Category Archives: Science

More nanoplastics in tiny part of sea than micro- and macroplastics in all world’s oceans

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“This estimate shows that there is more plastic in the form of nanoparticles floating in the this part of the ocean, than there is in larger micro- or macroplastics floating in the Atlantic or even all the world’s oceans!,” said Helge Niemann, researcher at NIOZ and professor of geochemistry at Utrecht University. Mid-June, he received a grant of 3.5 million euros to conduct more research into nanoplastics in the sea and their fate.

Ocean expedition For this research, Utrecht master student Sophie ten Hietbrink worked for four weeks aboard the research vessel RV Pelagia. On a trip from the Azores to the continental shelf of Europe, she took water samples at 12 locations where she filtered out anything larger than one micrometer. “By drying and heating the remaining material, we were able to measure the characteristic molecules of different types of plastics in the Utrecht laboratory, using mass spectrometry,” Ten Hietbrink says.

First real estimate The research by NIOZ and Utrecht University provides the first estimate of the amount of nanoplastics in the oceans. Niemann: “There were a few publications that showed that there were nanoplastics in the ocean water, but until now no estimate of the amount could ever be made.”

[…]

Shocking amount Extrapolating the results from different locations to the whole of the North Atlantic Ocean, the researchers arrived at the immense amount of 27 million tons of nanoplastics. “A shocking amount,” Ten Hietbrink believes. “But with this we do have an important answer to the paradox of the missing plastic.”

[…]

Consequences The consequences of all those nanoplastics in the water could be fundamental, Niemann emphasizes. “It is already known that nanoplastics can penetrate deep into our bodies. They are even found in brain tissue. Now that we know they are so ubiquitous in the oceans, it’s also obvious that they penetrate the entire ecosystem; from bacteria and other microorganisms to fish and top predators like humans. How that pollution affects the ecosystem needs further investigation.”

[…]

Not cleaning up but preventing Niemann emphasizes that the amount of nanoplastics in ocean water was an important missing piece of the puzzle, but now there is nothing to do about it. “The nanoplastics that are there, can never be cleaned up. So an important message from this research is that we should at least prevent the further pollution of our environment with plastics.”

Story Source:

Materials provided by Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

  1. Sophie ten Hietbrink, Dušan Materić, Rupert Holzinger, Sjoerd Groeskamp, Helge Niemann. Nanoplastic concentrations across the North Atlantic. Nature, 2025; 643 (8071): 412 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09218-1

Source: Scientists just solved the mystery of the missing ocean plastic—now we’re all in trouble | ScienceDaily

Goodbye plastic? Scientists create new supermaterial that outperforms metals and glass

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Scientists at Rice University and the University of Houston have created a powerful new material by guiding bacteria to grow cellulose in aligned patterns, resulting in sheets with the strength of metals and the flexibility of plastic—without the pollution. Using a spinning bioreactor, they’ve turned Earth’s purest biopolymer into a high-performance alternative to plastic, capable of carrying heat, integrating advanced nanomaterials, and transforming packaging, electronics, and even energy storage.

Source: Goodbye plastic? Scientists create new supermaterial that outperforms metals and glass | ScienceDaily

This ‘Molecular Shield’ Might Stop Pollen Before It Wrecks Your Nose

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what if, by spraying something akin to a nasal spray, you could thwart the onslaught of those pesky allergens before they latch onto your sensitive nasal passages?

This was the “simple but powerful idea” that inspired Kaissar Tabynov, who led the efforts to create a “molecular shield” that intercepts allergens the moment they approach our airways. For the experiment, they targeted mugwort pollen, which is the most common cause of pollen allergy in Central Asia and Europe. Tabynov and colleagues reported the first proof-of-principle for this technology, in this instance with mice, in a paper published today in Frontiers in Immunology.

[…]

Here’s how the “shield” works. Researchers first develop a monoclonal antibody, or a lab-made protein designed to attach to a specific molecule. In this case it’s aimed at a major allergy-causing protein found in mugwort pollen. These antibodies are applied to the nose, effectively snatching the allergens away from our natural antibodies, which trigger allergic responses when bound with allergens.

The immune system is an intricate network of cells and hormones, so adjusting the treatment such that it wouldn’t disrupt the natural system of mice proved to be a major challenge, explained Tabynov. Not only that, mugwort pollen is actually a combination of multiple allergy-causing particles (partly the reason they’re so insufferable), meaning Tabynov’s team had to focus on the most clinically relevant parts of the allergen complex.

After several adjustments, the team succeeded in making an antibody treatment that curbed nasal inflammation and asthma symptoms in mice, and it did so without harming the animals’ natural antibodies. Although the duration of the treatment was shorter than Tabynov hoped, he told Gizmodo that he and his team have already devised a strategy to potentially make the treatment last longer.

“What’s exciting about our approach is that it shows how precise, targeted biologics can be used not just for chronic therapy but for prevention, delivered right where allergens strike,” Tabynov added. “Our approach is non-invasive, needle-free, and fast-acting [and] reduces the allergen load on the immune system and may help prevent the progression of allergic rhinitis into more severe conditions such as bronchial asthma.”

