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Two iconic dinosaurs - Tyrannosaurus rex and Brachylophosaurus canadensis - have yielded a fresh line of evidence that traces of their original biology can survive for tens of millions of years. 



In new work, researchers at <a href="https://www.ncsu.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">North Carolina State University</a> identified hemoglobin - the oxygen-carrying protein in blood - and its iron-bearing heme group in bone extracts from both animals.



The finding strengthens a growing body of data showing that certain biomolecules can persist in exceptional fossils. It also clarifies how they change as fossils form.



Researchers have debated and re-examined soft, stretchy tissues from these same specimens for nearly two decades. 



Teams have used high-resolution imaging, antibodies, and protein sequencing to argue that the materials are genuine remnants of dinosaur biology rather than modern contaminants. The latest study adds another tool - and another confirmation.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-light-unlocks-dinosaur-chemistry">Light unlocks dinosaur chemistry</h2>



The team turned to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/resonance-raman-spectroscopy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Resonance Raman (RR) spectroscopy</a>. In this method, laser light is tuned to a molecule’s electronic transitions. This causes only that molecule to “sing” back with a strong signal.



“Raman spectroscopy essentially uses light waves to identify a molecule’s energetic ‘fingerprint,’” said physicist Hans Hallen, the study’s corresponding author. 



“Resonance Raman, which we use here, takes that process one step further by using light already tuned to the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/seeking-the-origins-of-the-molecule-that-made-the-universe/">molecule</a> of interest - so only that type of molecule will resonate.”



That resonance dramatically boosts the signal from specific bonds - crucial when your targets are rare, damaged molecules embedded in a complex fossil matrix.



“This strong signal allows us to find the needle (hemoglobin remnants) in the haystack (messy fossil) to see how this molecule has changed from the functional living state, revealing the chemical changes molecules undergo in deep time,” Hallen added.



RR spectra from T. rex and Brachylophosaurus extracts showed signatures consistent with heme still bound to globin proteins. In addition, they indicated heme bound to goethite, an iron oxide mineral linked to oxidized iron.



The researchers cross-checked those signals against demineralized modern <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/discovery-of-a-cretaceous-ostrich-mexidracon-longimanus-with-extremely-long-arms/">ostrich</a> bone and human blood to anchor their interpretations.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-blood-molecules-traced-to-dinosaurs">Blood molecules traced to dinosaurs</h2>



Because Raman detects bonds rather than whole molecules, skeptics often point out that generic signals could arise from modern microbes or other contaminants. 



That’s where the extra selectivity of RR - and the structural information in the spectra - matters.



“RR identifies both bonds and structure," said paleobiologist Mary Schweitzer, a co-author on the work. 



"We know that heme is there and that it is still bound to hemoglobin protein - contaminants like <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/reusable-water-bottles-are-breeding-ground-for-strep-and-fecal-bacteria/">bacteria</a> don’t have those specific bonds, so we can say that the molecules are from the animal, or in this case, the dinosaur,”



The team also mapped how those spectral fingerprints shift as hemoglobin decays. After death, the protein breaks down, damaging the heme ring and oxidizing the iron inside it. 



RR data show that goethite forms on that iron, and the heme can bind to the mineral surface.



Tellingly, the researchers observed the early stages of the same degradation pathway in modern samples, suggesting that key steps happen relatively quickly and then stabilize.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-dinosaur-blood-survived-fossilization">Dinosaur blood survived fossilization</h2>



Beyond confirming what the molecules are, the spectral changes reveal a plausible route for how they survived. 



Goethite is a bio-related mineral - it often forms in association with biological activity - and the new data hint that it doesn’t just grow near proteins; it can latch onto and stabilize fragments. "We didn’t know that it could bind to and stabilize <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/scientists-modified-plant-proteins-to-create-delicious-meat-alternatives/">protein</a> fragments,” Hallen said.



That matters because it shows a mechanism that locks delicate organics in place and protects them during fossilization. 



Researchers already know that heme persists in sediments far older than the age of dinosaurs, but the path from fresh blood to ancient rock has remained murky.



Pinning down the chemistry helps explain why hemoglobin, in particular, shows up as a survivor - and why some fossils preserve molecular vestiges while others do not.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-new-view-of-fossil-preservation">A new view of fossil preservation</h2>



The study reinforces a shift in paleontology: under the right conditions, original biochemistry can endure deep time, and modern tools can detect and interpret it. 



Instead of a binary “preserved or not,” researchers are piecing together degradation pathways, mineral partnerships, and microenvironments that favor survival.



For dinosaur biology, that means more than just curiosity. Hemoglobin and heme in blood play key roles in metabolism, oxygen transport, and overall physiology. 



Their presence, and the way they degrade, defines how tissues fossilize and what information we can still extract.



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><a href="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/dinosaur-bone_hemoglobin_preserved_NCSU_1m.jpg"><img src="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/dinosaur-bone_hemoglobin_preserved_NCSU_1s.webp" alt="Vessels isolated from Tyrannosaurus cortical bone by demineralization in EDTA. Credit: NC State University" class="wp-image-1985867"/></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Vessels isolated from Tyrannosaurus cortical bone by demineralization in EDTA. Click image to enlarge. Credit: NC State University</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-blood-chemistry-spans-eons">Blood chemistry spans eons</h2>



For dinosaur fossil science, mineral–organic interactions like heme–goethite may help preserve blood proteins and molecular fragments throughout Earth’s history.



“Heme has been identified in sediments that are much, much older than dinosaurs, so we know that it persists,” Schweitzer noted. 



“Understanding why <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/secrets-of-human-genetics-could-optimize-medical-care/">hemoglobin</a> preserves, and the role that heme plays in the process, is really important if we want to know how these ancient molecules survive through time.”



The upshot is both practical and provocative. Resonance Raman pinpoints specific ancient molecules within messy fossils, and the chemistry it reveals also serves as a preservation roadmap. 



That’s a powerful combination for anyone trying to read life’s oldest diaries written in stone.



The study is published in the <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2025.0175" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Proceedings of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences</a>.



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Hemoglobin and other blood molecules found preserved in dinosaur fossils

Two iconic dinosaurs - Tyrannosaurus rex and Brachylophosaurus canadensis -...

The benefits of psilocybin-assisted therapy for major depression reportedly endures for years, if not forever. 



In a new analysis of people who took part in a 2020 psilocybin clinical trial, 67 percent were still in full remission from depression an average of five years later - up from 58 percent at the one-year mark.



Study lead author Alan Davis is an associate professor and director of the <a href="https://www.cpdre.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Center for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education</a> at The Ohio State University.



“Across the board - <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/gut-microbes-have-an-unexpected-link-to-anxiety/">anxiety</a>, depression, global functioning, self-reported depression - we kept seeing the same signal of continued improvement," said Davis.



The follow-up results offer a rare long view of outcomes after psychedelic-assisted therapy, an area where long-term data are still sparse.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-understanding-psilocybin-the-basics">Understanding psilocybin - the basics</h2>



Psilocybin is a natural compound found in certain mushrooms, often called “magic mushrooms.” When you ingest psilocybin, your body quickly converts it into psilocin, the active form that interacts with your brain. 



Psilocin closely resembles <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/how-dopamine-and-serotonin-shape-behavior/">serotonin</a>, a key neurotransmitter, so it binds to serotonin receptors - especially the 5-HT2A receptor. 



This binding alters the way nerve cells communicate, which leads to changes in perception, mood, and thought patterns. 



From a scientific standpoint, psilocybin disrupts the brain’s usual patterns of activity and connectivity. 



Brain imaging studies show that it quiets the “default mode network,” a system linked to self-reflection and the inner voice we all carry. 



At the same time, it boosts communication between brain regions that don’t normally interact.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-curing-depression-with-psilocybin">Curing depression with psilocybin</h2>



The peer-reviewed study, published in 2021, enrolled adults with major depressive disorder and compared two groups: one received psilocybin treatment immediately, and the other started after a wait-list period.



All the participants ultimately completed a standardized protocol: two dosing sessions with psilocybin paired with about 13 hours of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/psychotherapy-is-key-to-the-success-of-psychedelic-treatment/">psychotherapy</a> (including preparation, support during sessions, and integration).



The initial results showed large reductions in depression severity, with half of participants in remission up to one year.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tracking-patients-over-time">Tracking patients over time</h2>



Of the 24 people in the original trial, 18 took part in the five-year check-in. Online questionnaires were used to assess depression, anxiety, and functional impairment. 



The researchers also applied a clinician-rated depression scale and conducted qualitative interviews to capture changes the numbers might miss.



The team made a conservative assumption to avoid overstating success. They counted the six who did not return as having fully relapsed to pre-treatment levels.



Even under that assumption, depression scores remained “very large and significantly” reduced at five years, Davis noted, and the share of participants in complete remission nudged upward.



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



The lasting gains cannot be chalked up solely to the two psilocybin sessions. Only three people reported no additional depression-related treatment in the years since. 



Others used antidepressant medications, tried <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/ketamine-treatment-may-now-last-months-instead-of-weeks/">ketamine</a> or other psychedelics, or engaged in psychotherapy.



Interviews helped explain that context. Many participants described life with depression as profoundly constricted before the trial - too little energy, too little hope to engage. 



Afterward, several said their depression felt more situational and manageable. They reported a greater capacity for positive emotion and motivation, and a different relationship to low moods when they returned.



A few who experimented with psychedelics on their own found the experiences less helpful without a clinical framework. This underscores a theme from other work by Davis and colleagues: the therapeutic container matters.



A strong alliance with trained therapists, structured preparation, and integration support may play as big a role as the drug itself.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-psilocybin-safety-over-time">Psilocybin safety over time</h2>



At the five-year mark, 11 of 18 participants reported no adverse effects since the trial. Looking back, three remembered feeling unprepared for the heightened emotional sensitivity that followed their dosing sessions. 



Two said tapering off <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/cure-for-alcohol-addiction-was-discovered-by-accident/">medications</a> and waiting during the original trial was especially difficult, and two wished they’d had more formal integration therapy afterward.



The study is small, non-randomized at follow-up, and based on a motivated sample - limitations the authors emphasize.



With just 18 people contributing long-term data, it’s impossible to generalize broadly or disentangle psilocybin’s contribution from other treatments and life changes.



Larger, placebo-controlled trials with systematic follow-up will be needed to test durability, dosing strategies, and who benefits most.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-psilocybin-depression-and-healthcare">Psilocybin, depression, and healthcare</h2>



Even with the study's limitations, the pattern is encouraging. Many participants maintained remission or continued to function better. 



Several described a shift that outlasted symptom scores - more engagement with family, work, and meaningful activities, and fewer episodes of withdrawal and isolation, which are among depression’s most disabling features.



“Five years later, most people continued to view this treatment as safe, meaningful, and important - something that catalyzed an ongoing betterment of their life,” Davis said.



“Despite some symptoms coming back, they weren’t experiencing the same levels of impairment - suggesting this approach might, for some, kick-start lasting positive change.”



The bottom line: psilocybin-assisted therapy remains experimental, and it’s not a <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/how-gut-bacteria-morganella-morganii-could-cause-depression-not-a-brain-disorder/">depression</a> cure-all. But in this small cohort, the combination of guided psychedelic sessions and psychotherapy was associated with durable relief - and in many cases, a different relationship to depression - years down the road.



The study is published in the <a href="https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/aop/article-10.1556-2054.2025.00461/article-10.1556-2054.2025.00461.xml" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Journal of Psychedelic Studies</a>.



