It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, October 09, 2026
Your favorite music could help reduce the pain of small medical procedures
Scientists find that playing patients’ favorite music during a cannulation minimizes pain
If you hate needles, music might make you feel better during a cannula insertion… but it has to be the right kind of music. Although different musical interventions have repeatedly been reported to help with pain and stress, the evidence varies widely for different types of music and it’s hard to figure out what works best. To investigate, scientists played different kinds of music for patients about to undergo an intravenous cannula before an MRI — either Mozart, relaxation music, or the patients’ own favorite tunes. They found that playing patients’ favorite music worked best.
“Although a needle puncture is a minor procedure, the level of pain can vary significantly from person to person,” said Dr Andrei Cristinel Dragnea of University Hospital Zürich, lead author of the article in Frontiers in Pain Research. “In modern medicine, the goal of treating physicians is not only to provide a successful diagnosis and therapy, but also to ensure that the procedure causes as little discomfort as possible.”
“I would recommend listening to music to patients, especially patients who like music in general,” said Dr Meritxell Garcia Alzamora of University Hospital Zürich, senior author of the article. “In view of our results we will increase the application of music in venous punctures performed for radiological procedures, especially in anxious or claustrophobic patients.”
Sweet music?
The scientists recruited 204 patients undergoing a non-emergency MRI of the brain, spine, or head and neck. These patients’ procedures called for a contrast agent inserted into their veins with a cannula, which can hurt. A quarter of them acted as a control group, meaning they listened to no music, while three other groups listened to either their favorite music, music specifically designed for relaxation, or a piece of Mozart, Sonata KV448, which several studies have found to have therapeutic properties.
Before the procedure started, patients assigned to the ‘favorite music’ group were asked to name an artist or song they would like to hear, and all patients were shown a visual scale that describes pain from a level of one (no pain) to 10 (worst pain of their life). This allowed the researchers to ask patients to rate their pain before and during the procedure, and then at two points afterwards — 30 seconds and two minutes later.
“From the four conditions we examined, only favorite music and Mozart showed a positive effect,” said Garcia Alzamora. “Favorite music manifested a significant pain reduction effect both in patients with and without baseline pain — i.e. with preexisting pain before needle puncture. Mozart only showed significant pain relief in patients with preexisting pain.”
Patients who were listening to their favorite music experienced less pain both 30 seconds and two minutes after the cannula was inserted. In a subgroup of patients who reported preexisting pain before cannulation, listening to their favorite music also reduced pain at the time of needle insertion, and listening to Mozart reduced pain two minutes after needle insertion.
Pain levels seemed to improve more two minutes after cannulation than at the earlier time points, although this data can’t explain why. It could be that the initial discomfort of the cannula pulled people’s attention from the music, or that the mechanisms which make music helpful for pain reduction need some time to kick in.
Relaxation music doesn’t soothe
However, Mozart only seemed to work for the patients who reported being in pain before the cannulation, and the patients who listened to relaxation music or no music didn’t experience any change in their pain.
“Relaxation music is usually characterized by a slow speed and low volume, and does not show noticeable dynamics,” said Garcia Alzamora. “These characteristics may have contributed to the patients disregarding relaxation music, which would explain the lack of pain relief.”
“The intervention — in this case the venous puncture — consisted only of a very short-term pain with a small needle, although this can be very painful for some patients,” cautioned Dragnea, adding that it would be worth evaluating the benefits of music for patients undergoing procedures that are more painful and last longer. “Additionally, a technician accompanying and talking to the patient could be regarded as a confounder, as the mere presence of a person talking to you may be perceived as calming and distracting. However, all patients were exposed to the same conditions, so this confounder should not be over-interpreted.”
The study found that perceived relationship stability was associated with differences in attachment anxiety and avoidance between gay and heterosexual men, highlighting the potential importance of feeling confident about a relationship's future.
Credit: Assistant Professor Fan Yang from Waseda University, Japan
Feeling secure in a relationship is not only about how people connect with their partners today. It may also depend on how confident they are that the relationship will continue into the future. Feelings of closeness, trust, and connection, together with a sense that the relationship is stable and has a future, can shape how people experience their romantic relationships.
For people with diverse sexual identities, these expectations may be shaped not only by their relationship but also by the wider social environment. Concerns about whether a relationship will be accepted by family and society, for example, may affect how secure people feel about maintaining their relationships over time.
