Flu, shingles, and RSV vaccines are helping older people more than we knew

Other reasons for older people to be vaccinated are emerging. They are known, in doctor-speak, as off-target benefits, meaning that the shots do good things beyond preventing the diseases they were designed to avert.

Wormholes may not exist—we’ve found they reveal something deeper about time and the universe

Wormholes are often imagined as tunnels through space or time—shortcuts across the universe. But this image rests on a misunderstanding of work by physicists Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen.

Researchers solve mystery of universe’s ’little red dots’

Since the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) went into operation, red dots in its images have puzzled researchers around the world.

Recovering tropical forests grow back nearly twice as fast with nitrogen

Young tropical forests play a crucial role in slowing climate change. Growing trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air, using photosynthesis to build it into their roots, trunks, and branches, where they can store carbon for decades or even centuries.

How exercise helps aging muscles repair themselves

Strong, healthy muscles are essential for movement, metabolism, and overall vitality. From midlife onward, muscle function gradually declines, increasing the risk of falls and fractures, slowing recovery from illness or injury, and making blood sugar harder to regulate.

Asexual yam species employs mimicry to trick birds and spread farther

Evolutionarily speaking, the ultimate goal of a lifeform is to reproduce and stave off extinction. Many plants and animals have evolved unique tricks to do so.

The risks of AI in schools outweigh the benefits, report says

It found that using AI in education can “undermine children’s foundational development” and that “the damages it has already caused are daunting,” though “fixable.”

== paywall?
Meet the man hunting the spies in your smartphone

Ronald Deibert and his research group, the Citizen Lab, have rigorously worked to unveil alarming digital threats for the past two decades. Now, he warns, this kind of work is under threat.

== paywall?, lengthy
How next-generation nuclear reactors break out of the 20th-century blueprint

From molten salt to TRISO fuel, here’s how technological advancements could upend an old power technology.

Coal Power Generation Falls in China and India for First Time Since 1970s

The simultaneous fall in coal-powered electricity in the world’s biggest coal-consuming countries had not happened since 1973.

Europe is Rediscovering the Virtues of Cash

In a world of payment apps and digital euros, the coin is staging a modest comeback.

Never-before-seen Linux malware is “far more advanced than typical”

The framework, referred to as VoidLink by its source code, features more than 30 modules that can be used to customize capabilities to meet attackers’ needs for each infected machine.

NASA, Department of Energy To Develop Lunar Surface Reactor By 2030

The renewed collaboration was formalised through a newly signed memorandum of understanding, which commits the two agencies to jointly developing, fuelling, authorising and preparing a lunar surface nuclear reactor for deployment.

Pentagon Device Linked To Havana Syndrome

The cause of the often debilitating condition has mystified officials and observers for years, the lack of answers frustrating those impacted.

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Windsor-made Dodge Charger wins Car of the Year Award at the Detroit Auto Show

President Donald Trump visited Detroit Tuesday and said the U.S. doesn’t need Canadian-made cars.

World Map of Human Ideas

From Control of Fire to General Relativity, from the automobile to GPS — where were the ideas that shaped civilization born? The World Map of Human Ideas lets you explore the birthplaces of discoveries and inventions

Tiny Mars’s big impact on Earth’s climate

At half the size of Earth and one-tenth its mass, Mars is a featherweight as far as planets go. Yet new research reveals the extent to which Mars is quietly tugging on Earth’s orbit and shaping the cycles that drive long-term climate patterns here.

Danish chemist’s invention could make counterfeiting a thing of the past

In 2021, counterfeit goods worth 467 billion US dollars were traded globally. The most well-known counterfeits are luxury goods such as bags, watches and sunglasses. Today, almost all types of products are counterfeited.

Meet the springtails: Little-known fantastic beasts that live everywhere on Earth

In virtually every piece of land on Earth—from near the summit of Mount Everest to Antarctica to caves nearly 2,000 meters underground—live tiny critters that have shaped the health of our planet for hundreds of millions of years.

Sinking boreal trees in the deep Arctic Ocean could remove billions of tons of carbon each year

Global efforts to reduce pollution will not be enough to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, scientists say. We will also need to extract over 10 gigatons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year for the next century. However, currently only two gigatons are being removed annually, so we have to rapidly scale up existing methods or come up with new ideas.