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Patients report no signs of depression five years after psilocybin treatment

The benefits of psilocybin-assisted therapy for major depression reportedly endures...

A small, cool star 40 light-years away has a planet that just might hold on to an atmosphere. Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to watch that world, TRAPPIST-1e, pass in front of its star four times and extract the planet’s faint atmospheric fingerprint.



A new paper reports those observations and what they can - and cannot - show about the gases above this rocky surface. 



The team can already reject a thick, hydrogen-dominated atmosphere, but the data are not yet strong enough to prove what is there on the planet instead.



Néstor Espinoza from the <a href="https://www.stsci.edu/home" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Space Telescope Science Institute</a> (STScI) led the analysis with the JWST Telescope Scientist Team.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-star-activity-masks-trappist-1e">Star activity masks TRAPPIST-1e</h2>



TRAPPIST-1 is a <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/planets-orbiting-red-dwarf-stars-may-not-be-habitable-ultraviolet-uv-radiation/">red dwarf star</a>, a compact and relatively cool star type that often flares and develops spots in ways that upset precise measurements. 



That activity complicates the search for air around its planets because changes from the star can masquerade as signs from a planet’s atmosphere.



TRAPPIST-1e sits in the star’s habitable zone - the region where a planet could support liquid water on its surface if pressure and temperature are suitable. 



That alone does not make it hospitable, since the star’s outbursts could strip or scramble any atmosphere over time.



Earlier Webb data on the inner siblings, such as TRAPPIST-1b, found little evidence of a substantial atmosphere. 



That result keeps expectations in check and places more weight on careful, repeated measurements for the middle worlds.



NASA shared a technical feature explaining that the first four TRAPPIST-1e observations are not enough to confirm an atmosphere. 



The figure shows that models with and without an atmosphere still overlap in the range allowed by today’s data.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-the-telescope-actually-measured">What the telescope actually measured</h2>



TRAPPIST-1e is an exoplanet, a planet beyond our solar system. When it crosses the star, a tiny bit of starlight filters through any air at the planet’s edge, and that light carries molecular fingerprints.



This method is called transmission spectroscopy, and it spreads the light into wavelengths to see where particular gases absorb. 



Webb’s NIRSpec instrument recorded four such transits in 2023, covering wavelengths where gases like water vapor, methane, and carbon dioxide could show up clearly.



Because the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/interstellar-tunnel-cosmic-channel-discovered-connects-our-solar-system-to-other-stars/">star</a> itself has features that can change over minutes to hours, the team built models to separate stellar effects from any possible planetary signals. 



They also combined the four events to reduce random noise while being careful not to blur out real, repeatable features.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-no-primary-atmosphere-detected">No primary atmosphere detected</h2>



A hydrogen-rich atmosphere on the planet would have produced large, easily seen features in the spectrum. 



The team reports that such primary atmospheres - dominated by hydrogen at levels above roughly 80 percent by volume - are inconsistent with the data.



Ana Glidden is a postdoctoral researcher in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and the MIT <a href="https://www.space.mit.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.</a>



“The idea is: If we assume that the planet is not airless, can we constrain different atmospheric scenarios? Do those scenarios still allow for liquid water at the surface?” she said. 



Glidden noted that the results rule out a hydrogen-dominated atmosphere and tighten limits on several secondary-atmosphere scenarios.&nbsp;



A warm, nitrogen-rich mix remains possible, along with other secondary atmospheres that could arise from volcanic outgassing. 



Those would appear much subtler in the data than hydrogen and require more than four transits to emerge from the noise.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-stellar-flares-complicate-tests">Stellar flares complicate tests</h2>



<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/trappist-1-has-seven-earth-like-planets-that-may-support-life/">TRAPPIST-1</a>’s surface has star spots and frequent flares that change its spectrum over time. 



That “stellar contamination” can either add or remove features in the planetary spectrum and, if not modeled correctly, can be misleading.



To tackle that, the authors used Gaussian processes, a flexible statistical tool that learns the typical shape and size of the star’s variations and then subtracts them. 



That approach does not assume a perfect star model, which is wise when the star is as active as this one.



The goal is to treat any wiggles that change from one visit to the next as coming from the star, and any persistent pattern as likely belonging to the planet. Webb’s stability helps here, but the source star’s behavior still sets the pace.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-trappist-1e-air-circulation">TRAPPIST-1e air circulation</h2>



A nitrogen-rich atmosphere would resemble Earth in broad strokes, though details such as oxygen, water vapor, and methane would matter greatly. 



<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/nitrogen-was-plentiful-for-early-life-on-earth/">Nitrogen</a> alone does not prove anything about life on the planet, but it suggests a heavier, secondary atmosphere capable of maintaining surface pressure.



“We are seeing two possible explanations," said Ryan MacDonald, Lecturer in Extrasolar Planets in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the <a href="https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of St Andrews</a>.



"The most exciting possibility is that TRAPPIST-1e could have a so-called secondary atmosphere containing heavy gases like nitrogen. But our initial observations cannot yet rule out a bare rock with no atmosphere.” 



Independent of biology, an atmosphere changes surface temperature and how heat moves from day to night. On a tidally locked world, that could be the difference between an ice cap and a stable ocean.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-webb-and-trappist-1e">Webb and TRAPPIST-1e</h2>



The team plans many more transits to shrink error bars and test for specific gases. More visits let the statistics work, and they also average over the star’s mood swings.



“In the coming years we will go from four JWST observations of TRAPPIST-1e to nearly twenty," said MacDonald. 



"We finally have the telescope and tools to search for habitable conditions in other star systems, which makes today one of the most exciting times for astronomy.”



As the dataset grows, scientists can check for methane and <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/carbon-dioxide-hydrogen-peroxide-discovered-on-plutos-moon-charon/">carbon dioxide</a> together and run climate models that test whether liquid water could persist at the surface. 



Caution remains the watchword until a clear atmospheric pattern repeats across many passes.



The study is published in <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/adf42e" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Astrophysical Journal Letters</a>.



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Nearby rocky planet may hold an atmosphere fit for life

A small, cool star 40 light-years away has a planet...

Elusive birds can be hard to protect, especially when they move under cover of darkness and lie low in thick desert grass by day. That’s the challenge with the night parrot, a small green-and-yellow species long considered near-mythical across Australia’s interior. 



A focused effort on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngururrpa_Indigenous_Protected_Area" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ngururrpa Country</a> set out to answer three practical questions: where these parrots are living, what threatens them there, and what people can do now to keep them alive.



The approach was hands-on and methodical. Instead of waiting for chance sightings, the team paired local knowledge with tools that work while people sleep. 



The goal was simple: build a clear picture of the night parrot's daily needs and the pressures nibbling at its edges, find them, then save them.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-in-search-of-the-night-parrot">In search of the night parrot</h2>



From 2020 to 2023, Indigenous rangers and scientists deployed rugged, weatherproof audio recorders across dozens of sites. 



Night parrots have distinctive calls, so detections on these devices acted like pins on a map. When recordings confirmed <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/parrots-that-learn-like-people-macaws-copy-without-being-taught/">parrots</a> at a location, camera traps followed to learn which predators showed up nearby. 



The team also collected predator scat to identify what those hunters had been eating, then added decades of satellite imagery to track how often fires rolled through the landscape.



Nick Leseberg, an ecologist at the <a href="https://www.uq.edu.au/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of Queensland</a> and a co-author of the study, helped explain the soundscape these devices captured. 



“One of the night parrot’s diverse array of calls sounded like “didly dip, didly dip,” like a telephone, explains Leseberg. Another sounded like “dink dink,” resembling a bell."



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-they-heard-on-tape">What they heard on tape</h2>



Monitors detected night parrots at more than half of the surveyed sites, stretched across a wide slice of desert. 



That pattern points to a real population, not a stray bird passing through. Follow-up work located the birds’ daytime roosts inside dense, older clumps of spinifex grass. 



In this region the key plant is bull spinifex, also known as <a href="https://keys.lucidcentral.org/keys/v3/AusGrass/key/AusGrass/Media/Html/TRIODIA/TRILONC.HTML" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Triodia longiceps</a>, which forms tough, dome-like shelters where a parrot can stay cool and hidden.



These shelters aren’t interchangeable. Younger, sparse spinifex doesn’t offer the same cover. Night parrots depend on mature, tightly packed clumps that take time to form. When those clumps are lost, there’s no quick substitute.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-night-parrots-lost-their-shelters">Night parrots lost their shelters</h2>



The Great Sandy Desert sees <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/lightning-is-zapping-forests-harder-than-we-thought/">lightning strikes</a> and long, dry spells that can set off fast-moving fires. When blazes return too often, older spinifex doesn’t get the years it needs to grow into protective domes. 



The study found that country around roosts tends to burn on a cycle of several years, which is quick in plant terms and risks keeping the habitat stuck in a youthful, thinner stage.



There’s a practical fix within reach. Cooler, well-planned burns at the right times can create a patchwork of fuel breaks. 



That mosaic reduces the odds that one high-intensity wildfire will sweep across the sandplains and erase parrot shelter in one go.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-predators-and-balance">Predators and balance</h2>



Cameras frequently recorded dingoes near parrot habitat. At face value, a wild dog near a small bird sounds like trouble. But scat analysis told a different story: cat remains showed up often. 



<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/feral-cats-kill-more-native-animals-than-expected/">Feral cats</a> hunt stealthily at night and can wipe out inexperienced fledglings. <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/australian-dingoes-evolved-from-dogs-in-east-asia/">Dingoes</a> appear to keep cat numbers in check, either by direct predation or by making key areas less comfortable for cats.



This balance matters. Push down dingo presence and cats may surge; keep dingoes on the scene and cat pressure may fall. 



For a species that nests and roosts on the ground, fewer cats near those roosts can mean more chicks making it through their earliest weeks.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-numbers-don-t-lie">Numbers don't lie</h2>



Based on where birds were heard and how many called at once, the team estimates there could be about 50 night parrots in this protected area. 



For a species with very few confirmed individuals across Australia, that figure carries weight. It points to Ngururrpa Country as an important stronghold.



A stronghold isn’t guaranteed safety. A single rough fire season could knock back the habitat. Predator control programs that harm dingoes could open the door for more cats. 



Fresh disturbances - vehicle tracks, new weeds that change fire behavior, or grazing stock - could tilt the system in the wrong direction.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-to-save-night-parrots">How to save night parrots</h2>



The recommendations fit the place. <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/experts-have-identified-the-key-driver-of-severe-wildfires-in-canada/">Fire management</a> should lean on the rangers’ deep local knowledge and use modern mapping to guide cooler-season burns. 



Those burns can cut fuel, set natural breaks, and lower the odds of summer wildfires racing across roosting country. 



Predator control should avoid harming dingoes, since dingoes may be doing important work by suppressing cats. 



Keeping the landscape relatively quiet - limiting disturbances and keeping grazing stock out - will help the vegetation hold its form.



The team also pointed to tools that can sharpen future counts and maps. Genetic methods, such as DNA recovered from feathers, could give more precise estimates.



Tiny tracking tags could show how far these parrots travel at night to feed and which patches matter most during the dry months.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-have-we-learned">What have we learned?</h2>



This work shows what happens when Indigenous rangers and scientists align methods with the land. 



The night parrot needs old, dense spinifex for daytime cover, a fire rhythm that lets that grass mature, and a predator community where cats don’t run the show. 



