Science

خلاصہ: Does Hurricane Melissa Show It’s Time for a Category 6 Designation?Hurricane Melissa’s powerful winds and drenching rains devastated Jamaica. But is its wrath a sign that we need a new designation for monster storms?Source InformationPublisher: Scientific AmericanOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: How a common immunosuppressive drug injures liver blood vesselsIn a human organoid-based mechanistic investigation, researchers revealed how an immunosuppressive drug, antithymocyte globulin (ATG), induces injury to blood vessels in the liver. According to the study, ATG first triggers rapid clotting through a complement activation system and later causes inflammation by activating the TGF-β pathway. This discovery explains why some patients experience severe liver-related side effects following organ transplantation, and the research may aid in the development of safer immunosuppressive regimens.Source InformationPublisher: Medical Xpress - latest medical and health news storiesOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: NASA moves Artemis 2 launch to March after hydrogen leak during testingNASA started making the final preparations for the Artemis 2 mission in early January, with the hopes of opening its launch window as soon as February 6. After issues showed up during the mission’s wet dress rehearsal in the early hours of February 3, however, the agency had to push back its earliest launch opportunity to March. “With more than three years between SLS launches, we fully anticipated encountering challenges. That is precisely why we conduct a wet dress rehearsal. These tests are designed to surface issues before flight and set up launch day with the highest probability of success,” NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said on X . During a wet dress rehearsal, the spacecraft to be used for a mission is loaded with propellants to simulate the actual preparations and countdown to liftoff. NASA explained that Artemis 2’s Space Launch System, which was already on the launch pad, suffered from a liquid hydrogen leak that its engineers spent hours troubleshooting. They were ultimately able to fill all the rocket’s tanks and started the countdown to launch. But with approximately five minutes left in the countdown, the ground launch sequencer automatically stopped due to a spike in the spacecraft’s liquid hydrogen leak rate. The agency admits that it has other issues to fix, based on what happened during the rehearsal. It has to make sure that the cold weather doesn’t affect the mission’s equipment during the actual launch in the same way it did in testing . The Orion crew module’s hatch pressurization process took longer than expected, and that should must not happen on launch day. NASA also has to troubleshoot the audio communication channels for its ground teams after they dropped several times during the rehearsal. Artemis’ ground crew will review data from the wet dress rehearsal and address the aforementioned problems. NASA then has to conduct another test to confirm that they were taken care of before announcing the mission’s launch window. NASA completed a wet dress rehearsal for the Artemis II mission in the early morning hours on Feb. 3. To allow teams to review data and conduct a second wet dress rehearsal, NASA will now target March as the the earliest possible launch opportunity for the Artemis II mission.… pic.twitter.com/jSnCUPLQb6 — NASA (@NASA) February 3, 2026 This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/nasa-moves-artemis-2-launch-to-march-after-hydrogen-leak-during-testing-140000351.html?src=rssSource InformationPublisher: EngadgetOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: MDGA2 gene malfunction removes brain's excitatory 'brake' to trigger severe epilepsy, study findsThe DGIST Center for Synapse Diversity and Specificity has identified MDGA2 as a novel causative gene for developmental and epileptic encephalopathy (DEE), a rare and intractable neurological disorder occurring in infancy and early childhood. This study advances the understanding of the causes of DEE and highlights the potential for early diagnosis and the development of new therapies.Source InformationPublisher: Medical Xpress - latest medical and health news storiesOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Single-shot HIV vaccine candidate induces neutralizing antibodies for the first timeScientists at The Wistar Institute have developed an HIV vaccine candidate that achieves something never before observed in the field: inducing neutralizing antibodies against HIV after a single immunization in nonhuman primates. The innovative approach, published in Nature Immunology, could significantly shorten and simplify HIV vaccination protocols, making them more accessible worldwide.Source InformationPublisher: Medical Xpress - latest medical and health news storiesOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: New catalyst turns carbon dioxide into clean fuel sourceResearchers have found that manganese, an abundant and inexpensive metal, can be used to efficiently convert carbon dioxide into formate, a potential hydrogen source for fuel cells. The key was a clever redesign that made the catalyst last far longer than similar low-cost materials. Surprisingly, the improved manganese catalyst even beat many expensive precious-metal options. The discovery could help turn greenhouse gas into clean energy ingredients.Source InformationPublisher: All Top News -- ScienceDailyOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Scientists just mapped the hidden structure holding the Universe togetherAstronomers have produced the most detailed map yet of dark matter, revealing the invisible framework that shaped the Universe long before stars and galaxies formed. Using powerful new observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the research shows how dark matter gathered ordinary matter into dense regions, setting the stage for galaxies like the Milky Way and eventually planets like Earth.Source InformationPublisher: All Top News -- ScienceDailyOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Colorado co-ops to Trump: Let us close our aging coal plantThe Trump administration is facing lawsuits from states and environmental groups opposing its use of emergency power to force aging coal plants to stay online. Now, add utilities to its list of challengers. Last week, the cooperative utilities Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and Platte River Power…Source InformationPublisher: Canary MediaOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Why the future of meat production is in vats, not farmsI recently ate a pig that’s alive and well at a sanctuary in upstate New York. Her name is Dawn, and she donated a bit of fat, which a company called Mission Barns grows in bioreactors, then blends with plant-based ingredients to create pork products (like the meatballs above) that taste darn near like the real thing . Its “cultivated” offerings join a herd of alternative meats — including those from mainstays like Impossible Foods and Eat Just — that are challenging the traditional livestock industry, which uses immense swaths of land and spews staggering quantities of greenhouse gas emissions. In his new book Meat: How the Next Agricultural Revolution Will Transform Humanity’s Favorite Food — and Our Future , Bruce Friedrich, founder and president of the Good Food Institute , catalogs the extraordinary costs of conventional meat production and the vast potential for alternative culinary technologies. Grist sat down with Friedrich to talk about the progress, challenges, and potential of the fledgling industry. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. Q. It’d be great to get a rundown on — if you’ll pardon the pun — your beef with meat. A. Conventional meat production has significant external costs. In 2006, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization released a more-than-400-page report called Livestock’s Long Shadow . It said that animal-product production is responsible for all of the most serious environmental harms at every scale, from local to global. It looked at deforestation, climate change, air pollution, water pollution, water depletion, loss of biodiversity, and said that the inefficiency and extra stages of production involved in producing animal products made meat, dairy, and eggs a significant contributor to all of those, including being the number one contributor to deforestation. All of those environmental consequences have gotten worse. If it takes 9 calories of feed to get 1 calorie of chicken, or 10 or more calories of feed to get a calorie of farmed fish or pork, and even more calories to get a calorie from a ruminant animal — a cow or a sheep or a goat — that’s an inherent inefficiency that really is 800 percent food waste, or more. All of the inefficiency adds up, and that’s why the latest numbers are that roughly 20 percent of climate emissions are attributable to animal agriculture. Q. We’re at an interesting point in which the technology has gotten extremely advanced when it comes to replicating what is grown in an animal in a field somewhere. What are the options for alternative meats? A. It’s very much similar to how we think about renewable energy or electric vehicles. There is a recognition that the world is going to consume more energy, the world is going to drive more miles. The world is also going to eat more meat. In the last 25 years, meat production is up about 65 percent. It will probably be up something like 65 percent again through 2050, and that means all of the external costs of meat production continue to get worse. Just like if you’re talking about energy, we need an all-of-the-above strategy. So we want everything from more energy-efficient