An arthritis drug of all things was recently found in a study to restore up to 100% of hair in patients with severe alopecia. Around 2% of the world population live with alopecia areata, an autoimmune disorder where the human immune system mistakes hair follicles for harmful inva … | Continue reading
It wasn’t just the roars of the dinosaurs that made up the soundscape of the animal world during the Jurassic period. Crickets and grasshoppers communicated through a variety of songs and high-pitched sounds, some of which you can now listen to thanks to Thorin Jonsson from the I … | Continue reading
An East Honolulu high school student discovered a fungi in coconut husks that could clean up plastics and sunscreen from the ocean—and her won multiple awards at the Hawaiʻi State Science & Engineering Fair. Vera Wang, a senior at Kaiser High School, won in multiple categories af … | Continue reading
Space scientists have put together a photo gallery of ‘cosmic gems’ to showcase the variety of sizes, shapes, and high-energy features of distant galaxies. Astronomers put galaxies into three main categories: spirals like our own Milky Way with arms emanating from their cores, el … | Continue reading
A combination of omega-3 and low-dose aspirin performed about as well as antibiotics in a yearlong study of people with severe gum disease, or periodontitis. It raises the possibility of an alternative treatment for some patients at a time when multiple pathogens are developing r … | Continue reading
Reprinted with permission from World at Large. 9 months ahead of schedule, and surviving attempts in both Trump Administrations to cut its budget in half, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope soared into space on Sunday afternoon aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launched from … | Continue reading
He’s no poison-arrow frog, but that doesn’t mean the American bullfrog doesn’t understand poison—far from it, according to scientists. Hidden within the humble bullfrog’s genetics is the equipment to produce an antidote to a deadly shellfish toxin that afflicts thousands of peopl … | Continue reading
Researchers at Johns Hopkins report that an experimental drug targeting one of the most common genetic drivers of pancreatic cancer was safe in humans, and generated durable immune responses aimed at preventing the cancer in people at high risk. Pancreatic cancer has one of the l … | Continue reading
Hundreds of geometric earthworks were recently found in the southwestern Amazon, evidence that a monument-building, precolonial civilization was so much larger than previously thought. The scale of this hidden world of massive earthen construction projects only began to truly be … | Continue reading
For caregivers of children living with chronic or rare lung diseases, monitoring their condition presents an uncomfortable tradeoff: Repeated scans can be valuable, but they can also expose patients to radiation. Now, a rapidly advancing form of MRI is offering another possibilit … | Continue reading
NASA engineers found a way to free up power aboard Voyager 2, helping the nearly 50-year-old spacecraft continue its scientific work. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory team decided to simultaneously shut down certain powered components and replaced them with options that use less ene … | Continue reading
Scientists using Earth’s most powerful solar telescope have snapped a picture of the Sun’s surface that helped explain—for the first time—foundational physics about our dear star. Situated atop the summit of Haleakalā, a volcano on the island of Maui, the Daniel Inouye Solar Tele … | Continue reading
2 famously toxic plants, know also to counter pain, malaria, cancer, and pests, may have had those medicinal properties synthesized in a lab for the first time. The researchers behind the discovery hold that “plants are the best chemists,” and believe they’ve demonstrated that ne … | Continue reading
In what must rank as one of the rarer fossil assemblages ever discovered, an incredible moment where the whole top-third of the Cretaceous era marine food chain was being sorted out has been presented by scientists. Following 7 years of study, the jumble of bones is nothing less … | Continue reading
A major, early-stage advancement in vision technology comes to us now from South Korea, where researchers created a contact lens that repairs scratches automatically when exposed to sunlight. A scratched lens can mean an expensive replacement, but the UV light-activated hydrogel … | Continue reading
As NASA’s Curiosity rover ascended the Martian valley named Valle Grande back in June, it sent back images of a landscape covered in honeycomb-like textures. “We’ve seen a lot of fascinating landscapes through Curiosity’s eyes, but this sea of polygons took our breath away,” said … | Continue reading
