Kids Face Double the Long COVID Risk After Second Infection Parents who thought their children were in the clear after recovering from COVID-19 may need to reconsider. A massive study tracking more than 460,000 young people across the United States has found that getting infected with COVID a…

Stranded Dolphins Show Alzheimer’s-Like Brain Changes When marine biologists pull a beached dolphin from Florida's Indian River Lagoon, they are increasingly finding something unexpected: brains riddled with the same toxic proteins that destroy human minds in Alzheimer's disease. The culprit…

First Stars May Have Run on Dark Matter, Not Fusion The universe's first stars might not have been stars at all, at least not in the way we understand them. New analysis of James Webb Space Telescope observations suggests that four extremely distant, extraordinarily bright objects could be "dark…

Diabetes Pill Plus Allergy Med Shows Promise for MS Repair A diabetes drug you can pick up at any pharmacy, combined with an over-the-counter antihistamine, might help rebuild the protective coating around nerves damaged by multiple sclerosis. It sounds almost too simple, but early trial results…

Scientists Spot Parkinson’s Culprits Hiding in Plain Sight For the first time, researchers have directly observed the tiny protein clusters believed to kickstart Parkinson's disease in human brain tissue, a development one scientist likens to seeing stars during the day. The clusters, called…

CAR T Cell Therapy Gets a Makeover for Solid Tumors The cancer treatment that has saved countless blood cancer patients might finally work against the tumors that kill most people. Researchers have engineered CAR T cells to carry a one-two punch directly to solid tumors, potentially opening…

Fungi Were Shaping Earth Long Before Plants Existed The fungal kingdom has been quietly rewriting Earth's early history. New research from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology reveals that fungi diversified hundreds of millions of years before land plants emerged, fundamentally…

The Flu Test That Lives on Your Tongue Forget the nasal swabs. A team of German researchers has developed a molecular sensor that releases the taste of thyme when it encounters influenza virus in your saliva, potentially turning chewing gum into a diagnostic tool for catching infections before…

Urban Air Harbors Disease-Causing Yeast Not Found at Coast Those doctors who once prescribed seaside visits for healing may have been onto something. New research reveals that urban air carries dangerous yeast strains entirely absent from coastal environments, suggesting city dwellers face…

When Fusion Sensors Fail, AI Reads Between the Lines Scientists at Princeton University have developed an artificial intelligence system that can reconstruct missing sensor data in fusion energy experiments, and it might provide even more detail than the original measurements could capture. The…

Ketamine Deaths Surge as Drug Shifts from Clubs to Chaos The ketamine problem in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland has morphed into something nobody anticipated. Deaths involving the drug have jumped twentyfold since 2014, but here is the twist: ketamine is rarely killing people on its own…

Why Mamba Snake Bites Worsen After Antivenom Doctors treating mamba snake bite victims have long puzzled over a disturbing pattern: patients who initially improve after receiving antivenom sometimes deteriorate again, their muscles seizing in painful, uncontrolled spasms. Now researchers at The…

Astronomers Find Giant Wave Rippling Through the Milky Way The Milky Way has been caught in the act of making waves. Using data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia telescope, astronomers have discovered a massive ripple surging outward through our galaxy’s disc, stretching across tens of…

Cerebellum, Compound 6 Hold Keys to Easing Alcohol Withdrawal The answer to one of addiction medicine's most stubborn problems might be hiding in plain sight, tucked into a walnut-sized region at the back of the brain that scientists have long associated with little more than balance and…

Universe Was Warm Before First Light The gas between galaxies was already heated 800 million years after the Big Bang, according to astronomers who have spent a decade hunting signals from the Universe's infancy. The finding rules out certain models of how the cosmos evolved and suggests early…

Dar Side of the Moon Runs 100 Degrees Cooler The first rock samples ever retrieved from the moon's far side suggest its interior may be significantly colder than the hemisphere perpetually facing Earth, a finding that deepens one of lunar science's most enduring mysteries. Analysis of fragments…

Scientists Read Mice’s Minds Through Facial Twitches The next time you are trying to hide what you are thinking, you might want to keep your face very, very still. Scientists at the Champalimaud Foundation in Portugal have demonstrated something unsettling: they can decode what mice are "thinking"…

