Young aspen trees in Yellowstone are doing something they have not done in almost 100 years. Rather than sprouting and being eaten back to nubs by elk and bison, they're actually growing into tall, adult forest trees rising up towards the canopy.



This matters more than it might seem, because it shows what happens when a missing piece of an ecosystem returns.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-yellowstone-aspens-and-elk">Yellowstone, aspens, and elk</h2>



In the 1920s, people <a href="https://www.yellowstone.org/wolf-project/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">eliminated wolves in Yellowstone</a>. At the time, with limited scientific knowledge, managers believed it was the right thing to do.



<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/from-wolves-to-dogs-did-domestication-begin-without-human-help/">Without wolves</a>, elk herds grew very large. Elk love to eat aspen shoots - the tender young growth is highly palatable to them.



For roughly 70 years, elk browsed aspen sprouts down to stub height, and the trees couldn't grow. 



If you had walked through Yellowstone in the 1980s, you would have seen many tiny aspen shoots covering the ground, but almost no young trees gaining height. 



The forest's regeneration was stalled. Old trees died, and no new ones replaced them.



In 1995 and 1996, park managers reintroduced wolves into the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/yellowstone-supervolcano-eruption-study-sparks-new-debate-on-where-and-when-it-will-erupt/">Yellowstone Park ecosystem</a>. Scientists hoped and wondered whether this would change anything for the trees.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-aspen-matter-to-yellowstone">Why aspen matter to Yellowstone</h2>



Aspen groves provide habitat for many species. Birds nest in them. Beavers eat the bark and use the wood for dams. Butterflies and moths lay eggs on the leaves. 



Their canopy admits enough light for wildflowers and shrubs to grow beneath. When it rains, aspen groves hold water in the soil better than some other forest types.



In short, when aspen return, dozens of other species benefit. More trees support more insects, which in turn support more birds, enriching the ecosystem.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-checking-the-trees-three-decades-later">Checking the trees three decades later</h2>



<a href="https://fwcs.oregonstate.edu/users/luke-painter" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Luke Painter</a>, an ecologist at <a href="https://oregonstate.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Oregon State University</a>, sought clear answers. His team returned to 87 aspen stands across Yellowstone that scientists had previously surveyed. 



They measured thousands of young trees, looked for bite marks, and counted how many stems were tall enough that elk could no longer reach the tips.



About a third of these stands now have many tall young aspens pushing toward the canopy. 



"About 26 of the 87 aspen stands we examined had large numbers of tall saplings throughout, a remarkable change from the 1990s when surveys found none at all," Painter said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-wolves-matter-to-yellowstone-aspens">Why wolves matter to Yellowstone aspens</h2>



Breaking it all down, the conclusions of this study are pretty simple. 



<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/wolves-move-pups-across-mountains-to-adapt-to-climate-pressure/">Wolves hunt elk</a>. When wolves came back, two things happened. First, elk numbers declined from unusually high levels. Second, elk changed their behavior. They spent less time in the same areas feeding.



With fewer elk and shorter feeding bouts, more aspen shoots survived long enough to exceed the browsing zone - about six to seven feet high. 



Once a sapling reaches that height, elk cannot easily reach the growing tip. The tree continues to grow.



"The reintroduction of large carnivores has initiated a recovery process that had been shut down for decades," Painter explained.



Scientists call this a <a href="https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/trophic-cascades-across-diverse-plant-ecosystems-80060347/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">trophic cascade</a> - when adding or removing one species causes changes that ripple through the whole system.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-some-places-recover-others-don-t">Some places recover, others don't</h2>



Unfortunately, not every aspen stand has recovered yet. Some valleys still have many short, heavily browsed shoots, because it's not only elk eating them anymore. 



<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/yellowstones-iconic-bison-have-merged-into-a-single-herd/">Bison herds have grown</a>, and bison browse on aspen as well. They are strong enough to break young trees. 



"Increasing numbers of bison may be emerging as a new constraint to aspen in some areas," Painter confirmed.



Additionally, winter snow depth varies; droughts stress trees; bears and mountain lions also hunt elk; and hunting outside the park influences elk distribution. 



All of these factors interact, which is why some sites show strong recovery, others show moderate recovery, and a few have changed very little.



The key pattern is that places with many tall saplings experience little browsing, and aspen groves that remain popular eating grounds today stay short. 



This fact is the strongest indication that tree recovery is linked directly to wolf presence, not solely to weather or soil conditions.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-proof-in-the-measurements">Proof in the measurements</h2>



Painter's team did not rely on casual observation. They used the same methods as earlier researchers, measuring the same plots. 



They counted recruitment - when young trees surpass browsing height and begin progressing toward maturity. This measure is crucial. Sprouts are insufficient if they never grow; without recruitment, the forest cannot replace itself.



The results are robust. After being stalled for most of a century, Yellowstone's aspens are increasing in height. In recovering stands today, you will see saplings - six, eight, or ten feet tall - that were not present in the 1990s.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-future-of-yellowstone-s-aspens">The future of Yellowstone's aspens</h2>



"This is a remarkable case of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/giant-viruses-found-in-yellowstones-hot-springs-may-be-near-the-root-of-all-life-on-earth/">ecological restoration</a>," Painter concluded. "Wolf reintroduction is yielding long-term ecological changes contributing to increased biodiversity and habitat diversity."



Trees grow slowly, so even with wolves restored, it will take decades for these young aspens to form a full-grown forest. 



Some areas might never fully recover if bison numbers continue to rise or if the climate becomes too hot and dry.



Thanks to the work of Painter and his team, scientists are now certain that restoring the Yellowstone predator has restarted aspen forest regeneration. Not everywhere and not perfectly, but enough to be measured, creating hope for the future.



The full study was published in the journal <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112725004499?via%3Dihub" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Forest Ecology and Management</a>.



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Yellowstone's aspen trees are growing again thanks to the reintroduction of wolves

Young aspen trees in Yellowstone are doing something they have not done in almost 100 years. Rather than sprouting and being eaten back to nubs by elk and bison, they're actually growing into tall, adult forest trees rising up towards the canopy. This matters more than it might seem, because it shows what happens when a missing piece of an ecosystem returns. Yellowstone, aspens, and elk In the 1920s, people eliminated wolves in Yellowstone. At the time, with limited scientific knowledge, managers believed it was the right...

The 17-mile Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located beneath the French-Swiss border, regularly slams heavy ions together at near light speed. But on July 30, 2025, researchers reported something many thought belonged to folklore: lead ions momentarily changed into gold before decaying back into more ordinary matter.



The analysis shows that a single run of lead can produce gold nuclei with a cross section comparable to the total hadronic collision rate. This makes the “modern alchemy” far more common in the tunnel than anyone expected.



“Usually in collider experiments, we make the particles crash into each other to produce lots of debris,” said Daniel Tapia Takaki, professor of physics at the <a href="https://ku.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of Kansas</a> and leader of the group on the <a href="https://home.cern/science/experiments/alice" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ALICE</a> experiment.



His team developed the method that spots what happens when the ions merely graze, an interaction so clean that almost nothing else appears in the detectors besides a flash of light and an altered nucleus.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-gold-from-lead-briefly">Gold from lead, briefly</h2>



Ultraperipheral collisions happen when two atomic nuclei pass close to each other without touching, but their powerful <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/strong-magnetic-fields-leave-marks-on-nuclear-matter/">electromagnetic fields</a> still interact.



Instead of smashing apart, each ion showers the other with a burst of high-energy photons described by the Weizsäcker Williams method, allowing photons from one nucleus to probe or even transform its partner. That photon barrage can knock out one, two, or three protons.



If three protons are lost, the lead-208 nucleus briefly becomes a gold-205 nucleus - fulfilling the alchemist’s dream, though only for about 10⁻²³ seconds. That’s just long enough to leave a signal in the forward calorimeters.



Previous ALICE runs hinted that such clean events existed, but the detector was optimized for messy head on smash ups. Tapia Takaki’s team re-tuned readouts, added vetoes, and refined a two-stage fit to isolate neutron from proton peaks.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-near-miss-collisions-reveal">What near miss collisions reveal</h2>



Because <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/precise-shape-of-single-photon-light-revealed-for-the-first-time/">photons</a> carry no net charge, photon photon or photon nucleus interactions are free from the spray of hadronic debris that plagues central collisions. The clean environment allows physicists to study nuclear structure and test QED at previously unreachable energy scales.



The Kansas-led analysis clocked a gold production cross section of 6.8 barns, only 12 percent shy of the 7.67 barn total inelastic rate for ordinary lead-lead interactions at the same energy.



That means every time the LHC delivers a hadronic ion collision, there is roughly another event nearby where a lead ion quietly becomes gold and then disintegrates.



The same data set pinned the 0 proton channel at 157.5 barns, the 1 proton channel at 40.4 barns, and the 2 proton channel at 16.8 barns. These results matched or exceeded theoretical predictions from the RELDIS photonuclear model within 25 percent.



Discrepancies suggest existing models poorly capture pre-equilibrium emission and nucleon coalescence in single proton channels.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tracking-alchemy-at-light-speed">Tracking alchemy at light speed</h2>



The ALICE collaboration relies on zero degree calorimeters placed 369 feet downstream of the interaction point to record neutral and charged fragments.



The KU team gated on events where proton energy fell within two standard deviations of the beam energy and at least one neutron hit the neighboring neutron calorimeter. This isolated a data set of just two million events from 2.05 million triggers.



They corrected for acceptance, efficiency, and the small chance that a peripheral hadronic collision could imitate an electromagnetic event.



Monte Carlo studies using RELDIS and the AAMCC-MST transport code showed that hadronic imposters contribute less than one percent to the single proton sample, leaving the photon driven signal essentially pure.



The resulting fit revealed broad 1 proton and broad 2 proton peaks, about twice as wide as the corresponding neutron peaks. This is because relativistic protons can leak energy at the calorimeter edges or through interactions with beam line material.



A modified Gaussian model with width scaling by proton count corrected smearing - now adopted by other heavy ion groups.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-flash-matters-for-future-colliders">Flash matters for future colliders</h2>



Removing three protons turns lead into gold, but knocking out even one proton turns the ion into <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/toxic-thallium-levels-are-rising-in-the-baltic-sea/">thallium</a>, which bends differently in the LHC magnets.



Secondary particle beams that aren’t properly controlled can hit cold components, shut down superconducting magnets, or trigger safety systems. These issues could limit the performance of future 27 TeV upgrades and the proposed 100-km Future Circular Collider.



By measuring the full suite of 0- to 3- proton channels, the ALICE team provides essential inputs for loss maps that machine engineers use to design collimators and shielding.



The data also feed into simulations for the U.S. <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/supercooled-nanowires-detect-protons-at-close-to-the-speed-of-light/">Electron Ion Collider</a> (EIC), where understanding photon induced breakup of nuclei is critical for background rejection in precision measurements.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-more-than-just-gold">More than just gold</h2>



Beyond gold, near-miss collisions can produce mercury, thallium, or platinum isotopes - each with unique decay paths and insights.



Light-by-light scattering, axion-like particle searches, and studies of nuclear excitation all benefit from knowing exactly how often and how cleanly these channels occur.



Tapia Takaki noted that the study may be crucial for designing the next generation of machines, because every lost beam ion costs days of accelerator time and significant operational money.



In short, catching a blink of gold is less about getting rich and more about keeping billion dollar facilities running safely and efficiently.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-next-steps-for-gold-physics">Next steps for gold physics</h2>



The team plans to extend the analysis to four and five proton emissions once Run 3 data arrive, pushing sensitivity toward nuclei around hafnium and tantalum.



They're working with theorists to refine <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/lightning-captured-creating-gamma-ray-bursts-on-earth-which-normally-come-from-space/">photonuclear</a> models so neutron-to-proton ratios better match observations.



A dedicated trigger for ultraperipheral collisions is in development. It combines existing calorimeter logic with real-time machine learning filters to capture rare events without overwhelming the data acquisition system.



If successful, physicists could watch modern alchemy unfold almost as it happens, perhaps even identifying long lived isomers before they decay in flight.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prc/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevC.111.054906" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Physical Review C</a>.



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Lead was turned into gold - but only for a trillionth of a second

The 17-mile Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located beneath the French-Swiss...

You probably don’t think twice about smelling a jug of milk to check if it’s gone bad. But behind that quick decision is a symphony of genes and proteins hard at work.



A research team at <a href="https://www.uni-leipzig.de/en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Leipzig University</a>, led by genetic epidemiologist Markus Scholz, has mapped the genetics behind our sense of smell in more detail than ever before. 



In a sweeping study of over 21,000 people from Germany, Italy, and the U.S., they uncovered how our DNA shapes which scents we recognize - and how strongly we react to them.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-fragrance-fingerprints-in-dna">Fragrance fingerprints in DNA</h2>



“We identified ten genetic regions associated with the ability to detect specific odors, seven of these are new discoveries,” said Scholz. His genome-wide association study tied everyday smell performance to specific DNA changes. 



The team asked participants to identify twelve scents delivered by Sniffin’ Sticks and then matched the right answers to millions of single-nucleotide polymorphisms. The exercise generated a personal odor score for every volunteer.



Two hotspots sit inside clusters of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/the-story-behind-our-sense-of-smell-is-coming-into-focus/">olfactory receptor</a> genes, while others highlight specific enzymes that convert a chemical whiff into an electrical signal. Together they outline the earliest steps between sniff and perception.



