Although the treatment did not significantly lower blood pressure compared with a placebo device across all participants, researchers observed encouraging results in patients with more severe hypertension. The findings suggest that stimulating nerves in the ear could eventually help certain people whose blood pressure remains elevated despite taking medication.

The results come from the SCRATCH-HTN trial, published in Hypertension, a journal of the American Heart Association. Researchers emphasize that larger studies are needed to determine whether the approach can provide meaningful benefits and which patients might respond best.

How Ear Nerve Stimulation Could Lower Blood Pressure

The experimental treatment uses a technique called transcutaneous autonomic neuromodulation (tAN), which aims to influence the autonomic nervous system. This network of nerves automatically controls essential bodily functions, including heart rate, digestion, and blood pressure.

By delivering mild electrical signals to nerves in the ear, researchers hope to influence the body’s natural mechanisms for regulating blood pressure without requiring an invasive procedure.

The handheld device, developed by Afferent Medical Solutions, uses two small clips positioned on the tragus, the small flap of cartilage located just in front of the ear canal. These clips deliver gentle electrical stimulation, allowing patients to administer the treatment themselves without visiting a clinic.

Clinical Trial Tests the Device in 63 Patients

The clinical trial, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), enrolled 63 people with uncontrolled hypertension. All participants were already taking at least one medication to lower their blood pressure, but their readings remained above recommended levels.

Researchers randomly divided the participants into two groups. One received active nerve stimulation, while the other used a sham device designed to serve as a comparison. This approach helped investigators assess whether the electrical stimulation produced benefits beyond those associated with using the device itself.

Participants used their assigned devices for 30 minutes daily during the first two weeks. For the following 10 weeks, they reduced their sessions to once per week.

The results showed that the treatment was safe and generally comfortable for participants. Most also followed the prescribed schedule, suggesting that the technology could be practical for regular use at home.

However, when researchers compared blood pressure changes across the entire study population, they found no statistically significant difference between patients receiving active stimulation and those using the sham device.

Promising Results in Patients With Severe Hypertension

Despite the lack of a significant overall benefit, the researchers identified a potentially important finding among participants who entered the trial with more severe hypertension.

A prespecified subgroup analysis, meaning the researchers had planned this comparison before examining the results, revealed a greater reduction in blood pressure among these patients when they received active nerve stimulation rather than the sham treatment.

This finding raises the possibility that the technique may work better for people with particularly difficult-to-control blood pressure. However, the trial was relatively small, and the subgroup results require confirmation in larger studies before any conclusions can be drawn about its effectiveness.

Dr. Ajay Gupta, Chief Investigator, Clinical Reader at Queen Mary University of London and Consultant Physician at Barts Health NHS Trust, said:

“This is an exciting, highly patient-acceptable technology that could ultimately provide a cheap, scalable solution for millions. Although the trial did not achieve significance across the broad unselected group, those with more severe hypertension exhibited a clear blood pressure reduction in the active group compared to sham.

“As the first and most thorough study of its kind, this points towards important new research directions that could help us understand whether non-invasive neuromodulation can benefit particular groups of patients with uncontrolled hypertension.”

A Potential New Option for Hard-to-Control Blood Pressure

High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is a major contributor to cardiovascular disease and increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes. It places additional strain on blood vessels and the heart, potentially causing serious damage over time.

Although medications help many patients manage their condition, a substantial number continue to have blood pressure readings above recommended targets even while receiving treatment.

This ongoing challenge has encouraged scientists to explore additional approaches that could complement existing therapies.

Ear nerve stimulation is one such possibility. Because the device is small, does not require surgery, and can be used at home, it could offer a convenient option if future research establishes that it reliably lowers blood pressure in certain patients.

For now, the findings represent an early step rather than proof of an effective new treatment. The researchers say larger clinical trials will be essential to confirm the encouraging results in patients with severe hypertension and identify which groups, if any, could benefit most from this approach.