Arizona State University researchers are testing ways to neutralize mining’s biggest environmental liabilities. At present the mining sector is experiencing a surge in interest and investment, as America has seemingly woken up to the dearth of Western supply for various minerals … | Continue reading
A sprinkle of crushed basalt rock has turned out to be the fairy dust that newly planted forests need to develop faster and absorb more carbon. That’s what scientists from Imperial College London are reporting in a new study from the largest field experiment studying how “enhance … | Continue reading
A changing climate seems to be shortening Africa’s dry season, resulting in less land scorched during the wildfire season according to new science. For all the column inches devoted to the record wildfire seasons in France, Spain, or the Amazon, it is still and has always been Af … | Continue reading
As soon as Aleksander Wolszczan confirmed the observation of the first planet outside of our solar system, he immediately reasoned that thousands more would be discovered in the coming decades. On that prediction the astronomer, now 80, was eminently correct, and the trend has ex … | Continue reading
The elusive vaquita porpoise swims in the wild only in shallow northern waters of Mexico’s Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortez)—and it’s one of the rarest and most endangered marine mammals on Earth. With a wild population numbering as low as ten, the vaquita is p … | Continue reading
Scientists trudging through Nicaragua’s rainforest have identified a “hotbed” of avocado species diversity. The fruit was first transported hundreds of miles to Central America from South America around 5,000 years ago, and the American researchers uncovered genetic traces of thi … | Continue reading
A man who was paralyzed from the chest down is now regaining hand and arm control thanks to a double neural bypass surgery—by using a computer to connect his brain with the nerves in his hand and arms. Hardly doomed to becoming a wheeled internet node for the rest of his life, th … | Continue reading
At the intersection of big data, forestry, and genomics, a biotech startup has birthed a generation of “elite” blight-resistant American chestnut trees without deep genetic tinkering. The company is inspired by saving American hardwoods that have been ravaged by an introduced fun … | Continue reading
Homegrown catnip plants have proven to be as effective as DEET for repelling mosquitoes in rural Uganda. Presented at an international science conference in Florence, Italy, a collaborative team of Welsh and Ugandan researchers believe they’ve found a lower cost solution to mosqu … | Continue reading
Scientists have detected a simple sugar found in raspberries within the gas and dust at the center of the Milky Way. It’s the first time a sugar molecule has been identified in interstellar media, having previously been found in our solar system on asteroids. Called erythrulose, … | Continue reading
The chronic disease schistosomiasis wreaks havoc on more than 220 million people around the world, with the vast majority of cases being in sub-Saharan Africa. New research published in Nature Sustainability by scientists from Notre Dame has explored how raising freshwater fish i … | Continue reading
A protein associated with longevity in humans has recently been found at high concentrations in an extraordinarily long-living mouse. The discovery makes the case for more research into a poorly-understood, potentially gene-determined, metabolic pathway for healthy aging that cou … | Continue reading
Respect cardiologist Dr. Benjamin Levine said last year in an interview that exercise “needs to be part of your personal hygiene, like brushing your teeth or taking a shower.” That’s because it prevents our muscular repair systems from weakening with age, a new study has shown. B … | Continue reading
Reprinted with permission from World at Large Scientists in Canada have discovered that ancient underground rocks are naturally producing hydrogen gas—and lots of it, and it may be everywhere—and it may be cheap. The rocks could offer another source of clean energy known for emi … | Continue reading
Blind people have been offered fresh hope of seeing again after lab-grown cells restored retinal function in mice. When injected into mice with retinal disease, the special retinal blood cells integrated into the damaged tissue to regenerate blood vessels and restore retinal func … | Continue reading
You can reduce your diesel engine’s emissions by 60% with THIS surprisingly simple solution—just add water. In all seriousness, according to a review of studies from around the world published by a research team from Nigeria, mixing small amounts of water into diesel fuel could d … | Continue reading
