Compost is known for helping the environment by putting waste to good use, but in an unexpected way, it may also give rise to more effective chemotherapy treatments. According to new research, it turns out that bacteria found in compost harbor a type of protein that can be used for improved drug delivery.A recent study published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition details a promising method in which protein cages can be modified to transport drugs. Having shown success during ...read more

The need for Alzheimer’s prevention is growing. About 7 million people in the U.S. now live with the disease, with estimates climbing to 13 million by 2050. The estimated annual cost of care for Alzheimer’s and other dementias could rise from $360 billion to almost $1 trillion over that time period, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.One class of HIV drug shows promise in preventing Alzheimer’s disease, according to an article in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzhe ...read more

Dwelling beneath the soil in the American Southwest are coccidioides fungus spores (C. immitis, C. posadasii). Inhaling these spores can lead to valley fever, also known as coccidioidomycosis. While this fungal infection is nothing akin to the spores seen in the series and video game, The Last of Us, an infection from coccidioides can lead to serious medical issues. Because valley fever is isolated to areas with low rainfall and hot summers, like the American Southwest, and parts of Mexico and ...read more

There’s a new type of criminal on the loose. They’re big. They’re cold. And they’ve been committing acts of thievery in Antarctica for the past eighteen years.A new study, published in The Cryosphere, reveals that a glacier in Antarctica has been stealing ice from its neighbor. This act of ice piracy, observed using satellite imagery, is a phenomenon never before seen in such a short period of time. In fact, until now, ice piracy was understood to be a centuries- or even millennia-long p ...read more

The 28 most populous U.S. cities are all settling to one degree or other, according to a study in Nature Cities. The phenomenon isn’t limited to coastal urban areas but includes population centers in the country’s interior as well. Rates differ from city to city — even area to area within some municipalities — but the general phenomenon is consistent.Authors suspect that draining the groundwater upon which the cities sit is a major contributor. If that practice continues — not just in ...read more

Paleontologists have long considered Tyrannosaurus rex a North American reptile, but a study now claims that the king of the dinosaurs’ predecessor hailed from the Far East. The cousin megaraptors likely lumbered from one continent to another via land bridge more than 70 million years ago — perhaps in an attempt to beat the heat, according to an article in the journal Royal Society Open Science. The finding is potentially controversial, because paleontologists have long debated T. rex’s or ...read more

A wolf’s howl is one of those unforgettable sounds of nature. Now, this iconic sound is setting a new chapter for wolf conservation, fitting hand-in-hand with monitoring technology.To make sense of what wolf howls mean for an ecosystem, The Colossal Foundation (the non-profit arm of Colossal Biosciences, which recently made headlines for its dire wolf de-extinction project) has announced a partnership with non-profit Yellowstone Forever and the Yellowstone Wolf Project. The collaboration aims ...read more

It’s your trusty kitchen sponge that you use for everything. Whether it’s to clean the dishes, wipe down the counters, or scrub your pots and pans. But research has shown that sponges might not be your best tool in the kitchen. In fact, they harbor more bacteria than almost any other kitchen tool.According to Markus Egert, a microbiologist at Furtwangen University, in Schwarzwald, Germany, used kitchen sponges are colonized by a large diversity of microbes, including bacteria, fungi, and vir ...read more

Our DNA contains the functional instructions for all of our cells, from the cells in our brains to the cells in our bones and our blood. But it is only by activating and deactivating different segments of our DNA, or our genes, that our cells take on their specialized functions. This is true for all sorts of organisms, whose cells are differentiated when different genes are switched on and off. In simple organisms, these on-off “switches” are typically situated only a short distance away fro ...read more

Everyone who’s watched a police procedural knows that crime scene investigators can link the tiniest bits of organic evidence to a perpetrator though their DNA. A new technique could take DNA’s crime-fighting potential a quantum leap forward: by leveraging it to create a 3D model of the suspect’s face, researchers report in the journal Advanced Science.Their computational tool, called Difface, looks for genetic differences between single letters of the genetic alphabet, known as single nuc ...read more