The study, published in Science Advances, introduces a new approach called “ousiometrics,” which uses mathematical methods to measure the essential meaning of language. Its most striking finding is that the words people use show a consistent and widespread preference for safety over danger.

This hidden safety bias could transform how researchers study language, understand human behavior, and develop artificial intelligence systems that interpret what people say and write.

Scientists Discover a Hidden Safety Bias in Human Language

Since the 1950s, much of the scientific understanding of word meaning has relied on a framework developed through pioneering research by psychologist Charles Osgood and others. Known as the VAD model, it describes meaning through three emotional dimensions: valence (positive vs. negative), arousal (excited vs. calm), and dominance (controlling vs. submissive).

This approach became influential in psychology, linguistics, and artificial intelligence, particularly in systems designed to identify the emotional tone of written language.

However, the University of Vermont researchers found evidence that this long-established model overlooks important aspects of how meaning is organized.

Their analysis examined billions of individual uses of more than 20,000 words across a wide range of real-world texts. Using advanced computational techniques, the team identified a different underlying structure. They found that the three dimensions in the traditional VAD model are not independent of one another, as previously assumed.

Instead, their results indicate that word meaning can be more effectively described through three separate dimensions: power (weak vs. powerful), danger (safe vs. dangerous), and structure (ordered vs. chaotic).

The research, supported by the US National Science Foundation, Google, MassMutual, and other funders, found that this new framework accounted for more than 90% of the variation in measured word meaning. The traditional VAD approach explained approximately 72%.

That improvement could be especially important as large language models, automated content moderation, and other AI technologies increasingly depend on understanding human communication.

Why Human Language Favors Safety Over Danger

One of the study’s most unexpected discoveries emerged when the researchers examined how words actually appear in everyday communication.

Across books, news reporting, social media, and spoken language, words associated with safety appeared much more frequently than those associated with danger.

This finding offers a new explanation for a familiar phenomenon called the Pollyanna principle, which describes the tendency for human language to lean toward positive rather than negative words.

For decades, researchers generally interpreted this pattern as evidence that people favor positive emotional expressions. The new analysis suggests that something more fundamental may be responsible.

According to the researchers, the apparent preference for positivity largely reflects an underlying preference for safety.

“The Pollyanna principle’s positivity bias,” the study concludes. “is, in fact, a one-dimensional projection of an underlying safety bias.”

“This is a big observation that comes out of this work,” said Peter Dodds, director of the UVM’s Complex Systems Institute and senior author of the study. “Expressions of safety are crucial to all language.”

Could Human Language Be Shaped by Survival?

The discovery raises an intriguing possibility: the structure of human language may reflect evolutionary pressures associated with staying alive.

From this perspective, words do more than communicate feelings. They also help people recognize threats, evaluate uncertainty, establish trust, and coordinate actions with others.

Being able to distinguish between safety and danger is essential to survival. The researchers suggest that this basic human priority may also influence how meaning is organized in language.

Throughout daily life, people constantly exchange information about whether individuals, places, situations, and behaviors are threatening or safe. The new findings suggest that these distinctions may be more central to communication than previously recognized.

They also offer a different interpretation of why positive language is so common. Rather than simply expressing happiness or approval, many positive words may convey a sense of security, stability, or predictability.

Julia Zimmerman, a postdoctoral researcher in UVM’s Computational Story Lab and a co-author of the study, said the three newly identified dimensions reflect experiences that are fundamental to human life.

“Power, danger, and structure,” she said, “are relevant to every person that’s ever lived.”

Researchers have also long recognized that people tend to favor language associated with goodness and low aggression. The team argues that these familiar tendencies may arise from the same deeper pattern.

“We now understand,” the team writes, that these are “shadows of an underlying linguistic safety bias.”

Although the results are consistent with a possible connection between language and survival, they do not establish that evolutionary pressures directly caused the safety bias.

A Discovery That Could Change How AI Understands Language

The findings have implications that extend well beyond linguistics.

