Two skeptics of antidepressant drugs named to NIH mental health council
Pending appointments of Laura Delano and David Cohen raise concerns that key advisory groups are becoming politicized
Interdisciplinary
How Unknowable Math Can Help Hide Secrets
A graduate student recently harnessed the complexity of mathematical proofs to create a powerful new tool in cryptography. The post How Unknowable Math Can Help Hide Secrets first appeared…
Pregnancy Changes Mothers’ Brains. These Recent Discoveries Are Showing Us How
“Baby brain” isn’t the deficit it’s stereotyped to be, research suggests. Neural adaptations during pregnancy can prime soon-to-be-moms to become more attuned to their children and enhance…
Will We Ever Be Able To Forecast Volcanic Eruptions Like Weather?
It should be possible, but getting there will require a greater understanding of subsurface physics. The post Will We Ever Be Able To Forecast Volcanic Eruptions Like Weather? first…
Evaluating the statistical realism of LLM-generated social science data
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 19, May 2026. <br/>SignificanceLarge language models (LLMs) enable the generation of data that could potentially be analyzed…
Demonstrating real advantage of machine learning–enhanced Monte Carlo for combinatorial optimization
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 19, May 2026. <br/>SignificanceIn this work, we address a question that has attracted intense interest in recent years:…
Sterol divergence across eukaryotic kingdoms determines membrane susceptibility to saponins, a class of plant defense compounds
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 19, May 2026. <br/>SignificanceThe basis for the selective activity of saponins across organisms, and for plant…
Inflammasome adaptor protein ASC is a mechanistic checkpoint in IL-1β maturation
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 19, May 2026. <br/>SignificanceInflammasomes are supramolecular complexes that activate caspase-1 and other inflammatory…
Reconstructing ancient genomes from gene counts: A robust likelihood framework with sampling bias correction
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 19, May 2026. <br/>SignificanceHow has evolution shaped the diverse gene repertoires of extant genomes? We find that current…
MiR-155-driven loss of ICOSL and SOCS1 in EBV+ gastric cancers renders abundant cytotoxic T cells ineffective, enabling immune evasion
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 123, Issue 19, May 2026. <br/>SignificanceCytotoxic T cells [cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs)] play a critical role in antitumor immunity;…