News Paleontology Ancient, water-loving rhinos gathered in big, hippolike herds The beasts lived and died together after an erupting supervolcano blanketed their world in ash Fossils of the barrel-bodied rhino Teleoceras (shown) are among the most common ancient herbivores excavated at Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park in northern Nebraska. The animals perished roughly 12 million years ago due to impacts from the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano. James St. John/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) By Jake Buehler 2 hours ago Millions of years ago in Nebraska, chunky, stumpy-legged rhinoceroses were party animals, crowding together in huge herds at watering holes and rivers. Chemical signatures in the fossilized teeth of the extinct, corgi-shaped beasts suggest they didn’t roam widely, instead forming big, local herds unlike the more solitary rhinos of today, researchers report April 4 in Scientific Reports. About 12 million years ago during the Miocene Epoch, the Yellowstone supervolcano erupted and covered much of North America in ash. Around a watering hole that eventually became Nebraska’s Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park, about a foot of the debris fell on the landscape. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

News Earth The United States’ oldest known rock has existed for at least 3.6 billion years A rock formation in Michigan has beat out other contenders for the title — for now An analysis of minerals in the Watersmeet Gneiss (shown) suggest the metamorphic rock dates to about 3.6 billion years ago, potentially making it the oldest known rock in the United States. Paul Brandes By Evan Howell 2 hours ago A weathered sign in the Minnesota River Valley proudly proclaims: “World’s Oldest Rock.” Erected in 1975, it marks a 3.8-billion-year-old gneiss — or so scientists thought. Turns out, it’s not the world’s oldest rock (Since 2019, that title has been held by an estimated 4-billion-year-old Canadian Acasta Gneiss). An analysis of minerals in the Minnesota gneiss and gneisses from across the country indicate that it’s probably not even the oldest in the United States, geologist Carol Frost and colleagues report in the March-April GSA Today. The age proclaimed on the sign may be overstated by at least 300 million years, the team argues. Instead, the old sign should be uprooted, revised to “America’s Oldest Rock” and hammered into Michigan’s Watersmeet Gneiss, which the researchers estimate is at least 3.6 billion years old. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

News Animals This caterpillar wears the body parts of insect prey The “bone collector” caterpillar’s outfit acts as camouflage A newly discovered caterpillar weaves the remains of insect prey onto a protective case (several shown) worn for camouflage, a new study suggests. Rubinoff lab/Entomology Section/University of Hawaii at Mānoa By McKenzie Prillaman 1 hour ago A severed ant head. A fly wing. A beetle abdomen. These body parts ripped from devoured insects festoon a newfound caterpillar’s protective coat. Dubbed the “bone collector,” this caterpillar species sports remains of prey as camouflage while it stalks spider webs for trapped bugs, researchers report in the April 25 Science. The carnivorous caterpillar, found on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, is the first known by scientists to live in spider hunting grounds and fully decorate itself with body parts. Relatively few caterpillars eat meat, with about 300 carnivorous varieties out of nearly 200,000 documented moth and butterfly species. The bone collector caterpillar belongs to the Hyposmocoma genus, also called Hawaiian fancy case caterpillars, endemic to the islands. Body parts belonging to at least six different families of insects (some labeled) have been found woven onto caterpillar cases. Unlabeled pieces are skin shed from a host spider.Rubinoff lab/Entomology Section/University of Hawaii at Mānoa Body parts belonging to at least six different families of insects (some labeled) have been found woven onto caterpillar cases. Unlabeled pieces are skin shed from a host spider.Rubinoff lab/Entomology Section/University of Hawaii at Mānoa While walking in the Waianae Mountains more than 20 years ago, entomologist Dan Rubinoff and colleagues spied an odd caterpillar next to a spider web in a tree hole. “It [was] covered in little bits of bug,” says Rubinoff, of the University of Hawaii at Mānoa in Honolulu. He initially dismissed it as a curious coincidence but eventually kept crossing paths with more weird larvae. In all, he and others spotted 62 bone collector caterpillars over two decades, but only within a 15-square-kilometer range. Each caterpillar takes up residence in a spider web enclosed in a tree, log or rock cavity. (Only one caterpillar usually inhabits a web, since they will eat one another.) There, the caterpillar lurks, waiting to prey on insects stuck in the web while masking its scent and texture with leftovers from the spider’s meals and skin shed by its eight-legged landlord. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

