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Today:
Doctors Discover New Blood Type—And Only One Person Has It
NEWS | 15 July 2025
In a routine blood test that turned extraordinary, French scientists have identified the world’s newest and rarest blood group. Each system reflects subtle but crucial differences in the proteins and sugars coating our red blood cells. So red blood cells from all blood donors tested are Gwada-positive and the Guadeloupean patient is the only known Gwada-negative person on the planet. Scientists are already working on growing red blood cells from stem cells that could be genetically modified to match ultra-rare blood types. A growing fieldGwada joins 47 other blood group systems recognised by the International Society of Blood Transfusion.

Top Stories:
Earth’s Poles Have Shifted because of Water Dams
NEWS | 15 July 2025
Large dams like this one are shifting the Earth's poles away from its axis of rotation. That shift of water is pushing Earth’s geographic poles away from its axis of rotation, a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters has found, contributing to a phenomenon called true polar wander. The distance between the two is called the polar motion, or true polar wander, and it’s crucial to know for a number of purposes. They then calculated the dams’ effect on the Earth’s poles in two time periods. Studying polar motion reveals something about how Earth’s mass is moving, he says.

World:
Texas Failed to Spend Federal Aid for Flood Disaster Protection
NEWS | 15 July 2025
But Texas, like most states, has chosen not to spend a significant chunk of its mitigation grant money. The grants have been given automatically after each federally declared disaster and are separate from the federal money that pays for disaster cleanup and rebuilding. Most recently, on April 29, Texas ceded $5.7 million of a $13 million mitigation grant it got in 2016. Although states had automatically received FEMA grant money after each disaster, spending the money has been excruciating at times. The largest chunk of grant money has gone to flood protection, usually for individual properties.

Current Events:
DeepMind’s AlphaGenome Uses AI to Decipher Noncoding DNA for Research, Personalized Medicine
NEWS | 15 July 2025
AlphaGenome, an artificial intelligence system just released by Google DeepMind in London, aims to show how even tiny changes in those noncoding sections affect gene expression. Though scientists long dismissed noncoding DNA as “junk,” we now know this so-called dark matter controls when and how genes turn on or off. AlphaGenome shows promise in predicting how mutations in these regions cause diseases—from certain cancers to rare disorders where crucial proteins never get made. By revealing these hidden control switches, AlphaGenome could help researchers design therapies that target genetic conditions, potentially aiding millions of people. AlphaGenome’s goal is to understand how these regions affect gene expression—and how even tiny changes can tilt the entire body’s balance between health and disease.

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SPONSORED | 15 July 2025
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News Flash:
The Fast Fashion Backlash Is Fueling a Sustainability Revolution
NEWS | 15 July 2025
The fashion industry is also responsible for up to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions—more than the aviation and shipping industries combined. Despite being worth some $1.7 trillion, the global fashion industry has for years been allowed to operate with little transparency or oversight. “There’s nothing stopping a brand from churning out an insane number of products,” says Kate Hobson-Lloyd, the fashion-ratings manager at Good On You, a website that monitors and rates fashion brands’ sustainability. Greenwashing—when brands make misleading claims about the impact of their sustainability efforts—is “an absolutely enormous problem” in the fashion industry, Hobson-Lloyd says. The HVTP isn’t waiting for top-down initiatives to change the fashion industry.

Latest:
A Beginner’s Guide to Ethical and Sustainable Fashion
NEWS | 15 July 2025
Above all, the two simplest ways to participate in sustainable fashion are to buy less and to ask questions. Jen Christiansen (design); Amanda Hobbs (research support); Sources: Circular Fashion: Making the Fashion Industry Sustainable, by Peggy Blum; Sustainability and Circularity in the Textile Value Chain: Global Stocktaking. For natural fibers, “production” refers to cultivation or breeding. Jen Christiansen (design); Amanda Hobbs (research support); Source: Circular Fashion: Sustainability and Circularity in the Textile Value Chain: Global Stocktaking. Environment Program, 2020 (data)TIPS FOR CONSUMERSSimply buying less stuff is the most impactful way to make more sustainable fashion choices and push back against the relentless consumerism perpetuated by the fast-fashion industry.