Many artificial intelligence systems use sentiment analysis to determine whether language expresses positive, negative, or neutral feelings. Some approaches also draw on the traditional VAD framework to measure emotional meaning.

If that framework does not fully capture the underlying structure of language, systems built around it could overlook important distinctions in what people communicate.

The researchers suggest that incorporating power, danger, and structure could eventually help AI models interpret language more accurately and explain their assessments more clearly. This may be particularly useful when analyzing trust, risk, and decision-making.

In linguistics, the findings offer a different way to understand the foundations of meaning. Instead of treating emotional tone as the primary organizing principle, the new framework emphasizes distinctions related to strength, safety, and predictability.

Psychology could also be affected. Decades of studies have used the VAD model to investigate emotions, perception, and behavior. A different set of fundamental dimensions could encourage researchers to reconsider how some of those findings are interpreted.

The discovery may also interest neuroscientists. The human brain is highly sensitive to threats and signals of safety, and the newly identified linguistic bias suggests that these biological priorities may be reflected in language. This potential connection could help researchers explore relationships between brain activity and symbolic communication, although further research would be needed to establish them.

A New Tool Measures the Hidden Meaning of Words

To investigate these patterns, the researchers created analytical methods designed to measure meaning across enormous collections of written and spoken language.

One of their central innovations is the “ousiometer,” a tool that rapidly evaluates the essential meaning of large bodies of text and produces an average meaning score.

(The word “ouisa” comes from Ancient Greek and is a root for the English word “essence.”)

The ousiometer builds on an earlier tool developed by the research team called the “hedonometer” (a happiness meter). While that instrument measures the overall emotional tone of language, the new approach examines broader patterns of meaning.

The researchers demonstrated that the ousiometer can analyze material from remarkably different sources, including Jane Austen’s novels, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, the New York Times, Wikipedia, Twitter, and transcripts of talk radio programs.

The tool can also track how meaning shifts as a story unfolds.

For example, the researchers analyzed an English translation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables and mapped its changing meaning throughout the novel.

They called this changing pattern an “ousiometric trajectory.” The visualization resembles the twisting shape of a multicolored protein, with the narrative moving across a grid based on four contrasting pairs: dangerous/safe, weak/powerful, gentle/aggressive, and bad/good.

By following this path, researchers can observe how the underlying meaning of the text changes from one section of the story to another.

Why Counting Word Frequency Changes the Results

Another important innovation involved distinguishing between words themselves and how often people actually use them.

In linguistics, researchers describe individual words as categories called “types,” while each appearance of a word in text is known as a “token.”

(For example, as a category “apple” is a type and every time the word “apple” is used in a sentence is a token.)

This distinction matters because a word that appears millions of times contributes much more to everyday communication than one that is rarely used.

Earlier research often gave each word equal importance, regardless of its frequency. The Vermont team instead incorporated how often words appear in real communication, allowing patterns to emerge that might otherwise remain hidden.

This approach was particularly important for identifying the widespread preference for safety-related language.

The ten-member research team was led by Peter Dodds and Chris Danforth, professors in UVM’s College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences. Their collaborators included researchers from the Santa Fe Institute, the Complexity Science Hub in Austria, Howard Hughes Medical Center, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Adelaide, and MassMutual Data Science.

Rethinking What Human Language Reveals About Us

Understanding this hidden safety bias could have consequences for how researchers study communication across society.

If words consistently reflect a preference for safety, that tendency may influence how stories are told, how information spreads, and how people interpret events and experiences.

The findings could eventually inform research into political communication, mental health messaging, and AI systems designed to interact with people.

More broadly, the study challenges the idea that human language can be understood primarily through emotions such as happiness, fear, and excitement.

Instead, the researchers propose that meaning has a deeper structure connected to power, danger, and order. Their findings suggest that language may reflect the challenges humans face when navigating uncertain environments, maintaining relationships, and identifying threats.

