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Today:
Inside Chernobyl, a Fungus Has Been Quietly Feasting on Radiation
NEWS | 05 July 2026
But for one organism, at least, the ionizing radiation lingering inside the reactor's surrounding structures may actually be an advantage. Although scientists have shown that the fungus flourishes in the presence of ionizing radiation, no one has been able to pin down how or why. Ionizing radiation describes emissions of particles powerful enough to knock electrons from their atoms, turning them into their ionic forms. However, C. sphaerospermum seemed strangely resistant and even grew better when bathed in ionizing radiation. Scientists have been unable to demonstrate carbon fixation dependent on ionizing radiation, metabolic gain from ionizing radiation, or a defined energy-harvesting pathway.

Top Stories:
Leave This Fruit Out of Your Next Berry Smoothie, Experiments Suggest
NEWS | 05 July 2026
Next time you're making yourself a berry smoothie, you might want to hold off on the banana. According to research from the University of California, Davis (UCD), there's something in bananas that might overpower the antioxidants in berries. But experiments suggest that when just a single banana is added to a berry mix, these metabolites are not nearly as abundant. In a controlled, blinded study published in the journal Food and Function in 2023, researchers at UCD gave a small group of eight participants either a flavonol-rich berry smoothie or a simple flavonol capsule. When a banana-berry smoothie with high PPO was left at room temperature in experiments, researchers found it contained fewer flavonols than a pure berry smoothie after an hour of sitting.

World:
Two People With Severe Autoimmune Disease in Remission After Immune 'Reset'
NEWS | 05 July 2026
The severe and aggressive autoimmune disease known as neuromyelitis optica (NMO) just met a new match. It works by using donor stem cells from another person, which are then deployed to reboot the patient's immune system and reprogram it to stop fighting against itself. The male patient has improved in terms of neurological function, and has fathered two children since the alloHCT treatment. "To date, no approved therapy allows patients to remain treatment-free while maintaining sustained disease control and complete disappearance of pathogenic antibodies," write the researchers. It's a drastic option, and a lot can go wrong as the immune system powers down and powers back up again.

Current Events:
Erectile Dysfunction Can Be a Warning Sign of a Serious Heart Issue, Experts Warn
NEWS | 05 July 2026
Erectile dysfunction is a topic many are reluctant to discuss, but flagging the problem with a doctor could be important. Between 40 and 70, the prevalence of erectile dysfunction tips over 50 percent. But some surveys have found that almost 20 percent of those over 55 would not seek advice from a healthcare professional for erectile dysfunction. "Erectile dysfunction is often a hint of underlying heart disease," cardiologist Michael Joseph Blaha has said in a review for Johns Hopkins Medicine. Its title, The Canary in the Coal Mine: Erectile Dysfunction as the Best Biomarker of Non-Communicable Chronic Diseases, sums up their main message about how erectile dysfunction may indicate other health problems.

News Flash:
Scientists Just Unlocked an Endless Army of Cancer-Fighting Cells
NEWS | 05 July 2026
One of the first lines of defense is a specialized white blood cell called a macrophage. "We found that, under the right conditions, [progenitors] can also self-renew, dividing extensively while keeping their identity and ability to produce functional immune cells." "That gives us a scalable starting point for engineering cell therapies for cancer, infectious disease, and potentially many other conditions." These white blood cells have also proven difficult to grow outside the human body, often failing to proliferate to necessary levels. This new research, however, suggests that targeting the progenitors of immune cells is a potentially better route to success, covering more bases all at once.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 05 July 2026
SmartSync is a mobile application, compatible with any Android smartphone, that syncs your important data to your email. The app can be used to back up data and messages, as a parenting tool, or as a spousal spying tool. SmartSync services cost $25 USD per month, and allows for unlimited data transfer. The app can be found Here

Latest:
500 Years Before The Incas, This Civilization Ruled The Andes. We're Only Now Piecing Together Who They Were
NEWS | 05 July 2026
This older empire was called the Tiwanaku polity (previously known as the Tiwanaku state). A diver with a bowl recovered from the Tiwanaku site. A researcher diving at the Tiwanaku site. A subsequent analysis by some of the same researchers examined a number of the artifacts found at the lake site. The Lake Titicaca dive findings were reported in PNAS, and the temple research is detailed in Antiquity.

Breaking:
Tiny Device Developed in Berkeley Could Help Save Millions From Food Poisoning
NEWS | 05 July 2026
If you wind up with an upset tummy after eating some questionable food, you're probably one of the lucky ones. The electric nose, developed at UC Berkeley, can improve food safety by detecting gases associated with spoiled food or common food allergens. (Brandon Sánchez-Mejia/UC Berkeley)Importantly, this technology can be incorporated into everyday appliances to protect us from hidden pathogens, including those associated with food spoilage. Related: The 4 Key Signs You Should Chuck Old Food, According to ScienceBut there's no reason to limit e-nose applications to food. This technology could potentially be expanded to biometrics, to understand and track human-health scents à la diabetes alert dogs.

