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Today:
US Man Dies From Rabies After Receiving Infected Kidney
NEWS | 11 December 2025
Rabies is a viral pathogen that spreads typically via the saliva of infected animals, usually through bites or scratches. Around five weeks after receiving the kidney, the Michigan patient developed symptoms consistent with rabies. Doctors sent samples of his saliva, skin, and other fluids to the CDC, which detected rabies virus RNA in some of the samples. A stored serum sample from the Idaho man tested negative for rabies antibodies, but an archived biopsy of his kidney was positive for rabies virus RNA, confirming the organ as the source of infection. Public health officials assessed 357 possible contacts of both the donor and the kidney recipient.

Top Stories:
The Cause of Alzheimer's May Be Coming From Within Your Mouth
NEWS | 11 December 2025
"Infectious agents have been implicated in the development and progression of Alzheimer's disease before, but the evidence of causation hasn't been convincing," Dominy said at the time. "Now, for the first time, we have solid evidence connecting the intracellular, Gram-negative pathogen, P. gingivalis, and Alzheimer's pathogenesis." Related: We May Now Know Why Alzheimer's Erases Memories of Our Loved OnesToday, Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia and a leading cause of death in the US. Back in 2011, the most prominent, modifiable risk factor for Alzheimer's disease was physical inactivity, followed by depression and smoking. "It's important that we test as many approaches as possible to tackle diseases like Alzheimer's," chief scientific officer David Reynolds from Alzheimer's Research commented in a statement.

World:
New Species of Tiny Pumpkin Toadlet Discovered in Brazil's Cloud Forests
NEWS | 11 December 2025
Deep in the mountains of southern Brazil, a bright orange frog, just over a centimeter long, hops into the spotlight. The tiny pumpkin toadlet is a whole new, toad-like species of frog, never formally described before. The highly endemic miniature frog is only found in a very small sliver of mountainous forest, where it inhabits the leaf litter. Their analysis led them to declare a new species, named B. lulai, after Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. At present, there is a formal discussion underway to establish a federal conservation unit in the Santa Catarina state, ensuring forest protection without the need for the government to buy private land.

Current Events:
Archaeologists Discover Earliest Evidence of Humans Using Tools to Make Fire
NEWS | 11 December 2025
Fire gave early humans access to a broader range of safe foods, fueling the development of larger brains and paving the way for the birth of Homo sapiens, so the cooking hypothesis goes. "This extraordinary discovery pushes this turning point back by some 350,000 years," says British Museum archaeologist Rob Davis. Related: Modern Humans Thrived While Neanderthals Disappeared, But Not Due to Our BrainsResearchers suspect fire use began opportunistically, with humans harvesting flames from wildfires. The ability to create fire would have enabled humans to feed and bond in larger groups. Fire also gave our early ancestors access to new technologies, like the creation of glue for more advanced tools.

News Flash:
'Super-Jupiter' Exoplanets May Look Like Nothing We've Ever Seen
NEWS | 11 December 2025
Do they look similar to Jupiter? Brown dwarfs lie in the middle ground. We've long known that the most massive brown dwarfs look very star-like. So generally, we've imagined these 'super-Jupiters' to look very Jupiter-like. In other words, many super-Jupiters wouldn't look like their smaller cousin but would have a more chaotic surface.

Sponsored:
SmartSync Data Sync App
SPONSORED | 11 December 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:
'Forever Chemicals' in Drinking Water Linked to Increased Risk of Birth Issues
NEWS | 11 December 2025
These risks include the chance of low birth weight, preterm birth and infant mortality. Using outside data on PFAS testing, we confirmed that PFAS levels were indeed greater in "downstream" wells than in "upstream" wells. Per 100,000 births, this works out to 2,639 additional low-weight births, 1,475 additional preterm births and 611 additional deaths in the first year of life. Per 100,000 births, that's about 607 additional extremely low-weight births and 466 additional extremely preterm births. Our results indicate that pregnant women have special reason to be concerned about exposure to long-chain PFAS through drinking water.

Breaking:
JWST Detects Record-Breaking Supernova That Erupted Right at The Cosmic Dawn
NEWS | 11 December 2025
A faint, tiny flash of red light glimpsed at the Cosmic Dawn more than 13 billion years ago has smashed the record for the earliest supernova ever observed. Gamma-ray bursts are broadly sorted into two categories. Surprisingly, the observations from JWST revealed a supernova that was pretty much what we'd expect to see in a supernova from the nearby, recent Universe. The supernova associated with GRB 250314A suggests that at least some of the stars during the Epoch of Reionization were similar to stars in more recent times. Descriptions of GRB 250314A and the subsequent supernova have been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, here and here.

