But in Alzheimer’s, this vital barrier becomes compromised, allowing toxic substances to build up and damage brain cells.

Researchers discovered that by injecting nanoparticles into the brain, they could repair the BBB, enabling it to once again clear away harmful amyloid plaque — a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.

The new therapy helps the brain rebalance itself, making other treatments more effective, according to Newsweek. Giuseppe Battaglia, one of the researchers from the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies, said restoring the brain’s defenses could lead to “fewer day-to-day declines, longer periods of independence and better responses to existing medications for families, which could translate into more meaningful time together and a reduced caregiving burden.”

The research team focused on a specific biological mechanism that allows waste proteins produced in the brain to pass through the BBB and be eliminated into the bloodstream. In Alzheimer’s, the main waste protein is called amyloid-beta, or Aβ.

To test their approach, scientists genetically engineered mice to produce large amounts of Aβ. After injecting the mice with supramolecular drugs, they observed a 50–60% reduction in the amount of waste proteins in the brain — within just one hour.

Once the brain’s vascular system was restored, it could efficiently clear away toxic proteins and other harmful substances. The findings offer new hope to the 55 million people worldwide living with Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia. The next step, researchers say, is to determine whether these results can be replicated in humans.

Battaglia added, “If we can safely trigger the same recovery of barrier function in people, we expect improved brain housekeeping: steadier nutrient delivery, reduced inflammation and more effective clearance of toxic proteins. That combination could slow disease progression and boost the impact of other treatments.”

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The peacemakers are regulatory T cells, a type of immune cell that calms the immune system after it has finished fighting infection or healing a wound. These special T cells also prevent the immune system from attacking the body. If they fail in this mission, autoimmune disorders or damaging inflammation can result. These cells are also important to prevent rejection of the fetus during pregnancy.

Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University in Japan first discovered these important cells, also known as T-regs, in 1995. Sakaguchi shares the prize, worth 11 million Swedish krona (over $1.1 million), with Mary Brunkow of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle and Fred Ramsdell, a cofounder of Sonoma Biotherapeutics, a company based in San Francisco and Seattle. The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm announced the prize October 6.

Brunkow and Ramsdell tracked down a mutation that caused a fatal autoimmune disease in male mouse pups while working at Celltech Chiroscience in Bothell, Wash., in the 1990s. The mutation turned out to disable a gene called FOXP3. That gene is important for T-reg development, Sakaguchi later discovered. Without it, there aren’t enough T-regs to stop wayward immune cells from causing harm in the body. Mutations in FOXP3 are also responsible for an autoimmune disease called IPEX in people, the American duo revealed in 2001.

Scientists are learning to harness T-regs to prevent rejection of transplanted organs and treat autoimmune disorders, food allergies, cancer and other conditions in which the immune system is overactive or directed against the wrong thing.  

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Can you prove whether a large quantum system truly behaves according to the weird and wonderful rules of quantum mechanics -- or if it just looks like it does? In a groundbreaking study, physicists from Leiden, Beijing en Hangzhou found the answer to this question.

You could call it a 'quantum lie detector': Bell's test designed by famous physicist John Bell. This test shows whether a machine, like a quantum computer, is truly using quantum effects or just mimics them.

As quantum technologies become more mature, ever more stringent tests of quantumness become necessary. In this new study, the researchers took things to the next level, testing Bell correlations in systems with up to 73 qubits -- the basic building blocks of a quantum computer.

The study involved a global team: theoretical physicists Jordi Tura, Patrick Emonts, PhD candidate Mengyao Hu from Leiden University, together with colleagues from Tsinghua University (Beijing) and experimental physicists from Zhejiang University (Hangzhou).

The world of quantum physics

Quantum mechanics is the science that explains how the tiniest particles in the universe -- like atoms and electrons -- behave. It's a world full of strange and counterintuitive ideas.

One of those is quantum nonlocality, where particles appear to instantly affect each other, even when far apart. Although it sounds strange, it's a real effect, and it won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2022. This research is focused on proving the occurrence of nonlocal correlation, also known as Bell correlations.

Clever experimenting

It was an extremely ambitious plan, but the team's well-optimized strategy made all the difference. Instead of trying to directly measure the complex Bell correlations, they focused on something quantum devices are already good at: minimizing energy.

And it paid off. The team created a special quantum state using 73 qubits in a superconducting quantum processor and measured energies far below what would be possible in a classical system. The difference was striking -- 48 standard deviations -- making it almost impossible that the result was due to chance.

But the team didn't stop there. They went on to certify a rare and more demanding type of nonlocality - known as genuine multipartite Bell correlations. In this kind of quantum correlation, all qubits in the system must be involved, making it much harder to generate -- and even harder to verify. Remarkably, the researchers succeeded in preparing a whole series of low-energy states that passed this test up to 24 qubits, confirming these special correlations efficiently.

This result shows that quantum computers are not just getting bigger -- they are also becoming better at displaying and proving truly quantum behaviour.

Why this matters

This study proves that it's possible to certify deep quantum behaviour in large, complex systems -- something never done at this scale before. It's a big step toward making sure quantum computers are truly quantum.

These insights are more than just theoretical. Understanding and controlling Bell correlations could improve quantum communication, make cryptography more secure, and help develop new quantum algorithms.

Source

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to a trio of researchers for discovering quantum mechanics on a whole new scale — one big enough to hold in your hand.

John Clarke of the University of California, Berkeley, Michel H. Devoret of Yale University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, and John M. Martinis of the University of California, Santa Barbara, received the prestigious prize "for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit."

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the winners at a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, on Tuesday (Oct. 10). This is the 119th Nobel physics prize and comes with a cash prize of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million).

"To put it mildly, it was the surprise of my life," Clarke said by phone at a news conference. "I'm completely stunned, of course. It never occurred to me in any way that this might be the basis of a Nobel Prize."

He said that his discovery (which underlies the advanced microchips present in many modern-day technologies, including smartphones) is being used for the further development of quantum computers.

Clarke, Devoret and Martinis carried out experiments in which they were able to demonstrate quantum mechanical tunneling and quantised energy levels in an electrical circuit "big enough to hold in your hand," according to a statement released by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Quantum tunneling enables particles to pass through seemingly impassable barriers. This is because in quantum physics particles exist as both waves and particles simultaneously; those waves are the projected probabilities of the particle existing in a given space.

Much like a wave smashing against a groin at sea will result in a smaller wave propagating to the other side, particles that exist as waves also have some probability of existing at the other side of a barrier. It is this ability that allows electrons to leap between material layers that would otherwise be impassable, at least according to large-scale physical laws.

Prior to the researchers' discovery, quantum tunneling had been observed in single particles, but physicists soon wondered if multiple particles could tunnel at a single time. One way this could be done is by making materials extremely cold, transforming them into superconductors by prompting electrons to bind together into so-called "Cooper pairs."

Cooper pairs follow different quantum mechanical rules than those of lonesome electrons. Instead of stacking onto each other to form energy shells, they act like particles of light, or photons, an infinite number of which can occupy the same point in space at the same time. If enough of these Cooper pairs are created throughout a material, they become a superfluid, flowing without any loss of energy from electrical resistivity.

To make their discovery, the researchers sandwiched two superconductors between a thin insulating barrier — creating an experimental setup known as a Josephson junction. Working together in the mid-1980s, the scientists screened their own Josephson junction from interference before feeding a weak electrical current into it.

Initially the voltage across this circuit was zero, indicating that no current was flowing through the barrier. But repeating their experiment multiple times, the researchers soon found that a voltage did appear across the apparatus at various points in time. This showed that the electrons were indeed tunneling across the system, acting as a single, large-scale particle.

Firing microwaves to be absorbed by the electrons showed that, despite their collective state being macroscopic, the Cooper-paired electrons had discrete, quantized energy levels.

This discovery has had a number of practical applications in physics and beyond. The collective system is referred to as an artificial atom, from which numerous experiments and quantum technologies have been developed.

"It is wonderful to be able to celebrate the way that century-old quantum mechanics continually offers new surprises," Olle Eriksson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said in the statement. "It is also enormously useful, as quantum mechanics is the foundation of all digital technology."

Source

The Register reports that Deloitte was commissioned by Australia's Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) last year, with the work revolving around the Targeted Compliance Framework. This is the government's IT system to track and penalize welfare recipients who miss certain mandates, such as job interviews.

Although the report was published in July, many were quick to find fabrications in the work, such as fake citations, imaginary quotes, and non-existent footnotes. It was theorized that this was the output of an AI tool, given the nature of the "hallucinations".

Deloitte began its investigation into these mistakes, and it seems like it has admitted that it used AI for at least a portion of its work. The latest version of the report, published a couple of days ago, contains a disclaimer that Deloitte leveraged Azure OpenAI GPT-4o hosted on DEWR's tenant account to fill certain "traceability and documentation gaps".

As a result, Deloitte has agreed to partially refund the DEWR's agreement, which was worth AUD 440,000 (USD ~290,000). An anonymous source told media outlets that the accounting firm had blamed human error for the mistakes in an internal review rather than admitting poor quality AI text generation.

Although this case did result in Deloitte admitting at least some form of wrongdoing, it does set a worrying precedent where it seems like even a Big Four firm being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars can't be bothered with original research. It also sounds the alarms for executives who spearhead pivots in strategies or make major financial decisions for their companies based on AI-generated reports produced by consultancy firms.

Source

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Posted Tuesday 7 October 2025 at 4:28 pm AEST (my time).

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Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment showing the strangeness of quantum mechanics. Imagine a cat in a sealed box with a device that has a 50% chance to release poison, triggered by a quantum event. Until you open the box, quantum rules say the cat is both alive and dead at the same time—a “superposition.” Only when observed does the cat’s state become definite. It illustrates how observation affects quantum systems. Thus the equation remains central to understanding the behavior of particles at the quantum level.

“Quantum mechanics, along with Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, are the two pillars of modern physics,” says Utah State University (USU) physicist Abhay Katyal. “The challenge is, for more than half a century, scientists have struggled to reconcile these two theories.”

Katyal, a doctoral student and Howard L. Blood Graduate Fellow in the Department of Physics, explains that quantum mechanics governs matter and forces at the subatomic scale, while general relativity describes gravity and the structure of space-time on cosmic scales. The difficulty lies in uniting these frameworks into a single, consistent theory.

“Many unknowns in physics are explained by one side or the other, but these explanations are often incompatible,” says Oscar Varela, associate professor at Utah State University and Katyal’s faculty mentor. “Quantum gravity is an attempt to combine these theories but, to this day, we don’t know what quantum gravity is.”

In their latest work, Varela, Katyal, and former USU postdoctoral fellow Ritabrata Bhattacharya present a new gauging of maximal supergravity in five spacetime dimensions. This gauging involves a gauge group containing ISO(5) and incorporates the local scaling symmetry of the metric, while also admitting a supersymmetric anti–de Sitter vacuum. The researchers show that this maximal supergravity emerges through a consistent truncation of M theory on a six-dimensional geometry linked to a stack of N M5 branes wrapped on a smooth Riemann surface.

The existence of this truncation enables the team to holographically determine the complete, universal spectrum of light operators in the dual four-dimensional 𝒩 = 2 theory of class 𝒮. They further compute the superconformal index of the dual field theory at large N, finding exact agreement with previously established field theory results in specific limits.

Their findings, published in the May 6 online issue of Physical Review Letters and supported by the National Science Foundation’s Elementary Particle Physics-Theory program, highlight the "holographic principle" as a central tool in advancing the search for quantum gravity.

“Proposed theories of quantum gravity are difficult to test experimentally because we don’t have the technology to predict effects occurring at extremely high energies or extremely small scales,” Varela says. “For theoretical physicists like us, a precise mathematical model is akin to the apparatus of an experimental physicist: It can be used to make predictions about the physical world.”

For the Utah State team, the holographic principle provides a framework to move closer to a unified description of nature’s laws.

Source: Utah State University, American Physical Society

This article was generated with some help from AI and reviewed by an editor. Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, this material is used for the purpose of news reporting. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.

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Posted Tuesday 7 October 2025 at 4:27 pm AEST (my time).

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Announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025 awarded by the Nobel Assembly to scientists 

Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi at the Nobel Forum of Karolinska Institute, Stockholm City, 

Sweden, October 6, 2025. 

Credit: Getty | Narciso Contreras

Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi were awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for their collective work in the discovery of specialized immune cells that roam the body and keep potentially harmful immune responses in check—preventing them from attacking the body directly (autoimmune responses) or causing harm with overzealous responses to invaders.

Those specialized cells—regulatory T cells—are now well established as playing a key role in peripheral immune tolerance. That is, a non-central process that allows the immune system to strike a delicate balance between being appropriately responsive and aggressive toward intruding germs or foreign dangers while also not running amok.

Before the trio of prize winners came along, researchers thought that such immune tolerance occurred centrally, in the thymus, the primary lymphoid organ that sits in the center of the chest. There, T cells mature, including into two key types: T helper cells, which go on to trigger immune responses when they recognize foreign dangers; and the aptly named T killer cells, which kill cells, including foreign cells, cancer cells, and cells infected by a virus.