light bulbs to houses, but we do need renewable energy as one of the tools in the toolkit. Here, the solution is to figure out how we create plant-based meat that is indistinguishable and less expensive, and how we grow actual animal meat in factories rather than on live animals. Q. You talk in the book about a number of ways this can be incentivized, though there are many states that have already done things like ban cultivated meat . What could be done in these early days of alt meats that could accelerate both the science and the adoption? A. One very encouraging aspect of a shift in the direction of plant-based meat and cultivated meat is that because they are so much more efficient, there is a massive profit motive. And there is also a massive food-security motive for countries like China, Japan, and Korea that have significant food self-sufficiency concerns. Countries that cannot feed themselves recognize that that is a significant national security threat and are highly motivated to figure out how to feed themselves. These countries recognize that if they can produce meat with a fraction of the inputs required to produce animal-based meat, that will be a boon to their national security. And in the United States, we’re also seeing bipartisan support for alternative proteins for economic competitiveness reasons. Q. One challenge now is that there’s a backlash in the United States against ultra-processed foods. Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have been struggling financially lately , perhaps as part of that. Is that a surmountable challenge for the industry? A. The first thing to say is that the plant-based meats are significantly healthier than what they are replacing. All of the plant-based meats that consumers like best, relative to animal-based meat, have less fat, less saturated fat, less cholesterol, more fiber, and more protein. All of the plant-based meats are significantly less calorically dense than the animal-based meat they’re replacing. The indictment against ultra-processed foods works, generally speaking, as shorthand for products that are low in fiber, calorically dense, high in fat, high in sugar. But comparing plant-based meat to Doritos and Coca-Cola doesn’t make a lot of sense. There are some questions around some of the other ultra-processed foods, but the science is clear that the meat and dairy alternatives do not lead to bad health outcomes. Q. You make the point in the book that these companies should collaborate with the traditional meat industry, reforming the industry instead of replacing it. Why? A. The goal of the meat industry is to produce high-quality protein profitably. Figuring out how to produce that same end product far more efficiently is going to be extremely profitable for the companies and countries that lean in. If you’re sort of...

خلاصہ: This brain discovery is forcing scientists to rethink how memory worksA new brain imaging study reveals that remembering facts and recalling life events activate nearly identical brain networks. Researchers expected clear differences but instead found strong overlap across memory types. The finding challenges decades of memory research. It may also help scientists better understand conditions like Alzheimer’s and dementia.Source InformationPublisher: All Top News -- ScienceDailyOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Chart: In the EU, wind and solar surpass fossil fuels for first timeSee more from Canary Media’s “Chart of the Week” column . Two decades ago, the European Union got basically none of its power from wind and solar. Now, those are the leading sources of electricity in the bloc. In 2025, wind and solar produced more electrons for the EU than fossil fuels did, per a new Ember…Source InformationPublisher: Canary MediaOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: The biomass industry promised these Southern towns prosperity. So why are they still dying?The mayor of Urania steered his pickup down a dirt road snaking through the weedy lots and patches of trees that had once been the bustling heart of his central Louisiana town. Jay Ivy passed pines growing where the saws of the sprawling Urania mill turned similar specimens into lumber. He pointed out the log pond, now the domain of alligators, and stopped at the mill’s smokestack, still standing over an increasingly deserted townscape. Once a year, the smokestack belches celebratory black clouds over Urania. “For our fall festival, we get it smoking again with some old tires or whatever we can find to burn,” the big-shouldered mayor said with a sheepish grin. “I suppose it reminds us of what we had here.” Jay Ivy, the mayor of Urania, looks out over his small Louisiana town. He hopes a wood pellet mill operated by British energy giant Drax will revive its economy. Eric J. Shelton / Mississippi Today Urania was devastated when the mill and a related fiberboard operation