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Today:
Record-Breaking Concentrations of Gold Discovered in The Seafloor
NEWS | 15 July 2026
Japan has found a potentially perfect place to build a commercial underwater gold mine – although whether it should is another matter inspiring great global debate. The discovery is published in Scientific Reports – just months after an international team of scientists warned that active seafloor vents need to be protected from commercial mining interests. (Nautilus Minerals)The Higashi-Aogashima vents were discovered in 2015 within Japan's exclusive economic zone, and to this day, it remains unknown how much marine life these hydrothermal fields host. Scientists around the world are still trying to figure out a way to extract 'invisible gold' from seafloor materials in a cheap and efficient way. Related: 'Supergiant' Gold Deposits May Be Worth Over US$80 BillionEven before this study, the Higashi-Aogashima hydrothermal fields were thought to host some of the highest gold contents in seafloor sulfides worldwide.

Top Stories:
Parasites Are Surging in The US Food Supply. Here's Exactly How to Wash Your Produce
NEWS | 15 July 2026
The thought of parasites in your food might make you squirm, but they are a reality we must all be wary of. (CDC)This particular food source has not been confirmed; the outbreak may yet be linked to other food sources. A new World Health Organization report published in The Lancet estimates the burden of foodborne parasites in 2021. Across the world, they estimate that infections with food-borne parasites were responsible for 4,886,427 DALYs lost in 2021. al, The Lancet, 2026)The pork tapeworm (Taenia solium) has the largest global health burden of the foodborne parasites they measured.

World:
Rare Autopsy Finds Alzheimer's Drugs Only Work in Some Parts of The Brain
NEWS | 15 July 2026
It allowed us to directly compare what happened next in neighboring brain regions and better understand the relationship between amyloid, tau, and neurodegeneration." Interestingly, the brain regions that showed low levels of amyloid also had fewer tau tangles at autopsy, and these were associated with slower atrophy of brain tissue. Two brain regions show persistent amyloid plaque accumulation, corresponding to greater tau tangle burden in the same areas. Bottom: Brain section from autopsy stained for tau tangles. Increasingly, evidence suggests that amyloid plaques and tau tangles may be symptoms of dementia, not necessarily early triggers of it.

Current Events:
Gum Disease Improved With Just 6 Weeks of Taking Bacteria-Loaded Gummies
NEWS | 15 July 2026
But sweet, sugary gummies are probably not what comes to mind if you're thinking about ways to better your oral health; quite the opposite, in fact. Researchers led by a team from the Institute of Science Tokyo in Japan wanted to see if there was a way to ward off damaging gum disease (or periodontitis) beyond the basics of daily brushing and flossing. Over time, it's become increasingly apparent that conditions like gum disease can be brought on and exacerbated by a bad mix of microbes in the mouth. The bacteria-loaded gummies (and the placebo gummies, to a lesser but non-significant degree) effectively reduced Bleeding On Probing (BOP) – a standard measure of inflamed gums, given as a percentage area of the mouth showing signs of bleeding. With up to 1.5 billion people thought to be at risk of severe gum disease by 2050, a simple healthy snack could make a significant difference.

News Flash:
A Last-Resort Antibiotic Is Losing The Battle Against a Dangerous Hospital Bug
NEWS | 15 July 2026
However, there's also an intriguing twist in the tale: The adaptations that are helping P. aeruginosa repel CZA might also leave it vulnerable to older medications. "Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a well-recognized opportunistic pathogen and a leading cause of healthcare-associated infections," write the researchers in their paper. "The shrinking effectiveness of available antimicrobial therapies has intensified the global threat posed by carbapenem-resistant P. aeruginosa (CRPA)." That said, there's also the risk that the bacteria develop carbapenem resistance all over again, and come back even stronger. Following good hygiene and cleaning practices can help reduce the risk of P. aeruginosa infections, but these infections are hard to prevent completely.

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SPONSORED | 15 July 2026
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Latest:
Your Dominant Hand Isn't Actually Hard-Wired, New Study Suggests
NEWS | 15 July 2026
Since most people have already been using their dominant hand loyally throughout their lives, it's difficult to design an experiment to test this hypothesis. They got healthy, right-handed participants to write the letter 'A' and the number '8' with their dominant and non-dominant hand, eight times. For elbow writing, the pen was securely attached to the elbow to prevent wobbling. "There were no significant differences or trends between the dominant and non-dominant elbow characters," the researchers report. Half of the participants were trained to write with the elbow of their dominant limb; the other half, their non-dominant elbow.

Breaking:
'Vanishingly Rare' Discovery: T. Rex Hatchlings Were Smaller Than a Cat And Born by The Dozen
NEWS | 15 July 2026
In the second movie, hunters find an infant Tyrannosaurus rex and use it to lure the adults into a trap. In a "vanishingly rare" discovery, paleontologists have found and closely examined fossils of tyrannosaur hatchlings. A size comparison between Tyrannosaurus rex hatchlings and a modern cat. One of the small bones appeared to be a third metatarsal – the middle foot bone – of a theropod dinosaur. No complete or certain Tyrannosaurus rex egg has ever been found.

