You’ve seen the headlines: This battery breakthrough is going to change the electric vehicle forever. And then … silence. You head to the local showroom, and the cars all kind of look and feel the same.

WIRED got annoyed about this phenomenon. So we talked to battery technology experts about what’s really going on in electric vehicle batteries. Which technologies are here? Which will be, probably, but aren’t yet, so don’t hold your breath? What’s probably not coming anytime soon?

“It’s easy to get excited about these things, because batteries are so complex,” says Pranav Jaswani, a technology analyst at IDTechEx, a market intelligence firm. “Many little things are going to have such a big effect.” That’s why so many companies, including automakers, their suppliers, and battery-makers, are experimenting with so many bit parts of the battery. Swap one electrical conductor material for another, and an electric vehicle battery’s range might increase by 50 miles. Rejigger how battery packs are put together, and an automaker might bring down manufacturing costs enough to give consumers a break on the sales lot.

Still, experts say, it can take a long time to get even small tweaks into production cars—sometimes 10 years or more. “Obviously, we want to make sure that whatever we put in an EV works well and it passes safety standards,” says Evelina Stoikou, who leads the battery technology and supply chain team at BloombergNEF, a research firm. Ensuring that means scientists coming up with new ideas, and suppliers figuring out how to execute them; the automakers, in turn, rigorously test each iteration. All the while, everyone’s asking the most important question: Does this improvement make financial sense?

So it’s only logical that not every breakthrough in the lab makes it to the road. Here are the ones that really count—and the ones that haven’t quite panned out, at least so far.

It’s Really Happening

The big deal battery breakthroughs all have something in common: They’re related to the lithium-ion battery. Other battery chemistries are out there—more on them later—but in the next decade, it’s going to be hard to catch up with the dominant battery form. “Lithium-ion is already very mature,” says Stoikou. Lots of players have invested big money in the technology, so “any new one is going to have to compete with the status quo.”

Lithium Iron Phosphate

Why it’s exciting: LFP batteries use iron and phosphate instead of pricier and harder-to-source nickel and cobalt, which are found in conventional lithium-ion batteries. They’re also more stable and slower to degrade after multiple charges. The upshot: LFP batteries can help bring down the cost of manufacturing an EV, an especially important data point while Western electrics struggle to compete, cost-wise, with conventional gas-powered cars. LFP batteries are already common in China, and they’re set to become more popular in European and American electric vehicles in the coming years.

Why it’s hard: LFP is less energy dense than alternatives, meaning you can’t pack as much charge—or range—into each battery.

More Nickel

Why it’s exciting: The increased nickel content in lithium nickel manganese cobalt batteries ups the energy density, meaning more range in a battery pack without much more size or weight. Also, more nickel can mean less cobalt, a metal that’s both expensive and ethically dubious to obtain.

Why it’s hard: Batteries with higher nickel content are potentially less stable, which means they carry a higher risk of cracking or thermal runaway—fires. This means battery-makers experimenting with different nickel content have to spend more time and energy on the careful design of their products. That extra fussiness means more expense. For this reason, expect to see more nickel use in batteries for higher-end EVs.

Dry Electrode Process

Why it’s exciting: Usually, battery electrodes are made by mixing materials into a solvent slurry, which then is applied to a metal current collector foil, dried, and pressed. The dry electrode process cuts down on the solvents by mixing the materials in dry powder form before application and lamination. Less solvent means fewer environmental and health and safety concerns. And getting rid of the drying process can save production time—and up efficiency—while reducing the physical footprint needed to manufacture batteries. This all can lead to cheaper manufacturing, “which should trickle down to make a cheaper car,” says Jaswani. Tesla has already incorporated a dry anode process into its battery-making. (The anode is the negative electrode that stores lithium ions while a battery is charging.) LG and Samsung SGI are also working on pilot production lines.

Why it’s hard: Using dry powders can be more technically complicated.

Cell-to-Pack

Why it’s exciting: In your standard electric vehicle battery, individual battery cells get grouped into modules, which are then assembled into packs. Not so in cell-to-pack, which puts cells directly into a pack structure without the middle module step. This lets battery-makers fit more battery into the same space, and can lead to some 50 additional miles of range and higher top speeds, says Jaswani. It also brings down manufacturing costs, savings that can be passed down to the car buyer. Big-time automakers including Tesla and BYD, plus Chinese battery giant CATL, are already using the tech.

Why it’s hard: Without modules, it can be harder to control thermal runaway and maintain the battery pack’s structure. Plus, cell-to-pack makes replacing a faulty battery cell much harder, which means smaller flaws can require opening or even replacing the entire pack.

Silicon Anodes

Why it’s exciting: Lithium-ion batteries have graphite anodes. Adding silicon to the mix, though, could have huge upsides: more energy storage (meaning longer driving ranges) and faster charging, potentially down to a blazing six to 10 minutes to top up. Tesla already mixes a bit of silicon into its graphite anodes, and other automakers—Mercedes-Benz, General Motors—say they’re getting close to mass production.

Why it’s hard: Silicon alloyed with lithium expands and contracts as it goes through the charging and discharging cycle, which can cause mechanical stress and even fracturing. Over time, this can lead to more dramatic battery capacity losses. For now, you’re more likely to find silicon anodes in smaller batteries, like those in phones or even motorcycles.

It’s Kind of Happening

The battery tech in the more speculative bucket has undergone plenty of testing. But it’s still not quite at a place where most manufacturers are building production lines and putting it into cars.

Sodium-Ion Batteries

Why it’s exciting: Sodium—it’s everywhere! Compared to lithium, the element is cheaper and easier to find and process, which means tracking down the materials to build sodium-ion batteries could give automakers a supply chain break. The batteries also seem to perform better in extreme temperatures, and are more stable. Chinese battery-maker CATL says it will start mass production of the batteries next year and that the batteries could eventually cover 40 percent of the Chinese passenger-vehicle market.

Why it’s hard: Sodium ions are heavier than their lithium counterparts, so they generally store less energy per battery pack. That could make them a better fit for battery storage than for vehicles. It’s also early days for this tech, which means fewer suppliers and fewer time-tested manufacturing processes.

Solid State Batteries

Why it’s exciting: Automakers have been promising for years that groundbreaking solid state batteries are right around the corner. That would be great, if true. This tech subs the liquid or gel electrolytes in a conventional li-ion battery for a solid electrolyte. These electrolytes should come in different chemistries, but they all have some big advantages: more energy density, faster charging, more durability, fewer safety risks (no liquid electrolyte means no leaks). Toyota says it will finally launch its first vehicles with solid state batteries in 2027 or 2028. BloombergNEF projects that by 2035, solid state batteries will account for 10 percent of EV and storage production.

Why it’s hard: Some solid electrolytes have a hard time at low temperatures. The biggest issues, however, have to do with manufacturing. Putting together these new batteries requires new equipment. It’s really hard to build defect-free layers of electrolyte. And the industry hasn’t come to an agreement about which solid electrolyte to use, which makes it hard to create supply chains.

Maybe It’ll Happen

Good ideas don't always make a ton of sense in the real world.

Wireless Charging

Why it’s exciting: Park your car, get out, and have it charge up while you wait—no plugs required. Wireless charging could be the peak of convenience, and some automakers insist it’s coming. Porsche, for example, is showing off a prototype, with plans to roll out the real thing next year.

Why it’s hard: The issue, says Jaswani, is that the tech underlying the chargers we have right now works perfectly well and is much cheaper to install. He expects that eventually, wireless charging will show up in some restricted use cases—maybe in buses, for example, that could charge up throughout their routes if they stop on top of a charging pad. But this tech may never go truly mainstream, he says.

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Posted Wednesday 5 November 2025 at 4:03 am AEST (my time).

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SARS-CoV-2 infections have been rising in the past month — global cases increased by more than 19,000 last month compared with the previous month, according to data posted on the World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 dashboard.

But the real number of infections is much higher than that, researchers say, because countries are less focused on collecting data on the infection now than they were during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Surveillance is happening but it’s at a much lower level than it used to be. We don’t have a complete picture of virus circulation of the variants that are out there,” says Maria Van Kerkhove, interim director of the department of epidemic and pandemic management at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland. “I think there’s a collective amnesia right now about COVID-19,” she adds.

Even if people do test positive after using a home antibody test, there is no way to report a positive result in the community, says Antonia Ho, a clinical epidemiologist at the University of Glasgow, UK.

Without high-quality surveillance data, Ho warns that health organizations are not well-prepared to recommend corresponding vaccine formulations and time their roll-out. “Surveillance is critical to really understand what’s circulating,” she says.

How is COVID-19 being tracked?

Although surveillance data that are used to track the absolute number of SARS-CoV-2 infections are less robust than during the pandemic, researchers are tracking information about the number of people with severe COVID-19 who require hospitalization. “Hospital-based surveillance is what we’re mostly doing. But we also have wastewater surveillance, which is quite a useful indicator of what’s happening in the community,” Ho says.

Genomic analysis of samples containing the SARS‑CoV‑2 virus shows that the most common variants currently circulating globally are XFG, also known as Stratus or the 'Frankenstein variant', and NB.1.8.1, known as Nimbus. Stratus accounts for 76% of reported cases and is dominant in Europe and the Americas, whereas Nimbus is dominant in the Western Pacific region, accounting for 15% of cases, says Van Kerkhove.

Stratus and Nimbus have similar symptoms to previous variants including a fever, cough and runny nose, but the Nimbus variant has one distinct symptom: a ‘razor blade’ sore throat. These two variants are currently on the WHO’s list of ‘currently circulating COVID-19 variants under monitoring’ as of 4 September.

Van Kerkhove says the latest information about SARS‑CoV‑2 strains is far from the complete picture of viral circulation. Even hospitalization data aren’t as complete as they were during the pandemic — fewer than 35 countries still report COVID-19 data. “That’s why we’re trying to make sure that countries are still doing sequencing,” says Van Kerkhove.

However, she adds that the surveillance data currently available are sufficient to “provide information to governments related to the effectiveness of vaccines”.

Is COVID-19 seasonal?

Vaccination campaigns are focused on people over the age of 65 in the US, or 75 in the UK and parts of Europe, and those with a weakened immune system who are older than 6 months. Michael Head, an epidemiologist at the University of Southampton, UK, says he would prefer a wider vaccine roll-out for younger populations as well. “It’s still not a pleasant infection, and vaccines do still have a significant public-health benefit, so they are a vital tool in addressing the threat posed by COVID-19”.

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Coca-Cola is once again using generative AI to reimagine its classic Coke caravan holiday commercials, and in doing so, killing some of the festive joy you have for the brand. After receiving backlash for airing three AI-generated holiday commercials last year that featured gliding wheels and uncanny-looking faces, the company has doubled down with a new AI Christmas campaign that’s more visually jarring than the first.

The “Holidays Are Coming” commercial attempts to sidestep issues around generating realistic humans by instead featuring a cast of various critters. There’s no consistent style, switching between attempted realism and a bug-eyed toony look, and the polar bears, panda, and sloth move unnaturally, like flat images that have been sloppily animated rather than rigged 3D models in CG. Compared to the convincing deepfake videos being generated by tools like OpenAI’s Sora 2 or Google’s Veo 3, the videos produced for this Coke ad feel extremely dated.

The only notable improvement to my eyes is that the wheels on the iconic Coke trucks are actually consistently turning this year, rather than gliding statically over snow-covered roads. The Wall Street Journal reports that Coca-Cola teamed up with Silverside and Secret Level on its latest holiday campaign, two of the AI studios that previously worked on the 2024 Coke Christmas ads.

Coca-Cola declined to comment on the cost of the new holiday campaign, according to The Wall Street Journal, but said that around 100 people were involved in the project — a figure comparable to the company’s older AI-free productions. That includes five “AI specialists” from Silverside who contributed by prompting and refining more than 70,000 AI video clips.

This comes at a time when AI tools are rapidly improving to replace the manual work performed by creative professionals, raising concerns about future employment opportunities. Google has also introduced its first fully AI-generated commercial this year, saying that consumers don’t really care if ads are created using the technology. And Coca-Cola is firmly embracing its use in advertising, despite issues in previous campaigns, including a commercial in April that made up a fake book by author J.G. Ballard.

Those past blunders are seemingly worth the risk for Coca-Cola, with the company’s Chief Marketing Officer, Manolo Arroyo, telling The Wall Street Journal that its latest holiday campaign was cheaper and speedier to produce compared to traditional production. “Before, when we were doing the shooting and all the standard processes for a project, we would start a year in advance,” Arroyo told the publication. “Now, you can get it done in around a month.”

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Posted Tuesday 4 November 2025 at 5:02 am AEST (my time).

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Waymo said it plans on launching commercial robotaxi services in three new cities: San Diego, Las Vegas, and Detroit. The announcement comes after the company said it would begin rapidly scaling to bring its fully driverless technology to more people on a faster timeline.

Waymo didn’t say exactly when it plans on opening up its vehicles to customers in all three cities, but it will likely be sometime next year. The company currently operates in five cities: San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta. It has also said it wants to launch in Boston, Seattle, Denver, Miami, New York City, and Washington, DC. (The company is experiencing local pushback in both Boston and Seattle.)

Waymo is licensed for autonomous ridehailing in California, but will still need to obtain approval in Nevada and Michigan before it can operate fully driverless cars in a commercial capacity. Waymo will need a Transportation Network Company permit in Michigan, and testing approval from both Nevada’s DMV and the state’s transportation authority for commercial operations, Waymo spokesperson Sandy Karp said.

“We’ll follow our safety framework and serve riders in these cities when we’ve properly validated our technology and obtained the necessary permissions, with the intentions to open our doors to riders next year,” Karp added in an email.

Waymo also says it will be adding its new Zeekr RT vehicles to its fleet of Jaguar I-Pace SUVs when its ready to commence commercial operations in the three cities announced today. The Zeekr RT, which is made by China’s Geely, will be equipped with the company’s 6th generation technology that Waymo says is more cost efficient.

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Posted Tuesday 4 November 2025 at 5:01 am AEST (my time).

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If you want to get into stargazing in 2025, there’s no better place to start than viewing a meteor shower. Meteor showers, or shooting stars, happen when Earth’s orbital path crosses a path of debris left by a comet and that material burns up in the Earth’s atmosphere. Watching a meteor shower is one of the most accessible ways to engage with the night sky.

The next shower are the Leonids, which last throughout November and will peak around November 16-18. This is just one of nine major meteor showers that will grace skies in 2025, and details of when they will appear in the northern hemisphere are listed below—so mark your calendar for these.

How to Watch a Meteor Shower

You don’t need any special equipment to see a meteor shower—in fact, using devices like binoculars or telescopes actually prevents you from seeing meteors, because they travel too fast to be seen through the lenses of such equipment. All you need are your eyes, a dark sky with little to no moonlight, and a location that’s away from excess light, as moonlight and light pollution can wash out shooting stars.

Note that the moon appears (rises) and disappears (sets) in the night sky at different times depending on what time zone you are in. All moonrise/moonset times in this piece are for the eastern US. You can use tools like Time and Date’s moonrise/moonset calendar or this tool from the US Naval Observatory to check the precise moonrise/moonset times in your exact location.

You should allow your eyes about half an hour to adjust to the darkness. If you need to use a flashlight while outside, use one with red light instead of white to preserve your night vision.

Each meteor shower is named after its radiant, or the constellation that the shower appears to come from. A meteor shower’s radiant usually needs to be above the horizon before you can see the meteors. You don’t need to look directly at the radiant to see meteors; shooting stars will be visible throughout the entire sky once the radiant has risen.

If you need help finding a shower’s radiant, you can use an app like Stellarium, which can also tell you when the radiant will be above the horizon in your exact location. If you really want to maximize the number of meteors you’ll see, you should watch the sky when the shower’s radiant reaches its highest point in the sky. However, you don’t need to wait until the radiant is at its highest to enjoy the show—as long as the radiant is above the horizon, you should be able to see plenty of shooting stars.

