Here's a new perspective to motivate yourself (or someone else) to give up smoking: every cigarette smoked can take 20 minutes off your life expectancy, according to experts. Quit for a week, and your life could be a whole day longer.

The new metrics have been estimated by researchers from University College London (UCL), and are based on recent data added on top of a 2000 study that estimated each cigarette smoked equated to 11 minutes of lost life.

We now have more statistics for mortality rates across a greater number of smokers, which means a more accurate estimate for predicting their life expectancy.

The researchers were keen to update the calculation to motivate people to give up the smoking habit, which dramatically increases the risk of developing lung cancer, brain damage, and a host of other harms.

"Conveying these harms in a clear and accessible way that resonates with smokers can be challenging," write the researchers in their published paper.

"One potentially impactful way to express the harm caused by smoking is to estimate the average loss of life expectancy for each cigarette smoked."

Of course, 20-minute increments are a generalization based on a simplified measure of each person's habit. Everything from how deeply smokers inhale with each puff, to the other medical conditions they have, can make a difference to life expectancy.

However, 20 minutes is a useful shorthand for imagining the impact every cigarette has on the body, emphasizing the fact that benefits of being smoke-free increase over time.

"Epidemiological data indicate that the harm caused by smoking is cumulative and the sooner the person stops, and the more cigarettes they avoid smoking, the longer they live," write the researchers.

"Thus, a person smoking 10 cigarettes per day who quits smoking on the 1st of January 2025 could prevent loss of a full day of life by the 8th of January, a week of life by the 20th of February, and a month by the 5th of August. By the end of the year, they could have avoided losing 50 days of life."

In the UK, where the study data was sourced, being a smoker equates to an average reduction in lifespan of 10 years for men, and 11 for women. Smoking is the number one preventable cause of death, disability, and ill health in the country (as it is in the US).

And the researchers emphasize that it's not enough to cut down on how much you smoke; stopping completely is the only option if you want to eliminate the added risks of disease. No matter how old you are or how long you've smoked for, you can see benefits by finding a way to quit.

"Stopping smoking at every age is beneficial but the sooner smokers get off this escalator of death the longer and healthier they can expect their lives to be," write the researchers.

The research has been published in Addiction.

While our body shuts down in slumber each day, the brain remains busy at work, filing through the day's recordings and making sense of them with respect to past experiences.

Just how fresh memories are processed without blurring into old recollections has never been clear, with scientists hypothesizing different methods of keeping our memories separate while we sleep.

Researchers from Cornell University in the US strapped brain-scanning electrodes and tiny eye-tracking cameras to mice, monitoring them as they learned new tasks in the day, such as navigating a maze, and slept during the night. (Fun fact: mice can sleep with their eyes open.)

The team found two substages happening during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, that restorative period crucial to forming memories. One replayed new memories, coinciding with a constriction of the pupils. The other substage featured recall of older memories, with the pupils dilated. Each phase occurred in quick succession.

The findings help answer the question of why consolidation of new memories doesn't erase old ones; for example, learning to play the piano without forgetting how to ride a bike. A similar analysis will need to be carried out in humans to verify the results, even if we do share a lot of brain similarities with mice.

"Our results suggest that the brain can multiplex distinct cognitive processes during sleep to facilitate continuous learning without interference," write the researchers in their published paper.

Previous studies have identified links between pupil size and sleep state, and between sleep state and memory formation, but this study adds a whole new level of detail to those connections.

Before now, there had been plenty of debate over how the brain fitted new memories in amongst the old ones during sleep – specifically, just how separated and intentional these processes are.

The team also found that blocking sharp-wave ripples (SWRs) – known to affect memory storage – during contracted pupil stages in the mice limited their capabilities to remember anything new.

"It's like new learning, old knowledge, new learning, old knowledge, and that is fluctuating slowly throughout the sleep," says neuroscientist Azahara Oliva, from Cornell University.

"We are proposing that the brain has this intermediate timescale that separates the new learning from the old knowledge."

The implications of the study are far-reaching: having a non-invasive means of monitoring brain function may help in the treatment of memory issues or the boosting of memory, for example.

The findings also lend weight to hypotheses on how our brains and computer systems have the potential to forget old information on a significant scale. In AI, it's known as catastrophic forgetting, and is one area where the machines are still way behind biology.

"This finding provides a potential solution for the long-standing problem in both biological and artificial neural networks of preventing catastrophic interference while also enabling memory integration," write the researchers.

The research has been published in Nature.

Volcanic activity bubbling away beneath the Yellowstone National Park in the US appears to be on the move.

New research shows that the reservoirs of magma that fuel the supervolcano's wild outbursts seem to be shifting to the northeast of the Yellowstone Caldera. This region could be the new locus of future volcanic activity, according to a team led by seismologist Ninfa Bennington of the US Geological Survey.

"On the basis of the volume of rhyolitic melt storage beneath northeast Yellowstone Caldera, and the region's direct connection to a lower-crustal heat source, we suggest that the locus of future rhyolitic volcanism has shifted to northeast Yellowstone Caldera," they write in their paper.

"In contrast, post-caldera rhyolitic volcanism in the previous 160,000 years has occurred across the majority of Yellowstone Caldera with the exclusion of this northeast region."

Yellowstone is one of the world's largest supervolcanoes; a vast, complex, dynamic region of Earth's crust that is both spectacularly beautiful and deeply dangerous.

In the past 2 million years, Yellowstone has undergone three huge, caldera-forming eruptions – those that create the cauldron-like basins on Earth's surface when a subterranean magma chamber empties and collapses in on the hollowed-out cavity. These huge eruptions have been interspersed with smaller eruptions.

The caldera-forming eruptions at Yellowstone are sourced from reservoirs of rhyolitic melt. That's silica-rich magma, the volcanic equivalent of granite, sticky and viscous and slow-moving, and thought to be stored in vast volumes underneath the Yellowstone region.

Previous studies presumed the rhyolitic reservoirs were supported by deeper reservoirs of basaltic magma – molten material that has a much smaller silica content than rhyolite, but abundant iron and magnesium. It's also significantly less viscous than rhyolite, but also denser, and the way it conducts electricity differs to rhyolite.

This latter difference in properties gave Bennington and her colleagues the tools they needed to probe the magmatic reservoir contents beneath the Yellowstone Plateau.

One way to monitor activity beneath Earth's surface involves measuring surface variations in the planet's magnetic and electric fields. This is known as magnetotellurics, and it's particularly sensitive to the presence of subsurface melts.

Bennington and her colleagues carried out a wide-scale magnetotelluric survey across the Yellowstone Caldera, and used the resulting data to model the distribution of the melt reservoirs lurking therein.

Their results revealed that there are at least seven distinct regions of high magma content, some of which are feeding into others, at depths between 4 and 47 kilometers (2.5 to 30 miles) beneath the ground – down to the boundary of the crust and mantle.

The most interesting melt storage was in the northeast. There, huge reservoirs of basaltic magma in the lower crust heat and maintain chambers of rhyolitic magma in the upper crust. These chambers of rhyolitic magma contain an estimated melt storage volume of around 388 to 489 cubic kilometers – almost an order of magnitude higher than melt storage zones to the south, west, and north, where previous eruptions took place.

This volume, the researchers note, is also comparable to the melt volume of previous caldera-forming eruptions in Yellowstone.

The rhyolitic caldera-forming eruptions, the researchers note, were interspersed with smaller, basaltic eruptions within the caldera. However, it's unclear exactly how these kinds of eruptions work. The team's research suggests that the rhyolitic magma chambers have to cool completely before the basaltic magma can move in.

Exactly when and how these future eruptions are going to take place will, the researchers say, require further analysis.

The research has been published in Nature.

Low doses of a drug used to treat ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) could help people focus on the road when driving for long, monotonous stretches risks sending their mind wandering.

Researchers from Australia's Swinburne University were curious about risks and benefits the pharmaceutical methylphenidate might have on driving performance, specifically in cases of individuals who don't have ADHD.

Up to 90 percent of people medicated for their ADHD are prescribed the drug, which is commonly sold under the brand name Ritalin. For a medicated person with ADHD, driving without it can feel a bit like driving without their glasses.

Adults with ADHD are more at risk for road accidents, motor vehicle injuries, traffic tickets, and hard braking events. Taking methylphenidate is known to improve their driving performance. All this probably contributes to the fact that ADHD medication can literally add years to some people's lives.

Yet many individuals take methylphenidate without a prescription. In the US alone, 5 million adults misuse prescription stimulants by taking them at higher doses, longer durations, or simply without a script. It's important to know how these people may be affected while driving under the influence of unauthorized stimulants, especially those tasked with long and monotonous journeys.

This study enlisted 25 mentally and physically healthy drivers without a diagnosis of ADHD to learn what impact methylphenidate might have on their driving performance.

