An international team of ornithologists has overturned one of the oldest assumptions in natural history by directly documenting how common cuckoos lay their eggs in host nests located inside cavities. The findings provide definitive evidence that cuckoos do not carry eggs in their beaks; a theory that has persisted since ancient times.

Researchers at almost 100 institutions supported the creation of the Max Planck Institute-funded EVApeCognition Dataset – with hopes high that the resource could enhance scientific understanding of how human intelligence has evolved.

BUFFALO, NY — April 21, 2026 — A new meeting report was published in Volume 18 of Aging-US on April 6, 2026, titled “Toward actionable interventions in human aging (12th ARDD meeting, 2025).”

Floatable beads made from chitosan and cellulose acetate and enhanced with bentonite were engineered to effectively clean oil from water. The beads showed good oil adsorption capacity while remaining easy to collect from the water surface. 

A newly discovered mechanism renders antibiotic-resistant bacteria vulnerable by disabling both their individual resistance and a process known as cross-protection, the ability of resistant bacteria to shield nearby, otherwise sensitive strains. By targeting this shared defense, researchers aim to restore the effectiveness of antibiotics, enabling them to eliminate not only resistant bacteria but also the susceptible microbes they protect.

What culinary practices prevailed in the South Caucasus during the Bronze Age? The cuisine was remarkably diverse. This is what an international research team from the Universities of Bonn and Bari, along with other scientific institutions such as the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences report. The new evidence highlights a multi-ingredient cuisine alongside the central role of dairy products, fruit, and grape-based beverages in Kura-Araxes communities. The findings have now been published in the journal PNAS. 

Researchers at Umeå University have identified two human cell proteins, NUP98 and NUP153, that play a crucial role in how viruses such as tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV), West Nile virus, and dengue virus replicate in the body. The findings challenge existing views of how these viruses exploit human cells and point to new, promising targets for future antiviral drugs.

Stress fiber–generated traction forces critically regulate mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) behavior, yet how mechanical cues are integrated across transcriptional programs remains unclear. Here, we attenuated actomyosin contractility in human MSCs and performed parallel Assay for Transposase-Accessible Chromatin with high-throughput sequencing (ATAC-seq), YAP-targeted Cleavage Under Targets and Tagmentation sequencing (CUT&Tag) and RNA-seq profiling. We show that reduced stress fiber traction force selectively reorganizes chromatin accessibility into coherent functional modules, resulting in diverse transcriptional programs. The mechanosensitive co-activator YAP functions as a parallel force-responsive regulatory layer coordinating with chromatin accessibility changes. Integration of chromatin accessibility, YAP occupancy, and transcriptomic profiles reveals pathway-specific regulatory responses, identifying focal adhesion and PI3K-Akt signaling as central mechanosensitive pathways coordinated across layers. Together, these findings establish a modular framework for force-dependent gene regulation, demonstrating how mechanical signals are integrated across epigenomic and transcriptional networks to shape MSC transcriptional programs.