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Today:
Nipah Virus Outbreak Has Asia on High Alert Amid Deaths in India
NEWS | 07 February 2026
An outbreak of the deadly Nipah virus in India has put many countries in Asia on high alert, given the fatality rate in humans can be between 40% and 75%. But what is Nipah virus, and how concerned should we be? What is Nipah virus? Like Hendra virus, Nipah is in a category of viruses called henipaviruses. This Nipah outbreak in India is worrying because there's currently no prevention and no treatment available, and it's a severe disease.

Top Stories:
We May Have Seen a Special Kind of Black Hole Explode, Study Claims
NEWS | 07 February 2026
New research in Physical Review Letters has another explanation, and this one is based on primordial black holes, too. "While there are no known astrophysical sources, exploding primordial black holes could have produced these high-energy neutrinos." Primordial black holes (PBHs) are entirely hypothetical. Theory says that unlike stellar-mass black holes, PBHs don't need a massive star to explode and collapse in order to form. It says that over time, HR reduces a black hole's mass, and that eventually a black hole will evaporate, unless it accretes more matter.

World:
Forest's Strange Response to an Eclipse May Have a More Mundane Explanation
NEWS | 07 February 2026
Having examined the data, ecologists Ariel Novoplansky and Hezi Yizhaq from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel propose an explanation that's not quite as sensational. "To me, [the previous study] represents the encroachment of pseudoscience into the heart of biological research," says Novoplansky. In line with earlier studies, they proposed that the spruce trees were sensing an impending environmental change and coordinating a response. In this case, to a solar eclipse. What's more, there was no real need for the trees to coordinate a response to the solar eclipse.

Current Events:
Breakthrough: Scientists Created a 'Universal' Kidney To Match Any Blood Type
NEWS | 07 February 2026
Watch the video below for a summary:frameborder="0″ allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen>As it stands today, people with type O blood who need a kidney usually have to wait for a type O kidney to become available from a donor. That accounts for more than half the people on waitlists, but because type O kidneys can function in people with other blood types, they're in short supply. While it is currently possible to transplant kidneys of different blood types, by training the recipient's body not to reject the organ, the existing process is far from perfect and not particularly practical. Here, the researchers effectively converted a type A kidney into a type O kidney, using special, previously identified enzymes that strip away the sugar molecules (antigens) acting as markers of type A blood. Related: Your Blood Type Affects Your Risk of an Early Stroke, Study RevealsThe researchers compare the enzymes to scissors working on the molecular scale: By snipping off part of the type A antigen chains, they can be turned into the ABO antigen-free status that characterizes type O blood.

News Flash:
Discovery of Mammoth Ivory Tools Resets Human Timeline in North America
NEWS | 07 February 2026
Human-made ivory and stone tools have been found in a 14,000-year-old layer of Alaskan earth, providing evidence of some of the first people to inhabit the Americas. This means the middle Tanana Valley site in Alaska, where the 14,000-year-old tools were discovered, is one of the earliest archaeological sites on the American continents. Mammoth ivory is a signature of the Clovis culture's technology, and the methods used to create the ivory tools in the Tanana Valley site suggest a lineage spanning from Siberia to the Great Plains. In a slightly younger, 13,700-year-old layer, the team discovered a large workshop complete with quartz – essential in creating the mammoth ivory tools – the by-products of mammoth tool production, and the earliest-known ivory rod tools found in the Americas. "Mammoth ivory and lithic material appear to factor prominently in resource circulation throughout eastern Beringia and the eventual dispersal of people further south into the Rocky Mountains and Northern High Plains of North America," the researchers write.

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SPONSORED | 07 February 2026
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Latest:
'Brain-Bone-Axis' May Link Depression With Osteoporosis, Study Claims
NEWS | 07 February 2026
Their conclusion is that the bone-brain axis, once considered a speculative construct, now "represents a legitimate physiological network." Both osteoporosis and depression are common issues among older patients, and often, they go hand in hand. Conversely, patients who have osteoporosis, which is a disorder characterized by low bone mass, tend to have higher rates of depression. The review authors say our traditional view of the mammal skeleton has "fundamentally transformed" in recent years. In other words, the severity of depression and osteoporosis may feed into one another via the bone-brain axis.

Breaking:
Mormon Hair Clippings Preserve Legacy of US Ban on Leaded Gas
NEWS | 07 February 2026
Hair samples preserved in family scrapbooks across the past century have revealed the success of the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) efforts to crack down on lead pollution since the 1970s. Now, University of Utah researchers have traced this win for human health through locks of hair passed down through generations. Similarly, Utah's smelters would have added to the levels of lead exposure. Related: Lead Exposure in Childhood Linked to Future Crimes, Study FindsWhile gasoline consumption continued to rise in the US after 1970, lead levels were curtailed by the new EPA regulations. And, in lock-step, lead levels in the Utah hair samples decline around this time, from 50 parts per million (ppm) down to 10 ppm in the 1990s.