Extra protection

In the thymus, T cells are tested before their release to ensure they won't attack components of the body, causing autoimmune diseases. Thymus cells do this by dangling forbidden targets made from tidbits of the body. If any T cells lock onto such an endogenous target via one of their unique, randomly generated receptors, then it means they have the ability to cause autoimmune responses. As such, they are promptly killed off.

However, researchers had inklings that there were other mechanisms to tone down immune responses, ones outside the thymus. These peripheral systems might help catch rogue T cells that somehow pass the central test but still have the ability to attack the body. For a time in the 1970s. researchers floated the idea of "suppressor T cells," but the field was riddled with inconsistencies and false leads that led many to largely abandon the notion.

One of the researchers who didn't give up, though, was Sakaguchi. Alongside colleagues in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s, Sakaguchi wanted to figure out why, when batches of immune cells from healthy mice were injected into mice that had their thymuses removed, the cells didn't trigger an autoimmune disease. The finding suggested something in the immune cell injection was producing immune tolerance, and that it wasn't dependent on the thymus.

In a landmark 1995 study, Sakaguchi and colleagues pinpointed the cells responsible—T helper cells that also contained a protein on their surfaces called CD25. They did this using experiments again with the mice that had their thymuses removed. If they gave the mice just batches of immune cells that were normal T helper cells—no CD25—the mice developed autoimmune diseases. But if they gave them the T helper cells plus T helper cells that had the CD25, the mice were healthy. The experiment indicated that the CD25-carrying T helper cells were promoting immune self-tolerance in the mice, and Sakaguchi and colleagues coined these cells regulatory T cells, which caught on.

Scurfy mice

Here is where Brunkow and Ramsdell—today's other two Nobel laureates—come in. In the 1990s, they were working for a pharmaceutical company in Bothell, Washington, called Celltech Chiroscience, which developed treatments for autoimmune diseases. Weird mutant mice, called scurfy mice, had grabbed their attention.

The mutants were identified in the 1940s by researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, who were working on the effects of radiation as part of the Manhattan Project. A spontaneous mutation in a line of mice caused a severe autoimmune disease that was fatal—but only for males of the line; the females were fine. This signaled that the mutation was somewhere on the X chromosome, since females have two of those, and presumably one lacked the killer mutation. Brunkow and Ramdsell wanted to know what the mutation was that caused the autoimmune disease—and potentially use that knowledge to develop treatments for autoimmune diseases.

Today, finding a mutation on the X chromosome would be relatively easy. But in the 1990s, it was a labor-intensive effort. After narrowing the mutation's location down to a stretch of 500,000 nucleotides that included 20 genes, they carefully scanned 19 of them before finding a mutation in the very last one; it was a small, two-base pair insertion that threw the coding out of frame and resulted in a stunted protein. The mutated gene hadn't been studied before, but it looked like others that were classified as forkhead/winged-helix genes, so Brunkow and Ramsdell called it Foxp3.

The pair then did genetic rescue experiments, putting normal Foxp3 genes back into scurfy mice—doing it in five lines, for good measure. The genetic rescue prevented the severe autoimmune disease in the male scurfy mice and confirmed that the mutant Foxp3 was the source of the problem. The researchers then connected dots between scurfy mice and a disease in humans, called IPEX (immune dysregulation, polyendocrinopathy, enteropathy, X-linked). IPEX causes a fatal autoimmune disease in young boys. Brunkow and Ramsdell demonstrated that mutations in the human version of Foxp3 were also behind IPEX, which they published, along with all of their scurfy findings, in 2001.

Putting it together

Back in Japan, Sakaguchi's team connected more dots in the two years after that, realizing that Foxp3 was selectively turned on in their regulator T cells. Further, if they forced regular T helper cells to activate Foxp3, those cells then became regulatory T cells.

It turns out the Foxp3 protein is the master control for regulatory T cells. That is, it's a protein that controls the activity of a large suite of genes that collectively give T cells the ability to halt autoimmune responses and temper strong immune responses after an infection is cleared.

Overall, the findings have opened up new lines of research into peripheral immune tolerance. Researchers are now working on manipulating regulatory T cells for good, such as ensuring they can't protect cancerous tumors, engineering them to treat autoimmune diseases, and recruiting them to specifically protect transplanted organs and tissues.

The collective work to discover and understand T regulatory cells provided fundamental knowledge on how our immune systems work, the Nobel Committee concluded: "They have thus conferred the greatest benefit to humankind."

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Posted Tuesday 7 October 2025 at 4:26 pm AEST (my time).

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In two companion papers published in Nature Communications on July 1 and July 2, 2025, researchers revealed the discovery of two distinct stem cell lineages responsible for forming the tooth root and the alveolar bone—the jawbone structure that cradles each tooth. Using cutting-edge genetic tracing techniques in mice, they have illuminated how specialized cell populations coordinate to sculpt one of nature’s most complex and resilient biological architectures: the tooth and its surrounding bone.

This discovery is not merely an incremental advance; it represents a leap forward in our understanding of dental biology, offering new hope for future regenerative therapies that could one day allow humans to naturally regrow lost teeth.

The Quest to Recreate Nature’s Design

For decades, dentistry has relied on mechanical replacements—implants, bridges, and dentures—to restore lost teeth. While these solutions are practical and life-changing for millions, they are, at best, imitations of nature. A real tooth is a living structure, with nerves, blood vessels, and a delicate dance of tissues that grow and adapt over time.

Regenerating a lost tooth, along with its supporting bone, is considered the “holy grail” of dental medicine. To achieve it, scientists must not only recreate a tooth’s outer form but also replicate the intricate relationships between its internal tissues and the bone that holds it in place. Yet the biological processes behind tooth and bone development remain a labyrinth of mysteries.

Teeth do not grow in isolation. Their formation involves an orchestra of tissues—the dental pulp, enamel organ, dental follicle, and alveolar bone—all communicating through a symphony of molecular signals. Each cell must “know” what to become, when to divide, and when to stop. One misstep in this choreography can disrupt the entire structure.

Understanding this interplay at the cellular level has been one of the great challenges of developmental biology. That is precisely where the Science Tokyo team stepped in.

Peering into the Heart of Development

The research, led by Assistant Professor Mizuki Nagata of the Department of Periodontology at Science Tokyo, and Dr. Wanida Ono from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, represents a remarkable international collaboration with partners from the University of Michigan and other leading institutions.

Their goal was simple but ambitious: to map, in exquisite detail, how stem cells in developing teeth decide their fate—whether to become part of the tooth itself or the bone that anchors it.

To accomplish this, the scientists turned to genetically modified mice and lineage-tracing techniques—powerful methods that allow researchers to follow the destiny of individual cells over time. Using fluorescent tags that glow under specific lighting conditions, they could literally watch cells transform, migrate, and organize themselves during tooth growth.

By silencing specific genes and manipulating key signaling pathways, they uncovered how different molecular “instructions” guide these stem cells into specialized roles. What they found fundamentally redefines how we understand tooth development.

Two Lineages, One Beautiful Collaboration

The study revealed two distinct, previously unrecognized populations of mesenchymal stem cells—the master builders responsible for creating the supportive structures of the tooth and jaw.

The first lineage was traced to the apical papilla, a soft tissue mass located at the tip of a growing tooth root. These cells, marked by the presence of a signaling protein called CXCL12, play a crucial role in the formation of bone within the bone marrow. Through the canonical Wnt pathway—a key communication channel in stem cell biology—these CXCL12-expressing cells can differentiate into several types of cells vital for tooth and bone formation.

Remarkably, under the right conditions, these cells can transform not only into odontoblasts, which form dentin (the hard tissue beneath enamel), but also into cementoblasts, which build the cementum covering the tooth root, and even into osteoblasts, which generate the alveolar bone itself.

The second lineage was found within the dental follicle, a sac-like structure surrounding the developing tooth. This population of cells expressed parathyroid hormone-related protein (PTHrP)—a molecule known for regulating bone metabolism. These cells, too, showed a remarkable versatility, capable of becoming cementoblasts, ligament-forming fibroblasts, and alveolar bone osteoblasts.

However, this transformation depended on a very particular molecular balance. The researchers discovered that a signaling pathway known as the Hedgehog–Foxf pathway had to be switched off for the PTHrP-expressing cells to fully commit to forming bone. It was as if nature had installed a safety switch, preventing premature or misdirected bone formation unless all conditions were just right.

“We observed that the Hedgehog–Foxf pathway needs to be suppressed to drive the alveolar bone osteoblast fate of PTHrP-expressing cells,” explains Nagata. “This reveals a unique tooth-specific mechanism of bone formation that requires deliberate on–off regulation of Hedgehog signaling.”

This discovery paints a stunning picture: two distinct stem cell lineages, each with its own developmental logic, working in harmony to construct both the tooth root and its surrounding support structure.

The Language of Cells: How Signals Shape Identity

One of the most captivating aspects of this research lies in the molecular dialogue between cells. Stem cells are not pre-programmed to become a particular type of tissue; instead, they respond to the chemical signals in their environment—tiny messages carried by proteins and other molecules.

In tooth development, these signals form a complex web. The Wnt pathway, for instance, acts like a conductor guiding stem cells to differentiate in specific directions. When Wnt signaling is activated, stem cells are nudged toward forming the hard, mineralized tissues of the tooth root. The Hedgehog pathway, on the other hand, operates as a kind of brake—restraining certain transformations until the surrounding structures are ready.

It is this dynamic push and pull—activation and inhibition—that allows the delicate architecture of a tooth to form correctly. By decoding these instructions, scientists gain not only a deeper understanding of natural development but also a toolkit for future regenerative strategies.

Building the Foundation for Regenerative Dentistry

The implications of these findings stretch far beyond basic biology. They represent a turning point for regenerative dental medicine, a field that seeks to replace lost or damaged tissues with living, functional ones.

If researchers can learn to harness these stem cell populations, it may one day be possible to grow new teeth from a patient’s own cells—teeth that integrate naturally with the surrounding bone and nerves, eliminating the need for artificial implants. Even partial regeneration—such as rebuilding the tooth root or strengthening the jawbone—could transform dental care for millions worldwide.

Furthermore, these insights could help repair periodontal disease, a major global cause of tooth loss. By guiding stem cells to regenerate the cementum and bone destroyed by infection or inflammation, doctors could restore not just appearance but true biological function.

“This mechanistic framework for tooth root formation gives us a roadmap,” says Nagata. “It opens the way for innovative stem-cell-based regenerative therapies for dental pulp, periodontal tissues, and bone.”

The Art and Emotion of Scientific Discovery

Beyond its medical promise, this research also embodies something deeply human—the desire to understand and recreate the beauty of nature’s designs. The tooth, often overlooked as a simple piece of anatomy, is in fact a masterpiece of biological engineering. It must endure decades of wear and stress, yet remain sensitive and responsive to the world around it.

For Nagata and her colleagues, uncovering the hidden rules of how a tooth builds itself was not merely an intellectual puzzle—it was a journey into life’s most elegant processes. Watching fluorescent cells bloom across a microscope’s field, mapping their migrations and transformations, is to witness creation in miniature.

There is something profoundly poetic in the fact that our understanding of regeneration—of renewal and healing—begins with something as humble as a tooth. It reminds us that even the smallest parts of our bodies hold vast mysteries, and that in decoding them, we learn not only how to rebuild our tissues, but how to appreciate the astonishing complexity of life itself.

A Future of Living Dentistry

The road ahead is long, and many challenges remain before these discoveries can translate into clinical treatments for humans. Scientists will need to determine how to safely manipulate similar pathways in human cells, how to control differentiation with precision, and how to integrate newly grown tissues seamlessly into existing bone structures.

Yet, the foundations are now set. The identification of these two stem cell lineages offers a blueprint—a cellular map of how nature constructs the intricate interface between tooth and bone. The regenerative dentistry of the future may no longer rely on titanium or ceramic, but on the body’s own biological power to heal and rebuild.

Imagine a world where a lost tooth does not mean a permanent gap or an artificial implant, but simply the beginning of a new growth cycle—where dental visits focus on activating your body’s own regenerative potential. That world, once confined to the realm of dreams, is now coming into view.

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Summary:  A chance encounter with plastic waste on a tropical beach sparked a deep investigation into what those fragments mean for human health. The research reveals that bottled water isn’t as pure as it seems—each sip may contain invisible microplastics that can slip through the body’s defenses and lodge in vital organs. These tiny pollutants are linked to inflammation, hormonal disruption, and even neurological damage, yet remain dangerously understudied. 

The sun-drenched paradise of Thailand's Phi Phi islands isn't the usual starting point for a PhD. But for Sarah Sajedi, those soft, sandy beaches - or rather, what she found under them -inspired her pivot from a business career to an academic one.

"I was standing there looking out at this gorgeous view of the Andaman Sea, and then I looked down and beneath my feet were all these pieces of plastic, most of them water bottles," she says.