The Next Big Meteor Shower

The Leonids are active from about November 3 to December 2. They have a sharp peak, producing the most meteors overnight from November 16 to November 17, according to the American Meteor Society. Other organizations, however, predict that this shower will peak from November 17 to November 18. During the Leonids’ peak, you can expect to see about 15 meteors per hour under dark skies.

Although the Leonids produce fewer meteors than many other of the major meteor showers, they are known for producing fast-moving, bright, fireball meteors.

The Leonids peak just before the new moon—on the morning of November 18, the moon will be just 6 percent illuminated and in the eastern US won’t rise until around 5 am on November 17, so you’ll have ample time to see this meteor shower under perfect viewing conditions.

The Leonids’ radiant is the constellation Leo, which rises around midnight local time and is highest in the sky around dawn.

Coming Up Later in 2025

The Geminids (December)

The Geminids are active from about December 4 to December 17, peaking overnight from December 13 to December 14. They have a sharp peak, so the night of the 13th is the best time for skywatching.

The Geminids are the most spectacular meteor shower of the year. In addition to boasting up to 120 or even 150 meteors per hour during its peak, this meteor shower is also the brightest and most colorful of the year.

The Geminids are bright, slow-moving meteors that often have yellow tones, but they can be a range of other colors, including green, blue, white, red, or orange. And unlike most meteors, which are caused by comet debris, the Geminids are the remnants of an asteroid.

The night that the Geminids peak, their radiant, the constellation Gemini, will be above the horizon all night and will reach its highest point around 2 am local time, so meteors will be visible almost the whole night.

That same night, the moon will be about 32 percent illuminated and will rise around 1:30 am in the eastern US, so if you watch this shower shortly after midnight, the moonlight won’t interfere with your viewing experience.

The Ursids (December)

The Ursids are active around December 17 to December 26, peaking in the early morning hours of December 22. This meteor shower is less active than others, typically yielding about 10 meteors per hour; however, viewing conditions will be perfect for skywatching. The moon will set at approximately 6 pm in the eastern US on the 21st, so no moonlight will interfere with this meteor shower.

Even though the Ursids typically produce the most meteors just before dawn, when its radiant, the Little Dipper (or Ursa Minor), is highest in the sky, you will be able to see meteors throughout the entire night during this shower’s peak. In northern latitudes the Ursids’ radiant is above the horizon all night.

Showers to Look Out for Next Year

The Quadrantids (January)

The Quadrantids take place in December and January and peak during the first week of the year. This meteor shower has a sharp peak, meaning that most of its activity occurs in a narrow window of time. The Quadrantids typically produce many fireball meteors—that is, meteors that are very bright—with up to 120 meteors per hour during the shower’s peak.

The Quadrantids’ radiant is the constellation Quadrans Muralis, though the International Astronomical Union no longer recognizes this group of stars as a constellation. In its place is the constellation Boötes, which is next to the Big Dipper.

The Lyrids (April)

The Lyrids are active in the second half of April, with their peak lasting around three nights. You can expect to see about 15 to 20 meteors per hour under ideal viewing conditions during the Lyrids’ peak. Under optimal viewing conditions, the stargazing website Earth Sky notes, about a quarter of Lyrids shooting stars produce persistent trains—lingering streaks of light that are the result of gases being ionized as the meteors enter Earth’s atmosphere.

The Lyrids’ radiant, the constellation Hercules, rises well before midnight, so meteors are visible all night, but are most likely to be seen just before dawn, when the radiant reaches its highest point in the sky.

The Eta Aquariids (May)

The Eta Aquariids are active approximately from mid-April to the end of May. This meteor shower does not have a sharp peak: Elevated activity lasts about a week, with activity peaking for one night in the first week of May.

In the northern hemisphere, the Eta Aquariids are a medium-strength shower that produces about 10 to 30 meteors per hour. According to the American Meteor Society, many of these meteors produce persistent trains. One other thing that makes the Eta Aquariids extra special is that these meteors are actually remnants of the famous Halley’s Comet.

The Eta Aquariids’ radiant, the constellation Aquarius, appears very low in the sky in the northern hemisphere in April and won’t start to peak above the eastern horizon until after 2 am local time. However, meteors from this shower are still visible even when the radiant is just below the horizon.

The Southern Delta Aquariids (July–August)

The Southern Delta Aquariids are active from mid-July to mid- to late August, producing peak activity for about a week at the end of July. Unlike some other meteor showers, the Southern Delta Aquariids don’t have a sharp peak. Instead, the number of meteors per hour gradually increases and then slowly decreases during the period of activity.

The Southern Delta Aquariids’ radiant is the constellation Aquarius.

Although this meteor shower typically yields meteors that are somewhat dimmer and do not have persistent trains, this meteor shower is still worthwhile: You’ll be able to see about 25 shooting stars per hour in ideal viewing conditions.

The Perseids (July–August)

The Perseids are also active from from mid-July to mid- to late August but peak roughly two weeks after the Southern Delta Aquariids.

The Perseids are one of the strongest and brightest meteor showers of the year, producing 100 to 150 meteors per hour under dark skies. However, the number of meteors drops off sharply after the peak.

The Perseids often yield bright fireball meteors, and about a third of the Perseids have persistent trains. Shooting stars in this shower are also known for being particularly colorful: Most have a green or bluish color, but these meteors can produce yellow, red, purple, or pink hues as well.

The Perseids appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus.

The Orionids (September–November)

The Orionids are active from late September until late November and have a gradual peak due to the angle at which Earth crosses the path of this trail of comet debris. The Orionids produce peak activity for about a week, in the second half of October.

The Orionids typically yield about 20 to 25 meteors per hour during their peak and are known for being particularly bright—many of the Orionids are fireball meteors. Like the Eta Aquariids, the Orionids are debris left behind by Halley’s Comet.

The Orionids appear to radiate from the constellation Orion.

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Posted Tuesday 4 November 2025 at 5:01 am AEST (my time).

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Melatonin is a hormone naturally produced in the body by the pineal gland, and it helps regulate the body's sleep-wake cycle.

Melatonin levels increase during darkness and decrease during daylight. Chemically identical synthetic versions of the hormone are often used to treat insomnia (difficulty falling and/or staying asleep) and jet lag. The supplements are widely available over the counter in many countries, including the U.S. In the U.S., over-the-counter supplements are not regulated, so each brand of supplement can vary in strength, purity, etc.

In this study, researchers classified people who had used melatonin long-term (with long-term use defined as a year or more documented in their electronic health records) as part of the "melatonin group." In contrast, those who never had melatonin recorded anywhere in their medical records were classified as the "non-melatonin group."

Melatonin supplements may not be as harmless as commonly assumed. If our study is confirmed, this could affect how doctors counsel patients about sleep aids."

Ekenedilichukwu Nnadi, M.D., lead author of the study and chief resident in internal medicine at SUNY Downstate/Kings County Primary Care in Brooklyn, New York

Melatonin supplements are promoted and marketed as a safe sleep aid; however, data demonstrating their long-term cardiovascular safety are lacking, which prompted the researchers to examine whether melatonin use alters the risk of heart failure, specifically in chronic insomnia patients. According to the American Heart Association's 2025 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics, heart failure occurs when the heart can't pump enough oxygen-rich blood to the body's organs for them to function properly and is a common condition that affects 6.7 million adults in the U.S.

Using a large international database (the TriNetX Global Research Network), the researchers reviewed 5 years of electronic health records for adults with chronic insomnia who had melatonin recorded in their health records and used it for more than a year. They were matched with peers in the database who also had insomnia but never had melatonin recorded in their health records. People were excluded from the analysis if they had previously been diagnosed with heart failure or had been prescribed other sleep medications.

The main analysis found:

• Among adults with insomnia, those whose electronic health records indicated long-term melatonin use (12 months or more) had about a 90% higher chance of incident heart failure over 5 years compared with matched non-users (4.6% vs. 2.7%, respectively).
• There was a similar result (82% higher) when researchers analyzed people who had at least 2 melatonin prescriptions filled at least 90 days apart. (Melatonin is only available by prescription in the United Kingdom.)

A secondary analysis found:

• Participants taking melatonin were nearly 3.5 times as likely to be hospitalized for heart failure when compared to those not taking melatonin (19.0% vs. 6.6%, respectively).
• Participants in the melatonin group were nearly twice as likely to die from any cause than those in the non-melatonin group (7.8% vs. 4.3%, respectively) over the 5-year period.

"Melatonin supplements are widely thought of as a safe and 'natural' option to support better sleep, so it was striking to see such consistent and significant increases in serious health outcomes, even after balancing for many other risk factors," Nnadi said.

"I'm surprised that physicians would prescribe melatonin for insomnia and have patients use it for more than 365 days, since melatonin, at least in the U.S., is not indicated for the treatment of insomnia. In the U.S., melatonin can be taken as an over-the-counter supplement and people should be aware that it should not be taken chronically without a proper indication," said Marie-Pierre St-Onge, Ph.D., C.C.S.H., FAHA, chair of the writing group for the American Heart Association's 2025 scientific statement, Multidimensional Sleep Health: Definitions and Implications for Cardiometabolic Health. St-Onge, who was not involved in this study, is a professor of nutritional medicine in the division of general medicine and director of the Center of Excellence for Sleep & Circadian Research in the department of medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City.

The study has several limitations. First, the database includes countries that require a prescription for melatonin (such as the United Kingdom) and countries that don't (such as the United States), and patient locations were not part of the de-identified data available to the researchers. Since melatonin use in the study was based only on those identified from medication entries in the electronic health record, everyone taking it as an over-the-counter supplement in the U.S. or other countries that don't require a prescription would have been in the non-melatonin group; therefore, the analyses may not accurately reflect this.

Hospitalization figures were also higher than those for initial diagnosis of heart failure because a range of related diagnostic codes may be entered for the hospitalization, and they may not always include the code for a new diagnosis of heart failure. The researchers also lacked information on the severity of insomnia and the presence of other psychiatric disorders.

"Worse insomnia, depression/anxiety or the use of other sleep-enhancing medicines might be linked to both melatonin use and heart risk," Nnadi said. "Also, while the association we found raises safety concerns about the widely used supplement, our study cannot prove a direct cause-and-effect relationship. This means more research is needed to test melatonin's safety for the heart."

Study details, background and design:

• The study included 130,828 adults (average age of 55.7 years; 61.4% women) diagnosed with insomnia.
• The study data was from TriNetX, established in 2013, a growing global network of real-world, de-identified patient data available for research.
• 65,414 participants had been prescribed melatonin at least once and reported taking it for at least a year.
• A second group of people were examined for comparison (control group) - those who had never been prescribed melatonin and were matched to the group taking melatonin on 40 factors including demographic information, health conditions and medications. 
• Participants were excluded if they had already been diagnosed with heart failure or had been prescribed other types of sleeping pills such as benzodiazepines.
• The melatonin and control groups were matched for age, sex, race/ethnicity, heart and nervous system diseases, medications for heart and nervous system diseases, blood pressure and body mass index. Researchers looked at electronic medical records from the five years after the matching date.
• For the main findings, records were searched for codes related to an initial diagnosis of heart failure. Secondary findings included codes for hospitalization related to heart failure or death.
• Following the initial analyses, researchers validated the credibility of their findings by conducting a sensitivity analysis. This involved slightly changing the criteria: they required participants in the melatonin group to have filled at least two melatonin prescriptions that were at least 90 days apart. This adjustment aimed to determine whether the extended duration of confirmed melatonin prescriptions influenced the outcomes.

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These findings haven't come out of nowhere: omega-3 has previously been linked to preventing schizophrenia, while aggression and antisocial behavior are thought in part to stem from a lack of nutrition. What we eat can influence our brain's chemistry.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania built on earlier, smaller studies of omega-3 supplementation effects on aggression. Their meta-analysis looked at 29 randomized controlled trials across 3,918 participants in total.

Across all the trials, a modest but noticeable short-term effect was found, translating to up to a 28 percent reduction in aggression across multiple different variables (including age, gender, medical diagnosis, and length and dosage of treatment).

"I think the time has come to implement omega-3 supplementation to reduce aggression, irrespective of whether the setting is the community, the clinic, or the criminal justice system," said neurocriminologist Adrian Raine when the meta-analysis was published.

Flow diagram of literature search leading to 28 suitable papers. (Raine & Brodrick, Aggression and Violent Behavior, 2024)

The trials included in the study, carried out between 1996 and 2024, ran for an average of 16 weeks. They covered a variety of demographics, from children aged 16 and under to older people aged between 50 and 60.

What's more, the reductions in aggression included both reactive aggression (in response to provocation) and proactive aggression (behavior planned in advance). Before this study, it wasn't clear if omega-3 could help with these different types of aggression.

While larger studies across longer periods of time are going to be needed to further establish this relationship, it adds to our understanding of how fish oil pills and the omega-3 in them might be beneficial for the brain.

"At the very least, parents seeking treatment for an aggressive child should know that in addition to any other treatment that their child receives, an extra portion or two of fish each week could also help," Raine said.

Natural sources of omega-3 in foods. (Ekaterina Kapranova/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

The researchers think something in the way that omega-3 reduces inflammation and keeps vital brain processes ticking over might be helping regulate aggression. There are still a lot of unanswered questions, but the team suggests there's enough evidence to look into this further.

Add in the studies that show that medications derived from fish oil can help reduce the risk of fatal heart attacks, strokes, and other heart health problems, and there seems to be plenty of upside to adding some omega-3 to your diet.

"Omega-3 is not a magic bullet that is going to completely solve the problem of violence in society," said Raine.

"But can it help? Based on these findings, we firmly believe it can, and we should start to act on the new knowledge we have."

The research has been published in Aggression and Violent Behavior.

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We know that in recent studies aspirin hasn't proven beneficial for primary prevention in people who don't have established cardiovascular disease. However, Type 2 diabetes is a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease. In our study, we wanted to better understand low-dose aspirin use in this very niche group of adults with Type 2 diabetes and with a moderate-to-high risk of cardiovascular disease – so, a population group who may or may not have been included in previous trials."

Aleesha Kainat, M.D., corresponding study author, clinical assistant professor of medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

For this study, researchers analyzed 10 years of electronic health record data on more than 11,500 adults. The individuals were previously diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and had a moderate or high risk for a cardiovascular event. Additionally, the researchers reviewed the potential effects of whether individuals had their blood glucose levels under control, along with whether they took medications as prescribed more frequently. 

"We were somewhat surprised by the magnitude of the findings," Kainat said. "People with Type 2 diabetes and a higher risk of CVD who reported taking low-dose aspirin were much less likely to have had a heart attack, stroke or death over 10 years when compared to similar individuals who did not report taking low-dose aspirin. That benefit was greatest for those who took aspirin consistently, throughout most of the follow-up time."

The analysis found:

• Adults with Type 2 diabetes who took low-dose aspirin were less likely to have a heart attack (42.4%) than the participants who did not take low-dose aspirin (61.2%).
• For those on a low-dose aspirin regimen, the risk of stroke was also lower (14.5% aspirin group vs. 24.8% no aspirin group), as was the risk of death from any cause within 10 years (33% aspirin group compared to 50.7% no aspirin group).
• Any low-dose aspirin use among the participants was linked to reduced risk of heart attack and stroke, with the greatest benefit seen among those who took low-dose aspirin most frequently. 
• In subgroup analyses, low-dose aspirin use was associated with similarly lower risk of a cardiovascular event no matter the participant's HBA1c, or blood glucose, levels, though this reduction was more substantial in individuals who had lower HBA1c levels, indicating their T2D was better controlled

"It's worth noting that our analysis excluded the records of people who had a high risk of bleeding, and we did not track bleeding events or other side effects in our study," said Kainat. "That's an important limitation because aspirin's bleeding risk is crucial in real-life decision making and a person's independent bleeding risk has to be accounted for whenever we are prescribing a medication."

