El Soplao, a fossil site tucked into the hills of Cantabria in northern Spain, stands out for yielding amber pieces with a blue-violet hue and abundant bioinclusions, according to a new review paper.
The post Spanish Amber Deposit Offers Rare Window into Cretaceous Life appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Sickness and disability benefits should be made as "easy as possible" to claim as the current system is too "stressful", the long-awaited Government review by Sir Stephen Timms has said.
The post Make Disability Benefits as “Easy as Possible” to Get, Says Labour Review appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
A Nature editorial on the Jason Arday affair, blaming everyone except Arday himself, chooses progressive ideology over basic honesty and scientific integrity, says Jerry A. Coyne in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The post Jason Arday and the Corruption of Science appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Reform doesn't have the dignity of the Tories' grand history, but its lack of historical baggage means it has more freedom to set out radical new policies, says Prof James Alexander. Together, they would be unstoppable.
The post It’s Time for a Conservative and Unionist and Reformist Party appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
The AfD's stunning victory in Sachsen-Anhalt with nearly 44% of the vote has left huge questions about who will form the government in the German state and whether the anti-AfD firewall will survive, says Eugyppius.
The post AfD Victory in Sachsen-Anhalt: What Now? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
In Boé National Park, researchers have repeatedly encountered a small number of trees marked by gouged bark and piles of stones at their bases. These signs suggest that wild chimpanzees have returned to the same trees for years to throw rocks. According to a recent field account by University of Victoria researchers Robyn Nakano and Ammie Kalan, some of these sites have remained in use for over a decade.
This behavior, called accumulative stone throwing, has been observed in only four chimpanzee populations in West Africa. While rocks and trees are widespread in chimpanzee habitats, piling stones at specific trees is rare. Nakano, Kalan, and other researchers suggest this may be a cultural practice within certain groups rather than arising from environmental factors alone.
Video recordings collected through the Pan African Programme and analyzed in a 2016 Scientific Reports study led by Hjalmar Kühl show that mostly adult male chimpanzees throw rocks at particular trees and repeatedly return to the same trunks. During these events, the chimpanzees pant-hoot, a loud call used for long-distance communication, and sometimes perform buttress drumming by repeatedly striking the tree’s buttressed base with their hands and feet.
Pant-hooting and buttress drumming are typical features of displays put on by male chimpanzees. The fact that these behaviors occur alongside stone throwing suggests that accumulative stone throwing may have developed as a variation of these existing social displays.
Researchers suspect this behavior may be cultural rather than simply a response to environmental conditions because it occurs only in certain areas, even though appropriate rocks and trees are common throughout chimpanzees’ habitats. Within one population, only particular trees are used as throwing sites. Earlier studies have suggested that the behavior might function as a form of communication or could indicate places of symbolic significance within a community’s territory.
The behavior could also offer archaeologists a rare example of how repeated stone use and accumulation can create material traces that persist after the animals that made them have moved on.
Some primates use stones as tools, including populations that use rocks to open nuts for food. Accumulative stone throwing differs because the behavior occurs in a social context rather than during extractive foraging. The purpose of this behavior for the chimpanzees remains unclear.
Nakano and Kalan conducted their fieldwork from Béli, a village where the Dutch nonprofit Chimbo operates a solar-powered research compound with local partners. The team traveled 22 kilometers by bicycle and on foot into the savanna-woodland to establish a camp, working with field assistants Djei Baldé, Balu Séra, and master’s student Taylor Tippett from the Great Ape Behaviour Lab.
The Boé chimpanzees are not used to humans and tend to avoid them, making direct observation impossible. The team instead set up two video cameras at each known stone-throwing site and placed audio recorders nearby to monitor the area.
Each day began at 6:30 a.m. with visits to two to five sites to replace SD cards and batteries, check equipment, measure trees, and create 3D scans of rocks thrown at the trees for later analysis. The team also recorded chimpanzee nests, feeding traces, and vocalizations along the trails. Their camp was located beside the Fefine River, which continues flowing through the dry season and provides an important water source for wildlife.