By revealing this previously overlooked structure, the team offers a new way to understand what words communicate and why certain kinds of meaning dominate everyday conversation. Human language, their research suggests, may be more closely connected to our fundamental need for safety than scientists have traditionally recognized.

Bennu completes one orbit around the Sun every 1.2 years and makes a relatively close approach to Earth about every six years, coming within roughly 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles). NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission traveled to the asteroid, collected material from its surface, and successfully delivered the samples to Earth in 2023.

On September 23, 2023, a capsule carrying approximately 120 grams of asteroid material landed in the Utah desert. Scientists around the world subsequently received small portions of the precious cargo for detailed study.

Among them was Maria Schönbächler, Professor of Isotope Geochemistry at ETH Zurich, whose laboratory received half a gram of Bennu material. Her team immediately began examining the samples for clues about the asteroid’s history.

The research, now published in Science Advances, has uncovered a distinctive chemical signature that not only helps identify Bennu’s origins but also provides new evidence about the processes that shaped the early Solar System.

Bennu’s Chemical Fingerprint Reveals Its Cosmic Relatives

To investigate Bennu’s origins, the ETH Zurich researchers examined isotopes of three elements: iron, titanium, and chromium.

Isotopes are different forms of the same chemical element that contain varying numbers of neutrons, giving them slightly different masses. By measuring the relative amounts of these isotopes, scientists can identify a material’s chemical fingerprint. These patterns provide clues about where an asteroid’s ingredients originated and, in some cases, when they formed.

The analysis revealed that iron and titanium are distributed remarkably evenly throughout Bennu’s material. It also uncovered a close chemical relationship between Bennu, the asteroid Ryugu, and a rare group of primitive meteorites known as CI meteorites.

CI meteorites are carbon-rich remnants of the early Solar System that have undergone relatively little alteration over billions of years. They are exceptionally uncommon among meteorites recovered on Earth.

Bennu, Ryugu, and CI meteorites share strikingly similar isotopic fingerprints, suggesting that their original materials came from the same reservoir of ancient cosmic dust. Their chemical signatures also differ substantially from those of other known asteroids, meteorite groups, and planets.

These similarities offer an important clue about where these objects formed and what conditions existed during the Solar System’s earliest stages.

Scientists Discover Bennu’s Unexpected Birthplace

For years, researchers generally believed that primitive asteroids like Bennu originated in the outer Solar System, perhaps in the same distant regions where comets formed. They also suspected that Bennu’s original material came together relatively late in the Solar System’s development.

The new findings challenge both assumptions.

Instead, the researchers propose that the material that became Bennu, Ryugu, and CI meteorites accumulated near a boundary known as the water-ice line.

This boundary marks the region in the disk surrounding the young Sun where temperatures were low enough for water vapor to freeze into ice. Around 4.5 billion years ago, it may have been a particularly important meeting place for material traveling from different parts of the developing Solar System.

Dust originating in both the inner and outer regions mixed near this boundary. Water ice helped the smallest particles stick together, allowing them to gradually accumulate into larger bodies.

“Bennu is a hybrid: the material does not clearly match either the inner or the outer Solar System,” says Schönbächler.

Its unusual chemical composition suggests that Bennu formed from a combination of materials originating in both regions rather than from a single, isolated source.

Jupiter May Have Played a Crucial Role in Bennu’s Formation

The researchers also developed a scenario explaining how this mixing could have occurred, with Jupiter emerging as a key player.

Jupiter began forming extraordinarily early in Solar System history, within approximately one million years of the Sun’s birth. At that time, the young Sun was surrounded by a rotating disk of gas, dust, and ice.

Within this disk, countless small particles gradually collided and stuck together, building larger objects through a process called accretion. Over time, some of these growing bodies became asteroids and planets.

As Jupiter rapidly increased in mass, its immense gravitational influence began reshaping the distribution of material throughout the disk.

