In the middle of Queensland’s dry outback, a traveler hunting for stones picked up what looked like a perfectly round pebble. It wasn’t a pebble at all. Researchers say it’s a fossil pearl from a giant Cretaceous clam roughly 100 million years old and the largest of its kind reported in Australia. The image on … Read more
A new paper reveals that glycogen stored in the brain plays a central role in tauopathies, a group of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s and frontotemporal dementia. The team shows that boosting glycogen breakdown in neurons helps reduce toxic protein aggregates and oxidative stress, opening a new therapeutic path in conditions that currently lack effective treatments. … Read more
Astronomers once hailed Earendel as the most distant star ever seen, a lone beacon shining just 900 million years after the Big Bang. But fresh observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) suggest a twist: Earendel may not be a single star at all, but a compact star cluster held together by gravity. If … Read more
“Cool” is one of the most global words in today’s vocabulary. From Santiago to Seoul, people use it to describe those who stand out socially. But what exactly does it mean to be cool? And is it the same as being good? A new article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: These questions were explored … Read more