"I've always had a passion for waste reduction, but I realized that this was a problem with consumption."

Sajedi, BSc '91, decided to return to Concordia to pursue a PhD with a focus on plastic waste. As the co-founder of ERA Environmental Management Solutions, a leading provider of environmental, health and safety software, she brought decades of experience to complement her studies.

Her latest paper, published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, looks at the science around the health risks posed by single-use plastic water bottles. They are serious, she says, and seriously understudied.

Tiny threats, little known

In her review of over 140 scientific articles, Sajedi writes that individuals on average ingest between 39,000 and 52,000 microplastic particles per year, and bottled water users consume 90,000 more particles than tap water consumers.

The particles are usually invisible to the naked eye. A microplastic particle can range between one micron -- a thousandth of a millimeter -- to five millimeters; nanoplastics are smaller than one micron.

They emerge as bottles are made, stored, transported and broken down over their lifespans. Because they are often made from low-quality plastic, they shed tiny pieces every time they are manipulated and exposed to sunlight and temperature fluctuations. And unlike other types of plastic particles, which enter human bodies through the food chain, these are ingested directly from the source.

As Sajedi notes, the health consequences can be severe. Once inside the body, these small plastics can cross biological boundaries, enter the bloodstream and reach vital organs. This can lead to chronic inflammation, oxidative stress on cells, hormonal disruption, impaired reproduction, neurological damage and various kinds of cancer. However, the long-term effects remain poorly understood due to a lack of widespread testing and standardized methods of measurement and detection.

Sajedi identifies multiple methods researchers have used to measure nano- and microplastics, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Some, for instance, can detect very small particles but cannot identify their chemical composition. Others can provide details about their makeup but miss the smallest plastics. And the best, most advanced and most reliable tools are often extremely costly and not always available.

Education is the best prevention

Sajedi is encouraged by the legislative action that has been adopted by governments around the world aimed at limiting plastic waste. However, she notes that the most common targets are single-use plastic bags, straws and packaging. Very few address the pressing issue of single-use water bottles.

"Education is the most important action we can take," she says. "Drinking water from plastic bottles is fine in an emergency but it is not something that should be used in daily life. People need to understand that the issue is not acute toxicity -- it is chronic toxicity."

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“Illusions are fun, but they are also a gateway to perception,” says Hyeyoung Shin, assistant professor of neuroscience at Seoul National University. Shin is the first author of a new study in Nature Neuroscience that has identified a specific population of neurons in the visual cortex—dubbed IC-encoders—and shows their direct role in representing a visual illusion. The work is the result of a collaboration between the University of California, Berkeley, the Allen Institute in Seattle, and Seoul National University.

What the brain “knows”

Illusory contours are edges we see even though they aren’t physically there. A classic example is the Kanizsa triangle: three “Pac-Man” shapes make us perceive a bright white triangle floating on top. Hide the Pac-Men with your fingers and the trick is revealed: There is no border, just a uniform background. Neurophysiology agrees with perception here: For over 20 years, studies in primates and later imaging in humans and mice have described neurons in the primary visual cortex (V1) and higher visual areas that respond to real and illusory contours.

If the edges don’t exist in the stimulus, the brain must be filling them in. That’s tricky to explain in a purely “bottom-up” view of perception, where the visual system would just act like a camera, faithfully processing the input from the retina. But even at the very first stages, the visual system doesn’t just passively record—it integrates local and long-range neural signals and draws on prior knowledge (like statistical regularities of the visual world) to guide its interpretations. In other words, it makes “assumptions” about what we’re seeing based on what it already knows.

The new study pinpoints the neurons that encode some of these inferences. To find them, the researchers combined cutting-edge brain imaging with a crucial causal test: directly poking the neurons to see what happened.

Watching and poking neurons

The first part of the study, done with the Allen Institute’s OpenScope program, used high-density silicon probes to record large-scale electrical activity across visual areas of mouse brains, capturing the activity of hundreds of neurons with sub-millisecond precision as the mice viewed stimuli that included illusory contours.

That technique has superb temporal resolution, but it can’t easily distinguish the properties of individual cells. So the team also recorded the activity of thousands of neurons in the upper layers of the visual cortex using a calcium-sensitive fluorescent molecule. This produced what Hillel Adesnik of UC Berkeley calls “dynamic pictures of the brain activity where neurons flash when they fire.”

Together, these approaches not only mapped activity but also identified the specific neurons to target in the next phase with optogenetics. This technique introduces the gene encoding a light-sensitive protein into the genomes of neurons, allowing light to act like an on/off switch. Shine light, and neurons fire. Adesnik’s group took this a step further, using holographic 3D illumination: “We used an optical system that shapes the light in three dimensions that allowed us to target very specific neurons,” he says.

This allowed them to stimulate a tiny, very selective subset: “Out of approximately 5,000 neurons, we were able to selectively target the 20 most responsive to, for example, encoding illusory contours.” By combining this stimulation with cortical recordings, the team could move beyond simply correlating neural activity with a stimulus. As Adesnik puts it: “rather than working with a purely observational approach, we could actually photo-stimulate and activate those particular neurons as a group and observe how that influences neural dynamics.”

By photo-stimulating the IC-encoders, the researchers were able to re-create the same neural activity patterns normally evoked by illusory edges, even in the absence of any visual input. In other words, activating this population was enough to generate the specific ‘border’ signal in the visual circuit, not just a generic burst of activity. This suggests IC-encoders don’t just follow sensory input—they actively build the representation of edges that aren’t physically there.

Earlier work had hinted at such cells, but Shin and colleagues show systematically that they’re not rare oddballs—they’re a well-defined, functionally important subpopulation. “What we didn’t know is that these neurons drive local pattern completion within primary visual cortex,” says Shin. “We showed that those cells are causally involved in this pattern completion process that we speculate is likely involved in the perceptual process of illusory contours,” adds Adesnik.

Behavioral tests still to come

That doesn’t mean the mice “saw” the illusory contours when the neurons were artificially activated. “We didn’t actually measure behavior in this study,” says Adesnik. “It was about the neural representation.” All we can say at this point is that the IC-encoders could induce neural activity patterns that matched what imaging shows during normal perception of illusory contours.

“It’s possible that the mice weren’t seeing them,” admits Shin, “because the technique has involved a relatively small number of neurons, for technical limitations. But in the future, one could expand the number of neurons and also introduce behavioral tests.”

That’s the next frontier, Adesnik says: “What we would do is photo-stimulate these neurons and see if we can generate an animal’s behavioral response even without any stimulus on the screen.” Right now, optogenetics can only drive a small number of neurons, and IC-encoders are relatively rare and scattered. “For now, we have only stimulated a small number of these detectors, mainly because of technical limitations. IC-encoders are a rare population, probably distributed through the layers [of the visual system], but we could imagine an experiment where we recruit three, four, five, maybe even 10 times as many neurons,” he says. “In this case, I think we might be able to start getting behavioral responses. We’d definitely very much like to do this test.”

Nature Neuroscience, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41593-025-02055-5

Federica Sgorbissa is a science journalist; she writes about neuroscience and cognitive science for Italian and international outlets.

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Posted Tuesday 7 October 2025 at 6:12 am AEST (my time).

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New research from the University of Cambridge suggests that autism should not be understood as a homogeneous condition with a single cause. Scientists found that people diagnosed in early childhood often have a different genetic profile than those diagnosed later in life, broadening the understanding of how the condition develops.

The study analyzed the behavior of autistic people during childhood and adolescence in the United Kingdom and Australia. It also evaluated genetic data of more than 45,000 patients with the condition from diverse cohorts in Europe and the United States.

By linking genetic information to age at diagnosis, the researchers observed that the profiles of those identified early with the condition differed from those who received confirmation at later stages. They found only a slight overlap between the two groups, indicating that the biological mechanisms associated with autism in childhood may be different from those linked to autism identified in adolescence or adulthood.

The analysis, published last week in the journal Nature, showed that children diagnosed before the age of 6 were more likely to have behavioral difficulties—such as problems with social interaction—from an early age. In contrast, those diagnosed after the age of 10 were more likely to experience social and behavioral difficulties during adolescence. They also had a greater predisposition to mental health conditions, such as depression.

The study adds that the average genetic profile of those diagnosed later was closer to that of ADHD and conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder than to that of “classic” autism identified in early childhood.

The study concludes that the timing of diagnosis is not entirely random but reflects underlying genetic differences that, in some cases, coincide with risk for other conditions.

“For the first time, we have found that earlier and later diagnosed autism have different underlying biological and developmental profiles,” said Varun Warrier, a researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge and lead author of the paper, in a press statement. “The term ‘autism’ likely describes multiple conditions.”

The researchers stress that their intention is not to create new subtypes of autism, but to understand the different developmental processes of the condition in order to improve therapies. “Some of the genetic influences predispose people to show autism traits from a very young age that may be more easily identified, leading to an earlier diagnosis,” Warrier says. “For others, genetic influences may alter which autism features emerge and when. Some of these children may have features that are not picked up by parents or caregivers until they cause significant distress in late childhood or adolescence.”

While acknowledging their work’s limitations, such as the sample size and reliance on caregiver reports rather than clinical assessments, the authors contend that the study expands understanding of how autism characteristics emerge at different stages and their relationship to genetic profiles. This information could improve diagnostic mechanisms and therapeutic strategies.

“An important next step will be to understand the complex interaction between genetics and social factors that lead to poorer mental health outcomes among later-diagnosed autistic individuals,” says Warrier.

Uta Frith, an emeritus professor of cognitive development at University College London, who was not involved in the study, said that the great contribution of the research is to demonstrate that autism is not a single condition. “It is time to realize that ‘autism’ has become a ragbag of different conditions,” she said in a statement to the Science Media Centre. “If there is talk about an ‘autism epidemic,’ a ‘cause of autism,’ or a ‘treatment for autism,’ the immediate question must be, which kind of autism?”

This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.

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Posted Tuesday 7 October 2025 at 6:11 am AEST (my time).

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In 1915, intrepid British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew were stranded for months in the Antarctic after their ship, Endurance, was trapped by pack ice, eventually sinking into the freezing depths of the Weddell Sea. Miraculously, the entire crew survived. The prevailing popular narrative surrounding the famous voyage features two key assumptions: that Endurance was the strongest polar ship of its time, and that the ship ultimately sank after ice tore away the rudder.

However, a fresh analysis reveals that Endurance would have sunk even with an intact rudder; it was crushed by the cumulative compressive forces of the Antarctic ice with no single cause for the sinking. Furthermore, the ship wasn't designed to withstand those forces, and Shackleton was likely well aware of that fact, according to a new paper published in the journal Polar Record. Yet he chose to embark on the risky voyage anyway.

Author Jukka Tuhkuri of Aalto University is a polar explorer and one of the leading researchers on ice worldwide. He was among the scientists on the Endurance22 mission that discovered the Endurance shipwreck in 2022, documented in a 2024 National Geographic documentary. The ship was in pristine condition partly because of the lack of wood-eating microbes in those waters. In fact, the Endurance22 expedition's exploration director, Mensun Bound, told The New York Times at the time that the shipwreck was the finest example he's ever seen; Endurance was "in a brilliant state of preservation."

As previously reported, Endurance set sail from Plymouth on August 6, 1914, with Shackleton joining his crew in Buenos Aires, Argentina. By the time they reached the Weddell Sea in January 1915, accumulating pack ice and strong gales slowed progress to a crawl. Endurance became completely icebound on January 24, and by mid-February, Shackleton ordered the boilers to be shut off so that the ship would drift with the ice until the weather warmed sufficiently for the pack to break up. It would be a long wait. For 10 months, the crew endured the freezing conditions. In August, ice floes pressed into the ship with such force that the ship's decks buckled.

The ship's structure nonetheless remained intact, but by October 25, Shackleton realized Endurance was doomed. He and his men opted to camp out on the ice some two miles (3.2 km) away, taking as many supplies as they could with them. Compacted ice and snow continued to fill the ship until a pressure wave hit on November 13, crushing the bow and splitting the main mast—all of which was captured on camera by crew photographer Frank Hurley. Another pressure wave hit in the late afternoon on November 21, lifting the ship's stern. The ice floes parted just long enough for Endurance to finally sink into the ocean before closing again to erase any trace of the wreckage.

Once the wreck had been found, the team recorded as much as they could with high-resolution cameras and other instruments. Vasarhelyi, particularly, noted the technical challenge of deploying a remote digital 4K camera with lighting at 9,800 feet underwater, and the first deployment at that depth of photogrammetric and laser technology. This resulted in a millimeter-scale digital reconstruction of the entire shipwreck to enable close study of the finer details.

Challenging the narrative

It was shortly after the Endurance22 mission found the shipwreck that Tuhkuri realized that there had never been a thorough structural analysis conducted of the vessel to confirm the popular narrative. Was Endurance truly the strongest polar ship of that time, and was a broken rudder the actual cause of the sinking? He set about conducting his own investigation to find out, analyzing Shackleton's diaries and personal correspondence, as well as the diaries and correspondence of several Endurance crew members.