"This study offers some interesting insights into helping reduce the incidence of major cardiovascular events among people with Type 2 diabetes. This is very important because cardiovascular disease continues to be the leading cause of death among people with Type 2 diabetes, and furthermore, Type 2 diabetes is a leading risk factor contributing to a recent rise in heart disease and stroke," said Amit Khera, M.D., M.Sc., FAHA, the volunteer chair of the American Heart Association's Advocacy Coordinating Committee and recipient of the Association's 2025 Chairman's Award. "While the American Heart Association does not currently recommend low-dose aspirin for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease for adults with Type 2 diabetes who have no history of cardiovascular disease, this study raises some good questions for further research and validation. The clear message is to always work directly with your health care team to identify your specific risk factors and conditions and together decide whether the benefits of any treatment outweigh the potential risks." Khera, who was not involved in this study, is a professor of medicine, clinical chief of cardiology and director of preventive cardiology at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas

The study had additional limitations. The analysis was observational, meaning the researchers examined past, real-world data from patient records rather than enrolling participants in a clinical trial. The findings cannot prove low-dose aspirin prevented or reduced major cardiovascular event. Also, the researchers measured low-dose aspirin use based on reports within individuals' health records, which may not accurately reflect how often people actually took low-dose aspirin or if they took other unreported over-the-counter medications. Additionally, there may have been other unidentified differences across the groups of individuals who took low-dose aspirin versus those who did not, which could influence the findings.

"We'll need to look at how we balance the cardiovascular benefits of low-dose aspirin with its known bleeding risks for individual high-risk individuals, such as those who have high inflammatory burden or subclinical coronary calcifications," Kainat said. "It is also an open area of inquiry to see how low-dose aspirin's benefit might interact with the myriad of emerging therapies for Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, such as GLP-1 medications and other lipid lowering agents besides statins, so we look forward to conducting more research on this important topic."

Study details, background and design:

• Low-dose aspirin use among the participants was based on how frequently it was noted on the medication list of their medical records over the follow-up period of about eight years. It was classified as: no use, seldom use (<30% of the time), sometimes used (between 30-70% of the time) and frequently used (>70% of the time).
• The study included health records for 11,681 adults with Type 2 diabetes who had a moderate or high risk score as determined by the 10-year Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease (ASCVD) risk score, a standardized cardiovascular disease calculator outlined in a 2018 special report from the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology. All records were from a primary prevention registry within the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center multihospital system, which includes over 35 hospitals and 400 outpatient clinics in Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia.
• Participants had an average age of 61.6 years, 46.24% were female and 53.76% were male. People who were at a higher risk for bleeding were excluded.
• Participants were divided into four groups, depending on how often their medical records noted they took low-dose aspirin over the course of about eight years of follow-up: no low-dose aspirin, low-dose aspirin taken less than 30% of the time, low-dose aspirin taken 30-69% of the time and low-dose aspirin taken more than 70% of the time. 
• The analyses compared the incidence of stroke, heart attack and death from any cause within 10 years across all four participant groups.
• Across the study's 10-year follow-up, 88.6% of all participants reported taking low-dose aspirin and 53.15% reported taking statins, or cholesterol-lowering medications.
• An additional analysis investigated potential links between low-dose aspirin use and heart attack, stroke and death based on participants' levels of blood sugar, or HbA1C results.

Heart attack and stroke are leading causes of death in the U.S., and people with Type 2 diabetes are at increased risk for these events. According to the American Heart Association's 2025 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics, more than half (57%) of all adults in the U.S. have Type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes.

Aspirin is a blood-thinning medication and is often used in low doses to reduce CVD risk. Low-dose aspirin is recommended for secondary prevention in the American Heart Association's 2025 Guideline for the Management of Patients With Acute Coronary Syndrome for adults who have already had a cardiac event and in the Association's 2021 Guideline for the Prevention of Stroke in Patients with Stroke and Transient Ischemic Attack for adults who have already had a stroke. However, the Association's 2019 Guideline on the Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease states that daily low-dose aspirin might be considered in select adults 40-70 years of age who are at higher risk for heart disease but not at increased bleeding risk. The Association's 2024 Guideline for the Primary Prevention of Stroke states that in people with diabetes or other common vascular risk factors and no prior stroke, the use of aspirin to prevent a first stroke is not well established.

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A new study from researchers in Japan has uncovered a surprising link between this mouth-drying sensation and brain function. It suggests that the very astringent taste of certain foods could send direct signals to the brain, influencing alertness, memory, and even stress response. This discovery adds a fascinating new layer to our understanding of how taste and the nervous system interact.

Beyond Flavor: The Hidden Power of Polyphenols

At the heart of this discovery are compounds called polyphenols, naturally occurring molecules found in many plants.

Polyphenols are responsible for much of the color, taste, and health benefits of foods like berries, tea, wine, and cocoa. Among them, flavanols—a subgroup of polyphenols—have attracted particular scientific attention.

Flavanols are known for their potential health benefits, especially for the heart and brain. Numerous studies have shown that they can improve blood flow, reduce inflammation, and even enhance cognitive performance. People who consume flavanol-rich foods often exhibit better memory and lower risk of age-related cognitive decline.

Yet, despite these promising findings, a scientific puzzle has remained unsolved: flavanols are poorly absorbed by the body. Only a small fraction ever reaches the bloodstream, raising an important question—if so little gets inside, how do they have such powerful effects on the brain?

The Taste That Talks to the Brain

In an attempt to answer this mystery, a research team led by Dr. Yasuyuki Fujii and Professor Naomi Osakabe at the Shibaura Institute of Technology in Japan explored an entirely new idea. What if flavanols don’t need to be absorbed into the blood to affect the brain? What if the taste itself—the astringent feeling they create—acts as a kind of sensory message, triggering neural activity directly?

“We hypothesized that the astringent taste serves as a stimulus, transmitting signals directly to the central nervous system,” explains Dr. Fujii. “This stimulation may activate the brain through sensory nerves and induce physiological responses through the sympathetic nervous system.”

In other words, when you taste something astringent, your mouth might be sending a wake-up call to your brain—activating neural circuits that control attention, motivation, and stress responses.

Testing the Hypothesis: From Taste to Thought

To test their theory, the researchers turned to laboratory mice. Ten-week-old mice were given flavanols orally in doses of 25 or 50 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. A control group received only water. Afterward, the scientists carefully monitored their behavior, brain chemistry, and hormone levels.

The results were striking. Mice that consumed flavanols showed increased movement, curiosity, and alertness. They explored their surroundings more actively and performed better on tasks that required learning and memory. These behavioral changes suggested that the flavanols had stimulated the brain in ways similar to mild stress or exercise.

But how could a simple taste trigger such widespread effects? The researchers dug deeper into the mice’s brains, focusing on chemical messengers known as neurotransmitters. They found that dopamine (linked to motivation and pleasure), norepinephrine (associated with alertness and focus), and their precursors were significantly elevated in the locus coeruleus–noradrenaline network, a brain system that controls arousal and attention.

These neurotransmitters are crucial for keeping the brain awake, engaged, and ready to respond to the environment. By stimulating this system, flavanols appeared to act like a signal that sharpened the senses and boosted mental performance.

The Brain’s Stress Network Comes Alive

The research also revealed that flavanol consumption activated the sympathetic nervous system, which governs the body’s “fight-or-flight” response. This activation wasn’t harmful—it resembled the kind of beneficial stress response the body experiences during physical exercise.

The mice excreted higher levels of catecholamines, stress-related hormones that include adrenaline and noradrenaline. Within the brain, the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN)—a region central to regulating stress and energy balance—also became more active. Levels of key molecules such as c-Fos, a marker of neuronal activity, and corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) rose significantly.

This pattern of activation mirrors what happens during moderate physical exertion, when the body mobilizes energy, sharpens focus, and prepares for action. The implication is profound: simply tasting flavanol-rich foods may trigger some of the same brain and body responses as exercise, stimulating alertness and improving cognitive function.

When Taste Becomes Therapy

These findings mark a breakthrough in understanding the connection between taste and physiology. Traditionally, nutrition science has focused on what happens after food is digested—how nutrients are absorbed, metabolized, and circulated through the bloodstream. But Dr. Fujii’s team suggests that the sensory experience of eating itself can directly influence brain activity, even before digestion begins.

This concept, known as sensory nutrition, explores how the smell, texture, and taste of food can shape our health in ways that go far beyond pleasure. It implies that the human body may have evolved to use taste as an early signal—alerting the nervous system and preparing it for changes in energy and mood.

“Stress responses elicited by flavanols in this study are similar to those elicited by physical exercise,” says Dr. Fujii. “Thus, moderate intake of flavanols, despite their poor bioavailability, can improve health and quality of life.”

From Chocolate to Cognitive Health

If these findings hold true in humans, they could change how we think about foods like dark chocolate, red wine, and certain berries. Each of these contains high levels of flavanols and is known for its complex, slightly astringent taste. Perhaps part of their appeal—and their health benefits—comes from the subtle stimulation they provide to the brain’s sensory circuits.

Imagine eating a square of dark chocolate not just as a treat, but as a mini workout for your brain. The very taste that makes it feel rich and slightly drying on your tongue could be sparking neural activity, enhancing alertness, and strengthening cognitive resilience.

This also sheds light on why people often associate these foods with comfort or focus. The connection may not be purely emotional—it could be rooted in the brain’s physiological response to the compounds they contain.

Implications for the Future of Food Science

The idea that taste can directly influence brain function opens a new frontier in food research and design. If specific sensory properties can activate beneficial brain responses, then next-generation foods could be developed to optimize both pleasure and health.

Food scientists might craft products that balance taste with neurostimulation—designing snacks, drinks, or supplements that gently engage the nervous system to enhance mood, focus, or relaxation. Such innovations could redefine what it means to “eat for the brain.”

This approach could also have medical potential. For individuals who cannot exercise regularly due to age or illness, foods that safely mimic some of the physiological benefits of physical activity could offer new ways to support cognitive health and emotional well-being.

The Harmony Between Taste and Mind

The study from the Shibaura Institute of Technology reminds us that food is more than fuel—it’s a complex dialogue between the senses and the brain. Every flavor, texture, and aroma carries information that shapes how our body and mind respond to the world.

Flavanols, once celebrated mainly for their antioxidant properties, now appear to hold another kind of power: the ability to speak to our nervous system through taste. The dry, puckering sensation that some find unpleasant might actually be nature’s way of nudging our brains into a state of alertness and vitality.

As scientists continue to explore this connection, a new appreciation emerges for the everyday sensory experiences we often take for granted. That first sip of strong tea, that bite of rich cocoa, or that taste of ripe berries may be doing more than delighting your senses—they may be awakening your mind.

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Some things haven’t changed in the new high blood pressure (BP) guideline for adults released this August by the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American College of Cardiology. The definitions of normal, elevated, and stage 1 and 2 hypertension are the same, for example. And the recommended first-line antihypertensives are unchanged from the 2017 guideline.

But many updates with the potential to change patient care were included in the new guideline, which incorporates the latest data and emphasizes both earlier treatment and tighter control of BP.

“With heart health, brain health, kidney health…overall we have really great evidence that lower blood pressure is better,” said guideline coauthor Sadiya S. Khan, MD, MSc. “Start blood pressure treatment earlier and get to lower targets.”

Plus, there’s much more attention on prevention in the new guideline—meaning recommendations even for people with normal BP.

Here are some of the most important takeaways:

Lower the Target

The BP goals for people with hypertension remain generally the same in the new guideline, but the wording of the recommendation has been tweaked to make the message stronger. The 2017 guideline recommended a systolic goal of less than 130 mm Hg for people with hypertension at increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Now, the phrasing for people with hypertension with heightened CVD risk is to achieve at least less than 130 mm Hg, with encouragement to achieve less than 120 mm Hg. For those with hypertension who are not at increased risk of CVD, the same goal “may be reasonable” to forestall their BP from climbing higher, the guideline states.

The new language is a recognition that, after the previous guideline’s release, “there was not a big sweeping uptake by the clinical community or patients to achieve lower blood pressures,” explained Daniel W. Jones, MD, who chaired the current guideline writing committee and served on the committee for the 2017 version. “We don’t want to discourage our clinicians. We don’t want to discourage patients. But we want to be honest about what the evidence is. And the evidence clearly says 120 is better for reducing heart disease and stroke and kidney disease.”

The guideline addresses safety concerns, noting that adverse events related to intensive antihypertensive therapy are “infrequent and usually mild.” Clinicians should, however, exercise their judgement and use shared decision-making when selecting how low to go for individual patients, who should be monitored carefully.

Finally, whether or not a patient has achieved their target BP goal should be determined based on at least 2 readings during at least 2 visits, not on a single measurement.

Treat Earlier

Earlier treatment is a big addition to the new guideline. People with stage 1 hypertension who don’t have clinical CVD and who also have a low 10-year risk should use lifestyle changes to try to bring down their BP, but they should start antihypertensives if they’re not at goal in 3 to 6 months. The previous guideline recommended that this lower-risk population wait until stage 2 hypertension to initiate drug therapy.

The 2017 guideline also advised treating stage 1 hypertension with drug therapy only for secondary prevention of recurrent CVD events or for primary prevention in people with a heightened 10-year risk. The update expands on this by also recommending immediate medication initiation for people with stage 1 hypertension who don’t have clinical CVD but do have diabetes or chronic kidney disease.

Skip Monotherapy for Some

For people with stage 2 hypertension or higher at the time of diagnosis, “one drug is not going to cut it,” said Khan, who is an associate professor of cardiology and preventive medicine at Northwestern University and a JAMA Cardiology associate editor.

Over the past 5 years, she noted, trials have demonstrated that initiating treatment with a combination of BP-lowering drugs gets patients to target faster and keeps them there for longer stretches, thereby reducing their accumulated risk.

The new guideline advises this approach and takes it a step further by recommending the use of widely available single-pill combinations—2 medications combined in a single pill—to improve adherence. If a patient experiences an adverse effect, the physician can stop the combination therapy and reassess, Khan said.

Adopt the PREVENT Risk Calculator

As for determining CVD risk to make decisions about treatment initiation and goals, the updated BP guideline adopts the AHA’s new PREVENT (Predicting Risk of CVD Events) risk calculator, released in 2023, replacing the pooled cohort equations (PCEs) introduced a decade prior.

With PREVENT, a 10-year predicted CVD risk of 7.5% or higher defines increased risk and is equivalent to 10% risk using the PCEs, according to Khan.

Khan was among the researchers who developed the PREVENT model with more contemporary data from larger and more diverse cohorts. The guideline notes that the new tool predicts CVD risk more accurately than the PCEs. Among its improvements is that it factors in kidney function and estimates the risk for heart failure in addition to atherosclerotic CVD.
Emphasize Dementia Prevention

The previous BP guideline acknowledged that lowering BP was “reasonable” to prevent cognitive decline and dementia. Since then, the strength of evidence has grown, and the revised recommendation is to bring systolic BP below 130 mm Hg to prevent mild cognitive impairment and dementia.

In fact, dementia prevention is one of the reasons why the new guideline advises medication initiation for stage 1 hypertension that doesn’t resolve within a few months of lifestyle intervention, even for patients with low CVD risk.

“We’ve known for years that…people in middle age who had high BP were more likely to have dementia as they aged,” Jones said. “Now we know with certainty that taking those people and lowering blood pressure below 130 mm Hg systolic blood pressure reduces the risk of dementia.”