With careful burns, smart predator management, and steady watchfulness, Ngururrpa Country can keep those needs on the table and give this shy bird a fair shot.



The full study was published in the journal <a href="https://www.publish.csiro.au/WR/WR24083" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Wildlife Research</a>.



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Rare and beautiful bird, thought to be extinct, is rediscovered after 100 years of no sightings

Elusive birds can be hard to protect, especially when they...

A small river in upstate New York bounced back fast after a long standing barrier came out. A new study followed the water before and after the dam removal and tracked how the habitat, water quality, and small aquatic life changed.



The results show a clear pattern. When a <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/dams-built-by-humans-have-shifted-earths-poles/">dam</a> stops slowing water and trapping sediment, the channel rebuilds itself, oxygen levels rise, and the community of living things resets.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-before-and-after-dam-removal">Before and after dam removal</h2>



“The research demonstrates the resilience of nature to recover from imperiled states,” said lead author <a href="https://cals.cornell.edu/water-resources-institute/about/people/jeremy-dietrich" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jeremy Dietrich</a>, principal aquatic ecologist at the New York State Water Resources Institute at <a href="https://cals.cornell.edu/">Corn</a><a href="https://cals.cornell.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">e</a><a href="https://cals.cornell.edu/">ll University</a>. 



He and colleagues monitored the site from the summer before removal through the third year after.



The barrier was a 12 foot structure installed in the 1960s to hold a small reservoir. 



After the dam removal, the slow pool upstream shifted toward a stony channel with steady current, and the differences between upstream and downstream sections faded.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-recovery-after-dam-removal">Recovery after dam removal</h2>



The team relied on macroinvertebrates, the insects, worms, and other small animals without backbones that live on stream bottoms. 



These organisms respond quickly to changes in flow and substrate, so they are reliable indicators of stream health.



New York uses the Biological Assessment Profile (<a href="https://extapps.dec.ny.gov/docs/water_pdf/bapnarrative18.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BAP</a>) to score water quality based on that community. Scores range from 0 to 10, with higher values signaling healthier conditions.



Before removal, the impounded reach had soft sand and silt, which favors burrowers and low oxygen tolerant species. 



After removal, gravel and cobble expanded, and clinging insects that need cleaner, faster water moved in.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-from-silty-and-still-to-rocky-and-flowing">From silty and still to rocky and flowing</h2>



Scientists often describe still water as lentic and flowing water as lotic. The upstream reach shifted from lentic conditions to lotic conditions once the channel reformed and the fine sediments moved out.



Those physical changes matched biological ones from the first year onward. 



Taxa richness and the number of sensitive <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5584830/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">EPT groups</a>, the mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies, rose in the former reservoir reach while tolerant taxa declined as habitat improved.



The study documented a jump in upstream BAP score from the “moderately impacted” range to the “slightly impacted” range by year three. 



That change signals that the site moved out of biological impairment and into a condition that can support a diverse community.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-fish-on-the-move-again">Fish on the move again</h2>



Dams do more than trap sediment. They block movement for species that need to travel between salt water and fresh water during their life cycles, a pattern biologists call diadromous.



American eels are <a href="https://www.fws.gov/species/american-eel-anguilla-rostrata" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">catadromous</a>, which means they grow in rivers and estuaries and return to the Sargasso Sea to spawn. The new channel opened upstream access to rearing habitat that had been off limits.



Juvenile eels can now reach cooler, oxygen rich stretches that support growth. Restoring that passage is one of the most direct ecological wins when a small barrier comes out.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-numbers-that-tell-the-story">Numbers that tell the story</h2>



By year three, upstream habitat composition in the former impoundment was dominated by gravel and cobble instead of sand and silt. 



The macroinvertebrate community shifted toward clingers and grazers that feed on algae growing on rock surfaces.



The BAP score in the upstream reach rose into the “slightly impacted” band. Sensitive EPT taxa increased several fold, and overall taxa richness roughly doubled, showing a stable and diverse community had taken hold.



This case fits a bigger national pattern. In <a href="https://www.americanrivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/DamList2024_Summary_03032025_Revised.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2024</a>, there were 108 removals across 27 states that reconnected more than 2,528 miles of upstream habitat.



Removing the right barriers can improve water quality, increase habitat variety, and make rivers safer for communities. It can also reduce maintenance risks tied to aging infrastructure.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-cost-and-common-sense">Cost and common sense</h2>



Many older dams are expensive to repair and keep up to code. Rehabilitating non-federal dams carries an <a href="https://damsafety-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/files/2025%20ASDSO%20Costs%20of%20Dam%20Rehab%20Report.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">estimated</a> nationwide price-tag of about 165.2 billion dollars.



Communities weigh those bills against the benefits of free flowing streams, improved fish passage, and fewer liability concerns. In many cases, taking out a small, obsolete barrier is the practical option.



Two ingredients stood out. First, the stream had healthy downstream habitat that could seed the new channel with sensitive taxa once conditions improved.



Second, the restored channel developed coarse substrate quickly, which boosted oxygen exchange and created surfaces for <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/bioplastic-bubbles-made-with-algae-could-sustain-life-on-mars/">algae and microbes</a> that fuel the food web. 



Those changes support clinging and grazing insects that form the base of a productive stream.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-dam-removals-and-conservation">Dam removals and conservation</h2>



Not every site will respond on the same timeline. Recovery speed depends on gradient, how much fine sediment is stored, watershed land use, and how intact nearby source populations are.



This project shows how a simple monitoring plan can track progress clearly. 



A short list of indicators, substrate size, macroinvertebrate groups, and BAP score, gave managers a transparent way to judge when a site has met its target.



One removal is good, and many removals in the right places can be even better. 



Repeating small, strategic projects across a watershed can stitch together longer corridors for fish and re-build natural transport of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/why-rivers-split-a-century-old-mystery-has-finally-been-solved/">sediment and nutrients</a>.



That kind of connectivity helps streams handle floods, heat waves, and shifting seasons. It also makes local wins add up to regional gains.



Healthy flow and connected habitat set the stage for life to return. When small, aging barriers come out, streams can heal faster than many people expect.



The study is published in <a href="https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecs2.70323" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ecosphere</a>.



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River ecosystem is reborn and life is thriving just three years after a dam is demolished

A small river in upstate New York bounced back fast...

Ticks are small, but their saliva is busy. It carries a toolkit of proteins and other molecules that let a tick feed for days while keeping the bite site quiet and easy to tap for blood. 



In the United States, an estimated 476,000 people are diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease each year, a figure that shows why this biology matters, according to a 2021 <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/communication-resources/press-kit.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">estimate</a>.



A new scientific review maps out how these saliva components reshape the skin’s defenses, from the earliest minutes of a bite to the longer window when microbes can slip in. 



The big idea is simple, and a little unsettling, because the tick’s spit changes how our immune system responds right where the mouthparts lock on.



After that overview, here is the lead researcher. <a href="https://researcherprofiles.meduniwien.ac.at/backend/db_files/cv_1229_67e6760598c69.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Johanna Strobl</a> of the <a href="https://www.meduniwien.ac.at/web/en/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Medical University of Vienna</a> and <a href="https://cemm.at/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CeMM</a> Research Center for Molecular Medicine helped synthesize the latest findings and place them in a clear, practical frame for clinicians and the public.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ticks-have-tricky-saliva">Ticks have tricky saliva</h2>



Your skin’s first responders are built to move fast. The <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459455/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">innate immune system</a> is the immediate defense that jumps on injury and germs without needing a warm up or a memory from past infections. 



Tick saliva meets it with proteins that block signals, thin the blood, and keep clotting at bay.



Many of those proteins have names worth knowing. Serpins are protease inhibitors that put brakes on enzymes that normally fan the flames of inflammation. 



Cystatins block different enzymes that help immune cells process and present antigens. Together they slow cell recruitment and damp down the noise that would usually make a bite red and itchy.



Another family acts like a sponge for the body’s traffic signals. Chemokines are messenger proteins that tell immune cells where to go, and tick evasins bind them with high selectivity. 



A 2008 <a href="https://rupress.org/jem/article/205/9/2019/40287/Ticks-produce-highly-selective-chemokine-binding" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a> demonstrated that evasins can grab specific chemokine targets and stop immune cells from homing to the bite.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tick-saliva-blunts-the-first-response">Tick saliva blunts the first response</h2>



A bite normally triggers neutrophils to swarm the site within minutes. Saliva proteins interfere with that rush by blocking chemokines, choking off platelet activation, and thinning local clots. 



Less clotting means easier sipping, and less signaling means fewer alarm bells for nearby cells.



Tick proteins also tamper with complement, a set of blood proteins that assemble into complexes that punch holes in <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/tiny-microbes-can-affect-how-our-brains-grow-before-birth-pvn/">microbes</a>. 



By interrupting parts of the pathway that activate complement, saliva buys time for the tick, and for any passengers it carries. That includes proteins that mimic our own complement regulators to short circuit the system.



Platelet blocking matters as well. Saliva enzymes like apyrase degrade ADP that platelets use to clump, while Kunitz type inhibitors and serpins slow thrombin generation. Blood keeps flowing in the tiny space the tick creates, and the bite site stays calmer than it should.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-they-quiet-t-cells">How they quiet T-cells</h2>



The adaptive immune system would normally build a targeted response over hours to days. Saliva undercuts that by directly targeting helper T cells and the dendritic cells that activate them. 



One important protein, Salp15, attaches to immune cells and blocks the signals they need to switch on and multiply.



A mechanistic <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17082567/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a> in 2006 showed that Salp15 physically associates with the CD4 receptor and suppresses T cell activation. 



That single move weakens the handoff between dendritic cells and T cells and slows the building of a strong, lasting response at the skin.



Some saliva proteins tilt the immune response toward a type that is less effective at fighting many bacteria. 



This shift weakens the defenses normally powered by other <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/brain-eating-fungus-beauveria-bassiana-causes-the-immune-system-to-attack-neurons/">immune</a> pathways, making it easier for certain microbes to take hold.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-microbes-use-tick-saliva">Microbes use tick saliva</h2>



When the local alarm is muted, microbes have a window to establish a foothold. 



Borrelia burgdorferi, the Lyme bacterium, benefits from tick proteins that protect it from complement mediated killing in the skin. That protection helps more organisms survive the early hours after transmission.



A 2011 <a href="https://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/fulltext/S1931-3128%2811%2900219-8" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">paper</a> identified a lectin pathway inhibitor in tick saliva that blocks binding events needed to activate complement and recruit neutrophils. This single factor raised bacterial survival at the bite site and boosted transmission in animal models.



Chemokine binding by evasins adds another layer by limiting cell recruitment to the bite. 



Fewer recruited dendritic cells can mean weaker T-cell priming, and lower antibody class switching downstream. The biology stacks up in the tick’s favor, and in the pathogen’s favor too.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-from-spit-to-medicine">From spit to medicine</h2>



The same features that make saliva useful to ticks could be repurposed to treat human disease. Evasins that soak up chemokines might someday help in conditions where runaway cell recruitment damages tissue. 



Protease inhibitors from saliva are already being explored as topical tools against inflammatory skin disease.



“Just seconds after a tick bite, the animal releases its saliva into the host's skin. The bioactive molecules it contains cause the blood vessels to dilate, inhibit <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/rare-genetic-mutation-has-given-rise-to-a-new-blood-group-mal-system/">blood</a> clotting and suppress inflammatory reactions,” said Dr. Strobl.



The review also highlights vaccine ideas that target saliva rather than a single pathogen. 



