Fungal toxins contaminating food and animal feed pose a major threat to livestock health. In particular, deoxynivalenol (DON), a toxin produced by Fusarium fungi, can severely damage pig gut cells. A recent study in China reveals that lycopene, a natural antioxidant derived from tomatoes, helps protect these cells from DON-induced injury. It does so by blocking PGAM5, a key protein involved in cellular stress-highlighting its potential in preventing toxin-related damage.

Children who need life‑saving emergency surgery after a serious injury are almost six times more likely to die if in poorer countries than in wealthier ones, according to an international study led by the University of Cambridge.

A new study finds that large language models (LLMs), used with straightforward prompting, perform poorly on routine number-crunching tasks that hospital administrators depend on every day to track patients and allocate resources. The findings were published this week in the open-access journal PLOS Digital Health by Eyal Klang of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA, and colleagues.