Skip to content Space See how the Hubble Space Telescope is still revolutionizing astronomy Celebrate Hubble's 35th anniversary with some amazing imagery The Hubble Space Telescope was placed in low Earth orbit in 1990 by astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery. NASA, Smithsonian Institution, Lockheed Corporation By Katherine Kornei 10 seconds ago After 35 years, the Hubble Space Telescope is still churning out hits. In just the last year or so, scientists have used the school bus–sized observatory to confirm the first lone black hole, reveal new space rocks created by a NASA asteroid-impact mission and pinpoint the origin of a particularly intense, mysterious burst of radio waves. These findings are a testament to the fact that there’s still plenty of science for the telescope to do. And there are some observations that simply can’t be done with any other telescope, including Hubble’s younger sibling, the James Webb Space Telescope. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

News Anthropology A lion’s bite marks a fatal fight with a possible Roman-era gladiator Physical evidence of a fight between a Roman gladiator and a lion has been unearthed in England Researchers say they have found physical evidence of a fight between a lion and a gladiator in Roman Britain. In this illustration from the 1860s, gladiators battle tigers and lions in Rome’s Colosseum. Nastasic/digitalvision vectors/getty images By Bruce Bower 1 hour ago As a fight to the death reached its end around 1,800 years ago, a victorious lion sank its teeth into a young man’s thigh bone. Those feline bite marks, preserved on a skeleton interred in northeast England, provide the first physical evidence of a Roman-era battle between a gladiator and a nonhuman animal anywhere in Europe, say forensic anthropologist Timothy Thompson of Maynooth University in Ireland and colleagues. The man’s remains, which date to between the years 200 and 300, come from what may have been a gladiator cemetery in the Roman city of Eboracum, now called York, the researchers report April 23 in PLOS ONE. Bite marks on the thigh bone of a man who lived in Roman Britain, including those shown here, were likely made by a lion during a gladiator show or public execution, a new study finds.T.J.U. Thompson et al., PLOS ONE, 2025 Previous excavations found that most graves there contained men between the ages of 18 and 45, many of whom displayed injuries from violent fights. Diet-related bone chemistry tests indicated that these men had grown up in different parts of the Roman empire, perhaps before entering gladiator training. Most had been decapitated after death, a practice possibly associated with gladiator burials in Roman Britain. Written records and artworks have documented fights between armed performers and dangerous predators such as lions, leopards and tigers in Roman amphitheaters. Roman records also cite public amphitheater spectacles in which such animals maimed and killed criminals, warfare captives, Christians and others. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

News Climate Wetland bacteria could make more methane in a warming world The findings offer clues to a worrisome recent spike in wetlands’ methane emissions Below the peaceful surface of Chesapeake Bay tidal wetlands, methane-producing and methane-consuming microbes are competing for food. Higher temperatures may give the producers the edge. Beata Whitehead/Moment/Getty Images Plus By Carolyn Gramling 1 hour ago Warming temperatures may cause methane emissions from wetlands to rise — by helping methane-producing bacteria thrive. Higher temperatures favor the activity of wetland soil microbes that produce the potent greenhouse gas, at the expense of other microbes that can consume it, researchers report April 23 in Science Advances. The scientists, led by microbiologist Jaehyun Lee of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology in Seoul, conducted a summer field study in coastal wetlands near the Chesapeake Bay, analyzing soil conditions in a set of marshy plots with differing environmental conditions. The findings may offer clues to a puzzling and worrisome spike in wetland emissions of methane over the last decade. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