It’s believed that high BP causes damage to small blood vessels in regions of the brain responsible for cognitive function, similar to how it damages the microvasculature of the brain leading to ischemic stroke, explained Jones, who is an emeritus professor of medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

Add New Labs

There are 2 important updates to laboratory testing in the new guideline. The first is the addition of urine albumin to creatinine ratio testing as part of the standard workup for all people with high BP. According to Jones, this previously optional test is a more sensitive indicator of early kidney disease than serum creatinine testing, which is still recommended. The additional laboratory test “will allow an earlier detection of chronic kidney disease and allow patients to have appropriate therapy for reducing their risk of going on to renal failure,” he said.

There’s also a new recommendation to screen more patients for primary aldosteronism, a condition that leads to hypertension and low potassium levels. The guideline recommends the plasma aldosterone to renin ratio test for people with resistant hypertension or obstructive sleep apnea, as well as a few other conditions, regardless of whether hypokalemia is present. Clinicians can also consider screening patients with stage 2 hypertension to increase detection.

Why the change? It turns out that aldosteronism is more common than previously recognized: it’s present in up to 10% of patients with stage 1 hypertension and up to around 20% of patients with stage 2 or resistant hypertension, but very few people—only 1% or 2%—who should be screened for it are. “We just don’t check it enough to pick it up,” Khan said. Importantly, she added, the new guidance clarifies that patients can safely continue most antihypertensives leading up to screening. Older guidance to withdraw these medications before screening created an unnecessary barrier that contributed to low uptake.

Less Salt and More Salt Substitutes—for Everyone

Reducing the amount of salt in the diet has long been a staple of hypertension treatment. But the new guideline advises a low-sodium diet for all patients—with or without high BP. The specific recommendation is for adults to reduce dietary sodium intake to less than 2300 mg/d (about a teaspoon), but ideally less than 1500 mg/d (about two-thirds of a teaspoon).

The update also comes out stronger in favor of potassium-enriched salt substitutes, which lower the level of sodium in the diet and increase the level of potassium, “both of which are useful in lowering blood pressure,” Jones said. Most adults, with or without hypertension, can consider swapping out regular table salt for these products, which he noted are available in grocery stores and online but are underused in the US. (They’re not advised for patients with chronic kidney disease.)

Shoot for At Least 5% Weight Loss

Adults who are overweight or obese should aim to lose at least 5% of their bodyweight or reduce their body mass index (BMI) by at least 3 in the new guideline. Previously, no specific target was given for weight or BMI reduction, which was only recommended for people who were carrying extra weight and already had elevated BP or hypertension. The new recommendation is based on data demonstrating that reducing at least this amount of body weight or BMI is more effective for lowering BP in people with and without hypertension than reducing less.

This is also the first update to mention glucagon-like peptide-1, or GLP-1, receptor agonist medications. It notes that these drugs “when used for weight management may be effective as an adjunct to lower BP.”

The Ideal Amount of Alcohol Is None

Whereas the prior guideline recommended limiting alcohol intake for people with elevated BP or hypertension, the update advises all adults to abstain from drinking. That’s because both systolic and diastolic BP “increase over time with any amount of baseline alcohol intake.”

For those who continue to imbibe, the limit hasn’t changed: no more than 1 drink per day for women and 2 for men. (The different limits aren’t based on weight, Jones said, but on differences in alcohol metabolism in the liver for women and men.)

According to Jones, the observational evidence on alcohol consumption and BP continues to grow stronger. “The guideline committee is convinced that the relationship is clear,” he said. “And so our new recommendation is that the ideal for people who have high blood pressure or want to prevent high blood pressure is no alcohol intake—abstinence.”

The guideline does note that reducing alcohol intake appears to have bigger BP reduction benefits for people who drink more, regardless of whether they have hypertension.

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The surge in global use of fossil fuels in 2024 contributed to extreme weather and devastating disasters including heat waves, storms, floods and wildfires.

"The planet's vital signs are flashing red," the scientists wrote in their annual report on the state of the climate. "The window to prevent the worst outcomes is rapidly closing."

Some of the most alarming of Earth's "vital signs," the researchers said, include record heat in the oceans ravaging coral reefs, rapidly shrinking ice sheets and increasing losses of forests burned in fires around the world. They said the extreme intensity of Hurricane Melissa this week is another sign of how the altered climate is threatening lives and communities on an unprecedented scale.

"The climate crisis has reached a really dangerous stage," said William Ripple, the report's co-lead author and a professor at Oregon State University. "It is vital that we limit future warming as rapidly as possible."

There is still time to limit the damage, Ripple said. It means switching to cleanly made electricity, clean transportation, fewer beef and dairy cows and other sources of harmful gases. These transitions are happening in some places, though not nearly fast enough.

For example, fossil fuel use actually fell in China in the first half of this year, a remarkable change for a country that remains the world's biggest climate polluter. Renewable energy is being built out at a furious pace there, dwarfing installation in the rest of the world. And in California, clean energy provided two-thirds of electricity in 2023.

Yet total use of fossil fuels rose 1.5% in 2024, the researchers said, citing data from the Energy Institute. Energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide and other planet-heating gases also reached an all-time high—exactly the opposite of what needs to be happening to address climate change.

The report notes that hotter temperatures are contributing to growing electricity demand.

"Avoiding every fraction of a degree of warming is critically important," the scientists wrote. "We are entering a period where only bold, coordinated action can prevent catastrophic outcomes."

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

The report, published in the journal BioScience, is the sixth annual assessment that Ripple and his colleagues have compiled since they wrote a 2020 paper declaring a climate emergency—a statement that more than 15,800 scientists have signed in support.

The scientists said the current pace of warming greatly increases the risks of crossing dangerous climate tipping points, including vicious cycles such as the collapse of ice sheets, thawing of carbon-rich permafrost and widespread dieback of forests.

Ripple and his colleagues stressed that adopting solutions now to reduce emissions can swiftly bring benefits and that these solutions will be far less expensive than dealing with the consequences of uncontrolled climate change.

Efforts by President Donald Trump and his administration to boost production of oil, gas and coal seriously threaten to slow the shift toward clean energy, said Michael Mann, a climate scientist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

He and co-author Peter Hotez argue in the recent book "Science Under Siege" that other nations must take on greater leadership now that the U.S. and other oil-promoting governments are working to block action on climate change.

Other scientists who helped write the report said the Trump administration is turning a blind eye to threats including sea-level rise, worsening droughts and wildfires, and diminished agricultural output.

"It's a scandal that the U.S. is pulling back from any efforts to address environmental challenges," said Peter Gleick, co-founder and senior fellow of the Pacific Institute, a think tank in Oakland. "The rest of the world should ignore efforts by the U.S. to delay progress on these problems ... and I'm hopeful that other countries will continue to step up."

The upcoming United Nations climate conference in Brazil in November could be a turning point if countries commit to bold and transformative changes, Ripple said.

Solutions must involve not only phasing out fossil fuels, the scientists said, but also addressing the fact that people are using up resources faster than nature can replenish them. Researchers, they noted, have estimated that two-thirds of the warming since 1990 is attributable to the wealthiest 10% of the world's people because of "high-consumption lifestyles, high per capita fossil fuel use, and investments."

The scientists called for changes including "reducing overconsumption" among the wealthy, protecting and restoring ecosystems, and shifting away from meat-heavy diets to more plant-based foods.

"It's not just about cutting emissions. Dealing with climate change requires more," Ripple said. "It calls for deep, systemic change in how societies value nature, design economies, consume resources and define progress."

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Date:  November 1, 2025

Source:  American Heart Association

Summary:  More screen time among children and teens is linked to higher risks of heart and metabolic problems, particularly when combined with insufficient sleep. Danish researchers discovered a measurable rise in cardiometabolic risk scores and a metabolic “fingerprint” in frequent screen users. Experts say better sleep and balanced daily routines can help offset these effects and safeguard lifelong health. 

Research Highlights

• More time using electronic devices or watching TV among children and young adults was linked with higher cardiometabolic disease risk, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol and insulin resistance, based on data from more than 1,000 participants in Denmark.
• The association between screen time and cardiometabolic risks was strongest in youth who slept fewer hours, suggesting that screen use may harm health by "stealing" time from sleep, researchers said.
• Researchers said the findings underscore the importance of addressing screen habits among young people as a potential way to protect long-term heart and metabolic health.

Screen time tied to early heart and metabolic risks

Children and teens who spend many hours on TVs, phones, tablets, computers or gaming systems appear to face higher chances of cardiometabolic problems, such as elevated blood pressure, unfavorable cholesterol levels and insulin resistance.

The findings are reported in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open-access, peer-reviewed journal of the American Heart Association.

A 2023 scientific statement from the American Heart Association reported that "cardiometabolic risk is accruing at younger and younger ages," and that only 29% of U.S. youth ages 2 to 19 had favorable cardiometabolic health in 2013-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data.

Danish cohorts show a consistent pattern

An evaluation of more than 1,000 participants from two Danish studies found a clear connection: more recreational screen time was significantly associated with greater cardiovascular and overall cardiometabolic risk among children and adolescents.

"Limiting discretionary screen time in childhood and adolescence may protect long-term heart and metabolic health," said study lead author David Horner, M.D., PhD., a researcher at the Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood (COPSAC) at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. "Our study provides evidence that this connection starts early and highlights the importance of having balanced daily routines."

What researchers measured

The team analyzed two COPSAC groups: one of 10-year-olds followed in 2010 and one of 18-year-olds followed in 2000. They examined how leisure screen use related to cardiometabolic risk factors. Screen time included watching TV and movies, gaming and time on phones, tablets or computers for fun.

To capture overall risk, researchers created a composite cardiometabolic score based on multiple components of metabolic syndrome, including waist size, blood pressure, high-density lipoprotein or HDL "good" cholesterol, triglycerides and blood sugar levels. They adjusted for sex and age. The score reflects each participant's risk relative to the study average (in standard deviations): 0 indicates average risk, and 1 indicates one standard deviation above average.

Each hour adds up

The analysis showed that every additional hour of recreational screen time was linked with an increase of about 0.08 standard deviations in the cardiometabolic score for the 10-year-olds and 0.13 standard deviations for the 18-year-olds. "This means a child with three extra hours of screen time a day would have roughly a quarter to half a standard-deviation higher risk than their peers," Horner said.

"It's a small change per hour, but when screen time accumulates to three, five or even six hours a day, as we saw in many adolescents, that adds up," he said. "Multiply that across a whole population of children, and you're looking at a meaningful shift in early cardiometabolic risk that could carry into adulthood."

Sleep appears to intensify the risk

Short sleep and later bedtimes strengthened the relationship between screen time and cardiometabolic risk. Youth who slept less showed notably higher risk linked to the same amount of screen exposure.

"In childhood, sleep duration not only moderated this relationship but also partially explained it: about 12% of the association between screen time and cardiometabolic risk was mediated through shorter sleep duration," Horner said. "These findings suggest that insufficient sleep may not only magnify the impact of screen time but could be a key pathway linking screen habits to early metabolic changes."

Metabolic "fingerprint" linked to screen use

In a machine learning analysis, investigators identified a distinctive pattern of blood metabolites that appeared to correlate with screen time.

"We were able to detect a set of blood-metabolite changes, a 'screen-time fingerprint,' validating the potential biological impact of the screen time behavior," he said. "Using the same metabolomics data, we also assessed whether screen time was linked to predicted cardiovascular risk in adulthood, finding a positive trend in childhood and a significant association in adolescence.

This suggests that screen-related metabolic changes may carry early signals of long-term heart health risk.

"Recognizing and discussing screen habits during pediatric appointments could become part of broader lifestyle counseling, much like diet or physical activity," he said. "These results also open the door to using metabolomic signatures as early objective markers of lifestyle risk."

Practical guidance from experts

Amanda Marma Perak, M.D., M.S.CI., FAHA, chair of the American Heart Association's Young Hearts Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Committee, who was not involved in this research, said focusing on sleep is a great starting point to change screen time patterns.

"If cutting back on screen time feels difficult, start by moving screentime earlier and focusing on getting into bed earlier and for longer," said Perak, an assistant professor of pediatrics and preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Adults can also set an example, she said. "All of us use screens, so it's important to guide kids, teens and young adults to healthy screen use in a way that grows with them. As a parent, you can model healthy screen use -- when to put it away, how to use it, how to avoid multitasking. And as kids get a little older, be more explicit, narrating why you put away your devices during dinner or other times together.

"Make sure they know how to entertain and soothe themselves without a screen and can handle being bored! Boredom breeds brilliance and creativity, so don't be bothered when your kids complain they're bored. Loneliness and discomfort will happen throughout life, so those are opportunities to support and mentor your kids in healthy ways to respond that don't involve scrolling."

Important caveats and next questions

Because this work is observational, it reveals associations rather than direct cause and effect. In addition, screen use for the 10-year-olds and 18-year-olds was reported by parents through questionnaires, which may not perfectly reflect actual time spent on screens.

Horner noted that future studies could test whether reducing screen exposure in the hours before bedtime, when screen light may disrupt circadian rhythms and delay sleep onset, helps lower cardiometabolic risk.

Study details, background and design

• The two prospective research groups at COPSAC in Denmark consisted of mother-child pairs, with analysis of data collected at planned clinical visits and study assessments from the birth of the children through age 10 in the 2010 study group and age 18 in the 2000 study group.
• Through questionnaires, parents of children in the 10-year-old group and 18-year-olds detailed the number of hours the young participants spent watching TV or movies, gaming on a console/TV and using phones, tablets or computers for leisure.
• For the 2010 group, the number of hours of screen time was available for 657 children at age 6 and 630 children at age 10. Average screen time was two hours per day at age 6, and 3.2 hours per day at age 10, representing a significant increase over time.
• For the 2000 group of 18-year-olds, screen time was available for 364 individuals. Screen time at 18 years was significantly higher at an average of 6.1 hours per day.
• Sleep was measured by sensors over a 14-day period.

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Attachment anxiety is a form of insecure attachment characterized by fear of rejection and excessive need for closeness in relationships. People with attachment anxiety constantly worry that their partner does not love them enough or will eventually leave them.

This persistent fear can lead to clingy or overly dependent behaviors as they seek reassurance. Even minor signs of distance or withdrawal from a partner can trigger intense distress or jealousy. Such individuals tend to be highly sensitive to changes in tone, attention, or affection. Their self-esteem is often highly dependent on how they are treated by significant others.

Attachment theory proposes that this form of anxiety develops from inconsistent caregiving during childhood, where affection and attention were unpredictable. In adulthood, it can make relationships emotionally exhausting and unstable.

Study author Alessandro Musetti and his colleagues hypothesized that attachment anxiety contributes to problematic social media use through a chain of psychological factors. They proposed that this relationship is mediated first by loneliness and then by death anxiety. Citing Terror Management Theory, they noted that individuals often cope with existential anxiety by seeking “symbolic immortality”—a sense of being part of something larger that will outlast them. The authors suggest that individuals with attachment anxiety may turn to social media to build a lasting digital presence as a way of achieving this symbolic immortality.

The study included 799 Italian adults (52% women) with an average age of 32. Regarding education, 54% had finished high school and 16% had a bachelor’s degree. In terms of employment, 31% were employed full-time, while 27% were students.

They completed a survey containing assessments of attachment anxiety (the Relationship Questionnaire), loneliness (the UCLA–Loneliness Scale), death anxiety (the Death Anxiety Scale), and problematic social media use (the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale). Problematic social media use is a pattern of excessive or compulsive engagement with social media that interferes with daily functioning, relationships, or mental well-being.

Results showed that attachment anxiety was positively correlated with the other measured traits. Individuals with higher attachment anxiety also tended to report greater loneliness, stronger death anxiety, and more symptoms of problematic social media use.

The researchers’ statistical model revealed a nuanced set of relationships. First, it showed that two forms of loneliness—isolation (lacking a social network) and relational disconnectedness (lacking intimate relationships)—each helped explain the link between attachment anxiety and problematic social media use. More specifically, the model supported a sequential pathway: attachment anxiety was linked to higher relational disconnectedness, which in turn was linked to greater death anxiety, which finally was associated with problematic social media use. This specific chain of events was not found for the other types of loneliness.

