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Science News

Latest science news, discoveries and scientific developments.

'Zombie cells' may drive aging, and scientists are devising new ways to get rid of them
Science News

'Zombie cells' may drive aging, and scientists are devising new ways to get rid of them

Emerging treatments aim to reverse or stall signs of aging in the body and thus cut the risk of age-related diseases. One of those signs is an accumulation of "zombie cells" — damaged cells that spew harmful substances rather than dying off and getting cleared away by the immune system. Some scientists are designing treatments aimed at killing those zombies directly. But what if we instead helped the body's cleanup crew get rid of them?"I think rejuvenating the immune system could rectify a lot of problems," said Roel de Maeyer, an immunologist at the University of Oxford. "We know hospitals are full of older people suffering from infections that younger people don't need to go to [the] hosp...

📅 2026-10-07 10:00:00    •    Live Science
Woman 'saw dead people' and fired a gun at them after taking too many aspirin
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Woman 'saw dead people' and fired a gun at them after taking too many aspirin

The patient: A 65-year-old woman in MichiganThe symptoms: The woman arrived at the emergency room via ambulance and asked to see a psychiatrist for her visual hallucinations. "I'm seeing dead people," she told clinicians, adding that she'd even fired a gun at her hallucinations in one instance, according to a report of her case. (The report does not describe what the hallucinations looked like.)Despite this reaction to her hallucinations, she was calm and alert during her physical exam, with normal vital signs other than high blood pressure. She reported a history of high blood pressure, diabetes, heart failure and chronic back pain but no prior psychiatric history.What happened next: Since ...

📅 2026-10-07 10:00:00    •    Live Science
Scientists reprogram immune cells inside the body to fight cancer
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Scientists reprogram immune cells inside the body to fight cancer

Scientists at UC San Francisco have developed a way to create cancer-fighting CAR-T cells directly inside the body, potentially avoiding the slow and extremely expensive process of removing, engineering, and reinfusing a patient’s immune cells. Using a two-particle delivery system, the researchers sent CRISPR gene-editing tools and new cancer-targeting DNA specifically into T cells, where the DNA was inserted at a precise location in the genome.

📅 2026-10-07 09:50:16    •    ScienceDaily
Amazon wildfires are generating ozone that weakens surviving trees' carbon uptake
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Amazon wildfires are generating ozone that weakens surviving trees' carbon uptake

Ozone pollution caused by Amazon wildfires is significantly reducing the rainforest's ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, new research reveals. Ground-level ozone is formed when pollutants from sources such as wildfires react in the presence of sunlight. This harms human health and interferes with plants' ability to absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere.

📅 2026-10-07 09:00:01    •    Phys.org
Roboticists showcase tiny, frog-like robot that can hop across wet surfaces and swim
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Roboticists showcase tiny, frog-like robot that can hop across wet surfaces and swim

The animal kingdom has influenced several robot designs over the years to solve fundamental challenges in propulsion and movement — from horses to insects. Now, frogs are the latest creatures to inspire roboticists. As seen in a new study published Sept. 18 in the journal Science Advances, researchers probed how twisting bent elastic rods could produce a "snapping motion" that enabled a small robot to hop or swim. This mechanism could be used to improve robots with limited power and ones that need to traverse rough terrain and even water, the scientists said in the study. They also built a prototype to demonstrate the work. The palm-sized robot weighs just 3.4 ounces, or about as much as a d...

📅 2026-10-07 09:00:00    •    Live Science
Petal 'windows' affect the abundance of microbes within flowers
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Petal 'windows' affect the abundance of microbes within flowers

Some flowers have petals with small semitranslucent sections. Research in New Phytologist reveals that these "windows" alter the amount of light and heat entering the flower and create conditions that influence microbial abundance.