The team found that most sites first identified by the Pan African Programme and revisited in 2017 remained active when Nakano and Kalan’s team returned in 2026. Chimpanzees have returned to these same trees to throw rocks for more than ten years.
The video and audio collected during this trip will allow the team to identify the age and sex of individual stone-throwers and observe how nearby chimpanzees respond to these events. This data could help the researchers determine the purpose of this behavior.
Chimpanzees’ habitat in Guinea-Bissau is becoming increasingly threatened by industrial mining. During fieldwork, the researchers discovered boreholes dug to explore bauxite, the ore used to produce aluminum. Although bauxite mining might help promote economic development, comparable operations in neighboring Guinea have caused habitat loss and pollution, with negative effects on both wildlife and local communities. The country’s political instability also presents challenges for environmental oversight.
Nakano and Kalan emphasize that losing these stone-throwing sites would be both a cultural and ecological loss, erasing a documented example of primate material culture.
Nakano and Kalan are still analyzing the footage from this field season, but the main question of why chimpanzees throw stones at these specific trees remains unanswered. Still, the evidence collected by the cameras and recorders could help determine whether the behavior functions as territorial signaling, long-distance communication, or something else entirely.
Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.
Temperatures in the Arctic are increasing at a rate 4 times faster than the average global temperature. Scientists have documented the global effects of climate change, but there are still regions where these effects are less well known. This is the case for freshwater ecosystems in the Arctic.
When the ground has been permanently frozen for 2 years, scientists call it permafrost. Permafrost contains soil, sand, rocks, and organic matter held together by ice. As temperatures rise, permafrost thaws, which can change groundwater flow paths. It can also alter a stream’s temperature, flow patterns, and nutrient loads by introducing new material from the permafrost.
To determine how thawing permafrost affects Arctic ecosystems, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey recently studied 10 headwater streams within the Brooks Range in the Noatak National Preserve of Alaska. The scientists studied streams with different amounts of permafrost and ice to test whether connections exist between permafrost, food webs, and populations of fish called the Dolly Varden and Arctic Graylings. They focused on these 2 species of fish because their migrations often indicate ecological shifts in the area.
The scientists collected fish from the streams by temporarily stunning them, using a method called electrofishing, or by catching them in minnow traps. They manually identified each species they collected, then froze the fish and shipped them to a lab. Once in the lab, the scientists measured the length of each fish and used documented growth patterns to estimate its biomass. To calculate fish abundances, they divided their total biomass by the time spent electrofishing or trapping. Finally, they measured the energy density of each fish by burning it in a device called a bomb calorimeter.
At each stream, the scientists took manual temperature measurements and deployed loggers that recorded the temperature every 15 minutes. They also deployed equipment at the bottom of each stream to record water pressure in 15-minute intervals and converted the data to depth, since pressure increases with depth. Then, they used wading rods to measure how much water was flowing through each stream at a given spot.
They combined the depth and wading rod data to determine the flow rate of water in the streams over time. They used these data to identify unstable streams where water rose and fell rapidly. They also collected water samples from each stream and measured their nutrient concentrations, including dissolved organic carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, to determine water quality.
Finally, they measured 2 types of smaller organisms that allow energy to flow through the food web to the fish, called microbial biofilms and macroinvertebrates. They used a hand-held device to estimate the types and amounts of biofilms, and nets to collect macroinvertebrates.
Once they had compiled these data, the team conducted a statistical analysis to compare the studied parameters and fish populations to the extent of permafrost in each area. They found that streams with more permafrost in the area had warmer temperatures, because the permafrost prevented water from infiltrating the soil to cool off. The streams with warmer temperatures, in turn, had lower abundances and biomass of Dolly Varden fish and Arctic Grayling with lower energy densities. They suggested that these results meant that the high temperatures had pushed the fish above their optimum temperature range.