Assistant Professor Fan Yang from the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University, Japan, and Mr. Zichen Zhai from the Graduate School of Education and Human Development, Nagoya University, Japan, investigated whether gay and heterosexual men differ in how they experience romantic attachment and whether perceived relationship stability would help explain these differences. The study was published online in the journal BMC Psychology on September 16, 2026.
The researchers focused on two aspects of attachment: anxiety, which can involve worrying about being abandoned or being unsure about a partner’s feelings, and avoidance, which can involve discomfort with emotional closeness or relying on a partner.
“Our findings highlight the critical role of relationship stability in shaping adult attachment patterns, particularly within sexual minority populations,” says Yang.
The researchers collected questionnaire data from 603 men aged 20–29 years living in Shanghai, China. The participants included 303 gay men and 300 heterosexual men. They completed questionnaires measuring attachment anxiety and avoidance, perceived romantic relationship stability, and their romantic relationship history.
Among the 510 participants who had experienced at least one romantic relationship, the researchers assessed perceived relationship stability by asking how stable they considered their romantic relationships to be, with responses ranging from “very unstable” to “very stable.” Attachment anxiety and avoidance were assessed using a nine-item questionnaire designed to measure these two dimensions of romantic attachment.
The findings showed that gay men reported higher levels of both attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance than heterosexual men. These differences remained after accounting for economic and occupational statuses.
The researchers found little difference between gay and heterosexual men in their relationship histories. The groups reported similar numbers of romantic relationships and similar durations for their shortest relationships. The researchers found a clearer difference when they asked participants how stable they considered their relationships to be. Gay men reported lower perceived stability than heterosexual men, and perceived relationship stability statistically accounted for the differences in attachment anxiety and avoidance between the groups.
“The feeling that ‘this relationship has a future’ may be an important part of romantic security,” explains Yang.
Overall, the study suggests that romantic security may depend not only on how people experience their relationships, but also on how confident they feel about their relationships continuing into the future.
For people with diverse sexual identities, this sense of stability may also depend on whether their relationships feel accepted and supported by their families, communities, and wider social environment.
“These findings may be relevant to relationship counseling, mental health support, and services for sexual minority individuals. Support may need to consider not only communication between partners, but also concerns about whether the relationship can be accepted, supported, and maintained over time,” says Yang.
***
Reference Authors: Fan Yang1 and Zichen Zhai2 Title of original paper: Are gay men more insecurely attached than heterosexual men in romantic relationships? Perceived relationship stability, rather than relationship history, matters Journal: BMC Psychology DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05621-z Affiliations: 1Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University, Japan 2Graduate School of Education and Human Development, Nagoya University, Japan
About Waseda University Located in the heart of Tokyo, Waseda University is a leading private research university that has long been dedicated to academic excellence, innovative research, and civic engagement at both the local and global levels since 1882. The University has produced many changemakers in its history, including eight prime ministers and many leaders in business, science and technology, literature, sports, and film. Waseda has strong collaborations with overseas research institutions and is committed to advancing cutting-edge research and developing leaders who can contribute to the resolution of complex, global social issues. The University has set a target of achieving a zero-carbon campus by 2032, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015.
About Assistant Professor Fan Yang from Waseda University, Japan Dr. Fan Yang is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University, Japan. He leads the Kayo Psychology Seminar with international students. He is also a committee member of the Public Relations Committee of the Japanese Psychological Association and a reviewer for SSCI journals. His recent research interests include AI attachment and attachment security priming.
Are gay men more insecurely attached than heterosexual men in romantic relationships? Perceived relationship stability, rather than relationship history, matters
Ingenious ‘molecular movie’ finally reveals how penicillin is made
Animated molecular movie of penicillin biosynthesis. Each frame shows a different stage of the reaction as IPNS converts its substrate into penicillin. The animation was reconstructed from several time-resolved X-ray crystal structures collected at different reaction times, allowing the complete catalytic process to be visualized at atomic resolution. Image credit: Patrick Rabe/University of Oxford and Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Credit: Patrick Rabe/University of Oxford and Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Researchers from the University of Oxford and international collaborators have revealed previously unseen rapid chemical stages in the formation of β-lactam antibiotics like penicillin, offering insights that can support future antibiotic development. The findings have been published today (9 Oct) in Nature Catalysis.
Ever since penicillin was developed into a working drug at the University of Oxford in the early 1940’s, β-lactam antibiotics have been among the most important medicines for treating bacterial infection. Their activity depends on a special ring - the β-lactam ring - a highly strained chemical ring system that interferes with bacterial cell wall synthesis, ultimately causing the cell wall to fail and the bacteria to die.