[…]

Source: This ‘Molecular Shield’ Might Stop Pollen Before It Wrecks Your Nose

A tiny implant just helped paralyzed rats walk again—is human recovery next? | ScienceDaily

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A groundbreaking study from the University of Auckland and Chalmers University of Technology is offering new hope for spinal cord injury patients. Researchers have developed an ultra-thin implant that delivers gentle electric currents directly to the injured spinal cord. This device mimics natural developmental signals to stimulate nerve healing, and in animal trials, it restored movement and touch sensation in rats—without causing inflammation or damage.

[…]

Spinal cord injuries shatter the signal between the brain and body, often resulting in a loss of function.”Unlike a cut on the skin, which typically heals on its own, the spinal cord does not regenerate effectively, making these injuries devastating and currently incurable,”

[…]

“We developed an ultra-thin implant designed to sit directly on the spinal cord, precisely positioned over the injury site in rats,” Dr Harland says.

The device delivers a carefully controlled electrical current across the injury site. “The aim is to stimulate healing so people can recover functions lost through spinal-cord injury,” Professor Darren Svirskis, director of the CatWalk Cure Program at the University’s School of Pharmacy says.

[…]

After four weeks, animals that received daily electric field treatment showed improved movement compared with those who did not.

Throughout the 12-week study, they responded more quickly to gentle touch.

“This indicates that the treatment supported recovery of both movement and sensation,” Harland says. “Just as importantly, our analysis confirmed that the treatment did not cause inflammation or other damage to the spinal cord, demonstrating that it was not only effective but also safe.”

[…]

Source: A tiny implant just helped paralyzed rats walk again—is human recovery next? | ScienceDaily

Scientists Discover Unknown Organelle Inside Our Cells

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The organelle, a type of specialized structure, has been dubbed a “hemifusome” by its discoverers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. This little organelle has a big job helping our cells sort, recycle and discard important cargo within themselves, the scientists say. The new discovery could help scientists better understand what goes wrong in genetic conditions that disrupt these essential housekeeping functions.

“This is like discovering a new recycling center inside the cell,” said researcher Seham Ebrahim, PhD, of UVA’s Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics. “We think the hemifusome helps manage how cells package and process material, and when this goes wrong, it may contribute to diseases that affect many systems in the body.”

[…]

UVA’s expertise in cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) – a powerful imaging method that “freezes” cells in time – to create striking images of the organelle.

The scientists believe hemifusomes facilitate the formation of vesicles, tiny blister-like sacs that act as mixing bowls, and of organelles made up of multiple vesicles. This process is critical to cellular sorting, recycling and debris disposal, the researchers report.

“You can think of vesicles like little delivery trucks inside the cell,” said Ebrahim, of UVA’s Center for Membrane and Cell Physiology. “The hemifusome is like a loading dock where they connect and transfer cargo. It’s a step in the process we didn’t know existed.”

While the hemifusomes have escaped detection until now, the scientists say they are surprisingly common in certain parts of our cells.

[…]

“Now that we know hemifusomes exist, we can start asking how they behave in healthy cells and what happens when things go wrong. That could lead us to new strategies for treating complex genetic diseases.”

Findings Published

The researchers have published their findings in the scientific journal Nature Communications. The research team consisted of Amirrasoul Tavakoli, Shiqiong Hu, Ebrahim and Kachar.

The research was supported by the NIH’s National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders, grant Z01-DC000002; the Owens Family Foundation; and a startup grant from UVA’s Center for Cell and Membrane Physiology.

Source: Scientists Discover Unknown Organelle Inside Our Cells

This breakthrough turns old tech into pure gold — No mercury, no cyanide, just light and salt

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An interdisciplinary team of experts in green chemistry, engineering and physics at Flinders University in Australia has developed a safer and more sustainable approach to extract and recover gold from ore and electronic waste.

Explained in the leading journal Nature Sustainability, the gold-extraction technique promises to reduce levels of toxic waste from mining and shows that high purity gold can be recovered from recycling valuable components in printed circuit boards in discarded computers.

The project team, led by Matthew Flinders Professor Justin Chalker, applied this integrated method for high-yield gold extraction from many sources – even recovering trace gold found in scientific waste streams.

The progress toward safer and more sustainable gold recovery was demonstrated for electronic waste, mixed-metal waste, and ore concentrates.

“The study featured many innovations including a new and recyclable leaching reagent derived from a compound used to disinfect water,” says Professor of Chemistry Justin Chalker, who leads the Chalker Lab at Flinders University’s College of Science and Engineering.

“The team also developed an entirely new way to make the polymer sorbent, or the material that binds the gold after extraction into water, using light to initiate the key reaction.”

Extensive investigation into the mechanisms, scope and limitations of the methods are reported in the new study, and the team now plans to work with mining and e-waste recycling operations to trial the method on a larger scale.

“The aim is to provide effective gold recovery methods that support the many uses of gold, while lessening the impact on the environment and human health,” says Professor Chalker.