Persistent shock wave around dead star puzzles astronomers

Gas and dust flowing from stars can, under the right conditions, clash with a star’s surroundings and create a shock wave. Now, astronomers have imaged a beautiful shock wave around a dead star—a discovery that has left them puzzled.

A new AI tool could dramatically speed up the discovery of life-saving medicines

Typically, when scientists develop new medicines, they use complex computer simulations to fit a 3D drug molecule into a protein pocket. This indicates that it is likely to interact with the protein’s binding site and function. However, the process is incredibly time-consuming and expensive.

How stress hormone receptors alter the brain and behavior

Stress, the body’s natural response to different types of challenges and daily problems, is an inherently harmless state experienced by most people worldwide. While short-term stress is a common experience and can even be beneficial, acute or prolonged stress responses are known to be linked with various neuropsychiatric disorders, including depression and anxiety disorders.

== perhaps for you, depending on location and budget?
Anker Solix’s new whole-home backup is the power outage solution of my dreams - here’s why

Can’t decide between solar, battery, or generator backup? Anker Solix E10 does all three.

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Microsoft responds to AI data center revolt, vowing to cover full power costs and reject local tax breaks

Microsoft is changing its approach to building massive data centers for artificial intelligence, unveiling what it calls a “community first” initiative in response to growing opposition from people across the country facing higher electricity bills and dwindling water supplies.

Researchers Beam Power From a Moving Airplane

The greater purpose of the flight was to demonstrate the feasibility of a much grander ambition: to beam power from space to Earth.

Viral Chinese app “Are You Dead?” checks on those who live alone

“Are You Dead?”, known as Sileme in Chinese, was launched in May and is now the most downloaded paid app in China, where millions of people live alone.

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A world without flu is possible

We’re finally making progress toward a universal flu vaccine.

== yjc, I use Markdown to write my blogs, software converts it into static HTML, themes provide the CSS
== but did not know the history of Markdown, lengthy read
How Markdown took over the world

Nearly every bit of the high-tech world, from the most cutting-edge AI systems at the biggest companies, to the casual scraps of code cobbled together by college students, is annotated and described by the same, simple plain text format.

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I spent months investigating whether gut health affects ageing - and if I could hack my own gut to age better

Guts have become a source of immense fascination. Social media influencers promote unproven supplements said to boost gut health, whilst milk and kombucha brands promise to nourish them with “good bacteria”.

China is Geoengineering Deserts With Blue-Green Algae

Scientists aim to reclaim thousands of hectares of desert using cyanobacteria that can stabilise sand and create foundation for plant growth.

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The Verge Awards at CES 2026

Rollable laptops, twice-folding phones, and a ‘longevity station.’ This is the CES tech we come back for.

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Huge Roman villa found under popular park

Archaeologists have discovered the largest Roman villa ever found in Wales in an “amazing discovery”. The location, in a historical deer park, is significant because the land has not been ploughed or built on, meaning the villa’s remains - less than a metre below the surface - look to be well preserved.

How Many Years Left Until the Hubble Space Telescope Reenters Earth’s Atmosphere?

One of the most pressing concerns for scientists today is the deterioration of the telescope’s orbit. While Hubble was initially launched into low Earth orbit at an altitude of around 360 miles, it has since descended to approximately 326 miles, and it continues to fall.

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That Bell Labs ‘Unix’ Tape from 1974: From a Closet to Computing History

It took careful work to recover the UNIX V4 operating system from the 9-track magnetic tape. The software is foundational for most devices used today, including iPhones.

Making the invisible visible: Space particles become observable through handheld invention

You can’t see, feel, hear, taste or smell them, but tiny particles from space are constantly raining down on us. They come from cosmic rays—high-energy particles that can originate from exploding stars and other extreme astrophysical events far beyond our solar system.

Making sense of quantum gravity in five dimensions

Quantum theory and Einstein’s theory of general relativity are two of the greatest successes in modern physics. Each works extremely well in its own domain. However, despite many decades of effort, scientists still do not have a satisfying theory that combines both into one clear picture of reality.

