WEIRD JOY
Backpack won Fat Bear Week.
A brown bear called Backpack packed on enough Alaska to win the internet’s favorite wildlife election.
SOURCENational Park Service
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ALL THE SLOP
Every serving. No expiration date. Page 3 of 4.
SCIENCE
A daily pill cut an average liter of volume from swollen legs.
A small trial suggests the first medication for lymphedema may be getting closer.
SOURCEStanford Medicine
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SCIENCE
They lined the surgery cavity with radioactive tiles. Surgical-site recurrence fell to 1.3%.
A Phase 3 trial turned the walls of a surgical cavity into the radiation treatment.
SOURCEUT MD Anderson Cancer Center / Journal of Clinical Oncology
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WEIRD JOY
Peanut butter failed. Burnt coconut found a new species.
Two mice, one mountain valley, and twenty-two years of patient taxonomy.
SOURCEZooKeys / PubMed Central
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SCIENCE
After brain-metastasis surgery, three to five radiation sessions beat one.
A small scheduling change produced a surprisingly large clinical difference.
SOURCEAmerican Society for Radiation Oncology
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SCIENCE
A urine-and-swab test ruled out womb cancer 98.8% of the time.
A painless test using urine and a vaginal swab showed it could accurately rule out womb cancer for most women with postmenopausal bleeding.
SOURCEUniversity of Manchester
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WEIRD JOY
Two new sea spiders turned up in the Salish Sea. One has hairy feet.
UBC divers found the first new sea spider species described in the Salish Sea in almost a century. One has red eyes and fuzzy-looking legs.
SOURCEUniversity of British Columbia
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SCIENCE
A vitamin-derived molecule reached its target in mitochondrial disease patients.
A Cambridge-led study gave nicotinamide riboside to eight people with mitochondrial DNA disease. It was well tolerated and showed early signs of working.
SOURCEGenome Medicine / University of Cambridge
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SCIENCE
An experimental drug gave mice with MS-like disease their movement back.
In a mouse model of multiple sclerosis, the experimental drug K-9 restored function after paralysis and vision loss had already set in. It has not been tested in people with MS.
SOURCENational Institutes of Health / UVA Health
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SCIENCE
Chagas treatment just got cut from 60 days to 30.
In the TESEO trial, 450 adults received different benznidazole regimens. The 30-day, once-daily option matched the standard 60-day course in the trial and caused fewer side effects.
SOURCEUTEP
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WEIRD JOY
This one-gram robot can hop over a stair.
DirectHop uses a tiny motor and three folding legs to make controlled, repeated jumps. The prototype can clear a standard stair and twitch itself upright after a fall.
SOURCEUniversity of Washington / Newswise
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HUMANS
THE LINE HELD.
HUMANS
A high school football team pulled a pontoon out of a flash flood.
When flash flooding hit New Richland, Minnesota, players from the New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva football team helped with a pontoon rescue instead of watching from the bank.
SOURCEKEYC News
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WEIRD JOY
NINETY-NINE, IN SQUASH.
WEIRD JOY
A farm built a world-record Attenborough portrait out of pumpkins.
Sunnyfields Farm unveiled a giant mosaic portrait of Sir David Attenborough assembled from pumpkins, breaking its own world record for the largest pumpkin mosaic.
SOURCEBBC News
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SCIENCE
THE SCAN CAME BACK EMPTY.
SCIENCE
Two doses of a new immunotherapy cleared a child's liver cancer.
Researchers at Texas Children's, Baylor College of Medicine and Seattle Children's reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that a child with hepatoblastoma had complete regression of disease after a novel immunotherapy given as part of the CARE study.
SOURCETexas Children's Hospital
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SCIENCE
THE HAND FELT BACK.
SCIENCE
He lost his arm at 16. Now he can feel his wife's hand.
Seventeen years after an amputation, Alexander “Avi” Davidson became the first participant to take Utah's thought-controlled bionic arm home — with a nerve interface that gives it a sense of touch.
SOURCEUniversity of Utah Health
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WEIRD JOY
THE CLEANING CREW HAS SHELLS.
WEIRD JOY
Alabama put 1,500 mussels to work cleaning a river.
About 1,500 rare native freshwater mussels — including two endangered species — were released into the Paint Rock River on August 25 after years of streambank repair.
SOURCEOutdoor Alabama
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WEIRD JOY
THE PATIENT KNOCKED.
WEIRD JOY
An injured pelican knocked on a NOAA lab door for help.
A brown pelican tangled in fishing line, with a treble hook in its wing and cactus spines in its foot, repeatedly tapped on NOAA’s Panama City Laboratory door. Biologists freed it in about 10 minutes, and it flew away.
SOURCENOAA Fisheries
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SCIENCE
TWO ORIGINS. ONE BRAIN.
SCIENCE
The human brain may have been built from two ancient systems.
Stanford researchers found the forebrain/midbrain and hindbrain arise from distinct progenitor cell populations — and used that insight to grow functional human hindbrain motor neurons in the lab.
SOURCEStanford Medicine
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SCIENCE
THE GENOME GOT A BIGGER TOOLBOX.
SCIENCE
Gene editing just learned to move bigger pieces of DNA.
A new lab method can place gene-sized DNA at targeted sites in human cells. No patients yet.
SOURCENature
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WEIRD JOY
THE LETTUCE LIVES UPSTAIRS.
WEIRD JOY
Alaska found the place vertical farming actually makes sense.
The brewery put a lettuce farm upstairs. In Skagway, that actually works.
SOURCEReasons to Be Cheerful
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WEIRD JOY
THE DINOSAUR LEFT RECEIPTS.
WEIRD JOY
A T. rex took four steps. 66.5 million years later, a teacher found them.
Four footprints. Twenty-three feet. One 66.5-million-year-old walk.
SOURCEJournal of Vertebrate Paleontology
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SCIENCE
LAB BENCH HOPE.
SCIENCE
Scientists found antibodies that blocked the red-meat allergy in the lab.
42 antibodies made. Two blocked the reaction. In a dish, for now.
SOURCENIH
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SCIENCE
STAGE 1 AND 2, CAUGHT ABOUT 87% OF THE TIME
SCIENCE
A blood test just got better at finding pancreatic cancer early.
An investigational blood test flagged stage 1 and 2 pancreatic cancer about 87% of the time in a study of roughly 1,800 people. Not FDA-cleared. Still a big deal.
SOURCENature Medicine
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HUMANS
800 VILLAGERS. 350,000 OBSERVATIONS.
HUMANS
They used to hunt the wildlife. Now the photos pay better.
About 800 villagers across nine Borneo villages get paid for verified photos, video and audio of wildlife. Two villages have since banned hunting themselves.
SOURCEBorneo Futures
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