In the forest, certain fungi attach to trees and fallen logs to break down and digest the carbon within their wood before releasing it as carbon dioxide. But when their preferred meal isn’t available, these wood-decaying fungi can chow down on plastic instead, according to a new study published July 26 in the journal PLOS … Read more
A 64-year-old man got a medical checkup after his tongue began sprouting green “hairs.” The bizarre-looking fuzz turned out to be caused by a fairly common and harmless condition known as hairy tongue. The patient’s tongue had turned green about two weeks before he visited the clinic, shortly after he had completed a course of … Read more
Lab-grown meat, made from chicken cells cultured in steel tanks, can now be produced and sold in the U.S. for the first time. Two California-based companies — Upside Foods and Good Meat, a subsidiary of Eat Just — became the first in the nation to get approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to … Read more
Neanderthal genes may be one cause of the disorder nicknamed the “Viking disease,” in which fingers become frozen in a bent position, a new study finds. The study, published June 14 in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, finds gene variants that were inherited from Neanderthals that dramatically increase the odds of developing the condition, … Read more
Mysterious, spiral signals have been discovered in the human brain, and the scientists who found the swirls think they could help to organize complex brain activity. The signals, which appeared as swirling spirals of brain waves across the outer layer of the brain, were discovered in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans of 100 … Read more
Fish are constantly surrounded by water, but do they get thirsty? And how would they even drink? To answer these question, it’s crucial to understand how water — a solvent — interacts with other substances like salt, which is a solute, across a cell membrane. Through a process called osmosis, water flows across a membrane … Read more
Two children who experienced intense, insatiable hunger that drove them to overeat have rare, never-before-seen genetic mutations that interfere with leptin, a key hormone that helps tell the body when it is full, a new case report says. After white fat cells make leptin, it plugs into the brainstem and hypothalamus, brain regions that help … Read more
Elon Musk’s brain-implant company Neuralink has been given clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to carry out its first trials in humans, according to news reports. Neuralink aims to use its brain-computer interface (BCI) technology to restore movement in people with quadriplegia, meaning complete or partial paralysis of the arms, legs and … Read more
The sun is an ordinary star, but it’s not the only kind of star out there. Most stars in our galaxy are M dwarfs (sometimes called red dwarfs), which are significantly smaller and redder than the sun — and many of them may have the potential to host life, new research shows. A new reanalysis … Read more
Locked away in frigid Arctic soils and riverbeds is a world teeming with ancient microbes. Bacteria and viruses that existed thousands of years ago are frozen in time inside prehistoric layers of permafrost. Warming temperatures could cause much of the ice to melt and unleash these microbes from their frosty prisons. Once free, unknown pathogens … Read more