Tuhkuri also conducted a naval architectural analysis of the vessel under the conditions of compressive ice, which had never been done before. He then compared those results with the underwater images of the Endurance shipwreck. He also looked at comparable wooden polar expedition ships and steel icebreakers built in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Endurance was originally named Polaris; Shackleton renamed it when he purchased the ship in 1914 for his doomed expedition. Per Tuhkuri, the ship had a lower (tween) deck, a main deck, and a short bridge deck above them that stopped at the machine room in order to make space for the steam engine and boiler. There were no beams in the machine room area, nor any reinforcing diagonal beams, which weakened this significant part of the ship's hull.

This is because Endurance was originally built for polar tourism and for hunting polar bears and walruses in the Arctic; at the ice edge, ships only needed sufficiently strong planking and frames to withstand the occasional collision from ice floes. However, "In pack ice conditions, where compression from the ice needs to be taken into account, deck beams become of key importance," Tuhkuri wrote. "It is the deck beams that keep the two ship sides apart and maintain the shape of a ship. Without strong enough deck beams, a vessel gets crushed by compressive ice, more or less irrespective of the thickness of planking and frames."

The Endurance was nonetheless sturdy enough to withstand five serious ice compression events before her final sinking. On April 4, 1915, one of the scientists on board reported hearing loud rumbling noises from a 3-meter-high ice ridge that formed near the ship, causing the ship to vibrate. Tuhkuri believes this was due to a "compressive failure process" as ice crushed against the hull. On July 14, a violent snowstorm hit, and crew members could hear the ice breaking beneath the ship. The ice ridges that formed over the next few days were sufficiently concerning that Shackleton instituted four-hour watches on deck and insisted on having everything packed in case they had to abandon ship.

Crushed by the ice

On August 1, an ice floe fractured and grinding noises were heard beneath the ship as the floe piled underneath it, lifting Endurance and causing her to first heel starboard and then heel to port, as several deck beams began to buckle. Similar compression events kept happening until there was a sudden escalation on September 30. The hull began vibrating hard enough to shake the whole rigging as even more ice crushed against the hull. Even the linoleum on the floors buckled; Harry McNish wrote in his diary that it looked like Endurance "was going to pieces."

Yet another ice compression event occurred on October 17, pushing the vessel one meter into the air as the iron plates on the engine room's floor buckled and slid over each other. Ship scientist Reginald James wrote that "for a time things were not good as the pressure was mostly along the region of the engine room where there are no beams of any strength," while Captain Worsley described the engine room as "the weakest part of the ship."

By the afternoon, Endurance was heeled almost 30 degrees to port, so much so that the keel was visible from the starboard side, per Tuhkuri, although the ice started to fracture in the evening so that the ship could shift upright again. The crew finally abandoned ship on October 27 after an even more severe compression event hit a few days before. Endurance finally sank below the ice on November 21.

Tuhkuri's analysis of the structural damage to Endurance revealed that the rudder and the stern post were indeed torn off, confirmed by crew correspondence and diaries and by the underwater images taken of the wreck. The keel was also ripped off, with McNish noting in his diary that the ship broke into two halves as a result. The underwater images are less clear on this point, but Tuhkuri writes that there is something "some distance forward from the rudder, on the port side" that "could be the end of a displaced part of the keel sticking up from under the ship."

All the diaries mentioned the buckling and breaking of deck beams, and there was much structural damage to the ship's sides; for instance, Worsley writes of "great spikes of ice... forcing their way through the ship's sides." There are no visible holes in the wreck's sides in the underwater images, but Tuhkuri posits that the damage is likely buried in the mud on the sea bed, given that by late October, Endurance "was heavily listed and the bottom was exposed."

Based on his analysis, Tuhkuri concluded that the rudder wasn't the sole or primary reason for the ship's sinking. "Endurance would have sunk even if it did not have a rudder at all," Tuhkuri wrote; it was crushed by the ice, with no single reason for its eventual sinking. Shackleton himself described the process as ice floes "simply annihilating the ship."

Perhaps the most surprising finding is that Shackleton knew of Endurance's structural shortcomings even before undertaking the voyage. Per Tuhkuri, the devastating effects of compressive ice on ships were known to shipbuilders in the early 1900s. An early Swedish expedition was forced to abandon its ship Antarctic in February 1903 when it became trapped in the ice. Things progressed much like Endurance: the ice lifted Antarctic up so that the ship heeled over, with ice-crushed sides, buckling beams, broken planking, and a damaged rudder and stern post. The final sinking occurred when an advancing ice floe ripped off the keel.

Shackleton knew of Antarctic's fate and had even been involved in the rescue operation. He also helped Wilhelm Filchner make final preparations for Filchner's 1911–1913 polar expedition with a ship named Deutschland; he even advised his colleague to strengthen the ship's hull by adding diagonal beams, the better to withstand the Weddell Sea ice. Filchner did so, and as a result, Deutschland survived eight months of being trapped in compressive ice until the ship was finally able to break free and sail home. (It took a torpedo attack in 1917 to sink the good ship Deutschland.)

The same shipyard that modified Deutschland had also just signed a contract to build Endurance (then called Polaris). So both Shackleton and the shipbuilders knew how destructive compressive ice could be and how to bolster a ship against it. Yet Endurance was not outfitted with diagonal beams to strengthen its hull. And knowing this, Shackleton bought Endurance anyway for his 1914–1915 voyage. In a 1914 letter to his wife, he even compared the strength of its construction unfavorably with that of the Nimrod, the ship he used for his 1907–1909 expedition. So Shackleton had to know he was taking a big risk.

"Even simple structural analysis shows that the ship was not designed for the compressive pack ice conditions that eventually sank it," said Tuhkuri. "The danger of moving ice and compressive loads—and how to design a ship for such conditions—was well understood before the ship sailed south. So we really have to wonder why Shackleton chose a vessel that was not strengthened for compressive ice. We can speculate about financial pressures or time constraints, but the truth is, we may never know. At least we now have more concrete findings to flesh out the stories."

Polar Record, 2025. DOI: 10.1017/S0032247425100090 (About DOIs).

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Posted Tuesday 7 October 2025 at 6:10 am AEST (my time).

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The object, officially designated 2023 KQ14 and nicknamed “Ammonite” by the research team, follows a highly elongated orbit on the outer edge of the Solar System. Its discovery provides new insights into the formation and evolution of the Solar System and raises questions about the existence of the hypothetical Planet Nine.

Ammonite was first detected in March, May, and August 2023 as part of the FOSSIL project (Formation of the Outer Solar System: An Icy Legacy), which employs the Subaru Telescope’s wide-field prime-focus camera, Hyper Suprime-Cam. FOSSIL, launched in 2020 by an international team led by researchers from Japan and Taiwan, aims to investigate icy bodies that preserve traces of the Solar System’s earliest planetesimals. The project’s name reflects its goal of uncovering “fossils” of the Solar System’s infancy.

Follow-up observations in July 2024 with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope refined Ammonite’s orbital path. Additional searches of archival data revealed the object in images from the Dark Energy Camera on the Blanco 4-meter telescope in 2014 and 2021, as well as in data from the Kitt Peak National Observatory in 2005. These findings extended the observational record to 19 years, significantly improving the accuracy of its orbit.

Numerical simulations conducted by the FOSSIL team, including those run on the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan(NAOJ)’s computing cluster, indicate that Ammonite has maintained a stable orbit since the early stages of the Solar System, at least 4.5 billion years. Although its current orbit differs from those of the other three known sednoids, models suggest that their orbits were closely aligned about 4.2 billion years ago. This divergence implies that the outer Solar System is more diverse and complex than previously thought.

The unusual orbit of Ammonite also places new constraints on the Planet Nine hypothesis. Some astronomers have argued that the clustering of sednoid orbits could be explained by the gravitational influence of a large, unseen planet far beyond Neptune. However, Ammonite’s misaligned orbit reduces the likelihood of this explanation, suggesting instead that if Planet Nine exists, its orbit must lie farther out than earlier predictions.

The Planet Nine hypothesis proposes the existence of a large, unseen planet in the far outer Solar System, possibly 5–10 times the mass of Earth. It was suggested to explain the unusual clustering of orbits of distant trans-Neptunian objects, which appear influenced by a massive body’s gravity.

Another possibility is that a planet once present in the Solar System was ejected, leaving behind the unusual orbital patterns observed today. Ammonite’s location, far beyond the reach of Neptune’s gravitational influence, makes it particularly valuable for studying the Solar System’s early history. Objects in this region are thought to preserve evidence of ancient events that shaped the outer Solar System. Because spacecraft missions have so far explored only limited regions, wide-field surveys such as FOSSIL are essential for expanding knowledge of these distant populations.

The discovery of Ammonite highlights the Subaru Telescope’s unique capability to detect faint, remote objects. With only four sednoids known to date, each new detection provides rare and critical evidence about the Solar System’s distant frontier. Ammonite, with its stable orbit and long observational record, is expected to serve as a natural archive of the Solar System’s infancy, offering clues to both its origins and its long-term evolution.

The International Astronomical Union will assign a formal name to 2023 KQ14 in the future. Until then, astronomers will continue to monitor Ammonite and search for additional sednoids, with the aim of building a more complete picture of the Solar System’s past.

Source: Subaru Telescope, NAOJ

This article was generated with some help from AI and reviewed by an editor. Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, this material is used for the purpose of news reporting. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.

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Posted Monday 6 October 2025 at 5:57 pm AEST (my time).

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In a 2022 survey of 3,000 U.S. adults, more than one-third of respondents reported that on most days, they feel “completely overwhelmed” by stress. At the same time, a growing body of research is documenting the negative health consequences of higher stress levels, which include increased rates of cancer, heart disease, autoimmune conditions and even dementia.

Assuming people’s daily lives are unlikely to get less stressful anytime soon, simple and effective ways to mitigate these effects are needed.

This is where dogs can help.

As researchers at the University of Denver’s Institute for Human-Animal Connection, we study the effects animal companions have on their humans.

Dozens of studies over the last 40 years have confirmed that pet dogs help humans feel more relaxed. This would explain the growing phenomenon of people relying on emotional support dogs to assist them in navigating everyday life. Dog owners have also been shown to have a 24% lower risk of death and a four times greater chance of surviving for at least a year after a heart attack.

Now, a new study that we conducted with a team of colleagues suggests that dogs might have a deeper and more biologically complex effect on humans than scientists previously believed. And this complexity may have profound implications for human health.

How stress works

The human response to stress is a finely tuned and coordinated set of various physiological pathways. Previous studies of the effects of dogs on human stress focused on just one pathway at a time. For our study, we zoomed out a bit and measured multiple biological indicators of the body’s state, or biomarkers, from both of the body’s major stress pathways. This allowed us to get a more complete picture of how a dog’s presence affects stress in the human body.

The stress pathways we measured are the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal, or HPA, axis and the sympathoadrenal medullary, or SAM, axis.

When a person experiences a stressful event, the SAM axis acts quickly, triggering a “fight or flight” response that includes a surge of adrenaline, leading to a burst of energy that helps us meet threats. This response can be measured through an enzyme called alpha-amylase.

At the same time, but a little more slowly, the HPA axis activates the adrenal glands to produce the hormone cortisol. This can help a person meet threats that might last for hours or even days. If everything goes well, when the danger ends, both axes settle down, and the body goes back to its calm state.

While stress can be an uncomfortable feeling, it has been important to human survival. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors had to respond effectively to acute stress events like an animal attack. In such instances, over-responding could be as ineffective as under-responding. Staying in an optimal stress response zone maximises humans’ chances of survival.

More to the story

After cortisol is released by the adrenal glands, it eventually makes its way into your saliva, making it an easily accessible biomarker to track responses. Because of this, most research on dogs and stress has focused on salivary cortisol alone.

For example, several studies have found that people exposed to a stressful situation have a lower cortisol response if they’re with a dog than if they’re alone – even lower than if they’re with a friend.

While these studies have shown that having a dog nearby can lower cortisol levels during a stressful event, suggesting the person is calmer, we suspected that was just part of the story.

What our study measured

For our study, we recruited about 40 dog owners to participate in a 15-minute gold standard laboratory stress test. This involves public speaking and oral math in front of a panel of expressionless people posing as behavioural specialists.

The participants were randomly assigned to bring their dogs to the lab with them or to leave their dogs at home. We measured cortisol in blood samples taken before, immediately after and about 45 minutes following the test as a biomarker of HPA axis activity. And unlike previous studies, we also measured the enzyme alpha-amylase in the same blood samples as a biomarker of the SAM axis.

People who had their dog with them showed lower cortisol spikes (220 Selfmade studio - stock.adobe.com)

As expected based on previous studies, the people who had their dog with them showed lower cortisol spikes. But we also found that people with their dog experienced a clear spike of alpha-amylase, while those without their dog showed almost no response.

