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It used to be that allergies were somewhat rare but if you go to an allergist today, you are almost certain to be declared allergic, or at least sensitive, to something. How much of that is actual biological change versus how much is that the country that purchases 85% of the world's prescription medication loves to get medical diagnoses is unclear.Now the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology believes that nearly half of the population of the EU have allergies to something. A survey of Americans in 2020 estimated that approximately 30 percent of Americans of all ages have allergies. Since they are self-reported surveys rather than dianoses, what is unclear is how many of those are people claiming issues like gluten sensitivity.

Though it is common to see environmental videos of birds caught in plastic, less well known is that, like cats, seabirds love to eat it.Paracelsus famously noted that the dose makes the poison but in the 1990s some activist scientists began claiming that any dose is a poison, so even if birds excrete the plastic, chemicals can "bioaccumulate" and cause harm.

Telescopes and inference told scientists that the asteroid Bennu was covered in large swaths of fine regolith, smaller than a few centimeters. What they found when OSIRIS-REx arrived at Bennu was something else: A surface covered in boulders. The surprise lack of fine regolith became even more interesting when mission scientists observed evidence of processes capable of grinding boulders into fine regolith. Yet they had not.

Pancreatic cancer tends to develop from chronic inflammation that happens when a mutation has caused digestive enzymes to digest the pancreas itself.What if we could go 'back in time' and reverse that process?Purdue University Professor Bumsoo Han and his team built is a lifelike reproduction of a pancreatic structure called the acinus, which produces and secretes those digestive enzymes into the small intestine. The goal is reprogram the cancerous acinar cells that produce those enzymes, and perhaps completely reset the pancreas. 

In 2019, three free-ranging cheetahs in the Namib Desert died within 24 hours of each other. Scholars set out to determine why.On October 5th 2019, the carcass of a GPS-collared cheetah in the Namib desert was found dead from the air. After they went in on foot to investigate, two other cheetahs were also found dead. The GPS data showed they had all died within a short period of each other so the team then identified a cluster of GPS locations approximately two kilometers away from the location where they were found dead.

For a pilot study, a team examined blood samples from 50 patients and 16 healthy subjects. Using atomic force microscopy technology, they analyzed the surface of around 1000 red blood cells per person without knowing anything about their state of health. They were able to detect the presence of suspicious proteins, beta-amyloid peptides and tau proteins associated with the neurodegenerative disease commonly called dementia. but also to determine their variable shape and form as well as their amounts.

Exercise is healthy. That is common knowledge. But just how rigorous should that exercise be in order to really impact a person’s fitness level? And, if you sit all day at a desk, but still manage to get out and exercise, does that negate your six, seven, or eight hours of sedentary behavior? These were the sort of questions Matthew Nayor and his team at Boston University School of Medicine set out to answer in the largest study to date aimed at understanding the relationship between regular physical activity and a person’s physical fitness. 

The rapid development of effective mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 has led some observers to suggest that mRNA will push other types of vaccines out of the market completely in the near future. But is that desirable? Is it even possible?

The coconut is the sixth most cultivated fruit on earth and thanks to fads around things like coconut oil and water, demand continues to rise. Growing products that rich people want is great for developing nations but they face challenges. Trees grow slowly and natural plagues Lethal Yellowing Disease put existing ones at risk. The answer may be what made bananas the staple they are now: cloning."Coconut plants do not form side shoots. They put all their energy into one shoot that has to grow as fast and as tall as possible. This makes it very difficult to clone and store the plants," said Bart Panis of KU Leuven.Image courtesy of Hannes Wilms at KU Leuven

Man's best friend learns to understand human emotions, and that can help them predict our behavior and informs their decision making.

Coronavirus may only have been identified as distinct from the common cold in the 1960s, and it may have only had two pandemics (SARS and MERS) in this century prior to COVID-19, but there is a reason it is called COVID-19 and not just COVID. There have been too many to know about.Viruses evolve and adapt. New research shows Sarbecoviruses they have been hitting us with disease for over 20,000 years.

In 2019, astronomers spotted a snowball in space moving at over 110,000 miles per hour. They quickly realized they had never seen it before. It was not even from our solar system.Now named Borisov, it was the first interstellar comet ever detected by humans. That doesn't make it rare.A new computer estimate instead believes that in the Oort Cloud—a shell of debris in the farthest reaches of our solar system—interstellar objects outnumber objects belonging to our solar system.Borisov comet. Credit: NASA, ESA and D. Jewitt (UCLA)