North Pacific winter storm tracks shifting poleward much faster than predicted

Alaska’s glaciers are melting at an accelerating pace, losing roughly 60 billion tons of ice each year. About 4,000 kilometers to the south, in California and Nevada, records for heat and dryness are being shattered, creating favorable conditions for wildfire events.

== don’t think it is available outside Germany
New toothpaste stops periodontal pathogens

Periodontitis is widespread and can have serious consequences for overall health. Researchers have identified a substance that selectively inhibits only those bacteria that cause periodontitis, thereby preserving the natural balance of the oral microbiome.

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Cory Doctorow: Legalising Reverse Engineering Could End ‘Enshittification’

The US president is weaponising tech, but his tariffs and Brexit provide a surprising opportunity to gain back digital control of our lives

China’s ‘artificial sun’ breaks nuclear fusion limit thought to be impossible

Breakthrough marks significant progress towards achieving ‘holy grail’ of clean energy.

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How an old word like ‘snollygoster’ can give people power over politics

Labelling something you fear with the right word can be ‘incredibly empowering’.

Can we use bees as a model of intelligent alien life to develop interstellar communication?

Bees, despite their evolutionary distance from humans, demonstrate abilities in basic mathematics such as addition, subtraction, and understanding zero. This suggests that mathematical reasoning may arise independently in different intelligent species. These findings support the idea that mathematics could serve as a universal language for interstellar communication with alien life.

How your brain keeps time: Consistent probability calculations help you react rapidly

Humans respond to environments that change at many different speeds. A video game player, for example, reacts to on-screen events unfolding within hundreds of milliseconds or over several seconds. A boxer anticipates an opponent’s moves—even when their timing differs from that of previous opponents.

Whale hunting began 5,000 years ago in South America, a millennium earlier than previously thought

The study shows that groups in the region of Babitonga Bay (Santa Catarina) who built sambaquis—monumental shell mounds built by Holocene societies along the coast of Brazil—developed specialized technologies for hunting large whales long before earlier archaeological research had suggested.

Most Alzheimer’s cases linked to variants in a single gene

Potentially more than 90% of Alzheimer’s disease cases would not occur without the contribution of a single gene (APOE), according to a new analysis led by UCL researchers.

What past global warming reveals about future rainfall

To understand how global warming could influence future climate, scientists look to the Paleogene Period that began 66 million years ago, covering a time when Earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were two to four times higher than they are today.

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New Zealand’s rare flightless parrot begins breeding again

New Zealand’s critically endangered flightless parrot, the kakapo, started breeding last week for the first time in four years, the government conservation department said.

‘Motivation brake’ may explain why it’s so hard to get started on an unpleasant task

Most of us know the feeling: maybe it is making a difficult phone call, starting a report you fear will be criticized, or preparing a presentation that’s stressful just to think about. You understand what needs to be done, yet taking that very first step feels surprisingly hard.

Single-cell testing shows which antibiotics actually kill bacteria, not just stop growth

Drugs that act against bacteria are mainly assessed based on how well they inhibit bacterial growth under laboratory conditions. A critical factor, however, is whether the active substances actually kill the pathogens in the body.

The ‘Age of Fishes’ began with mass death, fossil database reveals

Some 445 million years ago, life on Earth was forever changed. During the geological blink of an eye, glaciers formed over the supercontinent Gondwana, drying out many of the vast, shallow seas like a sponge and giving an “icehouse climate” that, together with radically changed ocean chemistry, ultimately caused the extinction of about 85% of all marine species—the majority of life on Earth.

AI data centers could stabilize the power grid

The rapid development and widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems is posing new challenges for electricity consumption.

Scientists tried to break Einstein’s speed of light rule

In 1887, a landmark experiment reshaped our understanding of the universe. American physicists Albert Michelson and Edward Morley attempted to detect Earth’s motion through space by comparing how fast light traveled along different directions. Their experiment found no difference at all.

AI Models Are Starting to Learn by Asking Themselves Questions

An AI model that learns without human input—by posing interesting queries for itself—might point the way to superintelligence.

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The golden age of vaccine development

In 1796, when Edward Jenner developed the first vaccine, against the smallpox virus, no one knew what viruses were, let alone connected them to diseases. His concept worked because of the good fortune that cowpox infections provided cross protection1 against smallpox. It would take almost a century to work out how to develop vaccines against other diseases.