News Psychology Uncertainty is on the rise. Here’s how people can cope People can manage their aversion to uncertainty with some simple tools The ills of uncertainty are well documented. But uncertainty can also help people savor the moment. For instance, it can literally increase people’s likelihood of stopping to smell the roses, one study found. m-imagephotography/Getty Images By Sujata Gupta 1 hour ago The rapid pace of change under the current presidential administration has been amping up people’s feelings of uncertainty. That collective unease can take a toll on societal well-being, researchers say.   “Given that unfamiliarity permeates our current ether … uncertainty can be considered a widespread public health problem,” Emily Hauenstein argued earlier this year in the Archives of Pediatric Nursing. A considerable body of research shows that uncertainty challenges people’s ability to think clearly, sift through information and make sound decisions. This can make people susceptible to cognitive traps. Faced with a volatile environment, some go down every rabbit hole in search of the perfect path forward, only to feel paralyzed by the glut of competing options. Others take the opposite tack, latching onto simplistic explanations for complex problems.   Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

News Neuroscience Mouse brains hint at why it’s so hard to forget food poisoning Flavor memories first processed in the amygdala help mice avoid foods that once made them sick When mice encounter an unfamiliar food, neurons in a brain region called the amygdala light up (blue). If the mice start feeling sick after the meal, the same neurons get reinforced to help the mouse remember — and avoid — the troublesome taste in the future. Princeton University By Elise Cutts 1 hour ago Food poisoning isn’t an experience you’re likely to forget — and now, scientists know why. A study published April 2 in Nature has unraveled neural circuitry in mice that makes food poisoning so memorable. “We’ve all experienced food poisoning at some point … And not only is it terrible in the moment, but it leads us to not eat those foods again,” says Christopher Zimmerman of Princeton University. Luckily, developing a distaste for foul food doesn’t take much practice — one ill-fated encounter with an undercooked enchilada or contaminated hamburger is enough, even if it takes hours or days for symptoms to set in. The same is true for other animals, making food poisoning one of the best ways to study how our brains connect events separated in time, says neuroscientist Richard Palmiter of the University of Washington in Seattle. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

News Animals How science can help you train your puppy Young dogs’ cognitive abilities may predict behavioral traits in adulthood Scientists have linked certain cognitive abilities in puppies with desirable adult dog behaviors. Awareness of those links could help pet owners determine the best training for their puppies. Daniel Garrido/Moment/Getty Images Plus By Joshua Rapp Learn 14 seconds ago A puppy’s thinking ability may indicate how responsive the dog will be to training and whether it’ll grow up to be well-behaved. Traits such as impulsivity, ability to follow gestures and reaction to unsolvable tasks in 3- to 7-month-old puppies were linked with desirable behaviors in those dogs in adulthood, researchers report in the May Applied Animal Behaviour Science. The findings from these cognitive tests could help pet owners determine the best way to train their dogs and what kinds of activities the animals may enjoy as they age, the team says. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

News Psychology Loneliness is higher among middle-aged Americans than older ones That makes the United States a global outlier, a new study shows Worldwide, loneliness tends to increase from midlife to later life. That trend is reversed in the United States. Researchers suspect a poor social safety net for caregivers might be partially to blame. Steve Prezant/Tetra images/Getty Images Plus By Sujata Gupta 34 seconds ago Across the world, loneliness tends to increase after midlife. But for reasons that aren’t altogether clear, the United States is an outlier, with loneliness steadily decreasing from the middle to later years of life, researchers report April 22 in Aging and Mental Health. Most attention and policies addressing loneliness in the United States target the elderly or, recently, teens and young adults, whose rates of mental health problems have surged. “Middle-aged adults really have been a neglected population,” says Robin Richardson, a social and psychiatric epidemiologist at Emory University in Atlanta. And that leaves them vulnerable to mental and physical health problems associated with loneliness, including cognitive decline, reduced quality of life and even higher risk of death.  Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