The new process uses a low-cost and benign compound to extract the gold. This reagent (trichloroisocyanuric acid) is widely used in water sanitation and disinfection. When activated by salt water, the reagent can dissolve gold.

Next, the gold can be selectively bound to a novel sulfur-rich polymer developed by the Flinders team. The selectivity of the polymer allows gold recovery even in highly complex mixtures.

The gold can then be recovered by triggering the polymer to “un-make” itself and convert back to monomer. This allows the gold to be recovered and the polymer to be recycled and re-used.

[…]

The team also collaborated with experts in the US and Peru to validate the method on ore, in an effort to support small-scale mines that otherwise rely on toxic mercury to amalgamate gold.

Gold mining typically uses highly toxic cyanide to extract gold from ore, with risks to the wildlife and the broader environment if it is not contained properly. Artisanal and small-scale gold mines still use mercury to amalgamate gold. Unfortunately, the use of mercury in gold mining is one of the largest sources of mercury pollution on Earth.

[…]

ARC DECRA Fellow Dr Nicholls, adds: “The newly developed gold sorbent is made using a sustainable approach in which UV light is used to make the sulfur-rich polymer. Then, recycling the polymer after the gold has been recovered further increases the green credentials of this method.”

[…]

Story Source:

Materials provided by Flinders University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

  1. Maximilian Mann, Thomas P. Nicholls, Harshal D. Patel, Lynn S. Lisboa, Jasmine M. M. Pople, Le Nhan Pham, Max J. H. Worthington, Matthew R. Smith, Yanting Yin, Gunther G. Andersson, Christopher T. Gibson, Louisa J. Esdaile, Claire E. Lenehan, Michelle L. Coote, Zhongfan Jia, Justin M. Chalker. Sustainable gold extraction from ore and electronic waste. Nature Sustainability, 2025; DOI: 10.1038/s41893-025-01586-w

Source: This breakthrough turns old tech into pure gold — No mercury, no cyanide, just light and salt | ScienceDaily

Vitamin C flips your skin’s “youth genes,” reversing age-related skin thinning

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[…] “VC seems to influence the structure and function of epidermis, especially by controlling the growth of epidermal cells. In this study, we investigated whether it promotes cell proliferation and differentiation via epigenetic changes,” explains Dr. Ishigami, while talking about this study.

To investigate how VC affects skin regeneration, the team used human epidermal equivalents, which are laboratory-grown models that closely mimic real human skin. In this model, skin cells are exposed to air on the surface while being nourished from underneath by a liquid nutrient medium, replicating the way human skin receives nutrients from underlying blood vessels while remaining exposed to the external environment.

The researchers used this model and applied VC at 1.0 and 0.1 mM — concentrations comparable to those typically transported from the bloodstream into the epidermis. On assessing its effect, they found that VC-treated skin showed a thicker epidermal cell layer without significantly affecting the stratum corneum (the outer layer composed of dead cells) on day seven. By day 14, the inner layer was even thicker, and the outer layer was found to be thinner, suggesting that VC promotes the formation and division of keratinocytes. Samples treated with VC showed increased cell proliferation, demonstrated by a higher number of Ki-67-positive cells — a protein marker present in the nucleus of actively dividing cells.

Importantly, the study revealed that VC helps skin cells grow by reactivating genes associated with cell proliferation. It does so by promoting the removal of methyl groups from DNA, in a process known as DNA demethylation. When DNA is methylated, methyl groups attach to cytosine bases, which can prevent the DNA from being transcribed or read, thereby suppressing gene activity. Conversely, by promoting DNA demethylation, VC promotes gene expression and helps cells to grow, multiply, and differentiate.

The study suggests that VC supports active DNA demethylation by sustaining the function of TET enzymes (ten-eleven translocation enzymes), which regulate gene activity. These enzymes convert 5-methylcytosine (5-mC) into 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5-hmC), a process in which Fe2+ is oxidized to Fe3+. VC helps maintain TET enzyme activity by donating electrons to regenerate Fe2+ from Fe3+, enabling continued DNA demethylation.

The researchers further identified over 10,138 hypomethylated differentially methylated regions in VC-treated skin and observed a 1.6- to 75.2-fold increase in the expression of 12 key proliferation-related genes. When a TET enzyme inhibitor was applied, these effects were reversed, confirming that VC functions through TET-mediated DNA demethylation.

These findings reveal how VC promotes skin renewal by triggering genetic pathways involved in growth and repair. This suggests that VC may be particularly helpful for older adults or those with damaged or thinning skin, boosting the skin’s natural capacity to regenerate and strengthen itself.

“We found that VC helps thicken the skin by encouraging keratinocyte proliferation through DNA demethylation, making it a promising treatment for thinning skin, especially in older adults,” concludes Dr. Ishigami.

This study was supported by grants from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI: grant number 19K05902.

Source: Vitamin C flips your skin’s “youth genes,” reversing age-related thinning | ScienceDaily

How much you need to take to achieve this effect is however a mystery.

