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Today:
Dangerous microbes may be hiding in drought-stricken soils
NEWS | 27 March 2026
By providing your email address, you also consent to having the email address shared with third parties for those purposes. But it turns out drought can have a damaging effect even on the microscopic level by promoting dangerous antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Researchers discovered that drought conditions can boost both soil-dwelling and human-hosted bacteria’s ability to resist antibiotics. And as rising global temperatures dry out more of the world, more people may be exposed to these treatment-immune pathogens. When they tested the microbial population in wet and dry soil samples, they noticed that drier conditions tended to increase the concentration of antibiotics—and resistant bacteria.

Top Stories:
Spring heat dome, a blow to RFK, Jr.’s health agenda, SpaceX Starlink milestone
NEWS | 27 March 2026
Pierre-Louis: So spring just started, and much of, like, the Southwest and parts of the western U.S. are cooking; they’re baking. Thompson: Yeah, so, you know, this is following on a, a March that has been really wild weather-wise in general. So this is an incredibly huge and incredibly extreme and an incredibly persistent heat event, especially for this time of year. Pierre-Louis: So we know with heat events, there are kind of two big problems, right? Thompson: Yeah, there’s definitely that potential, and there are heat advisories and extreme heat warnings out in some places, you know, things like that.

World:
How stress causes an eczema flare-up
NEWS | 27 March 2026
For people with eczema, stress can trigger flare-ups and worsen their itchy rashes. But the link between stress and skin inflammation has been unclear. Now, researchers have identified a network of neurons that respond to stress by activating immune cells in the skin, fuelling eczema symptoms. When these mice experienced psychological stress, their AD symptoms, such as itching, worsened. The work linking stress and eczema “is an important piece to the puzzle”, says Wolfgang Weninger, a clinical dermatologist at the Medical University of Vienna.

Current Events:
U.K.’s deadly meningitis outbreak shows importance of vaccination
NEWS | 27 March 2026
Treating exposed people with antibiotics before symptoms show up can help quickly squash bacterial meningitis outbreaks. But experts say that routine meningitis vaccination for high-risk groups, including young adults who congregate in settings such as college campuses, is key to preventing such dangerous transmission in the first place. “In an outbreak setting, though, what we’re typically talking about is bacterial meningitis,” he says. Sometimes you get gangrene, and amputations become necessary.”How is bacterial meningitis treated or prevented? MenACWY meningococcal vaccine requirements exist for the U.S. military.

News Flash:
Rival ‘shadow’ group to RFK, Jr.’s autism science committee meets in D.C.
NEWS | 27 March 2026
Called the Independent Autism Coordinating Committee (I-ACC), the group rapidly came together as a response to Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., overhauling of the federal government’s Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), which provides guidance on autism research. The federal autism committee now has a “striking absence of scientific expertise,” said Craig Snyder, policy lead at the Autism Science Foundation, during the rival group’s meeting on Thursday. Notably, the federal autism committee was meant to meet on Thursday, too, but postponed its own meeting after the independent group announced it would convene on the same day. Fears about vaccines had become tied to rising autism rates, and the government had to dedicate the proper attention and funding to autism science, he adds. Now the federal group has less representation from autistic people than before, and the independent group has only one autistic member.

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SPONSORED | 27 March 2026
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Latest:
Drug retatrutide helps people lower blood sugar and lose weight, clinical trial results show
NEWS | 27 March 2026
In a phase 3 clinical trial, the medication retatrutide helped control blood sugar levels in participants with type 2 diabetes and led to an average of up to 36.6 pounds of weight loss, according to drugmaker Eli Lilly. Retatrutide is among an emerging generation of weight loss drugs called GLP-3 agonists. Over the 40-week trial, participants saw a 1.7 to 2 percent decrease in A1C—a measure of average blood sugar levels—while on retatrutide. “The retatrutide data are very solid,” says Daniel Drucker, a university professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, adding that the trial shows “excellent” weight-loss and A1C results. Ultimately, McCoy hopes retatrutide will soon add to “a growing tool kit” to tackle type 2 diabetes and obesity.

