The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation has announced its 2026 awardees , providing 15-month mentored research experiencesfor basic research in the chemistry and life sciences.







The awards total over $2.1 million in funding for 84 undergraduate Beckman Scholars at the following 14 institutions:



SUNY Binghamton

Bowdoin College

Butler University

Emory University

Harvey Mudd College

Pomona College

San Jose State University

St. Olaf College

Syracuse University

University of Arkansas

UCLA

Universi…

Colorectal cancer, cancer of the colon and rectum, is the third most common form of cancer in the world and has the second highest mortality rate. When caught early enough, it is usually treated with surgery, radiation or chemotherapy, methods that can have significant side effects.



A new study highlights a fourth way, one the researchers hope could have fewer side effects. They found that a purified toxin secreted by cholera bacteria can slow the growth of colorectal cancer and has not shown a…

Diabetic foot infections are a serious complications of diabetes and a leading cause of lower-limb amputation but little is known about the specific pathogens involved in these chronic foot infections, particularly E. coli , despite its frequent detection in clinical samples.



A new genomic characterization of E. coli strains isolated directly from diabetic foot ulcers across multiple continents may help explain why some infections become difficult to treat and lead to severe, even life-threaten…

The concept of “hard work v privilege”, and what either one says about someone’s social status, is an important one. Politicians regularly draw dividing lines between “hardworking families” and those receiving “handouts”. Others distinguish between those whose wealth increases while they sleep, and small business owners who work hard for their incomes.



read more

A fundamental component of my research work is the close collaboration with a large number of scientists from all around the world. This is the result of the very large scale of the experiments that are necessary to investigate the structure of matter at the smallest distance scales: building and operating those machines to collect the data and analyze it requires scientists to team up in large numbers - and this builds connections, cooperation, and long-time acquaintance; and in some cases, fri…

In 1902, President Teddy Roosevelt instructed his US Department of Agriculture to create a set of nutrition guidelines for a population that was gaining increased access to more foods, thanks to railways, but were more and more often in cities.



Wilbur Olin Atwater, Ph.D., did just that, and it was great, and we could have stopped there. Yet that is not the way of government. His recommendations were entirely sensible. Think about calories first. Eat meat and vegetables, limit fatty and carbohyd…

Vaccines are getting American media attention now that Republicans are engaging in misinformation the way Democrats did for decades, but there has long been a war on the pharmaceutical and medical communities.



When the HPV vaccine was first rolled out, progressives began the conspiracy theory that it was due to the Vioxx settlement by Merck. Vaccines did not have the same "accountability" (read: predatort lawyers being able to sue and win if they just convince a jury a product may have caused p…

For decades, health care costs have been a political topic in America. Advocates argue it is the best in the world, wealthy people from countries where it is nationalized travel to the United States for elite care, while critics argue it is too expensive and that creates socioeconomic barriers.



Political advocates on both sides always want to be reductionist - X causes Y - but a recent analysis shows it is never that simple. Norway has universal health care and yet 25 percent of new mothers do …

Today is, in Christian observance, Twelfth Night, the end of The 12 Days of Christmas in that song.(1) The Twelfth Night celebration ends Christmastide then tomorrow is Epiphany - the day when the Three Wise Men who saw the Star of Bethlehem during the birth of Jesus arrived after their journey.(2)



In modern times, today is also Divorce Day. Couples who vowed to just 'get through the holidays' split up the Monday after the weekend after New Year's Day. For Divorce Lawyers, Revenue Christmas com…

Government unemployment data today are what Nielsen TV ratings were decades ago - a flawed metric only believed if you like what they show. Government unemployment data take too long, like the CDC for the last 15 years needs six weeks to tell the public if lettuce has E. coli , and it only measures people getting paid through unemployment insurance. Once that runs out, to the government they are suddenly employed again.

read more

Gestational diabetes, a form of glucose intolerance during pregnancy, occurs primarily in women who already had obesity and added more weight. It not only carries immediate pregnancy risks but increases the chance of future heart disease for both the mother and the child. 



And it has gone up every year since 2016, according a new analysis of more than 12 million U.S. births from the National Center for Health Statistics; up 36 percent during the study period. Pregnancy is simply a trigger for s…

Researchers recently studied the relationship between numerical information in our vision, and how it affects our perception of space - and discovered subtle asymmetries that color our view on the world.



They wanted to see if numbers in our vision create “attentional biases” so volunteers were asked to identify the center of lines and squares filled with numbers. It showed how our perception of space is a complex interplay between “object-based” processing and our processing of numerical inform…

Bees have the reputation of being incredibly organized and spending their days making sure our food ecosystem is functioning. Neither is accurate. Unless you are an almond farmer in California and rented bees that were delivered in giant trucks, they have no impact on your food, and they are also not working non-stop for the hive.



Instead, they may be genetically wired to beg for food.



Male bees -“drones” - actually cannot digest pollen, the most important source of protein for bees. To avoid …

While 2025 will arguably not be remembered as a very positive year for humankind, for many reasons - first and foremost, raging wars and raising inequalities -, as we near its end some have tried to find good things to say about this particular revolution of our planet around the Sun. 