No response may sound like a good thing, but in fact, a flat alpha-amylase response can be a sign of a dysregulated response to stress, often seen in people experiencing high stress responses, chronic stress or even PTSD. This lack of response is caused by chronic or overwhelming stress that can change how our nervous system responds to stressors.

In contrast, the participants with their dogs had a more balanced response: Their cortisol didn’t spike too high, but their alpha-amylase still activated. This shows that they were alert and engaged throughout the test, then able to return to normal within 45 minutes. That’s the sweet spot for handling stress effectively. Our research suggests that our canine companions keep us in a healthy zone of stress response.

Dogs and human health

This more nuanced understanding of the biological effects of dogs on the human stress response opens up exciting possibilities. Based on the results of our study, our team has begun a new study using thousands of biomarkers to delve deeper into the biology of how psychiatric service dogs reduce PTSD in military veterans.

But one thing is already clear: Dogs aren’t just good company. They might just be one of the most accessible and effective tools for staying healthy in a stressful world.

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The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.

Since their discovery in 1982, exotic materials known as quasicrystals have bedeviled physicists and chemists. Their atoms arrange themselves into chains of pentagons, decagons, and other shapes to form patterns that never quite repeat. These patterns seem to defy physical laws and intuition. How can atoms possibly “know” how to form elaborate nonrepeating arrangements without an advanced understanding of mathematics?

“Quasicrystals are one of those things that as a materials scientist, when you first learn about them, you’re like, ‘That’s crazy,’” said Wenhao Sun, a materials scientist at the University of Michigan.

Recently, though, a spate of results has peeled back some of their secrets. In one study, Sun and collaborators adapted a method for studying crystals to determine that at least some quasicrystals are thermodynamically stable—their atoms won’t settle into a lower-energy arrangement. This finding helps explain how and why quasicrystals form. A second study has yielded a new way to engineer quasicrystals and observe them in the process of forming. And a third research group has logged previously unknown properties of these unusual materials.

Historically, quasicrystals have been challenging to create and characterize.

“There’s no doubt that they have interesting properties,” said Sharon Glotzer, a computational physicist who is also based at the University of Michigan but was not involved with this work. “But being able to make them in bulk, to scale them up, at an industrial level—[that] hasn’t felt possible, but I think that this will start to show us how to do it reproducibly.”

‘Forbidden’ Symmetries

Nearly a decade before the Israeli physicist Dan Shechtman discovered the first examples of quasicrystals in the lab, the British mathematical physicist Roger Penrose thought up the “quasiperiodic”—almost but not quite repeating—patterns that would manifest in these materials.

Penrose developed sets of tiles that could cover an infinite plane with no gaps or overlaps, in patterns that do not, and cannot, repeat. Unlike tessellations made of triangles, rectangles, and hexagons—shapes that are symmetric across two, three, four or six axes, and which tile space in periodic patterns—Penrose tilings have “forbidden” fivefold symmetry. The tiles form pentagonal arrangements, yet pentagons can’t fit snugly side by side to tile the plane. So, whereas the tiles align along five axes and tessellate endlessly, different sections of the pattern only look similar; exact repetition is impossible. Penrose’s quasiperiodic tilings made the cover of Scientific American in 1977, five years before they made the jump from pure mathematics to the real world.

In 1982, Shechtman found quasiperiodic atomic structures with fivefold symmetry in lab-created metal alloys—something that most materials scientists had dismissed as impossible. The physicists Paul Steinhardt and Dov Levine gave the name “quasicrystals” to this new class of materials and classified their allowed symmetries. Steinhardt later discovered naturally occurring examples of quasicrystals.

By the time Shechtman won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery, hundreds of researchers around the world were trying to explain these impossible-seeming structures and find uses for them.

Though fascinating to physicists, quasicrystals have so far found few applications. They exist in an in-between realm—they’re not as ordered as crystals, not as unstructured as glass, and less malleable than the metals they’re made from. Their ever-varying structure makes it tough to definitively pin down their properties.

Some applications have been identified. Because they are generally poor conductors of heat and electricity and are relatively durable and nonreactive, they’re potentially useful for nonstick cookware coatings, and for reinforcing steel in medical devices and razors. There have also been attempts to employ their unique patterns to create atomic anti-fraud tags for works of art. Large-scale use, though, has been hampered by how inherently difficult quasicrystals are to understand.

Whereas Penrose tiles provide an illuminating mathematical description, they say nothing about the mechanism by which atoms self-order into these patterns. With quasiperiodicity, one atom’s position determines those of others in distant parts of the material, even though these atoms don’t directly interact. How do they do it?

Old Method, New Use

Endeavoring to find out, Sun and his colleagues studied two types of quasicrystals, both of them metal alloys whose atoms arrange themselves into 30-sided, three-dimensional shapes known as rhombic triacontahedrons. Like pentagons, these can’t sit snugly side by side. The shapes therefore take on quasiperiodic patterns.

X-ray diffraction measurements had revealed the atomic structure of the quasicrystals. The researchers applied a technique called density functional theory (DFT) to this data.

DFT involves measuring the states of electrons or other quantum particles within a material and using that information to predict the material’s properties, like hardness and stability.

The complexity of DFT calculations grows exponentially with the number of particles. This limitation is manageable in conventional crystals because their repeating atomic structures mean that a small “unit cell” section can provide representative information about the whole. But in quasicrystals, what’s true in one region of the sample might not be true elsewhere.

To apply DFT, the researchers considered randomly selected chunks of their larger quasicrystals, a process they call “nanoscooping.” Their smallest scoop contained 24 atoms, their largest 740. Even at these limited sizes, “these were the most expensive DFT calculations of solids of all time,” Sun said—the first such calculation to use “exascale computing,” involving more than a billion billion operations per second.

They calculated the surface and bulk energies of their samples: how much energy atoms require to maintain their bonds, both at the surface and in the interior. Because surface atoms have bonds only on one side, surface energy is always higher than bulk energy. The difference between surface and bulk energies, as well as their combined totals, varies from material to material, affecting how easily these atomic structures nucleate and grow. Until this study, quasicrystals had eluded these types of computations. But the different-size scoops allowed the team to model the progression of energies from smaller to larger, extrapolating from there to the quasicrystal as a whole.

The elements that make up the compounds in a quasicrystal can also be combined into other forms, including many known stable crystalline materials. Plotting the combined surface and bulk energies of various stable compounds forms a shape—an abstract zone of stability for materials made from those elements. Sun and his colleagues found that the energies they calculated with this new DFT approach did indeed fall on the shape.

“We showed in the paper that quasicrystals are, in fact, stable, which I think would be surprising to a lot of people,” Sun said.

“That’s just freaking awesome. It’s a really clever thing,” Glotzer said. “Until now, no one has ever successfully tried to do DFT calculations on something that wasn’t periodic.”

Michael Widom, a physicist at Carnegie Mellon University, said the stability result might help explain how quasicrystals form in the first place. “It answers a fundamental question. If you’re confronted with the existence of something, you would like to know, ‘Why does it exist?’” he said. “It satisfies intellectual curiosity.”

Materials naturally tend toward lower-energy states. The overall energy depends on how closely atoms are packed together, as well as the shapes of their bonds. In the quasicrystals that the Michigan team studied, the rhombic triacontahedrons forced quasiperiodic patterns and appeared to require relatively little energy.

“We haven’t proven this conclusively, but my interpretation is that the triacontahedrons, these building blocks of quasicrystals, are a very happy shape,” Sun said. “By happy, I mean a low-energy, stable-shaped building block.”

Dynabead Quasicrystals

A recently published experiment co-led by Brennan Sprinkle, an applied mathematician at the Colorado School of Mines, was designed to guide particles to that happy place.

Atoms are so tiny that physicists can’t easily observe or control their assembly into quasicrystals. So Sprinkle and his collaborators developed a new, comparatively simple fabrication method: They grew quasicrystals out of commercially sold particles called Dynabeads. At micrometers across—10,000 times larger than individual atoms—Dynabeads are vastly more easily controlled and observed. Using magnetic and electrical fields, the researchers induced quasiperiodic structures to “just fold out from some nucleation point like a three-dimensional snowflake,” Sprinkle said.

Brennan Sprinkle and colleagues at the Colorado School of Mines recently induced microspheres called Dynabeads to assemble into a quasicrystal.

Photograph: Fangrong Zou

 

The diffraction pattern created from hitting the Dynabead quasicrystal with a laser reveals the twelvefold symmetry of its atomic structure.

Photograph: Brennan Sprinkle

 

Other researchers see practical potential in this advance.

“This work provides the first live, optical-scale system for studying quasicrystal formation in real time—a genuine advance,” said Chad Mirkin, a chemist at Northwestern University. “It is not yet clear the mechanistic insights will generalize to other quasicrystal systems, but in terms of synthesis and application, it is a strong, creative step forward.”

As researchers gain insight into how quasicrystals form, they’re also continuing to uncover unexpected properties. A team of Japanese researchers recently reported the first-ever observation of antiferromagnetism in quasicrystals. This phenomenon, in which particles’ magnetic moments point in alternating directions, was previously viewed as too regular to manifest in the nonrepeating structure of quasicrystals.

These advances in synthesis and characterization make it possible to contemplate applications, invigorating a research community that was already driven by a kind of joyous curiosity.

“I think that there is so much exciting work being done on quasicrystals because they have interesting properties when studied from any angle: from the mathematics of aperiodic tilings, the physics of superconductivity, the chemistry of alloys that form quasicrystals,” Sprinkle said. “There’s a sort of web of interest here so that mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and even artists can be working together to understand and expand all the amazing properties that quasicrystals have.”

Sun finds quasicrystals as crazy now as when he first learned about them. “They’re like the platypus of materials,” he said. “They have aspects of crystals; they have aspects of amorphous materials. Is the platypus a better animal than any other? Not really, but it’s fascinating, this mammal that lays eggs.”

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

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Posted Monday 6 October 2025 at 2:42 am AEST (my time).

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Human papillomavirus (HPV) is responsible for about 70% of head and neck cancers in the United States, making it the most common type of cancer linked to the virus. Rates of these cancers continue to rise each year. Unlike HPV-related cervical cancers, which have established screening options, there is currently no test to detect HPV-associated head and neck cancers.

As a result, most cases are diagnosed only after tumors have already expanded to billions of cells, causing symptoms and often spreading to nearby lymph nodes. Developing screening tools that can identify these cancers much earlier would allow patients to begin treatment sooner and improve outcomes.

Detecting cancer years before symptoms

In a newly funded federal study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, researchers at Mass General Brigham demonstrated that their liquid biopsy test, called HPV-DeepSeek, can detect HPV-related head and neck cancers as early as 10 years before symptoms develop. According to the study’s authors, diagnosing these cancers earlier could increase treatment success rates and reduce the need for aggressive therapies.

“Our study shows for the first time that we can accurately detect HPV-associated cancers in asymptomatic individuals many years before they are ever diagnosed with cancer,” said lead study author Daniel L. Faden, MD, FACS, a head and neck surgical oncologist and principal investigator in the Mike Toth Head and Neck Cancer Research Center at Mass Eye and Ear, a member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system.

“By the time patients enter our clinics with symptoms from the cancer, they require treatments that cause significant, life-long side effects. We hope tools like HPV-DeepSeek will allow us to catch these cancers at their very earliest stages, which ultimately can improve patient outcomes and quality of life.”

How HPV-DeepSeek works

HPV-DeepSeek relies on whole-genome sequencing to identify tiny fragments of HPV DNA that separate from tumors and circulate in the blood. Earlier studies by the same research group demonstrated that the test could reach 99% specificity and 99% sensitivity in diagnosing cancer at a patient’s initial clinic visit, performing better than existing diagnostic approaches.

To determine whether HPV-DeepSeek could detect HPV-associated head and neck cancer long before diagnosis, researchers tested 56 samples from the Mass General Brigham Biobank: 28 from individuals who went on to develop HPV-associated head and neck cancer years later, and 28 from healthy controls.

HPV-DeepSeek detected HPV tumor DNA in 22 out of 28 blood samples from patients who later developed the cancer, whereas all 28 control samples tested negative, indicating that the test is highly specific. The test was better able to detect HPV DNA in blood samples that were collected closer to the time of the patients’ diagnosis, and the earliest positive result was for a blood sample collected 7.8 years prior to diagnosis.

Using machine learning, the researchers were able to improve the test’s power so that it accurately identified 27 out of 28 cancer cases, including samples collected up to 10 years prior to diagnosis.

The authors are now validating these findings in a second blinded study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) using hundreds of samples collected as part of the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial (PLCO) at the National Cancer Institute.