Trending:
Scientists May Have Found a Way to Extend Fertility in Mice
NEWS | 15 July 2026
Scientists call it the extracellular matrix. These follicles lack any blood supply, and their only contact with other cells is via the extracellular matrix. Now, a team led by scientists from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China has demonstrated a way to keep the ovarian matrix more flexible – in mice, at least. Ovarian matrix stiffness increases in aging and pathological ovarian dysfunction. Ovarian stiffness and collagen buildup in the mice were reduced, and they produced more pups per pregnancy.

This Just In:
Uranium-Eating Bacteria Discovered in Radioactive Former Soviet Mine
NEWS | 15 July 2026
Krawczyk-Bärsch and team began their experiments with water samples collected from the treatment plant inlet of the Wismut GmbH Schlema-Alberoda mine. Comms., 2026)When they incubated the bacteria with glycerol, they found that the bacteria converted uranium into a pentavalent state. Pentavalent uranium does exist, but it is rare or only transient. In the presence of the bacteria, pentavalent uranium is then combined with iron and oxygen to form FeU(V)O 4 – a compound that scientists were already aware of but have yet to give a 'common' name to. This meant it more readily formed FeU(V)O 4 , especially when the water samples were dried and exposed to oxygen.

Today:
Hidden in a Guatemalan Ruin For 1,200 Years Was The Signature of a Maya Mathematical Genius
NEWS | 15 July 2026
The Classic Maya period, from around 250-900 CE, is seen as something of a golden age for the civilization. It's the first time a specific piece of work in mathematics or astronomy from the Classic Maya period has been attributed to a specific individual. And these calculations would have mattered: in the Classic Maya period, dates corresponding to the movement of celestial bodies would've been used to schedule royal events and plan building projects. "This fills out an important dimension of Classic Maya life that had typically been reconstructed through ethnohistories and Spanish accounts written centuries later." "We can now add Sak Tahn Waax to such thinkers, highlighting the great Indigenous astronomy and calendrical traditions of the Americas."

Top Stories:
The Center of Our Galaxy Is More Like a Raspberry Donut Than We Realized
NEWS | 15 July 2026
The latest discovery in the galactic center strengthens the Milky Way's resemblance to a mouth-watering treat. In roughly the same region of space, scientists have now identified erythrulose – the first true sugar ever found in interstellar space. "Interstellar erythrulose could have contributed to the sugar inventory available for early metabolic and replication processes." A diagram of erythrulose, consisting of four carbon atoms, four oxygen atoms, and eight hydrogen atoms. The team turned two radio telescopes in Spain towards a particularly promising cloud named G+0.693, which in the past has yielded other prebiotic molecules.

World:
Constipation May Be More Than a Simple Digestion Problem, Scientists Say
NEWS | 15 July 2026
Yet this is not the case for up to 15 percent of the global populace, as millions of individuals struggle with chronic constipation. As the microbial populations change, possibly due to diet, medications, or other lifestyle factors, they produce different metabolites, or microbial byproducts. "Current evidence supports an association between gut microbiota changes and [constipation]," the researchers say. Next, the "Hub" represents the microenvironment around the ENS, where signals from neurons, support cells, connective cells, immune cells, and microbes are locally integrated. Similarly, protecting neurons or 'pacemaker' cells in the ENS microenvironment could improve motility, though no such therapies have yet been established for constipation.

Current Events:
Light Usually Speeds Things Up. Scientists Just Caught It Doing The Opposite in The Nanoworld
NEWS | 15 July 2026
The fundamentals of light continue to fascinate scientists and reveal new secrets – including how its effects can be counterintuitive. But scientists just caught light doing the opposite: acting as an invisible brake at scales almost too small to imagine. This is at least partly due to 'quantum friction', the researchers determined. Quantum friction is a recently discovered phenomenon, and scientists are only just beginning to understand what it can do. "This discovery of light-induced quantum friction fundamentally changes our understanding of interfacial processes," says physical chemist Sebastian Kruss, from Ruhr-University Bochum.

News Flash:
Every Frame of a Black Hole Movie Is a Time Machine – And Physicists Think We're Oversimplifying
NEWS | 15 July 2026
Rather, the designations of "fast" and "slow" light are used to model how light travels around a black hole. It's computationally a lot more expensive, so physicists may sometimes opt for the fast-light model for simplicity and speed. A comparison of three ways to simulate a black hole movie. The photon ring signal is dominated not by the flowing accretion material, but the geometry of spacetime around the black hole. We're far from crisp, detailed observations of the processes around a black hole, but we're closer than we've ever been to seeing one in action.