If a vaccine could make a tick’s bite inflame quickly and force detachment, it could reduce feeding time and lower the odds of transmission across the board. 



Early animal studies with multicomponent saliva targets show signs that this path is plausible.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-next">What to watch next</h2>



Better protein catalogs are coming from proteomics and transcriptomics of salivary glands across feeding stages. 



Those data will sort out which molecules appear first, which persist, and how infections inside the tick change the saliva cocktail. That timing is central to which targets make sense for drugs or vaccines.



Work on extracellular vesicles and <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6085463/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">microRNA</a>s is also growing. These tiny packets can carry regulatory signals from the tick into skin cells, and they probably rewire gene expression during a bite. 



Understanding those signals could reveal non protein targets that are easier to stabilize as medicines.



Finally, keratinocytes and other structural skin cells deserve attention. They are not bystanders, they sense pathogens and broadcast signals that shape immunity and repair. 



If <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/tick-bites-can-trigger-lifelong-red-meat-allergies/">tick</a> saliva modulates their programs, that may explain why bites stay quiet and why wounds at the site can heal differently.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-next-steps-with-tick-saliva">Next steps with tick saliva</h2>



For clinicians, these mechanisms explain why early local signs can be muted and why removal time matters. 



The less time a tick has to feed, the less saliva it can pump in, and the fewer tricks it can use to tilt the odds. For public health, saliva targets offer a way to cut across the diversity of tick borne threats.



For researchers, saliva proteins are probes for the immune system. Each protein that blocks a pathway becomes a tool to test what that pathway does in real skin. 



Those tools can also be starting points for drugs that need precision, not broad immunosuppression.



The study is published in <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2025.1520665/full" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Frontiers in Immunology</a>.



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Ticks use 'tricks' to feed on human bodies without being detected

Ticks are small, but their saliva is busy. It carries...

A forgotten stone from a 1924 dig is now steering a long running Stonehenge debate in a clear direction. New analyses of the hand sized Newall boulder point to people, not ice, as the movers of the monument’s smaller bluestones.



Researchers mapped the rock’s minerals and chemistry and matched it to <a href="https://www.landoflegends.wales/location/craig-rhos-y-felin-crosswell" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Craig Rhos-y-Felin</a> in west Wales, about 125 miles from Salisbury Plain. 



The team also showed that its wear patterns and the wider landscape record do not support an ice delivery theory.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-a-palm-size-stone-matters">Why a palm size stone matters</h2>



Lead scientist <a href="https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/dges/staff-profiles/listing/profile/rib24/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Richard E. Bevins</a> of <a href="https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Aberystwyth</a> University guided the work that put this small clast under a big spotlight. 



The boulder measures roughly 8.7 by 5.9 by 3.9 inches, was lifted during Lt Col Hawley’s 1924 <a href="https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/library/browse/personDetails.xhtml?personId=45302" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">excavations</a>, and later archived with thin sections and sample records.



Its value is simple. As a stand alone piece with a clear excavation history, it offers a fair test for the human versus ice question that has followed Stonehenge for decades.



The team reports a bullet like profile but no glacial scratches. Surface abrasion fits burial and weathering after breakage, not grinding at a glacier’s base.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tracing-the-stonehenge-rock-to-wales">Tracing the Stonehenge rock to Wales</h2>



Under the microscope, its petrography matched the foliated rhyolite at Craig Rhos-y-Felin, including distinctive needle-like stilpnomelane and tiny titanite grains aligned with the rock’s fabric. 



Those features, seen together, are unusual in Wales and line up with the proposed source.



Portable geochemistry sealed the case. Surface calcium was elevated by chalk soil coatings from millennia underground, but the deeper chemical fingerprint overlapped the Welsh outcrop and Stonehenge debitage.



The boulder’s taper echoes the tops of columnar rhyolite at the source. Its dimensions fit the buried Stone 32d stump at Stonehenge, which shares the same <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/new-type-of-earth-rock-is-created-by-human-industrial-waste-and-forms-in-just-40-years/">rock</a> type.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-not-the-work-of-ice">Not the work of ice</h2>



Field surveys across Salisbury Plain report no till, erratic trains, or moraine ridges, and the regional glacial <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jqs.3313" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">evidence</a> shows major advances flowing offshore in the Celtic Sea. That pattern does not place an ice conveyor belt on the chalk plateau.



Around the monument, small fragments occur as sharp edged chips consistent with human dressing. A natural scatter of rounded cobbles has not been documented within the local two to three mile zone.



The Newall boulder itself shows wear that makes sense for weathering after a stone snapped. Claims of subglacial transport lack diagnostic marks and rely on assumptions the data do not support.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-quarries-dates-and-a-living-landscape">Quarries, dates, and a living landscape</h2>



Excavations at bluestone quarries at Carn Goedog and Craig Rhos-y-Felin revealed extraction platforms, wedges, and a trackway. Dating places activity in the centuries around 3400 to 3000 BC.



“The bluestones didn't get put up at Stonehenge until around 2900 BC. It is more likely that the stones were first used in a local monument, somewhere near the quarries, that was then dismantled and dragged off to Wiltshire,” said Professor <a href="https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/37464-michael-parker-pearson" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mike Parker Pearson</a> from the University College London (<a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">UCL</a>).



Those field traces show people selecting and moving pillars in a busy Neolithic landscape. The Newall boulder’s match to Welsh rhyolite fits that wider picture.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-moving-heavy-stones-without-ice">Moving heavy stones without ice</h2>



Geochemical fingerprinting shows that most sarsens (silicified sandstone blocks) at Stonehenge came from West Woods about 15 miles away, an independent case of long distance selection and transport within the same monument. 



If communities could marshal the labor to fetch multi-ton silcrete blocks, moving smaller rhyolite pillars was well within reach.



The <a href="https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/history-and-stories/building-stonehenge/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">bluestones</a> weigh roughly 2 to 5 tons each, while the big sarsens average near 25 tons. That spread reminds us that the monument marries different rocks with different journeys.



Archaeology does not preserve ropes, sledges, or timber rails on chalk uplands, so methods remain inferred. Even so, the combined quarry traces, <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/stone-tools-over-1-million-years-old-were-made-by-an-unknown-human-ancestor/">stone</a> chips, and provenancing make a coherent case for human logistics.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-stonehenge-still-has-secrets">Stonehenge still has secrets</h2>



The Newall boulder removes a key exhibit for the glacial transport argument. A hand sized clast once cited as an ice carried erratic now reads as a broken tip from a Welsh pillar.



With a secure Welsh origin, no diagnostic ice wear, and a match to a buried stump, the piece supports planned selection, extraction, and delivery by people. It shifts weight toward intention, not accident.



The wider bluestone assemblage also looks selective rather than random. A limited set of rock types, clustered sources, and consistent debris tell a story of choice instead of a scatter left by retreating <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/after-44000-years-under-the-ice-this-wolf-looked-almost-alive/">ice</a>.



This new work does not answer every question about routes or gear. It does tighten the link between Stonehenge and specific Welsh outcrops in the Neolithic centuries when people first raised stones on Salisbury Plain.



The study is published in <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X25003360?via%3Dihub" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports</a>.



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Discovery in a forgotten rock changes everything we knew about Stonehenge

A forgotten stone from a 1924 dig is now steering...

If you’re a male gray frog trying to find a mate, you’d better have a fast and steady call. That’s what female treefrogs usually go for. But when the crowd gets loud and chaotic, things change. The males that don’t sound all that great? They suddenly have a shot.



In quiet situations where females only hear two males at once, their preferences are clear. They go for the one with the sharper, more rhythmic call. 



But when four or even eight males are calling at once, things get messy. Female choices become unpredictable. This isn’t just a frog issue - it ties into a broader idea that scientists call “choice overload.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-frogs-face-chaos-in-the-chorus">Frogs face chaos in the chorus</h2>



In nature, frogs gather in large, noisy groups called choruses. Picture a shallow pond in spring, with dozens of males calling out at the same time. It’s the frog equivalent of a dating scene in a packed nightclub.



The researchers found that the crowded conditions of these choruses might be too overwhelming for females to reliably pick the best mate. It’s not that they stop caring - it’s that they can’t tell who’s who.



Professor Jessie Tanner of the <a href="https://www.utk.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of Tennessee, Knoxville</a>, led a team studying how choice overload affects evolution.



“Because female mate choice can drive evolution, our results suggest that <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/unraveling-the-story-of-early-animal-evolution/">evolution</a> might happen more slowly than we thought before,” she said. 



“Some males that are fairly unattractive could still mate, especially if they take advantage of crowded spaces where females might be less able to discriminate between attractive and unattractive males.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-happens-when-choices-are-too-hard">What happens when choices are too hard?</h2>



The idea of choice overload is pretty common in <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/science-behind-predicting-and-changing-human-behavior/">human behavior</a>. You walk into a store to buy toothpaste and face 50 brands. You either freeze, grab something random, or walk away. Same goes for dating apps with endless swiping.



“We wanted to understand how having to make mating decisions in crowded environments, where choice overload could be a problem, might drive the evolution of calls,” Tanner explained. 



“Since males that are chosen by females pass on their genes to the next generation, this mate choice can cause the population to change over time.”



When animals, like people, face too many options, their decision-making can break down. That opens up a chance for less attractive mates to get picked - not because they became more appealing, but because the chooser got overwhelmed.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-choice-overload-in-other-animals">Choice overload in other animals</h2>



This isn’t just about frogs. Scientists are now looking at how this effect shows up in other animals. <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/bumblebees-increasingly-stressed-over-the-past-century/">Bumblebees</a>, for instance, are on the list. So are wood roaches.



“Our lab is working to understand how choice overload and <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/frogs-have-lungs-that-cancel-out-background-noise/">noise</a> may each contribute to the difficulty female treefrogs face in making mating decisions,” Tanner said. 



“We are also working to understand whether this choice overload is something that occurs generally in many different kinds of animals or is more specific to individual species.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-simultaneous-cricket-songs">Simultaneous cricket songs </h2>



Tanner, who has a background in both psychology and biology, first got into animal behavior while studying mate choice as an undergrad. She later became interested in sound - especially how it plays into animal communication.



That led to earlier work on <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/when-male-crickets-go-silent-how-females-adapt-and-respond/">crickets</a>. Like treefrogs, male crickets use sound to attract mates. A study on cricket mating showed that noisy environments might either block females from hearing calls or make them too confused to pick. It was hard to tell which was causing the problem.



“During that study, it became clear that our work was consistent with both the possibility that many simultaneous cricket songs created noise that made it hard for females to hear, and the possibility that the females were experiencing choice overload,” Tanner said. “Our current work looks to disentangle those ideas.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-when-average-becomes-good-enough">When average becomes good enough</h2>



The research adds a new layer to how scientists think about evolution. Normally, stronger signals - like a faster frog call - are expected to win out and spread through the population over time. 



But if crowded conditions keep females from consistently picking the top performers, evolution slows down. Mediocre traits stick around longer.



That changes the math for survival. In nature, being the best isn’t always enough - and sometimes, being just okay is good enough, especially if the crowd’s loud and the choices are many.



The full study was published in the journal <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2025.0585" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences</a>.



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Frogs settle for average mates when dating gets too noisy

If you’re a male gray frog trying to find a...

Tomatoes do not just grow faster on a whim. They speed up when a tiny spelling mistake in their DNA gets corrected with precise tools.



