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Bacterial enzyme and nanoparticle discoveries hold promise for treating gut pain

Abdominal pain is a hallmark of many digestive disorders, including inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome. In an effort to develop targeted treatments for gut pain, scientists have discovered a new enzyme in gut bacteria and are using nanoparticles to deliver drugs inside cells.

Currently, there are no treatments specifically for gut pain, and existing painkillers are often insufficient at managing symptoms. These drugs—including opioids, NSAIDs, and steroids—also come with side effects, some of which directly harm the digestive system.

In two new studies published in Cell Host & Microbe and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers focused on PAR2, a receptor involved in pain signaling that has been shown to play a role in gastrointestinal diseases marked by inflammation and pain. Found on the lining of the gut and on pain-sensing nerves in the gut, PAR2 is activated by certain enzymes called proteases and is a promising target for treating gut pain—in numerous ways.

Cassini proves complex chemistry in Enceladus ocean

Scientists digging through data collected by the Cassini spacecraft have found new complex organic molecules spewing from Saturn’s moon Enceladus. This is a clear sign that complex chemical reactions are taking place within its underground ocean. Some of these reactions could be part of chains that lead to even more complex, potentially biologically relevant molecules.

Published in Nature Astronomy, this discovery further strengthens the case for a dedicated European Space Agency (ESA) mission to orbit and land on Enceladus.

In 2005, Cassini found the first evidence that Enceladus has a hidden ocean beneath its icy surface. Jets of water burst from cracks close to the moon’s south pole, shooting ice grains into space. Smaller than grains of sand, some of the tiny pieces of ice fall back onto the moon’s surface, while others escape and form a ring around Saturn that traces Enceladus’s orbit.

Widely-prescribed opioid painkiller tramadol not significantly effective for easing chronic pain, analysis finds

The strong opioid painkiller tramadol is not significantly effective at easing the chronic pain for which it’s widely prescribed, finds a pooled data analysis of the available research, published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine.

It likely increases the risk of serious side effects, including , the findings indicate, prompting the researchers to conclude that the potential harms of tramadol probably outweigh its benefits, and that its use should be minimized.

Tramadol is a dual-action widely prescribed for the treatment of moderate to severe acute and chronic pain. As such, it’s recommended in several medical guidelines for pain management, note the researchers.

AI-based model can help traffic engineers predict future sites of possible crashes

In a significant step toward improving road safety, Johns Hopkins University researchers have developed an AI-based tool that can identify the risk factors contributing to car crashes across the United States and to accurately predict future incidents.

The tool, called SafeTraffic Copilot, aims to provide experts with both crash analyses and crash predictions to reduce the rising number of fatalities and injuries that happen on U.S. roads each year.

The work, led by Johns Hopkins University researchers, is published in Nature Communications.

Nobel Prize: Quantum Tunneling on a Large Scale

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics recognizes the discovery of macroscopic quantum tunneling in electrical circuits.

This story will be updated with a longer explanation of the Nobel-winning work on Thursday, 9 October.

Running up against a barrier, a classical object bounces back, but a quantum particle can come out the other side. So-called quantum tunneling explains a host of phenomena, from electron jumps in semiconductors to radioactive decays in nuclei. But tunneling is not limited to subatomic particles, as underscored by this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics. The prize recipients—John Clarke from the University of California, Berkeley; Michel Devoret from Yale University; and John Martinis from the University of California, Santa Barbara—demonstrated that large objects consisting of billions of particles can also tunnel across barriers [1– 3]. Using a superconducting circuit, the physicists showed that the superconducting electrons, acting as a collective unit, tunneled across an energy barrier between two voltage states. The work thrust open the field of superconducting circuits, which have become one of the promising platforms for future quantum computing devices.

Physicists detect water’s ultraviolet fingerprint in interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS

For millions of years, a fragment of ice and dust drifted between the stars—like a sealed bottle cast into the cosmic ocean. This summer, that bottle finally washed ashore in our solar system and was designated 3I/ATLAS, only the third known interstellar comet. When Auburn University scientists pointed NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory toward it, they made a remarkable find: the first detection of hydroxyl (OH) gas from this object, a chemical fingerprint of water.

Swift’s space-based telescope could spot the faint ultraviolet glow that ground observatories can’t see—because, high above Earth’s atmosphere, it captures light that never reaches Earth’s surface.

Detecting water—through its ultraviolet by-product, hydroxyl—is a major breakthrough for understanding how interstellar comets evolve. In solar-system comets, water is the yardstick by which scientists measure their overall activity and track how sunlight drives the release of other gases. It’s the chemical benchmark that anchors every comparison of volatile ices in a ’s nucleus.

New study rules out binary hardening as cause of Dimorphos’s orbital period drop

A new study has challenged a popular explanation for the unexpected 30-second shortening of Dimorphos’s orbital period. The researchers found that the proposed mechanism would actually produce the opposite effect, given the gravitational dynamics of the small moon. The paper has been accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics and is currently available on the arXiv preprint server.

Scientists unlock new patterns of protein behavior in cell membranes

Cellular membrane proteins play many important roles throughout the body, including transporting substances in and out of the cell, transmitting signals, speeding up reactions and helping neighboring cells stick together. When they malfunction, it can cause serious diseases including cancer, making them attractive drug targets. But understanding how membrane proteins behave and function can be challenging because their position within the cell’s lipid membrane—a tightly-packed double layer of fat-like molecules—makes them difficult to study.

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