“These findings underscore the significance underlying psychological processes in PSMU [problematic social media use], suggesting potential avenues for targeted interventions that address attachment-related insecurities, relational disconnectedness, and existential concerns,” the study authors concluded.

The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the consequences of attachment anxiety. However, it should be noted that the design of the study does not allow any definitive causal inferences to be derived from the results. The statistical model tested and supported by data only shows that the state of relationships it proposes is possible, not that it is definitely true.

The paper, “Attachment anxiety, loneliness, and death anxiety in problematic social media use,” was authored by Alessandro Musetti, Alessandro Alberto Rossi, Mattia Pezzi, Stefania Mannarini, Vittorio Lenzo, and Adriano Schimmenti.

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It’s a regrettable reality that there is never enough time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we’ve featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we’re experimenting with a monthly collection. October’s list includes the microstructural differences between regular and gluten-free spaghetti, capturing striking snakes in action, the mystery behind the formation of Martian gullies, and—for all you word game enthusiasts—an intriguing computational proof of the highest possible scoring Boggle board.

Highest-scoring Boggle board

Sometimes we get handy story tips from readers about quirkily interesting research projects. Sometimes those projects involve classic games like Boggle, in which players find as many words as they can from a 4×4 grid of 16 lettered cubic dice, within a given time limit. Software engineer Dan Vanderkam alerted us to a a preprint he posted to the physics arXiv, detailing his quest to find the Boggle board configuration that yields the highest possible score. It’s pictured above, with a total score of 3,625 points, according to Vanderkam’s first-ever computational proof. There are more than 1000 possible words, with “replastering” being the longest.

Vanderkam has documented his quest and its resolution (including the code he used) extensively on his blog, admitting to the Financial Times that, “As far as I can tell, I’m the only person who is actually interested in this problem.” That’s not entirely true: there was an attempt in 1982 that found an optimal board yielding 2,195 points. Vanderkam’s board was known as possibly being the highest scoring, it was just very difficult to prove using standard heuristic search methods. Vanderkam’s solution involved grouping board configurations with similar patterns into classes, and then finding upper bounds to discard clear losers, rather than trying to tally scores for each board individually—i.e., an old school “branch and bound” technique.

DOI: arXiv, 2025. 10.48550/arXiv.2507.02117  (About DOIs).

Origins of Egypt’s Karnak Temple

Egypt’s Karnak Temple complex, located about 500 meters of the Nile River near Luxor, has long been of interest to archaeologists and millions of annual tourists alike. But its actual age has been a matter of much debate. The most comprehensive geological survey conducted to date is yielding fresh insights into the temple’s origins and evolution over time, according to a paper published in the journal Antiquity.

The authors analyzed sediment cores and thousands of ceramic fragments from within and around the site to map out how the surrounding landscape has changed. They concluded that early on, circa 2520 BCE, the site would have experienced regular flooding from the Nile; thus, the earliest permanent settlement at Karnak would have emerged between 2591 and 2152 BCE, in keeping with the earliest dated ceramic fragments.  This would have been after river channels essentially created an island of higher ground that served as the foundation for constructing the temple. As those channels diverged over millennia, the available area for the temple expanded and thus, so did the complex.

This might be supported by Egyptian creation myths. “It’s tempting to suggest the Theban elites chose Karnak’s location for the dwelling place of a new form of the creator god, ‘Ra-Amun,’ as it fitted the cosmogonical scene of high ground emerging from surrounding water,” said co-author Ben Pennington, a geoarchaeologist at the University of Southampton. “Later texts of the Middle Kingdom (c.1980–1760 BC) develop this idea, with the ‘primeval mound’ rising from the ‘Waters of Chaos.’ During this period, the abating of the annual flood would have echoed this scene, with the mound on which Karnak was built appearing to ‘rise’ and grow from the receding floodwaters.”

DOI: Antiquity, 2025. 10.15184/aqy.2025.10185  (About DOIs).

Gullies on Mars

Mars has many intriguing features but one of the more puzzling is the sinuous gullies that form on some its dunes. Scientists have proposed two hypotheses for how such gullies might form. The first is that they are the result of debris flow from an earlier time in the planet’s history where liquid water might have existed on the surface—evidence that the red planet might once have been habitable. The second is that the gullies form because of seasonal deposition and sublimation of CO2 ice on the surface in the present day. A paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters demonstrated strong evidence in favor of the latter hypothesis.

Building on her earlier research on how sublimation of CO2 ice can drive debris flows on Mars, earth scientist Lonneke Roelofs of Utrecht University in the Netherlands collaborated with scientists at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, which boasts a facility for simulating conditions on Mars. She ran several experiments with different sediment types, creating dune slopes of different angles and dropping blocks of CO2 ice from the top of the slope. At just the right angle, the blocks did indeed start digging into the sandy slope and moving downwards to create a gully. Roelofs likened the effect to a burrowing mole or the sandworms in Dune.

Per Roelofs, on Mars, CO2 ice forms over the surface during the winter and starts to sublimate in the spring. The ice blocks are remnants found on the shaded side of dune tops, where they break off once the temperature gets high enough and slide down the slope. At the bottom, they keep sublimating until all the CO2 has evaporated, leaving behind a hollow of sand.

DOI: Geophysical Research Letters, 2025. 10.1029/2024GL112860  (About DOIs).

Snake bites in action

Snakes can strike out and bite into prey in as little as 60 microseconds and until quite recently it just wasn’t technologically possible to capture those strikes in high definition. Researchers at Monash University in Australia decided to test 36 different species of snake in this way to learn more about their unique biting styles, detailing their results in a paper published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. And oh yes, there is awesome video footage.

Alistair Evans and Silke Cleuren traveled to Venomworld in Paris, France, where snake venom is harvested for medical and pharmaceutical applications.  For each snake species, they poked at said snake with a cylindrical piece of warm medical gel to mimic meaty muscle until the snake lunged and buried its fangs into the gel. Two cameras recorded the action at 1000 frames per second, capturing more than 100 individual strikes in great detail.

Among their findings: vipers moved the fastest when they struck, with the blunt-nosed viper accelerating up to 710 m/s², landing a bite within 22 microseconds. All the vipers landed bites within 100 microseconds of striking. By contrast, the rough-scaled death adder only reached speeds of 2.5 m/s². Vipers also sometimes pulled out and reinserted their fangs if they didn’t like the resulting angle; only then did they inject their venom. Elapids like the Cape coral cobra bit their prey repeatedly to inject their venom, while colubrids would tear gashes into their prey by sweeping their jaws from side to side, ensuing the maximum possible amount of venom was delivered.

DOI: Journal of Experimental Biology, 2025. 10.1242/jeb.250347  (About DOIs).

Spaghetti secrets

Spaghetti, like most pasta, is made of semolina flour, which is mixed with water to form a paste and then extruded to create a desired shape. The commercial products are then dried—an active area of research, since it’s easy for the strands to crack during the process. In fact, there have been a surprisingly large number of scientific papers seeking to understand the various properties of spaghetti, both cooking and eating it—the mechanics of slurping the pasta into one’s mouth, for instance, or spitting it out (aka, the “reverse spaghetti problem”); how to tell when it’s perfectly al dente; and how to get dry spaghetti strands to break neatly in two, rather than three or more scattered pieces.

Pasta also has a fairly low glycemic index, and is thus a good option for those with heart disease or type 2 diabetes. With the rise in the number of people with a gluten intolerance, gluten-free spaghetti has emerged as an alternative. The downside is that gluten-free pasta is harder to cook correctly and decidedly subpar in taste and texture (mouthfeel) compared to regular pasta. The reason for the latter lies in the microstructure, according to a paper published in the journal Food Hydrocolloids.

The authors used small-angle x-ray scattering and small-angle neutron scattering to analyze the microstructure of both regular and gluten-free pasta—i.e., the gluten matrix and its artificial counterpart—cooked al dente with varying salt concentrations in the water. They found that because of its gluten matrix, regular pasta has better resistance to structural degradation, and that adding just the right amount of salt further reinforces that matrix—so it’s not just a matter of salting to taste. This could lead to a better alternative matrix for gluten-free pasta that holds its structure better and has a taste and mouthfeel closer to that of regular pasta.

DOI: Food Hydrocolloids, 2025. 10.1016/j.foodhyd.2025.111855  (About DOIs).

Can machine learning identify ancient artists?

Finger flutings are one of the oldest examples of prehistoric art, usually found carved into the walls of caves in southern Australia, New Guinea, and parts of Europe. They’re basically just marks made by human fingers drawn through the “moonmilk” (a soft mineral film) covering those walls. Very little is known about the people who left those flutings and while some have tried to draw inferences based on biometric finger ratios or hand size measurements—notably whether given marks were made by men or women—such methods produce inconsistent results and are prone to human error and bias.

That’s why digital archaeologist Andrea Jaladonia of Griffith University decided to experiment with machine learning image recognition methods as a possible tool, detailing her findings in a paper published the journal Scientific Reports. She recruited 96 adult volunteers to create their own finger flutings in two different settings: once in a virtual reality environment, and once on a substitute for the moonmilk clay that mimicked the look and feel of the real thing. Her team took images of those flutings and then used them to train two common image recognition models.

The results were decidedly mixed. The virtual reality images performed the worst, yielding highly unreliable attempts at classifying whether flutings were made by men or women. The images produced in actual clay produced better results, even reaching close to 84 percent accuracy in one model. But there were also signs the models were overfitting, i.e., memorizing patterns in the training data rather than more generalized patterns, so the approach needs more refinement before it is ready for actual deployment. As for why determining sex classifications matters, “This information has been used to decide who can access certain sites for cultural reasons,” Jalandoni explained.

DOI: Scientific Reports, 2025. 10.1038/s41598-025-18098-4  (About DOIs).

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Posted Sunday 2 November 2025 at 3:31 am AEST (my time).

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The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines might make some cancer treatments more effective.

Lung cancer patients who received the vaccine within a few months of immunotherapy, which revs up the immune system, lived nearly twice as long as unvaccinated patients, researchers report October 22 in Nature. The team observed something similar in people with melanoma, says Elias Sayour, a pediatric oncologist at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville.

The correlation suggests that mRNA vaccines — even those not designed for cancer ­— could make tumors more sensitive to current therapies. That’s an exciting finding, says Hua Wang, a cancer vaccine researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who was not involved in the work. “It’s definitely interesting. It’s definitely important.”

In a time when mRNA COVID vaccines face increasing public and government skepticism, the study offers new evidence that their benefits may extend beyond protection from infectious diseases, Wang says.

Scientists already had clues about the anticancer effects of mRNA vaccines. An experimental mRNA vaccine given to tumor-bearing mice, for instance, made immunotherapy drugs work better, Sayour’s team reported in July in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

mRNA vaccines are typically thought of as the immune system’s teachers. For example, the COVID-19 vaccines include mRNA — a molecular messenger within cells — that carries the code for assembling a harmless bit of the coronavirus spike protein. The body uses that mRNA to build the protein, which the immune system then learns to recognize. mRNA cancer vaccines operate similarly but encode snippets of tumor proteins rather than viral proteins.

Sayour’s experimental vaccine was entirely different. It didn’t include tumor mRNA but still had antitumor powers. When paired with immunotherapy drugs, the mRNA itself — not what it encoded — rallied the immune system to fight cancer, his team discovered.

That finding inspired the new study. If the experimental mRNA vaccine could trigger an anticancer response, maybe other mRNA vaccines could, too. Millions of people, including cancer patients with electronic health records tracking their outcomes, have received the COVID-19 shots. Sayour’s team just had to look at the data.  

The researchers analyzed the records of roughly 1,000 people with non-small cell lung cancer, all of whom had received a type of immunotherapy drug called a checkpoint inhibitor. Nearly 200 of these patients had also received an mRNA COVID vaccine within 100 days of their drug treatment. Three years after diagnosis, 56 percent of vaccinated patients were still alive, compared with 31 percent of unvaccinated patients, the researchers report. They saw largely the same story in patients with advanced melanoma.

Such results “were not at all expected,” writes Eric Topol, a cardiologist at Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif., who covers biomedical advances in the newsletter Ground Truths. He calls the work a “seminal paper” that provides “compelling data.” Some of those data include lab work in tumor-bearing mice.

In animals receiving immunotherapy, the mRNA vaccine switches on a powerful molecular siren, Sayour says. It’s like a 911 call that alerts the immune system to start fighting cancer. And the COVID vaccine wasn’t the only siren starter, either. A different type of mRNA vaccine prompted the same response, though non-mRNA vaccines did not, the team found.

Still, it’s too early to say whether combining immunotherapy with nonspecific mRNA vaccines is beneficial for cancer patients, Wang says. Sayour agrees. “It’s important for people to understand that this isn’t proven yet.” For that, they need a clinical trial, which his team is working on. They hope to start enrolling patients by year’s end.

If mRNA COVID vaccines do make certain immunotherapies work better, that would be a “paradigm shift in the cancer field,” Sayour says. It would mean that doctors already have at their fingertips a widely available, tried-and-tested option to help treat patients with aggressive cancers.

“I really do hope that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are that universal tool,” Sayour says. But even if they’re not, he’s optimistic that scientists will be able to design an mRNA vaccine that is.

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By studying the process through which a soil bacterium naturally produces a well-known drug, scientists have discovered a powerful antibiotic that could help to fight drug-resistant infections.

In experiments described in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on Monday, the team studied the multi-step pathway that the bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor uses to make the antibiotic methylenomycin A, which was first identified in 1965.

They discovered an intermediate compound — called premethylenomycin C lactone — whose antimicrobial activity was 100 times stronger than that of the final product. Tiny doses of it killed strains of bacteria known to cause hard-to-treat infections.

The discovery was a ‘surprise’, says study co-author Gregory Challis, a chemical biologist at the University of Warwick in Coventry, UK. “As humans, we anticipate that evolution perfects the end product, and so you’d expect the final molecule to be the best antibiotic, and the intermediates to be less potent,” he says. But the finding “is a great example of what a ‘blind watchmaker’ evolution is. And it’s a good way of exemplifying it in a very molecular way,” adds Challis.

Antimicrobial resistance is a growing threat, projected to cause 39 million deaths worldwide over the next 25 years. Researchers say that the discovery of a potent antimicrobial compound might lead to fresh drugs to tackle resistance.

The work underscores “the potential of such studies to identify new bioactive chemical scaffolds from ‘old’ pathways”, says Gerard Wright, a biochemist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada.

Accidental discovery

In 2006, Challis and his colleagues began studying the molecular pathway through which Streptomyces coelicolor produces methylenomycin A. To do this, they deleted the genes encoding enzymes involved in each step, one by one. Their work built on earlier efforts in 2002 to sequence the bacterium’s genome.

By 2010, the team had mapped the mechanism that the bacterium used to make methylenomycin A and identified several intermediate molecules that it produced along the way.

“We were just doing very fundamental blue-sky research,” says Challis. “We discovered these intermediates, and we left them for a while because we didn’t quite know what to do with them.”

It was several years later — around 2017 — that a PhD student at Challis’s laboratory tested these intermediate molecules for antimicrobial activity.

These tests revealed that two molecules, including premethylenomycin C lactone, were much more effective than methylenomycin A at targeting seven strains of Gram-positive bacteria, including Staphylococcus aureus, which infects skin, blood and internal organs, and Enterococcus faecium, which can cause deadly bloodstream and urinary infections.

The lowest concentration of premethylenomycin C lactone needed to kill drug-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus was just 1 microgram per millilitre, compared with 256 micrograms per millilitre of methylenomycin A. The compound could also kill bacteria at much smaller doses than those needed for vancomycin, a ‘last line’ antibiotic used to treat infections caused by two Enterococcus faecium strains, to be effective.