One key genetic change makes people nearly four times better at recognizing the smell of fish. About one in three Europeans has it, which helps explain why some people love fish while others can’t stand the smell.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-women-really-smell-the-roses">Why women really smell the roses</h2>



Women outperform men in smell tests across cultures. The data reveal three genomic regions whose effects flip between sexes. One variant triples women’s odds of naming orange yet does nothing for men.



Sex hormone reviews link estrogen peaks to sharper sensitivity and testosterone surges to dampening effects on smell. The hormonal picture is complex, but patterns are starting to emerge.



“The findings help to explain why women perceive smells differently during their menstrual cycle or pregnancy,” said researcher Franz Förster, who helped coordinate data. His observation echoes decades of anecdotal reports from clinicians.



Anthropologists call this the embryo-protection hypothesis, arguing that a keen maternal nose guards the fetus - though evidence remains mixed. Human genetics is starting to test that evolutionary idea directly.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-smell-traits-mapped-in-dna">Smell traits mapped in DNA</h2>



Each scent in the test was linked to a different part of our DNA. <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/cinnamon-supplements-may-disrupt-how-medications-work/">Cinnamon</a> was tied to a gene that helps detect its main ingredient, while pineapple was connected to two separate spots in the genome.



Researchers confirmed that removing an odor from the total score erased its associated signal, proving that each variant’s effect is narrow. That safeguard against statistical noise strengthens confidence in each hit.



Your pineapple gene does not help you with peppermint. That precision matters for designing clinical smell tests.



Lemon and orange were linked to smaller genetic effects, found near genes that help send smell signals, not detect them. This suggests that how the signal is processed might matter just as much as how it's first picked up.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-scent-loss-as-warning-sign">Scent loss as warning sign</h2>



Smell loss is among the earliest red flags for Alzheimer’s disease. Using Mendelian randomization, the team found that high genetic risk for Alzheimer’s lowers odor-identification scores, but poor smell does not raise dementia risk.



The strongest link pointed to a gene involved in moving materials inside cells, one that’s often found alongside a known <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/new-blood-test-can-track-the-progression-of-alzheimers/">Alzheimer’s risk</a> gene. This connection brings cell health into the picture when studying how smell and memory might be related.



Community studies linking odor discrimination to later cognitive decline back the idea that brain change erodes smell, not the reverse. Genetic data now reinforce that timeline.



Large prevention trials are now considering smell testing as a low-cost enrollment screen. Ease of administration makes the scratch-and-sniff format appealing in primary care.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-hormones-shape-smell-genes">Hormones shape smell genes</h2>



Bioinformatic scans found more than forty androgen-response motifs near the sex-biased variants, far outnumbering estrogen motifs. This density hints at direct regulation by testosterone.



Yet genome-level screens showed no direct causal trail from circulating testosterone, bioavailable <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/men-with-low-testosterone-have-a-higher-risk-of-mortality/">testosterone</a>, or sex-hormone-binding globulin to smell scores. The null result surprised some observers.



Larger cohorts may be needed to uncover subtle endocrine effects that small studies miss. Endocrinologists are watching the space closely.



Lab teams are already planning CRISPR edits in cultured olfactory neurons to watch how these motifs alter gene output. Results from those experiments will clarify whether the motifs truly gate hormone effects.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-diverse-dna-diverse-smell-traits">Diverse DNA, diverse smell traits</h2>



A 200,000-participant follow-up inside Germany’s NAKO cohort is already underway and should expose weaker or rarer variants. The added power should uncover variants with much smaller effects.



Similar projects planned in East Asia and Africa will test whether diet or environment shifts genetic influence on smell. That diversity will reveal whether smell genetics follows food habits or remains universal.



Clinically, smell genotyping could tailor occupational screening for firefighters or chemical workers with innate disadvantages. Regulators already require smell tests for certain high-risk jobs.



In consumer spheres, recipe apps or <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/home-fragrances-impact-indoor-air-quality-and-the-health-risks-are-alarming/">fragrance</a> firms might one day suggest products that match a user’s genetic sensitivity. Industry watchers predict fragrance personalization within a decade.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-personalized-smell-is-coming">Personalized smell is coming</h2>



Smell genes are not part of medical care yet, but they could soon appear in direct-to-consumer DNA reports. 



Ancestry services already flag lactose intolerance, and a future module may tell you that a low-sensitivity pineapple allele runs in the family. Armed with that knowledge, perfumers could tailor product lines to match regional genetic profiles. 



Genes never fully dictate how we perceive aromas, but mapping their influence moves the sense of smell from mystery toward measurement.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-61330-y" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nature Communications</a>.



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Your DNA may explain why you love or hate certain smells

You probably don’t think twice about smelling a jug of...

The albatross is one of the largest flying birds on Earth, with wings that stretch up to 11 feet across. It spends most of its life in the air, gliding over open ocean with barely a wingbeat. That’s not just impressive - it’s efficient. And now, researchers want to learn from it.



At the <a href="https://www.uc.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of Cincinnati</a>, scientists are trying to bring some of the albatross’s natural skill into modern drone technology. 



With a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Professor Sameh Eisa is leading a project that could change how unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) handle long-distance flight.



The goal is simple: make <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/drones-can-help-monitor-the-health-of-remote-seabird-colonies/">drones</a> fly longer and smarter using the same strategies that make the albatross a master of the skies.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-the-albatross-masters-flight">How the albatross masters flight</h2>



Albatrosses don’t flap much. They soar. They use a technique called <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/albatrosses-can-dive-much-deeper-than-previously-thought/">dynamic soaring</a>, which lets them ride the wind to stay airborne for hours - or days - without using much energy.



Eisa and his team developed a new way to mimic this in drones. They call it a “natural extremum-seeking system.” The concept is based on how birds instinctively adjust their pitch, roll, and airspeed to find the most energy-efficient flight path.



To stay aloft, albatrosses tack into the wind like sailboats. They climb until they lose momentum, then dive, using gravity and wind to push forward. Just before touching the water, they turn again, repeating the cycle endlessly. All of it happens without flapping.



“They use it skillfully. That’s the only way they can sustain such long flights,” Eisa said. “GPS trackers show these birds can fly hundreds of miles a week. By the time they die, they’ve flown 20 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-albatross-instincts-sensing-the-wind">Albatross instincts: Sensing the wind</h2>



Part of what makes the albatross so efficient isn’t just how it flies - it’s how it senses the environment. "Albatrosses literally have a nose for wind,” Eisa said.



They have sensitive nostrils that help them detect wind direction and speed. This helps them adjust their flight in real time, maximizing every rise and fall in the air. Eisa’s research shows that the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/hundreds-of-bird-species-could-vanish-in-the-next-century/">birds</a> manage to keep their total energy use stable throughout each dynamic soaring cycle.



In literature, the albatross has always been linked to the wind. Sailors once believed the bird was a sign of good weather. 



In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, killing an albatross was blamed for a ship’s cursed, windless voyage. Now, science is proving just how vital this bird is to mastering flight.



“They are solving an optimization problem that is unbelievably complicated,” Eisa said. “They make it look natural and easy.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-drones-that-mimic-albatross-flight">Drones that mimic albatross flight </h2>



According to Eisa, simulating what the albatross does is not easy. Even powerful computers struggle with the calculations.



“A few seconds of data can take 100 seconds to generate. And albatrosses are doing it in real time with a high level of accuracy,” he said. “It seems implausible.”



For drones to match that, they’ll need to read the wind and adjust constantly. That means measuring changes in both speed and direction and altering their <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/hummingbird-wings-the-future-of-robotic-flight/">flight</a> path accordingly - all without human help.



“If we can get closer to how the albatross does it, we can be more efficient,” Eisa said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-turning-wind-into-an-advantage">Turning wind into an advantage</h2>



The project, named Albatross, brings together UC students, weather experts, industry engineers, and researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 



Traditionally, drones have struggled in windy conditions. This team wants to flip that. They believe wind can become an asset, not a problem.



Using Eisa’s new model of dynamic soaring, they’re building flight control systems that help drones ride the wind the way birds do. The designs will be tested with UC’s DARPA industry partners to measure how much energy can be saved.



The project isn’t just about drones. It could also help scientists better understand how albatrosses do what they do.



“If we can fly more efficiently like birds, we’ll have a brighter future for unmanned aerial systems,” Eisa said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-turning-albatross-flight-into-innovation">Turning albatross flight into innovation</h2>



The potential impact of this work goes beyond the lab. It could influence how drones are used in defense, science, and environmental research.



Gautam Pillay, UC's associate dean of research, said Eisa’s pioneering work exemplifies the transformative impact biomimicry is having on next-generation aerospace systems.



“By unlocking the secrets of dynamic soaring, we’re not just advancing unmanned aerial vehicle efficiency - we're addressing critical national defense priorities, such as endurance and adaptability in contested environments,” Pillay said.



“Just as importantly, students will get unparalleled experiential learning opportunities, placing them at the heart of cutting-edge research where theory meets real-world application in collaboration with top-tier institutions and industry partners."



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-flight-as-a-lifelong-fascination">Flight as a lifelong fascination</h2>



Eisa has always been drawn to flight. Ask him what superpower he would choose - flight or invisibility - and he doesn’t hesitate.



“I think <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/do-birds-dream-of-flying-scientists-say-they-now-know-the-answer/">flying</a> is fascinating. It’s something we always yearn to do because we can’t do it," said Eisa. That passion fuels his work in biomimicry.



“Nature has been optimizing flight for millions of years of evolution. So to take this gift from nature and make it available to humanity is engineering at its best.”



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Albatross flight inspires a new generation of drones

The albatross is one of the largest flying birds on...

Misplaced memories and slowed recall often accompany aging, yet the brain’s molecular decline begins long before the first "senior moment.’”



A new study zeroes in on the cell’s protein assembly lines - where proteins are built, folded, and dispatched - revealing the earliest tremors of decline that future therapies may aim to stabilize.



The research shows that when those lines decelerate, neurons choke on unfinished products, triggering a cascade that ends with sticky protein clumps and fading cognition. 



The study was led by <a href="https://www.stanford.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Stanford</a> biologist Judith Frydman, who has conducted extensive research tracking the life cycle of proteins from their genesis (birth) to their eventual breakdown and removal (grave).&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-brain-aging-slows-protein-production">Brain aging slows protein production</h2>



Cells rely on proteostasis, the steady balance between making, folding, and recycling <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/wasps-might-hold-the-secret-to-slow-human-aging/">proteins</a>, to keep their inner machinery humming. Each disruption saps energy and invites damage that accumulates over decades.



A critical step is translation elongation, the moment a ribosome adds one amino acid after another to a growing chain, and that step loses tempo with age according to large-scale profiling in worms, flies, and mice, a slowdown that now extends to vertebrate brains.



“Our new study begins to provide a mechanistic explanation for a phenomenon widely seen during aging, which is increased aggregation and dysfunction in the processes that make proteins,” said Frydman.



The team also noted that chaperones which normally police misfolded chains arrive late to stalled ribosomes, magnifying the risk that malformed proteins will stick together and poison nearby circuits.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-brain-aging-in-killifish">Brain aging in killifish</h2>



The African <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5946070/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">turquoise killifish</a> lives just four to six months in laboratory ponds, giving researchers a fast, almost time-lapse view of vertebrate aging without the budget burden of housing mice for years.



Adapted to puddles that vanish each dry season, the fish packs growth, reproduction, and decline into one academic semester, making experimental timelines feasible for doctoral students as well as grant cycles.



Its short lifespan does not mean simplicity. The killifish brain holds the full suite of vertebrate cell types, and its genome carries many of the same quality-control <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/human-bodies-begin-breaking-down-two-very-precise-ages/">genes</a> that humans use to police protein folding.



That compressed life course allowed the team to capture brains at three life stages and log shifts in metabolites, RNAs, and proteins without waiting years. 



The researchers have produced one of the most detailed aging atlases yet assembled for a vertebrate.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-stalled-ribosomes-harm-the-brain">Stalled ribosomes harm the brain</h2>



Ribosome profiling revealed a surge in stalling and head-on collisions on aging transcripts packed with lysine and arginine codons, transforming once-smooth molecular traffic into a shimmering gridlock.



Proteins that guard DNA and shuttle RNA, two classes dense in those basic amino acids, fell sharply in abundance even though their messenger RNA stayed stable. This points to a production glitch rather than a transcription problem.



Slowed traffic also left half-built chains exposed, boosting insoluble aggregates that are a signature of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS. In the killifish, the aggregates appeared in brain areas tied to <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/defying-time-three-ways-to-slow-biological-aging/">learning</a> days before behavioral decline emerged.



The mismatch between transcripts and proteins, known as protein-transcript decoupling, now has a clockwork explanation rooted in translation speed - closing a puzzle that has bothered biologists for a decade.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-slow-protein-speed-harms-aging-brain">Slow protein speed harms aging brain</h2>



When an assembly line halts, quality as well as quantity suffers because nascent chains misfold before cellular helpers can intervene, creating time bombs that only reveal themselves weeks or months later.



“Changes in the speed of ribosome movement along the mRNA can have a profound impact on protein homeostasis,” noted Jae Ho Lee, a professor at <a href="https://www.stonybrook.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Stony Brook University</a>.