📅 2026-10-07 07:10:18    •    Phys.org
Biodegradable nanoparticle technology may improve agricultural production
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Biodegradable nanoparticle technology may improve agricultural production

Farmers use a manufactured version of a natural plant hormone called gibberellic acid to improve the health and growth of crops, but it is highly sensitive to heat and light. A study in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture shows that loading gibberellic acid into biodegradable nanoparticles can improve grape yield and quality, making it a promising and environmentally friendly approach for sustainable agricultural production.

📅 2026-10-07 07:10:14    •    Phys.org
Fierce lobbying in EU over 'forever chemicals'
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Fierce lobbying in EU over 'forever chemicals'

The European Union is under pressure to ban "forever chemicals," but a battle is heating up in Brussels over the toxic substances known as PFAS, with industry groups seeking as many exemptions as possible.

📅 2026-10-07 06:28:50    •    Phys.org
The world's oyster reefs could add $12 trillion to planetary health each year—if they were better managed
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The world's oyster reefs could add $12 trillion to planetary health each year—if they were better managed

A new study shows that the world's oyster reefs are a precious resource that's vastly underestimated and underutilized. The authors set out to calculate the reefs' potential gross ecosystem product (GEP), the ecological counterpart of the gross economic product, and arrived at trillions of dollars in ecosystem goods and services delivered each year to different aspects of planetary health, including human well-being. But for their full potential to be realized, oyster reefs around the world will need to be restored and protected.

📅 2026-10-07 04:00:01    •    Phys.org
A new way to fight gum disease without wiping out good bacteria
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A new way to fight gum disease without wiping out good bacteria

Scientists discovered that disrupting the chemical messages bacteria use to communicate can push dental plaque toward a healthier microbial balance. The approach could lead to new treatments for gum disease that control harmful bacteria without destroying beneficial species.

📅 2026-10-07 03:55:00    •    ScienceDaily
Humans may not be as hardwired for violence as we thought
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Humans may not be as hardwired for violence as we thought

A study comparing 100 primate species, including humans, suggests that everyday aggression and lethal violence did not evolve as part of the same simple behavioral spectrum. Species that frequently fight or show mild aggression are not necessarily more likely to kill rivals, while extreme acts such as infanticide and lethal attacks appear to follow their own evolutionary patterns.

📅 2026-10-07 03:22:55    •    ScienceDaily
Animals may have evolved 200 million years earlier than we thought
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Animals may have evolved 200 million years earlier than we thought

New research suggests animals could have evolved as early as 800 to 700 million years ago, roughly 200 million years earlier than some previous estimates. If so, the first animals may have lived before or during Snowball Earth, leaving behind little trace because their soft bodies were rarely preserved.

📅 2026-10-07 02:29:56    •    ScienceDaily
What happens in the brain when cannabis makes you anxious?
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What happens in the brain when cannabis makes you anxious?

Cannabinoids may intensify anxiety by removing a natural brake on specific neurons in the brain’s fear center, particularly during stressful situations. In mice, shutting down those neurons sharply reduced cannabinoid-related anxious behavior.

📅 2026-10-07 01:26:07    •    ScienceDaily
Nobel winner Halzen says years of October 'misery' finally over
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Nobel winner Halzen says years of October 'misery' finally over

Physicist Francis Halzen has an impressively long list of academic accolades—but every October, as the Nobel Prize rolled around, his failure to bag the biggest award of them all left him "miserable," he admits.

📅 2026-10-07 01:00:01    •    Phys.org
Computer scientist tracks satellites with automated observatory built from off-the-shelf technology
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Computer scientist tracks satellites with automated observatory built from off-the-shelf technology

Allen Schnibben's interest in space started when he was a child. "I picked up some books about the solar system when I was in elementary school. In middle school, I got a telescope and I started observing the night sky as a hobby," said Schnibben, a computer scientist at Sandia National Laboratories. "My entire life, I've had an interest in space." Now, Schnibben collects data on satellites at Sandia's SOHBRIT facility, a 12-foot-wide (3.7-meter-wide) observatory.

📅 2026-10-07 00:20:01    •    Phys.org