The volunteers were given 10 mg of methylphenidate or a placebo 85 minutes before stepping behind the wheel of a driving simulator that mimics a 105-kilometer (65-mile) bi-directional, four-lane highway with standard Australian road markings and signage. The experiment was undertaken twice, with different participants allocated the placebo and drug.

They were asked to 'drive' for 40 minutes, maintaining a steady 100 kilometers per hour speed in the left-most lane. Occasionally, traffic conditions required them to overtake other vehicles.

While the participants focused on the 'road', a machine kept close watch on their eye movements, tracking eye fixation duration and rate via a driver-facing camera mounted on the dashboard, and the computer recorded how far the drivers deviated from the center of their lane.

A mathematical algorithm assessed how dispersed or focused the drivers' gazes were during the task, as well as how random or structured their visual scanning behaviour was.

"Methylphenidate significantly improved driving performance by reducing lane weaving and speed variation, particularly in the latter half of the drive," the authors report.

"Although a significant reduction in fixation duration was observed, all other ocular metrics remained unchanged."

Methylphenidate reduced the drop in performance drivers usually experience during driving tasks, and in comparison to the placebo, drivers who took the drug had better vehicle control and maintained a more constant speed.

It didn't cause any problems with people's visual scanning, although it didn't seem to improve it, either.

Previous studies raised concerns about a 'tunnel vision' effect associated with psychostimulants that could limit a driver's ability to respond to sudden or unexpected obstacles entering from the periphery, like a pedestrian or car.

While this effect didn't show up in the latest study, the authors suggest it may be because they used a relatively low dose taken short-term.

This study doesn't capture the effects that might be seen at higher doses or taken for longer, which, they write, "are arguably more common in real-world misuse scenarios and likely associated with road traffic collisions."

"There is a clear need for further research in this area, particularly studies aimed at identifying more pronounced alterations in ocular behaviour caused by methylphenidate and other psychostimulants," the authors conclude.

The research was published in Journal of Psychopharmacology.

If you're looking to improve your performance, both cognitively and physically, you need to start by giving a crap.

No, quite literally. Go to the toilet and empty your bowel. If you're about to compete in a triathlon, it will make you both faster and smarter, according to two recent studies.

The latest research involved 13 triathletes, a cognitive test called the Stroop test, and a magnesium oxide laxative.

The result? The athletes performed measurably better on the cognitive test after voiding their large intestines, a finding that suggests an underexplored link between the rectum and cognitive function. This potential link has interesting implications, not just for peak performance, but for understanding cognitive decline.

"The most striking finding of this study is the unequivocal improvement observed in Stroop test performance for all participants consuming magnesium oxide," writes a team of researchers led by biochemist Chen-Chan Wei of the University of Taipei in a new paper.

"Even in the absence of magnesium oxide, defecation led to improved Stroop test results for 9 out of 13 individuals."

A Stroop test is one that presents you with a visual of conflicting information. The word "red" might appear in blue text, for example; the test participant needs to say aloud the color of the text, not the color word that is written. It evaluates cognitive flexibility and response time.

A 2022 study found that patients with early-stage Parkinson's disease can exhibit mild cognitive impairment when constipated, suggesting a link between the rectum and the brain. Such a concept isn't without precedent. Your gut contains hundreds of millions of neurons, and the gut microbiome may play a role in your mood, as well as neurological and mental health disorders.

Wei and colleagues wanted to investigate the link for athletes. Triathlons, involving three different sports disciplines, are taxing on both mind and body. The athlete needs to make fast decisions to navigate the course, have the fortitude to last the distance, and in the process try to best their fellow athletes.

The researchers previously showed that having a poop before getting on a bike resulted in improved performance – and improved blood flow in the prefrontal cortex region of the brain – in triathletes. The next step, after establishing a link between an empty bowel and increased physical performance, was to try to identify if there was a similar link to cognitive performance.

"When you do exercise, especially long-distance exercise, your brain is going to be sending high amounts of commands to the muscles," explains physiologist Chia-Hua Kuo of the University of Taipei.

"Whether or not you can sustain muscle contraction is not really depending on whether your muscle has wrung out the energy, it's whether your brain is able to challenge your muscle."

Each of the 13 triathletes in the study participated in three sessions of Stroop testing. For the first session, the test was taken without a prior bowel movement. For the second session, after a careful diet, the test was administered an hour after a bowel movement. Finally, for the third session, the athletes were given magnesium oxide; they took the test 13 hours after taking the laxative, and an hour after defecation.

More than two thirds of participants performed better on the test with empty bowels in the second session. Intriguingly, 100 percent saw improvement after a laxative-aided defecation.

Although the sample size was small, the difference in performance between the sessions suggests that emptying one's bowels could be linked to improved cognition.

The link and the reasons for it have not been definitively established, but the researchers believe that it may have something to do with finite resources in the body. When you have material in your digestive tract, blood and oxygen are used to help break it down. With no material to digest, those resources can be used elsewhere.

In fact, insufficient resourcing during exercising is thought to be the cause of the well-known phenomenon of runners' diarrhea, in which athletes lose control of their bowels while engaged in intense exercise.

In a 2012 review, scientists found that "During physical exercise, the increased activity of the sympathetic nervous system redistributes blood flow from the splanchnic organs to the working muscles… A severely reduced splanchnic blood flow may frequently cause gastrointestinal ischemia."

That means that the body redirects blood away from the gastrointestinal organs to work on the exercise; and the reduced blood flow causes gastrointestinal pyrotechnics.

It's all connected in strange and wonderful ways. Or, as Kuo puts it: "Our spirit is not only inside the skull, but also in other parts. And the rectum is also part of the brain."

The researchers caution against taking laxative drugs. If you are having issues maintaining gastrointestinal regularity, seek help from a medical professional.

The findings have been published in Sports Medicine and Health Science.

We could be producing concrete that's 30 percent stronger by processing and adding charred coffee grounds to the mix, researchers in Australia discovered.

Their clever recipe could solve multiple problems at the same time.

Every year the world produces a staggering 10 billion kilograms (22 billion pounds) of coffee waste globally. Most ends up in landfills.

"The disposal of organic waste poses an environmental challenge as it emits large amounts of greenhouse gases including methane and carbon dioxide, which contribute to climate change," explained RMIT University engineer Rajeev Roychand.

With a booming construction market globally, there's also an ever increasing demand for resource intensive concrete causing another set of environmental challenges too.

"The ongoing extraction of natural sand around the world – typically taken from river beds and banks – to meet the rapidly growing demands of the construction industry has a big impact on the environment," said RMIT engineer Jie Li.

"There are critical and long-lasting challenges in maintaining a sustainable supply of sand due to the finite nature of resources and the environmental impacts of sand mining. With a circular-economy approach, we could keep organic waste out of landfill and also better preserve our natural resources like sand."

Organic products like coffee grounds can't be added directly to concrete because they leak chemicals that weaken the building material's strength. So using low energy levels the team heated coffee waste to over 350 °C (around 660 °F) while depriving it of oxygen.

This process is called pyrolyzing. It breaks down the organic molecules, resulting in a porous, carbon-rich charcoal called biochar, that can form bonds with and thereby incorporate itself into the cement matrix.

Roychand and colleagues also tried pyrolyzing the coffee grounds at 500 °C but the resulting biochar particles were not as strong.

The researchers cautioned that they still need to assess the long term durability of their cement product. They're now working on testing how the hybrid coffee-cement performs under freeze/thaw cycles, water absorption, abrasions and many more stressors.

The team is also working on creating biochars from other organic waste sources, including wood, food waste and agricultural waste.

"Our research is in the early stages, but these exciting findings offer an innovative way to greatly reduce the amount of organic waste that goes to landfill," said RMIT engineer Shannon Kilmartin-Lynch.

"Inspiration for my research, from an Indigenous perspective, involves Caring for Country, ensuring there's a sustainable life cycle for all materials and avoiding things going into landfill to minimize the impact on the environment."

Their research was published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

An earlier version of this article was published in September 2023.

Brain damage can cause major personality changes, and in some rare cases, patients can become pathological jokesters, unable to suppress the urge to make silly jests or childish puns, even in inappropriate situations.

A notable case study from 2016 describes a 69-year-old man, who suffered a stroke and developed a compulsive need for humor.

The patient's desire to share a knee-slapper was so great, he would often wake his wife during the night just to tell her one of his funnies. So she kindly asked that he write them down instead.

When first meeting a team of neurologists, the man brought along "approximately 50 pages filled with his jokes, most of which were either puns or silly jokes with a sexual or scatological content."

The man was diagnosed with Witzelsucht, which is a collection of symptoms characterized by an incessant desire for humor. Oftentimes, the jokes are inappropriately timed or of an offensive nature, yet the joke-teller remains oblivious and highly entertained by their own wit.