News Climate Earth’s landmasses lost trillions of tons of water this century Scientists link the sharp decline with an increase in global drought and sea level rise A man walks across the dry bed of Lake Ahmad Sar in India in 2015. The total amount of water in Earth’s lakes, rivers and soils has drastically dropped since the turn of the century, a new study finds. The primary culprit: rising global temperatures. SAM PANTHAKY/AFP via Getty Images By Carolyn Gramling 8 seconds ago Earth’s landmasses are holding onto a lot less water than they used to — and this loss is not just due to melting ice sheets. Terrestrial water storage, which includes water in underground aquifers, lakes, rivers and the tiny pore spaces within soil, declined by trillions of metric tons in the early 21st century, researchers report in the March 28 Science. This sharp decrease in freshwater stores is driven by rising temperatures on land and in the oceans, which in turn are linked to an increased global incidence of drought. And given the projected warming of the planet, this trend isn’t likely to change any time soon, say geophysicist Ki-Weon Seo of Seoul National University and colleagues. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

Health & Medicine Autism rates rose again. Experts explain why A new report offers a better reflection of autism rates and an opportunity to help families in need More children than ever before were diagnosed with autism in 2022, a new report shows. Experts say most of the rise is because of better detection and increased awareness of the developmental condition. Maskot/digitalvision/getty images plus By Tina Hesman Saey and Laura Sanders 12 seconds ago Autism is more common than ever before, a new report suggests. As of 2022, about 1 in 31 children in the United States were diagnosed with autism by the time they were 8 years old, researchers reported online April 15 in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Previous studies had put the number at 1 in 36 in 2020 and 1 in 150 in 2000.  Many researchers view the report as a better reflection of the true rate of autism and an opportunity to help individuals and families in need. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

Skip to content News Climate Hidden Antarctic lakes could supercharge sea level rise Subglacial water may boost sea levels by over 2 meters by 2300 The Antarctic Ice Sheet holds around 90 percent of all ice on Earth. But human-caused climate change is driving it to shed an average of 150 billion metric tons of ice each year, raising sea levels around the world. Mario Tama/Getty Images By Nikk Ogasa 43 seconds ago Beneath the great, white expanse of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, a mysterious realm of streams and lakes lies out of sight. Much about this hidden water world remains poorly understood. But a new study suggests that if scientists continue to overlook it, they might greatly underestimate global sea level rise. Factoring this subglacial water into computer simulations could boost projections of sea level rise over the next two centuries by about two meters, researchers report April 7 in Nature Communications. For context, scientists estimate that climate warming has raised sea levels by about 0.2 meters over the last century. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

Letters to the Editor Readers weigh in on brainlike AI technology By Science News Staff 1 hour ago All about AI Scientists are working on AI technology that has brain-inspired hardware, architecture or algorithms. Such neuromorphic AI could be nimbler, more efficient and more capable than traditional AI, freelance writer Kathryn Hulick reported in “Making AI think more like your brain.” Hulick reported that mainstream computers, which currently run most AI, separate memory and processing. Some burgeoning neuromorphic technology, such as spiking neural networks, combine the two. This concept reminded reader Gary Pokorny of an early experience with computers. “The first computer I used … was an Apple IIe, in which I would insert one floppy disk to load word processing instructions, then take it out and insert a blank floppy to save my work, and back and forth while writing,” Pokorny wrote. The personal analogy helped Pokorny “understand why mainstream AI requires huge resources for both memory and processing. I have a harder time grasping, but am fascinated by, the idea of spiking [neural networks combining both], hence more efficiently, and more like our brains.” Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