Reference: “Circulating tumor human papillomavirus DNA whole genome sequencing enables human papillomavirus-associated oropharynx cancer early detection” by Dipon Das, Shun Hirayama, Ling Aye, Michael E Bryan, Saskia Naegele, Brian Zhao, Vasileios Efthymiou, Julia Mendel, Adam S Fisch, Zoe Guan, Lea Kröller, Birgitta E Michels, Tim Waterboer, Jeremy D Richmon, Viktor Adalsteinsson, Michael S Lawrence, Matthew G Crowson, A John Iafrate and Daniel L Faden, 10 September 2025, JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
DOI: 10.1093/jnci/djaf249.

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Magic mushrooms have been used in traditional ceremonies and for recreational purposes for thousands of years. However, a new study has found that mushrooms evolved the ability to make the same psychoactive substance twice. The discovery has important implications for both our understanding of these mushrooms’ role in nature and their medical potential.

Magic mushrooms produce psilocybin, which your body converts into its active form, psilocin, when you ingest it. Psilocybin rose in popularity in the 1960s and was eventually classed as a Schedule 1 drug in the US in 1970, and as a Class A drug in 1971 in the UK, the designations given to drugs that have high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use. This put a stop to research on the medical use of psilocybin for decades.

But recent clinical trials have shown that psilocybin can reduce depression severity, suicidal thoughts, and chronic anxiety. Given its potential for medical treatments, there is renewed interest in understanding how psilocybin is made in nature and how we can produce it sustainably.

The new study, led by pharmaceutical microbiology researcher Dirk Hoffmeister, from Friedrich Schiller University Jena, discovered that mushrooms can make psilocybin in two different ways, using different types of enzymes. This also helped the researchers discover a new way to make psilocybin in a lab.

Based on the work led by Hoffmeister, enzymes from two types of unrelated mushrooms under study appear to have evolved independently from each other and take different routes to create the exact same compound.

This is a process known as convergent evolution, which means that unrelated living organisms evolve two distinct ways to produce the same trait. One example is that of caffeine, where different plants including coffee, tea, cacao, and guaraná have independently evolved the ability to produce the stimulant.

This is the first time that convergent evolution has been observed in two organisms that belong to the fungal kingdom. Interestingly, the two mushrooms in question have very different lifestyles. Inocybe corydalina, also known as the greenflush fibrecap and the object of Hoffmeister’s study, grows in association with the roots of different kinds of trees. Psilocybe mushrooms, on the other hand, traditionally known as magic mushrooms, live on nutrients that they acquire by decomposing dead organic matter, such as decaying wood, grass, roots, or dung.

The observation that mushrooms that inhabit two different niches make the same psychedelic compound raises questions regarding the ecological role of this molecule. A possible explanation as to why both mushrooms produce psilocybin could be that it is intended to deter predators, such as insects, that may be tempted to eat their fruiting bodies. This would be similar to the role of caffeine, which is also known to act as a natural pesticide, deterring insects and other pests from feeding on certain plants.

Turning discovery into opportunity

This study may provide scientists with additional tools to produce psilocybin to use for medical purposes. Mushrooms tend to grow slowly both in nature and in the laboratory. Psilocybe (magic mushrooms) take about two months to grow from spores to mature mushrooms.

If large amounts of psilocybin are needed for testing in clinical trials or for future medical use, quick and sustainable ways of producing it should be investigated. Currently, psilocybin is produced using synthetic material because it is faster than extracting the compound from mushrooms and has higher yields. This has its drawbacks, though. The current synthetic extraction methods that scientists use generate hazardous waste and include key steps that can only be carried out on a small scale.

In a separate study published in April 2025, Hoffmeister and his coworkers came up with a new approach to produce psilocybin. His team used enzymes derived from fungi to catalyse the reactions to make psilocybin, rather than a fully synthetic approach, which uses lab-made materials and catalysts. This approach can be carried out on a larger scale than the usual, fully synthetic method. The immobilized enzymes they used are also reusable, making the process more sustainable.

Enzymes are inherently more sustainable than non-biological catalysts because they generally operate in mild conditions (such as low temperature and neutral pH) and are easier to purify, which reduces energy consumption and waste. Also, enzymes are biodegradable, which helps decrease the environmental impact of industrial processes.

Hoffmeister's most recent work provides the scientific community with additional enzymes that can be used to make psilocybin.

While we can only speculate as to why different mushrooms would come up with alternative ways of making the same psychedelic compound, this discovery opens new avenues for the large-scale production of a promising candidate drug.

Fabrizio Alberti, associate professor in life sciences, University of Warwick. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Posted Sunday 5 October 2025 at 3:46 am AEST (my time).

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Their study, published in Science Immunology, may also open the door to treating other diseases where tissue damage and scarring are major problems.

Right now, most asthma treatments focus on reducing inflammation in the lungs using steroid inhalers. While these treatments help many people, asthma still causes serious health problems and deaths. In the U.K. alone, more than 7 million people have asthma, and over 1,400 people died from asthma-related issues in 2022.

One of the biggest challenges in treating asthma is the long-term damage it causes to the lungs. Over time, asthma can make the lungs stiff and scarred due to changes in the tissue. These changes include a buildup of certain proteins called extracellular matrix collagens, which were thought to be irreversible.

But the new research shows there may be a way to reverse these changes. Using animal models with features similar to severe asthma in humans, the researchers discovered that simply stopping inflammation isn’t enough to fix the damaged lung tissue.

However, when they blocked specific protein molecules linked to inflammation and tissue damage, the lung scarring was “remarkably reversed.”

Dr. Tara Sutherland from the University of Aberdeen led the study. She explained that while current asthma drugs are important, they might not be enough to fully prevent or heal the lung damage seen in severe cases. This study shows that structural changes in the lungs can happen separately from inflammation—and may need their own treatment.

The team believes that better understanding how lung tissue changes in asthma can lead to new therapies. These could be especially useful for people with severe asthma and may work alongside current anti-inflammatory drugs.

Although this discovery is still in the early stages, it holds promise for other diseases too. Many illnesses—including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), chronic heart disease, and liver cirrhosis—also involve tissue scarring. Together, these types of diseases account for around 40% of deaths worldwide.

James Parkinson, a researcher from the University of Manchester, said this study gives us a deeper understanding of how asthma develops and highlights the need to look at all parts of lung damage when creating new treatments.

This breakthrough could lead to therapies that not only stop disease from getting worse but actually heal damaged tissues—something once thought impossible in many chronic conditions.

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For decades, people diagnosed with prediabetes—a condition affecting up to one in three adults depending on age—have been told the same thing by their doctors: eat healthily and lose weight to avoid developing diabetes.

This approach hasn't been working for all. Despite unchanged medical recommendations for more than 20 years, diabetes prevalence continues rising globally. Most people with prediabetes find weight-loss goals hard to reach, leaving them discouraged and still at high risk of diabetes.

Our latest research, published in Nature Medicine, reveals a different approach entirely. We found that prediabetes can go into remission—with blood sugar returning to normal—even without weight loss.

About one in four people in lifestyle intervention programs bring their blood sugar back to normal without losing any weight.

Remarkably, this weight-stable remission protects against future diabetes just as effectively as remission achieved through weight loss.

This represents a significant shift in how doctors might treat overweight or obese patients at high risk for diabetes. But how is it possible to reduce blood glucose levels without losing weight, or even while gaining weight?

The answer lies in how fat is distributed throughout the body. Not all body fat behaves the same way.

The visceral fat deep in our abdomen, surrounding our internal organs, acts as a metabolic troublemaker. This belly fat drives chronic inflammation that interferes with insulin—the hormone responsible for controlling blood sugar levels. When insulin can't function properly, blood glucose rises.

In contrast, subcutaneous fat—the fat directly under our skin—can be beneficial. This type of fat tissue produces hormones that help insulin work more effectively. Our study shows that people who reverse prediabetes without weight loss shift fat from deep within their abdomen to beneath their skin, even if their total weight stays the same.

We've also uncovered another piece of the puzzle. Natural hormones that are mimicked by new weight-loss medications like Wegovy and Mounjaro appear to play a crucial role in this process. These hormones, particularly GLP-1, help pancreatic beta cells secrete insulin when blood sugar levels rise.

People who reverse their prediabetes without losing weight seem to naturally enhance this hormone system, while simultaneously suppressing other hormones that typically drive glucose levels higher.

Targeting fat redistribution, not just weight loss

The practical implications are encouraging. Instead of focusing only on the scales, people with prediabetes can aim to shift body fat with diet and exercise.

Research shows that polyunsaturated fatty acids, abundant in Mediterranean diets rich in fish oil, olives and nuts, may help reduce visceral belly fat. Similarly, endurance training can decrease abdominal fat even without overall weight loss.

This doesn't mean weight loss should be abandoned as a goal—it remains beneficial for overall health and diabetes prevention.

However, our findings suggest that achieving normal blood glucose levels, regardless of weight changes, should become a primary target for prediabetes treatment.

This approach could help millions of people who have struggled with traditional weight-loss programs but might still achieve meaningful health improvements through metabolic changes.

For health care providers, this research suggests a need to broaden treatment approaches beyond weight-focused interventions. Monitoring blood glucose improvements and encouraging fat redistribution through targeted nutrition and exercise could provide alternative pathways to diabetes prevention for patients who find weight loss particularly difficult.

The implications extend globally, where diabetes represents one of the fastest-growing health problems. By recognizing that prediabetes can improve without weight loss, we open new possibilities for preventing a disease that affects hundreds of millions worldwide and continues rapidly expanding.

This research fundamentally reframes diabetes prevention, suggesting that metabolic health improvements—not just weight reduction—should be central to clinical practice. For the many people living with prediabetes who have felt discouraged by unsuccessful weight-loss attempts, this offers renewed hope and practical alternative strategies for reducing their diabetes risk.

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A Scandinavian clinical trial has revealed that low-dose aspirin can halve the risk of colon and rectal cancer recurrence in patients with specific genetic mutations. The research, involving over 3,500 patients, is the first randomized study to confirm aspirin’s powerful effect in this context. The findings suggest aspirin could become a widely available, inexpensive precision medicine, reshaping cancer treatment strategies globally.

A Swedish-led research team at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital has shown in a new randomized clinical trial that a low dose of the well-known medicine aspirin halves the risk of recurrence after surgery in patients with colon and rectal cancer with a certain type of genetic alteration in the tumor.

Every year, nearly two million people worldwide are diagnosed with colorectal cancer. Between 20 and 40 percent develop metastases, which makes the disease both more difficult to treat and more deadly.

Previous observational studies have suggested that aspirin may reduce the risk of certain cancers and possibly also the risk of recurrence after surgery in patients with colorectal cancer harboring mutations in genes within the PIK3 signaling pathway.

These genes regulate key cellular processes such as growth and division. When mutated, these processes can become dysregulated, leading to uncontrolled cell proliferation and cancer development. However, prior findings have been inconsistent and no randomized clinical trials had previously confirmed the association. To address this gap, the ALASCCA trial was initiated and has now been published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The current study included more than 3,500 patients with colon and rectal cancer from 33 hospitals in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland. Patients whose tumors showed a specific genetic mutation in the PIK3 signaling pathway -- a mutation found in approximately 40 percent of patients -- were randomized to receive either 160 mg of aspirin daily or a placebo for three years after surgery.

For patients with the genetic mutation in PIK3, the risk of recurrence was reduced by 55 percent in those who received aspirin compared with the placebo group.

"Aspirin is being tested here in a completely new context as a precision medicine treatment. This is a clear example of how we can use genetic information to personalize treatment and at the same time save both resources and suffering," says first author Anna Martling, professor at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, Karolinska Institutet, and senior consultant surgeon at Karolinska University Hospital.

So how does aspirin reduce the risk of recurrence of colon and rectal cancer? The researchers believe that the effect is likely due to aspirin acting through several parallel mechanisms - it reduces inflammation, inhibits platelet function and tumor growth. This combination makes the environment less favorable for cancer.

"Although we do not yet fully understand all the molecular links, the findings strongly support the biological rationale and suggest that the treatment may be particularly effective in genetically defined subgroups of patients," says Anna Martling.

The researchers believe that the results could have global significance and influence treatment guidelines for colon and rectal cancer worldwide. Anna Martling sees the fact that the drug is well established as a major advantage.

"Aspirin is a drug that is readily available globally and extremely inexpensive compared to many modern cancer drugs, which is very positive," says Anna Martling.

The study was funded in part by the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Cancer Society. The researchers state that there are no conflicts of interest.

Facts: What is aspirin?

Aspirin is a medicine that contains acetylsalicylic acid, a substance that relieves pain, fever, and inflammation. It belongs to the group of NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs). The effect usually occurs within 30 minutes. In low doses, it is also used to prevent blood clots.

Common side effects include stomach problems and increased bleeding tendency. People with stomach ulcers, bleeding disorders, or asthma should avoid aspirin. Aspirin is available over the counter in higher doses, but should be used with caution, especially in combination with other blood-thinning agents or alcohol.

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A new listing of the 50 most concerning pieces of space debris in low-Earth orbit is dominated by relics more than a quarter-century old, primarily dead rockets left to hurtle through space at the end of their missions.