A Swiss team did exactly that in a domesticated tomato line, altering SSP2, and the plants shifted into fruiting earlier while staying compact. 



In a new study, the researchers show that fixing a single harmful mutation can tune the plant’s growth schedule in a predictable way.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-making-genetic-alterations">Making genetic alterations</h2>



<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/the-italian-secret-to-sweeter-tomato-plants-and-greater-economic-efficiency/">The tomato</a> carried a small <a href="https://www.yeastgenome.org/locus/S000005768">change in a gene</a> called SSP2, which helps switch growing tips from making leaves to making flowers. 



That switch sets the pace for fruiting, so repairing the harmful version of SSP2 nudged plants to set fruit sooner without ballooning in size.



This work comes from assistant professor <a href="https://www.unil.ch/dbmv/en/home/menuinst/research/recherche/prof-sebastian-soyk.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Sebastian Soyk</a> at the University of Lausanne (<a href="https://www.unil.ch/unil/fr/home.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">UNIL</a>), whose group focuses on the genetics of flowering and plant architecture.&nbsp;



“Our work shows how deleterious variants have sensitized modern genotypes for phenotypic tuning and illustrates how repairing deleterious mutations with genome editing may allow predictable crop improvement,” wrote Soyk in the report.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-changing-the-tomato-s-ssp2-gene">Changing the tomato's SSP2 gene</h2>



During domestication, people selected traits like bigger fruit and determinate growth. That selection also dragged along unwanted DNA changes, a pattern called the <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28992310/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cost of domestication</a>. 



A 2018 review explains how such mutations accumulate and can subtly reduce performance.



The Swiss group identified a single letter change in SSP2 that weakened the protein’s grip on DNA. 



They also showed that SSP2 normally backs up a related paralog called SSP, and that redundancy eroded in domesticated <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/ripening-tomatoes-may-hold-clues-to-delay-human-aging/">tomatoes</a> over time.



Flowering in-tomato is powered by florigen, a mobile signal encoded by the gene SINGLE FLOWER TRUSS (<a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14504922/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">SFT</a>). 



Classic work showed how SFT shapes yield by balancing vegetative growth and flower production, including heterosis effects in hybrids, in a landmark <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/ng.550" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">paper</a>.



SSP and SSP2 are transcription factor partners that help florigen trigger the flower program. When SSP2 is compromised, the switch gets sluggish, shoots elongate more before flowering, and early fruit set slips.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-the-data-shows">What the data shows</h2>



Once the harmful letter in SSP2 was corrected, plants produced an earlier tranche of ripe fruit under controlled conditions. 



The repaired line showed compact growth and fewer flowers per truss, which channeled development toward earlier maturity.



At harvest, the repaired plants had an 8 percent higher share of fully red fruit compared with siblings carrying the uncorrected allele, and they showed an 11 percent lower sugar content by Brix. 



The team scaled up measurements to make that conclusion, then reported the full trait set in the study already cited.



Domestication often narrows genetic diversity and can fix slightly harmful variants that hitchhike with useful ones. Over centuries of selection and inbreeding, those background changes can linger and affect traits in small ways.



With precise editing, breeders can now remove a specific deleterious variant without undoing the useful alleles it sits near. 



That approach complements classical breeding and reduces guesswork that usually follows random <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/understanding-crop-pest-evolution-to-develop-biocontrol-strategies/">mutagenesis</a> or long cycles of recombination, as noted by the broader literature on domestication’s genetic footprints in the same 2018 review linked above.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ssp2-tomatoes-and-health-concerns">SSP2 tomatoes and health concerns</h2>



Switzerland has maintained a moratorium on growing genetically modified crops since 2005, and lawmakers voted in June 2025 to extend it. 



Swiss <a href="https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/various/parliament-wants-to-extend-genetic-engineering-moratorium-by-five-years/89467765" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">lawmakers</a> backed a continuation through 2030, while also debating tailored rules for new gene editing methods.



That policy context matters because base edited plants, including those created by precise letter swaps, may fall under different legal definitions depending on jurisdiction. 



The debate centers on whether an edit that could occur naturally should be regulated like older transgenic approaches that insert foreign DNA.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-this-could-mean-next-season">What this could mean next season</h2>



Earlier yield can be valuable for growers in short seasons, high latitude regions, or indoor systems where turn time is money. 



Compact plants with predictable flowering can be spaced and pruned more efficiently, which helps planning.



There is a tradeoff to watch, since lower Brix means less sweetness. Breeders can mitigate that by stacking the SSP2 repair with sugar related alleles or by targeting edits to environments where early red fruit is worth more than peak sweetness.



The SFT pathway is a central timing circuit in tomato, and tuning it has a long track record in yield optimization. 



<a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20348958/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Heterozygosity</a> at SFT can boost yield markedly in hybrids, showing how small shifts in flowering control ripple into fruit set and harvest timing, as shown in the 2010 paper cited above.



The SSP and SSP2 pair acts just upstream of these outcomes, guiding meristems to switch from leafy growth to flower clusters on schedule. 



Repairing SSP2 did not raise total fruit number in this experiment, but it pulled ripening forward and tightened the plant’s form, which is a clear lever for scheduling.



The study is published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-024-02026-9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nature Genetics</a>.



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This Swiss trick makes tomatoes bear fruit much faster

Tomatoes do not just grow faster on a whim. They...

Ryugu_aqueous-evolution_en

Large amounts of liquid water once flowed inside asteroid Ryugu. A new study shows that this did not happen only in the first few million years of the solar system, but more than a billion years later.



Japan’s <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hayabusa-2/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hayabusa2</a> mission brought pieces of Ryugu back to Earth in December 2020. The reentry <a href="https://global.jaxa.jp/press/2020/12/20201214-1_e.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">capsule</a> was recovered in Australia, and work began to open it and distribute samples to labs.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ryugu-s-water-record">Ryugu’s water record</h2>



The team studied the ratio of isotopes in the returned grains and found a clear fingerprint of liquid water moving through rock long after the asteroid formed. 



That late flow was strong enough to carry certain elements out of the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/asteroid-that-once-threatened-earth-may-target-the-moon/">rock</a> and into fractures.



This work was led by <a href="https://secure.eps.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/member/index.php?_urid=3394&amp;_lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Tsuyoshi Iizuka</a> at the <a href="https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of Tokyo</a>. The group reports that Ryugu’s parent body likely held between 20 and 30 percent water by mass.



In addition, the contribution of such bodies to Earth’s water may need to be revised upward by a factor of two to three.



Hayabusa2 collected a total of 5.4 grams from two sites, including material excavated from about 3.3 feet below the surface. The mission <a href="https://global.jaxa.jp/projects/sas/hayabusa2/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">project</a> confirms the returned mass and notes that the goal had been only 0.1 gram.



“We found that Ryugu preserved a pristine record of water activity, evidence that fluids moved through its rocks far later than we expected,” said Associate Professor Iizuka.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-the-clock-ran-fast">Why the clock ran fast</h2>



The team used <a href="https://evolution.berkeley.edu/radiometric-dating/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">radiometric dating</a> based on the decay of one element (lutetium 176) into another (hafnium 176) over time to figure out when key events happened inside the asteroid. 



Those clocks are reliable when elements stay put, but they can be thrown off if fluids move them around.



Some tiny grains looked older than the solar system, which is impossible. 



The only sensible reason is that liquid water flowed through parts of the rock and carried away a small amount of lutetium, which made the age calculation appear too old.



The method is powerful because lutetium and hafnium behave differently during water rock interactions. Lutetium dissolves more readily under certain alkaline conditions, while hafnium tends to stay locked in solid phases.



That contrast let the researchers map the movement of water, not by seeing the water itself but by measuring the chemical wake it left behind. 



They found evidence for at least several percent loss of lutetium in affected spots, which is enough to skew the apparent ages.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-water-flowed-through-ryugu">How water flowed through Ryugu</h2>



Early in solar system history, short-lived radioactive heat can melt ices inside small worlds. Later on, that heat is gone, so you need another source to melt ice and set fluids moving.



The study points to impacts that warmed the interior and cracked open pathways for liquid to travel. 



Sunlight alone cannot do the job deep below the surface, since it can only warm material down to about 16 inches, while some of the analyzed material came from about 3.3 feet.



These late fluids were not a steady flood. The mineral record shows limited flow along fractures, followed by loss of water as vapor that escaped to space through pores near the surface.



That pattern fits the chemistry that the team measured. Certain minerals show corrosion where water passed by, and complementary products formed when the water later cooled and <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/citizen-astronomers-captured-a-possible-impact-on-saturn-for-the-first-time-ever/">minerals</a> precipitated.



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><a href="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/asteroid-ryugu_water-flowing_billions-years_illustration_Kyoto-U_1m.jpg"><img src="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/asteroid-ryugu_water-flowing_billions-years_illustration_Kyoto-U_1s.webp" alt="Evolution of alkaline brines through the history of Ryugu samples. Credit: Kyoto University" class="wp-image-1985845"/></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Evolution of alkaline brines through the history of Ryugu samples. Click image to enlarge. Credit: Kyoto University</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ryugu-s-impact-on-earth">Ryugu’s impact on Earth</h2>



If Ryugu’s parent body retained a large store of ice and liquid for so long, similar <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/carbonaceous-meteorite" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">carbonaceous asteroids</a> could have delivered more water to the inner planets than many models assumed. That matters for the story of Earth’s oceans.



CI type meteorites, known as <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/physics-and-astronomy/carbonaceous-chondrite" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CI chondrites</a>, have long been used as a benchmark for primitive, water rich material. 



Ryugu’s chemistry is close to that group, and the new data suggest that past estimates of how much water such bodies can deliver were too low.



The authors note that early water rock interaction on these bodies happened at mild temperatures and alkaline pH, then slowed as the rock cooled. 



Later impacts briefly restarted the system, sending pulses of fluid through the interior.



Independent <a href="https://www.osti.gov/pages/biblio/1959483" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">analysis</a> of Ryugu carbonates supports this picture of early low temperature alteration within the first few million years. The new work extends the timeline and shows that water stayed available much later.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ryugu-lessons-for-worlds">Ryugu lessons for worlds</h2>



Hayabusa2 did not just scrape the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/asteroid-bennu-carries-stardust-older-than-the-solar-system/">surface</a>. It created an artificial crater, collected subsurface material, and returned a finely curated set of grains to Earth for careful study.



Those grains let scientists test ideas about <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703721000363" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">aqueous alteration</a> without guessing from telescope data alone. They also help calibrate the isotope clocks that date rocks around the solar system.



The results hint that small bodies can hold on to ice and liquid longer than expected. That increases the odds that collisions early in Earth’s history could deliver large water loads.



Finally, the work underscores the value of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/climate-chaos-how-an-asteroid-strike-would-change-life-on-earth/">sample</a> return missions. A few grams of unweathered material can answer questions that remote sensing might never settle.



The study is published in <a href="http://nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09483-0" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nature</a>.



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Asteroid Ryugu still had large amounts of liquid water inside over one billion years after it formed

Large amounts of liquid water once flowed inside asteroid Ryugu....

Earlier this year, astronomers watched a burst of high-energy light that kept roaring back for nearly a full day. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are usually sorted into short and long events, and they generally last from milliseconds to a few minutes.



In a new study, researchers describe a signal named GRB 250702B that fired three distinct times over a few hours, with soft X-rays flaring even earlier. The team also reported evidence that the source lies beyond our galaxy.