The term Witzelsucht (a combination of the German words for 'joke' and 'addiction') was first introduced in 1890 by a German neurologist named Hermann Oppenheim, who noticed that damage to the right frontal lobe, either through injury or disease, sometimes led to overly humorous behavior in his patients.

In 1929, the German neurosurgeon Otfrid Foerster was conducting brain surgery on an awake patient, when he prodded a certain part of the brain that caused the patient to suddenly start cracking puns in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and German.

This helped neuroscientists narrow in on the area involved in humor, but in all the decades since this discovery, it's still not entirely clear how often witzelsucht occurs, or how it can be treated. Case studies are few and far between.

Neurologist Mario Mendez has authored more than most. He and his colleagues at UCLA were the ones who received 50 pages of jokes, and they have reported several other case studies of Witzelsucht since 2005.

Today, scientists know that Witzelsucht can often exist alongside or overlap with another collection of neurological symptoms called moria, which is characterized by pathological giddiness.

Both behavioral changes are associated with damage to the orbitofrontal circuit, which is involved in decision-making and which can be associated with tactlessness when damaged.

Just a few years ago, Mendez and UCLA colleague Leila Parand shared the story of a 63-year-old man, who had been shot in the head, losing much of his right frontal lobe and part of his left orbitofrontal cortex.

The individual, who once suffered from frequent depression and suicidal ideation, suddenly showed persistent feelings of mirth and happiness in recovery, at one point declaring, "You will never find me in a miserable state".

"On examination, he was observed to be unconcerned, frequently jesting, punning, or making light-hearted teasing comments to others, and generally not taking his situation seriously," his doctors report.

"He would occasionally [exhale against a closed mouth] to self-inflate his craniotomy defect in order to surprise and amuse anyone around him."

While there is no standard treatment for Witzelsucht or moria, Mendez and his colleagues at UCLA note that clinicians may start by prescribing serotonin reuptake inhibitors. These often don't work, in which case other treatments are tried, such as psychoactive antiseizure medications or atypical antipsychotics.

But while some drug mixes seem to alleviate episodes of laughter in certain individuals, it's harder to get rid of the compulsion for jokes.

In a paper from 2019, psychiatrists wrote that research on moria and Witzelsucht has helped us better understand patients with neuropsychiatric disease.

These symptoms, they say, "shed light on the neural underpinnings of some of the most complex positive mental phenomena that make up human life, including humor, creativity, and joy."

It's hard to make light of that.

We celebrate getting older on the same day each year, but parts of our bodies can actually age at different speeds. A new study points to some of the lifestyle choices that influence the rate of aging in our brains.

Led by researchers from the Karolinska Institute and the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, an international team looked at various biological signals to estimate brain age in 70-year-olds with no cognitive impairment.

What stood out from their analysis of 739 people was the importance of vascular (blood vessel) health when it comes to keeping brains looking young. Habits such as regular physical activity, sticking to a healthy diet, cutting out smoking, and managing glucose levels can improve vascular health.

"A take-home from the study is that factors that adversely affect the blood vessels can also be related to older-looking brains, which shows how important it is to keep your blood vessels healthy to protect your brain," says neurobiologist Anna Marseglia, from the Karolinska Institute.

Older-looking brains were linked to physical inactivity, having diabetes, and having had a stroke, as well as higher levels of inflammation and higher levels of blood glucose – indicating a mix of interconnected factors having an impact.

There were some variations between men and women – with glucose levels making more of a difference to brain age in men, for example – which is something the researchers are keen to follow up on in the future.

The team used a deep learning AI model to assess brain age from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, having previously trained it on more than 18,000 scans of people without any cognitive issues.

Information from blood samples was then cross-referenced with the assessed brain ages, together with data collected by the researchers on various lifestyle factors, medical conditions, and cognitive tests.

"The algorithm is both accurate and robust, yet easy to use," says clinical geriatrician Eric Westman, from the Karolinska Institute.

"It's a research tool that still needs further evaluation, but our aim is for it also to be of clinical use in the future, such as in dementia investigations."

That link to dementia is an important one: older brains tend to be more at risk of developing dementia conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, and the findings suggest ways of protecting against that cognitive decline.

Previous research has tied brain age to numerous factors – including blood sugar levels, as found in this study, and living in poverty – and many of them we can do something about, either on an individual or societal level. Ultimately, researchers are looking for ways we can stop dementia from developing in the first place.

"Despite the recent introduction of new Alzheimer's drugs, they will not work for everyone with dementia, so we want to study what can boost the brain's resilience against pathological aging processes," says Marseglia.

As women and men appear to have different factors that relate to brain aging, the team now plans to investigate how we develop resilience with a closer look at biological determinants (such as hormones) and sociocultural factors.

"Next year, we'll launch a study to understand how social health – including social engagement, connectedness, and support – in middle and older age, along with sleep and stress, influence brain resilience, with a focus on women's health factors," Marseglia says.

The research has been published in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association.

As Earth completes yet another full orbit around the Sun, an encroaching storm is expected to bathe the planet in a glorious glow of auroral light.

On December 29 and 30 , the Sun unleashed a series of huge eruptions, flares, and coronal mass ejections, possibly right in our direction.

The flash of electromagnetic radiation caused brief radio blackouts on our planet's dayside just 8 minutes after leaving the Sun. But coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are huge eruptions of plasma that take hours to days to follow as they billow out through the Solar System.

On reaching us, CMEs slam into Earth's magnetic field, resulting in an event known as a geomagnetic storm – the most spectacular effect of which is the multi-hued aurorae that shimmer across the sky at high latitudes around the planet's poles.

The three eruptions in question took place over the course of 29 and 30 December 2024 UTC. On December 29, the Sun produced an X1.1 flare from sunspot region AR 3936. X-class flares are the most powerful class of flares. Then, on December 30, an X1.5 flare from the same region was followed by an X1.1 flare from sunspot region AR 3932.

Meanwhile, smaller flares popped up all over. There were 18 M-class flares – the second-most powerful category – counted on December 29 .

The CMEs are another matter. These are often released at the same time as flares, but the one that may be responsible for a geomagnetic storm on December 31 was recorded an hour prior to the first flare on December 29.

A second, smaller CME was recorded later the same day, with the possibility of a less powerful geomagnetic storm on January 1.

Lot's of activity on the Sun today! Many M-class solar flares and even an X1 solar flare! This coronal mass ejection which left the Sun at 6 UTC is the talk of the town today and is the reason why the NOAA SWPC issued a strong G3 geomagnetic storm watch for 31 December. However… pic.twitter.com/rIA2Mh9jVt

— SpaceWeatherLive (@_SpaceWeather_) December 29, 2024

The NOAA has issued an alert for a powerful geomagnetic storm, but there are some caveats. Neither CME is expected to deliver a full frontal blow to Earth, which makes forecasting difficult.

And, as SpaceWeatherLive points out, based on the data we have, it's unclear whether the coronal mass ejections took place on the side of the Sun facing us at all. It's possible they erupted from the Sun's far side, in which case they're not headed our way at all.

Which, when you think about it, is perfect. What better way to end the year than a practical joke played by the Sun?

Keep an eye on the NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center for updates.

In recent years there's been a significant rise in the number of pet dogs and cats exposed to cocaine in their homes, new research shows – a trend that raises concerns about animal health and safety.

The study was carried out by public health researcher Orrin Ware, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and veterinary toxicologist Renee Schmid, from the Pet Poison Helpline. They analyzed calls made to the international helpline across the years 2019 to 2023.

Data was logged on reports of dogs or cats' exposure to either cocaine or methamphetamine and the team calculated an annual percent change (APC) – a useful way of identifying an overall trend in figures that may experience fluctuations in the short term.

While there was no significant increase in pets coming into contact with methamphetamine, there was a concerning rise in reports of exposure to cocaine.

For cats, the numbers showed an APC of 52 percent (based on a total of 63 cocaine-related reports), while for dogs the APC was 39 percent (433 reports). An APC of 38 percent for dogs exposed to either cocaine or methamphetamine was also notable.

"Animals are highly sensitive to the stimulatory and sympathomimetic effects of cocaine and methamphetamine," write the researchers in their published paper.

"Any degree of exposure should be considered concerning, as there is the risk of severe toxicity and death, even with aggressive medical therapy."

The data in the study doesn't cover what the results were of the calls to the helpline, nor does it look at how the exposures happened. However, the study period coincided with the coronavirus pandemic, when a lot of us were spending more time at home.

Cocaine and methamphetamine are the most commonly used banned stimulant drugs in the US. According to the statistics, 1.8 percent of Americans took cocaine and 0.9 percent of Americans used methamphetamine in the last 12 months.

Pets encountering these drugs are at risk of eating or sniffing the toxic substance, as these inquisitive animals will tend to do. The effects of significant levels of exposure can range from vomiting and tremors to hemorrhaging and death.