Psilocybin Shows Dark Side in New Mothers The magic mushroom compound that has been hailed as a mental health breakthrough may pose serious risks for new mothers and their babies, according to UC Davis researchers who found the psychedelic worsened postpartum depression symptoms rather than…

Scientists Crack the Code for Bird Stem Cells The secret ingredient was hiding in plain sight all along: egg yolk. After decades of failed attempts, researchers have finally succeeded in creating authentic embryonic stem cells from chickens and seven other bird species, opening possibilities that…

Medicaid Experiment Falls Flat on Both Promises The numbers tell an inconvenient story. When Georgia became the first state to tie Medicaid coverage to work requirements in 2023, officials predicted up to 345,000 people would qualify and roughly 64,000 would enroll. Instead, insurance coverage…

Your Gym Hiatus Might Actually Help You Bulk Up Taking a month off from exercise might sound like a fitness setback, but new research suggests your muscles could emerge stronger for it. Scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign discovered that mice who stopped running for four…

AI Distinguishes Glioblastoma From Look-Alike Cancers During Surgery In the high-stakes world of brain surgery, a pathologist’s snap judgment can determine whether a patient walks out with their tumor removed or heads straight to chemotherapy instead. Get it wrong, and you’ve either carved out…

Trying to Curb Coyote Populations May Be a Lost Cause The coyotes always come back. That's the frustrating lesson from an 18-year study of a South Carolina predator population that refused to stay down, no matter how hard wildlife managers tried to suppress it. Researchers monitoring coyotes at…

Tiny Moon Rock Rewrites Lunar History A 155-gram fragment collected during Apollo 17 more than half a century ago is forcing scientists to reconsider the timeline of giant impacts that shaped the Moon - and by extension, Earth - during the solar system's violent infancy. The rock, designated…

Blood Test Reveals How Well You’re Aging A blood test might soon tell you more than your cholesterol levels. Scientists have identified molecular signatures in blood plasma that mirror physical fitness in elderly adults, with one amino acid standing out as a dominant marker of healthy aging.…

Maggot Reactor Turns Rural Food Waste Into Protein In a cluttered research lab in eastern China, a new kind of garbage disposal sits humming quietly. It doesn’t grind or incinerate. Instead, it farms millions of writhing black soldier fly larvae that consume rural food waste and transform…

Lung-on-a-Chip Defends Itself for the First Time Scientists watched immune cells rush through microscopic vessels inside a polymer chip no bigger than a postage stamp, and for the first time, the miniature lung fought back against infection on its own. The moment took Ankur Singh's breath away.…

Europe’s Hail Problem Gets Bigger, Not Better The future of European hailstorms looks less frequent but far more destructive, according to new climate modeling that challenges earlier predictions about how global warming will reshape one of nature's costliest local hazards. Researchers from…

Gen X Women Battle Addiction to Processed Foods One in five women in their 50s and early 60s meets clinical criteria for addiction to ultra-processed foods, a rate that dwarfs addiction levels for alcohol and tobacco in the same age group, according to new research from the University of Michigan.…

Brain’s Fortress Holds Strong Against Alzheimer’s The brain's protective shield may be tougher than scientists thought. In findings that upend decades of assumptions about Alzheimer's disease, researchers at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center have discovered that the blood-brain barrier…

How Bacteria Trick Themselves Into Suicide by Antibiotic Nobody expected the bacteria to commit suicide. But that is essentially what happens when polymyxin antibiotics attack, according to stunning new microscopy images that reveal how these last-resort drugs actually work after 80 years of…

Simple Blood Test Predicts Liver Disease Risk Your next routine checkup could reveal whether you are headed toward cirrhosis or liver cancer, and the warning might come from three blood measurements your doctor already takes. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have developed a prediction tool…

Biochar’s Hidden Superpower: Direct Pollutant Destruction For decades, researchers believed biochar cleaned contaminated water like a simple sponge, passively absorbing pollutants from wastewater. But a groundbreaking study from Dalian University of Technology reveals this carbon-rich material has…

Quantum Entanglement Slashes Learning Time From Millions of Years to Minutes In a basement laboratory at the Technical University of Denmark, researchers have achieved something that sounds like science fiction: they've reduced a learning task that would take classical systems 20 million years to…