The killifish data suggest that even a modest slowdown reshapes the proteome toward instability, opening gaps in genome maintenance, RNA splicing, and energy production that multiply across thousands of proteins.



Those gaps echo findings in post-mortem human cortex, where ribosomal subunits and DNA repair factors crumble first, hinting at a common aging script that crosses species and tissues.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-drugs-may-fix-protein-making">Drugs may fix protein-making</h2>



Geroscience researchers are already testing drugs like rapamycin, which targets the cell’s protein-making machinery. It has been shown to extend lifespan in many mammals and is showing early promise in Alzheimer’s trials focused on safety and biomarkers.



Fine-tuning elongation specifically, rather than throttling global protein synthesis, could sidestep side effects like immunosuppression and poor wound healing.



Researchers are screening small molecules that help separate collided ribosomes or enhance rescue proteins like Pelota. Zebrafish, nematodes, and cell cultures are being used for fast, low-cost testing of drug responses.



If those tools keep elongation on tempo, they might starve neurodegenerative seeds before they sprout, moving the field beyond symptomatic relief toward true prevention and even extension of healthspan.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-questions-still-remain">Questions still remain</h2>



Why basic proteins suffer first, and whether the same translation traffic jams appear in humans by midlife, remain open questions that high-resolution ribosome profiling in brain organoids could address.



The killifish study hints that neurons, already energy-hungry, might lack spare fuel to run sluggish assembly lines - a factor worth investigating.



The tiny fish offer a reminder that aging brains may struggle not from lack of effort, but from processes that slow down just slightly. Researchers can now measure these subtle delays - and may one day learn how to correct them.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk3079" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Science</a>.



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Brain aging linked to sluggish production of key proteins

Misplaced memories and slowed recall often accompany aging, yet the...

In the summer, wildlife watchers head to U.S. national parks hoping to catch a glimpse of a moose, a bear, or maybe even a wolf. But even with so much wildlife around, those moments are rare. A major study has just helped explain why.



The COVID-19 shutdowns in 2020 presented a unique opportunity to watch what animals do when people disappear. A multinational team of scientists from 13 universities, including the <a href="https://www.unl.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of Nebraska–Lincoln</a>, took advantage of this moment.



The researchers tracked how large mammals behaved in the absence of people across 14 national parks and protected areas in the United States.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-when-people-disappeared">When people disappeared</h2>



Researchers from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln were among more than 60 scientists who collaborated on this massive project. They worked with partners like the National Park Service and several state agencies.



Using GPS collars, the team tracked 229 animals, including <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/lessons-from-the-past-predators-are-doomed-when-their-prey-vanishes/">predators</a> like wolves, mountain lions, grizzly bears, black bears, and foxes, as well as herbivores like moose, elk, mule deer, mountain goats, and bighorn sheep. 



The experts compared <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/animal-movement-predictions-matter-more-than-ever/">animal movements</a> during the pandemic shutdowns in 2020 to the same period in 2019, when parks were bustling with tourists.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-natural-wildlife-experiment-in-parks">A natural wildlife experiment in parks</h2>



The parks studied included Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Zion, Glacier, and others - some of the most iconic and heavily visited in the country.



“COVID provided ecologists with a valuable natural experiment,” said John Benson, one of the study’s researchers. 



“We know that animals can respond strongly to humans, but it is often not clear whether they respond to the 'human footprint' of roads, trails and development, or to the humans themselves. Our study allowed us to separate the foot from the footprint to an extent."



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-wildlife-reaction-in-different-parks">Wildlife reaction in different parks</h2>



The main finding? Human activity leaves a mark - even when people aren’t there. While animals generally avoid roads, parking lots, trails, and campgrounds, their reactions aren’t all the same.



“Wildlife all around the world fear people and avoid areas of high human activity, but it was surprising to see that this holds true even in more remote protected areas,” said Kaitlyn Gaynor of the University of British Columbia, lead author of the study.



The team noticed that some species and individuals took advantage of the quiet, exploring areas they usually avoided. Others stuck to old habits, avoiding human infrastructure even when it was empty.



“There are so many factors that influence <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/ai-tool-superanimal-can-accurately-analyze-animal-behavior/">animal behavior</a>: local environmental context, species, sex, age, seasons,” Benson said. 



“In a large-scale analysis with many species across so many parks, it was important to separate variation in behavior resulting from all these other sources, from changes in behavior due to reduced human activity during <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/covid-lockdowns-had-unexpected-impacts-on-wildlife-behavior/">COVID</a>."



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-wild-animals-that-benefit-from-humans">Wild animals that benefit from humans</h2>



Some species are more cautious. Others seem to adapt. “Some species are just more wary of people than others, like bighorn sheep and mountain lions, while others have learned to associate humans with some benefit,” Gaynor explained. 



“The mule deer and elk in Zion National Park prefer being closer to developed areas and around humans. That could be because their predators might be avoiding people, so if deer and elk can learn to live with us, they can reduce the risk of becoming prey."



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-most-animals-didn-t-change-their-behavior">Most animals didn’t change their behavior</h2>



In parks with more development, wildlife was more likely to explore previously avoided areas during closures. But the shift wasn’t as dramatic as headlines in 2020 might have suggested.



“We heard from managers in Yosemite National Park that when people came back, the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/why-are-some-black-bears-actually-brown/">black bears</a> stayed, which caused a lot of problems because the bears got used to the abundant food in Yosemite Valley and didn't want to give it up,” Gaynor said.



Still, most animals stuck to their usual avoidance behavior - even when parks were closed.



“While some individuals and populations showed a strong response to the absence of people during park shutdowns, most did not,” Gaynor noted. 



“Because a lot of headlines in 2020 implied that animals were taking back our national parks and were on the streets everywhere, we expected to see a bigger effect. But it takes just a few individuals to start changing their behavior to create the perception of a larger impact.”



Why didn’t more animals take advantage of the quiet? The researchers have a few ideas. First, the closures were short - just 58 days on average. That may not have been long enough for animals to sense a real change. 



Furthermore, animals that avoid people might already have been pushed to quieter areas long ago. Meanwhile, those used to humans may have barely noticed the difference.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-parks-shape-people-and-wildlife">Parks shape people and wildlife</h2>



Human presence changes the game for wildlife. It affects how animals find food, avoid predators, and interact with each other. That has ripple effects on entire ecosystems.



"The national parks have a dual mandate to preserve natural and cultural resources, while also providing enjoyment of the parks to people,” said Benson. “This made national parks really interesting places to study animal behavior during COVID closures." 



"While we often think of national parks as some of the last truly wild places on Earth, some also receive intense visitation by humans.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-balancing-recreation-and-conservation">Balancing recreation and conservation</h2>



Before the pandemic, U.S. national parks saw 327 million visits in 2019. That number rose even higher in 2024 to nearly 332 million.



“Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite National Park and the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/500-million-year-old-animal-fossils-in-grand-canyon-goldilocks-zone-early-animal-evolution/">Grand Canyon</a> are international destinations that are crowded at peak times of year, but the crowds are concentrated near the roads and visitor centers and parking lots,” Gaynor said. 



“The study provides evidence that conservation is compatible with recreation at low levels but that we do need to keep some areas exclusively for wildlife.”



The full study was published in the journal <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2025.1013" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Proceedings of the Royal Society B</a>.



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Wildlife in national parks: How do they act when people are gone?

In the summer, wildlife watchers head to U.S. national parks...

Walk through any African rainforest at the height of fruit season, and you will eventually stumble upon a surprising scene: apes foraging not in the treetops but on the forest floor, scooping up fallen figs or overripe marulas that have begun to ferment.



Until now, primatologists have documented the behavior but lacked a word that sets it apart from ordinary fruit eating. 



A new paper led by <a href="https://home.dartmouth.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dartmouth College</a> anthropologist Nathaniel Dominy and <a href="https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of St Andrews</a> primatologist Catherine Hobaiter fixes that linguistic oversight by proposing a single, evocative term - “scrumping.”



“It’s not that primatologists have never seen scrumping - they observe it pretty regularly. But the absence of a word for it has disguised its importance,” Dominy explained.



By naming the habit, the authors hope to inspire more systematic data collection. This simple ground-level snack could hold outsized clues to why human beings tolerate <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/drunk-animals-may-explain-humans-love-of-alcohol/">alcohol</a> so well.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-medieval-word-for-a-modern-puzzle"><a></a>A medieval word for a modern puzzle</h2>



Scrumping originates from the Middle English rendering of the German “schrimpen.” The word described “shriveled” or “shrunken” fruit that had fallen off the tree. In rural England today, “scrumpy” refers to a rustic cider fermented from windfallen apples.



Dominy and Hobaiter argue that the linguistic lineage is perfect for apes pilfering fermented fruit. Both activities involve the opportunistic gathering of overripe produce with elevated alcohol content.



The name matters because, until now, field notes have lumped floor-foraging events with canopy foraging under the bland heading of “fruit feeding.” That lumping masks the ecological stakes. 



Once fruit hits the ground, it becomes a microbial playground where yeasts convert sugars into alcohols. This process often gives the fruit an ethanol punch of a few percent.



For a 220-pound chimp eating ten pounds of such fruit per day, that may add up to a low but steady dose of alcohol. If the capacity to <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/living-at-high-altitude-leads-to-longer-life-by-changing-metabolism/">metabolize</a> that ethanol confers a survival advantage, then scrumping could have exerted evolutionary pressure on primate digestive enzymes.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-linking-scrumping-apes-to-alcohol-genes">Linking scrumping apes to alcohol genes</h2>



In 2015, geneticists reported that the primary enzyme humans use to break down ethanol - ADH4 - underwent a pivotal amino acid tweak in the last common ancestor of humans, chimpanzees and gorillas.



That mutation boosted the enzyme’s efficiency fortyfold. The genetic timeline aligns suspiciously well with fossil and climatic evidence suggesting early apes were spending more time on the ground, perhaps because <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/global-cooling-wont-be-a-quick-fix-for-the-state-of-our-oceans/">global cooling</a> was fragmenting forest canopies.



Dominy’s team suspected that scrumping, not tree foraging, was the behavior that turned the genetic key. To test the prevalence of ground-level fruit snacking, they combed through thousands of feeding observations for chimpanzees, western gorillas, mountain gorillas, and orangutans.



Every record pairing ground-level apes with a fruit species normally found higher in the canopy counted as a scrumping event. African apes did it routinely. 



Orangutans of Southeast Asia, by contrast, almost never did - and tellingly, the 2015 gene study shows orangutans have a far less efficient version of ADH4.



These weren’t differences of nuance - African apes scrump on a regular basis, but orangutans do not. The contrast strengthens the idea that processing dietary ethanol was an adaptive edge for African lineages.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-escaping-competition-avoiding-falls"><a></a>Escaping competition, avoiding falls</h2>



Why would a large ape bother with windfall fruit instead of plucking fresher pieces overhead? Dominy points to two incentives. 



First, avoiding the highest branches reduces the risk of potentially fatal falls - a risk he and co-author Luke Fannin quantified in a 2023 study showing that accidents in the canopy exact serious tolls on primate skeletons.



Second, staying on the ground lets apes sidestep competition with smaller, more nimble monkeys that strip trees of unripe fruit. If ethanol metabolism means an ape can safely eat the fermented fare, it gains a foraging niche all its own.



“A fundamental feature of our relationship with alcohol is our tendency to <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/why-social-drinking-feels-so-different-from-drinking-alone/">drink together</a>," said Hobaiter. She wonders whether shared ape scrumping sessions reinforce social bonds in apes the way communal drinking does in humans.



Future fieldwork will track whether group foraging for windfallen fruit correlates with grooming, alliance formation, or mating opportunities.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-happy-hour-in-the-jungle">Happy hour in the jungle</h2>



The next empirical frontier is chemistry. Researchers plan to sample ethanol concentrations in fruits still hanging versus fruits lying on the forest floor. They will also monitor ape breath or urine for ethanol metabolites to estimate intake more precisely.



If chronic low-level exposure proves common, it could reshape narratives about ancient hominin diets and even the timing of the agricultural revolution, when humans began deliberately fermenting grains and grapes.



“Scrumping by the last common ancestor of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/gorillas-are-digging-for-a-surprising-food-in-the-jungle-soil/">gorillas</a>, chimpanzees, and humans about 10 million years ago could explain why humans are so astoundingly good at digesting alcohol,” Dominy noted.



He suggests that long before our ancestors brewed beer, natural selection had already equipped them with biochemical bar tabs.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-will-scrumping-stick">Will scrumping stick?</h2>



Scientific neologisms catch on only if they fill a conceptual gap - think “symbiosis” in the 19th century or Richard Dawkins’s “meme” in 1976. Dominy believes scrumping meets that test.



It instantly conveys a specific behavior - ground foraging for fermented fruit - that generic terms cannot. If colleagues adopt the label, datasets will soon be searchable, hypotheses testable, and evolutionary stories clearer.



“We never knew we needed the word until we did. That’s natural selection at work,” Dominy said. Whether scrumping becomes a staple of primatology vocabulary remains to be seen. 



But the paper makes a compelling case: name the behavior, and the science of why we drink - and how we evolved - may gain a fresh ferment of insight.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biaf102/8215783">BioScience</a>.



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"Scrumping" apes may explain how humans started drinking alcohol

Walk through any African rainforest at the height of fruit...