Lead researchers Antonio Martin-Carrillo of <a href="https://www.ucd.ie/">University College Dublin</a> (UCD) and Andrew J. Levan of <a href="https://www.ru.nl/en">Radboud University</a> (RU) directed the effort. 



Their teams combined rapid-response alerts from NASA’s <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/mission/fermi/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Fermi satellite</a>, China’s Einstein Probe, and follow-up observations with the Very Large Telescope (<a href="https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/paranal-observatory/vlt/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">VLT</a>) and the <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hubble Space Telescope</a>.



Martin-Carrillo called it "unlike any other seen in 50 years of GRB observations. This is 100 to 1,000 times longer than most GRBs. More importantly, gamma-ray bursts never repeat since the event that produces them is catastrophic."&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-makes-grb-250702b-so-strange">What makes GRB 250702B so strange</h2>



<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/ai-pinpoints-location-farthest-gamma-ray-bursts-in-universe/">GRBs</a> don't typically don't happen twice, much less three or more times. Here, Fermi saw three distinct outbursts separated by thousands of seconds, while the Einstein Probe caught earlier<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/understanding-x-ray-radiation-that-spews-out-of-black-holes-surroundings/"> X-ray</a> activity that started many hours before.



The timing was not random. The third outburst arrived at roughly an integer multiple of the gap between the first two. This pattern suggests at a repeating process inside the source rather than a single one-off blast.



The overall energy in gamma rays is in the same ballpark as other GRBs at similar distances, yet the pattern of activity is different. 



Standard relations that link a <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/brightest-gamma-ray-burst-ever-recorded-had-a-rare-energy-peak/">burst’s peak energy</a> to its total output do not align cleanly for each of the three pulses.



The fading afterglow across X-ray, infrared, and radio bands looks normal for a jet from a compact central engine. The near-infrared signal was unusual in one respect: it was extremely red, which suggests heavy dust near the site.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-locating-a-cosmic-mystery">Locating a cosmic mystery</h2>



"Before these observations, the general feeling in the community was that this gamma-ray burst must have originated from within our galaxy," said Levan. "The VLT fundamentally changed that paradigm." 



VLT’s HAWK-I camera picked up an extremely red point of light that faded over days.



<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/hubble-spots-a-white-dwarf-created-in-a-violent-star-collision/">Hubble</a> went a step further and resolved a galaxy at the same spot. That finding places the source in an extragalactic system, likely several billion light-years away. The engine must be extremely powerful to be visible at all.



VLT’s X-shooter spectrograph covered visible to infrared wavelengths and saw a very faint, red continuum, consistent with heavy dust. 



While the exact redshift is still being refined, the data point to a relatively nearby cosmic distance compared with many GRBs, which helps explain the sharp view of the host galaxy.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-potential-black-hole-link">Potential black hole link</h2>



One explanation for GRB 250702B points to a jetted tidal disruption event, in which a black hole tears apart a passing star and feeds on the debris. 



Astronomers have observed such jets firing erratically in events like Swift J1644+57, described in a paper that modeled how a powerful magnetic field around the black hole could drive on-off behavior.



Another possibility fits the unusual timing. The authors consider a compact <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/white-dwarf-stars-may-be-billions-of-years-older-than-estimated/">white dwarf star</a> passing close to an <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/evidence-found-suggesting-new-space-objects-called-intermediate-mass-black-holes/">intermediate-mass black hole</a>. 



This class of black holes is heavier than stellar-mass ones but lighter than the giants in galaxy centers, with masses around 100 to 100,000 times that of the Sun.



In this scenario, the star could be partially stripped during each close pass, feeding the jet in bursts spaced according to the star’s orbit.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-doesn-t-fit-the-mold">Doesn't fit the mold</h2>



A more familiar GRB engine, a collapsing massive star, is not off the table. 



The problem is explaining how such a collapse would produce multiple widely spaced pulses over many hours rather than one sustained episode lasting seconds to minutes.



Lensing by a foreground galaxy can also repeat a transient by splitting light paths, but the pulse shapes here differ from one another. The color and afterglow behavior also point away from that lensing explanation.



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><a href="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/gamma-ray-burst_GRB-250702B_long_repeating_image-sequence_ESO_1m.jpg"><img src="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/gamma-ray-burst_GRB-250702B_long_repeating_image-sequence_ESO_1s.webp" alt="This sequence of images shows the evolution over several days of the gamma-ray burst GRB 250702B. The first five images shown here were taken with the VLT’s HAWK-I infrared camera. The explosion, marked here with circles, appears to be nested within an elongated galaxy. An image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) on 15 July, bottom right, confirmed this. The galaxy appears to be seen edge-on, with a dark dust-lane crossing it. Credit: ESO/A. Levan, A. Martin-Carrillo et al./NASA/ESA " class="wp-image-1985820"/></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">This sequence of images shows the evolution over several days of the gamma-ray burst GRB 250702B. The first five images shown here were taken with the VLT’s HAWK-I infrared camera. The explosion, marked here with circles, appears to be nested within an elongated galaxy. An image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) on 15 July, bottom right, confirmed this. The galaxy appears to be seen edge-on, with a dark dust-lane crossing it. Click image to enlarge. Credit: ESO/A. Levan, A. Martin-Carrillo et al./NASA/ESA </figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-light-patterns-from-grb-250702b">Light patterns from GRB 250702B</h2>



The first detections were in soft X-rays, then came the brightest gamma-ray flash hours later. That order flips the usual script for GRBs, where the strongest gamma rays typically arrive first and fade quickly.



Infrared light faded quickly, and <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/massive-telescope-array-is-joining-the-hunt-for-alien-life/">radio telescopes</a> detected a faint source consistent with a standard jet interacting with surrounding gas. 



Those observations match the afterglow physics well, even if the prompt high-energy behavior does not fit neatly into existing categories.



The host galaxy is not a nuclear site, which weakens ideas that require a supermassive black hole sitting at the center. If the burst is a disruption event, an off-center intermediate-mass black hole is a better match for the position.



The red color likely comes from dust lanes in the host galaxy that absorb blue light. That dust also lines up with the strong X-ray absorption measured from the same line of sight.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-watching-for-a-supernova">Watching for a supernova</h2>



In jet-driven tidal disruption events, X-ray light can plummet once the jet shuts off, while radio emission can rise for months as the blast wave expands. 



Continued X-ray and radio monitoring will test whether this source follows that playbook.



If a <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/the-true-nature-of-dark-matter-may-be-revealed-in-a-supernova/">supernova</a> is involved, it would glow in the infrared a few weeks after the collapse. Dust makes that search harder, but large, sensitive telescopes can still look for the telltale rise and fall.



Spectroscopy can also help determine the distance and characterize the environment around the source. 



A firm redshift would establish the energy budget and sharpen the comparison to known gamma-ray bursts and disruption events.



"We are still not sure what produced this, but with this research we have made a huge step forward towards understanding this extremely unusual and exciting object," said Martin-Carrillo.



The study is published in <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/adf8e1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Astrophysical Journal Letters</a>.



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Unusually long and repeating gamma-ray burst, 'unlike any other seen,' baffles astronomers

Earlier this year, astronomers watched a burst of high-energy light...

A new study recorded brain activity from 621,733 neurons in 139 mice as they made decisions, building the first activity map of a mammal’s entire brain at single-cell resolution. 



The team saw where signals for seeing, choosing, moving, and getting feedback show up and how they unfold together.



The <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09235-0" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">work</a> goes beyond the usual hunt for a single decision center and shows a coordinated, brain-wide <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/how-our-brains-build-mental-maps-of-the-world/">pattern</a>. It also tests a simple idea about how past experience shapes a new choice without us noticing.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-brain-map-of-activity">Brain map of activity</h2>



One of the researchers, <a href="https://neurocenter-unige.ch/research-groups/alexandre-pouget/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Alexandre Pouget</a> of the <a href="https://www.unige.ch/en/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of Geneva</a>, helped lead an international group that trained mice to turn a small wheel to center a striped target for a reward. When the target was faint or absent, the mice leaned on their recent history to guess.



Across 12 labs, the group inserted 699 probes and sampled 279 brain areas while the same task ran everywhere. 



They used <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24636" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Neuropixels</a> to record spikes from hundreds of neurons per probe with millisecond precision, which made a fine-grained map possible.



“This is the first time anyone has produced a full, brain-wide map of the activity of single neurons during decision-making,” explained Pouget.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-activity-and-decisions-in-the-brain">Activity and decisions in the brain</h2>



Vision <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/first-map-of-the-brains-mitochondria-may-explain-cognitive-decline/">signals</a> appeared first in classical visual areas, then spread into midbrain and hindbrain regions that also carried choice information.&nbsp;



Earlier <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1787-x" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">work</a> in mice had already hinted that choice, action, and engagement are distributed, not isolated in one cortical spot. The new map strengthens that view with coverage of hundreds of regions and clear timing.



Feedback mattered, too. When trials were correct and reward was delivered, wide swaths of the brain lit up together, reflecting both the liquid reward and the licking movements that came with it.



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><a href="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/mouse-brain-map_75-thousand-neurons_decision-making-process_Princeton_1m.jpg"><img src="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/mouse-brain-map_75-thousand-neurons_decision-making-process_Princeton_1s.webp" alt="Visualization of 75,000 neurons (colored dots) active across the brain of an adult mouse across different stages of a decision-making task. Dot size reflects a cell’s average firing rate, such that larger dots indicate more active neurons. The color of each dot represents a different grouping of related brain regions. Data collected as part of the International Brain Laboratory’s effort to create a whole-brain map of behavior. Credit: Dan Birman (University of Washington/Allen Institute)" class="wp-image-1985838"/></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Visualization of 75,000 neurons (colored dots) active across the brain of an adult mouse across different stages of a decision-making task. Dot size reflects a cell’s average firing rate, such that larger dots indicate more active neurons. The color of each dot represents a different grouping of related brain regions. Data collected as part of the International Brain Laboratory’s effort to create a whole-brain map of behavior. Click image to enlarge. Credit: Dan Birman (University of Washington/Allen Institute)</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-expectations-shape-perception">Expectations shape perception</h2>



A companion <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09226-1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">paper</a> tested how prior expectations, built from recent trials, are encoded. Mice estimated the block’s left-right probabilities and performed better when the stimulus was weak, including zero-contrast trials.



The authors decoded signals for this subjective prior in 20 percent to 30 percent of recorded regions spanning early sensory areas like the thalamus, motor areas, and higher cortex.&nbsp;



Crucially, prior signals were present even before a new stimulus appeared and were detectable very early after it arrived. 



That result explains how expectations can nudge perception without crossing into conscious awareness.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-the-data-showed">What the data showed</h2>



Across the project, the team analyzed 75,708 well-isolated <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/how-the-brain-learns-study-reveals-an-unexpected-twist/">neurons</a> with the highest quality metrics. 



Just before a movement began, about 4 percent of neurons had activity correlated with the direction of the upcoming choice after controlling for stimulus and block.



Movement variables were strong predictors of activity, and reward delivery was one of the largest contributors to explained variance. 



Those patterns tell us that action and outcome signals are broadly shared, while basic sensory signals stay more localized and brief.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-the-brain-activity-map-matters">Why the brain activity map matters</h2>



The map shows that decision-making is not a handoff <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/brain-mapping-research-mouse-neurons-revolutionary-advance/">from sense to thought to action</a>. It looks more like many regions voting together, each carrying partial information that becomes aligned near movement and feedback.



