Soft sensor gives robots a better sense of touch

Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences

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Systematic overview of the humanoid dexterous hand with multi-degree-of-freedom posture perception. a The humanoid dexterous hand in various delicate operational scenarios. b The omnidirectional soft bending sensor in the humanoid dexterous hand.

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Credit: Microsystems & Nanoengineering

A new soft sensing system could help humanoid robots move their hands with far greater precision in delicate, human-like tasks. The study introduces a dexterous robotic hand equipped with omnidirectional bending sensors that can track both pitch and yaw at the finger joints, allowing the system to perceive complex finger posture in real time. By combining flexible sensing with a rigid-soft hand design, the researchers created a platform that not only moves more naturally but also performs demanding actions such as using scissors, operating a mouse, and playing the piano with improved control and stability. 

Robotic hands have made major progress in grasping and pinching, but many still struggle with the finer motions that make the human hand so versatile. One key limitation is proprioception: while human fingers constantly sense their own position and movement, most humanoid hands remain weak at perceiving posture across multiple degrees of freedom. Existing soft sensors often detect only one bending mode or suffer from coupling problems when fingers flex and move sideways at the same time. This leaves a gap between robotic grasping and true dexterous manipulation. Based on these challenges, deeper research was needed into soft sensing systems capable of decoupling and accurately tracking multidirectional finger motion.

Researchers from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou Dianzi University, and Lishui University reported (DOI: 10.1038/s41378-026-01179-3) the work in Microsystems & Nanoengineering in 2026. The study presents a humanoid dexterous hand designed to solve a central problem in advanced robotics: how to give robot fingers a reliable sense of their own posture during complex motion. By embedding a new omnidirectional soft bending sensor into the hand, the team enabled real-time perception of both flexion and side-to-side movement in delicate manipulation tasks.

The hand features 18 active degrees of freedom and five rigid-flexible fingers, with each finger integrating a soft optical sensor built from segmented PMMA fibers, a trichromatic LED, and a chromatic detector. The design works by tracking how red, green, and blue light attenuate differently as the sensor bends. Because the fiber layout separates responses to pitch and yaw, the system can decouple the two motions instead of mixing them together. The paper reports strong repeatability over 100 cycles, with RMSE values of 2.1%, 1.9%, and 3.2% across the three optical channels. Under single bending, the average measurement error was only ±2.13° for pitch and ±2.34° for yaw. Crosstalk remained low: pure yaw contributed 3.2% to pitch, while pure pitch contributed 4.1% to yaw, with signal-to-crosstalk ratios of 50.68 dB and 30.81 dB, respectively. The team then moved beyond bench testing and demonstrated the hand in three visually compelling tasks—cutting with scissors, clicking a mouse, and playing piano keys—showing closed-loop posture control in actions that require subtle coordination rather than simple gripping.

The researchers suggest that the real advance is not just a new sensor, but a new way of giving robotic hands a more human-like internal awareness of motion. In their conclusion, they emphasize that the integrated rigid-soft design supports natural movement, while the sensing system delivers the stability, repeatability, and multi-DoF posture perception needed for complex operations. That combination could make future humanoid hands more capable in tasks where precision matters most.

This work points toward robotic hands that are not only stronger or faster, but more skillful. Better posture perception could improve humanoid robots used in service settings, industrial assembly, rehabilitation devices, and other environments where fingers must adapt to fragile or highly varied objects. The study’s demonstrations also hint at broader possibilities in human-robot interaction, where smoother and safer hand motion is essential. By showing that soft optical sensing can remain accurate while supporting complex multidirectional movement, the research moves robotic manipulation closer to the responsiveness and finesse of the human hand.

