Bald dudes, you may want to cancel those tickets to Turkey, because an oral hair loss drug deep into clinical trials has generated positive results in over 500 balding men. According to a new study released by pharmaceutical company Veradermics, their shiny new daily pill could soon save your increasingly exposed scalp.

The experimental drug called VDPHL01 just went through a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 3 trial involving 536 men with mild-to-moderate male pattern baldness. They spent six months taking an 8.5 milligram pill once or twice a day, or taking a placebo. The guys taking the daily pill sprouted nearly 29 more hairs per square centimeter, while the twice-a-day overachievers birthed over 36 extra hairs. Placebo guys grew six lonely hairs.

Scientists Just Tested a New Hair Loss Pill, and the Results Are Pretty Impressive

Nearly 85 percent of the two-a-day crowd reported visible improvements in the mirror, compared to 15 percent of placebo takers who probably would’ve had better luck filling their vision boards with pictures of John Stamos’s head. No serious side effects reported.

The secret here is no secret at all, actually: minoxidil, the blood pressure medication that someone long ago noticed spurred hair growth as a side effect. Now, it’s one of the first lines of defense for men attempting to stem the tide of hair loss. For a while there, doctors prescribed it in a topical form, but it recently gained popularity as a pill.

Veradermics is hoping VDPHL01 becomes the first officially FDA-approved oral minoxidil specifically formulated to resurrect dead hair follicles. The company is currently running extended trials to track long-term safety over a full year, while launching a Phase 3 trial for women dealing with pattern baldness.

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Earth went through its famous Ice Age, the one adapted into those beloved animated films that captured the era’s kid-friendly hijinks. But what you didn’t know is that we almost had a sequel to the Ice Age. 2,000 years ago, according to new research published in Science, we were set to begin a brand-new era of cold, but then humanity’s industrialization kicked into high gear and called it all off.

Evidence of this aborted Ice Age was found atop Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic at the Barnes Ice, a remnant of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Barnes is frozen solid down to its bedrock, which preserved a lot of the ancient moss that was killed when the ice expanded, creating a well-preserved timeline.

A New Study Suggests Humanity Interrupted Earth’s Natural Cooling Cycle

Columbia University paleoclimatologist Nicolás Young and his team carbon-dated these old mosses and examined the buildup of a form of beryllium on rocks to get a sense of when it was exposed to cosmic rays and the atmosphere. They found that the Laurentide reached its smallest footprint roughly 3600 years ago before expanding yet again about 2000 years ago. Less solar radiation in the high northern latitudes overpowered atmospheric carbon dioxide, and with that, the Earth’s next ice age was in motion.

And then the 1960s happened. Industrial greenhouse gas emissions got so intense that we effectively killed that oncoming ice age dead in its tracks. The ice cap’s mass started dwindling, and summer melts started outpacing winter snows. Some people might hear that and breathe a sigh of relief, and maybe be a little thankful for industrialization for saving us from a the day after tomorrow style scenario.

But scientists say that messing with a cycle that was millions of years old could end up having some nasty ramifications way down the line.

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As you get older, your body gets weirder, malfunctioning in some awfully creative, uniquely torturous ways, like how those with a prostate will have to wake up a few times a night to dribble out an obnoxiously small amount of pee. This is because the prostate commonly enlarges in men as they age, though why it does so when cancer isn’t involved has been a little bit of a mystery.

A research team from Johns Hopkins University, publishing their findings in the Journal of Pathology, may have found an answer.

Doctors knew that benign prostatic hyperplasia starts in one specific part of the organ: the transition area around the urethra. Why that tiny ring of tissue suddenly started pumping out extra cells out of nowhere while the rest of the gland kept on doing its thing wasn’t well understood.

By running single-cell RNA sequencing on around 130,000 individual prostate cells, the researchers discovered a brand-new subtype of basal epithelial cells called WIF1+ (which, written out, looks like an improved form of Wi-Fi), and it’s that cell that might be why you have to bleary-eyed shuffle to the bathroom at one, three, and five in the morning.

Your Prostate’s WIF1+ Cells Are Betraying You

The prostate is broken up into several distinct areas, but these WIF1+ cells are holed up almost exclusively in the transition zone. Tissue samples taken from men with enlarged prostates showed a huge surge in these cells, promoting tissue growth and cellular remodeling that puts your urethra in a chokehold, thus explaining why only a little bit of pee comes out at a time.