And while pet owners are not likely to want to admit to having illicit substances in their homes, the researchers say they have a duty to make sure whatever they're taking isn't kept in a place where their canine or feline friends can find it.

"This study is critical because it raises awareness about the potential consequences of unsecured illicit stimulants," write the researchers.

"The importance of veterinary medicine cannot be understated, as cats and dogs are crucial members of households, often providing comfort and emotional support, highlighting the intrinsic relationship between human and animal health."

The research has been published in JAMA Network Open.

Exposure to a trio of chemicals found in many everyday household and industrial items may have contributed to millions of cases of heart disease, stroke, and deaths over the years according to estimations of the health and economic impacts of common plastic additives.

An international team of researchers pooled findings from over 1,700 existing studies from 38 different countries investigating links between people's exposure to the chemicals and certain health impacts.

The researchers argue the results are concerning enough to warrant global action, but critics say we still need conclusive proof that these chemicals are the true cause.

The suspects in question – BPA (bisphenol A), DEHP (di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate) and PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) – have been previously associated with serious health issues.

The safety of BPA has been questioned for a while: widespread in our food packaging, especially in the form of the epoxy that lines some food and drink cans and bottles, exposure to this compound has been linked to higher rates of ischemic heart disease and stroke.

This latest study found 5.4 million cases of ischemic heart disease and 346,000 cases of stroke in 2015 could be associated with BPA exposure. That suggests BPA exposure could be associated with 431,000 deaths. An estimate on the total economic impact suggests the resulting loss in health could have cost nations an equivalent of US$1 trillion in purchasing power.

DEHP is present in the flexible plastics of garden hoses, shower curtains, medical tubing, and synthetic leathers.

Animal studies have shown its potential as an endocrine disruptor, affecting pregnancy in mice and puberty in rats. A study published back in 2022 found a significant link between increased DEHP metabolites in the urine samples of 5303 US adults and an increase in mortality rate. This recent study calculates 164,000 deaths worldwide could be related to DEHP exposure, with an estimated US$398 billion in equivalent economic losses.

PBDEs are a class of brominated flame retardants controversially behind advice to throw out your black plastic spatula. Common in materials that are exposed to high levels of heat, they're also present in electronics, car parts, aircraft, and certain textiles.

They can enter your body by inhalation, dermal absorption, or via your food – a seemingly unlikely route, but they've turned up in utensils, food packaging, and children's toys made from recycled black plastic.

A correlation between PBDE exposure and measures of intelligence suggests almost 12 million collective IQ points may have been lost due to maternal PBDE exposure.

The cumulative impact, it seems, is damning. BPA and DEHP may be eliminated from the body relatively quickly over a course of days, but the continuous stream of plastics in our lives means we have little relief from their exposure. The 'stickiness' of PBDE in our bodies is less clear, and depends on the specific chemical makeup.

"Our reason for quantifying these health effects was to focus on the damages associated with three of the best studied chemicals in plastics and to estimate exposures in as many countries as we could," says Maureen Cropper, an economist from the University of Maryland.

All of the study's estimates lean heavily on the data from existing observational studies, making causation difficult to confirm. Some unrelated factor might increase people's exposure to the chemicals as well as their health problems – a diet high in fast food, for instance, would increase a person's exposure to plastics and is also known to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Statistician Kevin McConway, who was not involved in the research, urges caution in how the results are interpreted.

"I'm not trying to say that these plastics can't present important health hazards, but only that this research can't clearly establish the extent to which they do cause extra ill health and higher death rates," McConway says.

But Cropper and team think there's more than enough data to warrant global action, though there's a need for much more data on our exposure to these substances. If these plastic additives are in fact making people sick, the estimates suggest they might already have killed half a million people.

"Protection of human health against the hazards of chemicals in plastics will require a paradigm shift in national chemical law in multiple countries including the United States, Canada, and the EU," the team writes, urging producers of plastics to take on the onus of proof.

This, they note, has been the norm in pharmaceutical regulation since the 1970s.

"It will require a more precautionary approach that prioritizes the protection of human health and no longer presumes that chemicals are safe."

The paper is published in PNAS.

We know there's a link between cannabis use and psychosis, though the odds vary widely from study to study. But it's still unclear exactly how the drug triggers psychosis, which can progress to schizophrenia.

Genes, drug potency, and age of use all appear to play a role, and scientists in Canada have just uncovered another important factor: brain connectivity.

The study found that young people in the early stages of psychosis, or showing signs of being at-risk, had noticeably lower density in their brain synapses.

"Not every cannabis user will develop psychosis, but for some, the risks are high. Our research helps clarify why," says neuropharmacologist Romina Mizrahi, from McGill University.

The researchers analyzed data from 49 participants, ages 16 to 30, from a tertiary care psychiatric hospital between July 2021 and October 2023.

Among the group were people who had experienced their first episode of psychosis or were considered 'clinical high risk' (CHR), and healthy controls. All were either not taking antipsychotics or only taking minimal doses, and tested negative in drug screening for anything besides cannabis.

Participants also underwent medical and psychiatric screening, and PET and MRI scans, to measure their symptoms, brain structure and composition, and identify any potential confounding factors.

"We included patients with very recent psychotic onset and higher clinical severity as we primarily recruited from the emergency department," the authors note.

They assessed synaptic density by looking for levels of a protein called SV2A. Scientists use this protein as an indicator because it hangs out on the synaptic vesicles that store your neurotransmitters; generally, the more SV2A in your brain, the more synapses they can assume you've got packed into there.

The study also showed that lower synaptic density was associated with higher scores of negative psychiatric symptoms among participants with first-episode psychosis or CHR. The authors say it's the first study to provide direct evidence of changes in the synapses of patients during CHR states.

Knowing that there's less of this protein kicking around in the brains of people who have experienced their first episode of psychosis, or who are at high clinical risk for it, also helps us understand how cannabis might be sparking the match.

That's because, in tandem, the researchers found that using cannabis actually lowers SV2A levels, and therefore synaptic density, which lines up with the findings of a previous study that found SV2A levels were reduced in people with cannabis use disorder.

"Cannabis appears to disrupt the brain's natural process of refining and pruning synapses, which is essential for healthy brain development," Mizrahi explains.

Notably, they found cannabis use was impacting the striatal regions of the brain, which are known to be involved in psychosis.

It's important to bear in mind that the study doesn't show that cannabis use necessarily caused the reduced synaptic density in psychosis patients, or vice versa.

The study has a pretty small sample size, with participants in only the early stages of experiencing psychosis, for which long-term outcomes can vary widely. The team also notes that while SV2A can indicate synaptic density, it's not a direct measure.

But the fact that a change in SV2A levels is present in both the early stages of psychosis and in cannabis use is certainly interesting. The team thinks its worth investigating the impact cannabis use has on synaptic density as a potential mechanism for psychosis conversion, among those at high risk.

"Current medications largely target hallucinations, but they don't address symptoms that make it difficult to manage social relationships, work, or school," says neuroscience PhD student Belen Blasco, from McGill.

"By focusing on synaptic density, we may eventually develop therapies that enhance social function and quality of life for those affected."

This research is published in JAMA Psychiatry.

The processes that haul gold up to the surface from deep within Earth's mantle rely on the sulfur that bubbles beneath active volcanoes.

Two new papers have agreed that some forms of sulfur form molecular bonds with gold that would otherwise remain sequestered in the mantle, allowing the precious element to rise.

What they don't quite agree on is which form of sulfur is most important.

According to numerical modeling and experiments conducted by a team of geologists led by Deng-Yang He of the China University of Geosciences, trisulfur is key. But, according to experiments conducted by Stefan Farsang and Zoltán Zajacz of the University of Geneva, bisulfide is the crucial player.

Both sets of results are interesting and worth following up – because understanding how gold deposits form can help us make the most of this beautiful, valuable, and useful resource.

Gold deposits are often associated with volcanic activity at places where tectonic plates meet. There, the edge of one tectonic plate can slip beneath the adjacent plate, creating what is known as a subduction zone. Interactions between the two plates create a region riddled with earthquakes and volcanoes, such as the long volcano chain known as the Pacific Ring of Fire.

The gold in these deposits originates deep below Earth's surface, in the mantle. Left to its own devices, there the dense metal would stay; but it gets incorporated into the magmas that rise up via volcanic activity to the surface, where it is deposited.

Scientists believe the key to its transport is sulfur. Sulfur bonds strongly with heavy metals, including gold. But what form that sulfur takes to transport gold through Earth's subduction zones is a topic of debate among Earth scientists.

Deng-Yang He and his colleagues experimented with different pressures and temperatures to develop a thermodynamic model that could predict the real-world conditions that result in gold transport. They found that, at a set of very specific temperatures and pressures where water is heated and oxidized as Earth's crust sinks, gold and trisulfide bond to form a soluble complex with the formula Au(HS)S₃–.