Parent-Owned Guns Most Often Used in Youth Suicide When 16-year-old children take their own lives with firearms, they're most likely reaching for a gun that belongs to their parents. And in most cases, that weapon was stored loaded and unlocked, making it devastatingly accessible in a moment of…

Massive Study Finds COVID Shots Cut Infection Risk by 58% in Pregnancy When Nikan Zargarzadeh began combing through mountains of data on COVID-19 vaccines and pregnancy, she expected to find some reassurance for expectant mothers. What she discovered was far more compelling: a protective effect so…

Rogue Planet’s Weather Report Shows Auroral Storms and 1,500°C Heat Scientists have delivered the first detailed weather forecast from a world beyond our solar system, and the conditions are decidedly hostile. The target of their meteorological investigation is SIMP-0136, a rogue planet drifting…

Memory Chips Could Cut Energy Use 90% With New Material Swedish researchers have developed an atomically thin material that could dramatically slash the energy consumption of computer memory chips, potentially addressing one of technology's fastest-growing environmental challenges. The team at…

Brain’s Drainage System May Predict Parkinson’s Disease The brain's waste disposal system might hold the key to predicting who develops Parkinson's disease years before symptoms appear. A groundbreaking multicenter study of 428 participants reveals that disruptions in the brain's "glymphatic…

Ancient DNA Reveals Indonesian Cattle Are World’s Most Genetically Diverse Scientists have discovered that cattle on the Indonesian island of Java carry more genetic diversity than any other cattle population on Earth, thanks to an extraordinary interbreeding event that occurred more than 1,300…

Tiny Chip Detects Toxic “Forever Chemicals” in Minutes A grain of sand in an Olympic swimming pool. That's the level of precision a new handheld sensor can achieve when hunting for some of the most elusive and dangerous contaminants in drinking water. Researchers at the University of Chicago and…

New Brain Scan Reveals How Tiny Vessels Pulse With Age A cutting-edge brain imaging technique developed at USC has captured something never before seen in living humans: the rhythmic pulsing of microscopic blood vessels deep within the brain, revealing changes that could unlock new approaches to…

Amazon’s Trees Are Growing Bigger, Defying Climate Predictions Deep in the Amazon rainforest, something unexpected is happening. While scientists have spent decades warning about climate change threatening the world's largest tropical forest, trees across the basin have been quietly getting…

Scientists Discover Way to Block Pain While Preserving Healing What if treating pain didn't require shutting down the body's natural healing response? NYU researchers have identified a surprising answer hidden within the very cells that wrap our peripheral nerves. The team focused on Schwann…

Scientists Find Cancer’s Hidden Scent Cancer might be giving itself away through an invisible trail of chemical scents long before tumors become detectable through traditional screening methods. A new study from Chinese researchers suggests that analyzing volatile organic compounds (VOCs), the…

How Prozac Rewires the Brain’s Energy Grid to Fight Depression The world's most prescribed antidepressant doesn't just boost mood regulating serotonin. New research reveals that fluoxetine (better known as Prozac) fundamentally rewires how critical brain cells manage energy and form connections,…

Your Dog’s Dinner Could Be Costing the Planet 57 Football Fields A typical 20-kilogram dog munching on beef-based kibble throughout its adult life requires the equivalent of 57 football fields worth of agricultural land to produce its food. Switch that same pooch to a plant-based diet, and the…

Your Brain Uses The Same Chemical To Learn And Forget A millimeter-long worm with just 300 neurons has revealed something counterintuitive about human memory: forgetting isn't a bug in our brain's software, it's a carefully orchestrated feature. And the star of this process is dopamine, the same…

Ancient Oceans Held 99% Less Carbon Than Scientists Believed The primordial seas that nurtured early life were far more carbon-starved than anyone imagined. New research from ETH Zurich has overturned decades of assumptions about ancient ocean chemistry, revealing that dissolved organic carbon…

Silent speed: the fast, fuel-efficient European helicopter setting the pace for clean aviation With its sleek design and groundbreaking aerodynamics, the Airbus RACER isn’t just a prototype – it’s a symbol of Europe’s commitment to clean aviation. By Tom Cassauwers Brice Makinadjian and Stephane…