The first atlas of the female reproductive system shows menopause as a turning point that reorganizes organs and tissues, revealing that they do not all age at the same rate.

The study used artificial intelligence and the supercomputing power of MareNostrum 5 to analyze more than 1,000 tissue images and the expression of thousands of genes in 659 samples from 304 women.

The results open the door to detecting blood biomarkers that would allow non-invasive monitoring of reproductive aging and its associated risks.

An IR Sant Pau study analyzes for the first time the medium-term impact of angiogenic status during pregnancy on memory function in a period less influenced by postpartum-related factors.

The results, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, provide new evidence on the role of the vascular system in women’s cognitive health in the medium and long term.

The study suggests that this imbalance could act as a risk marker beyond preeclampsia, as it reflects a vascular process with potentially persistent implications.

Scorpions wield some of the natural world’s most formidable built-in weapons, from crushing pincers to venomous stingers. Scientists have long known that these structures contain trace metals that strengthen them, but only a small fraction of the roughly 3,000 scorpions had ever been examined for this trait. A new study published April 28 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface dramatically expands that understanding. Researchers at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute analyzed 18 scorpion species and uncovered striking patterns in the concentration and distribution of these metals.

Harvard researchers built a swarm of simple ant-like robots (RAnts) that can collectively excavate and construct structures without central control. Their experiments show that adaptive group behavior can emerge from the interaction between many simple agents and their environment, with potential applications in many fields. 

A new study in Current Biology suggests that restoration of a rainforest tree on tropical atolls depends upon the right soil fungi being present. The tree species, Pisonia grandis, is the backbone of life on and around atolls: everything from seabirds to the surrounding coral reefs depend on these trees. Research from Palmyra Atoll, the most remote island on Earth, suggests that these extraordinary island ecosystems are dependent upon a specific mycorrhizal fungi that supplies resources to these Pisonia trees.