Glitter gets everywhere: It clings to carpet fibers, hides in your hairline, and shows up weeks later in unexpected places. But what if this famously clingy, sparkly nuisance could actually help save a species?That’s the idea behind a new conservation initiative in Wales. The Initiative for Nature Conservation Cymru (INCC) is feeding edible cake glitter to water voles to help track their movements (literally) and better understand how to protect them. And surprisingly, it’s already showing p ...read more

In today’s ever more connected world, it’s fair to say that some of us receive nearly as much screen time as we do actual sunlight — if not more, depending on your job and the time of year.A growing body of research shows that the blue light that these screens emit might have effects on human health, whether it’s our vision, skin, or our sleep.“Blue light has an effect on skin health and even the retina in the eyes,” says Kseniya Kobets, an assistant professor of medicine at Albert E ...read more

Some humpback whales are born in warmer waters. Others are born on the way. That’s what a study in Frontiers in Marine Science seems to suggest, anyway, after showing that hundreds of East Australian humpback whales are actually born mid-migration, while their mothers are still traveling to their established calving and breeding grounds.“Hundreds of humpback calves were born well outside the established breeding grounds,” said Tracey Rogers, the senior study author and a biology professor ...read more

Sharks don’t have bones. Instead, their skeletons are made from mineralized cartilage that helps them constantly move through water. To understand the internal “sharkitecture” that helps keep these animals strong and graceful, researchers are putting sharks under the microscope. A new study, published in ACS Nano, found some surprising results. After analyzing shark cartilage, there appear to be two different regions within it. And each appears to have vastly different structures. These s ...read more

The most obvious home function we associate with the bladder is plumbing. But transplanting a bladder is much more complex than reconnecting a replacement to existing pipes. It also requires attaching the organ to a complex network of veins located deep within the pelvic cavity. Then there’s the possibility of rejection by the immune system.But a team of surgeons overcame these obstacles in the first-ever whole in-human bladder transplant. More accurately, it was a kidney-and-bladder transplan ...read more

In a move that should help diagnose Alzheimer’s disease (AD) cheaper, earlier, and easier, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first blood test to help identify AD in its early stages, potentially leading to more effective treatments. AD’s hallmark is progressive memory loss and dementia. It is often not detected until patients present such symptoms, making slowing down disease progression more difficult than if treatment began earlier.“Alzheimer’s disease impacts to ...read more

Key Take-aways on the Hubble Space Telescope: The Hubble Space Telescope launched on April 24, 1990 and is celebrating its 35th anniversary in 2025.The telescope has a 2.4-meter mirror, main types of science instruments, including a suite of spectrographs and cameras that have been upgraded through five astronaut-serviced missions.From mapping dark matter to refining the Hubble Constant, the rate at which the universe expands, the Hubble Space Telescope has been central to some of the most trans ...read more

CRISPR (short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) — the genetic equivalent of a word processor — has received its most powerful upgrade yet: the ability to insert an entire gene at the most potentially effective spot, according to an article in the journal Science.This marks a key step in cell and gene therapy, all of which aim to treat illnesses by making corrections or additions to the “misspelled” genes that can lead to disease.Before CRISPR, delivering gene ...read more

The sky holds endless cosmic treasures to admire all year round, but one of the most valuable sights will soon shine at its brightest: the Milky Way. The last two weeks of May 2025 are anticipated to be the perfect time to view our home galaxy, which usually becomes more visible on Earth as summer approaches. Although the Milky Way will soon come out to play in the night sky, you’ll need to follow a few steps in order to see its emergence. Find out how to watch our galaxy appear over the comi ...read more

When you set your alarm for 6:00 a.m. this morning, you thought you’d selected an appropriate time. But maybe you stayed up a little too late, or maybe you tossed and turned a little too much. Now it’s 6:09 a.m., and you’re tempted to press the snooze button a second time.Most sleep scientists advise against pressing the snooze button after the alarm sounds on an alarm clock or a smartphone, as the sleep that snoozing provides isn’t particularly beneficial. But a new study in Scientific ...read more