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References

DOI

10.1038/s41378-026-01179-3

Original Source URL

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41378-026-01179-3

Funding Information

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52475573), the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (No. LTGY23E050002), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2023YFC2811500), the Science and Technology Innovation Project of the General Administration of Sport of China (24KJCX074), the Key Research and Development Programme of Zhejiang (No. 2024C03259, No. 2023C03196), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

About Microsystems & Nanoengineering

Microsystems & Nanoengineering is an online-only, open access international journal devoted to publishing original research results and reviews on all aspects of Micro and Nano Electro Mechanical Systems from fundamental to applied research. The journal is published by Springer Nature in partnership with the Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, supported by the State Key Laboratory of Transducer Technology.

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Journal

Microsystems & Nanoengineering

DOI

10.1038/s41378-026-01179-3 

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Soft sensor for omnidirectional posture perception in humanoid dexterous hands

 

Magnetic tensegrity-enabled robotic gripper with adaptive energy barrier for UAV perching

Beijing Institute of Technology Press Co., Ltd

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(A) Perching behavior of biological and artificial systems. (B) Operational principle of our robotic gripper. (C) Energy variation of MTRG during operation. (D) Comparison of switching frequency f and force ratio κ between our paradigm and current bistable robotic grippers. Here, κ is defined as the ratio between failure force and triggering force. (E) Application demonstrations of our robotic gripper that is integrated into UAVs for implementing tasks such as grasping and perching, showing its potential for diverse scenarios.

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Credit: Lulu Han, Sun Yat-Sen University.

For long-endurance missions such as environmental monitoring and disaster response, UAVs remain fundamentally constrained by limited onboard energy because continuous lift generation is required during hovering. Perching on natural or artificial structures, such as branches or street lamps, has therefore been regarded as an effective means of extending mission duration by replacing sustained hovering with structurally supported resting. Although existing bioinspired perching systems have demonstrated attachment using robotic grippers, they typically require precise coordination between flight dynamics and grasping actuation, and many still depend on continuous or intermittent power input to maintain post-perching stability. In recent years, bistable grippers have emerged as a promising route toward reduced control complexity and energy consumption through passive engagement; however, in conventional bistable designs, the energy barrier is generally fixed once fabricated, making it difficult to reconcile compliant triggering with robust grasp retention. “While prior studies have explored tunable barriers using shape memory alloys or active actuators, such approaches still rely on external control and additional energy supply.” said the author Lulu Han, a researcher at Sun Yat-Sen University, “Therefore, the development of a perching gripper capable of passively achieving adaptive energy-barrier modulation is of considerable significance for improving the environmental adaptability, grasping stability, and energy efficiency of UAV perching systems, and holds promising application prospects.”

In this study, the authors developed a magnetic tensegrity-enabled bistable robotic gripper (MTRG), composed of two finger-like rigid frames hinged to a base, nonelastic cables, sliding supports, and neodymium magnets. The gripper maintains its initial stable state through the balance between magnetic attraction and cable tension, and undergoes rapid transition to a closed grasping state upon external triggering. To enable repeatable operation, an inflatable airbag and an elastic restoring element were further integrated into the base to actively reset the gripper after grasping. Methodologically, the authors first established a theoretical model based on the geometric configuration of the structure, and analyzed the effects of key geometric parameters, magnet spacing, magnetic force, and state-transition energy in order to determine a design region that balances triggering sensitivity and grasping stability. The system was then characterized through high-speed imaging and quasi-static mechanical testing to quantify closing dynamics, triggering force, and failure force. Finally, the gripper was integrated into a multirotor UAV platform together with an onboard pump, PWM control, sensing, and communication modules, followed by hovering-versus-perching energy tests, outdoor perching demonstrations, and UWB-based positioning experiments to evaluate its feasibility and performance in UAV perching applications.