The researchers suggest that the growing gas giant acted somewhat like a structural barrier, preventing most larger particles from crossing its orbital region while still allowing finer dust to move around it.

This fine material, originating from different parts of the disk, could then mix extensively near the water-ice line.

According to the proposed scenario, the parent bodies of Bennu and Ryugu, along with the objects that produced CI meteorites, formed from this thoroughly mixed material.

Jupiter may therefore have helped determine not only where these ancient asteroids formed but also which ingredients became incorporated into them.

Ancient Dust and Ice Reveal the Ingredients That Built Earth

The proposed formation scenario could also explain two of Bennu’s most intriguing characteristics: its abundance of water-bearing material and its chemical resemblance to the Sun.

Near the water-ice boundary, ice could evaporate as temperatures changed, releasing water vapor that later condensed again in cooler regions. This process would have helped concentrate water in the material from which Bennu formed.

Meanwhile, Jupiter’s influence may have limited the movement of larger particles, leaving the asteroid’s parent material dominated by fine dust.

Because these tiny particles could circulate and mix efficiently throughout the disk, they preserved a chemical composition that closely resembles the overall elemental mixture found in the Sun.

The process is somewhat similar to the way fine household dust spreads and settles across many different surfaces rather than remaining in one location.

This extensive mixing could explain why Bennu’s material retains such a representative sample of the ingredients present during the Solar System’s earliest history.

“Bennu may offer our best glimpse of the original mix of chemical elements from which the terrestrial planets were ultimately built,” as Schönbächler states.

Bennu is considered an exceptionally primitive asteroid because its material formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago and has experienced relatively little chemical alteration since then.

That makes its samples particularly valuable for reconstructing the conditions that existed before Earth and the other rocky planets finished forming.

By studying the asteroid’s chemistry, scientists can better understand how the Solar System developed and which processes determined the composition of its planets.

Bennu’s water-bearing minerals and organic compounds also make it important for investigating how early Earth obtained some of the chemical ingredients necessary for life.

Although these findings do not establish exactly how those materials reached our planet, they provide valuable evidence about where such ingredients originated and how they were distributed throughout the young Solar System.

A New Mission to Mars’ Moon Could Reveal More

Despite the new discoveries, several questions remain unanswered.

“We are now wondering whether other asteroids have the same isotopic signature as Bennu and Ryugu,” Schönbächler goes on to state.

Researchers also want to determine more precisely how Jupiter influenced the movement of dust and whether its gravitational effects were responsible for favoring the accumulation of particularly fine particles.

Additional asteroid samples could help scientists test the proposed formation scenario and establish whether Bennu’s chemical signature is shared by other ancient bodies.

With the Bennu analysis now complete, Schönbächler is looking ahead to another opportunity to examine material from the early Solar System.

Japan’s space agency, JAXA, is preparing a sample-return mission to Phobos, one of Mars’ two moons. The mission is scheduled to launch at the end of October 2026, with the goal of collecting material from the Martian moon and bringing it back to Earth.

“It would be exciting to also obtain this material to analyse it in my laboratory,” she says.

Schönbächler plans to apply to JAXA for access to the samples. However, the scientific community will need to be patient. The capsule carrying material from Phobos is not expected to return to Earth until 2031.

Those future samples could provide another important piece of the puzzle, helping researchers determine how different regions of the early Solar System exchanged material and ultimately produced the planets, moons, and asteroids we observe today.

The discovery offers a rare look at how giant volcanic systems rebuild their magma supplies after massive eruptions. It could also provide important clues about the behavior of other supervolcanoes, including Yellowstone in the United States and Toba in Indonesia, potentially helping scientists improve their ability to recognize warning signs of future eruptions.

How Supervolcanoes Store Enormous Amounts of Magma

Some volcanic eruptions are so immense that they dramatically reshape the landscape. The amount of magma released can be staggering, enough to bury all of New York City’s Central Park beneath a layer roughly 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) thick.