Brain reboot: Gene therapy reverses Alzheimer’s memory loss in mice

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Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have developed a gene therapy for Alzheimer’s disease that could help protect the brain from damage and preserve cognitive function. Unlike existing treatments for Alzheimer’s that target unhealthy protein deposits in the brain, the new approach could help address the root cause of Alzheimer’s disease by influencing the behavior of brain cells themselves.

Alzheimer’s disease affects millions of people around the world and occurs when abnormal proteins build up in the brain, leading to the death of brain cells and declines in cognitive function and memory. While current treatments can manage symptoms of Alzheimer’s, the new gene therapy aims to halt or even reverse disease progression.

Studying mice, the researchers found that delivering the treatment at the symptomatic stage of the disease preserved hippocampal-dependent memory, a critical aspect of cognitive function that is often impaired in Alzheimer’s patients. Compared to healthy mice of the same age, the treated mice also had a similar pattern of gene expression, suggesting that the treatment has the potential to alter the behavior of diseased cells to restore them to a healthier state.

While further studies will be required to translate these findings into human clinical trials, the gene therapy offers a unique and promising approach to mitigating cognitive decline and promoting brain health.

The study, published in Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy, was led by senior author Brian Head, Ph.D., professor of anesthesiology at UC San Diego School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs research career scientist, and co-senior author Shanshan Wang, M.D. Ph.D., an assistant professor of anesthesiology at UC San Diego School of Medicine. The gene therapy technology was licensed by UC San Diego to Eikonoklastes Therapeutics in 2021. Eikonoklastes was granted Orphan Drug Designation (ODD) by the FDA for the use of the patented gene therapy in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Source: Brain reboot: Gene therapy reverses Alzheimer’s memory loss in mice | ScienceDaily

Swarms of tiny nose robots could clear infected sinuses and more, researchers say

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Swarms of tiny robots, each no larger than a speck of dust, could be deployed to cure stubborn infected sinuses before being blown out through the nose into a tissue, researchers have claimed.

The micro-robots are a fraction of the width of a human hair and have been inserted successfully into animal sinuses in pre-clinical trials by researchers at universities in China and Hong Kong.

Swarms are injected into the sinus cavity via a duct threaded through the nostril and guided to their target by electromagnetism, where they can be made to heat up and catalyse chemical reactions to wipe out bacterial infections. There are hopes the precisely targeted technology could eventually reduce reliance on antibiotics and other generalised medicines.

The tiny devices are part of the expanding field of micro- and nano-robots for use in medicine. They have also been developed to deliver drugs and to remove bacteria from medical implants such as stents and hernia meshes.

Experts believe they could be in clinical use for treating infections in bladders, intestines and sinuses in five to 10 years. Scientists in China, Switzerland, the US and the UK are developing more sophisticated versions capable of moving through the bloodstream.

The latest development came from a collaboration of academics at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, and universities in Guangxi, Shenzhen, Jiangsu, Yangzhou and Macau.

Researchers in the emerging field acknowledge risks include some of the tiny micro-robots being left behind after treatment which could cause longer-term side effects.

[…]

The study, published in Science Robotics, showed the robots were capable of eradicating bacteria from pig sinuses and could clear infections in live rabbits with “no obvious tissue damage”.

The researchers have produced a model of how the technology could work on a human being, with the robot swarms being deployed in operating theatre conditions, allowing doctors to see their progress by using X-rays. Future applications could include tackling bacterial infections of the respiratory tract, stomach, intestine, bladder and urethra, they suggested.

“Our proposed micro-robotic therapeutic platform offers the advantages of non-invasiveness, minimal resistance, and drug-free intervention,” they said.

[…]

Source: Swarms of tiny nose robots could clear infected sinuses, researchers say | Medical research | The Guardian

Scientists use bacteria to turn plastic waste into paracetamol

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Bacteria can be used to turn plastic waste into painkillers, researchers have found, opening up the possibility of a more sustainable process for producing the drugs.

Chemists have discovered E coli can be used to create paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, from a material produced in the laboratory from plastic bottles.

“People don’t realise that paracetamol comes from oil currently,” said Prof Stephen Wallace, the lead author of the research from the University of Edinburgh. “What this technology shows is that by merging chemistry and biology in this way for the first time, we can make paracetamol more sustainably and clean up plastic waste from the environment at the same time.”

Writing in the journal Nature Chemistry, Wallace and colleagues report how they discovered that a type of chemical reaction called a Lossen rearrangement, a process that has never been seen in nature, was biocompatible. In other words, it could be carried out in the presence of living cells without harming them.

The team made their discovery when they took polyethylene terephthalate (PET) – a type of plastic often found in food packaging and bottles – and, using sustainable chemical methods, converted it into a new material.

When the researchers incubated this material with a harmless strain of E coli they found it was converted into another substance known as Paba in a process that must have involved a Lossen rearrangement.

Crucially, while the Lossen rearrangement typically involves harsh laboratory conditions, it occurred spontaneously in the presence of the E coli, with the researchers discovering it was catalysed by phosphate within the cells themselves.

The team add that Paba is an essential substance that bacteria need for growth, in particular the synthesis of DNA, and is usually made within the cell from other substances. However, the E coli used in the experiments was genetically modified to block these pathways, meaning the bacteria had to use the PET-based material.