Scientists have been studying how nature constructs this β-lactam ring for decades, but the key fleeting reaction intermediates have been too difficult to observe directly.
Rising rates of antimicrobial resistance- a process in which bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms evolve to survive the medicines designed to kill them, are undermining the effectiveness of existing antibiotics. With too few new antibiotics in development, understanding how nature builds these molecules is an important step towards replenishing the antibiotic pipeline.
In the new study, researchers from the University of Oxford in collaboration with partners from Diamond Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, PAL-XFEL and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have used X-ray free-electron lasers to observe the enzyme isopenicillin N synthase, or IPNS as it converts its linear peptide substrate into the ring system of penicillin.
The new study shows, in unprecedented detail, how the enzyme IPNS achieves an exceptionally complex transformation in a single step. This resolves a long-standing mechanistic question that has remained unanswered for more than four decades.
Rather than relying on static X-ray crystallographic structures of the enzyme, the researchers followed the reaction in real time using ultrafast X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) experiments.
The team captured several rapid stages in the reaction. These included a thioaldehyde intermediate formed just before the β-lactam ring is created, and a monocyclic β-lactam intermediate, representing the first ring-shaped structure on the way to forming the complete penicillin scaffold. These steps provide the clearest picture yet of how the IPNS enzyme assembles the penicillin scaffold.
The work also showed that water molecules inside the enzyme play a key role in guiding the reaction. Subtle movements throughout the enzyme help guide these chemical steps, showing that both the enzyme's shape and its chemistry work together to control penicillin formation.
To capture the reaction in real time, the researchers used a system in which thousands of tiny droplets containing anaerobic enzyme microcrystals were deposited onto a moving 2 mm wide tape. As the tape entered an oxygen filled chamber, oxygen rapidly diffused into the crystals and initiated the reaction simultaneously across the sample. By precisely controlling the speed of the tape, the researchers could determine how long each crystal reacted before reaching the X-ray interaction point, where an ultrafast XFEL pulse recorded an atomic resolution snapshot.
Combining thousands of these snapshots allowed the team to build a frame-by-frame “molecular movie” of penicillin biosynthesis. This method allows individual reaction intermediates that exist only for tiny fractions of a second to be observed at atomic resolution, and under physiological temperature and pressure, before they disappear.
Oxford has played a central role in the history of penicillin since the pioneering work of Nobel prize-winning scientists Prof Howard Florey and Sir Ernst Chain, and colleagues, who developed penicillin into the first clinically useful antibiotic during the Second World War. This new study ultimately builds on the work of Nobel prize-winning Oxford chemist Dorothy Hodgkin, who first solved the structure of penicillin in 1945 using X-ray crystallography.
Beyond penicillin, IPNS belongs to a large family of iron-dependent oxygenase enzymes involved in human biology, including ones that enable us to sense and respond to changes in oxygen availability. The mechanistic insights from this work therefore have implications far beyond antibiotics, offering new principles for enzyme engineering and catalyst design.
Professor Christopher Schofield, Professor of Chemistry, University of Oxford, and a senior author of the paper, said, “Penicillin has shaped modern medicine, but there is still much to learn about how nature builds this important antibiotic structure. By capturing these fleeting steps, we can better understand how enzymes control complex chemistry with remarkable precision.
“As rates of antimicrobial resistance continue to rise, understanding this process will ultimately help us make existing antibiotics more efficient and design new antibiotic structures.”
Today, one in six bacterial infections is resistant to antibiotics. Rising resistance threatens decades of progress in cancer care, transplant surgery and other areas of modern medicine, while also placing pressure on economies, health systems and food production.
Dr Patrick Rabe, Wellcome Career Development Award Investigator, University of Oxford and first author on the paper said, “These insights matter because they can inform how we think about antibiotic biosynthesis and future strategies for developing antibacterial medicines. The ability to capture structural snapshots over milliseconds to seconds of reaction time allows us to connect enzyme motion, iron chemistry and water-mediated proton transfer. This gives us a much richer view of how IPNS controls a difficult chemical transformation. By understanding this process in atomic detail, we can begin to think about engineering these enzymes to produce new or improved antibiotic scaffolds.”
This study brought together expertise in structural biology, spectroscopy, chemistry, computation and enzyme engineering. This approach provides a powerful way to study fleeting chemical intermediates that have previously been inaccessible, both in antibiotic biosynthesis and in other biologically important enzyme reactions.