When such enormous volumes of magma escape from underground, the rock above the emptied reservoir can collapse, leaving behind a broad, relatively shallow depression known as a caldera. These features are associated with some of the most powerful eruptions in Earth’s history.

Famous examples include Yellowstone, Toba, and Japan’s Kikai caldera, most of which lies beneath the ocean. Kikai last experienced a giant eruption approximately 7,300 years ago, producing the largest known volcanic eruption of the Holocene, the geological epoch that began roughly 11,700 years ago and continues today.

Although scientists know that giant caldera volcanoes can erupt more than once, they still have an incomplete understanding of how the enormous quantities of magma required for these events accumulate underground. This makes it extremely difficult to anticipate when another major eruption might occur.

“We must understand how such large quantities of magma can accumulate to understand how giant caldera eruptions occur,” says Kobe University geophysicist Nobukazu Seama.

Scientists Discover a Massive Magma Reservoir Beneath Japan

Kikai’s underwater location might seem like an obstacle to studying the volcano, but it actually gives researchers an important advantage. The surrounding seafloor allows scientists to carry out extensive geological surveys across the volcanic structure.

“The underwater location allows us to implement systematic, large-scale surveys,” Seama explains.

To investigate what lies beneath Kikai, researchers from Kobe University collaborated with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC). They used powerful airgun arrays to generate seismic pulses that traveled through the crust beneath the ocean floor.

Instruments called ocean bottom seismometers recorded how these waves moved through the underground rock. Because seismic waves travel differently through solid rock and regions containing molten material, scientists can analyze their behavior to investigate structures that cannot be observed directly.

The findings, published in Communications Earth & Environment, revealed a substantial region containing a high proportion of magma directly beneath the site of Kikai’s massive eruption 7,300 years ago.

By examining the seismic measurements, the team was able to determine the approximate size and shape of the underground reservoir. Its position and extent suggest that it occupies the same magma storage system involved in the ancient eruption.

“Due to its extent and location it is clear that this is in fact the same magma reservoir as in the previous eruption,” Seama says.

Fresh Magma Is Recharging the Ancient Supervolcano

Perhaps the most intriguing finding is that the magma currently beneath Kikai does not appear to be simply leftover material from its catastrophic eruption thousands of years ago.

Previous investigations revealed that a new lava dome has been developing near the center of the caldera over approximately the past 3,900 years. A lava dome forms when relatively thick, viscous lava accumulates around a volcanic vent rather than flowing freely across the surrounding landscape.

Chemical analyses also showed that volcanic material from this dome and other more recent activity differs in composition from the material released during Kikai’s giant eruption.

That difference provides an important clue. It suggests that the magma now stored beneath the volcano was supplied by new injections of molten rock from deeper within Earth’s crust or mantle, rather than remaining unchanged since the previous eruption.

“This means that the magma that is now present in the magma reservoir under the lava dome is likely newly injected magma,” summarizes Seama.

Together, the seismic observations and chemical evidence help researchers develop a clearer picture of how a giant volcanic system can gradually rebuild its underground magma supply following a massive eruption.

This replenishment process does not mean that another catastrophic eruption is imminent. Instead, it reveals how a magma reservoir can be recharged over thousands of years, an important process that scientists need to understand before they can reliably assess the long-term behavior of supervolcanoes.

What the Discovery Could Reveal About Yellowstone

The findings could have implications far beyond Japan.

Researchers believe the process identified beneath Kikai may help explain why other enormous caldera systems, including Yellowstone and Toba, also contain large magma reservoirs relatively close to Earth’s surface.

“This magma re-injection model is consistent with the existence of large shallow magma reservoirs beneath other giant calderas like Yellowstone and Toba,” says Seama.

The proposed model suggests that, following a giant eruption, new magma can gradually enter and replenish an existing underground reservoir. Understanding how this happens could reveal important patterns in the long-term cycles of magma accumulation, volcanic activity, and major eruptions.

