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Today:
A Worrying New Trait Has Appeared in an Isolated Cat Species on a Japanese Island
NEWS | 18 September 2026
On a small, isolated island of Japan, lives a tiny population of Tsushima leopard cats (Prionailurus bengalensis euptilurus). Recently, scientists have noticed a new trait emerging in the island's leopard cats that could mark a worrying trend for conservation efforts. The researchers sequenced the whole genome of one short-tailed leopard cat, and then compared it against several other groups. That included 5 local domestic cats (3 of which also had short tails), 15 other Tsushima leopard cats (with regular-length tails), and 4 leopard cats from continental Asia. That might be good news, but it does raise the question of why the trait appeared in at least three individual leopard cats in recent years.

Top Stories:
Two Remote Amazon Communities Have Strikingly Low Dementia Rates. Scientists Are Struggling to Understand Why.
NEWS | 18 September 2026
Two remote Indigenous communities in the Bolivian Amazon are said to have some of the lowest rates of dementia in the world. Compared to these remote communities, dementia prevalence in the US and Europe remains three to four times higher. The team speculates that a subsistence lifestyle with low vascular risk factors may be silently protecting the group's brain health. These are similar biological (non-lifestyle) risk factors to those in the US and other industrialized, high-income nations. Related: The Sad Case of The Youngest Person Ever to Be Diagnosed With Alzheimer'sPerhaps other lifestyle factors are confounding the results.

World:
North Korea Stopped Nuclear Testing in 2017 – But Triggered Nearly 1,400 Earthquakes Since
NEWS | 18 September 2026
North Korea's Punggye-ri nuclear test site sits beneath Mount Mantap, a 2,205-meter (7,234-foot) peak in the country's northeast. An underground nuclear explosion doesn't need a pre-existing cavern. That pattern suggested that the nuclear tests had disturbed pre-existing weaknesses in the crust. Rather, its topography provided a "long-lived mechanical framework" that helped determine where the effects of the nuclear tests played out. The faults were already there, loaded by natural stresses, and earthquakes might eventually have occurred without the nuclear tests.

Current Events:
Here's Why Everything You See Is a Mix of Red, Yellow, Green, And Blue
NEWS | 18 September 2026
Since a 19th century theory put forward by German physiologist Ewald Hering, color scientists have considered the hues red, yellow, green, and blue to be special – something you can still see in any modern color wheel today. A new study published in the Journal of the Optical Society of America A may finally have some answers about what makes red, yellow, green, and blue stand out. Color wheels have focused on red, yellow, blue, and green for over 100 years. The researchers suggest that the human brain simplifies this incoming palette by anchoring red, yellow, green, and blue (plus black and white) as the most straightforward way of encoding the world around us. If the brain wants to know how it can reproduce all of nature's colors using as few neural 'building blocks' as possible, it turns out that red vs green, blue vs yellow, and black vs white works rather well.

News Flash:
A Quantum Computer Just Confirmed a 48-Year-Old Math Problem
NEWS | 18 September 2026
Quantum computers already exist and are advancing quickly, but scientists predict there's much, much more to come from them – and a new study points the way to another significant step forward in the field of math. A diagram of the quantum processor used in the research (left) and the first theorem it tackled (right). "Here we report the experimental realization of automated geometry theorem proving on a fully programmable superconducting quantum processor," write the researchers in their paper. "As illustrative examples, we prove two theorems on a superconducting quantum processor: the perpendicularity of the diagonals of a square and a 1978 International Mathematical Olympiad geometry problem." The researchers used some simplified machine learning techniques for the second theorem, to reinforce the correct steps as they were worked through.

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SPONSORED | 18 September 2026
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Latest:
Just Smelling Coffee May Change Your Mood And Brain Activity
NEWS | 18 September 2026
Previous studies have linked coffee aroma with shifts in mood, memory, stress, and brain activity. They tracked mood, brainwaves, heart rate, and heart rate variability as volunteers sat beside freshly brewed coffee – without drinking it. Brain activity and heart rate were recorded using a portable headband, while heart rate variability was measured with a separate wearable device. Neither heart rate nor heart rate variability changed significantly. At an individual level, shifts in mood, brain activity, heart rate, and heart rate variability were not significantly correlated.

Breaking:
A WW1 Submarine Wreck Is Leaking Explosives Into The North Sea
NEWS | 18 September 2026
A German WW1 submarine known as SM UC-30 was returning home in April 1917 when it hit a British mine and sank. frameborder="0″ allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen> A video taken by Gert Normann Andersen in 2016, on discovering the wreck of SM UC-30. (Schuster et al., Marine Pollution Bulletin, 2026)"Many of these chemical compounds… are toxic and threaten the marine environment and its organisms," writes Andresen and team. At the SM UC-30 wreck site, concentrations of TNT and related metabolites were particularly high in the mussels. 3D model of the wreck of the submarine UC-30, based on seabed scans acquired with a multibeam echosounder.