The results demonstrate that the proposed MTRG establishes a strongly asymmetric energy barrier through nonlinear magnetic interaction: the transition from the initial state to the grasping state requires only about 0.58 J, whereas the reverse transition requires approximately 48.88 J, yielding an almost 85-fold difference. This enables rapid closure within about 42 ms while simultaneously combining low triggering force with high holding capability. Experimentally, the maximum triggering force was only about 0.15 N and remained stable over 1,000 cycles, whereas the failure force reached 25.38 N—approximately 200 times the triggering force. The holding performance was further enhanced by about 30% on rough surfaces, and the gripper was able to stably support payloads ranging from 0.45 to 2.07 kg. Although grasp stability decreased with increasing vibration frequency under dynamic disturbances, the system still showed meaningful environmental adaptability. In addition, the integrated airbag-based reset mechanism reliably recovered the bistable state at 28 kPa and, after optimization, enabled reset within about 15 s and deflation within about 20 s, substantially improving repeatable operation. When integrated into a UAV, the system further demonstrated reliable perching performance with negligible influence on flight behavior and attitude stability, thereby supporting its feasibility for low-energy perching and long-endurance aerial operations.

In summary, this study shows that a magnetic tensegrity-enabled bistable gripper can passively realize adaptive energy-barrier modulation, thereby combining compliant triggering and robust grasping within a single structural design, while enabling repeatable operation through an integrated airbag-based resetting module. When deployed on a UAV, the gripper demonstrates reliable perching across diverse scenarios, indicating that passive, physically intelligent grasping mechanisms may provide an effective route toward low-power, adaptive, and stable aerial perching.  “More broadly, the work offers a new solution to the long-standing trade-off between sensitive triggering and secure retention in bistable grippers, and highlights the potential of magnetically actuated tensegrity mechanisms for long-duration deployment, high-altitude operation, and aerial robotic tasks in complex environments.” said Lulu Han.

Authors of the paper include Lulu Han, Hao Yang, Luobin Wang, Yuquan Zheng, Jingrui Yang, Yuxuan Fu, Jieliang Zhao, Zhong Wan, Zhigang Wu, Jie Zhang, and Jianing Wu.

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 62388101, T2422031, and 52275298), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2025M781273), the Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province Program (2025080026-JH3/101), the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of CPSF (GZC20240192), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (DUT25Z3209).

The paper, “Magnetic Tensegrity-Enabled Robotic Gripper with Adaptive Energy Barrier for UAV Perching” was published in the journal Cyborg and Bionic Systems on Mar 9, 2026, at https://doi.org/10.34133/cbsystems.0535.

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Journal

Cyborg and Bionic Systems

 

Large-scale collaboration releases new findings on research credibility

Results from the SCORE program, published in Nature and several preprints, assess multiple dimensions of credibility in social and behavioral science research.

Center for Open Science

Findings from the Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence (SCORE) program—a collaborative effort involving 865 researchers—have been published in Nature as a collection of three papers alongside a release of five additional preprints. The SCORE program offers new empirical evidence on the reproducibility, robustness, and replicability of research across the social and behavioral sciences, and the predictability of replicability.

The SCORE program examined the capability of humans and machines to predict the replicability of research findings. In the process, SCORE accumulated an enormous database of information about the credibility of a large sample of findings from across the social and behavioral sciences. The program’s outcomes will contribute to strengthening how research is interpreted and communicated, work that supports authors, reviewers, funders, policymakers, and readers' understanding and use of research evidence. Improving credibility assessment will help direct attention and resources for further research to where they have the greatest impact in accelerating production of knowledge and solutions.

Funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), SCORE is a large-scale, multi-method research initiative designed to improve how scientific credibility is assessed in the social and behavioral sciences. The program examines multiple dimensions of research repeatability—including reproducibility, robustness, and replicability—to better understand the credibility of published findings from multiple perspectives. The SCORE team sampled claims from 3,900 papers published from 2009-2018 in 62 journals spanning criminology, economics, education, finance, health, management, marketing, organizational behavior, psychology, political science, public administration, and sociology. These claims were subjected to a variety of methods of credibility assessment.