Researchers now hope to improve the seismic techniques used at Kikai so they can investigate the movement and storage of magma in greater detail.

“We want to refine the methods that have proved to be so useful in this study to more deeply understand the re-injection processes. Our ultimate goal is to become better able to monitor the crucial indicators of future giant eruptions.”

By revealing how fresh magma accumulates beneath a volcano responsible for one of Earth’s most extraordinary eruptions, the research brings scientists closer to understanding the processes that eventually make such colossal events possible.

This research was funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) (The Third Earthquake and Volcano Hazards Observation and Research Program (Earthquake and Volcano Hazard Reduction Research)) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (grant 20H00199). It was conducted in collaboration with researchers from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC).

Antibiotics frequently fail to control this condition, and scientists have struggled to understand why. Now, researchers believe they have uncovered the mechanism responsible.

A new study published in PNAS Nexus by scientists at the Rutgers School of Dental Medicine reveals that bacteria can gradually corrode dental implants, releasing microscopic titanium particles into nearby tissues. These particles interfere with the immune cells responsible for fighting infection, trapping them in a state of excessive inflammation that progressively destroys jawbone.

The researchers examined human tissue samples, studied human immune cells in the laboratory, and conducted experiments using genetically engineered mice. Their investigation identified a calcium channel in macrophages, the immune cells that engulf bacteria, that becomes activated by titanium particles. When this channel was disabled in mice, the disease was prevented.

This discovery provides the first credible drug target for a condition that affects as many as one in five dental implant recipients and costs healthcare systems worldwide more than $1 billion annually.

“For the first time, we show why all the antibiotic treatments that work around teeth do not work around implants,” said Georgios Kotsakis, senior author of the study and assistant dean for clinical research at Rutgers School of Dental Medicine. “Now that we know the cause, we can start developing therapeutics.”

Why Dental Implant Infections Resist Antibiotics

One of the biggest mysteries surrounding peri-implantitis has been its similarity to periodontitis, the gum disease that develops around natural teeth. Both conditions begin with the same types of bacteria found in the mouth, yet they respond very differently to treatment.

For natural teeth, antibiotics combined with routine professional cleaning can resolve the infection. Around dental implants, however, the same medications are successful in fewer than half of cases. Even when treatment is attempted, the underlying jawbone may continue to deteriorate.

For the past two decades, scientists have largely concentrated on the bacteria responsible for these infections. Researchers in Kotsakis’ laboratory decided to investigate another possible contributor: the implant material itself.

Their work showed that bacteria accumulating on implant surfaces create acidic biofilms that slowly damage the titanium. Over time, this corrosion can release billions of microscopic metal particles, each smaller than a red blood cell.

Titanium particles can also be dislodged during routine dental cleaning. This is particularly concerning when instruments designed for natural teeth are used on implants, because they can scrape and damage the metal surface.

How Titanium Particles Hijack the Immune System

Once released into the gums, the tiny titanium fragments attract a bacterial toxin known as lipopolysaccharide, which coats their surfaces. This combination creates a deceptive target for the immune system, making the particles resemble unusually large bacteria that cannot be broken down.

Macrophages, the white blood cells responsible for engulfing and destroying harmful microorganisms, attempt to consume these particles. But because the cells cannot digest titanium, they become stuck in a prolonged state of excessive inflammation.

As a result, the macrophages produce large quantities of inflammatory signaling molecules, including interleukin-1 beta. This protein is also associated with inflammatory processes involved in rheumatoid arthritis and Alzheimer’s disease.

The resulting immune response gradually breaks down the bone supporting the dental implant. At the same time, the macrophages become less effective at fighting the bacteria that triggered the infection in the first place.

Laboratory experiments revealed just how severely their defenses were disrupted. Macrophages exposed to titanium particles engulfed fewer than half as many bacteria as immune cells that had not encountered the particles.