An ancient encounter between distant plant relatives forever changed agriculture. About nine million years ago, natural interbreeding between a tomato ancestor and a South American Etuberosum species led to the first true potato. 



This unexpected hybridization created a plant with one powerful trait: the ability to grow tubers underground.



Published in the journal Cell, the study reveals how this hybrid event transformed <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/how-psychoactive-plants-helped-build-an-ancient-empire/">evolution</a>. Tubers enabled plants to store nutrients below the surface, helping them survive climate shifts and colonize new terrains.



“Our findings show how a hybridization event between species can spark the evolution of new traits, allowing even more species to emerge,” said co-author Sanwen Huang of the <a href="https://www.caas.cn/en/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences</a>. “We’ve finally solved the mystery of where potatoes came from.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-potatoes-are-more-tomato-than-expected">Potatoes are more tomato than expected</h2>



While the potato resembles some tuberless Chilean <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/ancient-seeds-reveal-plant-migration-path-from-asia-to-australia/">species</a>, it shares more genetic ties with tomatoes. To investigate, the researchers sequenced 450 cultivated potato genomes and 56 wild relatives.



They discovered that all potatoes carry a stable genetic blend from both Etuberosum and tomato-like ancestors. 



The two lineages diverged around 14 million years ago, yet still interbred after 5 million years of separation. This compatibility led to the birth of the modern potato lineage with tuber-forming capabilities.



“Wild potatoes are very difficult to sample, so this dataset represents the most comprehensive collection of wild potato genomic data ever analyzed,” said study first author Zhiyang Zhang.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-origins-of-modern-potatoes">Origins of modern potatoes </h2>



By tracing the source of tuber-related genes, the study showed how specific gene combinations enabled tuber development. One gene, SP6A, came from the tomato ancestor. It acts like a timer, signaling when to begin tuber formation. 



Another gene, IT1, came from Etuberosum and drives the actual growth of the underground stem structures.



Without these two genes, tubers would not exist. Their presence in the hybrid offspring gave the new <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/evidence-of-ancient-plant-farming-found-in-east-africa/">lineage</a> a nutritional edge.



This combination also solved a long-standing contradiction. While tuberless Etuberosum plants resemble modern potatoes, they lacked these hybrid genes. Potatoes, on the other hand, inherited the best of both parents.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tubers-helped-potatoes-survive">Tubers helped potatoes survive</h2>



The potato’s evolutionary breakthrough matched a dramatic environmental shift. The Andes mountains were rising rapidly during this period. These changes brought colder, harsher conditions. 



Underground tubers allowed the hybrids to store energy and survive drought, frost, and low oxygen.



Tubers gave potatoes another advantage: asexual reproduction. A single tuber can sprout new plants without seeds or flowers. This helped the species spread across diverse&nbsp;<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/world-turtle-day-2025-ancient-creatures-with-modern-challenges/">ecosystems</a>, from mountain slopes to temperate grasslands.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-rewiring-of-plant-hormone-systems">Rewiring of plant hormone systems</h2>



The research uncovered even deeper changes. Potato hybridization did not just merge genes. It altered hormonal pathways. Tuber formation involves a shift from flowering-focused reproduction to underground storage growth.



The researchers found reduced expression of flowering genes and increased activation of genes that promote storage organ formation. These changes involved key hormones like gibberellins, which control plant development. 



The hybrid lineage adjusted hormone balances to support tuber growth while limiting flower formation when necessary.



The SP6A and IT1 genes did not act alone. They interacted with regulators of sugar transport and underground stem expansion. This suggests that tuber evolution affected entire physiological networks.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-hybridization-fuels-plant-diversity">How hybridization fuels plant diversity</h2>



Hybridization between distant plant lineages is rare, but powerful. It can bypass reproductive barriers, create new species, and introduce useful traits. In the potato’s case, hybridization created an entirely new reproductive strategy using vegetative propagation through tubers.



This ability allowed potatoes to diversify rapidly. The Andes became a hotspot for wild potato speciation. Each species adapted to different altitudes and climates.



“Evolving a tuber gave potatoes a huge advantage in harsh environments, fueling an explosion of new species and contributing to the rich diversity of potatoes we see and rely on today,” Huang said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tomatoes-helped-create-potatoes">Tomatoes helped create potatoes</h2>



The potato is now one of the world’s most essential crops, feeding billions. But its success began with one wild encounter between tomato-like and Etuberosum ancestors.



Through ancient hybridization, potatoes gained the ability to thrive underground, reproduce without seeds, and adapt to varied environments. Their tubers became both survival tools and culinary staples.



Scientists have finally traced that origin story, showing how a distant botanical union shaped the potato and our diets.



The study is published in the journal&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)00736-6" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cell</a>.



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Potato origins mystery solved after 9 million years

An ancient encounter between distant plant relatives forever changed agriculture....

Tiny plastic particles surround us daily. We can’t see them, but we inhale the plastic dust constantly. 



A new study by Nadiia Yakovenko and colleagues at <a href="https://www.univ-tlse3.fr" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Université de Toulouse</a> uncovers how much more exposure we face indoors than previously assumed.



Published in the journal PLOS ONE, the research reveals just how dense microplastic pollution has become inside homes and vehicles.



Earlier studies showed that <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/scented-products-release-indoor-air-pollutants/">plastics</a> float in the air almost everywhere. These fragments, called microplastics, often come from synthetic clothes, car interiors, packaging, and household items. Indoor air contains more of them than outdoor air. 



Until now, most research focused on larger particles that rarely enter deep lung tissue. This study takes a sharper look at smaller particles - the ones that can reach the lungs.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tiny-plastics-harm-your-lungs">Tiny plastics harm your lungs</h2>



When particles are smaller than 10 micrometers (µm), or 0.0004 inches, they become a threat to deep lung tissue. They slip past our natural filters and can reach the bronchi and even enter the bloodstream.



These particles also carry toxic chemicals and <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/millions-of-people-die-from-air-pollution-each-year-yet-theres-still-a-lack-of-monitoring/">pollutants</a>. Once inside the body, they may harm vital systems.



Yakovenko’s team studied both apartments and cars using Raman spectroscopy, a method capable of detecting particles as small as 1 µm. They found that the average indoor air contains thousands of these tiny particles per cubic meter.



Homes and cars had different compositions. Polyethylene dominated in homes, while polyamide was more common in cars due to the types of fabrics and plastics used in vehicle interiors.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-smaller-particles-bigger-problem">Smaller particles, bigger problem</h2>



Most previous studies used µFTIR spectroscopy, which detects particles no smaller than 10 µm. This left out the most common size range found in indoor air. 



The new study used a more sensitive method and found microplastic concentrations up to 100 times higher than earlier estimates.



More than 90% of all detected particles were smaller than 10 µm. These particles followed a pattern where smaller particles appeared more often. 



The distribution pattern followed a <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/quantum-mechanics-uncovers-hidden-patterns-in-the-stock-market/">power law</a>, meaning particle numbers rose sharply as size dropped. That means we are breathing in large quantities of the smallest, most hazardous plastics.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-indoor-dust-is-mostly-plastic">Indoor dust is mostly plastic</h2>



Sampling revealed a median of 528 particles per cubic meter (~15 particles/ft³) in homes and 2,238 particles per cubic meter (~63 particles/ft³) in cars.



These particles were mostly fragments rather than fibers. Their size typically ranged from 1 to 10 µm.



Based on combined data from this and other studies, researchers estimated that adults inhale about 3,200 larger microplastics and 68,000 smaller ones on a daily basis.



These smaller particles can cross biological barriers, reach the bloodstream, and impact organs. They may also release additives and chemicals that disrupt hormones and affect immunity.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-role-of-the-gut-and-beyond">Role of the gut and beyond</h2>



Larger <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/cutting-super-pollutants-could-quickly-cool-the-planet/">particles</a> usually get trapped in mucus and are removed by coughing or swallowing. This process introduces plastics into the digestive system. 



This secondary ingestion route could rival or exceed plastic exposure from food and drinks. In fact, people may absorb more microplastics through air than through meals.



Children may be even more vulnerable due to higher air intake relative to their body weight. Inhalation rates vary, but on average, children may inhale up to 47,000 small plastic particles daily. These particles can reach places in the body where they don’t belong.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-plastic-dust-found-everywhere">Plastic dust found everywhere</h2>



“We found that over 90% of the microplastic particles in indoor air across both homes and cars were smaller than 10 µm, small enough to be inhaled deep into the lungs," noted the researchers.



This was also the first study to measure microplastics in the car cabin environment. Overall, the team detected indoor concentrations up to 100 times higher than previous extrapolated estimates, revealing indoor air as a major and previously underestimated exposure route of fine particulate microplastic inhalation.



“Everywhere we looked, we find microplastics, even in the air we breathe inside our homes and cars," the researchers said.



The biggest concern is how small these particles are completely invisible to the naked eye. "We inhale thousands of them every day without even realizing it," the team pointed out. 



Deep inside our lungs, microplastics release toxic additives that reach our blood and cause multiple diseases.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-next-step-in-microplastic-research">Next step in microplastic research</h2>



This study also estimates potential exposure to nanoplastics, which are particles smaller than 1 µm (0.00004 inches). These may reach even deeper parts of the lungs and possibly cross into cells.



Though no direct measurements were made, the study extrapolated a likely exposure rate of over 33 million nanoplastics per day in the smallest size range.



Inhaled <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/what-happens-when-nanoplastics-get-into-the-soil-many-things-none-of-them-are-good/">nanoplastics</a> may behave differently than microplastics. They are smaller, more reactive, and harder to detect. Future research must develop better ways to observe and measure these invisible invaders.



The takeaway is clear. Indoor air carries more microplastics than we assumed, especially in the most harmful size ranges. 



This study urges regular monitoring and a closer look at how these particles move, settle, and affect health. Until then, the invisible plastic dust in our homes and cars remains an open hazard. We breathe it in with every passing moment.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0328011" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">PLOS One</a>.



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Plastic dust is making indoor air more polluted than outside

Tiny plastic particles surround us daily. We can’t see them,...

Most of us think empathy is either something you have or do not. A new study from the University of Southern California shows that this social glue can be taught through simple emotional rewards.



After just a few minutes of watching a cartoon stranger enjoy small victories, volunteers started to feel happy for the character and even gave up money to keep that happiness going. 



Psychologist Yi Zhang of <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">USC Dornsife</a>, who led the project, says the brain learns to link another person’s good mood to its own internal payoff.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-rewards-can-train-empathy-faster">Rewards can train empathy faster</h2>



The study reports that empathy can grow when positive feelings are consistently paired with personal gains. This finding challenges the idea that empathy only comes from shared experience or moral instruction.



Instead, the brain appears to treat another person like a favorite object whenever their smile predicts a benefit. That habit stays intact even when the benefit disappears.



In previous decades, empathy training focused on perspective taking workshops. The new data suggest that pairing emotion with reward may work faster and reach people who resist verbal lessons.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-cartoons-helped-people-care">Cartoons helped people care</h2>



Researchers asked 1,500 adults to view short clips of a stick figure hero who sometimes played with a dog and other times fell off a bike. After each scene, a counter on the screen rose or fell, telling viewers they had won or lost cents.



People whose counters rose during the happy scenes later rated the hero’s feelings as more important and even pressed keyboard keys longer to see new happy clips. Their extra effort showed that the emotional link was now a small but real motivational push.



Importantly, the hero had no voice or facial features, so participants could not read expressions or mirror emotions. That design choice helped isolate learning from automatic mimicry.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-smiles-taught-empathy-like-pavlov-s-bell">Smiles taught empathy like Pavlov’s bell</h2>



“It’s a social twist on Pavlov’s classic experiment,” said Professor Leon Hackel, the study’s senior author. By swapping food for smiles, the team demonstrated a form of Pavlovian conditioning that applies to mental states rather than bells and steaks.



Earlier work on associative learning in social settings found that humans and animals easily connect gestures and voices with reward, but this project is among the first to show that abstract <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/acts-of-kindness-social-brains-are-wired-to-help/">emotions</a> can serve the same role. 



The research opens the door to training compassion without relying on shared background or ideology.



Because the effect survived a delay period and new scenarios, the authors argue that the brain builds a flexible template rather than a narrow stimulus response chain. In practical terms, caring can expand beyond the original situation.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-empathy-led-to-kind-actions">Empathy led to kind actions</h2>



In a later task, participants picked digital gift cards for the cartoon hero, knowing exactly which cards the hero liked. Selecting the preferred card sometimes drained their own point balance.



Those who had learned the happiness reward link were more willing to lose points or at least hesitated before being selfish. The behavior matched their self reported feelings, suggesting that empathy and prosocial behavior can spring from the same learning rule.



The finding matters because many real world prosocial acts, from tipping to blood donation, involve small personal costs. Building the reward link could tip the scales toward generosity in those moments.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-cooperation-competition-and-classrooms">Cooperation, competition, and classrooms</h2>



The findings help explain why empathy thrives in groups where one person’s win lifts everyone. Studies of cooperative learning in schools show that children who share grades and goals also show sharper gains in caring for peers.



Competitive arenas do the opposite, because a rival’s success predicts personal loss, making the empathic pathway harder to condition. Workplace reward <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/how-customer-courtesy-kindness-transforms-service-quality-and-job-satisfaction/">systems</a> could unknowingly shape compassion by choosing between winner-takes-all bonuses and team incentives.



