Wednesday, December 03, 2025

American Physical Society launches APS Open Science to expand global participation in trusted physics research

APS Open Science will provide a community-driven platform that broadens recognition for high-quality physics research across all stages of discovery

American Physical Society

As the scientific community embraces open science principles, the American Physical Society is launching a new open access journal designed to meet the moment. With submissions opening in late February 2026, APS Open Science will publish a diverse range of research outputs while upholding the trusted, rigorous review processes that define APS standards.

“Researchers need high-quality options for sharing reliable findings across every stage of the scientific process,” said Jessica Thomas, executive editor at APS. “APS Open Science offers an open and trusted venue built on APS’ longstanding standards for rigor, with policies that support openness, inclusion, and broad participation in physics.”

A distinct home within the APS portfolio

APS Open Science complements other titles within the APS portfolio by publishing high-quality, technically valid, and ethically compliant research across the full breadth of physics and adjacent fields, using an objective and inclusive approach. The journal will serve as a community-shaped option for:

Fundamental and applied research articles
Theoretical and experimental work
Methodological and technical developments
Data and software papers
Replication and reproducibility studies
Negative and null results

To better support open science practices, APS Open Science will feature flexible article formats, rapid peer review, and efficient manuscript transfers from the Physical Review journals.

APS’ role in Purpose-Led Publishing, a coalition that promotes mission-driven publishing aligned with research community needs, also shapes the journal’s standards for openness, transparency, and research integrity. To reinforce quality, APS Open Science applies the same rigorous scientific and ethical standards used across all APS journals.

Open access supported by established waiver programs
APS Open Science will launch with article publication charge waivers for researchers in low- and lower-middle-income countries, along with introductory discounts for all authors. The journal will draw on APS’ longstanding waiver program to help reduce barriers and broaden equitable participation in open access publishing.

“Equity is fundamental to open science,” said Jeff Lewandowski, director of publishing at APS. “By pairing rigorous peer review with inclusive pathways for authors, APS Open Science enables more researchers — across regions, institutions, and career stages — to participate fully in global scientific communication.”

Led by an international editorial team of open access advocates
The journal is guided by active researchers, including a diverse global editorial board and editorial advisory board, reflecting APS’ commitment to community inclusion.

The journal’s inaugural chief editor, Badreddine Assouar — Director of Research at the French National Center for Scientific Research and the University of Lorraine, and a leading physicist in acoustic and elastic metamaterial and phononics — will oversee the peer review process and help shape the journal’s scientific direction. He is joined by Managing Editor Boyana Konforti, an advocate for open and equitable research practices.

“Useful scientific knowledge comes from every stage of research, not just headline breakthroughs,” said Assouar. “APS Open Science provides a reliable home for results that advance physics cumulatively, the kind of work that future discoveries depend on.”

The editorial advisory board consists of early and mid-career researchers from across the physics community who help shape the journal's future. They advise editors on whether manuscripts should proceed to peer review, recommend appropriate reviewers, and provide guidance on publishing standards and open science practices.

All articles will be published under the CC BY 4.0 license, with DOIs registered via Crossref and immediate discoverability through major scholarly search engines. APS is pursuing inclusion in additional indexing services as approvals are confirmed. Author guidelines and scope details will be available on the APS journals website when submissions open in late February.

Join our mailing list to help shape the journal's evolution through submissions, feedback, and advisory opportunities.

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The American Physical Society is a nonprofit membership organization working to advance physics by fostering a vibrant, inclusive, and global community dedicated to science and society. APS represents more than 50,000 members, including physicists in academia, national laboratories, and industry in the United States and around the world.

Family dogs boost adolescent mental health through the microbiome

Cell Press

Family camping with dog — image:
The girl has lived with her dog since she was three years old. Every summer, they go camping together.
view more
Credit: Nozomi Hirayama

It’s no surprise that dogs benefit people’s mental health. In a paper publishing in the Cell Press journal iScience on December 3, researchers point to a reason as to why: dogs prompt changes in the collection of microbes that live in and on our bodies, resulting in an increase in mental health.

“Raising dogs has beneficial effects, especially for adolescents, and these effects may be mediated through symbiosis with microorganisms,” says author Takefumi Kikusui of Azabu University in Japan.

In previous work, Kikusui’s team found that young people who grow up with a dog from a young age and continue to have dogs later in life score higher on measures of companionship and social support. Other studies showed dog owners also have differences in their gut microbiomes, including greater microbial diversity.

In this study, the researchers set out to explore whether some of the beneficial effects of dogs on adolescent mental health might be tied to these differences in the microbiome.

“Adolescent children who keep dogs exhibit higher mental well-being, and we also found that dog ownership alters the gut microbiota,” said Kikusui. “Since the gut microbiota influences behavior through the gut-brain axis, we conducted this experiment.”

The researchers found that a person’s dog-owning status at age 13 predicted their mental health and behavioral scores. Social problems were significantly lower in adolescents with a dog at home compared to those without a dog.

Next, they looked at microbiome samples collected from the mouth. After sequencing the microbes, the researchers found similar species diversity and richness between the two groups of teens. But the microbiome composition showed differences, suggesting that owning a dog shifted the abundances of specific oral bacteria. They hypothesized that some of those bacteria might correlate with the adolescents’ psychological scores.

To put this idea to the test, the researchers treated laboratory mice with microbiota from dog-owning teens to see whether and how it affected their social behavior. Mice with the dog-owning microbiome spent more time sniffing their cage mates. The animals also showed a more social approach toward a trapped cage-mate—a behavior test standardly used to test prosocial behavior in mice.