Dr Allen M Orville, group leader of the XFEL Hub and co-author of the paper, said: “The XFEL Hub at Diamond brought specialist expertise in time-resolved X-ray methods and XFEL-based structural biology to this study. Working closely with our colleagues in Oxford and at partner facilities, we helped bring together the experimental approaches needed to capture these fleeting stages of enzyme catalysis. The results show the power of combining complementary expertise and X-ray techniques to move beyond static structures and reveal how enzymes work in real time. It is a great example of how time-resolved structural biology can uncover new principles of enzyme function and, ultimately, inform the design of new catalysts and therapeutics.”
The study 'Unanticipated intermediates during isopenicillin N synthase catalysis identified by time-resolved X-ray free-electron laser studies' will be published in Nature Catalysis at 10 AM BST / 5 AM ET Friday 9 October 2026 at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41929-026-01618-4 To view a copy of the study before this under embargo, contact Avni Gupta avni.gupta@chem.ox.ac.uk.
The work was led by researchers in the Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford, in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and international partners.
Experiments were carried out using X-ray free-electron lasers at LCLS (USA), PAL-XFEL (Republic of Korea), SACLA (Japan) and Diamond Light Source (UK).
About the University of Oxford
Oxford University has been placed number 1 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for the tenth year running, and number 3 in the QS World Rankings 2024. At the heart of this success are the twin-pillars of our ground-breaking research and innovation and our distinctive educational offer.
Oxford is world-famous for research and teaching excellence and home to some of the most talented people from across the globe. Our work helps the lives of millions, solving real-world problems through a huge network of partnerships and collaborations. The breadth and interdisciplinary nature of our research alongside our personalised approach to teaching sparks imaginative and inventive insights and solutions.
Through its research commercialisation arm, Oxford University Innovation, Oxford is the highest university patent filer in the UK and is ranked first in the UK for university spinouts, having created more than 300 new companies since 1988. Over a third of these companies have been created in the past five years. The university is a catalyst for prosperity in Oxfordshire and the United Kingdom, contributing around £16.9 billion to the UK economy in 2021/22, and supports more than 90,400 full time jobs.
About Diamond Light Source
Diamond Light Source is the UK’s national synchrotron serving scientists and researchers from around the world. It is a not-for-profit joint venture funded by UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) and Wellcome. Diamond provides academic and industry researchers access to facilities that enable world-changing science. The machine generates extremely bright light that is directed into laboratories known as beamlines. Scientists use the light to find solutions to humanity’s most critical challenges, from health, food security and biotechnology to energy, climate change and advanced materials. Diamond is in the process of upgrading to a fourth-generation synchrotron, generating a brighter and more coherent light. This will provide enhanced imaging and analysis capabilities, helping the UK to remain at the forefront of scientific discovery.
Unanticipated intermediates during isopenicillin N synthase catalysis identified by time-resolved X-ray free-electron laser studies
Article Publication Date
9-Oct-2026
Short caption: Artistic concept of the ‘molecular movie’ method used to deduce how penicillin is made.
Extended caption: Molecular movie of penicillin biosynthesis. X-ray free electron laser experiments on isopenicillin N synthase microcrystals capture structural snapshots of key intermediates during the penicillin forming reaction. The film strip illustrates progression through the catalytic cycle, with the monocyclic β-lactam intermediate and reactive high valent ferryl iron species highlighted at the centre of the molecular movie.
Image credit: University of Oxford/Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Creating a molecular movie of penicillin biosynthesis. Researchers used ultrafast X-ray free-electron laser pulses to capture atomic snapshots of an enzyme as it reacted with oxygen. Combining these snapshots produced a molecular movie showing how nature builds the core structure of penicillin.
Image credit: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Fish may look fine in urban waters but their genes tell a different story
Blue damselfish remain abundant along Okinawa’s urbanized coasts, but gene activity reveals physiological stress that conventional environmental monitoring may miss.
Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Graduate University
Blue damselfish, with their striking blue hue, are easy to spot, even along Okinawa’s heavily urbanized coastlines. But while abundant, their gene activity reveals a hidden cost to living in human-impacted environments.
A new Nature Communications study shows that fish living close to human activity can be well fed while simultaneously displaying molecular signs of chronic physiological stress, suggesting a possible “junk food effect.” The research, conducted by scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), and the Indiana University School of Medicine, also opens the possibility of using organisms themselves as recorders of environmental conditions, with genome-wide gene activity revealing ecological impacts invisible to conventional environmental monitoring.