The contributions of hundreds of researchers was coordinated by several lead teams. Sampling of claims, gathering of credibility measures, and conducting of replication and reproduction studies was coordinated by the Center for Open Science (COS). Human expert assessments were conducted by two independent teams, the repliCATS project and Replication Markets, to evaluate the viability and accuracy of forecasting research replicability. Three teams led by researchers at Pennsylvania State University, TwoSix Technologies, and the University of Southern California implemented machine-learning and algorithmic approaches to predicting replicability. And, the Metascience Lab from Eötvös Loránd University coordinated the robustness assessments.

A basic contribution of the program is to affirm emerging standards for some terminology related to credibility and trustworthiness of research. Specifically, reproducibility, robustness, and replicability refer to distinct aspects of the repeatability of evidence—an important component of creating generalizable knowledge. A preprint from Nosek and colleagues explains the terminology to support clear and consistent understanding.

Across its studies, SCORE findings suggest that reproducibility, robustness, and replicability each capture distinct aspects of research credibility, and that published claims vary in how well they hold up under these distinct forms of scrutiny. The following are brief summaries of each of the three papers appearing in Nature.

Reproducibility refers to conducting the same analysis on the same data and assessing whether the finding is the same as reported in the original paper.

As reported by Miske and 127 co-authors, SCORE revealed limited transparency, which makes reproducibility and robustness assessment infeasible. Data was available for only 24% of a sample of 600 assessed papers. For the 143 papers that were subjected to reproduction tests, 74% successfully reproduced at least approximately and 54% precisely. Success was associated with how much was shared from the original paper. Approximate (91%) and precise (77%) reproducibility was highest for papers where both original data and code were shared, and lowest (38% and 11%) when reanalysis required reconstructing the original dataset from public sources (e.g., retrieving census data and reconstructing the data management and analysis steps reported in the paper). 

Robustness refers to conducting alternative reasonable analyses on the same data and assessing whether the findings are similar to what was reported in the original paper.

As reported by Aczel and 490 co-authors, SCORE revealed hidden uncertainty in research findings by conducting systematic testing of analytical robustness of 100 papers. For each paper, at least five independent analysts tested the same question with the same data, applying their own decisions about how to best analyze the data. 34% of independent reanalyses revealed the same result as the original finding within a narrow tolerance range (+/- 0.05 Cohen’s d units), and 57% revealed the same result with a tolerance range four times the size.  Regarding the conclusions drawn, 74% of analyses were reported to arrive at the same conclusion as in the original investigation; 24% to no effects/inconclusive result, and 2% to the opposite effect as in the original investigation.

Replicability refers to testing the same question in new data and assessing whether the findings are similar to what was reported in the original paper.

As reported by Tyner and 291 co-authors, SCORE revealed that it is challenging to replicate original findings with independent data. Of 164 papers subjected to replication attempts, 49% replicated successfully according to the most common criterion for assessing replication (statistical significance with the same pattern as the original study), and the observed effect sizes for replication studies (0.10 in Pearson’s r units) were less than half the magnitude of the original studies (0.25).

The five preprints released alongside the Nature collection provide additional evidence about credibility and predictability of research findings: 

• Abatayo and 85 co-authors combined evidence across the SCORE program and observed that measures of repeatability and credibility are only weakly related with one another. This suggests that credibility is multidimensional and it is unlikely that there are broadly applicable shortcuts to establishing the validity and reliability of research findings. 
• Mody and 33 co-authors reported evidence from two distinct methods of eliciting predictions from people about the replicability of findings: repliCATS and Replication Markets. They observed that human assessments are reasonably accurate at predicting replication outcomes (76% and 78% success rates by best performing metric for the two methods respectively). 
• Rajtmajer and 39 co-authors reported evidence from three distinct automated methods of eliciting predictions from machines about the replicability of findings: Synthetic Markets, MACROSCORE, and A+. None of the three methods were consistently effective at predicting which claims would replicate successfully or not, suggesting some caution for earlier evidence of successful use of machine methods for such assessments.
• Eight of the leaders of the SCORE program (Nosek, Aczel, Errington, Fidler, Mody, Rajtmajer, Szászi, and Tyner) comment on the implications of the SCORE program and the opportunity to reimagine assessment of research credibility.
• Five members of the Center for Open Science provided a brief review of the reproducibility, robustness, and replicability terminology that underlies the meaning and interpretation of the findings from the SCORE program.