That layout matters for medicine and technology. If priors and choices are distributed, measuring or modulating a single region may miss the story or cause side effects elsewhere.



The data come from head-fixed mice in a specific visual task, so the conclusions are about how mouse brains act under those conditions. 



The authors also note that licking and other movements explain a large share of the variance during reward, which means the hedonic piece is tangled with motor signals.



The map is correlational, not causal. It shows where information is present, not which sites are required for a decision, and it sets up future causal tests.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-reading-the-technical-terms">Reading the technical terms</h2>



Neuropixels are high-density silicon electrodes that record spikes from hundreds of neurons along a thin shank. They offer single-spike timing, which is needed to separate fast sensory and motor events.



The thalamus is a relay hub that routes sensory <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/first-complete-map-of-every-neuron-in-the-brain-revealed/">signals</a> to the cortex and receives strong feedback from the cortex. 



Seeing prior signals there tells us that expectations are changing the initial formatting of incoming inputs, not only the later decision layers.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-mapping-brain-activity-in-humans">Mapping brain activity in humans</h2>



The dataset is public, and the analysis code is standardized. That enables other labs to check the findings, try new models, and test questions about learning, attention, and internal states.



A natural next step is to combine this map with targeted perturbations and to follow priors as they update in different contexts. 



If the same network rules hold across tasks, that will sharpen theories of how brains implement probabilistic inference.



<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/RSBDnDD2Efo
</div></figure>



The study is published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09235-0" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nature</a>.



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First-ever brain activity map captures the decision-making process

A new study recorded brain activity from 621,733 neurons in...

Plastic may not always float where we expect it. The ocean’s surface might look clean in some places, but far beneath the waves, a different story is unfolding. 



In the southeastern Mediterranean, the deep seafloor is turning into a massive storage ground for plastic packaging, especially bags. A new study shows how this <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/large-retailers-are-replacing-plastic-bags-with-eco-friendly-paper-bags/">waste</a> ends up thousands of feet below the surface, and the answer isn’t as simple as trash just “sinking.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-plastic-in-the-deep-sea">Plastic in the deep sea</h2>



Plastic debris has entered every corner of the ocean, but previously, most of the research has concentrated on floating plastic or beach trash. That changed with this latest study, which took a closer look at what is occurring on the ocean floor. 



Scientists discovered that the Levant Basin - a deep section of the eastern <a href="https://www.earth.com/image/two-continents-meet-along-the-mediterranean-coastline/">Mediterranean</a> off the coasts of Israel, Egypt, and Turkey - is among the world's most contaminated deep-sea areas.



“We used trawls to survey the seafloor and we mainly found plastic bags and packaging that dominate the debris,” said Xing-Yu Li from the <a href="https://www.haifa.ac.il/?lang=en">University of Haifa</a>, the study’s lead author.



This raised a question: how does something so light - something meant to float - end up nearly a mile underwater?



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-forensic-approach-to-trash">A forensic approach to trash</h2>



To answer that, the team decided to treat each plastic item like a crime scene. Every piece of debris was carefully examined using a method called multi-marker analysis. 



This approach looks at everything about the plastic - size, shape, color, material, surface features, and even what kinds of things are stuck to it, like tar or <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/marine-organisms-may-adapt-to-climate-change-but-with-hidden-costs/">marine organisms</a>.



“In the multi-marker approach anything that is found on a piece of plastic is an evidence,” said Xing-yu. “We extracted as many evidence as possible from every piece of waste, more than many previous studies, to build a fuller, more detailed view of the bottom waste.”



Instead of just counting how much trash was found, this method helped researchers understand how it got there, why it sank, and where it might have come from.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-some-plastic-doesn-t-sink">Why some plastic doesn’t sink</h2>



Most of the plastics found were <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/everyday-kitchen-tool-that-could-be-leaching-toxins-into-your-food-polypropylene-cutting-board/">polyethylene</a> - the same material used in grocery bags. Normally, this kind of plastic floats. But when additives like calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) are mixed in during manufacturing, the plastic becomes heavier. 



Those with CaCO₃ sank closer to the shore. Others, without these additives, drifted farther out before eventually settling on the seafloor.



The study also revealed that the deep basin at over 3,000 feet deep acts like a trap. Pressure and fine sediments help keep the plastic down. 



<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/biofilms-could-change-the-way-we-track-plastic-pollution/">Biofilms</a>, which are slimy layers formed by microbes, usually help weigh plastics down too, but they don’t grow well in this part of the sea. Instead, things like tar, sand, and tiny shells helped plastics stay put.



The scientists noted that these plastic films - while thin and lightweight - are ending up where they can do the most long-term damage. 



Even more troubling, the team found that some of this plastic could become buoyant again if disturbed, but because of how the deep sea works, that rarely happens. Once the plastic settles, it stays.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-where-the-trash-is-coming-from">Where the trash is coming from</h2>



The plastic pollution isn’t only from local beaches. According to the research, land-based sources from Egypt, Israel, and Turkey are a big part of the problem. 



Shipping also plays a role, especially in deeper waters. Surprisingly, fishing was not a major contributor - possibly due to strict Israeli regulations.



For years, scientists noticed high levels of plastic at the seafloor, but they didn’t fully understand why. 



“For years in our monitoring reports we have reported a high concentration of plastic debris in this area. It was an unsolved mystery as we know that <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/ocean-floor-harbors-up-to-11-million-tons-of-plastic-debris/">plastic debris</a> should remain floating on the sea surface. Now we have a deep understanding of how it happens,” said Dr. Yael Segal from Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research (IOLR). 



“The Eastern Mediterranean is the most polluted area in the world, and we must take action for the sake of the next generation.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-long-term-risks-to-marine-life">Long-term risks to marine life</h2>



<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/grapevines-could-offer-a-breakthrough-alternative-to-plastic-packaging/">Plastic packaging</a> is cheap, easy to produce, and used globally - but it doesn’t go away. It breaks into smaller pieces and can remain in the environment for hundreds of years. 



Deep-sea habitats are already fragile, and adding plastic into the mix could disrupt food webs, introduce toxins, and harm species that haven’t even been fully studied yet.



“As the head of the national monitoring program, I see firsthand how plastic pollution is impacting the entire sea environment: beaches, water, sea bottom, and even local turtle populations,” said Dr. Segal.



Professor Revital Bookman said that the discovery is fascinating in the worst possible way. 



"The eastern Mediterranean is quietly turning into a deep-sea landfill. Plastics that we use for only a few minutes are ending up trapped for centuries, threatening deep marine ecosystems we barely understand," noted Professor Bookman. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-needs-to-happen-next">What needs to happen next</h2>



According to the researchers, this study changes how we should think about ocean pollution. Plastic doesn’t just float around until it hits a beach. It travels far, interacts with other pollutants like tar, and ends up in hidden places. 



“This previously overlooked dynamic necessitates a broader perspective on pollution processes in marine environments,” said Professor Bookman. 



“Without systematic deep-sea accounting, we risk underestimating the true environmental footprint of plastic pollution and misallocating mitigation efforts by neglecting offshore and deep-sea sinks.”



To deal with this, the experts call for coordinated efforts across the region. Countries that share the sea need to work together on monitoring, cleanup, and prevention. 



Without a shared strategy, plastics will continue piling up, silently choking one of the planet’s most mysterious ecosystems.



The full study was published in the journal <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0025326X25009671?via%3Dihub" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Marine Pollution Bulletin</a>.



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Hidden plastic graveyard uncovered in the deep Mediterranean Sea

Plastic may not always float where we expect it. The...

Blood clots cause strokes, heart attacks, and lung damage, and they remain a leading cause of preventable hospital deaths in the United States, according to federal <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/blood-clots/data-research/facts-stats/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">data</a>. A new line of research points to a simple lever that might lower risk - the color of light reaching our eyes.



The <a href="https://www.jthjournal.org/article/S1538-7836(24)00543-9/abstract">work</a> explores how specific wavelengths shape biology through the body’s daily timing system. 



Scientists call this the circadian clock, a network that tunes hormones, blood pressure, and blood vessel tone across the 24 hour day, as shown in a comprehensive <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5983320/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">review</a>.



Lead author <a href="https://providers.upmc.com/provider/elizabeth-ann-andraska/3013812" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Elizabeth Andraska, M.D</a>., of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (<a href="https://www.medschool.pitt.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">UPMC</a>), and her colleagues asked a basic question. Does the spectrum of visible light change the way blood forms clots in living organisms.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-testing-light-color-on-blood-clots">Testing light color on blood clots</h2>



In a peer reviewed study, the team exposed mice to red, blue, or white light for 12 hours a day over 3 days, then used standard models to trigger clots. 



Red light before the challenge led to nearly five times fewer <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/red-blood-cells-found-to-squeeze-clots-tight-using-physical-force/">clots</a> than blue or white light.



The same study reported no benefit in genetically blind mice, and shining light directly on blood outside the body did not change clotting. That pattern points to an eye to brain pathway rather than a direct effect on blood.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-blood-clots-and-red-light">Blood clots and red light</h2>



The researchers focused on <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/blood-platelets-play-a-critically-important-role-in-the-body-that-was-unknown-until-now/">blood platelets</a> - the small cell fragments that stick together to stop bleeding and can spark harmful clots.



Red light exposure was linked to lower platelet aggregation and activation, signaling a less reactive clotting profile.



They also tracked neutrophil extracellular traps (<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nri.2017.105" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NETs</a>), which are sticky webs released by white blood cells to capture microbes but also snag platelets. 



Mice given red light formed fewer NETs in clots and brain tissue after an induced stroke.



The researchers noticed that platelets in the red light group had more healthy fats, including oleic and linoleic acid.



These fats are known to make platelets less likely to stick together, which matched the reduced clotting activity they observed.



Finally, the scientists examined <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4369169/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">megakaryocytes</a>, the bone marrow cells that make platelets. 



Single cell data suggested changes in pathways tied to inflammation, stress responses, and cytoskeletal control, all of which relate to how platelets activate and aggregate.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-hints-from-human-patients">Hints from human patients</h2>



The investigators went a step further and reviewed outcomes in more than 10,000 adults who had cataract surgery with either standard lenses or lenses that filter a slice of blue light. 



Among people with cancer, who face about a ninefold higher clot risk than the general population according to a recent open access <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12001707/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">review</a>, those with blue light filtering lenses had a lower lifetime risk of venous clots.



That retrospective signal does not prove cause and effect. It does align with the mouse findings and with prior evidence that clotting biology tracks daily timing cues.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-it-means-for-you">What it means for you</h2>



This research does not replace proven prevention like movement during long trips, anticoagulants when prescribed, or hospital safety protocols. It does raise a precise, testable idea about light and <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/ginkgo-biloba-plant-may-be-key-to-preventing-blood-clots-vericose-veins/">clot</a> biology that clinical trials can evaluate.



Light is not acting as a drug in the bloodstream. It seems to work through the optic system and brain timing networks, which then influence immune cells and platelets.



The animal benefit appeared when red light came before the clotting challenge, not after it. That timing suggests a preventive window and warns against over reading the result.



Human biology is more complex than lab models. The lens analysis was observational, so unmeasured variables could explain the signal.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-to-think-about-light-in-daily-life">How to think about light in daily life</h2>



Clotting problems remain common and deadly, especially after hospitalization and in major illnesses. Even small, safe reductions in risk could help many people if confirmed by trials.



