For the third consecutive year, the Ramona Jones Friends of BrainHealth Luncheon took scientific innovation to a new level, offering talented young brain health researchers a chance to compete Shark Tank-style for $20,000 in grant funding for novel pilot studies designed to generate lasting, real-world impact. This annual event is led by Center for BrainHealth, part of The University of Texas at Dallas.

Scientists from Trinity College Dublin have unearthed a “universal thermal performance curve” (UTPC) that seemingly applies to all species and dictates their responses to temperature change. This UTPC essentially “shackles evolution” as no species seem to have broken free from the constraints it imposes on  how temperature affects performance.

All living things are affected by temperature, but the newly discovered UTPC unifies tens of thousands of seemingly different curves that explain how well “species work” at different temperatures. And not only does the UTPC seem to apply to all species, but also to all measures of their performance with regard to temperature variation – whether you are measuring lizards running on a treadmill, sharks swimming in the ocean, or recording cell division rates in bacteria.

What gives shark skin its toughness and sleek glide? Tiny, tooth-like scales called dermal denticles. Made of the same material as teeth, these structures protect sharks and reduce drag—especially crucial during mating. To uncover how denticles change with age and between sexes, researchers used high-powered electron microscopy on bonnethead sharks. The ultra-detailed images revealed striking variations in denticle shape and size across life stages and body regions. The findings offer a rare glimpse into how shark skin evolves as both armor and adaptation.

Understanding people’s attitudes to interactions with sharks could help halt the global decline of shark numbers, according to new research carried out on Ascension Island.  

The habitat of thirty species of sharks, rays, and chimaeras, also called ghost sharks, overlap with areas where proposed deep-sea mining may occur, according to new research. Nearly two-thirds of these species are already threatened with extinction due to human impacts, so deep-sea mining, which will disrupt the seafloor and discharge large plumes of sediment into the water above, has the potential to elevate their extinction risk.