As obnoxious as that sounds, that might be why the transition zone rarely gets hit with prostate cancer, as these cells might actively dampen local inflammation and tweak specific growth signaling pathways.

There’s some more research to be done to prove direct causation, but if this finding proves true, it will go a long way in identifying a clear target for future drug therapies, thus giving a glimmer of hope to men who just want to sleep without having to drain a leaky hose a few times a night.

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As the world teeters on ecological collapse, it’s occasionally nice to hear that an animal that was once thought to have gone extinct was just really good at hiding. Take the Bangka slow loris, an extremely slow primate that lives in trees and is also venomous.

For years, it had been considered critically endangered, maybe even fully extinct, as the last time any scientific team saw one was back in the 1930s. But it’s back, and according to new research published in Spixiana, there are at least 90 of them hanging out on the island of Bangka, off the southern coast of Sumatra.

Scientists thought this nocturnal tree-dweller was gone, but local residents and Indonesia’s Alobi Wildlife Rescue Center knew better. They’d been looking into the loris’ gigantic glassy eyes for about a decade, as Alobi workers had been spotting the loris since about 2015. As researchers assumed these slow-footed creatures had been lost to time, they’d actually been hanging out in backyards and getting nearly hit by cars. What the neighborhood cats and raccoons are to your neck of the woods, the slow loris was to Bangka.

Toxic Armpits and Secondary Tongues

“Slow” isn’t just a nickname. It’s a pretty good description of the creature’s whole demeanor. You’d think it would make them a great snack for predators, but that’s where its venomous qualities come into play. It secretes a toxin from armpit glands that it licks to mix it with its saliva and then delivers a venomous bite capable of putting a grown human into anaphylactic shock. It’s also got a specialized “toothcomb” for gouging bark and a secondary tongue underneath its main tongue that it uses to clean the toothcomb.

The species evaded scientific detection for nearly a century even though it’s only about an hour away from Jakarta. As for why researchers assumed it had gone extinct, it’s the usual explanation: the man-made horrors of obliterating its habitat to mine tin and to plant palm oil plantations so your chocolate bar is smooth and creamy.

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Apparently, this year, two anonymous federal agents briefly observed a mysterious matte black triangular object flying through the air. Another colleague had informed them of its presence. They were based in a redacted location in the western United States, dubbed a “national security site.” The dark triangle of their focus ascended, hovered, then sped away into a canyon.

The unsettling, smooth craft resembled a delta-wing drone and boasted a wingspan of between nine and 15 ft. It made no noise and left no trail behind it, but it showed up on an infrared monocular. The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office recorded the occurrence in a memo and a signed statement the experienced military observers gave to the FBI.

Everything We Know About the Mysterious Black Triangle UFO in the Pentagon’s Latest Files

The Pentagon made this sighting public in a recent release containing 28 PDFs. This amounted to the seventh release of its kind under an executive order mandating the disclosure of UAP, or “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” files. There has been no shortage of alleged UAP, or UFO, spottings lately. A pressing question, of course, remains whether some of these objects are the product of a hostile nation’s intelligence.

Extraterrestrials have quite clearly been a trending topic. Steven Spielberg’s recent June unveiling of the alien-themed Disclosure Day sparked controversy, with some claiming that it might have been “cursed.” The theory that UFOs are “Devil[s] in Disguise,” attempting to deceive us, has been gaining traction. Even Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke has expressed the belief that these manifestations are actually of demonic origin.

In any case, while further investigation of supposed UFO appearances is indeed necessary, we must not let the hype distract us from other matters that also require more exploration. Since the government has just demonstrated what seems to be admirable transparency, we might now continue to politely request the release of files on other matters…

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Every time I leave the nail salon with a fresh manicure, I definitely feel a little boost in my self-esteem. You just hold up your hands and admire how cute they look all day.

Other people are checking out your nails, too. In a study, researchers Sara DeMichele and T. Joel Wade of Bucknell University showed 342 adults illustrations of hands that looked identical except for the nails. Participants rated each one on a scale of 0 to 7 for attractiveness, along with how desirable they thought the person would be as a romantic partner.

Medium-length nails were the clear favorite, scoring 5.1 for attractiveness compared with 3.2 for short nails and 2.5 for long ones. Researchers think medium nails suggest someone takes care of themselves without making everyday tasks unnecessarily difficult. Like struggling to open a can of soda with long acrylic nails. 