“These particles are little magnets that attract the bacterial toxin, and they hijack the immune system, preventing it from clearing bacteria,” said Kotsakis. “You have a perfect storm that defies antibiotics.”

Scientists Identify a Potential New Treatment Target

After uncovering how titanium particles disrupt immune defenses, the researchers investigated the molecular pathway responsible for the damaging reaction.

They traced the process to TRPC1, a calcium channel (a specialized, pore-forming protein structure within cell membranes) found in macrophages. This channel plays a central role in the inflammatory response triggered by titanium particles and bacterial toxins.

To test its importance, the team used genetically engineered mice that lacked TRPC1. When these animals were exposed to the same combination of titanium particles and bacteria, their immune systems responded much more effectively.

The mice developed dramatically smaller abscesses, produced fewer inflammatory signaling molecules, and regained the ability to clear bacteria. Disabling the channel prevented the destructive disease process observed when TRPC1 was present.

The results point toward a potentially new approach to treating peri-implantitis by targeting the immune system response rather than relying exclusively on antibiotics.

With funding from the National Institutes of Health, Kotsakis and his colleagues are now evaluating potential drugs that act on the same molecular pathway in human cells.

Why Proper Dental Implant Cleaning Matters

Although the research opens the door to future therapies, it also reinforces an important preventive measure for people who already have dental implants.

Regular professional cleaning remains the strongest known protection against peri-implantitis. However, the instruments and techniques used during those appointments can make a significant difference.

Until approximately a decade ago, many dentists routinely cleaned implants with the same metal scalers used to remove deposits from natural teeth. Research by the Rutgers team and other scientists has since demonstrated that these tools can damage and corrode titanium surfaces, potentially releasing additional particles and accelerating the disease.

Today, nonabrasive cleaning methods have become standard practice, helping protect implant surfaces while reducing the risk of complications.

By revealing how corroded titanium can interfere with immune defenses, the findings offer a new explanation for why some dental implant infections are so difficult to treat and identify a promising direction for developing more effective therapies.

Several of Switzerland’s major glaciers, including the Rhône, Aletsch, and Clariden glaciers, experienced their most severe melting on record in 2026. The losses were even more dramatic for some smaller glaciers, which disappeared entirely. Among them were Bella Tola in the canton of Valais and Griessfirn in the canton of Glarus, both of which have now vanished permanently.

The scale of the decline is particularly striking over the past five years. During that relatively short period, Switzerland has lost nearly 20% of its total glacier ice volume, illustrating just how quickly the country’s mountain landscapes are being transformed.

These findings come from the annual report of the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT), which draws on long-term glacier observations collected by the Glacier Monitoring Network, known as GLAMOS. The monitoring program is based at ETH Zurich and the universities of Fribourg and Zurich in Switzerland.

Extreme Summer Heat and Low Snowfall Accelerate Ice Loss

A combination of unusually little snowfall and prolonged summer heat contributed to the extensive melting. The winter of 2025 to 2026 ranked among Switzerland’s ten least snowy winters since records began, leaving glaciers with less snow to protect them from warmer temperatures.

Conditions became even more unfavorable between May and September 2026, when persistent heat and dry weather accelerated ice loss, even at the highest elevations.

During the summer, the elevation at which temperatures reached freezing climbed above 4,000 meters on 76 days. That was more than twice the usual number of days and established a new Swiss record. By September, snow had disappeared even at elevations of 3,500 meters, exposing glacier ice that would normally remain protected beneath a layer of snow.

Melting Glaciers Provide Water, but the Supply Is Shrinking

The enormous amount of melting also temporarily helped ease Switzerland’s summer water shortages. Between July and September, the country’s glaciers released approximately 2.2 trillion liters of water, an amount exceeding four times the drinking water consumed by Swiss households in an entire year.

However, this additional water comes from a resource that is steadily disappearing. As Switzerland’s glaciers continue to shrink irreversibly, the amount of meltwater they can provide will also decline, reducing a source of water that currently helps offset shortages during the warmer months.