Sports teams and military units, which bond players through shared wins and losses, might naturally leverage the same circuit. Recognizing that link could inspire training programs that cultivate empathy alongside skill.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-empathy-training-can-help-therapy">Empathy training can help therapy</h2>



“Understanding how people form emotional <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/little-benjamina-the-oldest-evidence-of-social-empathy-in-humans/">bonds</a> could help us design AI that responds in more human-like ways,” said Yi Zhang. Engineers could teach chatbots to value user joy by aligning system rewards with human smiles, rather than relying on canned politeness.



Therapists might also use reward-based exercises to help clients with social anxiety practice noticing and valuing other people’s positive emotions. Because the intervention is brief and game like, it could slot into digital mental health tools.



Parents might reinforce caring by celebrating siblings who cheer each other on. Small rewards paired with shared happiness could be stronger than many lectures on kindness.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-real-world-tests-are-needed">Real world tests are needed</h2>



The experiments ran online with small monetary stakes, so scientists still need to check whether the same pattern appears in face to face settings. They also want to know how long the effect lasts when real time passes instead of computer rounds.



Brain imaging could reveal whether the reward circuits light up in sync with empathic <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/bonobos-and-chimps-express-empathy-much-like-humans/">feelings</a>, or if new networks come online. That work may point toward therapies for disorders marked by low empathy, such as psychopathy.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09567976251351304" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Psychological Science</a>.



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Empathy can be taught through simple reward training

Most of us think empathy is either something you have...

The ocean is slowly losing its breath, and fish that spend their days in the twilight depths are starting to pay the price. 



A new study tracking 10,000 years of fossil ear bones shows that some of the most numerous vertebrates on Earth vanished whenever deep water oxygen fell below a critical threshold.



Lanternfish expert Sven Pallacks of the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (<a href="https://portalrecerca.uab.cat/en/organisations/institut-de-ci%C3%A8ncia-i-tecnologia-ambientals-icta-uab" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">UAB</a>) says the pattern is a clear warning for today’s warming seas. 



The disappearance of a group with such enormous biomass would likely put many other marine <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/ancient-fish-bones-reveal-clues-about-the-evolution-of-eating/">species</a> at risk as well.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-lanternfish-need-deep-sea-oxygen">Lanternfish need deep sea oxygen</h2>



Oxygen dissolves into seawater at the surface and is carried downward by currents and mixing. In parts of the mid water column, consumptive microbes form an oxygen minimum zone that can drop to just a few micromoles per liter.



Since the 1960s, the global ocean has already lost roughly two percent of its oxygen inventory, an amount equivalent to the volume needed to supply every person on the planet for a year. Less mixing and warmer water both make it harder for fresh oxygen to reach depth.



When that deficit climbs, the low oxygen layer expands upward, squeezing habitat for <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/ancient-fish-had-flexible-joints-like-humans/">organisms</a> caught between breathless water below and surface predators above. Fish that once sheltered hundreds of feet deep end up in plain sight, exposed and stressed.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-lanternfish-are-important">Why lanternfish are important</h2>



The slim, glowing lanternfish make nightly ascents of up to 2,600 ft to feed, then retreat to 660 ft or deeper before sunrise. Their combined weight may reach six hundred million tons.



Because they commute between surface and depth, lanternfish shuttle carbon in their bodies into long term storage - a service called the biological pump. 



A 2019 <a href="https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2023.926063" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">synthesis</a> estimated that their nightly rise moves roughly four gigatons of carbon downward each year. That is more than the annual carbon emissions of the European Union, highlighting why the loss of lanternfish would weaken a key climate stabilizer. 



Lanternfish also feed whales, tuna, and many squid, so their absence would ripple through commercial fisheries.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-fossils-reveal-what-happened">Fossils reveal what happened</h2>



Pallacks and colleagues recovered a sediment core from 1,835 feet down in the Aegean Sea. They sorted more than 3,200 fossil otoliths - the tiny calcified ear stones that record a <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/living-fossil-reveals-clues-about-how-animals-learned-to-breathe/">fish</a>’s identity like fingerprints.



Each layer of mud offered a snapshot of who was living above at the time it settled. Because the Aegean toggled between well oxygenated and suffocating states over the past ten millennia, it served as a natural experiment.



During the most severe low oxygen phase, called Sapropel S1, lanternfish counts plummeted to near zero. Anchovies and other surface dwellers filled some of the gap, but overall fish abundance stayed low until oxygen crept back.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-past-loss-warns-the-present">Past loss warns the present</h2>



Archaeological <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02568-8" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">evidence</a> shows that early coastal cultures around the Mediterranean suffered reduced fish catches during the same sapropel interval, hinting at cascading effects on human food security. 



Historical records suggest that once oxygen levels recovered, <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/worlds-oldest-fish-coelacanth-presumed-extinct-for-60-million-years-before-rediscovery/">fish</a> markets rebounded within a few generations.



The core indicates that oxygen rebounded about 6,000 years ago, and lanternfish stormed back, tripling total fish abundance within a few centuries.&nbsp;



"Our findings corroborate expectations that future expansion of midwater deoxygenation could severely deplete mesopelagic fish communities," noted the study authors.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-when-lanternfish-vanish">When lanternfish vanish</h2>



Lanternfish sit at a crucial hinge in food webs. Many whales, seabirds, and predators such as swordfish depend on them for calories.



Lose the commuters, and both seafood supply and natural carbon sequestration take a hit. Models show that removing lanternfish from global ecology would cut twilight zone carbon export by at least twenty five percent.



Such a reduction would accelerate atmospheric warming, creating a feedback loop that drives oxygen even lower. The biological pump is not a luxury. It is planetary life support.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-climate-models-point-to-steeper-declines">Climate models point to steeper declines</h2>



Earth system simulations that include projected emissions paths suggest oxygen minimum zones could grow by up to seven percent by 2100. 



The upper boundary of low oxygen water could climb from roughly 1,300 feet today to less than 650 feet in some basins.



That shift would erase the safe daytime refuge for many mid-water species, forcing them closer to nets and predators. Warmer water also speeds fish metabolism, so they need more oxygen just as it becomes scarce.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-we-can-do-now">What we can do now</h2>



Cutting greenhouse gas emissions remains the fastest lever for stabilizing ocean oxygen. Local steps, like reducing nutrient runoff that fuels coastal dead zones, protect regional fisheries while the planet decarbonizes.



Monitoring programs that deploy autonomous sensors into the <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24509953/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">mesopelagic zone</a> now give managers early warning when oxygen starts to fall. Data from these floats already help reroute fishing effort away from emerging hypoxic patches



Scientists are also testing marine protected areas designed around depth bands rather than coastlines, preserving critical migration corridors. Protecting the pathways lanternfish use may buy time while global actions take hold.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-we-don-t-know-about-lanternfish">What we don’t know about lanternfish</h2>



Lanternfish biomass estimates still span an order of magnitude, and only a handful of regions have been sampled with modern acoustics. Expanding surveys will refine how much organic carbon these fish ferry to depth.



Meanwhile, paleo records such as the Aegean core offer rare, long term baselines against which future change can be measured. More sediment cores from other basins will reveal whether regional oxygen thresholds line up globally.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-s-coming-next">What’s coming next</h2>



Technology that tracks individual fish with miniaturized tags is beginning to map their vertical routes in three dimensions. Combining that data with oxygen sensors will reveal tipping points beyond which migration breaks down.



Policy makers armed with such thresholds can set clearer targets for climate mitigation and fishery protection. The past cannot predict every detail, but it shows how sharply deep sea life responds when the ocean runs short of air.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02568-8" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Communications Earth &amp; Environment</a>.



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Lanternfish fossils warn of looming ocean oxygen crisis

The ocean is slowly losing its breath, and fish that...

Picture the entire food system as an intricate relay race, except the baton is invisible. Trillions of microbes - bacteria, fungi, and viruses - pass nutrients, flavor compounds, and disease-fighting molecules down the line.



These microscopic transfers move from soil to crops, from animals to processing plants, and finally to our own digestive tracts.



A sweeping review has now drawn the first full map of these “agri-food microbiomes,” revealing both the magnitude of their quiet labor and the growing cracks that threaten to slow the handoff.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-microbes-mirror-earth-s-decline">Microbes mirror Earth’s decline</h2>



Lead author Paula Fernández-Gómez of Ireland’s <a href="https://teagasc.ie/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Teagasc Food Research Center</a> has spent years tracing microbes through cheese vats and barley fields.



What she sees lately is disturbing. Soils are losing their bacterial richness, rivers are overloaded with fertilizer-fed <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/green-algae-in-lake-erie-may-be-hiding-toxic-deadly-compounds/">algal blooms</a>, antibiotic-resistant genes are spreading from feedlots, and people are developing chronic gut disorders fed by ultra-processed diets.



“Declining microbial health is mirrored in the health of people and the planet,” said Fernández-Gómez.



The team’s survey of more than 250 “omics” studies confirms that climate stress, chemical overuse, and a taste for sterile convenience foods are unraveling microbial diversity at nearly every stop along the chain.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-subway-of-hidden-microbes">A subway of hidden microbes</h2>



To make sense of the tangle, Fernández-Gómez and study senior author Paul Cotter stitched together data from horticulture, <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/aquaculture-impacts-wild-fish-much-more-than-we-thought/">aquaculture</a>, livestock operations, and global food-distribution hubs.



Imagine a subway diagram in which one line begins beneath a wheat field, ducks under a flour mill, loops through a bakery, and ends in your gut. Another starts in a mangrove, hops into shrimp ponds, weaves through a freezing facility and surfaces in a seafood soup.



Overlaid on those tracks are warning signs where microbial “stations” are shutting down. These range from pesticide-scorched root zones to refrigerated warehouses that select for spoilage organisms.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-restoring-the-microbe-food-chain">Restoring the microbe food chain</h2>



The map also points to success stories. A yeast spray trimmed post-harvest loss in strawberries by crowding out decay fungi. 



Drought-tolerant bacteria boosted yields in desert test plots without extra water. Probiotic feed reduced infections in poultry flocks, letting farmers cut <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/bacteria-in-livestock-are-major-drivers-of-antibiotic-resistance/">antibiotics</a>.



Each example shows how fostering friendly microbes can save money, slash waste, and keep pathogens in check. 



“Just as microbes work together, so must we - at every point in the food system - to make microbe-friendly choices,” Cotter said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-simple-swaps-with-outsized-impact"><a></a>Simple swaps with outsized impact</h2>



What does that collaboration look like? Consumers can favor fresh, minimally <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/breaking-free-from-ultra-processed-foods-the-surprising-health-benefits/">processed foods</a> and support local growers who nourish soil life instead of drenching fields in chemicals.



Food companies can scale up living biofertilizers, smart packaging that suppresses spoilage, and fermentation processes that add beneficial cultures to everyday staples.



Regulators can build clear safety pathways for microbial products so innovators can move faster. Educators can demystify microbes, shifting public perception from “germs to kill” toward “partners to cultivate.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-two-threats-one-microbial-crisis">Two threats, one microbial crisis</h2>



The stakes stretch beyond taste and shelf life. Heavy fertilizer runoff rewires aquatic microbial communities until oxygen-starved “dead zones” form. 



Antibiotics used in aquaculture breed resistance genes that later show up in human hospitals. Heat waves and droughts favor plant pathogens just when crops are already stressed.



The researchers noted that protecting microbial diversity is a double win: it cushions agriculture against climate shocks while also curbing the spread of antimicrobial resistance.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-mapping-microbe-roles-in-detail">Mapping microbe roles in detail</h2>



Despite high-powered DNA sequencing, many microbes remain strangers; scientists know their names but not their jobs. 



The authors call for pairing genetic surveys with old-school culturing, synthetic biology experiments, and high-throughput screening to tease out who does what.



By isolating a desert-soil bacterium that fixes <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/nitrogen-was-plentiful-for-early-life-on-earth/">nitrogen</a> or a lactic acid strain that prolongs cucumber freshness, researchers can design “microbial consortia” tailored to specific challenges.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-profit-meets-planetary-health">Profit meets planetary health</h2>



Investors are noticing the trend. Markets for biofertilizers and <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/beer-vs-probiotics-how-drinking-a-pint-is-great-for-gut-health/">probiotics</a> are expanding as governments restrict chemical inputs.



A farm that inoculates seeds with growth-promoting microbes spends less on synthetic nitrogen. A retailer that uses bacteriophage sprays loses fewer heads of lettuce to rot.



"Healthy microbial networks underpin our existence. They drive nutrient cycling, disease resistance, and environmental resilience," explained study co-author Tanja Kostic of the <a href="https://www.ait.ac.at/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Austrian Institute of Technology</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-future-depends-on-microbes">The future depends on microbes</h2>



The new map is both a cautionary tale and a hopeful blueprint. We can continue eroding the webs of microbes that keep foods nutritious, ecosystems resilient, and our bodies in balance - or we can choose to ally with the unseen workforce that has sustained life for millennia.



A slice of sourdough made with wild cultures, a policy that rewards farmers for planting nitrogen-fixing clover, a wastewater standard that curbs antibiotic discharge - each small decision helps retie the threads. Each one contributes to restoring balance in the microbial web.



In the end, embracing our microbial partners may be the surest way to nourish nine billion people while healing the planet we all share.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/science/articles/10.3389/fsci.2025.1575468/full" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Frontiers in Science</a>.