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You’ll often hear plastic pollution referred to as a problem. But the reality is that it’s multiple problems. Depending on the properties we need, we form plastics out of different polymers, each of which is held together by a distinct type of chemical bond. So the method we use to break down one type of polymer may be incompatible with the chemistry of another.

That problem is why, even though we’ve had success finding enzymes that break down common plastics like polyesters and PET, they’re only partial solutions to plastic waste. However, researchers aren’t sitting back and basking in the triumph of partial solutions, and they’ve now got very sophisticated protein design tools to help them out.

That’s the story behind a completely new enzyme that researchers developed to break down polyurethane, the polymer commonly used to make foam cushioning, among other things. The new enzyme is compatible with an industrial-style recycling process that breaks the polymer down into its basic building blocks, which can be used to form fresh polyurethane.

Breaking down polyurethane

The new paper that describes the development of this enzyme lays out the scale of the problem: In 2024, we made 22 million metric tons of polyurethane. The urethane bond that defines these involves a nitrogen bonded to a carbon that in turn is bonded to two oxygens, one of which links into the rest of the polymer. The rest of the polymer, linked by these bonds, can be fairly complex and often contains ringed structures related to benzene.

Digesting polyurethanes is challenging. Individual polymer chains are often extensively cross-linked, and the bulky structures can make it difficult for enzymes to get at the bonds they can digest. A chemical called diethylene glycol can partially break these molecules down, but only at elevated temperatures. And it leaves behind a complicated mess of chemicals that can’t be fed back into any useful reactions. Instead, it’s typically incinerated as hazardous waste.

To find something that could work better, the research team focused on finding an enzyme that could be integrated into the process with diethylene glycol. To begin, they tested all the enzymes reported in the literature as capable of breaking down polyurethanes. After testing all 15 of them, only three had decent activity against the polymer they were testing with, and they largely failed to break the polymer down to its constituent starting materials.

So, the researchers focused on the enzyme that had the highest activity, searching for related proteins in public databases, and using the AlphaFold database of predicted structures to identify more distantly related proteins that folded up into a similar structure. On their own, none of these worked especially well either. But they turned out to be useful because they could be used to train an AI to look for sequences that could fold up into a similar structure.

A new enzyme

The tool the team started working with is called Pythia-Pocket, which is a neural network that specializes in determining whether any given amino acid in a protein is likely to contact whatever chemicals that structure can bind, along with any other functional features. That was combined with plain old Pythia (also a neural network), which predicts whether any given protein is likely to form a stable structure.

The researchers reasoned that a good candidate for breaking down polyurethane would have a number of features. It would look, structurally, like the enzyme they had already been working with. It would also face a trade-off between having a structure that was ordered enough to form a similar binding pocket that would have enzymatic activity, but not so rigid that it couldn’t flexibly fit around different types of polyurethanes. To strike this balance, the team used a message-passing interface that updated amino acid positions with each pass and balanced optimizing the structure and binding pocket. They called the resulting software GRASE, for graph neural network-based recommendation of active and stable enzymes.

The results were pretty spectacular. Of the 24 most highly rated proteins the software evaluated, 21 of them showed some catalytic activity, and eight did better than the best enzyme we had known about previously. The best of these designs had 30 times the activity of that enzyme.

Things got even better when the researchers mixed in the diethylene glycol and heated the mixture up to 50° C. Under those conditions, the newly designed enzyme was over 450 times as active as the best-performing natural enzyme. It took 12 hours, but it could break down 98 percent of the polyurethane in the reaction mixture. And the enzyme was stable enough that it could be given a fresh mixture of polyurethane two additional times before its enzymatic activity started to wear out.

Shifting from lab tests to kilogram-scale digestion showed the same thing: 95 percent or more of the material was broken down into the starting materials the polyurethane was made from.

The researchers highlight the fact that their tools go beyond simply focusing on the structure formed by the protein, but incorporate information about its function, such as its stability and the amino acids that are likely to interact with the material it’s digesting. And they suggest that these approaches may tell us more about how to get functional proteins by focusing on forming a similar 3D structure.

Science, 2025. DOI: 10.1126/science.adw4487 (About DOIs).

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Posted Saturday 1 November 2025 at 5:50 pm AEST (my time).

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As artificial intelligence drives the need for vastly more computing storage and processing power, interest in space-based data centers has spiked.

Although several startup companies, such as Starcloud, have begun to address this problem, the idea has also attracted the interest of tech barons. In May, it emerged that former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt acquired Relativity Space due to his interest in space-based data centers. Then, earlier this month, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos predicted that gigawatt-scale data centers will be built in space within the next 10 to 20 years.

Now, Elon Musk, whose SpaceX owns and operates significantly more space-based infrastructure than any other company or country in the world, has also expressed interest in the technology.

Scaling up V3 satellites

After Ars wrote a story on the potential of autonomous assembly to construct large data centers in space, Musk responded on X by saying that Starlink satellites could be used for this purpose.

“Simply scaling up Starlink V3 satellites, which have high speed laser links would work,” he said on the social media site X. “SpaceX will be doing this.”

Musk’s interest in space-based data centers significantly raises the profile of the nascent industry. Proponents of the idea say the advantages are clear: free, limitless power from the Sun and none of the messy environmental costs of building these facilities on Earth (where opposition is starting to grow). Critics say it is economically impractical to build these facilities in space and that supporters underestimate the technology needed to make it work.

SpaceX’s Starlink constellation has already defied some of this conventional wisdom by delivering high-speed broadband to millions of customers around the world while making a profit. So if Musk believes the Starlink architecture can be applied to data centers, it will be difficult for the industry to ignore.

Interest is growing rapidly

“The amount of momentum from heavyweights in the tech industry is very much worth paying attention to,” said Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space, in an interview. “If they start putting money behind it, we could see another transformation of what’s done in space.”

The essential function of a data center is to store, process, and transmit data. Historically, satellites have already done a lot of this, Henry said. Telecommunications satellites specialize in transmitting data. Imaging satellites store a lot of data and then dump it when they pass over ground stations. In recent years, onboard computers have gotten more sophisticated at processing data. Data centers in space could represent the next evolution of that.

Critics rightly note that it would require very large satellites with extensive solar panels to power data centers that rival ground-based infrastructure. However, SpaceX’s Starlink V3 satellites are unlike any previous space-based technology, Henry said.

A lot more capacity

SpaceX’s current Starlink V2 mini satellites have a maximum downlink capacity of approximately 100 Gbps. The V3 satellite is expected to increase this capacity by a factor of 10, to 1 Tbps. This is not unprecedented in satellite capacity, but it certainly is at scale.

For example, Viasat contracted with Boeing for the better part of a decade, spending hundreds of millions of dollars, to build Viasat-3, a geostationary satellite with a capacity of 1 Tbps. This single satellite may launch next week on an Atlas V rocket.

SpaceX plans to launch dozens of Starlink V3 satellites—Henry estimates the number is about 60—on each Starship rocket launch. Those launches could occur as soon as the first half of 2026, as SpaceX has already tested a satellite dispenser on its Starship vehicle.

“Nothing else in the rest of the satellite industry that comes close to that amount of capacity,” Henry said.

Exactly what “scaling up” Starlink V3 satellites might look like is not clear, but it doesn’t seem silly to expect it could happen. The very first operational Starlink satellites launched a little more than half a decade ago with a mass of about 300 kg and a capacity of 15Gbps. Starlink V3 satellites will likely mass 1,500 kg.

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Posted Saturday 1 November 2025 at 5:49 pm AEST (my time).

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Two chunks of ocher unearthed at ancient rock shelters in Ukraine were actually Neanderthal crayons, according to a recent study. The pair of artifacts, unearthed from layers 47,000 and 46,000 years old, showed signs of being deliberately shaped into crayons and resharpened over time. A third piece of ocher had been carefully carved with parallel lines. The finds add to the growing body of evidence that Neanderthals had an artistic streak.

Please pass Og the yellow crayon

Rock shelters, occupied by Neanderthals between 100,000 and 33,000 years ago, dot the landscape near the modern city of Bilohirsk in Crimea (a peninsula in southern Ukraine). Archaeologists studying those rock shelters have unearthed dozens of chunks of an iron-rich mineral called ocher. Many of them have flakes knocked out or grooves gouged into their surface, which mark how Neanderthals extracted powdery red, orange, or yellow pigment from the stone. D’Errico and his colleagues used X-ray fluorescence and scanning electron microscopes to examine 16 ocher chunks to better understand exactly what ancient Crimean Neanderthals were doing with the stuff.

Most of those ocher chunks could have been used for nearly anything. Ocher is handy not just as a pigment but also for tanning animal hides, mixing with resins into adhesives for hafting tools, or even repelling insects and preventing infection. Knapping a few flakes off a hard nodule of ocher, then crushing them into powder (or just carving out a chunk of a softer, more crumbly piece), is a good way to prepare it for any of those uses. But two pieces, both from a site called Zaskalnaya V, were clearly different.

“One is shaped into a crayon-like tool, with repeated resharpening,” wrote D’Errico and his colleagues in their recent paper. “Another appears to be a crayon fragment.”

One, a 44.8-millimeter-long, 23.3-millimeter-wide chunk of yellow ocher, showed the telltale marks of having been roughly scraped into a pointed shape, then sanded smooth on a grindstone. Chisel marks near the tip even “suggest use or intentional sharpening to maintain its point,” as D’Errico and his colleagues put it. But like a lot of crayons today, this one was eventually blunted by rough use and eventually lost amid the debris on the rock shelter floor. A second artifact—this one a 25.4-millimeter-long chunk of red ocher—looks much like the yellow one, except that its tip has been broken off.

“The combination of shaping, wear, and resharpening indicates they were used to draw or mark on soft surfaces,” D’Errico told Ars in an email. “Although the material is too fragile to reveal the specific material on which they were used, such as hide, human skin, or stone, an experimental approach may, in the future, allow us at least to rule out their use on some materials.”

A 73,000-year-old drawing from Blombo Cave in South Africa looks like it was made with tools much like the ocher crayons from Crimea, which means that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens both invented crayons in their own little corners of the world at around the same time.

Sometimes you’re the crayon, sometimes you’re the canvas

A third item from Zaskalnaya V is a flat piece of orange ocher. One side is covered with a thin layer of hard, dark rock. But more than 47,000 years ago, someone carefully cut several deep lines, regularly spaced and almost parallel, into its surface. The area of stone between the lines has been worn and polished smooth, suggesting that someone carried it and handled it for years.

“The polish smoothing the engraved lines suggest that the piece was curated, perhaps transported in a bag,” D’Errico told Ars. Whoever carved the lines into the piece of ocher also appears to have been right-handed, based on the angle of the incisions’ walls.

The finds join a host of other evidence of Neanderthal artwork and jewelry, from 57,000-year-old finger marks on a cave wall in France to 114,000-year-old ocher-painted shells in Spain.

“Traditionally viewed as lacking the cognitive flexibility and symbolic capacity of humans, the Neanderthals of Crimea demonstrate the opposite: They engaged in cultural practices that were not merely adaptive but deeply meaningful,” wrote D’Errico and his colleagues. “Their sophisticated use of ocher is one facet of their complex cultural life.”

Coloring in some details of Neanderthal culture

It’s hard to say whether the rest of the ocher from the Zaskalnaya sites and other nearby rock shelters meant anything to the Neanderthals beyond the purely pragmatic. However, it’s unlikely that humans (of any stripe) could spend 70,000 years working with vividly colored pigment without developing a sense of aesthetics, assigning some meaning to the colors, or maybe doing both.

“Other authors point out that symbolic and utilitarian functions are intimately linked among traditional populations,” wrote D’Errico and his colleagues, “and that, as a result, it would have been difficult for a systematic use of ocher powders to exist over a long period of time without a symbolic dimension being rather quickly attached to it.”

Tens of thousands of years later, without direct evidence, all we can do is speculate. Which, to be fair, is tremendously interesting as long as it comes with the right caveats and understanding of its limitations. But there are a growing number of places and times where we do have direct evidence that Neanderthals were using color to signal something meaningful to each other, even if we don’t know whether the meaning was “Og is the deputy chief of all the people east of the river,” “Zogg belongs to the people who live in this valley, not that one,” or “Grogg really likes yellow.”

As D’Errico and his colleagues point out, that meaning probably varied from place to place, just as it does today. In most of Europe, white is the traditional color for a wedding, but in China, white is for funerals. Millennial gray is in its heyday in the US (send help), but elsewhere in the world, brighter colors are in vogue. And in some parts of Eurasia, Neanderthals seemed to prefer manganese-based black pigments, while elsewhere (like Crimea), reds and yellows were all the rage.

“This variability suggests different cultural trajectories, possibly involving community-level traditions, long-distance exchanges, or local innovation,” wrote D’Errico and his colleagues.

The real takeaway here is twofold: First, evidence continues to pile up that Neanderthals were just as smart, innovative, and creative as our species, and they’d developed their own nuanced culture and sophisticated tools long before the first Homo sapiens ventured into Eurasia. And second, the impulse to make art is rooted deep in our family tree.

Science Advances, 2025.  DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adx4722  (About DOIs).

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Posted Saturday 1 November 2025 at 3:03 am AEST (my time).

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About an hour after sunrise over the Mojave Desert of Southern California, NASA’s newest experimental supersonic jet took to the skies for the first time on Tuesday. The X-59 Quesst (Quiet SuperSonic Technology) is designed to decrease the noise of a sonic boom when an aircraft breaks the sound barrier, paving the way for future commercial jets to fly at supersonic speeds over land.

The jet, built by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, took off from US Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. Flown by Nils Larson, NASA’s lead test pilot for the X-59, the inaugural flight validated the jet’s airworthiness and safety before landing about an hour after takeoff near NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.

“X-59 is a symbol of American ingenuity,” acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said in a statement. “It’s part of our DNA—the desire to go farther, faster, and even quieter than anyone has ever gone before.”

Commercial planes are prohibited from flying at supersonic speeds over land in the US due to the disruption that breaking the sound barrier causes on the ground, releasing a loud sonic boom that can rattle windows and trigger alarms. The Concorde, which was the only successful commercial supersonic jet, was limited to flying at supersonic speeds only over the oceans.

When a plane approaches the speed of sound, pressure waves build up on the surface of the aircraft. These areas of high pressure coalesce into large shock waves when the plane goes supersonic, producing the double thunderclap of a sonic boom.

The X-59 is capable of reaching supersonic speeds, without the supersonic boom.

Credit: Lockheed Martin/Gary Tice

The X-59 will generate a lower “sonic thump” thanks to its unique design. It was given a long, slender nose that accounts for about a third of the total length and breaks up pressure waves that would otherwise merge on other parts of the airplane. The engine was mounted on top of the X-59’s fuselage, rather than underneath as on a fighter jet, to keep a smooth underside that limits shock waves and also to direct sound waves up into the sky rather than down toward the ground. NASA aims to provide key data to aircraft manufacturers so they can build less noisy supersonic planes.

A jet like no other

The X-59 is a single-seat, single-engine jet. It is 99.7 feet long and 29.5 feet wide, making it almost twice as long as an F-16 fighter jet but with a slightly smaller wingspan. The X-59’s cockpit and ejection seat come from the T-38 jet trainer, its landing gear from an F-16, and its control stick from the F-117 stealth attack aircraft. Its engine, a modified General Electric F414 from the F/A-18 fighter jet, will allow the plane to cruise at Mach 1.4, about 925 mph, at an altitude of 55,000 feet. This is nearly twice as high and twice as fast as commercial airliners typically fly.

Perhaps the most striking change on the X-59 is that it does not have a glass cockpit window. Instead, the cockpit is fully enclosed to be as aerodynamic as possible, and the pilot watches a camera feed of the outside world on a 4K monitor known as the eXternal Visibility System.

“You can’t see very clearly through glass when you look at it at a very shallow angle, and so you need to have a certain steepness of the view screen to have good optical qualities, and that would develop a strong shock wave that would really corrupt the low-boom characteristics of the airplane,” says Michael Buonanno, the air vehicle lead for the X-59 at Lockheed Martin.