Trending:
Christmas Shopping 'Hijacks' Your Brain. Here's What You Can Do About It.
NEWS | 11 December 2025
And the prefrontal cortex connects directly to the reward centre of the brain. So if the prefrontal cortex is overloaded, the dopamine-driven, fast and impulsive reward responses are likely to take over. Fast, impulsive thinking and slow, deliberate thinking are both part of the brain's natural activity. Christmas shopping plays on this fast, impulsive thinking. If you can rein in impulsive Christmas purchases now, your future self will thank you for it.

This Just In:
Living at High Altitudes Induces Remarkable Changes in How Genes Behave
NEWS | 11 December 2025
High in the Ecuadorian Andes, at altitudes thousands of meters above sea level, humans face environmental pressures very different from those at lower altitudes. The researchers collected blood samples from 39 Indigenous people living high up in the Ecuadorian Andes and in the Peruvian Amazon Basin: the Kichwa and Ashaninka communities, respectively. The comparison revealed 779 differences between the high-altitude and the low-altitude populations, including specific changes related to high-altitude living conditions. These results don't show heritable genetic changes, but shorter-term adaptations to life at high altitude. Taken together, these results suggest that heritable genetic changes may only constitute part of our adaptation toolkit, and that epigenetic adjustments to gene activity in a single lifetime could play another role.

Today:
Australian Children Now Banned From Social Media. These Countries May Be Next.
NEWS | 11 December 2025
After months of anticipation and debate, Australia's social media ban is now in force. A global movementIn November, the European parliament called for a similar social media ban for under-16s. Malaysia has announced it will ban children under 16 from social media starting in 2026. For example, South Korea has decided against a social media ban for children. In the United States, the opposition to Australia's social media restrictions has been extremely vocal and significant.

Top Stories:
Cats Meow More Than Twice as Much at Men, And We Can Only Guess Why
NEWS | 11 December 2025
Cats meow more at owners who are men than women, new research has found, possibly because men tend to be more aloof when it comes to giving their pets attention. Led by a team from Ankara University in Türkiye, the research is based on video footage captured by 31 cat owners. A total of 22 different behavior types were looked at by the researchers, including yawning (often a sign of cat stress) and food-related behaviors (including heading to their food bowl). Two groups of behaviors usually happened together: social behaviors (including cats having their tails up and rubbing against owners), and displacement behaviors (cats shaking their bodies and scratching themselves). And suggests that cats are perhaps not as dismissive of our affections as they might sometimes appear to be.

World:
We Finally Know Why Roman Concrete Has Survived For Nearly 2,000 Years
NEWS | 11 December 2025
Last year, from under the volcanic ash that buried Pompeii, archaeologists uncovered a fully intact construction site – a rare snapshot of Roman building work frozen in time. It involves directly blending the concrete's ingredients: a volcanic ash mix called pozzolan, together with quicklime, which reacts with water to generate intense heat inside the mixture. A third, and crucial, benefit is that the surviving chunks, or clasts, of lime give the concrete a remarkable self-healing ability. However, this process does not produce the lime clasts observed in real Roman concrete samples. Related: Scientists Discovered an Amazing Practical Use For Coffee Ground Waste"We don't want to completely copy Roman concrete today.

Current Events:
Rock Used as Doorstop For Decades Revealed to Be Worth Over $1 Million
NEWS | 11 December 2025
They say one person's trash is another's treasure, but a chunk of 'rock' used to keep a door open for decades is a treasure by almost anyone's standards. A woman discovered the 3.5-kilogram (7.7-pound) stone in a stream bed in southeast Romania, brought it home, and used it as a doorstop. Somewhere in the region of €1 million – around US$1.1 million. A chunk of amber worth over a million dollars isn't a bad score, either, really. frameborder="0″ allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen>Amber is tree resin from millions of years in the past.

News Flash:
Black Hole 'UFO' Caught at Critical Moment in Scientific First
NEWS | 11 December 2025
For the first time, astronomers have caught the moment when a supermassive black hole flare triggers a mighty wind blasting out into space at relativistic speeds. That's not the fastest such outflow ever recorded, but it is the first observation of the onset and evolution of the supermassive black hole flare and the UFO it unleashed. "We've not watched a black hole create winds this speedily before," says astronomer Liyi Gu of the Space Research Organisation Netherlands (SRON). Related: Milky Way Supermassive Black Hole Caught Doing Something Never Seen BeforeThe galaxy NGC 3783 is a beautiful barred spiral galaxy located about 130 million light-years away, oriented with its broadside directly facing Earth – giving us a perfect view of the active supermassive black hole at its center. The event, detected in July 2024, is therefore the supermassive black hole equivalent of a solar flare.