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Featured news

25 Jun 2025

New ‘designer drugs’ pose growing threat to road safety in the US

Researchers from the US have reported the initial results from the first quantitative study to focus on the contribution of multiple new psychoactive substances (NPS) from a range of classes to roadway crashes in the US. They found that 2% of 1,000 adults who visited one of two trauma centers in California within six hours after being involved in a roadway crash had traces of NPS in their blood. The most frequent were bromazolam, para-fluorofentanyl, and mitragynine. In most (88%) of these positive cases, NPS had been taken together with traditional recreational drugs such as fentanyl, methamphetamine, and cocaine. These results indicate that NPS are a new concern in roadway crashes and put lives at risk.

Featured news

24 Jun 2025

Shaping the future: World Economic Forum and Frontiers reveal Top 10 Emerging Technologies for 2025

Cutting-edge technologies addressing climate, healthcare, and digital authenticity are spotlighted in the report co-published by the World Economic Forum and Frontiers. Pooling the expertise of hundreds of leading scientists from around the world, the report identifies early-stage technologies with the potential to become fully developed and adopted within the next five years.

Featured news

16 Jun 2025

“Chicken is her favorite dish. If one clucks, she comes”: how anacondas, chickens, and locals may be able to coexist in the Amazon

Dr Beatriz Cosendey is the author of a recently published Frontiers in Amphibian and Reptile Science article. In it, she and co-authors investigated the role of the anaconda as a mythical creature in Brazil’s Lower Amazon region, locals’ perception of the snake, and how better coops for chickens could play a vital role in the peaceful co-existence of people and snakes.

Featured news

13 Jun 2025

Swarm intelligence directs longhorn crazy ants to clear the road ahead for sisters carrying bulky food

Scientists studied the obstacle-clearing behavior of longhorn crazy ants, where a subset of workers temporarily specializes in removing tiny objects blocking the path between the nest and large food items. Experiments revealed that serial clearing behavior can be triggered by a single pheromone mark, which happened to be deposited near an obstacle by a forager recruited to a large food item. Clearing mostly occurs in the context of collective transport, which typically stalls in front of obstacles. The authors concluded that obstacle-clearing is a form of ‘swarm intelligence’ which emerges at the colony level, and which does not require understanding by individual ants.

Featured news

06 Jun 2025

Statins may reduce risk of death by 39% for patients with life-threatening sepsis

It has been suggested that statins could boost the chances of survival of patients with sepsis because of their multipronged effects on inflammation. Here, researchers from China used the MIMIC-IV database to perform a retrospective cohort study on two large, matched groups: critically ill patients with sepsis in the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center who received standard of care with or without statins. The 28-day all-cause mortality was 39% lower in relative terms [an absolute reduction from 23.4% to 14.3%] in the statin group, suggesting a protective effect. Previous randomized controlled trials that didn’t find any such benefit might have been too small or have had other weaknesses. The present results need to be confirmed in a large, well-designed randomized clinical trial.

Featured news

05 Jun 2025

Survival of the greenest: why world’s oldest organizations are surpassing young upstarts in environmental sustainability

In a new article published in Frontiers in Organizational Psychology, Daria Haner, Dr Yilei Wang, Dr Deniz Ones, Dr Stephan Dilchert, Dr Yagizhan Yazar, and Karn Kaura unveil surprising new findings: the world’s most sustainable businesses are the world’s most long-lived businesses, too. In this guest editorial, they explain their results, discuss the potential underlying reasons for their findings, and underline the importance of sustainability to the future of business.

Featured news

04 Jun 2025

Young people discover the technologies shaping their future in the World Economic Forum and Frontiers for Young Minds collection

Today's breakthroughs – from interactive smart surfaces to genetically engineered animal organs – that are emerging from laboratories now will be day-to-day realities for tomorrow’s adults and leaders. In this new collection, the next generation takes a driver’s seat in understanding and communicating the technologies that will transform our world.