Happy new year! To say goodbye to 2024, we’re counting down Futurity’s top 10 posts of the year.
We hope you’ve been able to find useful, surprising, mind-expanding research news on the site this year. Come back throughout 2025 to find more fascinating research from top universities.
Here are the 10 most popular posts on the site from the past year:
10. Diabetes drug may delay heart failure hospitalizations
“Developing heart failure is one of our major public health problems, and any step that gets us closer to preventing it is a step in the right direction,” says Adrian Hernandez, director of the Duke University Clinical Research Institute.
9. The best way to memorize stuff isn’t the same for all situations
Experiments suggest varying what we study and spacing out our learning over time can both be helpful for retaining memories—it just depends on what we’re trying to remember, University of Pittsburgh researchers report.
8. Parkinson’s disease may start in the gut
“The idea that Parkinson’s disease can start in the gut is a bit weird in terms of the typical dogma for thinking about Parkinson’s disease,” says Elizabeth Bess, a professor in the chemistry department at the University of California, Irvine. “But our research is charting a map for how this is possible.”
7. DNA damage is key to age-related macular degeneration
“Our findings highlight the critical role DNA damage repair plays in maintaining retina health for good vision,” says Dorota Skowronska-Krawczyk, a University of California, Irvine associate professor of physiology and biophysics.
“Because age is the strongest risk factor for AMD, gaining deeper insights into the underlying biology of aging in the eye is essential for developing effective therapies.”
6. Icing an injury may do more harm than good
Craig Wassinger and Jeff Foucrier, physical therapy faculty members in the Tufts University School of Medicine rehabilitation sciences department, share tips on properly administering thermal therapies after an injury, surgery, or in simple recovery from exercise.
5. New solar cells break efficiency record
“Collectively, these advancements offer ground-breaking insights into mitigating energy loss in perovskite solar cells and set a new course for the further development of perovskite-based triple junction solar technology,” says Assistant Professor Hou Yi of the National University of Singapore (NUS).
4. Natural supplement can benefit sleep and gut bacteria
Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) found that a naturally occurring supplement can improve sleep quality in older adults, particularly in individuals with poor sleep patterns, and manage their gut microbiome composition.
3. Listen: Bees can recognize human faces
“Yes, bees can recognize and differentiate between human faces, so they can recognize their beekeepers over somebody else,” says David Tarpy, a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University.
Check out the podcast to hear Tarpy dig into topics that run the gamut from how many bees there are in the US (approximately), to how bad their eyesight is, and what happens to drones at the end of the honey-making season.
2. What you should know about the latest COVID variant
“This latest variant should be a reminder that we have tools to fight off COVID infection and minimize severe disease,” Andy Pekosz, a professor in the molecular microbiology and immunology department at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, explained in January. “We just have to use these tools more effectively than we have over the last six months.”
1. How guaranteed income affects low-income households
Researchers from New York University reported on the impacts of guaranteed income—regular cash payments with no strings attached—to low-income households in Compton, California.
Thank you again for reading Futurity! Come back in 2025 for more incredible and useful research news.
-The Futurity Team