Scientists Just Found the Most Attractive Nail Length and Color

White nails came out on top in the color department, earning a 4.6 attractiveness rating, with red following at 3.8. Blue and black didn’t do so well, scoring 2.5 and 2.3. The researchers suspect white polish gives people the impression that someone takes care of their appearance. But among non-heterosexual participants, black was actually the favorite.

The fact that red didn’t score higher caught researchers off guard. “One finding that surprised our team was the relatively lower attractiveness ratings associated with red nails,” DeMichele told PsyPost. After all, red has a long history of being considered sexy, and a 2008 study even found that men rated women as more attractive when red was involved. Other researchers have since had trouble replicating those results, so the whole red-attraction theory is still up for debate.

Of course, we can only conclude so much from pictures of illustrated hands. The participants were mostly White Western adults, and the researchers didn’t examine different nail shapes or elaborate designs. So if you’re devoted to your long stiletto nails or black manicures, there’s no scientific reason to abandon them.

DeMichele has also been looking into how getting your nails done affects your own confidence. Her early research suggests that certain nail lengths and colors might give people a little self-esteem boost, although those findings haven’t been published yet.

As for me, I’m going to keep getting my nails done because I like them. If someone else thinks they’re attractive, that’s a nice bonus.

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When you hug, hold, squeeze, and pet your cat, you’re probably vaguely aware, maybe just in the back of your mind, that you’re actively trying to improve your quality of life by engaging in a pleasant activity. But something might be happening on a deeper, hormonal level that boosts not only your mood but your cat’s, too.

According to research published in iScience by a Kyoto University team, previous studies on whether cats actually make our lives better have been a bit of a mixed bag. There’s enough science to strongly suggest that dogs offer health benefits that stick around for quite a while. But research on cats’ health benefits, like the animals themselves, is complicated and inconsistent.

To figure out why cat ownership’s perks are harder to pin down, the researchers tracked 19 human and cat pairs for a month using Bluetooth tracking beacons and urine samples to check in on any biological effects.

Your Cat’s Brain Chemistry Could Be Affecting Your Mood, New Research Suggests

They found that simply owning a cat doesn’t magically turn your brain into a blissful utopia. But something fascinating is happening, and you need to be in close physical proximity to your cat to reap the benefits.

The study found a direct hormonal link between humans and cats: higher oxytocin in cats correlated with lower cortisol and fewer negative vibes in humans. Oxytocin is the hormone associated with bonding, and cortisol is the hormone that triggers stress.

In other words, the more your cat feels your bond, the less stress you’ll feel in turn. The researchers found such a close connection between the two that a cat’s oxytocin levels tracked an owner’s bad mood more closely than the owner’s own biochemistry did.

This is, of course, a good example of small-sample-size theater, and it all amounts to correlation rather than causation, but excuse me for snuggling your kitty just a little bit more tightly tonight.

The post Why Spending Time With Your Cat Feels So Good, According to Science appeared first on VICE.

Paleontology has been on a real Neanderthal tear lately, with all sorts of discoveries about how our ancient ancestors lived. Today, we learned a new factoid from a preprint study on ResearchSquare, published by researchers and found by IFLScience: Neanderthals loved eating beaver.

Okay, cool it, you pervs. I mean literal beaver, and marmots, too.

We’ve long known our extinct cousins were capable hunters. They could bring down towering woolly mammoths and small little rabbits. But new evidence suggests one of their favorite snacks was medium-sized rodents.

Neanderthals Apparently Loved Eating Beaver, According to New Research

At the Valdegoba Cave in northern Spain, researchers uncovered hundreds of 130,000-year-old Eurasian beaver and alpine marmot bones, along with stone tools and Neanderthal fossils. A lot of the bones had tooth marks likely made by opportunistic scavenger animals like foxes and wolves.

Some distinctly Neanderthal marks are mixed in as well, like cut marks on some bones that strongly suggest the work of a skilled butcher, or, to use the study’s more precise, fascinating word choice, “defleshing” and “disarticulation.” Never have I come across a more sociopathic word choice than “defleshing.”

