Even some 200 years after his death, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s scientific curiosity continues to yield new insights. This has now been demonstrated by biologists at Friedrich Schiller University Jena while closely examining the amber collection of the Weimar poet and polymath. In one of the pieces, they discovered a fossilized ant approximately 40 million years old which, thanks to its excellent state of preservation and extensive analyses, provides valuable information about the insect species. The Jena researchers report their findings together with experts from the Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung and the Klassik Stiftung Weimar in the scientific journal »Scientific Reports«.

A research team from Munich has identified a previously unknown communication mechanism in harvestmen. Five closely related species show species-specific, strongly fluorescent structures on their backs that become especially visible under ultraviolet light. The results suggest that these patterns serve for species recognition—particularly at dusk and in moonlight. The study has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Researchers at UCL and Great Ormond Street Hospital have developed the first-ever lab-grown mini-stomach that contains the key components of the full-sized human organ.¹

A comprehensive review led by researchers from Southern Medical University and Fudan University uncovers how the body’s circadian clock regulates tumor biology, immune function, and the effectiveness of immune checkpoint inhibitors. The study integrates molecular, cellular, and clinical findings to propose “chronotherapy” as a new strategy to optimize cancer immunotherapy outcomes through time-of-day–based dosing and tumor microenvironment modulation.

While probing the escape reflex in the fruit fly Drosophila, researchers at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, found that the synapses of one of the participating neurons can learn – the correct technical term is "plastic". This plasticity likely leads to the synapse not being functional anymore at old age thus abolishing the escape reflex. These findings were recently published in the renowned Journal PLoS Biology.

New University of Hawaiʻi research confirms that “Sharktober” is real, revealing a statistically significant spike in shark bite incidents in Hawaiian waters every October. The study, which analyzed 30 years of data (1995–2024), found that about 20% of all recorded bites occurred in that single month, a frequency far exceeding any other time of the year. Researchers at UH Mānoa’s Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) Shark Lab published their findings in Frontiers in Marine Science.