The researchers say the results are exciting as they suggest plastic waste can be converted into biological material.

“It is a way to just completely hoover up plastic waste,” said Wallace.

The researchers then genetically modified the E coli further, inserting two genes – one from mushrooms and one from soil bacteria – that enabled the bacteria to convert PABA into paracetamol.

The team say that by using this form of E coli they were able to turn the PET-based starting material into paracetamol in under 24 hours, with low emissions and a yield of up to 92%.

While further work would be needed to produce paracetamol in this way at commercial levels, the results could have a practical application.

“It enables, for the first time, a pathway from plastic waste to paracetamol, which is not possible using biology alone, and it’s not possible using chemistry alone,” Wallace said.

Source: Scientists use bacteria to turn plastic waste into paracetamol | Drugs | The Guardian

We finally may be able to rid the world of mosquitoes. But should we? (hell yes! And ticks please!)

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They buzz, they bite, and they cause some of the deadliest diseases known to humanity. Mosquitoes are perhaps the planet’s most universally reviled animals.

If we could zap them off the face of the Earth, should we?

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The question is no longer hypothetical. In recent years, scientists have devised powerful genetic tools that may be able to eradicate mosquitoes and other pests once and for all.

Now, some doctors and scientists say it is time to take the extraordinary step of unleashing gene editing to suppress mosquitoes and avoid human suffering from malaria, dengue, West Nile virus and other serious diseases.

“There are so many lives at stake with malaria that we want to make sure that this technology could be used in the near future,” said Alekos Simoni, a molecular biologist with Target Malaria, a project aiming to target vector mosquitoes in sub-Saharan Africa.

Yet the development of this technology also raises a profound ethical question: When, if ever, is it okay to intentionally drive a species out of existence?

Even the famed naturalist E.O. Wilson once said: “I would gladly throw the switch and be the executioner myself” for malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

But some researchers and ethicists warn it may be too dangerous to tinker with the underpinnings of life itself. Even irritating, itty-bitty mosquitoes, they say, may have enough inherent value to keep around.

How to exterminate mosquitoes

Target Malaria is one of the most ambitious mosquito suppression efforts in the works. Simoni and his colleagues are seeking to diminish populations of mosquitoes in the Anopheles gambiae complex that are responsible for spreading the deadly disease.

In their labs, the scientists have introduced a gene mutation that causes female mosquito offspring to hatch without functional ovaries, rendering them infertile. Male mosquito offspring can carry the gene but remain physically unaffected.

The concept is that when female mosquitoes inherit the gene from both their mother and father, they will go on to die without producing offspring. Meanwhile, when males and females carrying just one copy of the gene mate with wild mosquitoes, they will spread the gene further until no fertile females are left – and the population crashes.

[…]

At the heart of Target Malaria’s work is a powerful genetic tool called a gene drive.

Under the normal rules of inheritance, a parent has a 50-50 chance of passing a particular gene on to an offspring. But by adding special genetic machinery – dubbed a gene drive – to segments of DNA, scientists can rig the coin flip and ensure a gene is included in an animal’s eggs and sperm, nearly guaranteeing it will be passed along.

Over successive generations, gene drives can cause a trait to spread across an entire species’s population, even if that gene doesn’t benefit the organism.

[…]

When so many wildlife conservationists are trying to save plants and animals from disappearing, the mosquito is one of the few creatures that people argue is actually worthy of extinction. Forget about tigers or bears; it’s the tiny mosquito that is the deadliest animal on Earth.

The human misery caused by malaria is undeniable. Nearly 600,000 people died of the disease in 2023, according to the World Health Organization, with the majority of cases in Africa.

On the continent, the death toll is akin to “crashing two Boeing 747s into Kilimanjaro” every day, said Paul Ndebele, a bioethicist at George Washington University.

[…]

A compelling candidate for total eradication, according to the bioethicists, is the New World screwworm. This parasitic fly, which lays eggs in wounds and eats the flesh of both humans and livestock, appears to play little role in ecosystems. Infections are difficult to treat and can lead to slow and painful deaths.

Yet it may be too risky, they say, to use gene drives on invasive rodents on remote Pacific islands where they decimate native birds, given the nonzero chance of a gene-edited rat or mouse jumping ship to the mainland and spreading across a continent.

“Even at a microbial level, it became plain in our conversations, we are not in favor of remaking the world to suit human desires,” said Gregory Kaebnick, a senior research scholar at the institute.

It’s unclear how important malaria-carrying mosquitoes are to broader ecosystems.

[…]

Instead, the authors said, geneticists should be able to use gene editing, vaccines and other tools to target not the mosquito itself, but the single-celled Plasmodium parasite that is responsible for malaria. That invisible microorganism – which a mosquito transfers from its saliva to a person’s blood when it bites – is the real culprit.

“You can get rid of malaria without actually getting rid of the mosquito,” Kaebnick said. He added that, at a time when the Trump administration talks cavalierly about animals going extinct, intentional extinction should be an option for only “particularly horrific species.”