Trending:
Two Body Measurements Linked to Nearly Double The Risk of Death – And Neither One Is BMI
NEWS | 18 September 2026
Scientists have identified two simple body measurements that together are linked to nearly double the risk of death. Now, researchers in China have identified another unique combo, measuring both body size and strength, that was linked to nearly double the risk of death. Participants with both excess abdominal fat and relatively weak grip strength were especially at risk of death during the study. Both of these simple measurements could be conducted safely and easily in clinical settings, although calculating relative grip strength also requires BMI. Emerging evidence suggests that measures of body fat may be more predictive of health issues than BMI alone.

This Just In:
Common Gum Problem Is Linked to a 61% Higher Alzheimer's Risk
NEWS | 18 September 2026
In a long-term study in Japan, bleeding and receding gums were linked to a substantially higher risk of dementia. The study is observational, so it can't prove that poor gum health is causing dementia, but the data are long-term. But there was another factor linked to brain health, too. Bleeding gums with gaps near the teeth are both indicators of active and progressive inflammation. Recently, studies have found that inflammation in other parts of the body, like the gut, may also contribute to dementia risk.

Today:
Earth's Shape Is Changing – Becoming Rounder And Less Round at The Same Time
NEWS | 18 September 2026
Earth is, apparently, changing shape – becoming, paradoxically, both more and less squished at the same time, depending on how you measure it. "This means that solid Earth's overall shape is becoming slightly less flattened." But the shape of the geoid does not necessarily reflect the shape of solid Earth. Between 1997 and 2000, Earth's poles were rising at a rate of about 0.5 millimeters per year. (C. Kotsakis, JGR: Solid Earth, 2026)Around the equator, the solid Earth was sinking, at a rate that also increased over the study period.

Top Stories:
Scientists Explore an 'Untouched' Deep-Sea Canyon… And Find Human Trash Beat Us Down There
NEWS | 18 September 2026
Mar del Plata is detached from the continental shelf and lies hundreds of kilometers offshore. "This suggests that human activities at sea may be a major contributor to the litter reaching the Mar del Plata Submarine Canyon." Compared with other submarine canyons around the world, Mar del Plata wasn't particularly litter-strewn. On the one Mar del Plata dive where the researchers calculated litter density, they recorded fewer than three. Nor should the 29 items be accepted as a complete inventory of the trash scattered across Mar del Plata.

World:
Scientists Grew Human Brain Cells Inside Mice – And They Wired Into The Mouse Nervous System
NEWS | 18 September 2026
The biggest barrier to understanding the human brain is the human around it. They grew human cortical tissue inside mice whose own cerebral cortex – the outer layer of the brain – had largely been genetically depleted early in development. Within three months, the human tissue had expanded to make up more than 90 percent of the cortical tissue by volume. Cross-section of a xenocortical mouse brain showing estimated nerve-fiber pathways and their directions. Brains of a control mouse (left), an apallial mouse lacking most of its cortex (center), and a xenocortical mouse containing transplanted human cortical tissue (right).

Current Events:
Scientists Just Found 84 Mysterious, Extremely Bright Objects Hiding in Nearby Galaxies
NEWS | 18 September 2026
It is like discovering 84 powerful lamps in thick fog by noticing only the faintest glow escaping through it. An illustration of hypersoft X-ray sources in the elliptical galaxy NGC 3379 (left) and the spiral galaxy M101 (right), where the sources are highlighted in purple and magenta. Mustafa Muhibullah/University of AlabamaThe researchers named them hypersoft X-ray sources. Yet there is a strange gap in the story: they see plenty of explosions, but not enough white dwarfs preparing to explode. Observing the sources in ultraviolet and X-ray light at nearly the same time could reveal which suspect lies behind each glow.

News Flash:
Dinosaurs May Have Engineered Their Own Egg Incubators to Survive Cold Regions
NEWS | 18 September 2026
Dinosaurs are not known to have a taste for cold climates. And yet, somehow, more than 250 fragments of massive dinosaur eggshells have been discovered in the Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) Chorrillo Formation, at Patagonia's southernmost reaches. At the time the dinosaurs laid these eggs, their nest would've been about 55 to 60 degrees south of the equator, in a climate equivalent to modern-day New York. (Masato Hattori)It's rare to find fossil evidence of non-avian dinosaurs nesting so close to the South Pole. Dinosaur eggs required a certain amount of heat to keep their precious contents growing.