While the connection between air pollution and lung disease could appear obvious, the link between breathing in toxins and suffering memory loss looks about as clear as a cloud of cigarette smoke.Scientists at Scripps Research Institute first identified how contaminants in smog, pesticides, and other airborne chemical can affect the brain. Now they have identified a way to potentially reverse those effects, they report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Learning About Memory ...read more

Polar bear cubs are incredibly cute — and amazingly elusive. Their mothers dig dens under the snow in remote areas. Protecting cubs is key to the species’ survival. Under half of all polar bear cubs make it to adulthood.To help understand the act of denning — essential to the species survival — a team of scientists for the first time combined satellite tracking collars on mother bears with remote cameras aimed at the bears’ snow lairs. They observed bears near Svalbard, a Norwegian arc ...read more

In 2025, Dry January got a boost from the Surgeon General: an advisory about alcohol’s role in cancer and a warning about the risks of drinking. “Alcohol consumption,” the report stated, “is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the United States, after tobacco and obesity,” increasing the risk of cancer in at least seven sites: mouth, throat, larynx, esophagus, breast, liver, and colon.With the advisory drawing our attention to the issue, it’s a good time to take a look ...read more

Giant panda bears evolved away from other bear species about 20 million years ago. Though they have similar characteristics, like body shape and digestive system, they greatly differ in preferred diets. Most bear species will happily feast on meat, fish, and berries, while pandas tend to stick to bamboo. A new study published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science points out that pandas have evolved in specific ways to make eating bamboo easier, including a pseudo thumb for holding bamboo and flatt ...read more

One would think that astronauts’ living quarters in space need to be perfectly sterilized, but it turns out that creating a "dirtier" environment with more microbes from Earth may boost their health. New research has shown that the International Space Station (ISS) is overly sterile, and while this may not sound like an issue, it carries some surprising consequences; the sterile nature of the station has led to a low diversity of microbes, which could be what is causing astronauts to develop h ...read more

Eggshells found in Utah fill a 30-million-year fossil record gap and provide a snapshot of a time when dinosaurs were migrating from Asia to North America via a land bridge, according to a paper in PLOS ONE.The fossils include eggshells from three feathered bird-like dinosaurs, two plant-eating dinosaurs, and one crocodile-like species. It is also the first new dinosaur eggshell discovery from the region in 50 years, as well as the first evidence of a crocodilian species outside of Europe.The co ...read more

You may think of Vikings as warriors raiding and ransacking Medieval European villages. But this image of Viking hordes embarking on sea voyages with the sole purpose of pillaging is changing with new discoveries that reveal extensive trade networks spanning Europe and beyond.Experts are revealing entirely different relationships built on the exchange of a wide variety of goods from far away places for Viking society.Archaeological evidence reveals that materially, the Viking world was like that ...read more

Intense heat generated by Mt. Vesuvius’ eruption turned one victim’s brain to glass. While gruesome, the finding published in the journal Scientific Reports, lends insight into the chaotic events that fatal day in A.D. 79.Although the eruption was a singular event, it killed people in multiple manners. Many Pompeii people suffocated from breathing in toxic fumes from a cloud of gas and ashes. Some may have been crushed by falling objects during an earthquake that may have preceded the event. ...read more

To have a view on aliens and whether or not they exist, you have to believe in outer space in general and other planets beyond our own. So, what does this mean for ancient civilizations? How did they view outer space, the stars, and the objects that we today would refer to as unidentified aerial phenomena (unidentified anomalous phenomenonfile/UAPs)?It’s all about how they viewed the universe in general, says Marcus Harmes, an associate director of research at the University of Southern Queens ...read more

The search for water on the moon is about to take a massive leap into new territory as NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer orbiter and the latest Intuitive Machines lunar lander get ready to launch. These missions — riding together on the same SpaceX Falcon9 rocket — both aim to answer key questions about the presence of water on the moon, which has become a top priority in space exploration. The launch is scheduled for the evening of the Feb. 26, 2025 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Whil ...read more