Cancer amplifies <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/scientists-harness-soundwaves-vibrations-to-strengthen-tissues-and-heal-wounds-blood-clots/">clot</a> risk for biological reasons that include tumor driven inflammation and pro coagulation signals. Any non drug intervention that safely trims that risk would be worth careful testing.



Most modern environments flood us with short wavelength light from screens and overhead fixtures. The new study suggests wavelength balance might matter, along with timing and duration.



Morning light helps set healthy rhythms, while circadian disruption raises cardiovascular strain. That makes lighting a public health question as much as a lab topic.



Expect controlled human studies that standardize wavelength, intensity, timing, and duration. Devices that deliver known doses through the eyes would allow rigorous testing of dose and response.



Researchers will also map how retinal signals talk to the brain and then to bone marrow and immune cells. Those pathways could reveal new drug targets alongside any light based strategies.



The study is published in the <a href="https://www.jthjournal.org/article/S1538-7836(24)00543-9/abstract" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis</a>.



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How the color of light could save you from a heart attack or stroke

Blood clots cause strokes, heart attacks, and lung damage, and...

A large new study followed 407,618 adults in six European countries for about 11 years and tracked the incidence of cancer, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. 



The researchers examined how closely people stuck to a healthful, plant-based diet and how that related to developing more than one of the health conditions.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-this-study-matters">Why this study matters</h2>



The project was led by Reynalda Córdova, a nutritional epidemiologist at the <a href="https://www.univie.ac.at/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of Vienna</a>, working with colleagues across Europe. 



Their team centered the analysis on real-world eating patterns and combined two major datasets to see long term effects.



Chronic diseases often show up in pairs or more. When someone has two or more at the same time, clinicians call it <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5556462/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">multimorbidity</a>. Reducing the odds of multiple serious conditions can ease pressure on families and health systems.



In public health, preventing even a modest share of new cases matters because risk compounds when illnesses cluster. 



The analysis used the term “cardiometabolic” to group heart and <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/plant-extracts-may-help-treat-metabolic-syndrome/">metabolic</a> problems that often intersect with cancer risk. 



By treating the co-occurrence of conditions as the outcome, the study focused on how disease accumulates over time rather than on single diagnoses.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-plant-based-diets-were-rewarded">Plant-based diets were rewarded</h2>



Participants came from the <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12639222/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">EPIC</a> study, and the <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001779" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">U.K. Biobank</a> (a national research resource that invites adults to share health data for science). These two large cohort projects collect data that connects lifestyle and health records.&nbsp;



Diet quality was scored using a healthful, plant-based diet <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002039" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">index</a> that rewards vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and coffee. 



Dietary intake of refined grains, sweets, and animal products, on the other hand, reversed the points.



A companion unhealthful, plant-based diet index scores higher for refined plant foods and sugary drinks, reflecting differences in plant food quality.



The models estimated <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/hazard-ratio" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">hazard ratio</a>, which expresses how much risk changes with each 10-point rise in the score. This was calculated after accounting for age, sex, smoking, activity, and alcohol use. 



Events were counted and sequenced to see whether a first diagnosis was followed by another, which mirrors how disease accumulates in life.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-plant-based-diet-and-multimorbitity">Plant-based diet and multimorbitity</h2>



Across the combined cohorts, 6,604 people developed two of the three illnesses during follow up. 



A 10-point increase on the healthy <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666756825000613" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">plant diet score</a> was linked to 11 percent lower risk in EPIC and 19 percent lower risk in UK Biobank data.



In adults younger than 60, the hazard ratio was 0.71, and in those of 60 or older it was 0.86. This shows a stronger association in midlife. 



The pattern for the unhealthful plant score was positive in UK Biobank data, and null in EPIC, underscoring that not all plant-rich eating is the same.



“A healthy plant-based diet might <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/global-diet-shifts-the-hidden-costs-of-what-we-eat/">reduce</a> the burden of multimorbidity of cancer and cardiometabolic diseases among middle-aged and older adults,” concluded Córdova.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-healthful-plant-based-diet-defined">Healthful plant-based diet defined</h2>



Scores for the healthy pattern rise with vegetables, fruit, whole grains, beans, nuts, and coffee. Less reliance on refined carbs, sweets, and red or processed meat helps keep the score high.



The unhealthful score climbs with sodas, sweets, white bread, and other refined items. Those choices can crowd out fiber-rich foods that support steady energy and metabolic health.



Separating the healthful and unhealthful versions explains why a plant-based diet can help or harm, depending on the mix. Quality matters more than labels, and the scale captures that difference.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-diet-quality-might-matter">Why diet quality might matter</h2>



A Lancet <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2818%2931809-9/fulltext" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">review</a> linked higher fiber intake with lower risk of several noncommunicable diseases and better glycemic control. 



Fiber also feeds gut microbes that produce short chain fatty acids. These organic substances support metabolic and immune balance.



Other prospective evidence ties plant-based eating patterns to lower type 2 diabetes risk across populations. 



A comprehensive <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2738784" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">meta-analysis</a> reported that greater adherence to plant-based diets, especially those rich in healthful plant foods, was associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes.



These mechanisms align with the new results, where lower weight, lower inflammation, and better insulin sensitivity likely explain part of the link. Diet is not a cure, but quality changes can tilt the odds toward healthier aging.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-to-interpret-this-safely">How to interpret this safely</h2>



Self-reported diet is imperfect, and people may change how they eat after a diagnosis, which can blunt associations. 



Differences that are not measured can also shift estimates, so the authors tested many scenarios to check robustness.



The inconsistency for the unhealthful score between EPIC and UK Biobank suggests that context and measurement matter. Food culture, recall frequency, and how outcomes are captured can all influence results.



Even with caveats, the direction and size of the associations fit prior <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/early-humans-thrived-on-plant-based-diets-not-meat-alone-780000-years-ago/">literature</a> on plant-rich patterns and long term health. That consistency adds confidence without assuming what a single study proves in every setting.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-small-shifts-in-everyday-choices">Small shifts in everyday choices</h2>



The findings do not require strict rules or total exclusion of animal products. They point to a pattern where plants take the lead while animal products and refined items take a back seat.



Small shifts that raise the healthful plant score are realistic and sustainable. Those shifts also track with widely recommended approaches to lifelong health.



The study is published in <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhl/article/PIIS2666-7568(25)00061-3/fulltext" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Lancet Healthy Longevity</a>.



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Big health study shows how a plant-based diet protects against disease

A large new study followed 407,618 adults in six European...

Life is too short for matching socks! These socks are knit in the USA with recycled cotton yarn and mismatched with care. Available in three sizes. Read more Overview Water Lily socks come in a soothing mix of cool blues and soft greens, with a subtle hint of a pale pink. Colors in the Water Lily socks: kelly green, navy blue, pale pink, lime green, and turquoise. Whether you wear them all day at work, when relaxing at home or to keep your feet warm at night, these socks will brighten any day. Features & Benefits: Socks knit with recycled cotton yarn Mismatched with care Keeps your feet comfortable and warm year round Machine washable and dryable Made in the USA from recycled materials Size Options: Small: Women's 6 - 8, Men's 5 - 7 Medium: Women's 8 - 10, Men's 7 - 9 Large: Women's 10 - 12, Men's 9 - 11 Socks fit true to size. Small, medium and large corresponds to shoe sizes above. If you are on the cusp between sizes and wondering which size to order, these socks will shrink a little but they also stretch. So if you like your socks to fit snug then opt for the smaller size, and if you don't like socks to fit snug then go for the larger size. You can machine wash and dry these socks. Water Lily socks are knit with pre-shrunk, colorfast cotton yarns. The colors will not run or fade. Eco friendly Water Lily socks are knit from recycled materials. The recycled cotton yarn is created by recovering the scraps left over from the production of cotton t-shirts. All the little cotton scraps are gathered, ground up and spun into yarn. Using recycled cotton reduces the amount of cotton waste sent to landfills. Using recycled cotton yarn also reduces the amount of water, land use, pesticides and herbicides used to grow new cotton fibers as well as eliminates the need for harmful chemicals to dye virgin cotton yarn. This recycled yarn is certified by Oeko-Tex to be free of harmful toxins. Locally made Sock design, knitting and finishing final touches are all completed at small family-owned businesses in Vermont, North Carolina, and Oregon.

Water Lily Recycled Cotton Socks

Life is too short for matching socks! These socks are...

If you have drafty or single-pane windows, consider using this plastic shrink-film as insulation. It is clear and not visible after installation. Insulates up to five 36" x 60" windows. Read more Overview You might not think that this thin plastic will help insulate, but it's the trapped air between the pane and the plastic that does the insulating. This air pocket will double the insulating properties of your window. To install, fix the double-sided tape around the inside of your window frame, press the plastic onto it, and trim the excess with scissors. Now gently heat the plastic using a blow dryer and it'll draw completely tight and smooth, with no wrinkles. Application can be done by 1 person, and takes 5-10 minutes per window. In the spring, you can remove the tape and plastic easily without harming the window frame.

Window Insulator Kit

If you have drafty or single-pane windows, consider using this...

Watch your neighborhood birds nest from the comfort of your home! This little box is handcrafted in Maine and comes with species specific literature and instructions. Read more Overview Attach this nest box to your window and observe the nesting process from within your home. The back of the nesting box has a clear plastic panel which mounts securely to your window via two suction cups. Features & Benefits: Great nest box for most common backyard birds 1.5-inch round entrance hole invites birds in and keeps predators out Equipped with ventilation holes to regulate interior temperature Dimensions: 9" H x 6-1/4" W x 5" D Constructed from durable eastern white pine Made in the USA About the Window Nest Box Handcrafted in Maine by Coveside Conservation, our nest boxes are correct in every detail for each species, and comes with species specific literature and mounting instructions. Product Quality: Customers tell us again and again that the Coveside products are "the best on the market" with the unique rougher-head finish and secure construction. Environmental Concern: Dimensions are correct for each species and care is given to ventilation and drainage for the well being of the inhabitants. Sustainable Lumber: Made from eastern white pine which is preferable because it is a second-growth tree and it regenerates quickly. Educational Materials: Each product comes with a brochure and a card telling about the wildlife inhabitant that will use it, recommending ideas for location and suggestions for maintenance procedures. Experts Select: Coveside habitats were selected to be on permanent display in the United States Arboretum National Bird Garden in Washington, DC and the American Horticultural Society's Wildlife Garden in Virginia.

Window Nest Box

Watch your neighborhood birds nest from the comfort of your...

Woolly "Down" Pillows are similar to down feather pillows, but with more substance. Each pillow is made with tiny wool puffs, which you can move around and shape into any form desired. Read more Overview Each Woolly "Down" Pillow is handmade and filled with soft wool puffs. All the breathable benefits of wool, plus soft, squishable support similar to a down-feather pillow. Unlike down, however, these wool puffs are grown and safely sheared from the sheep year after year. The organic cotton cover features a side zipper, so you can remove or add wool to change the thickness of the pillow. By shaping your pillow to suit your own preferences, you will enjoy a comfortable, restful sleep. Features & Benefits: Easy to mold and holds shape better than down feathers Adjust pillow's thickness by adding or removing wool Filled with 100% Northeast Eco-Wool puffs Organic cotton zippered cover Resistant to dust mites Easier to wash than other wool products and will not compress Machine washable (gentle with special instructions) Handmade in the USA Size Options: Standard (20" x 24", 30-33 oz) Queen (20" x 29", 36-39 oz) King (20" x 35", 42-45 oz)

Woolly "Down" Pillows

Woolly "Down" Pillows are similar to down feather pillows, but...