Together, these eight papers offer the following conclusions:

• These findings replicate and extend prior systematic replication efforts in fields such as cancer biology and psychology with about half of attempts successfully replicating original findings across a diverse sample of research from the quantitative social and behavioral sciences.
• These findings also replicate and extend prior reproduction and robustness attempts in a variety of fields. A quarter to a third of attempts failed to show the same or similar results when either trying to repeat the same analysis as the original paper (reproducibility), and came to different conclusions when conducting reasonable alternative analyses for the same question (robustness).
• These findings replicate and extend prior evidence that humans can forecast replication success with reasonable accuracy, and provide weaker evidence than prior studies that machines can provide similarly accurate forecasts.
• No particular field in the social and behavioral sciences demonstrated consistently higher repeatability than other fields across the three approaches. However, for reproducibility specifically, there were substantial differences in data availability that were associated with higher reproducibility rates in Economics and Political Science compared with other fields.
• Reform efforts in the social and behavioral sciences over the last 10 years might result in higher repeatability compared with the findings from SCORE which were based on papers published from 2009 to 2018. For example, as highlighted by Miske and colleagues, journal policies across the social and behavioral sciences have strengthened since that time to require sharing data and code and even including reproducibility checks as part of the publication process.
• Repeatability and credibility assessments are highly diverse. There is no singular assessment of the credibility of a research findings, highlighting the complex process of knowledge production.

“The main message of SCORE is a simple one: research is hard. And, in some ways, the hard work begins after making a discovery. A tremendous amount of effort is needed to verify and have enough confidence in new discoveries to build foundations for further discovery,” said Tim Errington, Senior Director of Research at COS and one of the SCORE project leaders.

The results reveal that there is no single indicator of the repeatability of evidence, or research credibility more generally. There is substantial opportunity for innovation in development of indicators to assess credibility to diversify the understanding of how trustworthy findings are established.

As another SCORE project leader, Fiona Fidler, Professor at the University of Melbourne, shared, “There are a lot of open questions about the factors that foster credibility and repeatability of research findings. Like many productive research efforts, SCORE generated insights, and has prompted even more questions about how to evaluate research in practice.”

In addition to its primary scientific findings, SCORE has generated openly accessible datasets, algorithms, and replication and reanalysis materials. These outputs will support further research on scientific credibility, potentially including development and validation of indicators to improve credibility assessment and accelerate discovery.

“With contributions from almost 900 researchers, the SCORE program provides an enormous amount of evidence to explore and inspire hypotheses for the next round of research. The data and materials are shared publicly so that others might build on this work,” said Sarah Rajtmajer, a SCORE project leader and Associate Professor at Pennsylvania State University.

Visit the website for an overview of the SCORE program, links to the papers, press releases for each paper, and other context to understand the project, findings, and implications.

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About A+
The A+ system for automated assessment of replicability of claims was developed at TwoSix Technologies (Principal Investigator: James Gentile).

About the Center for Open Science (COS)
Founded in 2013, COS is a nonprofit culture change organization with a mission to increase openness, integrity, and trustworthiness of scientific research. COS pursues this mission by building communities around open science practices, supporting metascience research, and developing and maintaining free, open source software tools, including the Open Science Framework (OSF).

About MACROSCORE
A team led by Principal Investigator, Jay Pujara, at the University of Southern California, developed the MACROSCORE system for automated assessment of replicability of claims.

