Rice is a staple food for more than half of the world’s population, but in some mining-impacted regions, paddy soils can contain elevated levels of arsenic and antimony. These toxic metalloids can move from soil into rice plants, raising concerns for food safety and human health. A new study published in Biochar reports a promising strategy: a magnetic silicon-enriched biochar gel that can immobilize both arsenic and antimony in contaminated paddy soil and reduce their accumulation in rice grains.

Using nationally representative data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2017–2023, researchers examined obesity prevalence among children and adolescents ages 5-18 years using the recently proposed Lancet Commission framework. The new framework distinguishes between preclinical obesity, in which excess adiposity is present without current signs of organ dysfunction or disease, and clinical obesity, where measurable health complications associated with obesity are already evident.

A new PET imaging approach that measures synaptic density in the spinal cord provides a quantitative way to assess the brain's functional wiring in patients with multiple sclerosis. With this personalized information, physicians can monitor disease progression and evaluate whether new treatments are working to protect or restore these critical connections. This research was presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging's 2026 Annual Meeting.

A new end-to-end PET imaging approach for osteosarcoma can rapidly and reliably distinguish tumor tissue from normal tissue and accurately assess surgical margins in real time. The novel platform, presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2026 Annual Meeting, has the potential to fundamentally reshape surgical practice for osteosarcoma by enabling precise tumor resection, significantly reducing the risk of local recurrence, and preserving maximum limb function.

An AI-assisted model based on 71 different blood proteins could help doctors better predict retinal degeneration in diabetic patients before symptoms occur, according to a study published June 2^nd in the open access journal PLOS Medicine by Huangdong Li from the Guangdong Provincial Clinical Research Center for Ocular Diseases in Guangzhou, China, and colleagues.

A novel theranostic approach that targets RET -- a newly identified biomarker for neuroendocrine prostate cancer enables high-contrast PET imaging and effective, safe treatment for this highly aggressive malignancy. Because this disease is often poorly visualized with prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-based imaging, the RET approach offers an important alternative when conventional molecular imaging and PSMA-directed therapies are unsuitable. This research was presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2026 Annual Meeting.