But Ndebele, who is from Zimbabwe, noted that most of the people opposed to the elimination of the mosquitoes “are not based in Africa.”

[…]

Source: We finally may be able to rid the world of mosquitoes. But should we?

We have driven many species to extinction, many of which really did not deserve to die. Mosquitos and ticks (and bed bugs) most definitely do deserve to die. This technology is available, the gene editing is not. Go forth and exterminate!

Traceable random numbers from a non-local quantum advantage

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The unpredictability of random numbers is fundamental to both digital security1,2 and applications that fairly distribute resources3,4. However, existing random number generators have limitations—the generation processes cannot be fully traced, audited and certified to be unpredictable. The algorithmic steps used in pseudorandom number generators5 are auditable, but they cannot guarantee that their outputs were a priori unpredictable given knowledge of the initial seed. Device-independent quantum random number generators6,7,8,9 can ensure that the source of randomness was unknown beforehand, but the steps used to extract the randomness are vulnerable to tampering. Here we demonstrate a fully traceable random number generation protocol based on device-independent techniques. Our protocol extracts randomness from unpredictable non-local quantum correlations, and uses distributed intertwined hash chains to cryptographically trace and verify the extraction process. This protocol forms the basis for a public traceable and certifiable quantum randomness beacon that we have launched10. Over the first 40 days of operation, we completed the protocol 7,434 out of 7,454 attempts—a success rate of 99.7%. Each time the protocol succeeded, the beacon emitted a pulse of 512 bits of traceable randomness. The bits are certified to be uniform with error multiplied by actual success probability bounded by 2−64. The generation of certifiable and traceable randomness represents a public service that operates with an entanglement-derived advantage over comparable classical approaches.

Source: Traceable random numbers from a non-local quantum advantage | Nature

Pregnant mothers exposed to Sandstorm Sandy and extreme heat end up birthing kids with deformed brains

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  Weather-related stressors on healthy brain development has become an important topic in recent years. Notably, prenatal stress exposure to natural disasters may disrupt child neurodevelopment, with recent research exploring its impact on child brain morphology. Prenatal exposure to extreme weather events, such as ambient heat, may also affect child brain morphology. The basal ganglia, while historically related to motor ability, has gained increasing attention for its role in various non-motor functions, such as emotion regulation. Leveraging an existing cohort with and without prenatal exposure to Superstorm Sandy (SS), a category 3 hurricane at its peak, this study aims to investigate how prenatal exposure to both a natural disaster and extreme ambient heat impacts this important subcortical region.

[…]

Conclusions: Prenatal exposure to SS impacted child brain development. Extreme heat amplified this risk via increased and reduced brain volume from different basal ganglia subregions. Alongside promoting initiatives to combat climate change, increasing awareness of the potential dangers of exposure to extreme climate events for pregnant individuals is vital for protecting long-term child brain development.

Source: Prenatal exposure to extreme ambient heat may amplify the adverse impact of Superstorm Sandy on basal ganglia volume among school-aged children – PubMed

Tiny human hearts grown in pig embryos for the first time

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Researchers have reported growing hearts containing human cells in pig embryos for the first time. The embryos survived for 21 days, and in that time their tiny hearts started beating. The findings were presented this week at the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research in Hong Kong.

[…]

Pigs are a suitable donor species because the size and anatomy of their organs are comparable with those of humans, says Lai Liangxue

[…]

In their study, which has not been peer reviewed, Lai and his team reprogrammed human stem cells to bolster their ability to survive in a pig, by introducing genes that prevent cell death and enhance cell growth. They then generated pig embryos in which two specific genes that have key roles in heart development were knocked out. A handful of human stem cells were introduced into the pig embryos at the morula stage, soon after fertilization — a point at which the embryo consists of a ball of about a dozen cells that are rapidly dividing. The embryos were then transferred to surrogate pigs.

The team found that the embryos grew for up to 21 days, after which they did not survive. Lai says it’s possible the human cells disrupted the function of the pig hearts.

[…]

Source: Tiny human hearts grown in pig embryos for the first time

Scientists in Japan develop plastic that dissolves in seawater within hours | Reuters

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https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/scientists-japan-develop-plastic-that-dissolves-seawater-within-hours-2025-06-04/

Researchers in Japan have developed a plastic that dissolves in seawater within hours, offering up a potential solution for a modern-day scourge polluting oceans and harming wildlife.


While scientists have long experimented with biodegradable plastics, researchers from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science and the University of Tokyo say their new material breaks down much more quickly and leaves no residual trace.

[…]

Aida said the new material is as strong as petroleum-based plastics but breaks down into its original components when exposed to salt. Those components can then be further processed by naturally occurring bacteria, thereby avoiding generating microplastics that can harm aquatic life and enter the food chain.

As salt is also present in soil, a piece about five centimetres (two inches) in size disintegrates on land after over 200 hours, he added.

The material can be used like regular plastic when coated, and the team are focusing their current research on the best coating methods, Aida said. The plastic is non-toxic, non-flammable, and does not emit carbon dioxide, he added.