This complex, their calculations showed, can transport gold concentrations of several grams per cubic meter of fluid – more than three orders of magnitude higher than the average abundance of gold in Earth's mantle. It's an extremely efficient means of slurping the gold out of the mantle and dumping it into the crust.

"This thermodynamic model that we've now published is the first to reveal the presence of the gold-trisulfur complex that we previously did not know existed at these conditions," says geologist Adam Simon of the University of Michigan.

"This offers the most plausible explanation for the very high concentrations of gold in some mineral systems in subduction zone environments."

But it may not be the only means of transportation. In their experiment conducted at the University of Geneva, Farsang and Zajacz found a way to tweak the oxidation state of the sulfur in their experiment, adding it to pressure conditions and temperatures of 875 degrees Celsius (1607 Fahrenheit), consistent with the temperature of natural magmas.

Previous experiments, including a heavily cited 2011 paper, had shown that trisulfur was responsible for the transport. The new results showed that bisulfide, hydrogen sulfide, and sulfur-dioxide were all strongly present at magmatic temperatures.

This is interesting, because bisulfide plays a role in metal transport in hydrothermal fluids, which are lower in temperature. It was thought that bisulfide couldn't exist at magmatic temperatures; but the work of Farsang and Zajacz found that it can.

"By carefully choosing our laser wavelengths," Farsang says, "we also showed that in previous studies, the amount of sulphur radicals in geologic fluids was severely overestimated and that the results of the 2011 study were in fact based on a measurement artefact, putting an end to this debate."

Them's fightin' words. Your move, trisulfur.

The two papers have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Nature Geoscience, respectively.

Stealing from the company's bank accounts could earn you time in the big house. But embezzlement from a quantum ledger might not be against the law.

In fact, a new study finds it might be a handy way to entangle particles without messing up their mathematics.

Earlier this century, quantum computing researcher Wim van Dam and physicist Patrick Hayden described a process they called embezzling entanglement, named for the light-fingered approach some systems could potentially take to combining their numbers without leaving a trace.

Theoretical physicists Lauritz van Luijk, Alexander Stottmeister, Reinhard F. Werner, and Henrik Wilming of Leibniz University Hannover in Germany have now identified fields that could be key players in this unusual quantum heist.

Our physical Universe – where objects have very clearly defined properties like location, momentum, and energy – emerges from an unresolved version of reality consisting of maybes and likelihoods.

As uncertain as this existence is prior to being locked down by a measurement, the laws governing its operation are as strict as those of any casino. Interactions with additional particles can upset the odds as easily as an extra deck of cards could change how a game of poker is played.

Entanglement is both a handy tool and a foil for any physics card counter.

Done right, entanglement can be used as the basis of powerful algorithms combining the probabilities of hundreds or even thousands of quantum card games. In the form of random intrusions, they can turn a useful quantum state into meaningless chaos.

Mathematically speaking, it's possible to show some quantum transformations are more subtle than others. One type of change returns to a state that doesn't appear to be disturbed, for example. Described as a kind of catalyst, this reversal allows for computing operations that wouldn't have been possible in cases where end states are altered.

Where van Dam and Hayden demonstrated that catalysts could universally flip any entangled state on a whim, the researchers at Leibniz University have now algebraically demonstrated that a combination of general relativity and quantum field theory can result in a bottomless pit of catalysts.

In theory, a relativistic quantum field could serve as an infinite resource of embezzlement, entangling with particles in ways that wouldn't alter their delicate states.

"Since the bank is in the same state before and after the embezzlement, that means that no one can detect it," van Luijk explained to New Scientist's Karmela Padavic-Callaghan. "It's the perfect crime."

To become a practical system, a physical equivalent of a suitable field would need to be identified. Right now, embezzling entanglement is more of a mathematical abstraction than a 'how to' guide for silently stealing from the Universe.

Yet knowing infinite levels of entanglement could naturally be occurring in absolute nothingness could point the way to a whole criminal underworld of physics, where different classes of theft occur right under our noses.

This research has been accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters.

The human body is a strange and wonderful thing. It's also soft and squishy and vulnerable to all manner of threats, both from outside the body and within.

One extremely rare protection strategy arises in response to a very unusual and also unfortunate set of circumstances.

Every now and then, a fertilized human egg starts to develop into a fetus outside the uterus, within the mother's abdominal cavity. Known as an abdominal pregnancy, this is very dangerous, and potentially fatal.

In a very small percentage of abdominal pregnancies, the body is able to protect itself when the fetus dies – by turning the fetus to 'stone'.

It's not actually stone, but metal. The mother's body permeates the fetus with the metallic mineral calcium, a major component of bones, in a process known as calcification. This safely quarantines the fetus from the mother's own body, and thus protects her from sepsis.

The official term for such a calcified fetus is lithopedion – from the ancient Greek for 'stone baby' – and the phenomenon is so rare, at least in terms of it being discovered, it's only been documented a few hundred times over the course of human history.

What makes it particularly remarkable is that, more often than not, the stone baby can remain undetected in the mother's body for years – even decades, remaining undiscovered until well past menopause, or, in some cases, death.

The mother can even gestate and birth other babies, completely unaware of the calcium-encrusted fetal remains.

A lithopedion is thought to occur in 1.5 to 1.8 percent of abdominal pregnancies, but nowhere near that many are documented.

Abdominal pregnancy is a form of ectopic pregnancy, in which the fertilized embryo implants itself outside the uterus. The most common form of ectopic pregnancy takes place in the fallopian tube, but the ovary or the cervix are also known locations.

Roughly 2 percent of all pregnancies are ectopic; of those, an estimated 0.6 to 4 percent are abdominal. Although they're dangerous, and the fetus usually doesn't survive, an abdominal pregnancy can, in rare cases, deliver a live baby, typically prematurely.

A 2023 study estimates 208 million pregnancies occur worldwide every year. Based on that figure, and the lower estimates for the rates of abdominal pregnancies and lithopedions, 374 pregnancies should result in a stone baby annually.

According to a 2019 paper, fewer than 300 lithopedions have been documented across 400 years of human history.

There may be cases that go undetected. Several lithopedions have been found in ancient burial grounds, with the earliest known case dating back to 1100 BCE.

According to a 1949 review of the phenomenon, in which 128 cases were analyzed, the average age at which a mother is discovered harboring a lithopedion is 55.

In 1996, a case report detailed the discovery of a lithopedion in an 85-year-old patient who had successfully delivered four other babies prior to what her doctors described as "an incomplete abortion" at the age of 41 and went on to live for decades not knowing that parts of the fetus remained in her abdomen.

A 2000 case report detailed the phenomenon in an 80-year-old patient. A case report published in 2014 describes a lithopedion in a 77-year-old patient who believed she had never been pregnant at all. And a 2016 case report documented the case of a lithopedion in an 87-year-old deceased woman during a post-mortem autopsy.

Thanks to rising standards of gynecological and obstetric care, experts believe that the phenomenon is becoming even more rare. Abdominal pregnancies are more likely to be caught early, and treated before the fetus develops to the point of calcification.

If Earth is going to be blown to bits by an asteroid, it'd be nice to have some advance warning – to either do something about it, or simply find peace in our impending doom – and a newly developed equation gives us a better chance of an early heads up.

The work of physicist Oscar del Barco Novillo, from the University of Murcia in Spain, tackles the gravitational bending of light (GBL) – something physicists have been grappling with for decades. As a result of this bending, objects aren't always where they appear to be out in space.

"The fundamental significance of our new equation is its high accurateness for the GBL angle calculation," says Del Barco Novillo.

Knowing how light bends around the Sun and other massive Solar System objects means we can more accurately track smaller objects in space, including dwarf planets, comets, and asteroids heading straight for our planet.

"Our study, which is based on a geometric optics model, provides an exact equation for the most accurate calculation to date of the GBL angle by a static massive object – such as the Sun or Solar System planets," Del Barco Novillo says.

"This could have implications on the precise positioning of distant stars, as well as the correct location of Solar System minor objects like asteroids, to a better estimation of their exact orbits."

Science greats such as Newton, Soldner, Darwin, and Einstein have identified and attempted to calculate GBL, but this new equation adds more accuracy than before. In part, this is done by incorporating finite rather than infinite distances into the numbers.

More refinements were made by adopting what's known as a material medium approach, which treats celestial objects in the same way as physicists would analyze simpler setups here on Earth – like the way light bends as it passes through a glass of water.

Del Barco Novillo then verified his new equation through more complex numerical simulations, as well as comparisons to previous calculations and the related Shapiro time delay formula. In each case, it was shown to be accurate.

"Different branches of astronomy and astrophysics, such as celestial mechanics or stellar dynamics, might benefit from this new result," Del Barco Novillo explains.