closed in 2002, putting more than 350 people out of work. There was little hope of a revival until the British energy giant Drax arrived in the Deep South a decade ago, hungry for cheap wood it could burn in England as a “renewable” alternative to coal. Drax began opening wood pellet mills in former timber towns in Louisiana and Mississippi that had fallen on hard times. The region offered plentiful low-grade timber, a labor force desperate for work, and lax environmental regulations . The company was already producing pellets, which it calls “sustainable biomass,” in Mississippi and north Louisiana when Drax opened its biggest pellet mill just outside Urania in late 2017 . A ‘Welcome to Urania’ sign, stands at the entrance of the small Louisiana town, home to a Drax wood pellet mill. At the mill, LaSalle BioEnergy, logs await the grinders. Eric J. Shelton / Mississippi Today A year later, then-Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, thanked Drax for “believing in Louisiana.” Jobs and other economic growth were soon to follow, he and the company promised. “Louisiana aggressively pursued Drax Biomass and today those efforts have paid off,” Edwards said at the time. But more than a decade after Drax took root in the region, prosperity has yet to arrive. Drax employs a fraction of the workers the old mills did, and many commute from other towns. The money that might have flowed from Drax into investments in local roads, parks, and schools has been eroded by massive tax breaks. Now home to around 700 residents, Urania has lost nearly half its population since 2010 , a decline that continued after Drax built its mill in 2017. In 2023, it drew unwanted attention when a news site declared it “ the poorest town in America .” According to the most recent census report, some 40 percent of Urania’s residents live in poverty, and the average income is $12,400 — roughly one-fifth the national average. “It’s a town of old people — a poor town, really,” Ivy said. A painted saw blade depicting Urania’s early days sits in the town’s recreation hall. The Louisiana town lost much of its population after its lumber mill closed. Eric J. Shelton / Mississippi Today Gloster, Mississippi, a majority Black town of about 850 people near the Louisiana line, has also seen its population shrink since Drax opened a pellet mill near the shuttered elementary school in 2014. More than 10 percent of Gloster’s working-age residents are unemployed, and the typical household income of about $22,500 is less than half the Mississippi median. Residents in both towns believe that noise, dust, and air pollution from the nearly identical mills are harming their health. While it remains unclear whether Drax’s operations can be tied to any one person’s illness, the mills release chemicals at concentrations that federal regulators and scientists say are toxic to humans. Louisiana and Mississippi state regulators have repeatedly fined the company for a host of pollution violations, but several residents and environmental groups say the penalties haven’t made a noticeable difference. “Drax is a false solution,” said Jimmy Brown, a former worker at Gloster’s plywood mill, which closed 17 years ago. “They want to make something they can’t make in their own country, so they come here. We got this mill, but we don’t have schools anymore. We don’t have doctors anymore, and we got all these people with respiratory issues and heart issues now.” Sawdust piles up at Drax’s wood pellet mill near Urania, Louisiana. The mill presses sawdust into pellets that are burned in a former coal plant in Yorkshire, England. Eric J. Shelton / Mississippi Today On the outskirts of Urania, a giant hydraulic arm tips a tractor-trailer backward until its cab points to the sky. Several tons of tree limbs and other logging debris spill from the trailer into one of the mouths feeding Drax’s mill, called LaSalle BioEnergy. The half-mile-long facility also consumes a steady diet of sawdust from a neighboring lumber mill and a huge volume of tree-length logs, hoisted by crane into the teeth of an industrial-size wood chipper. “We take everything — the little bitty trees that’re so thin that nobody wants them, and also the limbs and even the pine needles,” Tommy Barbo, the mill’s manager, said during a tour. “Nothing gets wasted.” Tommy Barbo, manager of Drax’s wood pellet mill in Urania, Louisiana, surveys operations at the facility. Eric J. Shelton / Mississippi Today Drax and other utility-scale pellet makers initially promoted their industry as consumers of sawdust and other mill wastes, but these sources couldn’t meet their growing production goals. Large pellet mills now get most of their wood directly from logging whole trees. At the Urania mill, log stacks larger than football fields and higher than houses are stripped of bark, shredded, cooked in a 1,000-degree tumble dryer, pulverized in hammermills, pressed...