About Metascience Lab
The Metascience Lab at Eötvös Loránd University (Principal Investigator: Balazs Aczel) led the robustness studies conducted in association with the SCORE program. 

About Replication Markets
A team of researchers led by Charles Twardy at Amentum developed and conducted prediction markets of human assessments of the replicability of research claims.

About the repliCATS project
A team led by Fiona Fidler at the University of Melbourne used a group structured deliberation approach to crowdsource human assessments of replicability of claims.

About Synthetic Markets
A team led by Sarah Rajtmajer at The Pennsylvania State University, developed bot-populated prediction markets to predict replicability of claims.

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Journal

Nature

Article Publication Date

1-Apr-2026

 

A 500-million-year-old clawed predator rewrites the origin of spiders and horseshoe crabs

Harvard University

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Holotype specimen (part and counterpart) showing Megachelicerax cousteaui spectacular pincer-like chelicerae.

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Credit: Credit: Rudy Lerosey-Aubril

It had been a long day of teaching for Rudy Lerosey-Aubril. As a reward, he returned to cleaning an intriguing Cambrian arthropod fossil he had recently received for review. At first, the specimen showed all the expected characteristics of its time – yet, something was off. In place of an antenna, there appeared to be a claw.

“Claws are never in that location in a Cambrian arthropod,” said Lerosey-Aubril, “It took me a few minutes to realize the obvious, I had just exposed the oldest chelicera ever found.”

In a study published in Nature, Research Scientist Rudy Lerosey-Aubril and Associate Professor Javier Ortega-Hernández, Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology – both in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard – describe Megachelicerax cousteaui, a 500-million-year-old sea predator discovered in Utah’s West Desert. It is the oldest known chelicerate, the arthropod group that includes spiders, scorpions, horseshoe crabs, and sea spiders. The discovery pushes the evolutionary history of chelicerates back by 20 million years.

“This fossil documents the Cambrian origin of chelicerates,” noted Lerosey-Aubril, “and shows that the anatomical blueprint of spiders and horseshoe crabs was already emerging 500 million years ago.”

Lerosey-Aubril spent more than 50 hours carefully cleaning the fossil under a microscope using a fine needle to reveal its shocking anatomy. At slightly over 8 centimeters long, M. cousteaui preserves a dorsal exoskeleton consisting of a head shield and nine body segments. These two regions feature distinct appendages: six pairs of limbs specialized for feeding and sensing in the head shield, and plate-like respiratory structures beneath the body that resemble the book gills of modern horseshoe crabs.

Its most extraordinary feature, however, is its unmistakable chelicera — the pincer-like feeding appendages that define the subphylum Chelicerata and distinguish spiders from insects. While insects possess sensory antenna as their foremost appendages, chelicerates have grasping, often venomous tools. Despite a rich Cambrian fossil record, no unambiguous chelicera-bearing arthropod from that time had ever been found – until now.

Prior to this discovery, the oldest known chelicerates dated to the Early Ordovician Fezouata Biota of Morocco, roughly 480 million years ago. The existence of M. cousteaui 20 million years earlier places it as an early offshoot of the chelicerate family tree, a key transitional species bridging Cambrian arthropods that appear to lack chelicera with the much younger horseshoe crab-like chelicerates known as synziphosurines.

“Megachelicerax shows that chelicera and the division of the body into two functionally specialized regions evolved before the head appendages lost their outer branches and became like the legs of spiders today,” explained Ortega-Hernández, “it reconciles several competing hypotheses; in a way, everybody was partly right.”

The fossil captures a crucial stage in the assembly of the chelicerate body plan, revealing that key elements had already evolved during the immediate aftermath of the Cambrian Explosion – a period of extraordinarily rapid evolutionary innovation.

“This tells us that by the mid-Cambrian, when evolutionary rates were remarkably high, the oceans were already inhabited by arthropods with anatomical complexity rivaling modern forms,” Ortega-Hernández added.