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Hidden microbes powering our entire food system are under threat

Picture the entire food system as an intricate relay race,...

A massive pocket of unusually hot rock buried deep under the Appalachian Mountains might be a lingering echo of ancient tectonic shifts that split Greenland from North America 80 million years ago.



This strange heat zone - known as the Northern Appalachian Anomaly (NAA) - sits about 200 kilometers beneath New England.



For a long time, scientists thought it was a remnant from when North America tore away from Northwest Africa around 180 million years ago. 



But new research from scientists at the <a href="https://www.southampton.ac.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of Southampton</a>, the Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Germany, and the University of Florence in Italy points to a different story.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-appalachian-mountains-are-still-rising">Appalachian Mountains are still rising</h2>



The Northern Appalachian Anomaly spans about 350 kilometers and is hotter than the surrounding mantle. But it likely didn’t form where it is today.



According to the researchers, this zone of heat may have originated over 1,800 kilometers away, near the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/oxygen-flow-from-the-labrador-sea-sustains-life-globally/">Labrador Sea</a> - between Greenland and Canada - when those landmasses began to split apart between 90 and 80 million years ago.



Since then, the anomaly has likely crept southwest across the base of the North American continent, traveling at roughly 20 kilometers per million years.



“This thermal upwelling has long been a puzzling feature of North American geology,” said Professor Tom Gernon from the University of Southampton. 



“It lies beneath part of the continent that’s been tectonically quiet for 180 million years, so the idea it was just a leftover from when the landmass broke apart never quite stacked up."



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-heat-helps-the-appalachians-rise">Heat helps the Appalachians rise</h2>



According to Professor Gernon, the team's research suggests the heat zone is part of a much larger, slow-moving process deep underground that could potentially help explain why <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/hidden-mountain-range-under-antarctica-is-older-than-dinosaurs/">mountain ranges</a> like the Appalachians are still standing. 



"Heat at the base of a continent can weaken and remove part of its dense root, making the continent lighter and more buoyant, like a hot air balloon rising after dropping its ballast." 



"This would have caused the ancient mountains to be further uplifted over the past few million years.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-heat-moves-under-continents">How heat moves under continents</h2>



The researchers used seismic imaging, geodynamic simulations, and tectonic plate reconstructions to understand how the anomaly formed and where it came from. 



The team's work leans on a recent theory they’ve proposed, known as “mantle wave” theory. It describes how pieces of hot, dense rock peel away from the base of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/life-earth-tectonic-plates/">tectonic plates</a> and migrate slowly under <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/earth-only-has-six-continents-not-seven-tectonic-plates-under-iceland-study/">continents</a> - similar to blobs floating in a lava lamp.



The slow, deep movements can have surprising effects at the surface, from creating areas of uplift to triggering rare volcanic activity.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-heat-beneath-the-appalachians-is-moving">Heat beneath the Appalachians is moving</h2>



“These convective instabilities cause chunks of rock, several tens of kilometers thick, to slowly sink from the base of the Earth’s outer layer known as the lithosphere,” said Professor Sascha Brune of the Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences. 



“As the lithosphere thins, hotter mantle material rises to take its place, creating a warm region known as a thermal anomaly."



“Our earlier research shows that these ‘drips’ of rock can form in series, like domino stones when they fall one after the other, and sequentially migrate over time. The feature we see beneath New England is very likely one of these drips, which originated far from where it now sits.”



If their model is correct, the Northern Appalachian Anomaly will likely continue its slow southwestward journey. In about 15 million years, it may sit directly beneath the New York region. Its current size and depth match what models predict for these types of migrating thermal zones.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-mirror-beneath-greenland">A mirror beneath Greenland</h2>



Interestingly, the team believes a similar heat anomaly exists beneath north-central Greenland - likely formed at the same time, on the opposite side of the Labrador Sea, when the landmasses split.



Beneath Greenland, this heat zone affects how the ice sheet above moves and melts. "Ancient heat anomalies continue to play a key role in shaping the dynamics of continental <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/antarctic-ice-sheet-patterns-point-to-rapid-melting-risks/">ice sheets</a> from below,” said Professor Gernon.



According to Dr. Derek Keir, a co-author from the University of Southampton, the idea that rifting of continents can cause drips and cells of circulating hot rock at depth that spread thousands of kilometers inland makes us rethink what we know about the edges of continents both today and in Earth’s deep past.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-deep-earth-forces-remain-active">Deep Earth forces remain active</h2>



The findings add to a growing body of evidence showing that deep Earth processes can stay active long after surface plate movements have stopped. 



Even places like the Appalachians -geologically quiet for millions of years - are still shaped by what’s happening far below.



“Even though the surface shows little sign of ongoing tectonics, deep below, the consequences of ancient rifting are still playing out,” said Professor Gernon. “The legacy of continental breakup on other parts of the Earth system may well be far more pervasive and long-lived than we previously realised.”



The full study was published in the journal <a href="https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/doi/10.1130/G53588.1/659899/A-viable-Labrador-Sea-rifting-origin-of-the">Geology</a>.



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Deep heat zone may be lifting the Appalachian Mountains

A massive pocket of unusually hot rock buried deep under...

<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E0mn5mTvhQ
</div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">'Death Star' moon Mimas conceals a 15-million-year-old ocean that scientists never expected.</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-hidden-waters-beneath-ancient-craters">Hidden waters beneath ancient craters</h2>



Scientists have made a startling discovery that challenges everything we thought we knew about <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/saturn-moon-mimas-has-remarkably-young-ocean/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Saturn's moon Mimas</a>. Beneath the heavily cratered surface that earned it the nickname "Death Star" lies a global ocean that formed just 5 to 15 million years ago—a remarkably young age by cosmic standards.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-cassini-data-reveals-orbital-secrets">Cassini data reveals orbital secrets</h2>



The discovery, led by Dr. Valéry Lainey of the <a href="https://observatoiredeparis.psl.eu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Observatoire de Paris</a>, emerged from careful analysis of <a href="https://www.nasa.gov" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NASA</a>'s Cassini spacecraft data. By studying subtle irregularities in Mimas's orbit around Saturn, researchers detected the gravitational signature of liquid water hidden 20 to 30 kilometers beneath the moon's icy shell.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-an-unlikely-ocean-world">An unlikely ocean world</h2>



At only 400 kilometers in diameter, Mimas seemed like the least likely candidate to harbor a subsurface ocean. Unlike other ocean moons such as Europa and Enceladus, which show clear surface signs of internal activity, Mimas displays no obvious hints of the liquid water beneath its ancient, crater-scarred exterior.



"Mimas is a small moon, and its heavily cratered surface gave no hint of the hidden ocean beneath," explained Dr. Nick Cooper from <a href="https://www.qmul.ac.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Queen Mary University of London</a>, a study co-author.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-implications-for-astrobiology">Implications for astrobiology</h2>



The ocean's recent formation makes Mimas a prime target for studying how oceans develop and potentially support life. This discovery adds another member to the exclusive club of ocean worlds in our solar system, each offering unique insights into the conditions necessary for habitability.



The research, published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nature</a> journal, demonstrates how advanced orbital analysis can reveal hidden features of celestial bodies, opening new possibilities for understanding ocean formation throughout the cosmos.



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Scientists discover unexpected young ocean on Saturn's cratered moon Mimas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E0mn5mTvhQ 'Death Star' moon Mimas conceals a 15-million-year-old ocean that...

<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y4eLFNYrKE
</div></figure>



On the unforgiving landscape of North Greenland, temperatures drop and sunlight barely penetrates through the polar winter. It was here, however, that an international team of scientists found <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/predatory-worms-were-terror-beasts-half-a-billion-years-ago/#google_vignette" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">evidence of sea monsters</a> that would change our understanding of ocean life in the past.



This video captures the discovery of Timorebestia fossils that had been hidden for more than 500 million years in the Sirius Passet formation. The "terror beasts," as they are called, are a hidden chapter in the evolutionary history of <a href="https://www.earth.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Earth</a>, showing that sophisticated predator-prey interactions occurred much earlier than previously envisioned.



Dr. Jakob Vinther and his research team at the <a href="https://www.bristol.ac.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of Bristol</a>, in collaboration with researchers at the <a href="https://eng.kopri.re.kr/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Korean Polar Research Institute</a>, braved extreme weather conditions at 82.5 north latitude to locate these giant creatures. Using sophisticated electron microprobe analysis, they revealed the detailed anatomy of the animals, including their muscle and nerve tissues.



The find upsets the traditional timeline of sea predators. Although we've long appreciated that Cambrian oceans were at one time ruled by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWI3-UgA3_o&amp;list=PL1QLQMW9MWDwpkFOnvgAmu7wT6rZmYqdJ&amp;index=19" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">arthropods</a>, these discoveries indicate that relatives of arrow worms were first to dominate the seas. These worms were building sophisticated food webs several million years before other predator groups arose.



Each fossil is a story of ancient hunger, with fossil stomach contents revealing these meter-long beasts dined on heavily armored arthropods regularly, cementing their place as the ocean's first apex predators.



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Worms dominated seas before dinosaurs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y4eLFNYrKE On the unforgiving landscape of North Greenland, temperatures drop...

<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow3JH03PqEQ
</div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">New York is the site of the world's oldest forest.</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-385-million-year-old-trees-discovered">385-million-year-old trees discovered</h2>



Scientists have uncovered something extraordinary just two hours north of New York City. The <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/worlds-oldest-forest-discovered-close-to-new-york-city/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">world's oldest forest</a>, dating back 385 million years, offers a window into how Earth's first complex forests shaped our planet's atmosphere.



Located near <a href="https://townofcairo.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cairo, New York</a>, in Greene County, these weren't merely primitive plants struggling to survive. These were sophisticated trees with root systems remarkably similar to modern forests. This ancient woodland predates dinosaurs by 140 million years.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-cairo-forest-discovery">The Cairo forest discovery</h2>



385 million years ago, upstate New York was a tropical paradise near the equator. Thanks to continental drift, this ancient forest has traveled thousands of miles to its current location.



The fossil forest sits in an abandoned quarry, roughly half the size of a football field. This represents just a slice of what was likely a massive forest system stretching from New York into Pennsylvania.



Charles Ver Straeten, curator of sedimentary rocks at the <a href="https://www.nysm.nysed.gov/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New York State Museum</a>, made the discovery in 2009. While scouting the former highway department property, his trained eye spotted wandering patterns in the stone that looked like marine features.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-revolutionary-age-and-preservation">Revolutionary age and preservation</h2>



The site contains 385-million-year-old rocks with fossilized woody roots forming horizontal patterns up to 18 feet (5.5 meters) wide. As Christopher Berry, a paleobotanist at Cardiff University, explains: "You are walking through the roots of ancient trees."



This discovery pushes back advanced tree evolution by millions of years. The research, published in <a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/home" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Current Biology</a> in December 2019, fundamentally changes our understanding of when complex forests first emerged.



Researchers believe a massive flood buried the forest floor, creating perfect fossilization conditions. Over millions of years, sediment hardened into rock, preserving these root patterns like nature's time capsule.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-meet-archaeopteris-the-first-modern-tree">Meet Archaeopteris: the first modern tree</h2>



The star of this ancient forest is Archaeopteris – not to be confused with the feathered dinosaur Archaeopteryx. This tree was far older and more revolutionary.



William Stein from <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Binghamton University</a> describes the roots as "strikingly modern, essentially what you'd see outside in my yard right now." These weren't simple root systems you'd expect from ancient plants.



Some fossilized roots are six inches (15 centimeters) in diameter, forming 36-foot-wide (11-meter) patterns. These giants grew up to 65 feet (20 meters) tall with five-foot-diameter (1.5-meter) trunks.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-climate-changing-impact">Climate-changing impact</h2>



These trees fundamentally changed Earth's environment. Kevin Boyce, a Stanford University geoscientist, explains how their deep roots triggered "weathering," chemical reactions that pulled carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.



This process dropped atmospheric CO2 levels from 10-15 times higher than today to roughly modern concentrations. These ancient trees helped create atmospheric conditions that made complex life possible.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ancient-forest-ecosystem">Ancient forest ecosystem</h2>



The forest was remarkably diverse. Scientists identified Eospermatopteris, palm tree-like plants with short roots that reached 30 feet (9 meters) tall but lacked woody structure. The forest also housed cladoxylopsids and a mysterious third species still being studied.



All reproduced through spores rather than seeds – millions of years before seeds evolved. This tropical environment had no grass, flowers, or flying insects, just towering trees creating Earth's first complex forest canopy.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-scientific-significance">Scientific significance</h2>



Before this finding, the Gilboa forest, located 25 miles (40 kilometers) away, held the "oldest forest" title. Cairo's trees are 2-3 million years older, showing that complex forest ecosystems developed much faster than scientists believed possible.



Patricia Gensel, a <a href="https://www.unc.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of North Carolina</a> paleobotanist, notes: "The size of those root systems is really changing the picture. Even 20 years ago, researchers assumed trees with such complex root systems didn't evolve so early."



The Cairo site presents three unique root systems, suggesting Devonian period forests were diverse ecosystems with different trees occupying different environmental niches, much like today's forests.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-modern-preservation-efforts">Modern preservation efforts</h2>



In 2022, New York State Senator Michelle Hinchey secured a $170,000 grant for the town of Cairo to construct specialized fencing around the fossil forest site. The town plans to conduct a feasibility study exploring the possibility of creating an educational center and working lab on-site.



