Over the past two decades, a troubling pattern has emerged: more young adults are being diagnosed with colorectal cancer — a disease traditionally seen in people over 50. If this trend continues, early-onset colorectal cancer could become the leading cause of cancer-related deaths among young adults within just five years.What's causing this surge remains unclear. With few genetic links and no consistent risk factors like obesity to blame, scientists have started looking beyond lifestyle and g ...read more

The most powerful instrument of its kind has now taken its first picture of the sun. Although the Inouye Solar Telescope began operating from its perch on the Hawaiian volcano Haleakala in 2022, the addition of its latest key piece of equipment provides a major boost to its spatial, temporal, and spectral resolution to the most powerful telescope of its kind in the world. This will increase its ability to visualize eruptions on the sun’s surface. Those storms hurl particles and radiation into ...read more

It’s one hell of an old ant. Researchers discovered a 113-million-year-old hell ant preserved in a chunk of Brazilian limestone. The find earned it the title of the oldest such specimen, according to a paper in the journal Current Biology. The fossil is a member of Haidomyrmecinae — an extinct subfamily from the Cretaceous period. Those insects were armed with scythe-like jaws that researchers suspect the ant deployed to pin down or impale its prey.“What makes this discovery particularly i ...read more

In 2018, a study made headlines when it found that a captive orca, or killer whale, was able to imitate human speech. The whale, called Wikie, lived at the Marineland Aquarium in Antibes, France. Wikie was trained to produce the words "Ah ah," "hello," "Amy," and "one two three." (Wikie could also make a sound like a creaky door and imitate the call of an elephant.)It really shouldn’t be surprising that whales have a knack for imitating speech. They’re very auditory animals, explains Deborah ...read more

Melting glaciers in North America 10,000 years ago may have given continental drift a bit of a push. Similar activity in Greenland now could eventually trigger volcanic eruptions in Iceland.Geoscientists modeled a chain of events that demonstrate how sea level rise impacts plate tectonics, they report in the journal Nature.“As ice volume was greatly reduced, it caused a huge motion in Earth’s crust,” Tao Yuan, a graduate student at Colorado University, Boulder, and an author of the paper, ...read more

Both lung cancer diagnoses and deaths in men and women have declined over the past 20 years. That trend has helped improve the overall cancer mortality picture. Twenty years of cancer data indicate a slow, gradual, but significant change, with overall deaths declining 2.1 percent a year from 2001 to 2018 and 1.5 percent a year from 2018 to 2022.“Progress has been made in reducing overall cancer mortality, largely driven by sustained declines in lung cancer,” according to the report “The An ...read more

Tardigrades take extreme living to another level, thriving in the toughest conditions. These animals (nicknamed “water bears” for their rotund figure) live practically everywhere and can endure any ordeal thrown their way, from subzero temperatures to cosmic radiation. This unparalleled durability is what makes them the perfect candidate for microscopic tattoos, as shown in a new study published in the American Chemical Society’s Nano Letters.In this study, researchers have revealed a way ...read more

Encountering rattlesnake venom is something many of us would prefer to avoid. But for a research team from the University of South Florida, this venom may hold the key to species evolution and protection.A new study, published in Evolution, has revealed that island rattlesnakes in the Gulf of California adapt their venom depending on their environment and its biodiversity. This discovery comes as a surprise and helps provide new insights into how animals evolve in changing environments.“This i ...read more

Australia’s giant kangaroos of yesteryear were likely homebodies — and that inclination ultimately did them in.The massive marsupial megaherbivores, which, at an estimated 375 pounds, weighed more than twice as much as contemporary kangaroos, really had no reason to wander. Until about 280,000 years ago, they lived in a plant-eater’s Eden — a lush rainforest that, to them, probably seemed like the ultimate salad bar.But their inability — or unwillingness — likely led to their extinct ...read more

Tales of gladiators going head-to-head with ferocious lions in ancient Rome’s coliseum are legendary. Scenes of such deadly combat have been portrayed in stories, paintings, and mosaics (a Man versus Big Cat conflict was even suggested in the movie “Gladiator,” but never actually depicted). But until now, there has never been any direct physical evidence that such contests took place.A discovery showing tooth marks on a human bone suggests that these artistic accounts are more journalistic ...read more