They also learned that the limited infiltration in permafrost areas caused rainfall to flow straight into the stream. This process created instability as the stream levels rose and fell rapidly. Fish in these unstable streams had lower energy densities, likely due to the harsher environment.
Areas with greater permafrost also had higher concentrations of dissolved organic carbon and phosphorus, which stimulated the formation of biofilms at the bottom of the food chain. They noted that areas with more biofilms also had more macroinvertebrates and more Dolly Varden biomass. Since the Dolly Varden eats macroinvertebrates, this finding suggested that the lowest levels of the food web shape the health of species higher up. This is called the bottom-up effect, and means that areas with more biofilms and macroinvertebrates will likely have healthier and larger fish populations.
The scientists explained that knowing how these factors influence Arctic fish populations can help researchers understand how thawing permafrost might affect Arctic ecosystems in the future. They anticipated that their data could help future researchers predict how these and other ecosystems will be impacted by changing landscape dynamics caused by global warming.
The post Thawing permafrost is affecting fish health appeared first on Sciworthy.
Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is being redefined by molecular biology. Once viewed mainly as a disorder of excessive blood-vessel constriction, the disease is now understood as a progressive process involving vascular remodeling, immune activation, metabolic disruption, and inherited susceptibility. A review published online on June 17, 2026, in the Chinese Medical Journal describes how these interacting mechanisms are reshaping PAH research and opening the door to treatments designed not only to relieve symptoms, but also to alter the disease itself.
PAH is a rare and potentially fatal condition in which the small arteries carrying blood through the lungs become narrowed and structurally damaged. As resistance within the pulmonary circulation rises, the right side of the heart must pump harder to maintain blood flow. Over time, the right ventricle can enlarge, weaken, and fail. Current therapies have improved survival, but many patients continue to experience progressive disease, limited exercise capacity, and an uncertain long-term outlook. The new review was conducted by Dr. Taeil Yang of Gil Medical Center at Gachon University College of Medicine and Professor Wook-Jin Chung of the Gachon Cardiovascular Research Institute in the Republic of Korea.
The authors explain that PAH develops through a complex interaction among several types of cells in the pulmonary circulation. Endothelial cells, which form the inner lining of blood vessels, normally regulate vessel diameter, blood flow, clotting, and repair. In PAH, these cells become dysfunctional and can produce excessive vasoconstrictors while reducing protective signals such as nitric oxide and prostacyclin. Endothelial injury also promotes the recruitment of inflammatory cells and stimulates neighboring smooth-muscle cells and fibroblasts to multiply. The resulting changes thicken the vessel wall and progressively reduce the space available for blood flow.
Inflammation is another central feature of this transformation. T cells, B cells, macrophages, and other immune cells can accumulate around pulmonary arteries, releasing cytokines and growth factors that sustain vascular injury. Rather than being a temporary response to damage, this immune activity may become chronic, reinforcing the abnormal behavior of vascular cells. The review emphasizes that immune signaling is closely connected to endothelial dysfunction and tissue remodeling, suggesting that PAH cannot be fully understood by studying blood-vessel tone alone.
The metabolism of pulmonary vascular cells also changes as the disease advances. Under normal conditions, mitochondria generate much of the energy required for cellular function through oxidative phosphorylation. In PAH, endothelial and smooth-muscle cells may shift toward glycolysis, a pattern resembling the “Warburg effect” observed in cancer. This metabolic reprogramming allows cells to generate energy rapidly while supporting biosynthesis and proliferation. It can also increase resistance to programmed cell death, enabling abnormal cells to persist within the vessel wall. These changes help explain why pulmonary arteries can continue remodeling even when vasoconstriction is medically controlled.
Genetic research has provided some of the strongest evidence that PAH is driven by specific biological pathways. Variants in BMPR2, the gene most commonly associated with heritable PAH, can impair signaling involved in vascular growth, repair, and cell survival. Other genes linked to PAH include SOX17, TBX4, and KCNK3. Several of these genes influence the bone morphogenetic protein, or BMP, pathway and its relationship with transforming growth factor beta, known as TGF-β. When this signaling network is disrupted, the balance between controlled growth and abnormal proliferation can shift, increasing susceptibility to pulmonary vascular disease. Genetic risk, however, is not destiny: environmental exposures, inflammation, infections, hormonal influences, and other biological triggers may determine whether disease develops and how rapidly it progresses.
