From Firefighting Foams to Molecular Mysteries: A Surfactant’s Unexpected Journey

If you picture doctors making their daily rounds through hospital floors, you might imagine a single doctor standing by a bedside, examining a patient’s chart, or perhaps a group of doctors discussing a case right outside a patient’s room. However, the future of hospital care may well look more like a well-choreographed team effort, with doctors, nurses, pharmacists, students, and patients themselves, all in the same room, and all working as one team. This is exactly what Dr. Sarah Hallen and her colleagues at MaineHealth Maine Medical Center Portland envisioned when they created the iPACE model, short for Interprofessional Partnership to Advance Care and Education. Launched in 2017, this model is not just changing how doctors are trained; it’s leveraging team synergies to reshape what it means to deliver healthcare.

As our world becomes increasingly complex, the need for genuine self-development and "inner work" grows more important. Dr Kerstin Liesenfeld and colleagues at the Liesenfeld Research Institute explore how people develop and maintain authenticity throughout their lives. Their research reveals that authentic development follows distinct patterns and stages, occurring at different rates across various aspects of our personalities. This understanding could help shape more effective approaches to personal development and coaching.

Scientific discovery often unfolds in unexpected ways. What begins as a search for solutions to real-world challenges can lead researchers into unexplored scientific territory, where unconventional ideas emerge and spark debate. This dynamic was at the heart of research by Dr. Arthur W. Snow and Dr. Ramagopal Ananth in the Chemistry Division of the US Naval Research Laboratory. Their study aimed to address a pressing need: replacing fluorocarbon surfactants in firefighting foams. What they discovered would take them beyond firefighting applications and into fundamental questions about the nature of water itself.

In early 2020, the world changed almost overnight. As COVID-19 swept across the world, homes were repurposed as schools, playgrounds and classrooms were abandoned, and family routines changed utterly or vanished. People were forced to adapt to remote working, many lost their jobs, and a significant proportion of us experienced anxiety about the virus that had turned the world upside down. However, amid this pandemonium, one group of people was especially vulnerable: children. We often think of childhood as a carefree time, protected from responsibilities, worries and burdens. However, the pandemic shattered this illusion. For many children, it caused confusion, isolation, and fear. Recognizing the need to understand this impact, Dr. Carlos Lastra and his team of researchers at Saint Peter’s University Hospital in New Jersey, undertook an essential study: assessing how the pandemic affected anxiety levels in children and adolescents.

Are we primarily motivated by self-interest, or can activities that advance the progress of others provide similar or even greater levels of motivation? Logically, it would seem that people are most motivated to achieve specific goals when they are doing things that benefit themselves. Examples include studying for an exam, doing regular physical exercise, or working toward a career milestone; all activities that have tangible and readily apparent benefits for the individual pursuing them. Consequently, many of us would tend to believe that personal progress is our biggest driver. However, a recent study by Prof. Olya Bryksina from the University of Winnipeg reveals a surprising twist in how motivation works, especially when we're part of a group. In her innovative research, published in Motivation Science in 2025, Professor Bryksina explores a question many of us encounter daily but rarely think deeply about: What makes people put in effort when working toward a shared goal as part of a group? Her findings suggest something profound, that helping others in a group can be more motivating than helping ourselves.

In our increasingly interconnected world, sharing knowledge freely and fairly is crucial for ongoing development and progress. Increasing the overall size of our store of knowledge is important in dealing with the challenges we face in the modern world, but determining who can access and add to that knowledge is a key question. Prestigious academic journals and global conferences aim to help disseminate our most important discoveries and innovations, but researchers do not have equal access to such resources to promote their ideas and consequently not all voices are heard equally. Scholars from low- and middle-income countries continue to face invisible walls that limit their participation in the global exchange of ideas. This systemic imbalance is the focus of a deeply insightful study by Dr. Angel Ford of the University at Albany and Dr. Daniel Alemneh of the University of North Texas, who call for a more just and healthier scholarly communication system.

Thyroid cancer is one of the more common cancers globally, and for most patients, the prognosis is generally favorable with timely and effective treatment. The usual course involves surgery to remove the thyroid gland, followed by radioactive iodine therapy to eliminate any remaining cancerous cells. However, for a subset of patients, the story is far more complicated. When thyroid cancer no longer responds to radioiodine therapy, a condition known as radioiodine-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer, the outlook becomes significantly more daunting. These patients face limited treatment options and a much grimmer prognosis.

Research from Troy Norris at the WellBalance Institute for Positive Wellbeing reveals how a novel approach to measuring wellbeing can lead to more effective personalized interventions. The Wellbeing Balance and Lived Experiences (or WellBalance) Model and Assessment extends traditional wellbeing measures by evaluating both positive experiences and the feelings they generate, enabling tailored approaches to enhance individual flourishing based on specific life circumstances.

While checklists are often a vital tool for medical procedures, there has so far been little guidance on how they should be designed and applied in real medical scenarios. Now, a team including Dr. Alex Chaparro, a researcher at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, has developed an algorithm which can help medical experts to decide when a checklist is the best-suited tool for the task at hand; and if so, which type of checklist should be applied, based on the user’s technical experience. The approach could ultimately help complex, potentially urgent medical procedures to become safer and more efficient.

Research from Professor Mamta Jain at UT Southwestern Medical Center and her colleagues reveals how electronic alerts, patient navigation, and mailed outreach can significantly increase hepatitis C screening and treatment in traditionally difficult-to-reach populations. Their work demonstrates that while electronic reminders are effective, combining multiple approaches with adequate clinical staffing and resources leads to the greatest improvements in patient care across all stages of the hepatitis C care continuum.