More insights into Classical literature have been recovered from the burned papyrus scrolls destroyed in the same eruption that buried Pompeii. They include ruminations on Stoic philosophy by an unknown author, and the title “Book 8” from a work called On Gods, by the Greek philo … | Continue reading
A team of materials scientists in China have developed a solar-powered device that can produce freshwater from seawater with better economics than bottled water. By creating a weave of nanomaterials and organic polymers which were both durable and highly reflective, they created … | Continue reading
A sophisticated AI-powered examination of coral reef resistance extrapolated into the future found that there’re about 64,000 square miles of coral reefs on Earth that could still be resisting climate change by 2050. The common theory states that CO2 emissions create a greenhouse … | Continue reading
It took a new and special space telescope to parse out each one of these individual stars gleaming in a dizzying mass at the center of our own dear Milky Way galaxy. The European Space Agency’s Euclid Telescope, orbiting 1 million miles from Earth at the 2nd Lagrange Point—an orb … | Continue reading
A new high tech jacket developed by engineers at the University of Texas can pull drinking water from thin air. With the advance in fabric technology, the jacket can collect up to one-and-a-half pints of drinkable water a day, say scientists. They suggest the ground-breaking tech … | Continue reading
Two ‘super-puff’ planets lighter than candy candy have been discovered by scientists—and they’re bigger than Jupiter. They are among the lowest-density giant planets ever detected, according to a new study. The two planets orbit a dwarf star located around 1,110 light years from … | Continue reading
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover just completed a special milestone as it recently marked 5 years on the Red Planet. The robotic science lab has put 26.2 miles under its wheels: in other words, a marathon. Having conducted hundreds of experiments so far, the rover’s data has alread … | Continue reading
After a marathon effort to digitize each of the 7.4 million plant and fungi samples in its herbarium, the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew has said the result will help “democratize knowledge” while leveraging AI’s incredible computation power to plan conservation strategies, discover n … | Continue reading
Some animals like salamanders can regenerate entire limbs, and by flipping a few genetic switches scientists have potentially unlocked innate human regeneration. The key is essentially to deprogram the natural response to build scar tissue and reprogram cells to build back bone, … | Continue reading
Chinese scientists have discovered the world’s largest “whale graveyard” in a trench deep below the Indian Ocean—and it teems with life. Bivalves, brittle stars, different kinds of worms, and jellyfish—many of which may be new to science, thrived in what the scientists suggested … | Continue reading
An awesome study that could help clean up rivers world-wide at negligible cost leveraged fungi as a pollution control filter. The mushrooms in question were the very delicious and very helpful turkey tail, and the pollution in question was sewage: notably E. coli bacteria. The ri … | Continue reading
From the SpaceX Dragon capsule high above the Earth, astronaut Jessica Meir was left stunned and moved by what she was witnessing. As our own blue marble spun around to show its white underbelly, a blast of solar wind had ignited the Southern Lights, or Aurora Australis, which sp … | Continue reading
Some years ago, scientists dedicated to including the kingdom Fungi into modern conservation set out to measure the total length of fungal networks under the soil. These networks form the fabled “wood wide web,” an interconnected, biological framework of cooperation between plant … | Continue reading
A new energy-efficient desalination system produces fresh water without chemical additives and transforms leftover salts into useful materials. Communities from California to the Middle East currently rely on desalination plants to convert ocean water to fresh water. But, common … | Continue reading
In an impressive early demonstration of a potentially revolutionary technology, biotech engineers in Zurich used micro-sized robots and stem cells to restore normal movement in a mouse whose spinal cord was entirely severed. The tech was also demonstrated in zebrafish, and the en … | Continue reading
For a planet to be habitable, it’s generally considered to need liquid water. To have liquid water, a planet needs an atmosphere. To have an atmosphere, it’s understood a world needs a magnetosphere, and for the first time ever, a team of astronomers has found the strongest evide … | Continue reading