The Neanderthals were munching on beaver, but it wasn’t a usual staple of their diet. Given how many of the bones they found showed signs of human processing, beaver meat was more of a quick fix, a snack they could go to in a pinch, when more substantial meals weren’t available. Beavers and marmots were to Neanderthals as the peanut butter and jelly sandwich is to modern humans.

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Monkeys, they’re just like us! Yes, we share a ton of genes, but socially, researchers recently found monkeys from groups that lived through a deadly outbreak became much more wary of tainted food afterward. Now you’re starting to see why Taco Bell is still trying to recover from that tainted lettuce scare.

As The New York Times described them, they’re basically “germaphobe monkeys,” an apt nickname for the Japanese macaques observed in a study published in Royal Society Open Science.

When a virus tore through a South Texas macaque sanctuary, three out of four monkey groups watched their neighbors suffer and die from a disease spread through bites and scratches. Once the epidemic faded, cognitive scientists from the University of California, San Diego set up an experiment, the results of which they detailed in a press release.

Offered they macaques two food choices, food on a clean surface versus food on a board covered in feces.

Scientists Discovered That Monkeys Become Germaphobes After Surviving a Deadly Outbreak

That’s an easy choice for you, but for the macaques, a little s—t on their food isn’t usually a deal breaker. Monkeys that hadn’t been exposed to the virus happily eat the poop-covered food 79 percent of the time. But macaques from groups that survived the outbreak and witnessed its horrors only ate the poop-covered food 47 percent of the time.

Sure, if you knew someone who ate poop-covered food 47 percent of the time, you would think they were deranged. But again, these are monkeys, and 47 percent is crazy low.

What’s so fascinating here, and what’s so weirdly human about this phenomenon, is that the initial virus that wiped out so many of the monkeys wasn’t transmitted through food at all, and yet, like so many of us in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic who were furiously scrubbing down groceries in hopes of eliminating all traces of what would ultimately turn out to be an airborne virus, the monkeys that survived the outbreak turned into hypochondriac neat freaks, and justifiably so. They had undergone a severe trauma, and they were mitigating potential vectors of infection.

The researchers say that the psychological defense mechanism stems from something called the “behavioral immune system,” which triggers disgust in the brain to ward off perceived threats. When we went through a global pandemic that shut down the world, we went apes—t with the hand sanitizer. After the macaques went through their own tiny version of a pandemic, their sense of security was on high alert based on past trauma.

Strongly suggesting that avoidance of potentially disease-ridden stuff is a learned social behavior, potentially handed down from mother to baby, the researchers found that former pets and lab-reared monkeys were more willing to eat the dirty food. Poor things. They never had a mama to teach them not to eat food covered in poop.

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Reincarnation doesn’t seem like it’s a supernatural phenomenon that’s going to be definitively proven anytime soon with scientific research or study of any kind. But the descriptions in people’s reports of memories of past lives can be studied, and recently were. A study published in Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice that peered into 1,600 stories of reincarnation found a weird recurring pattern in the tales.

Researchers at the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies went through an extensive archive of over 1,600 cases where kids allegedly recalled the life of a specific, identifiable dead person.

First, let’s define a term: Intermission Time, which is the kind of temporal waiting period between a person dying and getting recycled back into a newborn baby. That time, according to the pattern uncovered by the researchers, is roughly 16 months among the cases that actually had a timetable attached to them.

People Who Died Suddenly or Violently Were Reportedly Reincarnated Faster, Study Finds

There were some exceptions that also yielded some fascinating patterns. Whenever a person died a sudden, unexpected death, or if it was violent, their soul was apparently moved further up the respawn queue, taking only 12 months to reincarnate, a 40 percent reduction compared to people who had died slowly from natural causes.

Lead author Saeedeh Sadeghi and her team tested for every logical explanation imaginable, trying to find some connective thread that can explain why so many of these very specific timelines are cropping up.

Things like parental involvement or religious beliefs or maybe some lightly shared cultural folklore might help explain… Some aspect of this. It didn’t. Researchers admit they don’t really know how to explain any of this. They admit that the accelerated rebirth pattern among people who died unexpectedly was even stronger in families whose religions didn’t believe in reincarnation.

None of this is definitive proof of an afterlife or of reincarnation. It’s more likely that all of this could be chalked up to coincidence, a statistical quirk. But it is a weird correlation that’s difficult to explain, and may never have a neat and tidy explanation. But, hey, feel free to use this as the basis of your next horror novel. It seems ripe for spooky supernatural narratives.