Trending:
A Newly Discovered Comet May Soon Appear Bright in Our Skies
NEWS | 07 February 2026
A newly discovered comet has astronomers excited, with the potential to be a spectacular sight in early April. The Great Comet of 1965 – C/1965 S1 (Ikeya-Seki) – was the brightest comet of the 20th century. That comet would be a sibling to the Great Comets of 1965 and 1882, and a fragment of the Great Comet seen by Chinese observers in 1138. Enter comet MAPSWhich all brings us to the newly discovered comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS). At the time of its discovery, comet MAPS was farther from the Sun than any previous newly discovered sungrazer.

This Just In:
A Pretend Tea Party May Have Revealed a Chimp's Imagination
NEWS | 07 February 2026
Scientists wondered whether Kanzi had the capacity to play pretend – that is, act like something is real while knowing it's not. They poured imaginary juice from a pitcher into two cups, then pretended to empty just one. They asked Kanzi which cup he wanted, and he pointed to the cup still containing pretend juice 68% of the time. But not all scientists are convinced that Kanzi is playing pretend as humans do. "To be convinced of that, I would need to see Kanzi actually pretend to pour water into a container himself," Tomasello wrote in an email.

Today:
Baby Giants Were The Fast Food of The Jurassic, Study Reveals
NEWS | 07 February 2026
Baby long-necked dinosaurs might have been the fast food of the Jurassic Period. A detailed food web of the time, reconstructed from fossil data, shows that the young not-yet-giants almost single-handedly supported predator populations of the area. So few, in fact, that baby sauropods might have become one of the most plentiful food sources for Jurassic predators. "Life was cheap in this ecosystem and the lives of predators such as the Allosaurus were likely fueled by the consumption of these baby sauropods." But the most fascinating observation of the food web study was that this abundance of easy meals could explain why evolution appears to have slackened off for a bit.

Top Stories:
Signs of Mysterious Structures Near The Core Detected in Earth's Magnetic Field
NEWS | 07 February 2026
And this has had a noticeable effect on Earth's magnetic field over the last few hundreds of millions of years at least. Adding the Blobs therefore enabled us to reproduce the observed stable behaviour of Earth's magnetic field over a wider range. The huge Blobs therefore gave rise to characteristic longitudinally varying patterns in the shape and variability of Earth's magnetic field. Most of the time, the shape of Earth's magnetic field is quite similar to that which would be produced by a bar magnet aligned with the planet's rotation axis. This is what makes a magnetic compass point nearly north at most places on Earth's surface, most of the time.

World:
Record Smashed For Largest Object to Be Seen as a Quantum Wave
NEWS | 07 February 2026
A microscopic clump of sodium has become the largest object ever to be observed as a wave, improving upon previous records by thousands of atoms. In a new study, researchers from the University of Vienna in Austria and the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany report one of the largest objects observed in a superposition. Their experiment shows that even nanoparticles of sodium, each with thousands of individual atoms, follow the rules of quantum mechanics, despite their relatively enormous size. "The fact that it still interferes shows that quantum mechanics is valid even on this scale and does not require alternative models." Known as quantum decoherence, this collapse from a superposition to a definable position may explain why we don't observe quantum mechanics in macroscopic systems.

Current Events:
Autism Probably Affects Boys And Girls Equally, Massive New Study Reveals
NEWS | 07 February 2026
Autism has historically been viewed as a condition that affects men and boys more frequently than women and girls. But a massive new study based on data from millions of people suggests this isn't actually the case, at least in Sweden. This suggests it's not a case of fewer women having autism: it's just that they aren't diagnosed until later in life. That finding suggests autism isn't actually a predominantly male condition: it just takes longer for girls and women to be diagnosed. There's clearly a lot more to learn about autism, particularly among women and girls.

News Flash:
Wildfires Claim 24,000 Lives in The US Each Year Through Smoke Alone
NEWS | 07 February 2026
"Our message is: Wildfire smoke is very dangerous. Other scientists who have studied the death toll from wildfire smoke were not surprised by the findings. "Nobody's going to have 'wildfire death' on their death certificate unless the fire actually burned them or a tree fell on them or something like that," said Jerrett. They also included deaths related to falls and transport accidents – which are unlikely to be linked to wildfire smoke – to ensure their other observations weren't biased. But he said the county-level data could have led to over- or underestimates because wildfire smoke is very dynamic.