In 2025, Dry January got a boost from the Surgeon General: an advisory about alcohols 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, its a good time to take a look at the connection between alcohol and cancer so we can make informed decisions about drinking.How Alcohol Causes CancerAlcohol does its damage in several ways. First, the breakdown of alcohol (ethanol) in the body produces acetaldehyde, a toxic chemical that damages both DNA and proteins.Alcohol also generates what scientists call reactive oxygen species you may know them as free radicals. They are unstable molecules that contain oxygen, which can react with other molecules. A buildup of these can damage DNA, RNA, and proteins and can contribute to the development of cancer.Alcohol can also increase blood levels of estrogen, a hormone that fuels some breast cancers. And last, but by no means least, alcohol can dissolve some other carcinogens, such as particles from tobacco smoke and pollution, making it easier for the body to absorb them. This increases the risk of mouth and throat cancers especially.Even Moderate Drinking Could Carry Cancer Risk For many years, weve heard that moderate drinking, especially red wine, is good for cardiovascular health. Recently, however, that thinking has been questioned. In 2018, The Lancet published research using 26 years of global data in an attempt to determine how much alcohol is safe.Though the study found that alcohol provided some protection from ischemic heart disease and diabetes, the benefits were outweighed by the risk of cancer. The researchers famously concluded that the safest level of drinking is none.Wei Zheng, a cancer epidemiologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, agrees with that conclusion. Zheng says that in the last five to seven years, more careful studies have found that moderate drinking provides no cardiovascular benefits, while weve known about the association between alcohol and cancer for over 20 years.The Surgeon Generals report shows that even moderate drinking one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men still carries a lot of risk for cancer, Zheng says.Alcohol Consumption Nuances Meanwhile, the U.S. is gearing up to revise its dietary recommendations. To aid with this decision, the National Academies of Medicine (NAM) undertook a review of the evidence for the benefits and harms of moderate drinking. Its findings are somewhat more nuanced.The analysis did find that women who drink moderately have a 10 percent higher risk of breast cancer than do non-drinkers. Women who drink on the higher end of the moderate range had an even higher risk.On the other hand, the NAM report drew no conclusions about the risk of colorectal cancer for moderate drinkers, nor was it able to establish an association between moderate drinking and oral, pharyngeal, esophageal, or laryngeal cancers. (It did find, however, that when you get beyond moderate drinking, the risks increase.) On top of that, the report concluded (with moderate certainty) that when compared with never drinking, moderate alcohol consumption is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular mortality in both men and women.Why the differences? For starters, the connection between alcohol consumption and health is very difficult to study. Other lifestyle factors can muddy the waters. For example, many moderate drinkers eat well and exercise regularly, habits which are known to lower risk.At the same time, conditions such as obesity can increase risk. Also, many past studies have relied on self-reporting, and people are known to underestimate, intentionally or not, how much they drink. The result is that its fiendishly difficult for researchers to adjust for all these factors.To Drink or Not To Drink When deciding whether to drink and how much, here are a few things to keep in mind.As the Surgeon Generals report explains, the increases in risk described in the report are relative risks. Relative risk is the proportional chance of an outcome occurring for one group (e.g., those who drink alcohol) as compared to another group (e.g., those who do not drink alcohol). It is important to understand that a large change in relative risk may represent only a small change in absolute risk, the report stated.Also, drinking is not the only factor that increases cancer risk; so does obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, and a family history of cancer. In other words, your mileage may vary depending on other risk factors.The current U.S. guidelines recommend two drinks a day or fewer for men and one drink or fewer a day for women. If youre not willing to give up alcohol completely, and most people arent, following these guidelines is probably the best strategy.If you drink, drink as little as possible, says Zheng, noting that the more you drink, the greater your risk. He also adds that other healthy lifestyle habits, while not eliminating the risk posed by alcohol, can also reduce your overall cancer risk.Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:U.S. Public Health Service. Surgeon Generals 2025 AdvisoryRethinking Drinking. What are the U.S. Guidelines for Drinking?Avery Hurt is a freelance science journalist. In addition to writing for Discover, she writes regularly for a variety of outlets, both print and online, including National Geographic, Science News Explores, Medscape, and WebMD. Shes the author of Bullet With Your Name on It: What You Will Probably Die From and What You Can Do About It, Clerisy Press 2007, as well as several books for young readers. Avery got her start in journalism while attending university, writing for the school newspaper and editing the student non-fiction magazine. Though she writes about all areas of science, she is particularly interested in neuroscience, the science of consciousness, and AIinterests she developed while earning a degree in philosophy.

Ive been a camera nerd for 20-ish years, and as a result, my photo archive takes up 12TB of space all by itself. Am I a photo hoarder? Yes. Am I willing to change? Absolutely not, especially when I can get a 20TB (thats terabytes, or 1,000 gigabytes) for $279. This is the largest consumer hard drive on the market at the moment and its just $20 more expensive than the 12TB version. Thats nearly doube the storage space for less than the price of an 11 p.m. Taco Bell order. These have been selling for $325 lately because they arent easy to get, so a deeper discount is a real treat.WD 20TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive $279 (was $325)WD I have been using these drives as a supplement to my cloud storage for several years now. Theyre very simple. Its basically a Western Digital drive inside of a housing with a USB 3.0 port on it. Its a full-sized desktop drive inside, so it requires external power, but Ive owned probably 10 of these in recent years and havent had one fail. Theyre pre-formatted for Windows, but a quick, simple format makes them compatible with Macs as well.

Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to the sun, is probably shedding comets and asteroids into our solar system and even producing a few meteors in our sky.Located just 4.3 light-years from Earth, Alpha Centauri consists of three stars that revolve around one another. If Alpha Centauri has an Oort cloud of distant comets as the sun does, about a million of these objects larger than a football field are now in our solar system, astronomers Cole Gregg and Paul Wiegert of the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, estimate in work submitted February 5 to arXiv.org.Most of [the objects] would be in the far reaches of the solar system, Gregg says. That puts them well beyond the orbit of Pluto, where they are mingling with the native objects in the suns own Oort cloud of cometary bodies.Astronomers have only ever detected one interstellar asteroid and one interstellar comet in our solar system. But neither came from Alpha Centauri.Just as Jupiters gravity catapulted the two Voyager spacecraft onto interstellar trajectories, so the stars of Alpha Centauri and their planets should do the same to some of the comets and asteroids that swing around them. A small percentage of the ejected objects 0.03 percent pass through our solar system, Gregg and Wiegert say, but none of the large bodies is close enough for telescopes to see.Still, small particles from Alpha Centauri probably reach Earths atmosphere, where they burn up. Gregg and Wiegert estimate that up to 10 meteors worldwide come from Alpha Centauri each year.We expect these numbers to go up by about a factor of 10 when Alpha Centauri is closest, Gregg says. Alpha Centauri is racing toward us at 0.007 light-years per century (80,000 kilometers per hour) and will be closest 28,000 years from now, when it will be 3.2 light-years from Earth.But 10 or even 100 meteors a year is a pittance compared with Earths annual total of 7 trillion meteors. Furthermore, because Alpha Centauri lies far to the south, its meteors appear only in the far southern sky, out of sight of most people on Earth, Gregg and Wiegert say. Their calculations are right, but the problem hides basically in the assumptions, says Simon Portegies Zwart, an astronomer at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. We dont know the rate at which Alpha Centauri ejects material, he says, which means the actual number of interstellar objects coming from our near neighbor could be much greater or smaller than the study calculates. Nevertheless, the work demonstrates that our solar system is not an isolated object in space, he says. We are connected to other objects like Alpha Centauri, like other stars in the neighborhood.

Nature, Published online: 26 February 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-08608-9Analyses of strain-resolved metagenomics with isolate sequencing data of skin samples from residents at nursing homes suggest that skin is a reservoir for Candida auris and other multidrug-resistant bacterial species.

Nature, Published online: 26 February 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-08622-xThe cis-regulatory functions of human accelerated regions of genomic loci and their potential contribution to human brain evolution are revealed.

A new study has pinpointed cells in the brains of mice that have the unique ability to proliferate and may help to repair damaged tissue. Scientists now need to determine if similar cells exist in human brains.

Monster Hunter Wilds is finally here, but one of its features has players scratching their heads: Players have to pay real-life money to edit their character if they decide they want to change up their initial look.Players can create and customize their character for free at the beginning of the game, but if they decide they want to tweak that character later on, they'll have to cough up some real-world cash. This aspect of character customization wasn't shown in review copies of the game, so players weren't expecting to have to open their wallets every time they wish to change up their character's look. The same also applies to re-customizing the Palico, a companion character who follows the main player-character throughout the game. On the bright side, this fee doesn't apply to changing up basic cosmetic features like hair, face/skin color, eyebrow color, makeup, or clothing. But making more in-depth changes will cost you.Continue Reading at GameSpot

Super7 has announced a new wave of action figures for its Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collection, as it'll be adding several familiar allies and villains to the line. Last year, Super7 brought the 2003 TMNT animated series to plastic life with figures of the four turtle-brothers, and this year, fans can pick up Casey Jones, Master Splinter, the Shredder, and a Foot Clan ninja. Each figure is priced at $55 and comes with several accessories, but Super 7 will also be offering them as a bundle that comes with exclusive extras.Splinter, Casey Jones, a Foot Clan Ninja, and the Shredder are here.Gallery Kicking things off is Casey Jones, New York's favorite sports-themed vigilante. Like his cartoon counterpart, Jones comes with sports gear like baseball bats, a hockey stick, and a golf club, as well as an unmasked headsculpt and one featuring his signature hockey mask. The figure has quite a bit of articulation, so if you want to strike a "Goongala" pose, you can do so easily. Preorder at Super7 Continue Reading at GameSpot

James Gunn is working hard to revamp the DC Universe after becoming CEO of DC Studios. It's a difficult task after the DCU's hit-and-miss success since its launch, which has left it miles behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, in Batman and Superman, the DCU has two of the most popular characters in cinematic history.

Hunters in the Solo Leveling universe are frequently pushed into circumstances that endanger their lives and force them to make split-second decisions that have far-reaching consequences. Since deadly beasts and ancient demons constantly threaten peace and sometimes even the future of humanity, hunters often end up losing their lives while fighting for the greater good.