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Elder millennials were technically alive the last time Halley’s Comet came around, though most of us were still learning to walk. And it won’t officially be back until 2061. 

But there’s a way to see pieces of it this week. NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke suggested something for anyone who doesn’t want to wait another 35 years. “For those who haven’t seen Comet Halley, if you don’t want to wait for its return, you can at least go out and see the Orionids,” he told CNN. This year’s Orionid meteor shower peaks tonight, Wednesday, Oct. 21, into Thursday morning.

Every October, Earth passes through a trail of dust and rock left behind by Halley’s Comet. Those particles burn up in our atmosphere, giving us the Orionids. The same comet debris also produces the Eta Aquariids meteor shower in May. Meanwhile, Halley’s Comet is out near Neptune’s orbit, absolutely nowhere near us.

And these things freaking move. Orionid meteors enter Earth’s atmosphere at around 41 miles per second, making them some of the fastest meteors we can see. They can produce bright streaks, the occasional fireball, and glowing trails that hang around for a few seconds afterward.

A Meteor Shower Made From Halley’s Comet Is Peaking Tonight. Here’s When to Look Up.

Unfortunately, the moon isn’t doing anyone any favors this year. A bright waxing gibbous moon will wash out many fainter meteors on Wednesday night. According to NASA, your best chance comes after it sets around 3 a.m. local time. Under ideal conditions, the Orionids can produce 10 to 20 meteors per hour, although people in suburban areas will probably see closer to three to six.

If you’re going to watch, find somewhere away from city lights and give your eyes time to adjust. Bring a blanket and something comfy to sit on, especially if you’ll be out there a while. You won’t need a telescope, and there’s no reason to stare directly at Orion. The meteors can appear anywhere in the sky.

Fun fact: Mark Twain had an interesting connection to Halley’s Comet. He was born in 1835, the year it passed, and predicted he’d die when it returned. In 1909, he wrote, “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.” He died on April 21, 1910, one day after the comet reached its closest point to the Sun.

If you’re willing to get out of bed at 3 a.m., you might catch a few pieces of the same comet. At least you won’t have to wait another 35 years.

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Earth’s core is leaking, and it has been for a long time.

Earth’s core, frankly, sounds insane. It’s a molten ball covered in a lava ocean that spews lethal gases and occasionally ejects some of itself through volcanoes. It used to be so wild that the planet was uninhabitable, but it eventually settled down enough for humans to exist on it.

According to a study in Science Advances by researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China, that core is constantly oozing chemical leftovers from the birth of our Solar System. For years, scientists have debated whether these weird deep-Earth ingredients get trapped in the mantle when the planet first cooled, or whether Earth’s core is slowly leaking material into the outer layers.

The Center of Earth Is Leaking Ancient Material, and Scientists Are Trying to Understand Why

To figure it out, scientists used computer simulations to model how hydrogen moves. Like sodas or cigarettes, hydrogen comes in a “light” version and a “heavy” version. The heavy one is called deuterium. If early Earth froze, the heavy and light versions would be mixed pretty evenly everywhere. But when scientists look at lava from volcanic hotspots in Iceland and Baffin Island, they find way more of the superlight version of hydrogen.

This means that the original cooling process couldn’t have caused this current setup. Instead, light hydrogen trapped in the planet’s metal core billions of years ago, when the Sun was forming, is actively leaking into the mantle like air from a punctured tire.

This light hydrogen, along with ancient helium and tungsten, rides hot lava streams to the planet’s surface, meaning that for the past several billion years ancient gases trapped in Earth’s core have been slowly burping their way out.

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Other than having a living plesiosaur in front of you, you probably won’t get much closer to the creature than by finding some of its bones, but maybe some of its bodily excretions would help you learn what was going on in its now-missing digestive tract. But how do you even come across the, let’s say, puke of a creature that’s been dead for tens of millions of years?

According to new research published in Geological Magazine by geologist Dirk Knaust, oil crews drilling off the Norwegian coast accidentally hauled up 160-million-year-old plesiosaur puke from deep underwater rock cores dating to the Jurassic period.

Samples range from walnut-sized to mango-sized, just in case you never want to look at those foods in the same way again.