These discoveries are already influencing treatment strategies. Traditional PAH medicines primarily target pathways that regulate vascular constriction, including endothelin, nitric oxide, and prostacyclin signaling. Newer approaches aim deeper at the mechanisms driving vascular remodeling. Sotatercept has attracted particular attention because it acts on signaling within the BMP/TGF-β superfamily and is designed to restore a healthier balance between growth-promoting and growth-inhibiting signals. By targeting the biology of vessel-wall remodeling rather than simply dilating arteries, the therapy represents a shift toward disease modification. Researchers are also studying seralutinib, which targets growth-factor and platelet-derived growth-factor signaling, as well as immune-directed treatments such as tocilizumab and rituximab. Metabolism-focused therapies remain another active area of investigation.
The review also highlights the growing importance of multi-omics research. Genomics can reveal inherited variants, while transcriptomics shows which genes are active in diseased tissue. Proteomics measures changes in proteins and signaling molecules, and metabolomics captures the chemical products of altered cellular pathways. Combining these layers may reveal why patients with apparently similar clinical diagnoses can have very different disease trajectories or responses to therapy. Such information could eventually help physicians classify patients according to molecular subtypes, identify biomarkers before irreversible vascular damage occurs, and select treatments according to the dominant mechanism in each individual.
Professor Chung argues that the most promising future for PAH depends on connecting laboratory discoveries with carefully designed translational studies and clinical trials. That challenge is substantial because the disease involves multiple interacting cell types and pathways, and because tissue samples from the pulmonary circulation are difficult to obtain. Nevertheless, the expanding molecular framework is changing the goals of treatment. Instead of focusing exclusively on lowering pulmonary artery pressure, researchers are seeking ways to repair endothelial dysfunction, restrain immune activity, normalize cellular metabolism, and reverse pathological remodeling. The field is moving toward precision medicine in which genetic and molecular information may guide therapy, offering patients the possibility of longer-lasting control and, ultimately, recovery of healthier pulmonary vascular function.
Subject of Research: Pulmonary arterial hypertension and its molecular mechanisms and emerging treatments
Article Title: Pulmonary arterial hypertension from a translational perspective: Bridging pathophysiology and treatment
News Publication Date: 17-Jun-2026
Web References: https://doi.org/10.1097/CM9.0000000000004137
References: Chinese Medical Journal, DOI: 10.1097/CM9.0000000000004137
Image Credits: Chinese Medical Journal
Keywords: Pulmonary arterial hypertension; PAH; BMPR2; SOX17; TBX4; KCNK3; BMP signaling; TGF-β; vascular remodeling; endothelial dysfunction; inflammation; metabolic reprogramming; sotatercept; seralutinib; precision medicine
Telo is raising the tow rating on its Mini-sized electric truck to 8,000 lbs, up from the 6,600 lbs it previously advertised.
The startup says months of real-world towing convinced it the little MT1 can safely pull more than a truck that size looks like it should. That new number puts a 152-inch pickup roughly on par with a base Ford F-150.
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology have found that moth wings are equipped with odor-detecting receptors, suggesting the insects use their wings -- not just their antennae -- to sense chemical cues in the air while flying.
The post Moths Can Smell With Their Wings, Researchers Say appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
A team of neuroscientists has reported that deep brain stimulation (DBS) targeted to the motor thalamus can reshape how the brain controls both speech and swallowing—and crucially, that the outcome depends on stimulation frequency. The findings, from experiments reported in Nature Communications (2026), suggest that “tuning” DBS parameters may offer more refined control over complex, real-world behaviors than previously possible.