The X-59 has repurposed components of other NASA aircrafts.

Credit: Lockheed Martin

For this first flight, the X-59 flew at a lower altitude and at about 240 mph, according to NASA. During future tests, the jet will gradually increase its speed and altitude until it goes supersonic, NASA said, which occurs at about 659 mph at 55,000 feet, or 761 mph at sea level. The speed of sound varies according to temperature and to a lesser degree pressure, causing it to decrease at higher altitudes.

“The primary objective on a first flight is really just to land,” James Less, a project pilot for the X-59 who will be conducting future flights, tells WIRED. Less flew an F-15 fighter jet in formation with the X-59 as a support aircraft during the flight, observing the new experimental jet for any issues.

“I’m looking for anything external to the airplane that the pilot can’t see,” Less says. Generally the first thing he would check for is that the landing gear retracted successfully, but on this initial flight the X-59 intentionally left the landing gear down. “If the aircraft is leaking any kind of fluids, be it fuel or hydraulics, as a chase pilot, you can usually see that… Also I’m looking for other traffic, air traffic, just to point that out to him.”

Following the X-59’s successful touchdown at Armstrong, NASA and Lockheed Martin engineers will review the flight data to prepare for the jet’s future, faster flights.

The design of the X-59 includes a nose that makes up most of the length of the craft, designed to help reduce noise.

Credit: NASA/Steve Freeman

The future of supersonic flight

The eXternal Visibility System is just one of the modern technologies needed to build a low-boom airplane like the X-59. Decades of computational fluid dynamics research and wind tunnel testing were also required to arrive at the final design.

“We’ve really had the opportunity to spend a lot of time on the computational fluid dynamics application to these low-boom aircraft,” Lori Ozoroski, the commercial supersonic technology project manager at NASA, tells WIRED. “We’ve gone from this computational domain around an aircraft of something that’s got a couple of million cells as you divide up the space around it to… things with a couple million cells, and now we’re pushing a billion cells.”

Once the X-59 gets up to speed, the next step will be to make sure the quieter sonic thumps really are tolerable for people on the ground.

“We have been planning a test campaign where we will fly over various communities in the US, polling them with a survey and understanding how annoyed people are,” Ozoroski says. The flights will produce both loud and quiet sonic booms to see how people react, she explains.

“Our plan is to gather all this data, doing approximately one-month tests in a couple of locations around the country, and then providing all that data to the FAA and the international regulatory community to try to establish a sound limit, rather than the speed limit.”

If the program is a success, it could pave the way for new commercial supersonic aircraft that would cut travel times in half, something that companies such as Boom Supersonic are trying to achieve.

The jet has joined the ranks of innovative NASA X-planes, dating back almost 80 years to the Bell X-1 that Chuck Yeager piloted on the first faster-than-sound flight in 1947.

“I grew up reading Popular Science and Popular Mechanics and reading about the X-planes out at Edwards, and never imagined that I’d be in a position to do something like this,” says Less, who is eagerly awaiting his turn at the X-59’s stick. “This will be the highlight of my career.”

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

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Posted Saturday 1 November 2025 at 3:02 am AEST (my time).

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SpaceX on Thursday released the most detailed public update in nearly two years on its multibillion-dollar contract to land astronauts on the Moon for NASA, amid growing sentiment that China is likely to beat the United States back to the lunar surface with humans.

In a lengthy statement published on SpaceX’s website Thursday, the company said it “will be a central enabler that will fulfill the vision of NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks to establish a lasting presence on the lunar surface… and ultimately forge the path to land the first humans on Mars.”

Getting to Mars is SpaceX’s overarching objective, a concise but lofty mission statement introduced by Elon Musk at the company’s founding nearly a quarter-century ago. Musk has criticized NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return US astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the last Apollo lunar mission in 1972, as unambitious and too reliant on traditional aerospace contractors.

Is this a priority for SpaceX?

The Starship rocket and its massive Super Heavy booster are supposed to be SpaceX’s solution for fulfilling Musk’s mission of creating a settlement on Mars. The red planet has been the focus each time Musk has spoken at length about Starship in the last couple of years, with Moon missions receiving little or no time in his comments, whether they’re scripted or off the cuff.

In the background, SpaceX’s engineers have been busy developing a version of the Starship rocket to fly crews to and from the surface of the Moon for NASA. The agency’s current architecture calls for astronauts to transit from the Earth to the vicinity of the Moon inside NASA’s Orion spacecraft, made by Lockheed Martin, then link up with Starship in lunar orbit for a ride to the Moon’s south pole.

After completing their mission on the surface, the astronauts will ride Starship back into space and dock with Orion to bring them home. Starship and Orion may also link together by docking at the planned Gateway mini-space station orbiting the Moon, but Gateway’s future is in question as NASA faces budget cuts.

NASA has contracts with SpaceX valued at more than $4 billion to land two astronaut crews on the Moon on NASA’s Artemis III and Artemis IV missions. The contract also covers milestones ahead of any human mission, such as an uncrewed Starship landing and takeoff at the Moon, to prove the vehicle is ready.

The fresh update from SpaceX lists recent achievements the company has accomplished on the path to the Moon, including demos of life support and thermal control systems, the docking adapter to link Starship with Orion, navigation hardware and software, a landing leg structural test, and engine firings in conditions similar to what the ship will see at the Moon.

Many of these milestones were completed ahead of schedule, SpaceX said. But the biggest tests, such as demonstrating in-orbit refueling, remain ahead. Some NASA officials believe mastering orbital refueling will take many tries, akin to SpaceX’s iterative two steps forward, one step back experience with its initial Starship test flights.

The first test to transfer large amounts of cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen between two Starships in low-Earth orbit is now planned for next year. This time a year ago, SpaceX aimed to launch the first orbital refueling demo before the end of 2025.

Orbital refueling is key to flying Starship to the Moon or Mars. The rocket consumes all of its propellant getting to low-Earth orbit, and it needs more gas to go farther. For lunar missions, SpaceX will launch a Starship-derived propellant depot into orbit, refill it with perhaps a dozen or more Starship tankers, and then dock the Starship lander with it to load its tanks before heading off to the Moon.

Officials haven’t given a precise number of tanker flights required for a Starship lunar lander. It’s likely engineers won’t settle on an exact number until they obtain data on how much of the super-cold liquid propellant boils off in space, and how efficient it is to transfer from ship to ship. Whatever the number, SpaceX says Starship’s design for recovery and rapid reuse will facilitate a fast-paced launch and refueling campaign.

The upshot of overcoming the refueling hurdle is Starship’s promise of becoming a transformative vehicle. Starship is enormous compared to any of the other concepts for landing on the Moon. One single Starship has a pressurized habitable volume of more than 600 cubic meters, or more than 21,000 cubic feet, roughly two-thirds that of the entire International Space Station, according to SpaceX. Starship will have dual airlocks, or pathways for astronauts and equipment to exit and enter the spacecraft.

An elevator will lower people and cargo down to the lunar surface from the crew cabin at the top of the 15-story-tall spacecraft. For pure cargo missions, SpaceX says Starship will be capable of landing up to 100 metric tons of cargo directly on the Moon’s surface. This would unlock the ability to deliver large rovers, nuclear reactors, or lunar habitats to the Moon in one go. In the long run, the Starship architecture could allow landers to be reused over and over again. All of this is vital if NASA wants to build a permanent base or research outpost on the Moon.

A competition in more ways than one

But hard things take time. SpaceX dealt with repeated setbacks in the first half of this year: three in-flight failures of Starship and one Starship explosion on the ground at the company’s development facility in South Texas. Since then, teams have reeled off consecutive successful Starship test flights ahead of the debut of an upgraded Starship variant called Version 3 in the coming months. Starship Version 3 will have the accoutrements for refueling, and SpaceX says this will also be the version to fly to the Moon.

The recent Starship delays, coupled with the scope of work to go, have raised concerns that the Artemis program is falling behind China’s initiative to land its own astronauts on the Moon. China’s goal is to do it by 2030, a schedule reiterated in Chinese state media this week. The Chinese program relies on an architecture more closely resembling NASA’s old Apollo designs.

The official schedule for the first Artemis crew landing, on Artemis III, puts it in 2027, but that timeline is no longer achievable. Starship and new lunar spacesuits developed by Axiom Space won’t be ready, in part because NASA didn’t award the contracts to SpaceX and Axiom until 2021 and 2022.

All of this adds up to waning odds that the United States can beat China back to the Moon, according to a growing chorus of voices in the space community. Last month, former NASA chief Jim Bridenstine, who led the agency during the first Trump administration, told Congress the United States was likely to lose the second lunar space race.

At a space conference earlier this week, Bridenstine suggested the Trump administration use its powers to fast-track a lunar landing, even floating the idea of invoking the Defense Production Act, a law that grants the president authority to marshal industrial might to meet pressing national needs.

An executive order from President Donald Trump could authorize such an effort and declare a “national security imperative that we’re going to beat China to the Moon,” Bridenstine said at the American Astronautical Society’s von Braun Space Exploration Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

Charlie Bolden, NASA’s administrator under former President Barack Obama, also expressed doubts that NASA could land humans on the Moon before China, or by the end of Trump’s term in the White House. “Let’s be real, OK? Everybody in this room knows, to say we’re going to do it by the end of the term, or we’re going to do it before the Chinese, that doesn’t help industry.”

But Bolden said maybe it’s not so terrible if China lands people on the Moon before NASA can return with astronauts. “We may not make 2030, and that’s OK with me, as long as we get there in 2031 better than they are with what they have there.”

Sean Duffy, NASA’s acting administrator, doesn’t see it the same way. Duffy said last week he would give contractors until this Wednesday to propose other ways of landing astronauts on the Moon sooner than the existing plan. SpaceX and Blue Origin, the space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, confirmed they submitted updated plans to NASA this week.

Blue Origin has a separate contract with NASA to provide its own human-rated lunar lander—Blue Moon Mark 2—for entry into service on the Artemis V mission, likely not to occur before the early 2030s. A smaller unpiloted lander—Blue Moon Mark 1—is on track to launch on Blue Origin’s first lunar landing attempt next year.

Blue Moon Mark 1 is still a big vehicle, standing taller than the lunar lander used by NASA during the Apollo program. But it doesn’t match the 52-foot (16-meter) height of Blue Origin’s Mark 2 lander, and tops out well short of the roughly 165-foot-tall (50-meter) Starship lander.

What’s more, Blue Moon Mark 1 won’t need to be refueled after launch, unlike Starship and Mark 2. Jacki Cortese, senior director of civil space at Blue Origin, confirmed Tuesday that her company is looking at employing a “more incremental approach” using Mark 1 to accelerate an Artemis crew landing. Ars first reported Blue Origin was studying how to modify Blue Moon Mark 1 for astronauts.

All of this is a reminder of something Blue Origin said in 2021, when NASA passed over Bezos’ company to award the first Artemis lander contract to SpaceX. Blue Origin protested the award and filed a lawsuit against the government, triggering a lunar lander work stoppage that lasted several months until a federal judge dismissed the suit.

Blue Origin said SpaceX’s approach with numerous refueling sorties was “immensely complex and high risk” and argued its proposal was the better option for NASA. The statement has taken on a meme-worthy status among fans of Starship.

But SpaceX bid a lower cost, and NASA officials said it was the only proposal the agency could afford at the time. And then, when Blue Origin won a contract from NASA in 2023 to provide a second lander option, the company’s concept also hinged on refueling the Blue Moon Mark 2 lander in space.

Now, SpaceX is making a new offering to NASA. Like Blue Origin, SpaceX said it has sent in a proposal for a “simplified architecture” for landing astronauts on the Moon, but did not provide details.

“We’ve shared and are formally assessing a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations that we believe will result in a faster return to the Moon while simultaneously improving crew safety,” the company said.

Since NASA selected SpaceX for the Human Landing System contract in 2021, the company said it has been “consistently responsive to NASA as requirements for Artemis III have changed.”

For example, NASA originally required SpaceX to only demonstrate it could land Starship on the Moon before moving forward with a crew mission. Lori Glaze, who leads NASA’s human exploration division, said in July the agency is now requiring the uncrewed landing demo also include an ascent from the Moon’s surface. NASA wants to know Starship can not just land astronauts on the Moon, but also get them back.

“Starship continues to simultaneously be the fastest path to returning humans to the surface of the Moon and a core enabler of the Artemis program’s goal to establish a permanent, sustainable presence on the lunar surface,” SpaceX said. “SpaceX shares the goal of returning to the Moon as expeditiously as possible, approaching the mission with the same alacrity and commitment that returned human spaceflight capability to America under NASA’s Commercial Crew program.”

SpaceX has built a reputation for doing things quickly. One example has been the rapid-fire launch cadence of the company’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX is setting up launch pads and factories to manufacture and launch Super Heavy and Starship—combining together to make the largest rocket ever built—at an even faster rate than Falcon 9.

The company has launched 11 full-scale test flights of Starship/Super Heavy since April 2023. “This campaign has quickly matured the core Starship and has produced numerous feats,” SpaceX said. The company listed some of them:

• Multiple successful ascents of the world’s most powerful rocket
• The launch, return, catch, and reuse of that rocket to unlock the high launch rate cadence needed for lunar missions
• The transfer of approximately 5 metric tons of cryogenic propellant between tanks while in space
• Successful in-space relights of the Raptor engines that are critical for the maneuvers that will send Starship to the Moon
• Multiple controlled reentries through Earth’s atmosphere

It’s true that these feats have come fast. Many more remain on the road ahead before SpaceX can make good on its commitment to NASA.

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Posted Saturday 1 November 2025 at 3:01 am AEST (my time).

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Welcome to Edition 8.17 of the Rocket Report! Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of the first crewed launch to the International Space Station on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur. Since this time, humans have lived in space continuously, even through spacecraft accidents and wars on Earth. This is a remarkable milestone that all of humanity can celebrate.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Skyroot nearing first launch with big ambitions. Three years after India opened up its space sector to private companies, Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace is targeting its first full-scale commercial satellite launch mission in January 2026, Mint reports. After this debut flight, Skyroot is targeting a launch every three months next year, and one every month from 2027. Each satellite launch mission is expected to generate the company nearly $5 million, according to Skyroot chief executive Pawan Chandana.

A promising start … Skyroot became India’s first space startup to demonstrate a rocket launch when it sent up a smaller version of its satellite vehicle from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh in November 2022. There are several other Indian launch startups, but Skyroot appears to be the most promising. Even so, a launch cadence of every three months next year seems highly ambitious. A single, successful launch in 2026 would be a great step forward.

Canadian spaceport gets infusion of cash. Maritime Launch Services will receive a senior credit facility for up to 10 million Canadian dollars ($7.1 million) from Canada’s government-owned export credit agency for defense, telecommunications, and weather-monitoring needs, Payload reports. Spaceport Nova Scotia, which is the Atlantic launching facility for MLS, will use the money to build out infrastructure and a launch pad for orbital missions. Half of the money will be advanced immediately, with more available as construction costs arise.

Going up from up there … Canada used to have a Manitoba spaceport when the United States was in a “space race” for military supremacy in the 1950s and 1960s. After hosting decades of Black Brant sounding rocket flights, officials closed the spaceport in 1985. Canada now mainly uses foreign launchers, in part because the government deemed building sovereign capability too costly. But Canadian companies (inspired by SpaceX) are moving to build their own facilities and rockets. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

ArcaSpace is dead, replaced by … a fashion company. Somehow I missed this news when it came out a year ago, but I’m including it now for completeness. For a quarter of a century, a Romania-based rocket organization, ArcaSpace, had been promising to revolutionize spaceflight. But that meme dream ended in late 2024 when the group rebranded itself as ArcaFashion. “The ArcaFashion products are designed and manufactured on the shoulders of innovation and cutting-edge technological achievements, using the vast aerospace capabilities of ArcaSpace,” the group said. Their early products look, well, you decide.

