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Today:
Scientists Are Making Concrete With Human Poop – And It Gets 42% Stronger
NEWS | 11 September 2026
To make the biochar, fecal sludge is dried, then heated in a low-oxygen environment at temperatures between 350 and 450 degrees Celsius (662 to 842 Fahrenheit) to produce biochar. The biochar concrete specimens being prepared and tested for compressive strength. The researchers measured the shrinkage, compressive strength, flexural strength, water absorption, and porosity of their different mixes, and this is where it got really interesting. Overall, the strongest concrete was generally produced when 5 percent of the cement was replaced with poop biochar. For one, poop biochar is highly porous, riddled with tiny cavities that can soak up water and gradually release it as the concrete cures.

Top Stories:
Scientists Witness Water Transforming Into a Weird 'Glass' Instead of Ice
NEWS | 11 September 2026
Like an aqueous Jekyll and Hyde, water crystallizes at low temperatures, taking the familiar form of ice. Or it can become "glassy water", with an amorphous, messy molecular structure. Bulk water's glassy transition was thought to occur somewhere around -135 degrees Celsius, but crystalline ice obscured researchers' attempts to reach this glassy precipice. "This allows us to selectively measure water dynamics even when the water is confined within a complex soft matrix." At very low temperatures, the water and phytantriol sample becomes brittle and starts forming macro- and microscopic cracks.

World:
Mysterious Viper With a 'Spider' For a Tail Reveals Another Surprise
NEWS | 11 September 2026
"We were particularly interested in seeing what the vertebrae at the tip of the tail look like, because the exterior of this snake's tail is so unusual." "You only get the spider tail from the soft tissue with no underlying bony structure, it is all keratin, just like our fingernails." That suggests the spider tail arose through evolutionary processes that dramatically modified the snake's scales rather than its underlying skeleton. "The radiating 'spider-leg' pattern of the tail tip is made up entirely from modified scalation," the researchers write in their paper. "The tail scales become progressively elongated, creating long and flexible filaments.

Current Events:
A Woman's Intestines Literally Tied Themselves Into a Knot After Childbirth
NEWS | 11 September 2026
(Science Photo Library/Canva)One section of her small intestine had wrapped around the lower part of her large intestine, forming a tight knot. The trapped section of her large intestine and about 60 centimeters (24 inches) of her small intestine had died. This kind of knot forms when sections of the small and large intestines wind around one another. A simpler twist in the large intestine can sometimes be relieved using a tube or scope inserted through the rectum. Trying that with an intestinal knot, however, could injure or perforate tissue already starved of blood.

News Flash:
Ancient DNA Reveals The 'American Cheetah' Wasn't a Cheetah at All
NEWS | 11 September 2026
Giant bears that stood up to 12 feet tall pooped in caves, woolly mammoths trumpeted across the frigid tundra steppes, and 'American cheetahs' chased 'American antelope' across expanding grasslands. (Velizar Simeonovski/UCSC)But a new, uniquely comprehensive DNA and isotopic analysis revealed that this fleet-footed felid wasn't actually a cheetah. M. trumani skull fragments recovered deep underground from Natural Trap Cave, Wyo. An illustration detailing the geographic distributions of M. trumani, as well as the origin of known samples, including those used in this work. Artist's conception of how a glacier barrier split the two American 'cheetah' populations, leading to dietary specializations based on their environments.

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Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 11 September 2026
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Latest:
Belly Fat, Not Age, May Be The Bigger Driver of Low Testosterone
NEWS | 11 September 2026
Aging may not impact your testosterone levels as much as you might think. According to a new analysis, published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, visceral fat, or deep fat in the abdomen, may be the more precise metabolic determinant of testosterone suppression. In cases like these, visceral fat levels may be the more important consideration. It's unclear why testosterone production is so closely linked to visceral fat, but researchers have a few ideas. Visceral fat can also stimulate inflammatory pathways that could disrupt the body's hormone signaling pathway, increasing the conversion of testosterone to estradiol.

Breaking:
Alzheimer's Disease Threat Actually Emerges From Beyond The Brain, Study Finds
NEWS | 11 September 2026
We usually think of Alzheimer's as a brain disease, but a growing body of evidence shows it's more complicated than that. Indeed, some of the damage caused by the condition appears to emerge not from inside the brain, but outside it. A new study published in Nature Neuroscience suggests that an immune response from beyond the brain could end up attacking it, causing the neurodegeneration we see in Alzheimer's disease. That study showed that when researchers eliminated or blocked the T cells in mice, it reduced neuronal damage, suggesting that manipulating the immune cells could be a new avenue for prospective treatments. There, the antigens trigger cDC1s, which alert CD8+ T cells that then make their way back upstream to the brain, ultimately causing neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration.

