Drugmaker Lykos Therapeutics announced on Aug. 9, 2024, that the Food and Drug Administration declined to approve the company’s application for the use of MDMA-assisted therapy in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. It is the first such decision issued on a psychedelic drug application.Many investors and researchers have been predicting a psychedelics boom, with MDMA being just the first of a number of psychedelics in the drug development pipeline.The FDA’s decision has disappoi ...read more

And since natural selection shares so many features with play, we may, with some justification, maintain that life, in a most fundamental sense, is playful. At Cambridge University Library, along with all the books, maps, and manuscripts, there’s a child’s drawing that curators have titled “The Battle of the Fruit and Vegetable Soldiers.”The drawing depicts a turbaned cavalry soldier facing off against an English dragoon. It’s a bit trippy: The British soldier sits astride a carrot, an ...read more

The years between 662 million years and 700 million years ago — just before and after glaciers left a half-mile thick rock layer — were mysterious. There is little information about the planet's conditions just before the period of the deep freeze, which covered the planet in ice and is sometimes referred to as Snowball Earth.Now, researchers have examined a rock feature showing what life on the planet was like — both before the freeze and after the subsequent thaw. The report in the Journ ...read more

From the first time a curious wolf approached fearful humans and managed to befriend them, dogs have been a big part of the human experience. For over 15,000 years, they’ve been our co-workers and companions. Since then, we've learned a lot about dogs and our relationship to them (as you'll learn if you watch Inside the Mind of a Dog, a new documentary on Netflix that includes research based on citizen science contributions). And yet there’s still so much we don’t know about them! To celeb ...read more

Did all dinosaurs become extinct, killed when an asteroid hit the Earth 66 million years ago? Or could a few of them, somehow, have survived that mass extinction event – with their descendants living even today?It is exciting to imagine that gigantic dinosaurs are still rumbling and lumbering around in some remote part of the world. But no evidence of this exists. There are no cousins of Tyrannosaurus rex stomping through the vast woods of Siberia, no Apatosaurus ambling through the Congo rain ...read more

Cerebrospinal fluid, or CSF, is a clear, colorless liquid that plays a crucial role in maintaining the health and function of your central nervous system. It cushions the brain and spinal cord, provides nutrients and removes waste products.Despite its importance, problems related to CSF often go unnoticed until something goes wrong.I am a neurologist and headache specialist. In my work treating patients with CSF pressure disorders, I have seen these conditions present in many different ways. Her ...read more

Earth has one of the most interesting weather systems. Its atmosphere is ideal for moving hot and cold air around, and a hydrological cycle allows for precipitation. But throughout our solar system, there are other planets that have more extreme and also fascinating weather patterns worth exploring. 1. MarsMars has weather and in certain ways, it’s similar to that of Earth. For example, it has seasons and it has winds. But in other ways, it’s very different. The orbit of the planet causes t ...read more

Stonehenge practically radiates mystery. Who built it? Why? And how? Now, there are some new questions: Why did the Altar Stone — a 6-ton cap for the neolithic monument — come from a site in Scotland about 450 miles away? And how was it moved from its mine to the Salisbury Plain site?A team of scientists raised these notions in a Nature report that says the stone hails from Scotland, not Wales, as had been previously thought. The Altar StoneThe implications are that the Altar Stone had speci ...read more

We’re interested in the moon because it’s close enough to Earth to allow us to practice setting up a base camp in preparation for Mars. In fact, Artemis III will send the first crewed spacecraft to the moon’s South Pole to set up camp by 2034.And while there’s still a lot that we don’t know about living on the moon, we do know a little something about its weather forecast, says Jason Steffen, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “There’s not ...read more

In the mid-1960s, a Scottish man named Angus Barbieri fasted for more than a year. For a total of 382 days, he survived on liquids, vitamins, and some yeast, ultimately losing 276 pounds. He undertook the fast (under medical supervision) to lose weight in his pursuit of better health.The practice of fasting for health benefits dates back to the fifth century B.C.E. when Hippocrates recommended fasting for certain illnesses. By the 1800s, fasting was being studied for its potential health effects ...read more