Besides more accurately tracking asteroid orbits through space, the equation could prove useful in multiple ways. It might give us a better lock on Proxima Centauri for instance, the next-closest star to Earth after the Sun.

It could also help with the Euclid mission currently being undertaken by the European Space Agency: In the hunt for dark matter, it's charting the position of billions of galaxies in the cosmos, up to 10 billion light-years away.

"It might be instrumental in finding a precise location of minor celestial objects in our Solar System and, consequently, a better determination of their orbits around the Sun," says Del Barco Novillo.

"The new research should therefore be important for astronomers and astrophysicists working on ultra-precise astrometry measurements, particularly in gravitational lensing studies."

The research has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

New tactics in controlling infection are sorely needed, with antibiotic-resistant bacteria expected to claim as many as 2 million lives each year by 2050.

US and Spanish researchers have now discovered at least some bacteria pay a steep price for their resistance – a cost that we may be able to exploit to fight infection.

"We discovered an Achilles heel of antibiotic-resistant bacteria," says molecular biologist Gürol Süel from the University of California, San Diego.

"We can take advantage of this cost to suppress the establishment of antibiotic resistance without drugs or harmful chemicals."

Exploring why bacteria with resistance factors don't necessarily dominate their non-resistant relatives, University of California, San Diego biologist Eun Chae Moon and colleagues discovered an example of protection that comes at a cost, impeding the bacteria's ability to survive when levels of magnesium are low.

"While we often think of antibiotic resistance as a major benefit for bacteria to survive, we found that the ability to cope with magnesium limitation in their environment is more important for bacterial proliferation," Süel explains.

Depriving environments of magnesium could counter the bacteria's ability to thrive. And because unmutated strains don't share the same flaw, reducing the key nutrient shouldn't adversely impact bacteria needed for a healthy microbiome.

Charged metals like magnesium ions stabilize ribosomes, the micro machines in cells that create proteins. The ions also play an important role in the use of ATP that powers our cells.

A mutant version of the L22 ribosome in some Bacillus subtilis both protects the strain against antibiotics and tightly binds to the charged magnesium atom, leaving less for ATP to use for producing cellular energy. Moon and team's modeling revealed this physiological toll impedes the mutated strain's ability to grow and spread, compared to unmutated B. subtilis.

"Intracellular competition for a finite magnesium pool can thus suppress the establishment of an antibiotic-resistant ribosome variant," the researchers write in their paper.

This means that without the pressure of antibiotics, unmutated B. subtilis is fitter than antibiotic resistant B. subtilis.

"We show that through a better understanding of the molecular and physiological properties of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, we can find novel ways to control them without the use of drugs," Süel explains.

A limited comparison revealed that not all mutated ribosome variants have this weakness, so the researchers are keen to explore similar mechanisms in other bacteria as well.

"We hope that our work can help identify conditions that hinder antibiotic-resistant strains without requiring development of new antibiotics," Moon and team conclude.

This research was published in Science Advances.

We know that too much sitting is bad for us, but a new study adds an important detail: if you spend more than 10-and-a-half hours a day sitting or lying down, regular exercise might not be enough to prevent an increased risk of serious heart issues.

It's an extra layer to our understanding of the push and pull between the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle and activities that might protect us against those health consequences.

The researchers behind the study, led by a team from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, suggest that guidelines should be introduced for the maximum time people should spend sitting – as well as the minimum time they should spend exercising.

"Our findings support cutting back on sedentary time to reduce cardiovascular risk, with 10.6 hours a day marking a potentially key threshold tied to higher heart failure and cardiovascular mortality," says cardiologist Shaan Khurshid, from Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute.

"Too much sitting or lying down can be harmful for heart health, even for those who are active."

The study analyzed activity data from 89,530 people, with an average age of 62, who were asked to wear fitness trackers for a week. This data was referenced against the longer-term health of the cohort, across an average follow-up period of 8 years.

The median sedentary time was 9.4 hours a day, but at 10.6 hours-per-day there seemed to be an inflection point. Those who sat for at least 10.6 hours had a 40 percent higher risk of heart failure and a 54 percent higher risk of cardiovascular mortality compared to those who sat less.

Individuals who did not regularly exercise faced the greatest health risks from this much daily sedentary time, but even those who did manage 150 minutes or more of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week still showed health repercussions.

Those who sat for 10.6 hours or more but who met exercise recommendations were 15 percent more likely to suffer heart failure and 33 percent more likely to die from a cardiovascular-related issue compared to those who sat less.

While we've seen previous studies that talk about how to 'offset' sitting with exercise, physical activity might not reverse all the health downsides, according to this latest research.

The collected data isn't comprehensive enough to prove cause and effect between sitting and major heart issues, but there is enough evidence here to suggest they're related.

The researchers point to the large sample size and the use of wearables – together with machine learning analysis – as strengths of the study. Many studies rely on self-reporting from the participants, and people tend to underestimate how much time they spend sitting each day.

Of course, this doesn't mean exercise doesn't matter – we've seen many times over that any increase in activity, even small ones, can help improve health – but it's also important to keep track of how much sitting we're doing, too.

"Future guidelines and public health efforts should stress the importance of cutting down on sedentary time," says Khurshid.

"Avoiding more than 10.6 hours per day may be a realistic minimal target for better heart health."

The research has been published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

One of the brightest objects in the cosmos just had its close-up.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers homed in on a quasar called 3C 273, some 2.5 billion light-years from Earth. It's one of the closest quasars to Earth, and extremely bright, making it a prime target for understanding the forces that illuminate these fascinating galaxies.

The new observations reveal some of the galaxy's distinct structures that we've never been able to tease out before, which not only tells us about the object itself – it validates a new method for understanding how quasars work.

"Thanks to Hubble's observing power, we're opening a new gateway into understanding quasars," says astronomer Bin Ren of the Côte d'Azur Observatory and Université Côte d'Azur in France. "My colleagues are excited because they've never seen this much detail before."

Quasars are awe-inspiring – among the brightest objects in the Universe, behind gamma-ray bursts and supernovae. Unlike other bright objects, though, quasars stick around. They are thought to be powered by supermassive black holes that lurk at the heart of each galaxy.

Black holes emit no light we can detect on their own. But the gas and dust around a feeding black hole does. That material swirls around in a disk, raining down onto the black hole from its inner rim. The gravity and friction within the disk are so high that they heat it to astonishing temperatures, causing the material to blaze with light across the spectrum, a last scream of brilliance before it vanishes into the darkness forever.

That is the light we see when we look at a quasar. But they're all really far away; and even the ones that are closer are so bright that features are difficult to resolve. 3C 273 is not the closest quasar to Earth, but it is among the brightest from our perspective, shining with the light of trillions of Suns, all packed into a tiny galactic center. It's so bright that you can see it with a backyard telescope, even across 2.5 billion light-years.

To see the structures that might be hiding in this light, the new Hubble observations used the Space Telescope Imaging System (STIS) to create a makeshift coronagraph that obscures the brightest source of light. It's a bit like holding a hand in front of your eyes when someone is shining a flashlight right at you – it allows you to see the other things the light is illuminating without being blinded by glare.

The new observations, eight times closer than any obtained previously, revealed never-before-seen details in the structures around the center of the quasar, within a radius of 16,000 light-years.

The researchers identified small blobs that may be satellite galaxies or chunks of material in the process of being subsumed by the quasar. They also found a new core jet, and a mysterious L-shaped filament that is yet to be identified.

In addition, they made new measurements of the astrophysical jet launched by the black hole's external magnetic field, and extending 300,000 light-years into intergalactic space, constraining its motion over a 22-year timeframe. This analysis revealed that the jet appears to be moving faster the farther it gets from the black hole.

What this all means and the mechanisms behind it are yet to be unraveled. Obtaining the data is an important step that will enable astronomers to conduct deeper analyses to better understand both 3C 273 in specific, and, hopefully, quasar behavior in general.

"With the fine spatial structures and jet motion, Hubble bridged a gap between the small-scale radio interferometry and large-scale optical imaging observations, and thus we can take an observational step towards a more complete understanding of quasar host morphology," Ren says.

"Our previous view was very limited, but Hubble is allowing us to understand the complicated quasar morphology and galactic interactions in detail. In the future, looking further at 3C 273 in infrared light with the James Webb Space Telescope might give us more clues."

The research has been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

NASA has been monitoring a strange anomaly in Earth's magnetic field: a giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies above the planet, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa.

This vast, developing phenomenon, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, has intrigued and concerned scientists for years, and perhaps none more so than NASA researchers.

The space agency's satellites and spacecraft are particularly vulnerable to the weakened magnetic field strength within the anomaly, and the resulting exposure to charged particles from the Sun.