Trending:
Physicists Watched a Quantum Material Rebuild Itself Like Ice After Laser Blasts
NEWS | 11 September 2026
The study by an international team of researchers investigates how two charge density wave (CDW) phases can emerge and co-exist in the same material. Essentially, the results suggest the two CDW phases form through fundamentally different mechanisms. "One of the biggest questions in physics is why some materials host multiple phases while others do not," says Gedik. "And when multiple phases do exist, how do they interact? "Our experiment provides a very neat way to study these multiple phases."

This Just In:
Giant Study Unravels The Links Between Meat Consumption And Stomach Cancer
NEWS | 11 September 2026
There's now a substantial amount of evidence that eating more meat – particularly red and processed meat – increases the risk of cancer. "Higher processed meat intake was associated with an increased risk of gastric cancer, especially intestinal-type gastric cancer, and esophageal adenocarcinoma," write the researchers in their published paper. Cancer, 2026)"This study adds new evidence for gastric and esophageal cancer prevention related to meat consumption." However, the study also analyzed unprocessed red meat and unprocessed white meat separately, and that turned up some interesting findings. "Future studies should elucidate the underlying mechanisms and inform dietary guidelines to reduce cancer risk."

Today:
Scientists Reveal What Happens When You Switch From a Low-Carb to a High-Carb Diet
NEWS | 11 September 2026
Low-carbohydrate diets are one of the most popular options for losing weight, with data suggesting 7 percent of Americans followed a low-carb diet in 2024. So what happens to your body when you come off a low-carb diet, and resume eating foods that are high in carbohydrates? During this 10-week phase, one group continued on very-low-carbohydrate diets, while the two other groups received different kinds of high-carbohydrate diets. As it turned out, that single alteration appeared to make a considerable difference between the two high-carb groups. "Following weight loss with very-low-carbohydrate diets," the team concludes, "starch-rich diets serve as an unrecognized driver of inflammation."

Top Stories:
US Doctors Just Changed Their Guidelines For Migraine Prevention
NEWS | 11 September 2026
Medical experts in the US have expanded their recommendations for who should receive migraine treatment and what preventative drugs they should be prescribed. So, under the new guidelines, people who suffer from migraine attacks or severe headaches should have expanded access to newer treatments, too. In clinical trials, they have produced some of the strongest evidence of efficacy for preventing migraine attacks yet. Unfortunately, because migraine patients respond so differently to preventative treatments, finding the right pharmaceutical can take a bit of trial and error. "The use of medications to treat acute migraine attacks too frequently is termed "medication overuse"," argue the 2026 recommendations.

World:
Your Body Keeps Producing Cannabis-Like Chemicals Throughout a Marathon
NEWS | 11 September 2026
Endocannabinoids may contribute to the famous "runner's high": the happiness, calm, reduced anxiety, and dulled pain some people experience during long runs. Previous research has linked anandamide more consistently with mood and features of the runner's high. Only 12 of the 36 reported a runner's high during the race. "Elevated endocannabinoid levels alone are not sufficient to produce a runner's high," Siebers explained. But their effects appear far more complicated than a simple runner's high.

Current Events:
NASA Found Strange Holes on Mars. Scientists Aren't Sure What Made Them.
NEWS | 11 September 2026
Alone in a dried-up crater lake millions of miles from Earth, NASA's Curiosity rover has been tirelessly exploring for 14 years. Even after all this time, however, the rover can still roll up to a new way Mars has found to be weird – something that defies easy explanation. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)Holes and pitted ground on Mars are nothing new. But these holes – tiny, shallow divots in the ground – are unlike anything seen before on Mars. The strange holes aren't the only mystery about the ground Curiosity is exploring.

News Flash:
A Low-Plastic Diet Has Detectable Impacts on Urine Levels Within a Week, New Experiment Shows
NEWS | 11 September 2026
Plastic is virtually unavoidable in 2026, but there may be ways to reduce your exposure to some of its associated chemicals. After seven days of this particular, low-plastic intervention, the urine levels of three plastic-associated chemicals were up to 60 percent lower than in the control group. Participants who had the lowest relative levels of plastic-associated chemicals rarely consumed fast food, highly processed foods, foods in plastic packaging, or microwaved foods in plastic. While changes to personal care products had the least impact on plastic-associated chemicals in urine, a strict adherence to low-plastic foods had the best outcomes. In the group given low-plastic food and kitchenware, mono-n-butyl phthalate levels were 38 percent lower, monobenzyl phthalate levels were 54 percent lower, and bisphenol A levels were 60 percent lower than the control group.