Microplastics — defined as plastic particles under 0.2 inches – have been discovered most recently in human lungs and brains, as well as in our livers, kidneys, and testes. They have so far been associated with some cancers, respiratory diseases, and pregnancy and birth complications.Now researchers are adding another ill effect to the persistent particles — boosting antibiotic resistance, according to a study recently published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.Antibio ...read more

When the James Webb Telescope first observed mysterious Little Red Dots in the early universe, astronomers looked on in disbelief. These strange objects, they realised, were distant, bright and strangely, unexpectedly, bafflingly red.That’s a puzzle because young stars are blue and become red only later in life, when they are several billion years old. But these objects formed about 900 million years after the Big Bang and so could not be made of stars that old. In any case, stars are incapabl ...read more

Languages evolve and change drastically over time. If you were to say street corn, nepo baby, or beach read — three terms recently added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary — to early English speakers, they’d likely think you were speaking a different language. English borrows a lot of words from different languages. Words include rendezvous, genre, and even lemon. English is more of a fluid language, picking up new words as it grows. However, this wasn’t always the case, especially when ...read more

Decades after its initial discovery, the skeleton of a prehistoric child who possessed both human and Neanderthal attributes has now been directly dated. Archaeologists have confirmed that the skeleton of the Lapedo child, named after its place of origin in Lapedo Valley, Portugal, is somewhere between 27,780 to 28,550 years old, according to new research. Details surrounding the Lapedo child are presented in a study that was recently published in Science Advances. The updated date range of the ...read more

Hantavirus is not exactly a household word — or a disease that many people think much about. That changed when complications caused by the rare virus killed Betsy Arakawa, wife of Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman.Hantaviruses are a family of viruses that can cause serious illnesses and death. Some forms do more damage to the lungs. Other strains can destroy the kidneys.Whatever the strain, the infectious diseases are most often spread by rodents. In much of the world, there has been no record ...read more

The highly infectious disease measles has recently hit at least 200 people in Texas and New Mexico and has resulted in at least one death. During this time, medical suggestions for measles treatment and prevention are going public — some information is accurate, and some is not.So, what does the research literature say? There has been work investigating how Vitamin A can impact measles for a few decades. However, interpreting the results requires both subtly and nuance.Vitamin A Supplements an ...read more

We all depend on oxygen to survive, but about 3 billion years ago, there was barely any oxygen at all. When was the last time you thought about where all the oxygen on Earth came from?A research team from the University of Tokyo’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science thinks about this question all of the time. In a newly published study in Communications Earth & Environment, the team reveals that we may have volcanoes to thank for the abundance of air that we breathe. A Volcanic Disc ...read more

There’s nothing like a well-timed joke to set the mood. Jokes can help ease tension in a conversation, make people feel more comfortable and engaged, and can even make you seem more trustworthy. Humor is something comedians and politicians alike have been using to connect with and captivate their audiences.However, this technique has not often been used by scientists and science communicators for fear that the audience will not take the scientific information seriously, leading some to have a ...read more

Obesity rates have more than doubled in adults and quadrupled in adolescents since 1990, making it a leading cause of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, neurological disorders, chronic respiratory diseases, and digestive disorders. This growing global health crisis calls for effective obesity treatments to reduce the burden on healthcare systems.Semaglutide, the weekly injectable drug better known by its brand names Ozempic and Wegovy, was initially ...read more

Both the deep sea and space are difficult to reach and even more difficult to explore. You can’t breathe the air, temperatures are extreme, gravity varies, and atmospheric pressure makes survival impossible without protective vehicles. It’s part of the reason that these remote terrains are largely left unexplored. Only around 5 percent of the universe and 26 percent of the ocean floor have been visited.  Both deep sea travel and deep space travel come with a lot of risks and a lot of prepa ...read more