Joe Hasenkopf, chair of the Cairo Planning Board, hopes to partner with educational institutions to create a research facility serving scientists, students, and the public.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-lessons-for-today-s-climate">Lessons for today's climate</h2>



Why does a 385-million-year-old forest matter today? It shows how dramatically forests can change Earth's climate. These ancient woodlands created the atmospheric conditions supporting complex life.



Understanding how prehistoric forests transformed the planet helps us appreciate modern forests' critical role in addressing climate change. Forests remain Earth's most effective carbon capture systems.



These prehistoric trees changed Earth's atmosphere by pulling massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the air. As we face modern climate challenges, this ancient forest reminds us of trees' incredible power to transform our planet's environment.



The next time you walk through a forest, remember you're experiencing an ecosystem whose blueprint was established 385 million years ago in upstate New York. These ancient pioneers didn't just survive – they thrived and changed the world forever.



The full study was published in the journal Current Biology.



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Earth's oldest forest found in the United States

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow3JH03PqEQ New York is the site of the world's oldest...

<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prrq8Ql81zk
</div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Acid rain and a crisis solved.</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-don-t-we-ever-hear-about-acid-rain-anymore-the-environmental-crisis-that-was-solved">Why don't we ever hear about "acid rain" anymore? The environmental crisis that was solved</h2>



Remember the 1980s when acid rain dominated headlines? Dire warnings about rain eating buildings, killing fish, and destroying forests filled every news cycle. Then, almost like magic, acid rain vanished from public discourse. What happened? Did we actually solve one of the late 20th century's most pressing environmental challenges?



The answer might surprise you. Unlike many environmental issues that drag on indefinitely, acid rain represents one of modern history's most successful ecological recovery stories. It's a tale of science, politics, and technology working together to tackle what seemed impossible.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What was acid rain?</h2>



Acid rain isn't regular rain having a bad day – it's precipitation that became significantly more acidic due to air pollution. When power plants, factories, and vehicles burn fossil fuels, they release sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) into the atmosphere.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The science behind it</h2>



Think of acid rain as nature's chemistry experiment gone wrong. These compounds react with water, oxygen, and other chemicals to form sulfuric and nitric acids. When mixed with water vapor in clouds, they create precipitation with dangerously low pH levels.



While clean rain has a pH of about 5.6, acid rain could drop as low as 4.2 to 4.4 – roughly as acidic as tomato juice or coffee. According to US Geological Survey documentation, Scottish chemist Angus Smith first coined "acid rain" in 1872, but it didn't become a household phrase until the 1960s and 1970s when Swedish scientist Svante Odén documented its devastating effects on Scandinavian lakes and European forests.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The crisis at its peak</h2>



During the height of public concern, environmental damage was both widespread and visible. This wasn't some abstract future threat – people could see destruction happening in real-time.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Environmental devastation</h2>



The most dramatic impacts were impossible to ignore. Research documented by the Adirondack Lakes Survey Corporation and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation shows that in the Adirondack Mountains, more than 200 lakes became so acidic they couldn't support fish life. The Adirondack Council reports that 409 lakes once supported brook trout, but many lost their fish populations due to acid rain.



By 1976, when scientists cataloged all acidified lakes in the Adirondack Park, researchers found that half of the lakes over 2,000 feet above sea level had no fish, according to studies published in environmental journals. The acidification process worked like a slow-motion disaster. As acid rain fell into watersheds, it gradually lowered pH levels. Fish couldn't survive in acidic water, and their food sources died off too.



Trees at high elevations showed stress directly linked to acid rain. It weakened them by leaching nutrients and making them susceptible to disease. Historical records show Germany's Black Forest saw nearly half its trees damaged by the mid-1980s.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Economic impact</h2>



Acid rain wasn't just environmental – it was expensive. Acidic precipitation corroded infrastructure, buildings, and monuments. Historic stone structures deteriorated at accelerated rates. Tourism suffered as lakes became fishless and forests declined. EPA economic analyses from the period documented repair costs mounting into billions annually.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The solution: government action and technology</h2>



Transformation from crisis to success required unprecedented cooperation between governments, industries, and environmental groups.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Clean Air Act of 1990</h2>



The turning point came with the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, signed by President George H.W. Bush. This represented a fundamentally new approach to environmental regulation, as documented in EPA historical records.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Cap-and-trade success</h2>



Instead of mandating specific technologies, the 1990 amendments introduced something revolutionary: a cap-and-trade system for sulfur dioxide emissions. EPA program documentation shows this market-based approach set overall limits but allowed companies to trade emission allowances.



The genius was harnessing market forces to find cost-effective pollution reduction. Companies reducing emissions cheaply could sell excess allowances to those facing higher costs. Research published in environmental economics journals and EPA progress reports shows this resulted in dramatic SO2 reduction at a fraction of projected costs.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Technology advances</h2>



Policy provided the framework, but technology made reductions possible. Studies in atmospheric science journals document the widespread adoption of flue gas desulfurization systems ("scrubbers") that removed sulfur dioxide before it reached the atmosphere. By the 2000s, new installations could remove over 95% of SO2 emissions, according to EPA technical reports.



The push coincided with cleaner energy development. Natural gas produces fewer sulfur compounds than coal. Wind and solar, emerging in the 1990s, captured growing market share, reducing reliance on high-sulfur coal.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-we-don-t-hear-about-it-today">Why we don't hear about it today</h2>



Why did acid rain disappear from headlines? Simple: the problem was largely solved.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Success doesn't make news</h2>



There's an old journalism saying: "If it bleeds, it leads." Environmental success stories don't generate urgency like crisis reporting. Media attention shifted to other challenges: climate change, plastic pollution, and biodiversity loss. There's only so much environmental anxiety the public can absorb, and newer concerns replaced acid rain.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Mission accomplished</h2>



The primary reason is beautifully simple: interventions worked. EPA monitoring data shows sulfur dioxide emissions dropped over 90% since 1990. Academic research published in environmental science journals confirms pH levels in formerly affected areas returned closer to normal. This represents one of history's most dramatic environmental recoveries. Studies by the Adirondack Lakes Survey Corporation show fishless lakes now support healthy populations. Forests recovered, and building damage slowed dramatically.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-is-it-really-gone">Is it really gone?</h2>



The crisis is largely resolved, but monitoring data shows the problem isn't completely eliminated – it's managed to acceptable levels. Some areas still experience occasional events during high pollution periods. International environmental research indicates that rapidly industrializing Asian countries face similar problems to what we experienced decades ago, though they're implementing successful strategies.



EPA research shows nitrogen oxide emissions proved more challenging than sulfur dioxide, coming from vehicles and mobile sources. Climate science studies suggest changing weather patterns add complexity to how acid rain forms and falls.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What this teaches us</h2>



The acid rain experience proves that seemingly intractable environmental problems can be solved with scientific understanding, political will, and technological innovation. Environmental monitoring data shows recovery speed was remarkable – within a decade, measurable improvements appeared in air quality and ecosystem health.



Success came from bipartisan support across party lines. Policy analysis studies show the market-based approach appealed to those preferring economic incentives while achieving environmental goals. This support created lasting policy surviving political changes.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Conclusion</h2>



Acid rain's disappearance from public consciousness represents environmental science's greatest success stories. Through effective regulation, technological innovation, and international cooperation, we transformed an overwhelming crisis into a manageable challenge.



Today's silence isn't because we forgot – it's because we solved it. The 1990 Clean Air Act, combined with technology and energy market changes, reduced acid rain emissions over 90%, according to comprehensive EPA data analysis.



This success offers hope for current challenges. It proves complex problems can be solved when science, policy, and technology work together. As we face climate change and plastic pollution, acid rain reminds us that dramatic positive change is possible.



Next time someone asks whether environmental regulations work, remember acid rain. It's proof that sometimes, we get it right.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Sources: This article draws from EPA official documentation and progress reports, peer-reviewed research published in environmental and atmospheric science journals, historical data from the Adirondack Lakes Survey Corporation, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation records, US Geological Survey publications, policy analysis studies, and environmental monitoring data collected over three decades.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Frequently Asked Questions</h2>



1. Is acid rain completely gone? No, but EPA monitoring shows it's reduced to manageable levels. US sulfur dioxide emissions dropped over 90% since 1990, making acid rain much less severe than the 1980s crisis.



2. How long did solving take? Environmental monitoring data shows significant improvements began within 5-10 years of 1990s emission controls. Full ecosystem recovery took longer – some areas need 20-30 years for complete recovery.



3. What made the solution successful? Clear scientific understanding, visible damage motivating action, bipartisan support, available technology, and innovative market-based policies like cap-and-trade.



4. Do other countries have acid rain problems? Yes, particularly rapidly industrializing Asian countries. However, international environmental research shows many implement similar successful control strategies.



5. Could acid rain return? Potentially, if regulations weaken or we return to high-sulfur coal without controls, though effects would take years to become severe according to environmental projections.



6. Can you recommend any teaching tools on the subject of "acid rain"? The United States Environmental Protection Agency produced a wonderful teacher's guide for ages 14 and under that you can find on the EPA website here: <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2017-03/documents/teachersguide.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2017-03/documents/teachersguide.pdf</a>



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The environmental problem we actually solved

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prrq8Ql81zk Acid rain and a crisis solved. Why don't we...

Fresh,Radish,Harvest,On,Soil,In,Garden.

<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
https://youtu.be/Fi2OeEwuzRM?si=vTyd2m9FMmtyWkex
</div></figure>







Mid-July is an opportune time to kick-start a thriving fall garden, and this guide lays out the best vegetables and herbs to plant now for a fruitful autumn harvest. 



Fast-growing leafy greens such as spinach, lettuce, kale, and arugula perform especially well in the waning summer heat, with harvests beginning as soon as 30 days. 



These cool-season crops relish the transition into fall, offering repeated yields with cut-and-come-again methods.



Root vegetables like radishes, carrots, and beets also excel during this period. Radishes deliver satisfaction in under a month, while carrots and beets mature in about two months. Employing succession planting ensures a continuous stream of produce deep into the cooler months. 



For a boost of fresh flavor, herbs like cilantro, basil, dill, and chervil are excellent picks. These heat-loving varieties flourish in July’s warmth and are harvest-ready in about 30 days, especially when sown continuously.



Gardeners in zones 6 through 9 can benefit from planting bush beans and snap peas, which don’t require trellising and are ideal for compact plots. 



Maturing in 50–60 days, they’re a smart choice for quick, protein-rich harvests. For those in hotter regions, heat-tolerant crops such as okra and southern peas provide reliable yields and thrive in scorching conditions.



This guide emphasizes more than crop selection—it highlights the importance of timing, soil preparation, and ongoing sowing techniques. 



With thoughtful planning and attention to regional climate needs, even late-summer gardeners can enjoy fresh salads, hearty stews, and the satisfaction of a robust, homegrown harvest well into fall.



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What to plant in your garden in mid-July

https://youtu.be/Fi2OeEwuzRM?si=vTyd2m9FMmtyWkex Mid-July is an opportune time to kick-start a thriving...

Green,Ecoduct,Over,An,Empty,Highway,During,Sunset.

<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
https://youtu.be/XYgiPzmNBTU?si=eFYY7gPHU1JznLvU
</div></figure>



A new long-term study in Monkton, Vermont, reveals that wildlife tunnels significantly reduce amphibian road mortality during seasonal migrations. 



Frogs and salamanders often cross roads to reach breeding ponds each spring, but many are killed by vehicles. 



Researchers from the <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of Vermont</a>, in collaboration with local citizens and the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, installed two underpass tunnels in 2015. 



Over a 12-year monitoring period, they observed an 80.2% reduction in amphibian deaths, and up to 94% for non-climbing species like salamanders. 



The study used a before-after-control-impact design and documented more than 5,200 amphibians, highlighting the tunnels’ effectiveness even in nearby buffer zones.



Funded at $342,397 - far cheaper than wildlife crossings for large mammals - the project showcased the power of community-led conservation.



Local groups initiated the effort after observing mass amphibian deaths. Wildlife cameras later captured over 2,200 amphibians using a tunnel in just one spring, along with other species like raccoons and bobcats, indicating wider ecosystem benefits.



This marks the first peer-reviewed, long-term data set in the northeastern U.S. confirming amphibian-specific underpasses work. 



The study urges transportation departments to incorporate these designs into road planning and highlights how community action, thoughtful infrastructure, and persistence can make a real difference for biodiversity.



The full study was published in the <a href="https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1617138125000780" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Journal for Nature Conservation</a>.



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Wildlife tunnels save millions of amphibians

https://youtu.be/XYgiPzmNBTU?si=eFYY7gPHU1JznLvU A new long-term study in Monkton, Vermont, reveals that...

Scientists are transforming chocolate into a functional food by infusing it with probiotics and prebiotics, aiming to create a treat that satisfies cravings while supporting gut health. 



The challenge lies in maintaining chocolate's beloved texture and flavor while adding health benefits.



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Probiotics - beneficial microbes that balance gut bacteria and aid digestion - are typically fragile and can be destroyed by stomach acid or processing. 



Prebiotics act as food for these microbes, helping them thrive. Together, they form "synbiotics," a powerful health combination.



