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Funding organizations can fix the science publishing system—which currently puts profit first and science second—according to research published on the arXiv preprint server.

The new paper says the current relationship between researchers, funders and commercial publishers has created a "drain"—depriving the research system of money, time, trust and control.

The research team used public revenue and income statements to assess the money being spent on publishing articles with the biggest commercial publishers, and placed this in the broader historical context, including recent trends.

Published on arXiv, the paper examines the scale of publisher profits—with the four leading publishers (Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis) generating over $7.1 billion in revenue in 2024 alone, with profit margins exceeding 30%.

Much of this money comes from public funds intended for research—and the new paper says bold action by funders is now essential.

"The real solution is not for scientists to band together. We've tried that for 30 years and it hasn't worked—publisher profit margins have remained steady despite every attempted reimagining of science publishing," said Dr. Mark Hanson, from the Center for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter.

"The funding agencies hold all the cards. They're the ones paying authors to do research, and journals to publish that research. They can mandate change.

"Some already are. For example, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has proposed limits on how much it will reimburse researchers for payments to publishers to make their articles open access (free to read).

"We researchers can support the battle, but we cannot lead the charge."

Research funding often includes money to pay journal fees to make articles open access. With these fees rising, increasing amounts of research funding—which often comes from taxpayers—becomes publisher profits.

What are these green swirls in the water?

This timelapse of Landsat images shows the explosive growth of toxic algae in Nevada’s Pyramid Lake in 2024. Satellite data can warn us about poor water quality and help track harmful algae blooms.

Researchers have found that early Earth’s atmosphere could naturally produce sulfur-based biomolecules, including amino acids like cysteine. Using light and simple gases, they recreated conditions that created complex molecules long thought to require living organisms.

These findings suggest that life’s raw ingredients may have been widespread, not limited to rare environments like volcanic vents.

Early Atmosphere as a Source of Life’s Raw Materials
Earth’s ancient air may have played a far larger role in the rise of life than scientists once believed.

A study published today (December 1) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, led by researchers from CU Boulder and several collaborators, reports that the early atmosphere may have been actively generating sulfur-based molecules billions of years ago. These compounds are known to be important for life.

The discovery challenges the long-standing assumption that such sulfur molecules appeared only after living organisms had already evolved.

“Our study could help us understand the evolution of life at its earliest stages,” said first author Nate Reed, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA who completed the research while working in the Department of Chemistry and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at CU Boulder.

New balloon-mounted space radiation probes developed by the Surrey Space Center at the University of Surrey have captured their first measurements of a major solar storm, confirming the research team's model, which indicates the flare caused the highest levels of radiation at aviation altitude in almost two decades.

The solar flare—classified as an X5 event—triggered a rare Ground Level Enhancement (GLE) on 11 November 2025, in which solar energetic particles penetrated deep into Earth's atmosphere and caused a radiation surge that was detectable even at ground level. Within an hour, the UK Met Office and their counterparts at KNMI in the Netherlands began launching a sequence of weather observation balloons equipped with Surrey's sensors to measure the storm in real time—right up to commercial aircraft altitudes and into regions used by business jets and supersonic transport.

Radiation levels and aviation impact
Early analysis shows that radiation levels at 40,000 feet rose to their highest since 2006, reaching almost ten times normal background levels for a short period. Although this event did not pose any immediate health concern, larger storms in future could be more worrying, not least because they have the potential to disturb on-board aircraft electronic systems. During the storm's peak, the team estimate that single-event upsets—bit-flips in onboard computer memory caused by energetic particles—could have reached around 60 errors per hour per gigabyte.

Professor Clive Dyer, an expert in space weather at Surrey Space Center, University of Surrey, said, "This was the strongest Ground Level Event we've seen since December 2006. Neutron monitors around the world measured significant increases and, in conjunction with newly installed UK monitors at Lerwick, Guildford and Camborne, these will enable us to map the footprint of the event across the globe.

"Our sensors have given the clearest picture yet of how rapidly conditions can change at aviation altitudes. We know from historical observations that significantly bigger events are possible, and we need to be ready."

A rock on Mars spilled a surprising yellow treasure after Curiosity accidentally cracked through its unremarkable exterior.

When the rover rolled its 899-kilogram (1,982-pound) body over the fragile lump of mineral in May of last year, the deposit broke open, revealing yellow crystals of elemental sulfur, known as brimstone.

Although sulfates are fairly common on Mars, this represented the first sulfur in its pure elemental form found on the red planet.

What's even more exciting is that the Gediz Vallis Channel, where Curiosity found the rock, is littered with objects that look suspiciously similar to the sulfur rock before it got fortuitously crushed – suggesting that, somehow, elemental sulfur may be abundant there in some places.

A low-dose blend of zinc, serine, and branched-chain amino acids dramatically improved brain signaling and social behavior across three different mouse models of autism.

Even brief treatment sparked real-time changes in neural connectivity, making this nutrient cocktail an intriguing path for future exploration.

Low-Dose Nutrient Blend Shows Potential in Autism Mouse Models
Researchers led by Tzyy-Nan Huang and Ming-Hui Lin at Academia Sinica in Taiwan have found that a small-dose combination of zinc, serine, and branched-chain amino acids may ease behavioral problems in several mouse models of autism.

The work, published December 2nd in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, suggests that these three supplements, when taken together, help strengthen communication between neurons and improve social interactions in the animals.

A research team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has shown that a nanoparticle-based vaccine can successfully prevent melanoma, pancreatic cancer, and triple-negative breast cancer in mice. Depending on the cancer type, as many as 88 percent of vaccinated mice remained free of tumors (depending on the cancer), and the approach reduced—and in some instances entirely blocked—the spread of cancer in the body.

“By engineering these nanoparticles to activate the immune system via multi-pathway activation that combines with cancer-specific antigens, we can prevent tumor growth with remarkable survival rates,” says Prabhani Atukorale, assistant professor of biomedical engineering in the Riccio College of Engineering at UMass Amherst and corresponding author on the paper.

Atukorale’s earlier work found that her nanoparticle-based drug design could shrink or eliminate existing tumors in mice. The new results reveal that the same technology also works as a preventative strategy.

This photo of Earth, dubbed the Blue Marble, was taken by the Apollo 17 crew #OTD in 1972 as they traveled to the Moon.

It soon became one of the most widely-distributed photographs in history.