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‘Eco-Friendly’ Straws Have Many ‘Forever Chemicals’, New Research Shows

The presence of PFAS in plant-based straws could, at least in part, be due to factors like unintentional contamination from plants grown in soil polluted by PFAS and from the use of recycled paper containing PFAS in the production of straws.

As OSIRIS-REx Returns to Earth From Asteroid Bennu, a Look Behind the Scenes

OSIRIS-REx will help reveal Bennu’s detailed carbon chemistry and history of space weathering and unlock a key piece of the solar system’s early history.

Brazil: Indigenous People Celebrate Land Rights Ruling

An attempt to restrict Indigenous people’s access to land has failed after a Supreme Court ruling that is seen as a major win for Indigenous rights and has set a nationwide precedent.

What Would Signal Life on Another Planet?

Astronomers have long debated what kind of chemistry might serve as a bona fide alien biosignature. With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, those ideas may be put to the test.

Dopamine Is Famously Linked to Mood and Pleasure − but That’s Not All

A brain scan. Photo: Flickr/Florey Institute CC BY NC ND 2.0 Dopamine seems to be…

Studying the Genes That Delay Alzheimer’s Decline May Lead to Treatments

Determining how genes affect brain chemistry is vital to understanding how Alzheimer’s disease progresses and devising interventions to prevent or delay cognitive decline.

NASA Report Finds No Evidence That UFOs Are Extraterrestrial

The NASA study team described in the report the types of data that can shed more light on UAPs. The authors note the importance of reducing the stigma that can cause both military and commercial pilots to feel that they cannot freely report sightings.

Climate Change Glossary: Every Term You Need to Understand, Explained

As the world warms due to climate change, threatening millions of lives and livelihoods, nothing…

Do Spiders Dream? What About Cuttlefish? Bearded Dragons?

Researchers are finding signs of multiple phases of sleep all over the animal kingdom. The ‘active’ sleep phases look very much like REM.

New Alzheimer’s Drugs Don’t Deserve the Hype – Here’s Why

This isn’t the beginning of the end of Alzheimer’s, but perhaps it should be the end of the anti-amyloid drug pathway.

The Fast, Furious, and Brutally Short Life of an African Male Lion

Male lions live a life far more vulnerable. One in two male lions die in the first year of life. From the moment a male lion is born it faces a gauntlet of challenges – from snakebite and hungry hyenas to infanticide at the hands of other male lions.

Book Review: One Man’s Hunt for Alien Artifacts

In ‘Interstellar’, Harvard professor Avi Loeb argues that searching for alien technology on Earth may save our species.