160-Million-Year-Old Vomit Could Reveal How Prehistoric Sea Monsters Ate

Plesiosaurs were long-necked aquatic sea monsters that measured 13 to 26 feet long and looked almost exactly like you’d imagine the Loch Ness monster. When the researchers found the fossilized vomit, I didn’t immediately assume it belonged to a Jurassic creature. It could’ve been fossilized poop or maybe storm debris. Maybe it belonged to a fish or squid? But no, because they can’t cough up chunks this big.

If it was a prehistoric shark or a crocodile, they probably would’ve found some fish in there. With all other possibilities ruled out, Cryptoclididae plesiosaurs were the last possibility remaining.

These massive reptiles moved along the deep seafloor using their long necks like vacuum cleaners to scoop up bottom-dwelling invertebrates. Their teeth weren’t strong enough to grind shells, so their stomachs compacted the indigestible stuff into gross pellets they later vomited up.

But what I find most interesting is that plesiosaurs didn’t just puke wherever they swam. Scientists found the items they barfed up in what used to be shallow ancient river deltas. So, like fur seals or marine crocodiles after a big meal, these ancient aquatic beasts probably swam into safe coastal waters to chill out for a bit, eventually puking their meals into the mud before napping and heading back out to sea.

Now that’s livin’.

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In 1873, an Argentine sailor named Luis Piedra Buena loaded a crew onto a ship called the Espora and headed toward the Strait of Le Maire, a rough stretch of ocean near Patagonia known for tearing hulls to smithereens. He risked his crew’s lives for the noble quest of murdering a bunch of penguins to harvest their grease for oil.

Somewhere along the way, the ship wrecked near Isla de los Estados. Piedra Buena and his crew suddenly became castaways, struggling to survive on unfamiliar shores. The Penguins, having no idea they came this close to being scooped up and turned into lamp oil or whatever, still don’t care about humanity’s plight.

Eventually, the crew slapped together a makeshift sailboat and made it to Chile. The penguins kept on doing their thing.

Archaeologists May Have Found the Lost Shipwreck of 19th-Century Penguin Hunters

Now, according to a study published in the journal Antiquity and reported by IFLScience, archaeologists searching around Franklin Bay have uncovered the ruined wooden ribs of a 19th-century ship, along with a crude castaway camp on a nearby hillside.

The researchers dug up salvaged ship parts, including whole timbers and a deck prism, and found a smattering of distinctly human clutter—glass bottles, buttons, beads, and tools. While this belongs to Piedra Buena and his crew, the most logical explanation, the researchers aren’t claiming that just yet, just to be safe.

There’s more testing to be done, but it’s hard to deny that the location and all the artifacts combined heavily suggest that there may have been a bunch of stranded penguin hunters who may have ripped their ship to shreds to fashion it into an improvised boat that could possibly, maybe, get them to Chile.

Hypothetically.

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Thanks to a team of heroes, a southern ground hornbill, belonging to Amsterdam’s Artis Zoo, is now flourishing with a brand-new prosthetic beak. The bird received two 3D-printed prostheses, as both the upper and lower portions of his natural beak were broken. In a press statement, Artis penned that, while other birds have been the happy recipients of prosthetic beaks, “As far as is known, this is the first time in the world both parts of a bird’s beak have been restored in this way.”

While the young bird of honor valiantly managed to persist adequately enough in his everyday life prior to the surgery, the zoo confirmed that his behavior was restricted, and he couldn’t care for himself all that well. Obviously, the southern ground hornbill relies on its beak for purposes as preening and foraging, thus he had trouble picking up certain pieces of food.

Fortunately, the bird began using his new beak the very same day it was attached. Before continuing with the article, you can see below that the heartwarming medical miracle means that he’s already back to grossing some of us out by preying on mice.

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This Bird Got a Brand-New 3D-Printed Beak, and He’s Already Putting It to Work

The life-altering procedure was performed by Artis, Utrecht University, UMC Utrecht, and Amnovis. The artificial beak was developed with the help of a CT scan and preserved sections of the bird’s original beak. Both plastic and titanium elements were incorporated. The NY Post adorably applauded the “im-peck-able performance.”

Of course, Artis is keeping an eye both on the bird and his female partner in order to make sure that all continues to go swimmingly, though they are prepared to step in if any issues occur.

Now, watch the complex procedure for yourself! Warning: Although it’s unbelievable, it just might be a bit disturbing for animal lovers to see the anesthetized bird.