And who am I to blow against the wind? I have to tell you, 2025 for me has been a formidable year. But before I go into a list of achievements, let me paint this rosy picture in broad strokes. 



Professional achie…

You’re in your mid-40s, eating healthy and exercising regularly. It’s the same routine that has worked for years. Yet lately, the number on the scale is creeping up. Clothes fit differently. A bit of belly fat appears, seemingly overnight. You remember your mother’s frustration with the endless dieting, the extra cardio, the talk about “menopause weight.” But you’re still getting your periods. Menopause should be at least half a decade away. So what’s really going on? read more

High blood pressure is an important risk factor for developing cardiovascular disease and premature death. Medication can reduce those risks so it makes sense that if someone is prescribed an angiotensin receptor blocker like Losartan continue to take it.



Yet people don't. A new cohort from Sweden using over 341,000 participants found that fewer than half were on their medication up to three years later. It can't be cost, their health care is overwhelmingly subsidized. It may be side effects.

r…

The Monday after New Year's is colloquially called Divorce Day, but it's more than marriages ending. Lots of people in longer relationships, and certainly seasonal holidates, just want to get through the holidays before pulling the plug. That Monday this year is January 5th.



Alone may be better, something better may be out there as well, but it may also be the case that one or both people simply have unrealistic expectations that their TV movie fantasy should be reality.

read more

Christmas can be hard. For some people, it increases loneliness, grief, hopelessness and family tension, and the festive season has a way of turning ordinary concerns into urgent ones. Not because something terrible is guaranteed to happen, but because more is often at stake: money, time, family dynamics, travel and expectations. A large study found a small but consistent dip in people’s wellbeing in the run-up to Christmas. One psychological process that often shows up under this pressure is wo…

A small, icy moon of Saturn called Enceladus is one of the prime targets in the search for life elsewhere in the solar system. A new study strengthens the case for Enceladus being a habitable world. The data for those new research findings comes from the Cassini spacecraft, which orbited Saturn from 2004-2017. In 2005, Cassini discovered geyser-like plumes of water vapor and ice grains erupting continuously out of cracks in Enceladus’ icy shell. read more

Desire to have a short-term companion for the holidays - a "holidate" - is common enough that it gets its own portmanteau but the reasons may not always be positive. A survey commissioned by the American Psychological Association found that 43 percent of U.S. adults report stress levels during this time of year high enough it makes the season difficult to enjoy.



The pressure is all the usual stuff some people struggle more than others over, like money and difficult families, but they are magnif…

A recent survey by found that over 28 percent of adults claim they have an intimate, even romantic relationship, with an LLM (Large Language Model), colloquially deemed Artificial Intelligence - "AI".(1)



It seems plausible because 41 percent of people believe in psychics and ghosts.



What may be surprising is the demographics of the people embracing this new technology. It isn't young people, they know it's not real, it is Baby Boomers. Not only are they fine with AI relationships, over 50 perc…

Ford is the latest company to take a massive write-off on current electric car production- nearly $20 billion. Because making them would be even more costly.

read more

With criticism due to an overspending frenzy funded by student loan debt still in full swing, some universities want to get back to education and not be social justice platforms for its employees to groom children to their beliefs.

read more

From an early age, my life’s goal was to get at “the truth.” There were only two obvious career paths: Science, or investigative journalism. I went the first route, becoming an academic researcher. Proud of the path I chose, and always admiring the other one. read more

Lard wasn't that long ago. Given the renewed prevalence of Health Whisperers, those progressive forms of trad wives who fetishize the ancient ways and call soup "bone broth", it is probably an alternative sold at high cost to people who also buy raw milk.



For my father, lard was a way of life. Bread made in my grandmother's kitchen with lard and salt and pepper was his school lunch. That wasn't bleak to him, he didn't go to therapy about it, it was just his life. We were poor when I was a child…

Since 2022, when I got invited for a keynote talk at a Deep Learning school, I have been visiting with increasing frequency the northern Sweden town of Lulea, and its Technology University (LTU). In 2023 I spent three months there, invited by Marcus Liwicki and Fredrik Sandin to join the Machine Learning group for some studies of neuromorphic computing applications to particle detectors. Then toward the end of 2023 they were able to secure funding to invite me as a WASP Guest Professor. I thus s…

A doctor who told you to smoke cigarettes "in moderation" would likely lose their license, but alcohol has long been known as a legitimate class 1 carcinogen, deemed such before the International Agency for Research on Cancer was hijacked by activist epidemiologists as likely as not to be caught signing contracts with predatort trial lawyers, and has gotten 'in moderation' hand-waving by the medical community.



Maybe it is due to the amount of money the American Medical Association gets from the…

Bleeding hosts and stigmatizations are the best-known medieval miracles but less known ones, like a scorched cherry twig miraculously sprouting, a diseased swamp becoming fertile land, and healing the broken leg of an ox, are getting a new look. 

read more

Environmental activists have claimed for decades that PFAS (Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are "forever" chemicals that have been causing disease. Once former Natural Resources Defense Council environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. joined the Republican team, their belief in homeopathic effects and endocrine disruption was adopted by some on the right.

read more