“The most interesting finding from this study is that bacteria promoting prosociality, or empathy, were discovered in the microbiomes of adolescent children who keep dogs,” Kikusui said. “The implication is that the benefits of dog ownership include providing a sense of security through interaction, but I believe it also holds value in its potential to alter the symbiotic microbial community.”

The researchers say that while more research is needed, the results suggest that a family dog can change the microbiome in ways that support mental health, empathy, and prosocial behavior. The benefits of living with dogs are likely the result of tens of thousands of years of human-canine coexistence, they say.

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This work was supported by funding from the JST-Mirai Program.

iScience, Miyauchi et al., “Dog ownership during adolescence alters the microbiota and improves mental health” https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(25)02209-6

iScience (@iScience_CP) is an open access journal from Cell Press that provides a platform for original research and interdisciplinary thinking in the life, physical, and earth sciences. The primary criterion for publication in iScience is a significant contribution to a relevant field combined with robust results and underlying methodology. Visit: http://www.cell.com/iscience. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

Journal

iScience

DOI

10.1016/j.isci.2025.113948

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Dog ownership during adolescence alters the microbiota and improves mental health

Article Publication Date

3-Dec-2025

The girl has lived with her dog since she was three years old. She always finds herself by his side.

Credit

Nozomi Hirayama

Girl at a dog park [VIDEO] |

The girls only saw each other once every few years, and both were shy by nature. Though an awkward atmosphere lingered at first, as they spent time together with the dog by their side, they naturally grew closer and slowly began to connect.

Credit

Nozomi Hirayama

A middle-school boy and his dog, relaxing together after settling a friendly sofa showdown. He’s been raised with dogs from day one, and the dog by his side is the family's second dog. And to him, having a four-pawed brother feels just as natural as having a human one.

Credit

Ai Tsujimura

KATRIN tightens the net around the elusive sterile neutrino

Max-Planck-Institut fur Kernphysik

Inside the KATRIN spektrometer — image:
Inner view of the large electrostatic spectrometer of the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino Experiment (KATRIN), the world's most accurate neutrino scale.
view more
Credit: Michael Zacher/KIT, KATRIN collaboration

Neutrinos, though nearly invisible, are among the most numerous matter particles in the Universe. The Standard Model recognizes three types, but the discovery of neutrino oscillations revealed they have mass and can change identity while propagating. For decades, puzzling experimental anomalies have suggested the presence of a fourth, sterile neutrino, one that interacts even more weakly. Finding it would transform our understanding of particle physics.

In a new study, published in Nature, the KATRIN collaboration presents the most precise direct search for sterile neutrinos through measurements of tritium β-decay.

The KATRIN (Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino) experiment, built to determine the neutrino mass, measures the energy spectrum of electrons emitted in the β-decay of tritium. In this process, the energy carried away by the neutrino subtly shapes the detected electron spectrum. If an additional sterile neutrino existed, it would occasionally be emitted in the decay, producing a distinct distortion, or “kink”, in the electron energy spectrum. KATRIN, located at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, is a large experiment extending over 70 meters. It comprises three main components: a high-luminosity windowless gaseous tritium source that emits electrons, a high-resolution spectrometer system that measures their energy, and a detector that counts them. Since 2019, KATRIN has measured the tritium β-decay spectrum with unmatched precision, looking for small deviations, especially the characteristic kink expected from a sterile neutrino.

The new Nature publication presents the most sensitive search to date for sterile neutrinos using the β-decay of tritium. KATRIN collected 36 million electrons over 259 days from 2019 to 2021 and compared them to a β-decay model, reaching sub-percent measurement accuracy. No sign of a sterile neutrino was found. The result excludes a large region of parameter space suggested by earlier anomalies: small but significant deficits observed in reactor-neutrino and gallium-source experiments that had hinted at a fourth neutrino state. It also fully rules out the Neutrino-4 experiment claim, which had reported evidence for such a signal. With an excellent signal-to-background ratio ensuring that almost all detected electrons come from tritium β-decay, KATRIN achieves a remarkably clean measurement of the spectral shape. In contrast to oscillation experiments, which study how neutrinos change flavor after traveling some distance, KATRIN probes the energy distribution at the point of creation. Relying on distinct detection methods, the two approaches complement each other and jointly deliver a powerful test that disfavors the sterile-neutrino hypothesis.

“Our new result is fully complementary to reactor experiments such as STEREO,” explains Thierry Lasserre (Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik) in Heidelberg, who led the analysis. “While reactor experiments are most sensitive to sterile–active mass splittings below a few eV², KATRIN explores the range from a few to several hundred eV². Together, the two approaches now consistently rule out light sterile neutrinos that would noticeably mix with the known neutrino types.”

With data collection continuing through 2025, KATRIN’s sensitivity will further increase, enabling even more stringent searches for light sterile neutrinos. “By the completion of data taking in 2025, KATRIN will have recorded more than 220 million electrons in the region of interest, increasing the statistics by over a factor of six,” says KATRIN co-spokesperson Kathrin Valerius (KIT). “This will allow us to push the boundaries of precision and probe mixing angles below the present limits.” In 2026, the KATRIN experiment will be upgraded with the TRISTAN detector, capable of recording the full tritium β-decay spectrum with unprecedented statistics. By bypassing the main spectrometer and measuring electron energies directly TRISTAN will be able to explore much higher sterile-neutrino masses. “This next-generation setup will open a new window into the keV-mass range, where sterile neutrinos might even form the Universe’s dark matter,” says co-spokesperson Susanne Mertens (Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik).

The KATRIN Collaboration

Scientists from over 20 institutions across 7 countries are working on the KATRIN project.