Breaking:
Why Some Black Holes Keep ‘Burping’ Light after Eating a Star
NEWS | 15 July 2025
Most galaxies around the size of the Milky Way or larger have a supermassive black hole skulking in their center. And for supermassive black holes, their mass alone means they have an extremely strong gravitational pull. This is the case for our own Milky Way’s black hole, called Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A* for short). Second, the light from a black hole flare will reveal a spectrum unlike that of a dying star. These eruptions occur around black holes that otherwise aren’t eating much.

Trending:
Why Testosterone Therapy Could Harm Some Men, though It Could Help Others
NEWS | 15 July 2025
For the right men, usually those with seriously low levels of the hormone, TRT can improve mood, energy levels and sex drive. But many men getting supplements may not have low testosterone to begin with, and for them, boosting levels of the hormone even higher could cause harm. Because of this uncertainty, some clinics will legally prescribe TRT for men whose hormone levels are, according to many measures, just fine. And for men with normal-range testosterone, the results of TRT might not be as dramatic as they are for men with uncontested low levels. Sperm quality may not be as high in men who have recovered post-TRT compared with men who never took testosterone replacement, Halpern says.

This Just In:
Is It Possible to Treat Psychopathy Before It Starts?
NEWS | 15 July 2025
Treating adult psychopathy is extremely difficult, but there is hope for children with CU traits. Most disturbing, unlike people with classic psychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia, people with CU traits appear socially typical and may even be charismatic. Those with high levels of CU traits perceived others as having less pain than the other participants estimated. Another contradistinction between these conditions is that autistic people tend to be very anxious, whereas those with CU traits often appear unflappable. CU children tend to have a low resting heart rate, which is also associated with stress resilience.

Today:
Physicists Finally Know How the Strong Force Gets Its Strength
NEWS | 15 July 2025
The strongest force in the universe is called, aptly, the strong force. Despite knowing roughly how it compares with the other forces, scientists don’t know precisely how strong the strong force is. So despite its importance to nuclear physics and building the material world, the strong force is not unconditionally loved by researchers. Instead many look at the domain where the strong force is truly strong as a “Terra Damnata,” a realm to avoid at all costs. In fact, the strong force accounts for the origin of around 99 percent of the mass in the visible universe.

Top Stories:
Tomorrow's Quantum Computers Threaten Today's Secrets. Here's How to Protect Them
NEWS | 15 July 2025
It solicited ideas for “post-quantum” or “quantum-resistant” cryptography—codes that can run on today’s computers but are so robust that not even quantum computers could break them. “At the time quantum computers seemed like they were way, way far in the future,” Shor says. By hovering between the two states, qubits enable quantum computers to perform certain tasks much faster than classical computers. (Confusingly, “quantum cryptography” refers to something else—using quantum phenomena as part of the security scheme.) To protect quantum computers' fragile behavior, facilities must keep them isolated from their environments and supercooled.

World:
Quantum Weirdness in New 'Strange Metals' Bends the Rules of Physics
NEWS | 15 July 2025
To see why strange metals are strange, let’s first consider how regular metals work. Strange metals present an apparent failure of one of the most successful physics models of solids. At the temperatures of our experiments, between three and 10 kelvins, this material is very much in the strange metal regime. Strange metals present an apparent failure of one of the most successful physics models of solids. Scientists have observed superconductivity emerging in multiple families of strange metals at relatively high temperatures.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 15 July 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

Current Events:
Physicists Make Matter out of Light to Find Quantum Singularities
NEWS | 15 July 2025
In place of the atomic lattice, we use light waves to create what we call an optical lattice. This change means the BEC’s quantum state has jumped from its ground state to its first excited state. We discovered that the BEC’s quantum state “wraps” around the Dirac point exactly once. This result means the BEC’s quantum state picked up a geometric phase of exactly 2π. After much effort and clever thinking, we finally saw the first measurement in which a BEC’s quantum state exhibited wrapping around a QBTP.