Science is, at its heart, a system for asking questions and seeking answers. Researchers must detect clues amid a cacophony of information. Pharmacist Joseph Lambson is one person with a gift for identifying signals in the noise. When he got a call from a poison control specialist saying that people were overdosing on the drug semaglutide, used to treat obesity and diabetes, he knew what this meant. Pharmaceutical companies were unable to keep up with demand for the drug, which comes in a prefilled injector pen, and people were buying alternative versions that are not as error-proof. Even with the drug no longer in shortage, the dangers persist. Senior writer Meghan Rosen talked with Lambson as part of her investigation into a proliferating online market where patients say they’re willing to take risks to get what they see as a life-altering drug. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

News Astronomy A gas clump in the Milky Way’s neighborhood might be a ‘dark galaxy’ Dark matter–dominated galaxies, if they exist, may offer clues to galaxy formation High-resolution images from the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, a radio telescope in southern China, have helped pinpoint a potential “dark galaxy” in the Milky Way’s neighborhood. wonry/Getty Images By Mara Johnson-Groh 1 hour ago A potential dark galaxy — one made primarily of dark matter — may have been spotted in the local universe. Dark galaxies are theoretical, starless systems whose discovery could help astronomers better understand galaxy formation. The new candidate was found within a large, fast-moving cloud of gas first seen in the 1960s. High-resolution observations of the cloud, reported April 18 in Science Advances, revealed a compact clump of gas that might be a dark galaxy. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

News Environment Fires in the Amazon forest may melt sea ice in Antarctica Soot traveling in atmospheric corridors could have darkened the sea ice, boosting its melting  Antarctica’s Weddell Sea (pictured) saw particularly large sea ice loss between 2018 and 2019 — loss that may be linked to increased soot in the atmosphere from fires in the Amazon. John Sonntag/NASA By Meghie Rodrigues 1 hour ago Soot from forest fires in the Amazon might play a role in the melting of faraway ice in Antarctica. For decades, scientists have known that black carbon from burning fossil fuels or forests accelerates ice melt in different parts of the world. According to remote sensing researcher Sudip Chakraborty, the slash-and-burn practices encouraged by Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro, who held office from 2019 to 2023, inspired his team to investigate whether black carbon from the Amazon affected ice melt in Antarctica. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

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Humans Ancient horse hunts challenge ideas of ‘modern’ human behavior Sophisticated social and mental capacities date back at least 300,000 years Communal hunting of horses in Europe 300,000 years ago required sophisticated planning and coordination. David Palumbo By Bruce Bower 50 seconds ago On a bright, late-summer day in north-central Europe around 300,000 years ago, a team of perhaps a couple dozen hunters got into their assigned positions for a big kill. Little did they know that remnants of this lethal event would someday contribute to a scientific rethink about the social and intellectual complexity of Stone Age life. Some of the hunters ascended a ridge where they gazed across a vast, marshy grassland below. Trees dotted the landscape and bordered a braided stream leading to a nearby lake. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

Skip to content News Astronomy A claimed hint of alien life whips up spirited debate There’s a lot to unpack behind hints of biosignatures on the far-off world K2 18b Some astronomers think the distant planet K2 18b (illustrated) may be an ocean world capable of hosting life. A. Smith, N. Madhusudhan/Univ. of Cambridge By Lisa Grossman 36 minutes ago You may have already seen the headlines: Signs of life have reportedly been discovered on an alien world.  A team of astronomers led by Nikku Madhusudhan of the University of Cambridge used the James Webb Space Telescope to search for interesting molecules in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system called K2 18b. The team now says they’ve found molecules that, on Earth, are associated with life, in an abundance that is hard to explain otherwise. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

News Space A NASA rover finally found Mars’ missing carbon The finding could help explain why Mars lost its habitable climate NASA’s Curiosity rover drilled into different rocks along an 89-meter stretch of terrain on its route up a mountain in an ancient lakebed. Samples from the rocks had carbon-bearing minerals that hint at a long lost carbon cycle and life-friendly climate. NASA By Lisa Grossman 7 seconds ago The carbon that once warmed Mars’ atmosphere has been locked in its rusty rocks for millennia.  That’s the story revealed by a hidden cache of carbon-bearing minerals unearthed by NASA’s Curiosity rover along its route up a Martian mountain. The finding is the first evidence of a carbon cycle on the Red Planet, but also suggests that Mars lost its life-friendly climate because that carbon cycle was slow, researchers report in the April 18 Science. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