خلاصہ: How thick is the ice on the Great Lakes? Scientists want your help.Scientists in the Midwest are asking for help from the public this winter to measure ice thickness on the Great Lakes and other inland lakes in the region, which they plan to use to improve ice-forecasting models. Satellites do a good job at capturing how much ice coverage there is, but not how thick it is, according to researchers at the Great Lakes Observing System, or GLOS, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. More data could give researchers insight as to how climate change is altering ice cover in the region and provide important safety information for people out on the ice. Improved ice models are also useful for navigational safety, like when ice-breaking ships clear frozen waterways. “Usually it’s the scientists putting data out to the public, and this time, we’re asking the public to give feedback to the scientists so they can improve the models,” said Shelby Brunner, science and observations manager at GLOS. She said buoys that collect data on lakes typically get pulled out in the winter because of harsh conditions. The citizen science program is in its second year of data collection. Last year, the program recruited around a dozen people in the Great Lakes region and logged around 30 measurements. Data collected by the public can be submitted online as long as there’s ice to measure, and stipends are available to participants. Recreation aside, the Great Lakes also make up the region’s largest source of fresh water — more than 30 million people rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Brunner said the data from last year showed researchers that ice is more variable than they initially predicted. That’s why more data from people who are already “in tune with the ice” is useful to tap into, she said. “They’re posting pictures of when there’s water in between layers of ice, and that’s information that is so novel for the modelers to have,” Brunner said. “If we can continually improve, we’re going to get safer and safer predictions.” A charter fish captain uses an auger on ice-covered Saginaw Bay in Michigan in 2025. Courtesy of Ayumi Fujisake-Manome The data is also useful as ice formation on the Great Lakes shifts with climate change, Brunner said. Research suggests that average ice cover on the Great Lakes has decreased overall since the 1990s, but year-to-year variability is high. That means there are years with very little ice or years with a lot of it — as of January 28, 38 percent of the Great Lakes had iced over this winter, higher than the historical average at this time of year. “We don’t get to go back in time and measure the past. We have to measure it now and keep it safe. So we can use it for reference for how things are looking in the future,” Brunner said. It’s not just ice fishers contributing data. Mandi Young, a science teacher in Traverse City, took her middle school students out last year to measure ice thickness on Cedar Lake, a long, narrow lake adjacent to Grand Traverse Bay popular for boating and fishing. Young has her students regularly collect information from the water, like its temperature or depth, to compare with previous years. Ice thickness was another data point they could add to the mix, she said. “The students really love it. They get the chance to be outside. They know that their information is being saved and used by other community members,” Young said. Young plans to have her students measure ice thickness again this winter. This time, they have an auger to drill holes into the icy lake. She said one of her favorite parts is the questions students ask while they’re out taking measurements: “Could we throw a rock on it? Will it break? Oh, what about throwing ice on ice, what’s gonna happen? Oh, did you hear that sound?” “Kids just get curious about ice,” she said. The data they collect from inland lakes like this one will be kept for archives and used in future research, Brunner, the scientist, said. She hopes citizen scientists see the benefit in contributing data that could help the many people, from ice fishers and ship captains to researchers, who spend time on the ice. “Our job is to collect information that’s relevant now, but also make sure we do our due diligence and make it useful in the future,” she said. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How thick is the ice on the Great Lakes? Scientists want your help. on Jan 30, 2026.Source InformationPublisher: GristOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: A 20-year-old cancer vaccine may hold the key to long-term survivalTwo decades after a breast cancer vaccine trial, every participant is still alive—an astonishing result for metastatic disease. Scientists found their immune systems retained long-lasting memory cells primed to recognize cancer. By enhancing a key immune signal called CD27, researchers dramatically improved tumor elimination in lab studies. The findings suggest cancer vaccines may have been missing a crucial ingredient all along.Source InformationPublisher: All Top News -- ScienceDailyOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Tesla launches its own solar panel as its EV business faltersTesla is rededicating itself to rooftop solar, a decade after it bought the then-leading company in that sector, SolarCity. The pioneering electric car maker has continued to sell rooftop solar through its energy division since the SolarCity acquisition. But the Solar Roof product — essentially roof tiles that…Source InformationPublisher: Canary MediaOriginal Source: Read more