The South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) – likened by NASA to a 'dent' in Earth's magnetic field, or a kind of 'pothole in space' – generally doesn't affect life on Earth, but the same can't be said for orbital spacecraft (including the International Space Station), which pass directly through the anomaly as they loop around the planet at low-Earth orbit altitudes.

During these encounters, the reduced magnetic field strength inside the anomaly means technological systems onboard satellites can short-circuit and malfunction if they become struck by high-energy protons emanating from the Sun.

These random hits may usually only produce low-level glitches, but they do carry the risk of causing significant data loss, or even permanent damage to key components – threats obliging satellite operators to routinely shut down spacecraft systems before spacecraft enter the anomaly zone.

Mitigating those hazards in space is one reason NASA is tracking the SAA; another is that the mystery of the anomaly represents a great opportunity to investigate a complex and difficult-to-understand phenomenon, and NASA's broad resources and research groups are uniquely well-appointed to study the occurrence.

"The magnetic field is actually a superposition of fields from many current sources," geophysicist Terry Sabaka from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland explained in 2020.

The primary source is considered to be a swirling ocean of molten iron inside Earth's outer core, thousands of kilometers below the ground. The movement of that mass generates electrical currents that create Earth's magnetic field, but not necessarily uniformly, it seems.

A huge reservoir of dense rock called the African Large Low Shear Velocity Province, located about 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) below the African continent, is thought to disturb the field's generation, resulting in the dramatic weakening effect – which is aided by the tilt of the planet's magnetic axis.

"The observed SAA can be also interpreted as a consequence of weakening dominance of the dipole field in the region," said NASA Goddard geophysicist and mathematician Weijia Kuang in 2020.

"More specifically, a localized field with reversed polarity grows strongly in the SAA region, thus making the field intensity very weak, weaker than that of the surrounding regions."

Satellite data suggesting the SAA is dividing. (Division of Geomagnetism, DTU Space)

While there's much scientists still don't fully understand about the anomaly and its implications, new insights are continually shedding light on this strange phenomenon.

For example, one study led by NASA heliophysicist Ashley Greeley in 2016 revealed the SAA slowly drifts around, which was confirmed by subsequent tracking from CubeSats in research published in 2021.

It's not just moving, however. Even more remarkably, the phenomenon seems to be in the process of splitting in two, with researchers in 2020 discovering that the SAA appeared to be dividing into two distinct cells, each representing a separate center of minimum magnetic intensity within the greater anomaly.

Just what that means for the future of the SAA remains unknown, but in any case, there's evidence to suggest that the anomaly is not a new appearance.

A study published in July 2020 suggested the phenomenon is not a freak event of recent times, but a recurrent magnetic event that may have affected Earth since as far back as 11 million years ago.

If so, that could signal that the South Atlantic Anomaly is not a trigger or precursor to the entire planet's magnetic field flipping, which is something that actually happens, if not for hundreds of thousands of years at a time.

A more recent study published this year found the SAA also has an impact on auroras seen on Earth.

Obviously, huge questions remain, but with so much going on with this vast magnetic oddity, it's good to know the world's most powerful space agency is watching it as closely as they are.

"Even though the SAA is slow-moving, it is going through some change in morphology, so it's also important that we keep observing it by having continued missions," said Sabaka.

"Because that's what helps us make models and predictions."

An earlier version of this article was published in August 2020.

Intestines suffer a lot of wear and tear in their daily service to digestion, requiring constant renewal of their lining. This growth of the gut's wall hints at underlying pathways distinguishing beneficial regeneration from the rampant reproduction of a tumor.

By trawling through databases of RNA sequences based on models of intestinal damage, a team of researchers led by scientists from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden has identified a molecule that does double duty as a gut tissue healer and a cancer tumor suppressor – a promising super-agent in fighting disease.

Known as liver X receptor (LXR), the protein's activity could reveal new ways to both treat inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and block colorectal cancer.

There are close links between these seemingly distinct health issues. Treating IBD by encouraging tissue growth can also encourage cancerous cell tumor growth, while treating bowel and rectal cancers with chemotherapy and radiotherapy often damage tissues lining the gut.

"It's virtually impossible to promote tissue regeneration without the risk of inducing tumour growth, as cancer cells can hijack the body's natural healing processes and start to grow uncontrollably," says Karolinska Institute stem cell biologist Srustidhar Das.

"We've now identified a molecule that can help the intestines to heal after damage while suppressing tumour growth in colorectal cancer."

The molecule was found during an investigation into new treatments for IBD. The researchers noticed a number of specific genes activating during gut repair in mice and driving cell regeneration – genes controlled by the LXR protein.

Through careful genetic analysis techniques – including transcriptome mapping using RNA databanks and spatial transcriptomics – the team mapped the regulation of gene expression in intestinal epithelial cells. They also used 3D organoid samples, scaled-down human tissue replicas, to study the effects of LXR in the lab.

The analysis of LXR showed it acting like a biological switch, turning on the production of a molecule called amphiregulin that helps grow new intestinal cells. When faced with cancer, though, it assists the immune system in limiting tumor growth.

"The discovery of both these functions was astonishing," says Karolinska Institute immunologist Eduardo J. Villablanca. "We now need to study how LXR controls tumor formation more closely."

People affected by IBD, including those with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, are often given immunosuppressants to damp down the inflammation caused by the immune system overreacting – but these are only effective for a subsection of patients, and can have unwanted side effects.

The researchers are hopeful that further studies of LXR can improve the targeting of treatments, though any actual drug development is still a long way off.

"This new therapeutic molecule has the potential to treat not only IBD patients but also cancer patients to prevent chronic bowel disorders after radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy," says Villablanca.

The research has been published in Nature.

We're way behind several species when it comes to regeneration, and scientists are keen to discover the secrets of these other animals so we can learn from them – including, in a new study, the marine worm Platynereis dumerilii.

These worms are experts in regeneration – they can survive losing a large chunk of their bodies – and now we have a better idea of how they're doing it: specialized cells near a wound are reverting to their original stem cell-like form, before adapting again to replace lost tissue.

Regeneration in most species is handled by stem cells, which develop into whatever type of cells are needed. However, when the end segment of Platynereis is removed, multiple populations of other cells are recruited to swiftly restore the missing body section.

It's a process called dedifferentiation, and we've seen it in other species too. The study authors, led by researchers from the University of Vienna in Austria, have identified how the worms essentially roll back the state of other cells so they can be repurposed.

"This means that these cells begin to return to a stem cell-like state within just a few hours in order to build up a new growth zone as quickly as possible," says molecular biologist Leonie Adelmann, from the University of Vienna.

The reprogramming of human cells is an emerging field of science that promises major improvements in medical treatments. Being able to control how cells turn into specialized types could be used to treat disease and repair significant damage to the body.

This study points to some links across species that we could one day make use of.

The team used two advanced genetic analysis techniques – single-cell RNA sequencing and mosaic transgenesis – to figure out how individual cells were behaving and changing between states to repair damage done in the worms in the lab. It enabled them to track where the cells came from, and what type of cells they ended up as.

"We discovered at least two different stem cell populations – one that regenerates tissues such as epidermis and neurons, and another that forms muscles and connective tissue," says Adelmann.

Our own bodies do of course have fantastic healing properties built right in, but major injuries, disease, and old age can all put limits on human regeneration. The dedifferentiation process observed here and in other species could help us to push some of those limits, especially as scientific analysis methods improve.

"The concept of dedifferentiation was suggested over 60 years ago, but researchers then lacked the tools to test this idea," says molecular biologist Florian Raible, from the University of Vienna.

"Now, we've developed tools to understand dedifferentiation at a molecular level, providing a foundation for future studies."

The research has been published in Nature Communications.

In new research, physicists have theorized a bold way to change it up by entangling two particles of very different kinds – a unit of light, or a photon, with a phonon, the quantum equivalent of a wave of sound.

Physicists Changlong Zhu, Claudiu Genes, and Birgit Stiller of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Germany have called their proposed new system optoacoustic entanglement.

This represents a hybrid system using two very different fundamental particles, establishing a form of entanglement that is uniquely resistant to external noise, one of the biggest problems facing quantum technology, making it a significant step towards more robust quantum devices.

Quantum entanglement has promising applications for high-speed quantum communication and quantum computing. The unique physics that define isolated and entangled particles before and after they are measured makes them ideal for a range of uses, from encryption to high-speed algorithms.

But the delicate quantum state required for these processes can be easily broken, a problem that has curtailed its realization in practical applications.

Scientists are working to solve this problem, with some promising pathways. Higher dimensionality reduces the impact of degrading noise, as does adding more particles to the entangled system. It's very likely that a workable solution will involve more than one pathway, though, so the more options we have, the more likely that the correct combination will be found.

The pathway Zhu and his colleagues investigated involved pairing photons not with other photons, but a 'particle' of a different propagation entirely: sound. This is quite tricky to achieve, because photons and phonons travel at different speeds and have different energy levels.