News Health & Medicine Clinical trials face uncertain futures amid Trump cuts Research on COVID-19 and sexual and maternal health are among the trials taking a hit In late March, NIH suspended funding for two clinical trials investigating how to better protect organ transplant recipients from COVID-19. The money is needed to complete the data analyses. DeSid/Getty Images By McKenzie Prillaman 1 hour ago For kidney transplant recipient Janet Handal, the recent push to phase out COVID-19 research could have a deadly outcome.  In early 2021, Handal participated in a study that found almost half of organ transplant recipients had no immune response to two doses of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. The finding came at a time when most people were celebrating that two shots could help them safely re-enter the world. “For people that are immunocompromised [from] the treatments, [the vaccines] don’t have the same effect,” says Handal, president and cofounder of the Transplant Recipients and Immunocompromised Patient Advocacy Group. The drugs that prevent their bodies from rejecting foreign organs interfere with the protective responses typically elicited by the jabs. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

News Astronomy Yes, there really is a black hole on the loose in Sagittarius It’s the first solitary black hole ever detected Thousands of light-years beyond the eight stars that make up the teapot of the constellation Sagittarius lurks the first lone black hole ever detected, just right of the top of the teapot’s spout, so in the far right region of this image. From mid-northern latitudes, Sagittarius appears in the southern sky during summer and early fall. Akira Fujii By Ken Croswell 18 seconds ago For the first time, astronomers have confirmed the existence of a lone black hole — one with no star orbiting it. It’s “the only one so far,” says Kailash Sahu, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. In 2022, Sahu and his colleagues discovered the dark object coursing through the constellation Sagittarius. A second team disputed the claim, saying the body might instead be a neutron star. New observations from the Hubble Space Telescope now confirm that the object’s mass is so large that it must be a black hole, Sahu’s team reports in the April 20 Astrophysical Journal. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

News Neuroscience Early Parkinson’s trials revive stem cells as a possible treatment In two small clinical trials, stem cell therapies caused no apparent trouble in the brain Injections of cells (shown here frozen in vials) may help restore missing nerve cells in the brains of people with Parkinson's disease. Mark Tomishima By Laura Sanders 2 hours ago Two small clinical trials revive hope for an old idea: Cells injected into the brain might replace the nerve cells that die in Parkinson’s disease. The studies, published April 16 in Nature, represent early steps for stem cell therapies that aim to replace these dead cells in the brain — and stop Parkinson’s and the movement problems, tremors and rigidity that it brings. In both trials, scientists injected cells derived from stem cells that would go on to become specialized neurons that pump out the chemical messenger dopamine. These are the crucial cells in the brain that die in Parkinson’s disease, a relentless neurological disease that is estimated to affect over 8 million people worldwide. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

News Physics Imitation dark matter axions have arrived. They could reveal the real thing A quasiparticle in a manganese-based material acts a lot like the elusive axion Researchers Suyang Xu (left), Jianxiang Qiu (right) and colleagues have created axion quasiparticles, which behave similarly to hypothetical axion particles that could be the explanation for dark matter. Suyang Xu By Emily Conover 17 seconds ago If imitation is a form of flattery, then scientists are enamored with the axion. The hypothetical subatomic particle has long eluded scientists. But it’s now been conjured up in imitation form within a thin sheet of material, researchers report April 16 in Nature. If axions exist, they could explain dark matter, an invisible form of matter inferred from observations of the cosmos. But efforts to spot the particles have been unsuccessful. The newfound axion imitators are the next best thing. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

