EurekAlert! National Science Foundation - NSF Funded Research News

NSF Funded Research News

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 12-Sep-2025 10:11 ET (12-Sep-2025 14:11 GMT/UTC)

Fresh fossil finds in Africa shed light on the era before Earth’s largest mass extinction

University of Washington
Peer-Reviewed Publication

An international team of paleontologists, led by researchers at the University of Washington and the Field Museum of Natural History, is identifying the animals that thrived in southern Pangea — the planet’s single supercontinent at the time — just before the so-called “Great Dying” wiped out about 70% of terrestrial species, and an even larger fraction of marine ones.

Journal: Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology
Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society

Is the 'love hormone,' oxytocin, also the 'friendship hormone'?

University of California - Berkeley
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A UC Berkeley study found that social prairie voles lacking the receptor for oxytocin are slow to form friendships, are less motivated to reach their friends, and are less aggressive toward and avoidant of unfamiliar peers. This points toward a role for oxytocin in both the ‘approach’ and ‘avoid’ sides of maintaining specific friendships, affecting selectivity.

Journal: Current Biology
Funder: NIH/National Institutes of Health, U.S. National Science Foundation

Why oxytocin treatments for social behavior are inconsistent

Society for Neuroscience
Peer-Reviewed Publication

When rhesus monkeys are already socially motivated, oxytocin prolongs their social behavior by promoting activity within and communication between two brain areas.

Journal: JNeurosci
Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation, NIH/National Institute of Mental Health

New class of protein misfolding simulated in high definition

Penn State
Peer-Reviewed Publication

New computer simulations that model every atom of a protein as it folds into its final three-dimensional form support the existence of a recently identified type of protein misfolding.

Journal: Science Advances
Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation, NIH/National Institutes of Health, National Science Centre, Poland

Consider the chemistry of your quantum materials, say researchers at Columbia

Columbia University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A team of chemists and physicists at Columbia University have discovered that atomic orbitals, not just a material's underlying crystal lattice, can act a new source of electron frustration that researchers can now tap to create quantum behaviors.

Journal: Nature Physics
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, U.S. National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Simons Foundation

Neighbors matter: Community cohesion boosts disaster resilience, Texas A&M study finds

Texas A&M University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A study from the Texas A&M University School of Public Health sheds new light on the relationship between community cohesion prior to a natural disaster and resilience after one, with possible policy applications for public health and emergency preparedness practitioners.

Journal: Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness
Funder: Texas A&M Superfund Research Center, U.S. National Science Foundation

New pathways could turn carbon dioxide into valuable fuels and chemicals

Texas A&M University

Rather than focusing solely on carbon emissions, chemical engineers at Texas A&M are emphasizing the idea of circularity, where CO2 becomes a resource.

Journal: Chem Catalysis
Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation, Governor's University Research Initiative, Oak Ridge Associated Universities

There’s something fishy going on with great white sharks that scientists can’t explain

Florida Museum of Natural History
Peer-Reviewed Publication

White sharks exhibit stark differences between the DNA in their nuclei and the DNA in their mitochondria, and the longstanding theory that explains why has just been invalidated.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation, College of Charleston, Florida Museum of Natural History

Zhou receives funding for novel performance profiling & analysis infrastructure for scientific deep learning workloads

George Mason University
Grant and Award Announcement

Keren Zhou, Assistant Professor, Computer Science, College of Engineering and Computing (CEC), received funding for the project: “Collaborative Research: Elements: DLToolkit: A Novel Performance Profiling and Analysis Infrastructure for Scientific Deep Learning Workloads.”

Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation

‘Bridge’ of stray stars reveals active merger of two galaxy clusters

Brown University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

In a preview of observations that will be made routinely by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, astronomers found evidence indicating that a galaxy cluster is merging, a first for a nearby (astronomically speaking) cluster.

Journal: The Astrophysical Journal
Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation, DOE/US Department of Energy, NASA Rhode Island Space Grant

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