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The post WATCH: Scientists Gave an Injured Bird a Second Chance With Two 3D-Printed Beak Prosthetics appeared first on VICE.

Have you noticed that healthy eating doesn’t always leave you feeling full of those vitamins and minerals that translate into energy and glowing skin? According to a report from Deep Science Ventures, many fruits and vegetables available for purchase are half as nutritious as they were 60 years ago.

Thus, consumers often have to eat twice as much to receive the same levels of minerals as magnesium, potassium, and copper. The 20-50% drop in key nutrients and minerals extends to other crops like wheat and foods in general. Your breads won’t have the same iron, zinc, and magnesium that your grandparents’ loaves had in the 1960s. It is no wonder that so many of us suffer from micronutrient deficiencies.

Declining soil quality is a key factor to blame. Also, as global demand has increased, the focus on high-yield crop varieties and farming practices hasn’t always been conducive to health. In addition, you might have noticed during your last trip to (even to a supposedly upscale) grocery store that many of the products felt and looked as though they had been stored for ages. We are all moreover aware of the horrors of genetically modified foods, and now there are all the fears surrounding lab-grown options.

A New Report Suggests Some Foods Have Lost Up to Half Their Nutritional Value

It can be difficult to tell which of our healthy habits need improvement these days. For example, even our berries can seem like little carcinogens: Driscoll’s CEO stepped down at the end of August amid complaints about pesticides. With all the causes for paranoia, even concerning supposedly organic foods, my admiration grows for those among us who rely upon themselves, opting for homesteading.

Obviously, farmers who use ethical practices should be supported. Yet, they often are not… Thus, our French farmer friends, for instance, have demonstrated their grievances by heading into town and spraying government buildings and more with manure — proof of their ingenuity.

The post Fruits and Veggies Are Less Nutritious Than They Were 60 Years Ago (And Scientists Don’t Know Why) appeared first on VICE.

You’ve probably seen it with your own eyes before, but a research team that published its findings in the journal Science says it noticed it at an epigenetic level: big dogs age faster. Chihuahuas, for as obnoxiously yappy as they are, seemed to last forever, while Great Danes, those big lovable galoots, give you about a decade before they cross the rainbow bridge.

Researchers at Arizona State University analyzing DNA from nearly 900 dogs in the Dog Aging Project finally know why big dogs don’t last as long. It all has to do with rogue “jumping genes.”

Scientists Say ‘Jumping Genes’ Could Explain Why Big Dogs Have Shorter Lives

Inside dog DNA, a specific class of “jumping” genes called LINE1s exists. Normally, a biological process called DNA methylation stamps chemical tags onto these genes to keep them locked down, but as big dogs age, that regulatory process falls apart and LINE1s start shaking loose, jumping between chromosomes, shredding DNA apart in the process, thus causing instability in the cells, triggering inflammation and cancer.

This happens to all dogs, but in big dogs it happens catastrophically and early. Giant breeds shed roughly 35 percent more LINE1 methylation per year than smaller dogs that fit in a purse.

Or, to put it less scientifically: there’s just too much dog for their bodies to keep up with. Humans specifically bred big dogs for their rapid growth, but that early growth leads to a genetic mess later in life, as their biological clocks essentially run twice as fast as a smaller dog’s.

The researchers think these out-of-control jumping genes could be a universal mammalian aging mechanism, and that learning more about them could eventually help us learn a little about ourselves, too, since dogs get a lot of the same age-related diseases that we do, largely because we share environments.

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Shark week has come and gone, but that doesn’t mean we can’t squeeze in a few more shark stories before the year is up.

According to a study published in Marine Biology and detailed by ScienceAlert, scientists analyzing thousands of drone flights off Australia’s east coast discovered that dozens of young scalloped hammerhead sharks are just chilling in the shallow waters right next to popular swimming beaches. The beachgoers are likely just a tiny bit more concerned about the hammerheads than the hammerheads are about the beachgoers.

While reviewing more than 20,000 drone flights for Queensland’s SharkSmart program, researcher Maddison Cross and her team spotted swarms of up to 100 juvenile hammerheads hanging out at tourist hot spots like Burleigh Beach and Noosa Main Beach. These are roughly three-and-a-half-foot-long teenagers.