"The things left before 2000 are still the majority of the problem," said Darren McKnight, lead author of a paper presented Friday at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney. "Seventy-six percent of the objects in the top 50 were deposited last century, and 88 percent of the objects are rocket bodies. That's important to note, especially with some disturbing trends right now."

The 50 objects identified by McKnight and his coauthors are the ones most likely to drive the creation of more space junk in low-Earth orbit (LEO) through collisions with other debris fragments. The objects are whizzing around the Earth at nearly 5 miles per second, flying in a heavily trafficked part of LEO between 700 and 1,000 kilometers (435 to 621 miles) above the Earth.

An impact with even a modestly sized object at orbital velocity would create countless pieces of debris, potentially triggering a cascading series of additional collisions clogging LEO with more and more space junk, a scenario called the Kessler Syndrome.

McKnight, a senior technical fellow at the orbital intelligence company LeoLabs, spoke with Ars before the paper's release. In the paper, analysts considered how close objects are to other space traffic, their altitude, and their mass. Larger debris at higher altitudes pose a higher long-term risk because they could create more debris that would remain in orbit for centuries or longer.

Russia and the Soviet Union lead the pack with 34 objects listed in McKnight's Top 50, followed by China with 10, the United States with three, Europe with two, and Japan with one. Russia's SL-16 and SL-8 rockets are the worst offenders, combining to take 30 of the Top 50 slots. Here's the Top 10:

1. A Russian SL-16 rocket launched in 2004
2. Europe's Envisat satellite launched in 2002
3. A Japanese H-II rocket launched in 1996
4. A Chinese CZ-2C rocket launched in 2013
5. A Soviet SL-8 rocket launched in 1985
6. A Soviet SL-16 rocket launched in 1988
7. Russia's Kosmos 2237 satellite launched in 1993
8. Russia's Kosmos 2334 satellite launched in 1996
9. A Soviet SL-16 rocket launched in 1988
10. A Chinese CZ-2D rocket launched in 2019

The list published Friday is an update to a paper authored by McKnight in 2020. This year's list goes a step further by analyzing the overall effect on debris risk if some or all of the worst offenders were removed. If someone sent missions to retrieve all 50 of the objects, the overall debris-generating potential in low-Earth orbit would be reduced by 50 percent, according to McKnight. If just the Top 10 were removed, the risk would be cut by 30 percent.

A troubling trend

"The bad news is, since January 1, 2024, we've had 26 rocket bodies abandoned in low-Earth orbit that will stay in orbit for more than 25 years," McKnight told Ars.

The 25-year discriminator is important because that is the guideline promulgated by the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, an international group that includes representatives from all of the major space powers: the United States, China, Russia, Europe, India, and Japan. If a piece of space junk is left in low enough of an orbit, aerodynamic resistance will drag it back into the atmosphere in less than 25 years.

US and European governments have policies requiring launch companies to deposit their spent upper stages to altitudes low enough to naturally reenter the atmosphere within 25 years, or deorbit their rockets altogether. For example, SpaceX routinely deorbits the upper stages of its Falcon 9 rocket, usually driving them back into the atmosphere over an unpopulated part of the ocean. The policy does not apply to missions delivering satellites to altitudes above low-Earth orbit.

China, on the other hand, frequently abandons upper stages in orbit. China launched 21 of the 26 hazardous new rocket bodies over the last 21 months, each averaging more than 4 metric tons (8,800 pounds). Two more came from US launchers, one from Russia, one from India, and one from Iran.

This trend is likely to continue as China steps up deployment of two megaconstellations—Guowang and Thousand Sails—with thousands of communications satellites in low-Earth orbit. Launches of these constellations began last year. The Guowang and Thousand Sails satellites are relatively small and likely capable of maneuvering out of the way of space debris, although China has not disclosed their exact capabilities.

However, most of the rockets used for Guowang and Thousand Sails launches have left their upper stages in orbit. McKnight said nine upper stages China has abandoned after launching Guowang and Thousand Sails satellites will stay in orbit for more than 25 years, violating the international guidelines.

It will take hundreds of rockets to fully populate China's two major megaconstellations. The prospect of so much new space debris is worrisome, McKnight said.

"In the next few years, if they continue the same trend, they're going to leave well over 100 rocket bodies over the 25-year rule if they continue to deploy these constellations," he said. "So, the trend is not good."

There are technical and practical reasons not to deorbit an upper stage at the end of its mission. Some older models of Chinese rockets simply don't have the capability to reignite their engines in space, leaving them adrift after deploying their payloads. Even if a rocket flies with a restartable upper stage engine, a launch provider must reserve enough fuel for a deorbit burn. This eats into the rocket's payload capacity, meaning it must carry fewer satellites.

"We know the Chinese have the capability to not leave rocket bodies," McKnight said. One example is the Long March 5 rocket, which launched three times with batches of Guowang satellites. On those missions, the Long March 5 flew with an upper stage called the YZ-2, a high-endurance maneuvering vehicle that deorbits itself at the end of its mission. The story isn't so good for launches using other types of rockets.

"With the other ones, they always leave a rocket body," McKnight said. "So, they have the capability to do sustainable practices, but on average, they do not."

Since 2000, China has accumulated more dead rocket mass in long-lived orbits than the rest of the world combined, according to McKnight. "But now we're at a point where it's actually kind of accelerating in the last two years as these constellations are getting deployed."

China is prioritizing the Guowang and Thousand Sails constellations. These networks are likely akin to SpaceX's Starlink broadband constellation, although there is some evidence that the Guowang program, in particular, has a military purpose.

"In their rush to move quickly, they are adding to the long-term collision hazard," McKnight said.

The deputy head of China's national space agency, Bian Zhigang, addressed the International Astronautical Congress on Monday. He was asked about China's commitment to good stewardship of the space environment. Bian acknowledged a "very serious challenge" in this area, "especially with megaconstellations." He did not mention China's problem with leaving rockets in orbit.

Bian said China is "currently researching" how to remove space debris from orbit. One of the missions China claims is testing space debris mitigation techniques has docked with multiple spacecraft in orbit, but US officials see it as a military threat. The same basic technologies needed for space debris cleanup—rendezvous and docking systems, robotic arms, and onboard automation—could be used to latch on to an adversary's satellite.

Silver lining

McKnight and his coauthors (from the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, and Russia) went the extra mile to assess how the space debris threat would change if some of the most hazardous objects dropped off the list. He said the results are promising.

"If you take out 10 of the objects, you reduce it by 30 percent," McKnight said. "That's a measurable change. I think that's what's been missing in the past about justifying active debris removal."

Active debris removal is an elusive proposition. While it is technically feasible, as several missions have shown, there's the question of who pays. Is there a viable market for space debris cleanup services? The European Space Agency and Japan's space agency have invested low levels of funding in debris removal initiatives. One of these projects, led by a Japanese company named Astroscale, completed a successful demonstration last year to set the stage for a future attempt to dock with a defunct Japanese rocket and steer it back into the atmosphere.

Astroscale was founded in 2013 for the purpose of ridding low-Earth orbit of space junk. Realizing the limited market for those missions, the company has pivoted to also pursue satellite servicing and refueling technology.

"We can make a measurable impact on the debris-generating potential, and the potential for the onset of the Kessler Syndrome by removing 10 or 20 objects," McKnight said. "The bad news is we just added 26 new objects in the last two years."

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Posted Saturday 4 October 2025 at 5:51 pm AEST (my time).

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Fermenting milk to make yogurt, cheeses, or kefir is an ancient practice, and different cultures have their own traditional methods, often preserved in oral histories. The forests of Bulgaria and Turkey have an abundance of red wood ants, for instance, so a time-honored Bulgarian yogurt-making practice involves dropping a few live ants (or crushed-up ant eggs) into the milk to jump-start fermentation. Scientists have now figured out why the ants are so effective in making edible yogurt, according to a paper published in the journal iScience. The authors even collaborated with chefs to create modern recipes using ant yogurt.

“Today’s yogurts are typically made with just two bacterial strains,” said co-author Leonie Jahn from the Technical University of Denmark. “If you look at traditional yogurt, you have much bigger biodiversity, varying based on location, households, and season. That brings more flavors, textures, and personality.”

If you want to study traditional culinary methods, it helps to go where those traditions emerged, since the locals likely still retain memories and oral histories of said culinary methods—in this case, Nova Mahala, Bulgaria, where co-author Sevgi Mutlu Sirakova's family still lives. To recreate the region's ant yogurt, the team followed instructions from Sirakova's uncle. They used fresh raw cow milk, warmed until scalding, "such that it could 'bite your pinkie finger,'" per the authors. Four live red wood ants were then collected from a local colony and added to the milk.

The authors secured the milk with cheesecloth and wrapped the glass container in fabric for insulation before burying it inside the ant colony, covering the container completely with the mound material. "The nest itself is known to produce heat and thus act as an incubator for yogurt fermentation," they wrote. They retrieved the container 26 hours later to taste it and check the pH, stirring it to observe the coagulation. The milk had definitely begun to thicken and sour, producing the early stage of yogurt. Tasters described it as "slightly tangy, herbaceous," with notes of "grass-fed fat."

To find out more, the authors conducted several lab experiments using worker ants collected locally in Denmark. They made three different versions under sterile conditions, using live ants, frozen ants, and dehydrated ants. They extracted DNA from the ants and the resulting yogurt to identify the microbes that were present and measured the bacterial loads, among other properties.

It turns out that the ants naturally contain both lactic acid and acetic acid bacteria—one species was very similar to the bacteria found in commercial sourdough starters—and these bacteria help coagulate the milk. Ants also carry formic acid as part of their natural chemical defense system, which acidifies the milk and creates the perfect environment for acid-loving microbes to thrive. Both the ants and the microbes contribute enzymes that help break down milk proteins to create yogurt. Only the live ants produced the desired microbial community.

A pinch of red wood ants

Researchers bury a jar of milk covered in cheesecloth and placed it in a red wood ant colony to incubate, 

following a traditional method where ants and their microbes help ferment dairy into yogurt.

David Zilber/CC BY-SA

 

Researchers tasted the first trials of ant yogurt, where the milk had begun to coagulate and acidify, which are signs of early yogurt fermentation.

David Zilber/CC BY-SA

 

Using ants for fermentation likely evolved as a makeshift method when starter cultures were in short supply. But would anyone in the 21st century voluntarily eat ant-made yogurt? To find out, the authors turned to Alchemist, a fine-dining restaurant in Copenhagen, Denmark, that boasts two Michelin stars. Alchemist very much falls under the molecular gastronomy rubric, known for providing a dining "experience," not just a fancy meal. So their chefs were an excellent choice to collaborate with to transform basic ant yogurt into various culinary delights. The chefs devised three recipes. (Ant body parts were removed via a strainer, for what it's worth.)

The first was an "ant-wich" (their version of an ice cream sandwich), made with ant yogurt ice cream with an ant gel filling within a delicate egg-white tuile, colored black with charcoal, and then stenciled via laser cutting into the shape of an ant. The second was an "ant cheese," similar to marscarpone, in which ants were used as the coagulant instead of the usual citric acid.

Finally, there was an aperitif cocktail clarified with ant milk wash—their version of the traditional Milk Punch dating back to the late 1600s (although the earliest written recipe was published in 1711). Once again, the ants were used as a coagulant for the milk wash, mixed with an alcoholic base of brandy, genepi liqueur, and apricot liqueur and garnished with four frozen ants.

The authors advise against making your own ant yogurt at home. The ants may carry parasites that could endanger human health. "Therefore, we caution against the general application of this fermentation, unless (a) practitioners maintain this as part of their heritage and cultures of food safety, or (b) practitioners have knowledge in food microbiology to allow for adequate food safety," they concluded.

If all this sounds too gross for words, bear in mind that in many cultures, ants and other creepy crawlies are considered delicacies. For instance, indigenous Brazilian people have eaten Ica leafcutter ants for centuries, sometimes called "Brazilian caviar." There's even a brand of award-winning gourmet cheese (Taiada Silvania) spiked with toasted Ica ants, described as having "notes of almonds and chestnuts, a slight fennel flavor, and the unmistakable crunch of ants."

We'll just call it an acquired taste.

DOI: iScience, 2025. 10.1016/j.isci.2025.113595  (About DOIs).

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It's a scenario Katie Ricketts, a principal economic research scientist at CSIRO, thinks about a lot.

"I've spoken with many in government and industry about this. Extreme heat makes farm work riskier, so managers need flexibility in how they use labor—while workers need protection. But demands for greater flexibility and worker protection are often at odds, straining productivity and staff retention."

That's usually when someone asks: "Won't robots fix this?"

While automation is making strides, Katie is pragmatic. Picking delicate crops—berries, grapes, orchard fruits—comes with challenges.

"It's not just about dexterity," she explained. "It's the judgment—knowing which fruit to pick, which to leave, and how to avoid damaging either. So, we still need human labor."

And let's not forget the question of the price tag on each piece of expensive tech, which could put it out of reach for many growers.

The real question isn't whether robots can handle the harvest, Katie said. It's whether people can handle the heat.