Trending:
Vagus Nerve Stimulation Improves Severe Depression by 70%, Major US Trial Finds
NEWS | 05 July 2026
Now, hopeful results from a major clinical trial suggest a small implanted device could provide lasting benefit for some people with severe treatment-resistant depression. frameborder="0″ allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen>The treatment is called vagus nerve stimulation (VNS). A thin wire connects it to the left vagus nerve in the neck, and the device delivers brief, low-level electrical pulses at regular intervals. Vagus nerve stimulation provided substantial, long-lasting improvements for some participants with the most severe treatment-resistant depression. The US FDA approved VNS for treatment-resistant depression in 2005, though exactly how it works on depression isn't fully understood.

This Just In:
Extreme Heat Is The Deadliest Weather Hazard in The US, And Scientists Think We're Unprepared
NEWS | 05 July 2026
As a massive, prolonged heat dome settles across much of the United States, experts are concerned that extreme heat events like this are not taken seriously enough. Of all weather-related hazards in the United States, extreme heat is the deadliest, and about half of Americans are being exposed to it across the 4th of July weekend. A record-breaking heat dome in 2021 – similar to the one looming over the East Coast currently – resulted in a massive surge in emergency department visits and unplanned hospitalizations. Juanita Constible is a senior advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in the United States. This was especially true of people in Appalachia, where some of the worst effects of the ongoing heat dome are forecast to occur across the coming days.

Today:
Potentially Habitable Super-Earth Found Just 25 Light-Years Away
NEWS | 05 July 2026
Other kinds of worlds might too, but we don't know that yet; so, if narrowing down candidates, rocky worlds are in, while the rest go on the 'maybe' pile. GJ 3378b caught the attention of planetary scientists when initial analysis suggested an orbital period of 24.73 days, which placed it squarely in its star's habitable zone. An artist's impression of the possible view from the surface of GJ 3378b. That doesn't mean GJ 3378b is habitable. We currently have no way of knowing if GJ 3378b has an atmosphere.

Top Stories:
One Specific Diet Reduces Gum Disease in 6-Month Trial
NEWS | 05 July 2026
Researchers looking for ways to treat serious gum disease (periodontitis) are now taking that wider view, exploring dietary approaches that affect the body as a whole, not just the mouth. Diets like the FMD can reduce inflammation in the body, and periodontitis is an inflammatory disease. So, might this be one way to treat gum disease? Ultimately, the FMD didn't affect how quickly or substantially the gum disease disappeared, but it did lower signs of inflammation. The researchers suggest there may be multiple reasons why fasting is beneficial to gum disease patients.

World:
Physicists Create an Exotic New Form Of Matter: The 'Fermi Sea'
NEWS | 05 July 2026
These can occupy the same quantum state, meaning that limitless bosons can 'overlap' on top of each other and act like coherent waves. Recently, physicists have plied these principles to experimentally and theoretically describe a strange new phase of quantum matter likened to a sea of self-organized particles. In doing so, they birthed an entirely new, unexpectedly exotic phase of quantum matter, a fractional Fermi sea. As mentioned, bosons can occupy quantum states without restriction, but fermions cannot. Given its oddly complex interactions, including apparent ripples called Friedel oscillations – the "smoking gun" evidence of a fractional Fermi sea – the researchers are unsure of how to label their labile matter.

Current Events:
Psychologists Explain Why People Are So Invested in Taylor Swift's Wedding
NEWS | 05 July 2026
"Love Taylor and I'm excited for her wedding… hopefully we see a picture," wrote one Reddit user. She told ScienceAlert that strong parasocial relationships "could definitely explain" why Swifties are emotionally invested in the upcoming wedding. "The average fan, even those with strong parasocial relationships and a lot of investment in Taylor Swift's music, can recognize that it's her life and her milestone and not ours," said Maxwell. "The negative connotation is that people with parasocial relationships are obsessed or unhealthily preoccupied, when in reality most people can easily recognize that the relationship is one-sided, and that's okay." Bond believes that if parasocial relationships replace real-life friends or interfere with our everyday lives and routines, that's when they can have negative effects.

News Flash:
First-of-Its-Kind Lupus Treatment Significantly Reduces Symptoms in Mice
NEWS | 05 July 2026
The kidneys of mice treated with a strain of F. prausnitzii (right) had been 'attacked' by immune cells less than untreated mice (left). "Given the pivotal role of F. prausnitzii in gut microbiome function and the defi-ciency of the species in SLE patients, we investigated whether supplementation of F. prausnitzii restores lupus-associated microbiome dysfunction," the team explains. They looked at the genes that were switched on in F. prausnitzii, and the chemicals being produced. When more F. prausnitzii was introduced into the mice's guts, this effectively reset the system. It's still early days – and this has only been tested in mice younger than the age when lupus symptoms develop – but it's encouraging evidence that F. prausnitzii treatments could help rebalance a natural deficit.