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Today:
Ice Age Humans Were Experts at Wielding Fire, Study Finds
NEWS | 27 April 2025
Learning to control fire was a game-changer for ancient humans, who could use it to cook food, see at night, and endure cold weather, among other things. The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), for example, was the iciest part of the most recent glacial period in Earth's current ice age – and presumably a great time to cozy up by a fire. Yet despite the era's extreme cold, there is scant evidence of humans using fire during the LGM, which lasted from about 26,500 to 19,000 years ago. Or maybe people built as many fires as ever, but harsh conditions during and after the LGM destroyed most of the evidence. We are currently investigating whether they were used as fuel or just accidentally burned," Bosch says.

Top Stories:
Do Cats Make Good Therapy Animals? It's Complicated.
NEWS | 27 April 2025
But an increasingly popular alternative is emerging: therapy cats. Therapy cats are used to alleviate loneliness and stress. The environments therapy cats are often taken into, such as nursing homes or schools, can be noisy, unpredictable, and filled with unfamiliar people and surroundings. For example, therapy cats may provide more benefits to people that see themselves as "cat people". So, dogs might be the traditional therapy animal, but cats have shown they too have what it takes.

World:
Lab-Grown Teeth Are Another Step Closer to Reality, Scientists Reveal
NEWS | 27 April 2025
The idea of growing teeth in a lab has vague horror movie connotations, but it could serve a real, practical, non-scary purpose – in replacing cavities and damaged teeth – and new research gets us another step closer to being able to do it. "Lab-grown teeth would naturally regenerate, integrating into the jaw as real teeth," says Xuechen Zhang, who is studying for a PhD in Regenerative Dentistry at KCL. We're now seeing several methods analyzed to see if our own teeth could be adapted to work like this. Several options are on the table, including transplanting cells, or implanting teeth already fully grown in the lab. Another approach that's being investigated, as part of efforts to tackle anodontia (which prevents teeth from growing), is an antibody treatment.

Current Events:
Largest Structure in The Universe May Be 50% Larger Than We Thought
NEWS | 27 April 2025
The largest known structure in the Universe may be even larger than the large we thought it was. Since black holes and neutron stars both form from massive stars, gamma-ray bursts are associated with the populations of massive stars that are usually found in galaxies. A structure larger than around 1.2 billion light-years would be considered a major inconsistency, and we've found quite a few of those. A super-structure called Quipu measures about 1.3 billion light-years wide, while the Sloan Great Wall spans around 1.37 billion light-years. The Clowes-Campusano LQG group of galaxies is 2 billion light-years across, the Giant Arc is around 3.3 billion light-years across, and the Huge Large Quasar Group is 4 billion.

News Flash:
Ozempic-Type Drugs May Trigger Brain Changes Linked to Depression
NEWS | 27 April 2025
A new study shows these medications could trigger brain changes linked to depression. Ozempic and Wegovy are both what's known as glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 drugs), so named because they mimic the natural GLP-1 hormone found in the brain, gut, and pancreas. "The paper provides critical evidence for re-evaluating the widespread use of GLP-1 drugs," says psychiatrist Mark Gold of the Washington University School of Medicine. Instead, the researchers ran an analysis of GLP-1 drug genetic pathways linked to depression and suicide risk. These genes check two boxes: they're associated with dopamine signaling and mood, and GLP-1 drugs could influence their behavior.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 27 April 2025
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:
Dementia in Younger People Is Often Overlooked. Here Are 5 Key Reasons.
NEWS | 27 April 2025
Here are five reasons young-onset dementia remains under-recognised. It also isn't uncommon for younger adults to be told they're "too young" to have dementia. The misunderstanding that dementia is a disease of older adults leaves people with young-onset dementia fighting to be heard. While this is improving, greater awareness still needs to be brought to the experience of dementia in younger adults – especially given research shows that the progression of cognitive decline is more pronounced in younger adults. You can also contact local dementia support organisations such as Alzheimer Scotland, Dementia UK, and Alzheimer Society, who can provide information, resources and guidance on support options.