The challenges of heat-proofing agriculture

In 2024, the World Meteorological Organization confirmed we had just experienced the warmest year on record globally. In fact, the organization reported that "the past 10 years have all been in the Top Ten, in an extraordinary streak of record-breaking temperatures."

At high temperatures, the body's cooling systems strain—blood is pushed to the skin, the heart works harder and sweat ramps up. Once thresholds are crossed—especially with high humidity—these defenses fail, core temperature rises, and organs are put under pressure. Even before heat illness sets in, focus, memory and decision-making can slip as the body struggles to cope.

For agricultural workers, this could mean an increased need to rest and rehydrate, a need for protective gear, and less time spent in the field—all reducing the hours of effective labor.

Katie and her team used wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) to estimate how heat, humidity, solar radiation and even wind speed could affect on-farm productivity across horticultural regions.

"We tend to treat labor like a static input when thinking about agriculture and production risk and profitability," Katie said.

"But people are not just inputs. They respond to risk, including changes in wages, working conditions, and regulation. If heat makes farm work more difficult and dangerous, that could affect worker attraction and retention and have bigger ramifications for overall labor supply and demand."

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Hot work, cold economics

CSIRO partnered with the Australian Climate Service to deliver the National Climate Risk Assessment (NCRA) for the Australian Government, along with the Bureau of Meteorology, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Geoscience Australia.

This research shows the agricultural sector in Australia will face significant repercussions as extreme weather events become more frequent and more intense. Farmers are already grappling with reduced yields, depleted soils, rising pest and disease pressure, and mounting stress on livestock.

What's been less visible is the toll on people. In fact, scientists have found that worker productivity dropped by 2%–3% for every degree above 20°C.

Katie and her co-author Dr. Sarah Whitnall, formerly with CSIRO and now at the University of Western Australia, delved into the Australian context in their paper From heat stress to economic stress. It was published in a special issue of the Farm Policy Journal, a landmark edition released by the Australian Farm Institute in collaboration with CSIRO as part of the Ag2050 initiative looking at the future of farming.

Katie and Sarah calculated that under a +2°C warming scenario, Australian horticulture would need, on average, 4% more labor to maintain current output levels.

While 4% might not sound dramatic, labor already accounts for a significant share of farmers' operating costs—so even small shifts can have major financial impacts for farmers.

Add to that the stark regional differences. In Victoria's Yarra Valley, for instance, strawberry pickers would need to work an extra 26 minutes per day to maintain current yields—a change that could push labor costs up by nearly 5%. In hotter regions, like Queensland's banana plantations, the required increase in labor could be as high as 9% or approximately 7,400 additional contract workers monthly.

Harvesting under rising temperatures demands more from farm labor. Credit: Max Smith/Unsplash 

Rising heat not the only factor

The agricultural sector is already grappling with a growing labor shortage and rising competition for the skills needed to sustain food and fiber production, said Dr. Rose Roche, CSIRO's Ag2050 lead.

"Rural communities are attracting fewer young people, who are increasingly drawn to opportunities in cities," she noted, adding that seasonal labor is harder to secure, with many growers reliant on overseas workers whose availability can be disrupted by policy shifts or global events. At the same time, an aging workforce means valuable knowledge is being lost faster than it can be passed on.

"The industry will need to think about how to make farming an attractive career in the future. Technology will play a role, but farming will always depend on people working outdoors. As the climate warms, those conditions will only get tougher, so adaptation is essential. That means rethinking how work is organized, how risks are managed and how to build a safe, resilient workforce."

Rose notes that broadening participation is one way to strengthen that resilience. Indigenous Australians, for example, remain under-represented in agriculture. In 2021 they accounted for just 1.8% of the workforce and in 2020 only 0.6% of business owners. Expanding pathways into both employment and ownership would not only address inequity but also build long-term investment and commitment in the sector, strengthening the human foundations agriculture will need as outdoor work becomes harder.

The researchers' findings underscore why we can't keep treating labor as an afterthought.

Katie flagged the need for more data on the long-term health impacts of heat exposure, better understanding of wages, work hours and contract structures. Rigorous evaluation of which adaptation strategies worked—and what they cost—is essential.

"There's a black box when it comes to the long-term effects of heat exposure on workers," she said. "And we need to understand what adaptation strategies are actually cost-effective."

Adaptation isn't one-size-fits-all

When it comes to dealing with a changing climate, what options do farmers have? Katie outlined several adaptation strategies, including shifting picking hours to cooler parts of the day and rotating between strenuous and lighter tasks. Farmers could also set up shaded rest areas or air-conditioned tents and provide workers with cooling vests.

But these solutions all come with costs—and complications.

What happens if the harvest window shrinks even further due to extreme weather? Would enough workers be willing to start their shifts at 3am? Would that trigger penalty rates or require overtime pay?

"The danger is that only large agribusinesses will be able to afford those adaptations," Katie said. "We don't want a two-speed agriculture system where small and medium growers are left behind."

She argues for targeted support and more science-informed regulatory considerations.

"Instead of a blanket approach, we could use science to identify the most heat-vulnerable regions and crops, then develop guidelines and incentives that actually fit those contexts plus grower types."

Resilient farms, resilient food

Australia isn't alone in relying on migrant labor, Katie noted—many OECD countries do the same. This means we would gain a competitive advantage if we could lead on heat safety and adaptation.

"We want to be a place where people choose to work and where managers have every tool and opportunity to make things safe and fair," Katie said.

And the implications go far beyond workforce logistics. Horticulture, she noted, is the foundation of Australia's micronutrient security.

"We produce most of our own fruit and vegetables domestically," she said. "If we don't invest in the resilience of this system, we risk making healthy, nutritious food more expensive and less accessible. If we want healthy, affordable food, we need a healthy, resilient labor market. It's that simple."

"This research illustrates the importance of thinking about climate change and adaptation in a systemic way," added Frank Sperling, Senior Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO and co-editor of the special issue.

"It is about anticipating changes and making adjustments in a particular practice domain and sector to manage existing and emerging risks. Meanwhile, we must consider the implications for the enabling environment and identify where broader, more transformative adaptive actions are required to ensure the long-term viability of Australian agriculture," Frank said.

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These figures were part of Australia's first National Climate Risk Assessment (NCRA), a big announcement from our Federal Government who have spoken little about climate change since the election in May.

You couldn't be blamed if, among these alarming media headlines, you missed the quiet companion to the risk assessment: Australia's inaugural National Adaptation Plan.

This plan outlines what the federal government is going to do to try to reduce climate risks (besides reducing emissions). Climate change adaptation is an important partner to the National Climate Risk Assessment.

Here, we'll unpack what we mean by climate change adaptation. And why it gives Australians some much-needed hope that we can significantly reduce climate impacts.

What do we mean by climate adaptation?

Adaptation is a term that is not commonly understood and is often forgotten in climate change reporting.

Yet humans act to reduce climate risks all the time.

First Nations communities, for example, have a demonstrated history of working with their natural environments to adjust to changes in climate, using practices like cultural fire management.

We can continue to learn from these practices as we seek to innovate and improve our responses to climate change.

For this reason, when we teach or write about climate change we always begin by acknowledging a few foundational facts that are worth remembering when thinking about climate risks.

First, mitigation and adaptation go hand in hand

Climate change mitigation, in the form of greenhouse gas reduction, is going to be essential to ensure we stop exacerbating damage to our climate and natural environment.

Setting suitable net-zero targets and adhering to them is the only way we can address this persistent issue, making them a crucial point in this discussion.

For some time, however, scientists have discussed the slow uptake of climate action and limited investment from key global players to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—meaning that changes in our climate are now unavoidable.

The NCRA report demonstrates that our climate has already changed and will continue to change, regardless of whether we successfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But the negative impacts of those changes depend on what we do next.

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Second, adaptation can be used to reduce climate risk

It's important to note that "climate change mitigation" refers to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to reduce human-induced (anthropogenic) climate change.

Whereas "climate risk mitigation" is the practice of adjusting to actual or expected changes to reduce harm, and can be equated to "climate change adaptation."

This is a key point of confusion in climate change language and an important distinction to make.

When we discuss what "climate risk" actually means, we need to consider three primary factors: a climate hazard, exposure of people or assets to that hazard, and the likelihood that they will be negatively impacted.

For a climate risk to exist, these three must occur at the same time and in the same place.

And so, the climate risks reported in the National Climate Risk Assessment are not just contingent on projected future climate but also on the adaptation taken to reduce exposure and vulnerability of people and assets to climate change.

The risks outlined are based on the current situation, and if we do nothing more to reduce them.

But adaptation is a choice and a necessary pathway for Australian households and businesses.

The National Adaptation Plan was released alongside our National Climate Risk Assessment in recognition that adaptation is an important piece of the puzzle.

It outlines what the federal government sees as its role and responsibility to be, and how it intends to address each of the emerging climate risks discussed in the risk assessment.

Third, adaptation is all around—here's what it looks like

Adaptation is not a great unknown—it's something that has been done for some time and will continue for years to come.

In response to rising concerns for heat-related deaths in cities like Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide, practitioners have been working hard to increase urban greening, which can significantly reduce the impacts of heat on local urban environments.

Trees and greenery help create shade and have cooling effects, which are particularly necessary in concrete environments that otherwise reflect heat.

Research is also underway exploring how to protect workers who spend time in the heat, finding and mapping activities that are more suitable during the hottest part of the day.

For sea level rise, local governments have already been addressing erosion issues with artificial reef installments and beach nourishment projects where sand is used to protect from waves.

Likely, some low-lying areas will eventually be left with little choice but to relocate.

This is why extensive community consultation and collaborative adaptation planning will be necessary to find suitable solutions.

The impact of compounding, cascading and concurrent climate risks is another term we are hearing a lot lately.

Australians know best that climate hazards don't discriminate and often coincide at the same time, on top of existing social or economic challenges (like our cost of living crisis), worsening impacts and making it more difficult to respond or cope.

In New South Wales, the state government is seeking to address this very real challenge by bringing climate change adaptation together with disaster preparation in its new Disaster Adaptation Planning approach.

While this is an area where more research is needed, we know that addressing underlying vulnerabilities in communities increases resilience to disasters and improves people's ability to cope.

All these examples and more are captured in the Australian Adaptation Database, which has been used to inform the National Climate Risk Assessment and National Adaptation Plan about what adaptation in Australia looks like and where we need to do more work.

It is important for Australians to be aware of the "dire" impacts of climate change that might be in our future, and of the need to drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

But it is also important for Australians to understand and care about what climate change adaptation is, why it is worthy of our investment and how it can create hope for our future.

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According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, light bends around objects with large masses, such as galaxies. This sometimes causes a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, which brightens, magnifies, and distorts light from objects behind.

In rare cases, a gravitational lens can even split light passing through it and make it appear multiple times. Such a phenomenon is called an “Einstein’s cross” due to the shape that these split repetitions of light form.

A new Einstein’s cross has recently been observed and described in a scientific paper. The discovery was made by a research team from the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), a space telescope located in northern Chile, using observation data from ALMA and other telescopes. The light of the cross comes from HerS-3, a galaxy located 11.6 billion light years away, with the gravitational lensing being generated by four giant galaxies located between HerS-3 and the Earth. These giant galaxies are located some 7.8 billion light years away.

The gravitational lensing not only splits the light source, but magnifies it, allowing a detailed view of the light source behind the lens. Thanks to this, the team says that HerS-3 appears to be a bright starburst galaxy—a galaxy undergoing explosive star formation—and was formed at a time when star formation was at its peak throughout the universe. HerS-3 also has a tilted, rotating disk, from the center of which gas is gushing out at a furious rate, the team say.

“Thanks to this natural telescope, we can zoom into regions 10 times smaller than the Milky Way, almost 12 billion light-years away, and in the process infer hidden matter in the light-of-sight,” said Hugo Mesias, a coauthor of the paper, in a statement.

A Giant Dark Matter Halo Revealed

At first glance, the Einstein’s cross of HerS-3 appears to have been created solely by gravitational lensing generated by the four giant galaxies located between HerS-3 and Earth. However, using a precise model of gravitational lensing, the team found that the observable mass of these four giant galaxies is insufficient to explain the arrangement of the five images of the cross: their mass is simply not great enough to produce the visual effect seen.

“The only way to reproduce the remarkable configuration we observed was to add an invisible, massive component: a dark matter halo at the center of the galaxy group,” said lead author Pierre Cox, from the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris.

A dark matter halo is a mass of dark matter that has gravitationally assembled on its own. The mass of this halo affecting the light from HerS-3 is believed several trillion times that of the sun.

Dark matter is material that is theorized to exist in space, but which can’t be seen with visible light; it is thought to account for about 85 percent of the total mass of the universe. The Einstein’s cross formed by HerS-3 may, the research team hopes, provide a unique means for studying the influence of dark matter on the formation of galaxies in the early universe.

This story originally appeared on WIRED Japan and has been translated from Japanese.

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