Intriguingly, the early acquisition of this complex anatomy did not immediately lead to ecological dominance or diversification. Instead, chelicerates remained relatively inconspicuous for millions of years, overshadowed by seemingly simpler groups such as trilobites, before successfully colonizing land.

“A similar evolutionary pattern has been documented in other animal groups,” said Lerosey-Aubril. “This shows that evolutionary success is not only about biological innovation — timing and environmental context matter.”

M. cousteaui was collected in the middle Cambrian Wheeler Formation of Utah’s House Range. The fossil was discovered by renowned avocational fossil collector, Lloyd Gunther, and donated to the Kansas University Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum in 1981 for further study. It was among a collection of seemingly unremarkable fossils from Utah that Lerosey-Aubril offered to investigate as part of his research on early arthropods.

Megachelicerax cousteaui is named in honor of French explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Lerosey-Aubril – who is also French – and Ortega-Hernández chose Cousteau for his work raising awareness of the beauty and vulnerability of the undersea.

“Cousteau and his crew inspired generations to look beneath the surface,” said Lerosey-Aubril, “it seemed fitting to name this ancient marine animal after someone who changed the way we see ocean life.” Just as Megachelicerax cousteaui has changed how we view chelicerates.

Today, chelicerates include more than 120,000 living species — from spiders and scorpions to mites, horseshoe crabs, and sea spiders – inhabiting both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

“For thousands of years, these animals have quietly existed among us, deeply influencing our lives from pop-culture to medical and agricultural contributions,” Ortega-Hernández concluded. “This fossil discovery sheds new light on their origins.”

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the vital role of scientific collections, such as those of the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum, and the dedication of the professionals who curate them – especially B. Lieberman and J. Kimmig – preserving specimens for decades until new questions, and new eyes, reveal their full significance.

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The surprisingly complex anatomy of the Cambrian chelicerate Megachelicerax cousteaui.

Credit

Artistic reconstruction by Masato Hattori (© Harvard University)

 

Modern Day Spider with Megachelicerax cousteaui 

Credit

Rudy Lerosey-Aubril

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Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-026-10284-2 

Method of Research

Observational study

Article Title

A chelicera-bearing arthropod reveals the Cambrian origin of chelicerates

Article Publication Date

1-Apr-2026

Advertising payments to news websites that publish health misinformation

JAMA Network Open

About The Study: 

From 2021 to 2024, government and health organizations accounted for about one-tenth of the $336 million in estimated advertising payments made to 11 news websites identified for publishing health misinformation. Noteworthy advertisers included federal health agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and pharmaceutical companies, such as Pfizer, although their individual contributions represented a small share of all payments.

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Joseph S. Ross, MD, MHS, email joseph.ross@yale.edu.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.5068)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

#  #  #

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article  

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.5068?guestAccessKey=1b34668e-afe8-4888-aa3d-dd05b3b83eff&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=040126

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication.

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Journal

JAMA Network Open

 

NIH researchers discover pain-relieving drug with minimal addictive properties

Positive safety profile of novel drug compound is surprise for class of synthetic opioids shelved years ago

NIH/Office of the Director

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have identified a novel, highly potent opioid that shows potential as a therapy for both pain and opioid use disorder. In a study published in Nature, the team observed the new drug’s effect in laboratory animals. They showed that it has high pain-relieving effects without causing respiratory depression, tolerance or other indicators of potential for addiction in humans.

 

“Opioid pain medications are essential for medical purposes, but can lead to addiction and overdose,” said Nora D. Volkow, M.D., director of NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). “Developing a highly effective pain medication without these drawbacks would have enormous public health benefits.”

 

The team investigated formulations of an understudied class of synthetic opioid compounds, known as nitazenes. Nitazenes selectively engage mu-opioid receptors, primary targets for opioid drugs in the brain and peripheral nervous system. However, nitazenes had been shelved in the 1950s due to their excessive potency. The scientific team revisited this class of compounds with a focus on harnessing their selectivity for the mu opioid receptor and engineering new nitazenes with a safer pharmacological profile.