Coastal environments worldwide are increasingly under pressure from urbanization, including agricultural, industrial, and residential activity. In Okinawa, less than 40% of the coastline remains natural and unaltered. This is particularly relevant for young coral reef fish, which spend their early lives in calm, shallow waters close to shore. These nursery areas provide relatively safe conditions and abundant food, but their proximity to land also exposes young fish to the impacts of human activity. However, how these conditions affect fish during this important stage of their lives, and into adulthood, remains poorly understood — until now.
“Classic methods of ecological and environmental monitoring involve water sampling, or counting the number of fish species, but this doesn’t really tell us about the health of the fish,” explains first author Emma Gairin, research fellow and former PhD student in the Marine Eco-Eco-Devo Unit at OIST. “To know what the fish is experiencing, looking at gene activity is key.”
But this is easier said than done. For wild animals in the field, scientists have typically focused on the activity of just a few genes at a time. Yet many different factors can affect gene activity, such as temperature and salinity, making it difficult to tell whether differences in gene activity between fish from different environments are really associated with human activity.
Gairin continues: “Our approach was to look at the activity of all genes, not just a few, from fish across multiple different sites to see if we can distinguish any clear environmental signatures.”
The researchers collected blue damselfish (Chrysiptera cyanea), from 18 different sites across Okinawa’s main island, with varying levels of urbanization, ranging from almost pristine reefs in northern Okinawa, to heavily urbanized coastlines in the island’s south.
“Some of the sites we were sampling were really dirty and polluted, but still, there they were,” says Gairin. “But just because they are present, it doesn’t mean that they’re not under stress.
When they analyzed the gene activity of these fish, they found, surprisingly, that many of the genes traditionally used as markers of pollution failed to track urbanization. Their activity was often better explained by factors such as temperature or nutritional status. Only when the researchers looked at gene activity across the genome as a whole did the signature of human activity clearly emerge.
The researchers identified 425 genes in juveniles and 585 genes in adult livers whose activity was associated with urbanization, but not with any of the other environmental factors they measured. These included genes involved in inflammation and immune responses, which were more active in fish from urbanized areas.
The researchers then compared the wild fish with fish raised in the laboratory under different feeding conditions. Adult fish from urbanized areas showed gene activity patterns similar to those of well-fed laboratory fish. Yet these same urban fish also showed increased immune and inflammatory responses, revealing a striking trade-off between nutritional status and physiological stress.
These findings may help answer a long-debated question: why do young reef fish settle in highly urbanized, sometimes visibly degraded coastal areas when cleaner, more natural habitats are available nearby? One possibility is that these environments may be enriched with organic matter, making food abundant and easily accessible.
“We suggest this is a ‘junk food effect’. It’s like teenagers going to a fast food chain: there is plenty to eat, it is cheap, but it may not be good for their health!” says Professor Vincent Laudet, head of OIST’s Marine Eco-Evo-Devo Unit and senior author of the study. “For young fish, an urbanized coastal environment may offer a similar trade-off. There’s plenty of food, but at a physiological cost.”
Overall, the study reveals the potential of using gene activity to better understand environmental conditions and how urbanization affects the organisms living there.
“What is exciting here is that instead of simply measuring the environment around an animal, we can ask the animal itself what it has experienced,” concludes Laudet. “Genome-wide gene activity integrates the many different environmental influences acting on an organism and can reveal physiological effects that remain invisible when we measure water quality or simply count which species are present. And there is no reason why this approach should be limited to fish or coral reefs. In principle, any animal, in any ecosystem, could become a living sensor of environmental change.”
Landscape transcriptomics reveals ecological constraints on fish under anthropogenic coastal change
Article Publication Date
9-Oct-2026
Four adult blue damselfish, three male and one female, in a coral reef in Okinawa.
Credit
Emma Gairin
The coastline of Okinawa, fringed by finger-like projections of coral reef. Along the coast, hotels, roads, and farmland show the presence of human activity.
Credit
Yoko Shintani
OIST researchers head out to collect damselfish at an urbanized field site in Sunabe, Okinawa
Credit
Saori Miura
OIST researchers conduct fieldwork at Kayo beach, a natural coastal area in Nago, Okinawa.
Credit
Emma Gairin
Gene activity is linked to a wide variety of different factors. Hundreds of genes showed activity patterns associated with urbanization, including 425 genes in juveniles and 585 genes in adult livers.
Credit
Gairin et al. Nature Communications, 2026. 10.1038/s41467-026-77751-2
