Microbial life hidden deep inside Earth’s crust has survived repeated periods of mountain-building, erosion and changing temperatures over hundreds of millions of years, a new study suggests. Researchers uncovered evidence of several bursts of methane-producing microbial activity by examining material from a borehole drilled 2.3 kilometres into the bedrock of central Sweden. Their findings were […]

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Flushing a toilet may send more into the air than most people realize. A new review has found that toilet flushing can produce tiny airborne particles, including some that may contain microorganisms, and these particles can sometimes rise high enough to reach the breathing zone of adults. Researchers from Flinders University examined previous studies to […]

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Rivers flowing from melting glaciers in Svalbard are carrying ancient methane out of rocks beneath the ice, according to new research. The discovery reveals a natural climate feedback that could become more important as the Arctic warms and glaciers continue to shrink. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. Although the amount identified in the study […]

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Scientists have designed a lightweight aluminum material inspired by eggshells that could one day help protect spacecraft from fast-moving pieces of space debris. Nearly one million pieces of debris larger than 1 centimeter are believed to be orbiting near Earth. These fragments can travel at extremely high speeds, so even a relatively small object can […]

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Some of the smallest objects ever detected in the outer solar system appear to have preserved evidence of how and where they formed billions of years ago. For the first time, astronomers combined observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope to study extremely faint objects beyond Neptune. Known as trans-Neptunian objects, […]

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Muscles need fuel to work, and they can use both sugar and fat for energy. But when too much fat becomes trapped inside muscle cells, this normal energy system can begin to work less efficiently. Excess fat inside skeletal muscle is sometimes called myosteatosis. It is associated with aging, inactivity, obesity and high-fat diets, and […]

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Could one of the world’s most widely used diabetes medicines also protect people from serious heart problems? Scientists have been asking that question about metformin for years. Metformin is usually given to people with type 2 diabetes to help control blood sugar. Because diabetes and heart failure often occur in the same person, researchers have […]

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What people eat throughout life may influence more than heart health, weight, and blood sugar. A growing body of research is examining whether food choices can also affect how quickly the brain changes as people grow older. This question matters because dementia already affects tens of millions of people worldwide. With no simple way to […]

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A very low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet may improve some measures of metabolic health more than Mediterranean or low-fat eating when people lose the same amount of weight. In a small clinical trial, the keto diet produced the largest reduction in liver fat and the highest proportion of participants who no longer met the definition of prediabetes. […]

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Statins are among the most widely used medicines for preventing heart attacks and strokes. They lower harmful cholesterol in the blood and can slow the buildup of fatty material inside arteries. The difficult question is deciding who should start taking them before heart disease causes symptoms. Doctors usually estimate a person’s future risk by looking […]

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Anyone who has struggled with an arcade claw machine knows that controlling a mechanical arm is not as easy as it looks. Excavator operators face a much harder version of the same problem. They must coordinate several joystick movements to control the machine’s boom, arm, bucket and cab at the same time. Learning those controls […]

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A gigantic line of cliffs may once have stretched for thousands of kilometers across ancient North America, helping erase more than a billion years of geological history from rocks now exposed in the Grand Canyon. Scientists led by the University of Southampton in the UK believe this enormous landscape formed about 800 million years ago, […]

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A faint gravitational-wave signal spreading across the universe may contain clues about mysterious stars that existed more than 13 billion years ago, according to new research. Scientists from Colgate University have investigated whether some of the earliest supermassive black holes could be responsible for much of the extremely low-frequency gravitational-wave background detected today. Their findings […]

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Some of the earliest massive galaxies in the universe may be hiding enormous numbers of small, faint stars, suggesting they contain much more mass than astronomers previously believed. Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team led by researchers at Leiden University studied nine massive galaxies from the early universe. They discovered that […]

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A urinary tract infection may make memory problems worse after a traumatic brain injury, according to new research in mice. The study raises an important question about whether a common infection could interfere with the brain’s recovery after an injury. Traumatic brain injury, often shortened to TBI, happens when a blow, fall or other force […]

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A compound connected with foods such as pomegranates and walnuts could point scientists toward a new treatment for one of the most stubborn forms of heart failure. Researchers found that urolithin A helped stiff heart tissue relax and reduced several damaging changes linked to the disease. Urolithin A is not simply a nutrient that comes […]

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Moving your body is generally good for your health, but new research suggests that all physical activity may not have the same relationship with the aging brain. A huge analysis found that exercise chosen for fun was linked to less dementia, while heavy physical activity at work was linked to more. The research came from […]

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Parents often notice differences between their first and second child and wonder whether birth order really matters. A massive new study suggests it may be linked to health in unexpected ways, although the differences are much smaller than many people might imagine. The findings were published in Nature Health. Researchers analysed health records from more […]

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A long-running study suggests that chemicals formed during drinking water disinfection may play a role in uterine cancer risk. Scientists tracked more than 53,000 California teachers and school administrators for nearly two decades and found that women exposed to higher levels of certain water treatment byproducts were more likely to develop uterine cancer. The findings […]

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