Researchers Smriti Gaur and Shubhi Singh from India's Jaypee Institute of Information Technology took an innovative approach, using natural prebiotics like corn and honey instead of complex processing methods. 



They created five chocolate varieties: a control and four synbiotic versions containing different combinations of prebiotics, probiotics (Lactobacillus strains), and flavor enhancers (cinnamon or orange).



Laboratory simulations of human digestion showed the probiotics remained viable for over five hours, suggesting they could survive long enough to benefit gut health.



Taste tests were positive, with researchers particularly enjoying the orange-flavored variety, describing it as having "vibrant citrus notes" complementing the "rich cocoa" with a "luxurious" texture.



This research represents just the beginning. With further refinement of strains, textures, and flavors, chocolate could evolve beyond mere indulgence to become a functional food that nourishes while it delights.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsfoodscitech.4c00741" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ACS Food Science &amp; Technology</a>.

Is chocolate the next nutritional powerhouse?

Scientists are transforming chocolate into a functional food by infusing...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Nushagak Bay, a large estuary in southwest Alaska. Nushagak runs mainly north to south and exits in Bristol Bay, a large body of water in the Bering Sea.



"The bay is primarily fed by the Nushagak River, which begins in the Alaska Range and flows southwest approximately 450 km. The bay is also fed by several additional rivers including the Wood, Igushik, Snake and Weary rivers," says ESA.



"The dark colors of the Nushagak River are most likely due to tannins or lignins (chemical substances found in plants). Tannins and lignins from roots, leaves, seeds, bark and soil can leach into the water and give it a brown or even black colour. The sediments then flow southwards where it is mixed with the bluer waters of the bay."



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Nushagak Bay in southwest Alaska

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> (ACS) reveals that proteins on flu viruses are actually flexible, tilting and waving in a “breath-like” motion. According to the experts, these proteins could be used to better defend against the flu.



"The main antigenic targets of influenza virus are two surface glycoproteins, hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). Whereas the structural and dynamical properties of both glycoproteins have been studied previously, the understanding of their plasticity in the whole-virion context is fragmented," wrote the researchers.



To investigate, the team conducted detailed simulations of the influenza A H1N1 virion, or the swine flu. The experts concluded that the visualizations show many new vulnerable states of flu viruses, which could improve future vaccines and antiviral drugs.



Video/ Image Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Flu viruses are more flexible than expected

[sendtonews key="G9bUoxcjr4-2511624-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from the...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Lake Trasimeno, which is located west of Perugia in central Italy. It is the fourth largest lake in the country. While Trasimeno’s water level varies, it has a maximum depth of approximately six meters.&nbsp;



"In this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image, captured on 6 August 2022, the lake’s emerald green colour is likely due to the presence of phytoplankton. Streaks in the water, particularly visible in the west, indicate the presence of soil and sediments which have been stirred up by winds. Dark colored waters in the southern part of the lake indicate a presence of submerged and floating macrophytes (aquatic plants) as well as algae," says ESA.



"Surrounded by hills on three sides, Trasimeno is subject to heavy storms created by winds, especially from the north and west. There are three islets in the lake: Maggiore, Minore and Polvese (the largest). The lake’s shores are sparsely inhabited with only two popular villages: Castiglione del Lago and Passignano sul Trasimeno."



"Italy is experiencing its worst drought in 70 years which has affected drinking water supplies, hydroelectric power and agricultural production. High temperatures, hot winds and lack of rainfall are the main causes of drought in the Umbrian region which saw Lake Trasimeno’s drop 1.3 m, reaching the limit of the hydrometric zero in July 2022."



Video/Image Credit: ESA&nbsp;



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Lake Trasimeno in Central Italy

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> describes a new self-powered nanosensor that can instantly detect mercury contamination with the tap of a finger.&nbsp;



The oxidized form of mercury can be harmful when it is ingested through contaminated water or food. This makes it necessary for experts to develop sensors that can quickly and accurately detect the presence of mercury.&nbsp;



Zong-Hong Lin and colleagues have now created a triboelectric nanosensor (TENS) that can detect mercury by simply by touching a sample. According to the researchers, their TENS could serve as the basis for similar devices to safely and remotely monitor other pollutants.



Video Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Detecting mercury contamination with the tap of a finger

[sendtonews key="LvS8v8bp9z-2564889-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from the...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> explores the ability of salt to transform the way that foods and beverages taste. Salt is known to cover up undesirable flavors, such as bitterness in coffee or beer, but how exactly does sodium chloride change the taste of other compounds?



One previous study showed that, not only does salt suppress bitterness, but also enhances sweetness and sourness. Another study revealed that bitterness reduction by salt seems to be happening at the tongue receptor level as well as in the brain.&nbsp;



While it is known that salt taste is mediated by the presence of sodium channels in the form of taste buds, experts believe that there is also an unknown receptor responsible for how we taste salt that has not yet been identified.&nbsp;



Video Credit: ACS Reactions



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

How does salt makes things taste better?

[sendtonews key="X0f6OHYoI4-2310561-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Santiago, the capital city of Chile. The city is located in the center of the Santiago Metropolitan Region, which has a population of about eight million people.&nbsp;



'The weather of Santiago resembles the Mediterranean climate with dry and warm summers with temperatures reaching up to 35°C (from October to March) and cool and humid winters that can drop to 0°C (from April to September)."



"The city lies in the centre of the country’s central valley around 80 km from the Pacific Ocean to the west and borders Argentina to the east. A tiny part of Argentina is visible in the top-right corner of the image where the mountain crest of the Andes Mountains acts as a divider between the two countries," says ESA.



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Santiago, Chile in South America

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Spiral,Galaxy,,Illustration,Of,Milky,Way

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Astronomers at <a href="https://www.jhu.edu/">Johns Hopkins University</a> have created an interactive map of the universe, including the actual position and real colors of 200,000 galaxies. The map allows the public to access data that was previously only available to scientists.



The map was developed using data collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For over two decades, a telescope in New Mexico was aimed at slightly different locations to capture the night sky.&nbsp;



"Growing up I was very inspired by astronomy pictures, stars, nebulae and galaxies, and now it's our time to create a new type of picture to inspire people," said map creator Brice Ménard, a professor at Johns Hopkins. "Astrophysicists around the world have been analyzing this data for years, leading to thousands of scientific papers and discoveries. But nobody took the time to create a map that is beautiful, scientifically accurate, and accessible to people who are not scientists. Our goal here is to show everybody what the universe really looks like."



"In this map, we are just a speck at the very bottom, just one pixel. And when I say we, I mean our galaxy, the Milky Way which has billions of stars and planets. We are used to seeing astronomical pictures showing one galaxy here, one galaxy there or perhaps a group of galaxies. But what this map shows is a very, very different scale."



"From this speck at the bottom, we are able to map out galaxies across the entire universe, and that says something about the power of science."



The <a href="https://mapoftheuniverse.net/">interactive map</a> is available online, where it can be downloaded for free.



Video Credit: Johns Hopkins&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Interactive map of the universe includes 200,000 galaxies

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Lesotho: Africa's "Kingdom in the Sky" Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features northwest Lesotho in South Africa.



According to ESA, Lesotho is the only nation in the world that lies completely above 1,000 m in elevation. The country is famous for its tall mountains and narrow valleys, and is known as Africa's "Kingdom in the Sky."



Out of a population of around two million people, about 80 percent live in rural areas. More than 75 percent of these people are engaged in <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/climate-change-will-have-a-global-impact-on-agriculture/">agriculture</a>, including rainfed cereal production and animal grazing.&nbsp;



ESA reports that the country’s agricultural system faces a growing number of issues, with climate-related vulnerabilities such as drought, floods and extreme temperatures occurring more frequently. 



Diamonds are amongst the minerals found in the mountains. Indeed, Lesotho can truly be called the Kingdom in the Sky. Beautiful, culturally rich, safe, affordable, and easily accessible from Durban and Johannesburg, mountainous Lesotho is a vastly underrated travel destination. the Kingdom of Lesotho (Sotho: 'Muso oa Lesotho) is an enclaved country in southern Africa. It is just over 30,000 km2 (11,583 sq mi) in size and has a population of around 2 million.



Video Credit: ESA&nbsp;&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer 



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Lesotho: Africa's "Kingdom in the Sky"

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Dublin, the capital and largest city of Ireland. Beyond its pub culture, Dublin is known as a modern culinary destination and a UNESCO City of Literature.



"Dublin is located near the midpoint of Ireland’s east coast in the province of Leinster. The city, which covers an area of around 115 square kilometers, is bordered by the Dublin Mountains, a low mountain range to the south, and is surrounded by flat farmland to the north and west," says ESA.



"The city straddles the River Liffey, which rises in the Wicklow Mountains and flows around 80 kilometers eastwards through the city of Dublin, in which it is canalised and bordered with quays. It then empties into Dublin Bay, an arm of the Irish Sea."



Dublin has an abundance of green spaces, including one of the largest enclosed public parks in any European capital city. Phoenix Park, which was originally formed as a royal hunting park in the 1660s, includes 707 hectares of green space.



Video Credit: ESA&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

The city of Dublin on Ireland's east coast

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features the province of Zaragoza in northeast Spain. The image was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.



"Together with the provinces of Huesca and Teruel, Zaragoza formed the old kingdom of Aragon. Its capital, also called Zaragoza (not visible in this image) is home to around half of Aragon’s population," says ESA.



"The Ebro River can be seen winding its way through the province from west to east in this image. Between its source in the Cantabrian Mountains in the northwest and its delta on the Mediterranean coast, the Ebro River is fed by more than 200 tributaries as it flows 910 km across much of northern Spain."



Since rainfall is very scarce in this region, irrigation in the Ebro basin is critically important. In the valleys surrounding the Ebro River, many fields are used for growing crops such as corn, wheat, and barley.



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

The province of Zaragoza in northeast Spain

[sendtonews key="oL4FnPTGCV-2384527-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from the...

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> reveals the evolution of the Columbia Glacier in southeastern Alaska. Columbia is among the fastest shrinking glaciers in the world, and the video documents its rapid retreat over the years.&nbsp;



Columbia Glacier is a large, multi-branched calving glacier that flows out of the Chugach Mountains to the Prince William Sound.&nbsp;



According to USGS, Columbia had a long history of stability prior to 1980, with a length 41 miles, and small, short-lived advances or retreats.



In the years since 1980, however, satellite images have captured Columbia’s alarming retreat. By using false-color images, scientists can distinguish between snow and ice, open water, vegetation, and rocky debris on the glacier’s surface.



The series of false-color images featured in today's video were acquired over the span of 35 years. You can see that by 2021, the glacier’s main branch had retreated about 15 miles from its initial position.



The Columbia Glacier has also lost more than 50 percent of its volume, mostly due to calving. <a href="https://www.earth.com/video/nasa-reveals-3d-visual-of-an-atmospheric-river/">NASA</a> reports that while climate change likely started the retreat, mechanical processes kept the disintegration going.



The NASA images are provided by Jesse Allen, Robert Simmon, Joshua Stevens, and Lauren Dauphin using data from Landsat satellites, from the U.S. Geological Survey, and data from MODIS on NASA’s Terra satellite. The structure of Columbia’s moraine played a large role in the stability of the glacier before 1980. 



Like other tidewater glaciers, the Columbia built up a moraine over time, and the mixture of ice and rock functioned like a dam keeping out the sea. It was supported on one end by the shoreline and by the underwater terminal moraine at the other.



Video Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/&nbsp; NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

The rapid retreat of the Columbia Glacier

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features the Pyrenees Mountains, which form a natural boundary between France and Spain in southwest Europe.



The mountain range is 430 kilometers in length. It stretches from the Mediterranean Sea on the east to the Atlantic Ocean on the west.



At an elevation of 3404 meters, Pico de Aneto is the highest mountain peak in the Pyrenees, and the third-highest peak in Spain. Pico de Aneto is located in the Posets-Maladeta Natural Park, which spans more than 82,000 acres.&nbsp;



"Geological studies have revealed that the Pyrenees Mountains have been around for longer than the Alps, with their sediments first deposited in coastal basins during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras," reports ESA.



"The entire mountain range formed due to the upwelling of large sedimentary rocks by the collision of the Iberian and the Eurasian plate around 100 to 150 million years ago, followed by intense erosion from ice and water."



The western Pyrenees receive more precipitation due to moisture blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean. The mountain range contains many lakes, several small glaciers, and some of the highest waterfalls in Europe.



Video &amp; Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

The Pyrenees Mountains in southwest Europe

[sendtonews key="6HyfrAJTBI-1831843-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

Earth,Like,Exoplanet,3d,Render

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes two exoplanets that are orbiting a star 218 light-years away. A team of researchers led by the University of Montreal has found evidence that these planets are "water worlds."



The experts used data from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes. They discovered that exoplanets Kepler-138 c and Kepler-138 could be composed largely of water.



"We previously thought that planets that were a bit larger than Earth were big balls of metal and rock, like scaled-up versions of Earth, and that's why we called them super-Earths," explained study co-author Björn Benneke.&nbsp;



"However, we have now shown that these two planets, Kepler-138 c and d, are quite different in nature and that a big fraction of their entire volume is likely composed of water. It is the best evidence yet for water worlds, a type of planet that was theorized by astronomers to exist for a long time."



Video Credit: NASA Goddard



Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and Leah Hustak (STScI)



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Two distant planets may be "water worlds"

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