Your Body Has Its Own Built-In Ozempic

January 25, 2024 4 min read Your Body Has Its Own Built-In Ozempic Popular weight-loss and diabetes drugs, such as Ozempic and Wegovy, target metabolic pathways that gut microbes and food molecules already play a key role in regulating By Christopher Damman & The Conversation US The following essay is reprinted with permission from The… Continue reading Your Body Has Its Own Built-In Ozempic

Babies Exposed to COVID in the Womb Are More Likely to Suffer Breathing Problems

More than four years after the virus that causes COVID first appeared, scientists continue to discover new ways that the illness threatens pregnant people and babies—as well as additional evidence that vaccination offers significant protection. A new study finds that babies born to women who got COVID while they were pregnant were three times more… Continue reading Babies Exposed to COVID in the Womb Are More Likely to Suffer Breathing Problems

A Quantum Trick Implied Eternal Stability. Now It’s Falling Apart.

For a true phase transition in one dimension, mathematicians had proved that two of these exponents must be greater than 2. But the MBL simulations had found them to be 1 — a major disagreement. In a still-unpublished preprint posted in 2015, Oganesyan and Chandran, together with Christopher Laumann of Boston University, showed that the… Continue reading A Quantum Trick Implied Eternal Stability. Now It’s Falling Apart.

‘Entropy Bagels’ and Other Complex Structures Emerge From Simple Rules

Repetition doesn’t always have to be humdrum. In mathematics, it is a powerful force, capable of generating bewildering complexity. Even after decades of study, mathematicians find themselves unable to answer questions about the repeated execution of very simple rules — the most basic “dynamical systems.” But in trying to do so, they have uncovered deep… Continue reading ‘Entropy Bagels’ and Other Complex Structures Emerge From Simple Rules

Robotic Dinosaur Tests How Dinos (and Birds) Got Wings

January 25, 2024 3 min read Robotic Dinosaur Tests How Dinos (and Birds) Got Wings Scientists built a robotic dinosaur to terrify grasshoppers, all in hopes of understanding how truly pathetic wings could offer prehistoric animals an evolutionary advantage By Meghan Bartels In any group, not everyone can be a fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex or a… Continue reading Robotic Dinosaur Tests How Dinos (and Birds) Got Wings

This Tiny Marsupial Gives Up Sleep for Sex, Then Drops Dead

January 25, 2024 3 min read The mouselike male antechinus goes all out for its first and final mating season By Jack Tamisiea Dusky antechinus marsupial on moss at Mount Wellington in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. During the breeding season, time is not on a male antechinus’s side. These carnivorous marsupials, which resemble a mousy shrew,… Continue reading This Tiny Marsupial Gives Up Sleep for Sex, Then Drops Dead

Maze Proof Establishes a ‘Backbone’ for Statistical Mechanics

Imagine that a grid of hexagons, honeycomb-like, stretches before you. Some hexagons are empty; others are filled by a 6-foot tall column of solid concrete. The result is a maze of sorts. For over half a century, mathematicians have posed questions about such randomly generated mazes. How big is the largest web of cleared paths?… Continue reading Maze Proof Establishes a ‘Backbone’ for Statistical Mechanics

Renewable Power Set to Surpass Coal Globally by 2025

CLIMATEWIRE | Global electricity demand will step up its rate of growth over the next three years — but the additional power use will be covered by low-emissions sources, according to a report released Wednesday by the International Energy Agency. The IEA’s Electricity 2024 report forecasts that renewable energy is set to overtake the world’s use of coal… Continue reading Renewable Power Set to Surpass Coal Globally by 2025

Lions Are Changing Their Hunting Strategy because of Ant Invasion

January 25, 2024 4 min read Big-headed ants are invading new territories in Kenya—and the consequences are rippling through the whole ecosystem, scientists have found By Meghan Bartels Young female (left) and male lions stalk prey within a “pristine” (uninvaded) savanna. The whistling-thorn trees in the foreground provide cover used by lions to stalk and… Continue reading Lions Are Changing Their Hunting Strategy because of Ant Invasion

64,000 Pregnancies Caused by Rape Have Occurred in States with a Total Abortion Ban, New Study Estimates

January 25, 2024 4 min read Researchers calculated the number of pregnancies resulting from rape in states where abortion was banned throughout pregnancy after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision By Tanya Lewis Abortion rights protesters rally outside of the Texas State Capital in 2022. A new study estimates the number of rape-related pregnancies in states with abortion… Continue reading 64,000 Pregnancies Caused by Rape Have Occurred in States with a Total Abortion Ban, New Study Estimates