The researchers showed how particles could be entangled by leveraging a process called Brillouin scattering, whereby light is scattered by waves of heat-generated sound vibrations among atoms in a material.

In their proposed solid-state system, the researchers would pulse laser light and acoustic waves into an on-chip, solid-state Brillouin-active waveguide, designed to induce Brillouin scattering. When the two quanta travel along the same photonic structure, the phonon travels at a much slower speed, resulting in the scattering that can entangle particles that carry dramatically different energy levels.

What makes this even more interesting is that it can be achieved at higher temperatures than standard entanglement approaches, bringing entanglement out of the cryogenic zone and potentially reducing the need for expensive, specialized equipment.

It requires further investigation and experimentation, but it's a promising result, the researchers say.

"The fact that the system operates over a large bandwidth of both optical and acoustic modes," they write, "brings a new prospect of entanglement with continuum modes with great potential for applications in quantum computation, quantum storage, quantum metrology, quantum teleportation, entanglement-assisted quantum communication, and the exploration of the boundary between classical and quantum worlds."

The research has been published in Physical Review Letters.

There is no sea creature whose name inspires terror – rightly or wrongly – as much as the great white shark.

With its sleek body optimized for hunting, its sharp teeth, and its (somewhat undeserved) reputation for enjoying human flesh, the great white (Carcharodon carcharias) is widely regarded as one of the ocean's top predators.

And that's true, it is – but there's something even the great white fears.

From 2017, scientists have documented that the sharks have made themselves extremely scarce off the coast of South Africa, where they usually congregate. Initially, the strange disappearance was blamed on human activity, such as overfishing.

But, in 2022, research confirmed in detail the true culprit: a pair of orcas (Orcinus orca), nicknamed Port and Starboard for the distinctive kinks in their dorsal fins, hunting the sharks and slurping out their delicious, nutritious, vitamin-rich livers.

Once upon a time, the fishing town of Gansbaai on the South African coast was something of a mecca for shark-spotters – so heavily populated with the predators that nearby Dyer Island is considered the great white shark capital of the world.

Over the last few years, however, the sharks' presence has been diminishing.

In addition, since 2017, at least nine great white sharks have washed ashore at Gansbaai, several of them missing livers (and some without their hearts) – the hallmark of an orca attack. And white sharks aren't the only prey. Port and Starboard have been implicated in a broadnose sevengill shark killing spree, wiping out at least 17 in a single day.

The wounds on these sharks are distinctive, and have been traced to the same pair of orcas. It's likely, scientists believe, that the pair are responsible for many more great white deaths that haven't washed ashore.

We know from other studies that the presence of orcas can drive great white sharks away pretty adroitly. One study in 2020 found that great whites will scarper away, without fail, from preferred hunting waters off the coast of San Francisco if an orca makes an appearance in the region.

In a study from 2022, using long-term sighting and tracking data from tagged sharks, a team of scientists led by marine biologist Alison Towner of the Dyer Island Conservation Trust found that orcas are the reason sharks are starting to avoid what used to be some of their favorite spots.

At least 17 sevengill #sharks have been killed by infamous #killerwhale pair Port & Starboard this week in South Africa. Only the livers were eaten with the leftover carcasses washing ashore [1/3] @MarineDynamics Christine Wessels pic.twitter.com/PQVk1KI9mF

— Dr. Alison Kock (@UrbanEdgeSharks) February 24, 2023

"Initially, following an orca attack in Gansbaai, individual great white sharks did not appear for weeks or months," Towner explained.

"What we seem to be witnessing though is a large-scale avoidance (rather than a fine-scale) strategy, mirroring what we see used by wild dogs in the Serengeti in Tanzania, in response to increased lion presence. The more the orcas frequent these sites, the longer the great white sharks stay away."

Over the course of five years, the team tracked 14 sharks that had been GPS tagged as they fled the area when orcas were present. Sightings of great white sharks are also down, quite significantly, in several bays.

This is a huge deal. Only twice before had great white sharks been noted as absent for a week or more in Gansbaai since record-keeping began: a period of one week in 2007, and a period of three weeks in 2017.

The new absences, the researchers said, are unprecedented. They're also ongoing. In a paper published earlier this year, Towner and her colleagues documented two sightings of Port and Starboard attacking sharks and eating their livers.

Worryingly, these attacks are altering the ecosystem.

In the absence of great white sharks, copper sharks (Carcharhinus brachyurus) are moving in to fill the vacant ecological niche. These sharks are preyed upon by great whites; with no great whites around, the orcas are hunting the coppers instead.

And, notably, they're doing so with the skill of predators who have had experience in hunting large sharks, the researchers said.

"However, balance is crucial in marine ecosystems, for example, with no great white sharks restricting Cape fur seal behavior, the seals can predate on critically endangered African penguins, or compete for the small pelagic fish they eat. That's a top-down impact, we also have 'bottom up' trophic pressures from extensive removal of abalone, which graze the kelp forests these species are all connected through," Towner said.

"To put it simply, although this is a hypothesis for now, there is only so much pressure an ecosystem can take, and the impacts of orcas removing sharks, are likely far wider-reaching."

It's also worth considering the reasons why orcas might be hunting sharks. Their livers are rich sources of nutrition, huge, plump, and full of fats and oil that the sharks use to fuel their epic migratory journeys across the ocean.

But it's unclear how the orcas figured this out, or why they might seek the shark livers as a preferred source of nutrition.

It's possible that some orcas are adapting to preferentially hunt sharks, perhaps in response to declining numbers of their preferred prey. An unrelated pod in the Gulf of California has developed its own techniques for hunting whale sharks, too.

However, given that great white populations are declining worldwide, the added pressure of an efficient predator is a cause for concern.

"The orcas are targeting subadult great white sharks, which can further impact an already vulnerable shark population owing to their slow growth and late-maturing life-history strategy," Towner said.

"Increased vigilance using citizen science (e.g. fishers' reports, tourism vessels), as well as continued tracking studies, will aid in collecting more information on how these predations may impact the long-term ecological balance in these complex coastal seascapes."

The team's research has been published in the African Journal of Marine Science, and African Journal of Marine Science.

An earlier version of this story was published in July 2022.

New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates life expectancy in the US is now higher than at any point since the coronavirus pandemic, predicting an average lifetime of 78.4 years for those born in 2023.

In 2022 the statistic was calculated to be an average of 77.5 years, hinting at a significant rebound from the high mortality rate when COVID infection was at its worst.

"The increase we had this year – the 0.9 year – that's unheard of prior to the pandemic," statistician Ken Kochanek, from the National Center for Health Statistics, told Randi Richardson at NBC News.

"When COVID happened, you had this gigantic drop, and now we have a gigantic drop in COVID. So, you have this gigantic increase in life expectancy."

Life expectancy at birth is a measure of the average time newborn babies are expected to live if current mortality rates were to remain unchanged. These rates are of course changing all the time, but it's a useful indicator of the state of the health of a nation (or the global population in its entirety).

US life expectancy was its highest in 2015. Calculated to be 78.94 years, the high figure reflected cumulative factors like improvements to medical treatments and diagnostics, sanitation, and nutrition throughout the past century.

The global pandemic introduced an unforeseen factor into the calculations, with 0.6 percent of those infected in the US at risk of dying from the infection early in the outbreak. The full COVID dip came into effect in 2021's measures, when US life expectancy dropped to 76.4 years.

While COVID is still putting people at risk of illness and death, infection from SARS-CoV-2 has a reduced mortality rate thanks largely to vaccination programs and improved treatments. The 4th leading cause of death in 2022, it slipped to 10th place in 2023, putting COVID behind heart disease, cancer, accidents (including drug overdoses), stroke, chronic lower respiratory diseases, Alzheimer's disease, Diabetes mellitus, kidney disease, and chronic liver disease and cirrhosis.

Life expectancy continues to differ by sex, though the gap narrowed last year: in the US it's now 75.8 years (up from 74.8 in 2022) for men, and 81.1 years (up from 80.2 in 2022) for women.

Both women and men who were 65 in 2023 have a life expectancy of 19.5 more years, up 0.6 years from 2022 estimates.

The CDC also produces a breakdown based on race and ethnicity. The biggest drops in death rates per 100,000 people were in American Indian and Alaska Native people, down by 11.5 percent for men and 13.5 percent for women.

There's another issue here, which is how healthily we're aging – whether longer lives are being spent in good health or not. This health gap, between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy, is wider in the US than anywhere else.

That continues to be a challenge for scientists, health professionals, and us as individuals: increasing lifespans (which are predicted to continue) is generally regarded as positive news, but we also need to the quality – not just the quantity – of lifespan lifts to get the most out of those extra years.

You can view the full CDC report here.