The study centers on motor-thalamus DBS, a strategy explored for movement disorders and related symptoms. Instead of treating stimulation as a single fixed setting, the researchers tested multiple frequencies and monitored changes in speech-related signals and swallowing performance. This frequency sensitivity points to circuit-level dynamics where different stimulation rates engage distinct neural processing modes.
In practical terms, the results imply that higher or lower frequencies may preferentially drive or suppress specific pathways that contribute to oral motor timing. Speech production relies on precisely coordinated patterns of muscle activation, airflow, and sensory feedback; swallowing requires rapid, sequence-based control to protect the airway. Alterations in these timing networks could explain why DBS can influence both functions simultaneously.
The authors describe the effects as frequency-dependent, meaning that the same DBS target produces divergent outcomes when the pulse rate changes. Such divergence is consistent with the idea that stimulation can shift synaptic interactions, firing synchrony, and network oscillations within the thalamocortical loop. When the stimulation rhythm matches intrinsic circuit oscillations, the brain may stabilize certain motor programs; at other rates, it may destabilize them.
Importantly, the work frames DBS not only as a way to modulate symptoms, but as a potential tool for “behavioral steering.” If translated to clinical settings, clinicians could adjust DBS frequency to reduce speech side effects while maintaining or improving swallowing safety, rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all configuration.
The study also highlights an often-overlooked challenge: therapies optimized for movement may inadvertently affect speech and swallowing, both of which share overlapping motor control resources. Frequency tuning could become a lever for mitigating such trade-offs, improving quality of life for patients who already depend on DBS.
While the research is mechanistic, its implications are immediately viral-science-worthy: the possibility that a single hardware intervention can be dynamically optimized for nuanced functions. The next step will be confirming how these frequency effects scale across different individuals and disease states.
As DBS devices become more programmable, the field is moving toward personalized stimulation “dial settings.” This report adds to that momentum by providing evidence that the motor thalamus does not respond uniformly—frequency matters, and the brain appears to treat different pulse rates as different control regimes.
Subject of Research: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) targeted to the motor thalamus and its frequency-dependent effects on speech and swallowing.
Article Title: Frequency-dependent effects of motor thalamus deep brain stimulation on speech and swallowing.
Article References: Tang, L.W., Grigsby, E.M., Damiani, A. et al. Frequency-dependent effects of motor thalamus deep brain stimulation on speech and swallowing. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-75588-3
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-75588-3
Keywords:
"Is Miatta Fahnbulleh the brains behind Burnham?" asks the New Statesman this week, even coining the term "Fahnbullehism". No, says Charlotte Gill: it's the brains behind Fahnbulleh that we need to be looking at.
The post The Truth About the “Brains Behind Burnham” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
A new genus and species of four-winged pennaraptoran dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of northern China is adding another twist to the story of how birds evolved from their dinosaur ancestors.
The post New Feathered Dinosaur from China Had Peacock-Like Tail appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Angela Rayner has been burnishing her Left-wing credentials this morning with a call for a hike in benefits as she joined other Labour big beasts in bidding to join Andy Burnham's top team.
The post Angela Rayner Calls for Benefits Hike in Bid to Join Burnham’s Team appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Powered trailer concepts aren’t new, but they typically focus on solving a single problem, whether that’s reducing fuel costs or powering a reefer unit or utility. The new PowerSled concept is a bit different, promising construction crews the ability to do both.
A 113-million-year-old pterosaur fossil from northeastern Brazil has yielded rare evidence of soft tissues, organic molecules and chemical traces of a diet heavy in fish and cephalopods such as squid or nautilus relatives.
The post 113-Million-Year-Old Pterosaur Fossil Reveals What Flying Reptiles Ate appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Keir Starmer has been given 72 hours to quit with "dignity" or face a full-blown coup following Andy Burnham's by-election landslide as the challenger plots a Left-wing "path for Britain".
The post “You Have 72 Hours”: Ultimatum for Starmer as Burnham Plots Left-Wing “Path for Britain” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
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