Breaking:
AI chatbots are sucking up to you—with consequences for your relationships
NEWS | 27 March 2026
Participants in the new study, which was published today in Science, preferred the sycophantic AI models to other models that gave it to them straight, even when the flatterers gave participants bad advice. Nevertheless, the AI models implicitly or explicitly endorsed such Reddit posters’ actions in 51 percent of the cases on average. In the first, participants read “Am I the asshole?”–style scenarios and responses from a sycophantic AI model or from an AI model that had been instructed to be critical of the user but still polite. People exposed to sycophantic AI in both experiments were significantly less likely to say they should apologize or change their behavior in the future. Cody Turner, an ethicist at Bentley University, also says that sycophantic AI can cause harm by damaging our ability to gather knowledge.

Trending:
Sperm whales help one another give birth, new study finds
NEWS | 27 March 2026
Sperm whales are known to socialize, but scientists were stunned when they saw a group of sperm whales gather as one of them gave birthI agree my information will be processed in accordance with the Scientific American and Springer Nature Limited Privacy Policy . His first thought was that there must have been an attack: earlier that day his team had spotted pilot whales, which are known to show aggression toward sperm whales. A newborn sperm whale emerges from the water post-birth (bottom right) and is supported by female sperm whales from a group called Unit A. The findings could help scientists better understand sperm whale behavior and communication during birth. Female sperm whales from Unit A hold the newborn sperm whale calf above the water.

This Just In:
Arctic sea ice hits lowest winter level on record
NEWS | 27 March 2026
The shell of ice that expands atop the Arctic Ocean every winter has done all the growing it will do this season—and that hasn’t been much. In fact, the annual winter maximum sea ice extent this year has tied for the record lowest amount in the nearly 50 years that satellites have been keeping watch. The expanse of Arctic Ocean covered by ice grew to 14.29 million square kilometers (5.52 million square miles), likely peaking on March 15, NSIDC reported on Thursday. This is just below a past record low of 14.31 million km2 (5.53 million square miles) set last year, but anything within 40,000 km2 (15,000 square miles) is considered a tie. This year’s winter low was 1.36 million km2 (525,000 square miles) below the 1981–2010 average.

Today:
What happens when AI starts checking mathematicians’ work
NEWS | 27 March 2026
Mathematicians could soon use computers to verify proofs quickly and rigorously, ensuring published proofs are correct and providing a foundation for further advances. With the development of the first large language models, mathematicians’ hopes rose: perhaps machines could one day do this translation automatically. As other AI-and-math start-ups explore formalization, this case offers hints as to what mathematicians might expect in an uncertain future. They joined with colleagues to launch a website documenting their formalization project in June 2025. Eventually, the software seemed capable of translating a mathematical work into Lean code and automatically checking it without human intervention.

Top Stories:
Why mathematicians are boycotting their biggest conference
NEWS | 27 March 2026
More than 1,500 mathematicians are demanding that their field’s most prestigious meeting be moved from the U.S. Mathematicians are threatening to boycott the field’s largest, most prestigious gathering this summer if it takes place in the U.S., as currently planned. Every four years since the turn of the twentieth century, the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) has brought together mathematicians from all over the world to share the latest breakthroughs and plot the field’s future. “International openness and collaboration are essential to mathematical progress,” wrote Ravi Vakil, current president of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), in a February 19 statement. “The petition is really strong evidence that what’s being asked of mathematicians for this particular event is just too much,” Barany says.

World:
Scientists reveal why Rocky Mountain lakes are turning green
NEWS | 27 March 2026
The opaque, pale-green water looked alien; normally, mountain lakes are so pure you can see through 20 feet of crystal blue water. In August 2019 Josh Kurz, a high school science teacher from Pagosa Springs, ran up to Turkey Creek Lake. “It shouldn’t be turning green.”In the Rocky Mountains, lakes famous for water so clear you can see 20 feet down are turning into opaque green soup. Last April, in an analysis of mountain lakes across the continental U.S., researchers reported that 25 percent were eutrophic, or nutrient-rich. Geographically, all that separates it from Turkey Creek Lake is a mile of alpine tundra and 665 feet of added elevation.

Current Events:
The kids are all right
NEWS | 27 March 2026
Compared with children from past generations, kids today are often portrayed as being less mentally healthy, less resilient and less empathetic. Whereas kids of yore could wait about three minutes for a second treat, kids in 2018 could wait more than eight minutes. Protzko’s findings run counter to popular narratives that kids today have less patience and shorter attention spans than previous generations. One problem is that cognitive biases often make us think kids today are faring worse than kids in the past. One problem is that cognitive biases often make us think kids today are faring worse than kids in the past.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 27 March 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