanceIn a paper published in PNAS in 1988, R. Zwanzig introduced a model of diffusion in a rough potential, in which energy roughness reduces the effective diffusivity. Recently, this model has been used in numerous biophysics studies to reconcile …

Cell numbers contribute to cell fate during Ciona cardiopharyngeal mesoderm specification

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 2, January 2026. SignificanceThe control of cell numbers is essential to many developmental processes, but it has been relatively understudied. A clear example of this can be seen in heart development. Hearts develop from precursor cells called cardiopharyngeal mesoderm. …

Elucidating cooperative genetic events in DCIS progression in mutant p53–driven breast cancer

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 2, January 2026. SignificanceDuctal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is a mammary precursor lesion with no clinical strategy to stratify indolent lesions from those that will become invasive, and the natural history of DCIS progression is unknown. The standard of care includes …

Gender stereotypes across nations relate to the social position of women and men: Evidence from cross-cultural public opinion polls

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 2, January 2026. SignificanceThis project addressed the content of gender stereotypes and its relation to the distribution of women and men into social roles in society. The data derived from worldwide public opinion poll data with samples from 1995 and 2023 that …

O-acyltransferase genes involved in the production of volatile sex pheromones in Caenorhabditis elegans

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 2, January 2026. SignificanceAs a step toward identification of the volatile sex pheromones (VSPs) that attract males as well as to understand where and under what conditions they are produced, we sought to identify genes necessary for VSP production. We generated loss-of-…

The anticipation of imminent events is time-scale invariant

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 2, January 2026. SignificanceFrom everyday conversation to sports, to traffic, to music, people constantly predict when events will happen so they can prepare their next actions. This study examines how the brain makes such timing predictions over short periods of a few …

Adult neural stem cells mediate hippocampal synapse elimination for circuit homeostasis through MERTK

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 2, January 2026. SignificanceAdult neural stem cells (NSCs) play important roles in the brain that extend beyond their function as a progenitor pool. Our study has shown that mice in which adult NSCs lack the phagocytic receptor MERTK display a reduced ability to …