Drug-treated mosquite nets eliminate parasites (such as marlaria) in mosquitoes

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Researchers have identified a type of chemical compound that, when applied to insecticide-treated bed nets, appears to kill the malaria-causing parasite in mosquitoes.

Published in the journal Nature, the multi-site collaborative study represents a breakthrough for a disease that continues to claim more than half a million lives worldwide every year.

[…]

ELQ drugs refer to a class of experimental antimalarial drugs known as endochin-like quinolones.

“It was a very clever and novel idea by Dr. Catteruccia and her colleagues to incorporate anti-malarial drugs into bed nets and then to see if the mosquitoes would land on the nets and take up the drug,” Riscoe said. “The idea is the drug kills the parasites that cause instead of the mosquitoes, and our data shows this works.”

Risco said further research is necessary to determine whether the best strategy in the field is to incorporate the antimalarial ELQs together with insecticides in the fibers that are woven into bed nets or simply to use them alone to blunt disease transmission.

[…]

“Insecticide resistance is now extremely common in the mosquitoes that transmit malaria, which jeopardizes many of our most effective control tools,” said Alexandra Probst, M.Pharm, lead author of the study and a Ph.D. candidate in Catteruccia’s lab at Harvard.

“By targeting malaria-causing parasites directly in the mosquito, rather than the mosquito itself, we can circumvent this challenge and continue to reduce the spread of malaria.”

[…]

More information: Alexandra S. Probst et al, In vivo screen of Plasmodium targets for mosquito-based malaria control, Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09039-2

Source: Targeting malaria at the source: Drug-treated nets eliminate parasites in resistant mosquitoes

Researchers Finally Link Long Covid ‘Brain Fog’ to Inflammation

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An anonymous reader shared this report from The Hill: A new study indicates the debilitating “brain fog” suffered by millions of long COVID patients is linked to changes in the brain, including inflammation and an impaired ability to rewire itself following COVID-19 infection. United Press International reported this week that the small-scale study, conducted by researchers at Corewell Health in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Michigan State University, shows that altered levels of a pair of key brain chemicals could be the culprit.

The study marks the first time doctors have been able to provide scientific proof that validates the experiences of the approximately 12 million COVID “long-haulers” in the U.S. who have reported neurological symptoms. Researchers looked at biomarkers in study participants and found that those complaining of brain fog had higher levels of an anti-inflammatory protein that is crucial to regulating a person’s immune system, UPI reported. They also showed lower serum levels of nerve growth factor, a protein vital to the brain’s plasticity…

One of the biggest issues involving long COVID has been doctors’ inability to find physical proof of the symptoms described by patients. The study has changed that, according to co-author Dr. Bengt Arnetz.

Source: Researchers Finally Link Long Covid ‘Brain Fog’ to Inflammation

Scientists find lead really can be turned into gold (with help from the Large Hadron Collider)

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One of the ultimate goals of medieval alchemy has been realized, but only for a fraction of a second. Scientists with the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN, were able to convert lead into gold using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. Unlike the examples of transmutation we see in pop culture, these experiments with the LHC involve smashing subatomic particles together at ridiculously high speeds to manipulate lead’s physical properties to become gold.

The LHC is often used to smash lead ions together to create extremely hot and dense matter similar to what was observed in the universe following the Big Bang. While conducting this analysis, the CERN scientists took note of the near-misses that caused a lead nucleus to drop its neutrons or protons. Lead atoms only have three more protons than gold atoms, meaning that in certain cases the LHC causes the lead atoms to drop just enough protons to become a gold atom for a fraction of a second — before immediately fragmenting into a bunch of particles.

Alchemists back in the day may be astonished by this achievement, but the experiments conducted between 2015 and 2018 only produced about 29 picograms of gold, according to CERN. The organization added that the latest trials produced almost double that amount thanks to regular upgrades to the LHC, but the mass made is still trillions of times less than what’s necessary for a piece of jewelry. Instead of trying to chase riches, the organization’s scientists are more interested in studying the interaction that leads to this transmutation.

[…]

Source: Scientists find lead really can be turned into gold (with help from the Large Hadron Collider)

Scientists rewrite 100 year old textbooks on how cells divide

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Scientists from The University of Manchester have changed our understanding of how cells in living organisms divide, which could revise what students are taught at school.

In a Wellcome funded study published today (01/05/25) in Science – one of the world’s leading scientific journals – the researchers challenge conventional wisdom taught in schools for over 100 years.

Students are currently taught that during cell division, a ‘parent’ cell will become spherical before splitting into two ‘daughter’ cells of equal size and shape.

However, the study reveals that cell rounding is not a universal feature of cell division and is not how it often works in the body.

Dividing cells, they show, often don’t round up into sphere-like shapes. This lack of rounding breaks the symmetry of division to generate two daughter cells that differ from each other in both size and function, known as asymmetric division.

Asymmetric divisions are an important way that the different types of cells in the body are generated, to make different tissues and organs.

Until now, asymmetric cell division has predominantly only been associated with highly specialised cells, known as stem cells.

The scientists found that it is the shape of a parent cell before it even divides that can determine if they will round or not in division and determines how symmetric, or not, its daughter cells are going to be.

