We give blood to save someone else’s life. It turns out that this altruistic act could also improve the donor’s health. But they might have to give a lot of blood over time for that effect.A study screened 217 male volunteer blood downers. The researchers divided the group into two. One cohort had given blood over a hundred times during their lifetimes. The other group had done so less than five times.Although the study was initiated in part to investigate whether long-term donation had any ...read more

New findings from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) collaboration may have just unveiled the sharpest images of the universe as an infant. After measuring light that traveled 13 billion light years to Earth, the images reveal the universe at about 380,000 years old — the equivalent of an image of a human baby only mere hours old. The new findings come from several international pre-peer-reviewed studies, set to be presented later in March 2025. According to the study researchers, this vie ...read more

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S., claiming around 600,000 lives in 2022 alone. A diagnosis can be devastating, as the disease can often resist treatment and spreads uncontrollably.Now, a research team from The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) and UConn Health has identified a potential therapeutic strategy to halt or reverse tumor growth. Their study, published in Nature Communications, reveals how cancer cells disable a built-in "off switch" — and how reactivating it could stop ...read more

A 30,000-year-old vulture feather represents a “two-for-the-price-of one” discovery: the fossil itself, and the first evidence that volcanic ash can preserve such soft tissues in exquisite detail.The feather itself is not a new find; a Roman landowner in 1889 came across evidence of entire bird preserved as a three-dimensional impression. Its details included eye lids and wing feathers. However, new research published in the journal Geology demonstrates that preservation extends to microscop ...read more

Sitting in traffic can expose a driver to intense irritation, as well as a range of sound frequencies. Humming engines typically emit low-frequency sounds, while car horns release high-frequency blasts. Emergency vehicle sirens are high-pitched, and the rumblings from large trucks are lower-pitched.For most people, their ears are able to process these wide-ranging sounds and make sense of them. However, scientists don’t have a full sense of why this happens because they are still working to un ...read more

Gas emissions, earthquakes, and ground deformations. These are all signs that a volcano is about to erupt, and they are also all signs that have appeared at Mount Spurr, an active volcano in southcentral Alaska, around 80 miles west of Anchorage.According to the team at the Alaska Volcano Observatory, “significantly elevated” emissions of volcanic gas have been detected at the volcano — the tallest in the Aleutian Arc — this month, along with elevated earthquake activity and ground defor ...read more

While Earth’s one and only moon enthralls everyone on this planet, it can’t hold a candle to Saturn’s 274 moons, 128 of which were recently discovered and recognized by the International Astronomical Union. With this new surge in its moon count, Saturn prevails with the most moons out of any other planet in the Solar System. Astronomers are now wondering, though, how this abundance of moons emerged in the first place.Regular vs. Irregular MoonsAlthough Saturn boasts an impressive amount of ...read more

On both page and screen, we’re used to seeing dinosaurs and prehistoric birds as vibrant creatures exhibiting unique and diverse patterns in color and texture. But what about the mammals roaming the earth alongside them?In a new study published in Science, an international team of scientists has discovered that early mammals had dark and dull fur, no matter the species. This uniform fur coloring had evolutionary advantages and allowed mammals to avoid becoming prey to their more colorful neigh ...read more

About 34 million years ago, iguanas sailed 5,000 miles from western North America and settled in Fiji. It’s not uncommon for iguana species to hop a natural raft and drift to a new island, but according to new research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this may be the “the longest known transoceanic dispersal of any terrestrial vertebrate.”"We found that the Fiji iguanas are most closely related to the North American desert iguanas, something that hadn't been fi ...read more

An unexpected extended stay at the International Space Station will come to an end March 18, 2025 — weather and technology permitting. If all goes as planned, NASA astronauts Sunita "Suni" Williams and Barry "Butch" Wilmore will return to Earth, unintentionally joining the top 10 list of longest time for U.S. astronauts spent in space on a single mission.A Longer Stay on the ISSWhen Suni and Butch rode Boeing’s first-ever crewed Starliner to the ISS in June 2024, they were only expected to s ...read more