But wait, there’s more … Before it went away, ArcaSpace released a video of its “accomplishments” to date, meant to be a sizzle reel of sorts. This popped into my feed this week because the madlads at Arca apparently aren’t done in aerospace. They put out a new video showing some bonkers-looking vehicle they’re calling “ArcaBoard2,” which purports to be a vertical takeoff personal electric vehicle. Maybe don’t be one of the early customers for this.

HTV-launch launches, docks with space station. Japan’s H3 rocket launched a new spacecraft, the HTV-X, last weekend from a launch pad on Tanegashima Island. This cargo ship pulled alongside the International Space Station on Wednesday, maneuvering close enough for the lab’s robotic arm to reach out and grab it, Ars reports. The HTV-X spacecraft is an upgraded cargo freighter replacing Japan’s H-II Transfer Vehicle, which successfully resupplied the space station nine times between 2009 and 2020.

An improved design … At the conclusion of the first HTV program, Japan’s space agency preferred to focus its resources on designing a new cargo ship with more capability at a lower cost. That’s what HTV-X is supposed to be, and Wednesday’s high-flying rendezvous marked the new ship’s first delivery to the ISS. At 26 feet (8 meters) long, the HTV-X is somewhat shorter than the vehicle it replaces. But an improved design gives the HTV-X more capacity, with the ability to accommodate more than 9,000 pounds (4.1 metric tons) inside its pressurized cargo module, about 25 percent more than the HTV. (submitted by tsunam)

India seeks dramatic increase in launch cadence. The chairman of the Indian space agency, V. Narayanan, has told The Times of India that the country seeks to dramatically scale up its annual launch cadence to 50 missions a year. He said the goal is to grow the country’s ecosystem of government-sponsored and private launches, and that the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has set a goal of 50 launches a year by the end of this decade.

A big step up … “We are working on it,” Narayanan said of his government’s request. He said the country currently has just two active launch sites, which is a constraint on activity, but that new facilities will soon come online. By the end of 2027, he said that 30 launches a year will be possible. Given that India has recently averaged about five launches annually, this would represent a significant step up in overall activity.

SpaceX breaks Vandenberg turnaround record, twice. SpaceX continued its rapid pace of launches Monday with the flight of a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The Starlink 11-21 flight broke the record for the fastest pad turnaround for SpaceX’s West Coast launch pad, flying two days, 10 hours, 22 minutes, and 59 seconds since the Starlink 11-12 mission on Saturday, Spaceflight Now reports.

Going fast, and then faster … And oh, by the way, the previous record beaten by Monday’s flight was two days, 18 hours, 52 minutes, and 20 seconds, which was set during the past week. This milestone comes after the company set another turnaround record over at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station earlier this month. SpaceX clearly is continuing to seek to optimize Falcon 9 operations and is having some success.

Ariane 6 upper stage engine production moves to Germany. ArianeGroup will transfer responsibility for the assembly of Ariane 6 Vinci upper-stage engines from Vernon, France, to Lampoldshausen, Germany, European Spaceflight reports. The agreement will also see the transfer of responsibility for the development of the Ariane 6 oxygen turbopump from Avio’s headquarters in Colleferro to Vernon.

A whole seven launches per year … Each Vinci engine for Ariane 6 will now be assembled, integrated, and tested at Lampoldshausen. To support this process, a new production facility will be built. The engines will then be transferred to Bremen for integration with the rocket’s upper stage. According to ArianeGroup, the transfer will “optimize the competitiveness of Ariane 6,” helping to secure the “financial viability of Ariane 6 with a rate of 7 launches per year.”

SpaceX surpasses 2024 launch total. On Saturday morning, SpaceX launched a batch of Starlink satellites that marked the company’s 135th Falcon 9 launch of the year, Spaceflight Now reports. This broke the company’s record number of orbital launches achieved in all of 2024. The mission came nearly a week after SpaceX launched its 10,000th Starlink satellite to date.

A big number in another way … The number 135 is symbolic in another way. That’s equal to the number of NASA’s space shuttles over the 30-year lifetime of the program. That is to say, SpaceX will launch more Falcon 9 rockets this year than shuttles launched by NASA in three decades. The contours of spaceflight have certainly changed.

Amid shutdown, NASA trying to keep Artemis II on schedule. It has been nearly one month since many parts of the federal government shut down after lawmakers missed a budget deadline at the end of September, but so far, NASA’s most critical operations have been unaffected by the political impasse in Washington, DC. That may change soon, Ars reports. Federal civil servants and NASA contractors are not getting paid during the shutdown, even if agency leaders have deemed their tasks essential and directed them to continue working.

A significant impact soon … Many employees at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida remain at work, where their job is to keep the Artemis II mission on schedule for launch as soon as next February. Even while work continues, the government shutdown is creating inefficiencies that, if left unchecked, will inevitably impact the Artemis II schedule. And some officials are starting to sound the alarm. Kirk Shireman, vice president and program manager for Orion at Lockheed Martin, said this week, “I do think we’re rapidly approaching the point where it will be a significant impact.”

Variant of China’s Moon rocket to take flight. China aims to conduct the first launch of its Long March 10 rocket and a lunar-capable crew spacecraft next year, Space News reports. “The Long March 10 carrier rocket, the Mengzhou crew spacecraft, the Lanyue lunar lander, the Wangyu lunar suit, and the Exploration crew lunar rover have completed the main work of the prototype stage,” Zhang Jingbo, spokesperson for China’s human spaceflight program, said Thursday at a pre-launch press conference for the Shenzhou-21 mission at Jiuquan spaceport.

China appears on track for pre-2030 landing … Though not explicitly stated, Mengzhou will likely fly on a two-stage, single-stick variant of the Long March 10, which is used for low Earth orbit (LEO) missions. The full, three-stage, 92.5-meter-tall Long March 10 for lunar flights will use three 5-meter-diameter first stages bundled together, each powered by seven YF-100K variable thrust kerosene-liquid oxygen engines. Zhang did not state if the first flight would be crewed or uncrewed, nor if the mission would head to the Tiangong space station. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Next three launches

October 31: Long March 2 | Shenzhou 21 crewed flight | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China| 15:44 UTC

October 31: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-23 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 20:06 UTC

Nov. 2: Falcon 9 | Bandwagon-4 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla. | 05:09 UTC

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Posted Saturday 1 November 2025 at 2:59 am AEST (my time).

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A magnetic device may be able to remove kidney stones more efficiently than standard approaches, avoiding the need for repeated surgical procedures.

Kidney stones occur when minerals in urine crystallise. They can be painful when they become lodged inside the kidneys or enter the ureters, tubes that connect the kidneys to the bladder.

They are often treated by breaking them into smaller pieces. This may involve pushing a thin tube with a stone-shattering laser at the end through the bladder into the ureter and kidney, or pulsing ultrasound waves from outside the body.

Surgeons can then remove the stone fragments, usually one by one, using a wire basket that is fed in and out of the urethra. But this repeated retrieval can cause tissue damage. In about 40 per cent of cases, fragments are left behind, partly because especially small ones slip through the basket. These carry the risk of forming more stones.

In search of an alternative approach, Joseph Liao at Stanford University in California and his colleagues previously developed a magnetic gel, which coats kidney stone fragments, and a magnetic wire, which they used to capture the fragments in a lab dish.

Now, they have tested the approach in four pigs. They inserted dozens of human kidney stone fragments into the animals’ kidneys before injecting the organs with the magnetic gel. Using the magnetic wire inserted through the urethra, they were able to retrieve multiple stone fragments at once, rather than just one at time, as is commonly the case with the wire basket method. 

“It’s sort of like using a stick to fish out a snot full of stone fragments, so you can remove a large amount of them in one” go, says Liao.

This suggests the technique would cause less tissue damage than the standard approach, as surgeons would need to go in and out of the kidneys fewer times. It could even completely clear fragments from the kidneys because, unlike wire baskets, the magnetic device can catch pieces of any size, says Liao. This would reduce the risk of new stones forming and the need for further surgery.

“It’s a very promising approach,” says Veronika Magdanz at the University of Waterloo in Canada, who wasn’t involved in the study. “Anything that increases the collection success of the stones and picks up more pieces at a time is helpful.”

None of the pigs showed side effects due to the gel. “It’s very good news; it’s not toxic or damaging in any way,” says Magdanz. After optimising the approach in further pig studies, the team hopes to trial it in humans in about a year, says Liao.

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Both generic atorvastatin and brand-name Lipitor contain the same active ingredient, atorvastatin calcium, and are considered bioequivalent by the Food and Drug Administration. This medication is the No. 1-selling drug in the US, with over 115 million prescriptions going to more than 29 million Americans.

I am a clinical pharmacologist and pharmacist who has assessed the manufacturing quality of prescription, over-the-counter and illicit drugs, as well as dietary supplements.

This atorvastatin recall is large, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of patients. But it's only the latest in a series of concerning manufacturing issues that have come to light since 2019.

What pills are being recalled, and why?

Ascend Laboratories, based in New Jersey, originally issued the recall for about 142,000 bottles of its generic atorvastatin on Sept. 19. Each bottle contained 90, 500 or 1,000 tablets, enough to fill prescriptions for three, 17 or 33 patients, respectively, for one month.

About three weeks later, on Oct. 10, the FDA quantified the risk of using these poor-quality tablets and gave the recall a Class II status, which means that the medication could cause "temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences."

Manufacturers must conduct quality tests on random samples of tablets from every batch they make. These tests make sure the pills contain the correct dosage of the active ingredient, are made to the proper physical specifications and are not contaminated with heavy metals or microbes.

If the samples test "out of specification" for any feature, the company must conduct further testing and destroy defective batches, losing the cost of manufacturing them.

In this case, sample pills failed to dissolve properly when they were tested. Batches manufactured from November 2024 through September 2025 all had this defect.

As with other drugs, when you swallow atorvastatin, it must dissolve before the active ingredient can be absorbed by the body. It then goes to the liver, where it reduces the blood concentrations of low-density lipoproteins – also called LDL, or "bad cholesterol."

If the drug doesn't dissolve properly, the amount absorbed by the body is substantially reduced.

Lowering LDL with atorvastatin has been shown to reduce cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes after a few years by 22%. When almost 30,000 people in a 2021 study stopped taking their atorvastatin or other statin for six months, the risk of cardiovascular events, deaths, and emergency room visits increased between 12% to 15%.

So, while patients wouldn't immediately feel a difference if their atorvastatin tablets didn't dissolve properly, their risk of cardiovascular events would significantly rise.

You should be able to tell from the prescription label whether your atorvastatin comes from the manufacturer that announced the recall. (eyesfoto/Canva)

What should patients on generic atorvastatin do?

First, don't stop taking the medication without talking with your pharmacist or prescriber. Even if you have the recalled pills, taking them is still better than not taking the medicine at all.

You can determine whether your medication came from Ascend Laboratories by looking at your prescription label.

Search for the abbreviations MFG or MFR, which stand for "manufacturing" or "manufacturer." If it says "MFG Ascend" or "MFR Ascend," that means that Ascend Laboratories supplied the medication.

The first five letters of a National Drug Code, abbreviated as NDC on the prescription label, also reveal the manufacturer or distributor. Ascend products have the number 67877.

If Ascend Laboratories is the distributor, a pharmacist can cross-reference your prescription number to obtain the lot number and compare it with the posted lot numbers on the FDA website for recalled atorvastatin.

If your product has been recalled, your pharmacy may have other generic versions of atorvastatin in stock that are not part of this recall.

Alternatively, the pharmacist can get a new prescription from your health care provider for another generic statin drug, such as rosuvastatin, which works similarly.

A pattern of lapses for overseas manufacturers

While the defective atorvastatin is distributed by a U.S. company, it is actually manufactured by Alkem Laboratories in India.

In fact, many aspects of pharmaceutical drug manufacturing are now occurring overseas, primarily in China and India. This has limited the FDA's ability to provide the oversight required for drugs sold in the U.S.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the FDA performed routine surveillance inspections of U.S. manufacturing plants every three years, but seldom conducted them overseas.

In the wake of several high-profile manufacturing quality lapses, including at the Indian generic drug giant Ranbaxy Laboratories, Congress established a funding mechanism and the FDA established a universal standard for inspecting both U.S. and overseas manufacturers every five years.

However, the U.S. fell behind with international inspections after COVID-19 shut down international travel, and it has yet to catch up. Additionally, overseas manufacturers generally get warning of an upcoming inspection, making the process potentially less rigorous than in the U.S.

A lack of inspections for eye drop manufacturers, especially in India, led to massive recalls in 2023 after a wave of rare eye infections caused some people to lose their eyesight. The problem was traced to widespread unsanitary manufacturing conditions and improper testing for sterility at overseas facilities.

In 2024, eight deaths and multiple hospitalizations led an Indian manufacturer, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, to recall 47 million potassium chloride extended-release capsules that did not dissolve properly. In February 2025, inspectors found that the company had falsified quality results.

The FDA recently started laboratory spot testing of prescription and over-the-counter drugs arriving in the U.S. to compensate for these limitations. Outside laboratories such as Valisure also do independent testing. Independent testing has caught several dangerous products, but due to limited resources, only a few products can be tested each year.

In 2023, Alkem Laboratories, which manufactured the currently recalled atorvastatin, had to recall 58,000 bottles of the blood pressure drug metoprolol XL because the pills also did not properly dissolve.

Spot testing also led to widespread recalls after FDA and Valisure laboratories found cancer-causing chemicals called nitrosamines in some blood pressure, diabetes and indigestion drugs tested between 2019 and 2020, as well as benzene in numerous sunscreen and antibacterial gel products tested between 2020 and early 2025.

Raising consumer vigilance

With these growing gaps in oversight, it's reasonable to be mindful of changes in how a particular medication affects you. If your prescription drug suddenly stops working, it might be because that particular batch of the medication was not manufactured properly.

Alerting the FDA about sudden loss of drug effectiveness could help the agency more quickly identify manufacturing issues.

In 2024, the FDA started sharing the inspection burden with other regulatory agencies like the European Medicines Agency for the European Union. Such coordinated efforts could lead to less duplication and a bump in inspections of overseas manufacturers.

In the meantime, however, consumers are largely at the mercy of spotty inspections and testing, and rarely hear about problems unless poorly manufactured drugs cause widespread adverse events.

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Google announced plans to revive a nuclear power plant that shut down in 2020, as it looks to secure enough electricity for its AI data centers.

The company announced a 25-year agreement with NextEra Energy to eventually purchase electricity from the Duane Arnold Energy Center, a 615MW nuclear plant in Iowa, when it starts operating again. “We’re enabling the investment to restart the plant and covering costs for the production of energy from Duane Arnold,” Google says in a blog post. The Central Iowa Power Cooperative will purchase remaining electricity from the plant that Google doesn’t use.

It’s the latest move by Google and other tech companies to revitalize nuclear energy in the US, which has struggled to compete with falling costs for gas, solar, and wind power over the years. As power grids scramble to keep up with growing electricity demand from AI, nuclear energy has become a more attractive option for generating carbon-free energy around-the-clock for data centers.

Duane Arnold first started generating power in 1975, and is slated to start running again in 2029. But getting it operational will be no small task; the US has never restarted a mothballed nuclear plant, Reuters reports. Microsoft announced plans last year to help revive a shuttered reactor at Three Mile Island, which is supposed to sputter back to life in 2028.

Google says that turning an old power plant back on is “the fastest path to unlock large-scale nuclear power to meet AI growth in the near-term.” The company is also working with NextEra and Kairos Power to develop next-generation nuclear reactors, but those advanced designs still face lengthy certification and permitting processes.

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Posted Friday 31 October 2025 at 5:10 am AEST (my time).

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