Breaking:
This Single-Celled Microbe Can Transform Into a Multicellular Creature
NEWS | 27 April 2025
A single-celled microbe that revels in Earth's most hostile salt lakes has the remarkable ability to transform its mote of a body into multicellular tissue when the pressure's on. Multicellularity is common in eukaryotes and rare among bacteria, and as far as we know, H. volcanii is only the second archaeon found to take this multicellular leap. We know H. volcanii has some impressive shape-shifting techniques up its tiny sleeves to help it thrive in such extreme environments as the Dead Sea and the Great Salt Lake. Rados first stumbled across this strange new strategy by tucking a single H. volcanii cell under a pad of jelly, which applied just 10 kPa of pressure – roughly what you experience at one meter below water. Finding these shapes in an organism whose body plan predates eukaryotes suggests that scutoid cells might be older – and more fundamental to multicellularity – than we realized.

Trending:
Mattresses Could Be Exposing Kids to Dangerous Chemicals While They Sleep
NEWS | 27 April 2025
Children's mattresses may be giving off chemicals associated with damage to the brain, according to new research – a discovery which raises serious concerns about the safety of youngsters in their own bedrooms. The researchers were looking for semivolatile organic compounds or SVOCs, including substances used to improve mattress durability and fire resistance. The researchers say it's concerning that many mattresses contain chemicals that may harm the brains of children. In tests on new mattresses, the team was also able to simulate how body heat and weight could increase chemical emissions. "Parents should be able to lay their children down for sleep knowing they are safe and snug," says Blum.

This Just In:
Why Aren't Humans as Hairy as Other Mammals? Here's The Science.
NEWS | 27 April 2025
Have you ever wondered why you don't have thick hair covering your whole body like a dog, cat or gorilla does? Humans aren't the only mammals with sparse hair. But over hundreds of millions of years, a small handful of mammals, including humans, evolved to have less hair. Genes that control hairinessTo better understand hairiness in mammals, my research team compared the genetic information of 62 different mammals, from humans to armadillos to dogs and squirrels. In the story of "Beauty and the Beast," the Beast is covered in thick fur, which might seem like pure fantasy.

Today:
Ancient Body Paint May Have Been Prehistoric Sunscreen, Study Says
NEWS | 27 April 2025
Ochre body paint may have been a form of prehistoric sunscreen that helped early humans survive a sudden increase in ultraviolet (UV) radiation around 41,000 years ago. At the same time, the poles where magnetic field lines meet expanded and tilted by over 75 degrees relative to Earth's rotational axis. Auroras are caused by charged particles from the Sun, which are guided along Earth's magnetic field lines to the poles, where they are dumped out and interact with our planet's atmosphere. If the magnetic field lines are weakened, though, all that cosmic radiation enters the atmosphere earlier and deeper, which can be disastrous for the ozone layer below. To this day, the Himba community in northern Namibia, for instance, use ochre as sunscreen, and Indigenous Australians have similar customs.

Top Stories:
First Utterly Alone Black Hole Confirmed Roaming The Cosmos
NEWS | 27 April 2025
A lonely black hole roaming the cosmos in solitude has been confirmed for the first time. But what's really special about it is that it's the only verified solitary black hole discovered wandering the Universe. Since that's generally too small to be a black hole, they proposed a neutron star was a more likely candidate. However, a series of follow-up studies, including another from the neutron star team, lend more weight to the black hole explanation. This may be the first black hole confirmed to be going solo, but it's far from the only one.

World:
A Strange Phrase Keeps Turning Up in Scientific Papers, But Why?
NEWS | 27 April 2025
Earlier this year, scientists discovered a peculiar term appearing in published papers: "vegetative electron microscopy". Excerpts from scanned papers show how incorrectly parsed column breaks lead to the term 'vegetative electron micro…' being introduced. (Bacteriological Reviews)Decades later, "vegetative electron microscopy" turned up in some Iranian scientific papers. Screenshot of a command line program showing the term 'vegetative electron microscopy' being generated by GPT-3.5 (specifically, the model gpt-3.5-turbo-instruct). Some automatic screening tools such as Problematic Paper Screener now flag vegetative electron microscopy as a warning sign of possible AI-generated content.

Current Events:
Scientists Spotted Signs of a Hidden Structure Inside Earth's Core
NEWS | 27 April 2025
In fact, Earth's inner core appears to have another even more inner core within it. But a few years ago, Stephenson and colleagues found evidence Earth's inner core may actually have two distinct layers. "The details of this big event are still a bit of a mystery, but we've added another piece of the puzzle when it comes to our knowledge of the Earth's inner core." The presence of an innermost layer has been suspected before, with hints that iron crystals that compose the inner core have different structural alignments. But their conclusions align with other studies on the anisotropy of the innermost inner core.