Common virus may play role in debilitating neurological illness

For decades, researchers have suspected that people infected with an exceedingly common virus, Epstein-Barr, might be more likely to develop multiple sclerosis, a neurological illness that affects 1 million people in the United States. Now, a team of researchers reports what some say is the most compelling evidence yet of a strong link between the … Read more

Beatrice Mintz, groundbreaking cancer researcher, dies at 100

Written by Katharine Q. Seelye Dr. Beatrice Mintz, a cancer researcher whose many groundbreaking discoveries included the crucial finding that certain cancerous cells could be tamed by contact with normal neighboring cells, without the use of harsh treatments like chemotherapy and radiation, died January 3 at her home in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. She … Read more

Fossils of a prehistoric rainforest hide in Australia’s rusted rocks

Australia’s Central Tablelands, hundreds of miles northwest of Sydney, are dominated today by grasses and spindly trees. But scientists recently discovered that some of the area’s rusted rocks conceal traces of the lush rainforests that covered the area 15 million years ago during the Miocene Epoch. The area, McGraths Flat, is not Australia’s only Miocene … Read more

Dr. Ronald Weinstein, telepathology pioneer, dies at 83

In August 1986, a health care provider in Washington, DC, manipulating a microscope, examined a tissue pattern from a breast-cancer affected person and appropriately recognized that her tumor had unfold. What was uncommon about the prognosis was that the tissue pattern and the microscope have been half a rustic away, in El Paso, Texas. It … Read more

You don’t need a spaceship to grow ‘bizarre little’ Martian radishes

In the historic creativeness, astronomers look by telescopes, and photonic knowledge pours in on the pace of sunshine. Taking what they will get, they passively obtain data about far-off stars and planets. These objects are fastened, and their circumstances can’t be tweaked. But that’s not how all astronomy works. Planetary and exoplanetary scientists, as an … Read more

New eye drops offer an alternative to reading glasses

An eye drop that improves close-range imaginative and prescient may make misplaced reading glasses much less of an inconvenience for lots of the 128 million Americans who are suffering from age-related deficits in close to imaginative and prescient. Vuity, which turned out there by prescription this month, is a once-a-day remedy that may assist customers … Read more

Last known slave ship is remarkably well reserved, researchers say

In 2019, a staff of researchers confirmed {that a} wood wreck resting off the muddy banks of the Mobile River in Alabama was the Clotilda, the final known ship to carry enslaved folks from Africa to the United States. Now, the researchers say they’ve made one other startling discovery: The wreck is remarkably well preserved. … Read more

3,000 years in the past, Britain got half its genes from…France?

Three years in the past in the journal Nature, an enormous worldwide analysis crew led partially by Harvard University geneticist David Reich shined a torchlight on certainly one of prehistoric Britain’s murkier mysteries. By analyzing the degraded DNA from the stays of 400 historical Europeans, the researchers confirmed that 4,500 years in the past nomadic … Read more

Webb telescope prepares to ascend, with an eye toward our origins

There are just a few instances within the historical past of a species when it positive aspects the know-how, the audacity and the instruments to drastically advance the interrogation of its origins. Humanity is at such a second, astronomers say. According to the story that they’ve been telling themselves (and the remainder of us) for … Read more

A hair-raising hypothesis about rodent hair

It’s robust on the market for a mouse. Outdoors, its enemies lurk on all sides: owls above, snakes beneath, weasels across the bend. Indoors, a mouse could discover itself focused by broom-wielding people or bored cats. Mice compensate with sharp senses of sight, listening to and odor. But they might have one other set of … Read more