On the eve of Daylight Saving Time, I flew home to Vermont from California. Crossing several time zones, I arrived near midnight. At 2 a.m., the clock jumped ahead an hour, leaving me discombobulated. “How messed up am I?” I asked sleep researcher and evolutionary anthropologist David Samson days later. Jet lag can make people feel moody and hungry at weird times, but my extreme state probably masked chronic sleep dysregulation, he told me. For most of human history, people woke with the sun and slept with the stars. Environmental cues like light and temperature synchronized the body’s clock, or circadian rhythm, to the day-night cycle. Nowadays, many of us spend more time indoors than out, where we bathe in artificial light and temperatures set for optimal comfort. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

Reviews Artificial Intelligence Tech billionaires’ vision of an AI-dominated future is flawed — and dangerous A new book unravels the fantasy of a limitless society in outer space served by superintelligent AI A new book contends that Silicon Valley’s vision of the future — one in which AI enables humans to surpass biological limitations and build an ever-growing society in space — is implausible and morally fraught. Westend61/Getty Images Plus By Ashley Yeager 1 hour ago More Everything ForeverAdam Becker Basic Books, $32In the eyes of tech billionaires, our future is clear. We will be an ever-growing society living in outer space, our every need answered by superintelligent AIs. This vision may seem like science fiction. But around the world, a league of financial elites believes that such a transhumanistic future — one where technology enhances human capabilities and lets us surpass biological limitations — is inevitable. Science journalist Adam Becker counters this fantasy in More Everything Forever. In a deeply researched and engaging narrative, Becker dives into AI’s limitations to show that this vision of the future is not only unrealistic but also laden with racism, sexism and “endless capitalism of the most brutal sort.” Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

Skip to content News Health & Medicine A drug for heavy metal poisoning may double as a snakebite treatment The drug can block proteins that are found in the venom of many vipers around the world Researchers are investigating whether a drug used for heavy metal poisoning might prevent harm to people from the venom of the puff adder, shown here, and other vipers. The snakes’ venom contains proteins that need zinc to do their damaging work. Michele D'Amico supersky77/Getty Images By Aimee Cunningham 1 hour ago An old drug may find new use as a speedy treatment for venomous snakebites. The drug, called unithiol, has long been used as a therapy for heavy metal poisoning. Research in mice suggests the drug could block damaging proteins that are found in the venom of many vipers. A recent Phase I clinical trial explored different dosages of the drug in people — larger quantities than are used for metal poisoning — and didn’t find safety issues, researchers report in the March eBioMedicine. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

News Health & Medicine Three U.S tick species may cause a mysterious red meat allergy The lone star tick isn’t the only one that can trigger alpha-gal syndrome, two cases suggest A bite from a western blacklegged tick may, in rare cases, cause a red meat allergy known as alpha-gal syndrome. CDC By Meghan Rosen 1 hour ago Cathy Raley’s first bout of hives woke her in the middle of the night with itchy bumps that crept up her arms and spread to her legs and back. Her second bout took her to the hospital. It was a June afternoon in 2017, and she was getting ready to take her dog, Jake, on a hike. The hives started suddenly, when she was about to load Jake into the car, but this time was different, Raley says. Her tongue was swelling, and her throat was getting tight. “That’s when I called 911.” Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

News Science & Society Federal cuts put help for mental health and drug addiction in peril Changes to SAMHSA are hitting during an opioid epidemic and a wave of mental health problems The federal agency that helps oversee the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline has undergone an extreme reorganization under the Trump administration. Since its launch in 2022, millions of texts, calls and chats have poured into the Lifeline as people in distress look for help. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images By Laura Sanders 5 seconds ago People in the United States are in the midst of an ongoing opioid epidemic and a wave of mental health problems. So funding and staff cuts to a federal agency that supports mental health care, suicide prevention, and addiction treatment, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, has worried people who work on substance use disorders and mental health. “We’ve got some challenges — big ones,” says Keith Humphreys, a psychologist at Stanford University. He has served on the SAMHSA National Advisory Council and as a senior policy adviser at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. “It seems like a bad time for the government to say, ‘Well, we’re not doing this anymore.’” Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.