Why Young Hammerhead Sharks Are Gathering Just off Popular Australian Beaches

The young aquatic predators cluster in shallow surf zones during Australia’s autumn months as scientists suspect that these coastal cluster hangout spots were kind of like a combination safe haven and food court for the sharks, allowing the juveniles to feed on prey that hang out at nearby reefs while offering protection via their safety-in-numbers approach.

Beachgoers are probably worried about shark attacks, but the sharks themselves were the ones in real danger, as these gathering spots overlap with Queensland’s shark control programs, which are often lethal. Shark nets and baited drum lines are responsible for killing over 600 scalloped hammerheads between 2000 and one in 2024; rather unfortunate considering that it’s a critically endangered species.  

Sharks generally mind their own business and will scatter if a human comes near, as evidenced by the fact that paddleboarders and snorkelers occasionally pass through these hang-out clusters, causing the groups to temporarily break up before reforming once the coast is clear, but if you’re planning on a trip down under to take in some of Australia’s gorgeous beaches, just know that there might be hundreds and hundreds of adolescent hammerhead sharks floating just beneath your feet.

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Over the past year or so, I’ve covered a lot of Neanderthal-related discoveries. The biggest takeaway from it all is that they weren’t too dissimilar from us, which is in itself a revelation given that for so long we made their very name synonymous with stupid and out of touch. A new study of Neanderthals published recently in Scientific Reports follows that trend of revealing the humanity of the Neanderthal, and it’s all thanks to a stabbing.

Researchers were looking at a 75,000-year-old partial skeleton nicknamed Shanidar A, named after where they found it, the Shanidar Cave in Iraq. It had a circular 15-millimeter puncture on the left shoulder blade. Speaking to Reuters, study lead author Dr. Emma Pomeroy of the University of Cambridge says that the fatal wound was likely caused by a downward thrust from a wooden spear that punched through the chest, into the lung, and through the heart before exiting the back.

Rough stuff. One could even call it distinctly Neanderthal behavior, assuming it was the result of some kind of clash among rivals, even though it could’ve just as easily been an accident.

This Neanderthal May Have Been Killed by a Spear. His Other Injuries Tell a Different Story.

The suggestion of a violent act also reveals a distinctly human, maybe even kind of touching reality upon closer examination: this Neanderthal experienced a degree of empathy. Not in the stabbing that punctured lungs and heart, but in other features. Shanidar A had severe but healed facial trauma that included a mouth of mangled teeth, an injury that the researchers theorize Shanidar A could’ve only survived with communal help since they probably couldn’t properly chew their food.

As Pomeroy said, “The pain would have been extreme, and basic needs like eating and drinking would have been difficult, perhaps meaning Shanidar A needed food mashing and being able to rest. It’s likely that Shanidar A did need some care from members of the group for ​some basic needs during recovery.”

Neanderthals had some real bad PR, but the more we find out about them, the more we realize they weren’t a bunch of stupid brutes that forgot to branch off into higher intelligence like the rest of us. They were violent, but they were also caring, and they knew how to keep their communities alive and thriving, even if, in time, Homo sapiens came out on top.

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The prospect of living on the moon is getting even more far-fetched by the day. For example, researchers published concerning findings in The Planetary Science Journal using data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, finding that the Moon is shrinking and covered in over 10,000 visible faults that trigger moonquakes.

Study author Thomas R. Watters, a scientist emeritus at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, found that our nighttime companion rock is basically shriveling up like an old grape. As its interior cools, the moon’s radius has contracted by about 148 feet over the past 400 to 800 million years. That is a very, very slow rate of contraction, about 0.1 micrometers a year, but the structural consequences are immense for anyone hoping to build a lunar dream home.

The Moon Is Slowly Shrinking, Triggering Thousands of Faults and Moonquakes

The Earth distributes 90 percent of the seismic activity along a neat network of tectonic plate boundaries. The Moon is surrounded by a giant, unbroken shell, so when the interior contracts and stress isn’t released along predictable boundaries, the shell cracks. Moonquakes can pop up anywhere, without warning, meaning you’ll never quite feel confident enough in your real estate selection.

This poses a theoretical threat to lunar colonization, but also a practical, very real threat to NASA’s Artemis missions, which had already identified potential landing spots that were sitting uncomfortably close to active fault zones. A tremor could trigger a landslide or damage mission infrastructure. The study offered a silver lining for anyone hoping to build lunar infrastructure one day: areas with the thickest crust had fewer faults, making them the safest places to set up camp.

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