 

“Our goal was to study the profile, or pharmacology, of these drugs,” said Michael Michaelides, Ph.D., senior author and NIDA investigator. “We wanted to decrease the potency and create a potential therapeutic. What we discovered exceeded our expectations.”

 

The team focused initially on a chemical formulation called FNZ that could be administered to rats and tagged with a radioisotope for positron emission tomography (PET). PET imaging enables tracking of the drug in real time throughout the rat brain. The team discovered that FNZ entered the brain only briefly, for approximately five to 10 minutes. Yet pain relief, known as analgesia, persisted for at least two hours. Knowing that nitazenes can have active metabolites, or by-products, the team investigated whether an FNZ metabolite might be responsible for the prolonged effect. That investigation revealed DFNZ, another opioid dubbed a “superagonist” for its extremely high efficacy at the mu opioid receptor.

 

Whereas FNZ carries serious risks, including depressed breathing and high potential for addiction, DFNZ appears to sidestep these liabilities.

 

At preclinical therapeutic doses, DFNZ produced a moderate and sustained increase in brain oxygen rather than depressing respiration. Repeated doses of the drug did not result in tolerance, drug dependency, or meaningful withdrawal effects. Among 14 classic opioid withdrawal symptoms, the researchers only observed irritability, as measured by vocalization, when handling DFNZ-treated rats.

 

To test the drug’s rewarding effects, an important component of their addictive potential, the team studied its effects in rats who had been trained to press a lever for a dose of the pain-relieving drug. They found that animals readily self-administered DFNZ, indicating that it does produce some rewarding effect. However, when the drug was replaced with saline, animals stopped the drug-seeking behavior. The immediate behavior change is in contrast with what researchers see with other opioids such as heroin, morphine, and fentanyl. In those cases, animals typically persist in seeking the drug even after it is removed.

 

Further investigation revealed a likely neurochemical explanation. While DFNZ increases slow-acting dopamine release in the brain's reward circuitry, it does not trigger the rapid dopamine bursts associated with the formation of strong drug-cue associations, the conditioned responses that drive craving and relapse in addiction.

 

“DFNZ has an unprecedented pharmacology for an opioid,” Michaelides said. “It is a potent and high-efficacy analgesic, but in certain contexts it resembles partial agonists, drugs that activate the receptor with low efficacy, which is what scientists think is needed for safety. Its capacity to be administered at therapeutic doses without producing respiratory depression is very important."

 

The teams’ findings challenge the prevailing view that high-efficacy mu-opioid receptor drugs are unsuitable for development as safe analgesics. In fact, the authors of the paper maintain that DFNZ should be explored for use in treatment for opioid use disorder and may be preferable to current opioid agonist medications, which have an associated risk of causing respiratory depression.

 

The research team will pursue additional preclinical studies to support an application for regulatory approval to conduct studies of DFNZ in humans. They believe several patient populations may benefit from DFNZ, including those in surgical settings and with cancer-related or chronic pain who have a particularly high need for effective pain treatment.

 

This research was supported in part by the NIH Intramural Research Program and by NIH/NIDA grant DA056354.

 

About the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA): NIDA is a component of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIDA supports most of the world’s research on the health aspects of drug use and addiction. The Institute carries out a large variety of programs to inform policy, improve practice, and advance addiction science. For more information about NIDA and its programs, visit www.nida.nih.gov.
 

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health®

 

Reference: Michaelides M., Rice K., Skiniotis G., et al. A μ opioid receptor superagonist analgesic with minimal adverse effects. Nature. 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10299-9.

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Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-026-10299-9 

Article Title

A μ opioid receptor superagonist analgesic with minimal adverse effects

Article Publication Date

1-Apr-2026