Cells which are shorter and wider in shape tend to round up and divide into two cells which are similar to each other. However, cells which are longer and thinner don’t round up and divide asymmetrically, so that one

daughter is different to the other.

The findings could have far reaching implications on our understanding of the role of cell division in disease. For example, in the context of cancer cells, this type of ‘non-round’, asymmetric division could generate different cell behaviours known to promote cancer progression through metastasis.

[…]

Source: Scientists rewrite textbooks on how cells divide

Brain implant does thought to speech

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Marking a breakthrough in the field of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), a team of researchers from UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco has unlocked a way to restore naturalistic speech for people with severe paralysis.

This work solves the long-standing challenge of latency in speech neuroprostheses, the time lag between when a subject attempts to speak and when sound is produced. Using recent advances in artificial intelligence-based modeling, the researchers developed a streaming method that synthesizes brain signals into audible speech in near-real time.

As reported today in Nature Neuroscience, this technology represents a critical step toward enabling communication for people who have lost the ability to speak. […]

we found that we could decode neural data and, for the first time, enable near-synchronous voice streaming. The result is more naturalistic, fluent speech synthesis.

[…]

The researchers also showed that their approach can work well with a variety of other brain sensing interfaces, including microelectrode arrays (MEAs) in which electrodes penetrate the brain’s surface, or non-invasive recordings (sEMG) that use sensors on the face to measure muscle activity.

“By demonstrating accurate brain-to-voice synthesis on other silent-speech datasets, we showed that this technique is not limited to one specific type of device,” said Kaylo Littlejohn, Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and co-lead author of the study. “The same algorithm can be used across different modalities provided a good signal is there.”

[…]

the neuroprosthesis works by sampling neural data from the motor cortex, the part of the brain that controls speech production, then uses AI to decode brain function into speech.

“We are essentially intercepting signals where the thought is translated into articulation and in the middle of that motor control,” he said. “So what we’re decoding is after a thought has happened, after we’ve decided what to say, after we’ve decided what words to use and how to move our vocal-tract muscles.”

[…]

 

Source: Brain-to-voice neuroprosthesis restores naturalistic speech – Berkeley Engineering

AI Helps Unravel a Cause of Alzheimer’s Disease and Identify a Therapeutic Candidate

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graphic showing how Alzheimer's severity increases with PHGDH expression

A new study found that a gene recently recognized as a biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease is actually a cause of it, due to its previously unknown secondary function. Researchers at the University of California San Diego used artificial intelligence to help both unravel this mystery of Alzheimer’s disease and discover a potential treatment that obstructs the gene’s moonlighting role.

[…]

hong and his team took a closer look at phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase (PHGDH), which they had previously discovered as a potential blood biomarker for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease. In a follow-up study, they later found that expression levels of the PHGDH gene directly correlated with changes in the brain in Alzheimer’s disease; in other words, the higher the levels of protein and RNA produced by the PHGDH gene, the more advanced the disease.

[…]

Using mice and human brain organoids, the researchers found that altering the amounts of PHGDH expression had consequential effects on Alzheimer’s disease: lower levels corresponded to less disease progression, whereas increasing the levels led to more disease advancement. Thus, the researchers established that PHGDH is indeed a causal gene to spontaneous Alzheimer’s disease.

In further support of that finding, the researchers determined—with the help of AI—that PHGDH plays a previously undiscovered role: it triggers a pathway that disrupts how cells in the brain turn genes on and off. And such a disturbance can cause issues, like the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

[…]

another Alzheimer’s project in his lab, which did not focus on PHGDH, changed all this. A year ago, that project revealed a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease: a widespread imbalance in the brain in the process where cells control which genes are turned on and off to carry out their specific roles.

The researchers were curious if PHGDH had an unknown regulatory role in that process, and they turned to modern AI for help.

With AI, they could visualize the three-dimensional structure of the PHGDH protein. Within that structure, they discovered that the protein has a substructure that is very similar to a known DNA-binding domain in a class of known transcription factors. The similarity is solely in the structure and not in the protein sequence.>

Zhong said, “It really demanded modern AI to formulate the three-dimensional structure very precisely to make this discovery.”

After discovering the substructure, the team then demonstrated that with it, the protein can activate two critical target genes. That throws off the delicate balance, leading to several problems and eventually the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. In other words, PHGDH has a previously unknown role, independent of its enzymatic function, that through a novel pathway leads to spontaneous Alzheimer’s disease.

That ties back to the team’s earlier studies: the PHGDH gene produced more proteins in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients compared to the control brains, and those increased amounts of the protein in the brain triggered the imbalance. While everyone has the PHGDH gene, the difference comes down to the expression level of the gene, or how many proteins are made by it.

[…]

Given that PHGDH is such an important enzyme, there are past studies on its possible inhibitors. One small molecule, known as NCT-503, stood out to the researchers because it is not quite effective at impeding PHGDH’s enzymatic activity (the production of serine), which they did not want to change. NCT-503 is also able to penetrate the blood-brain-barrier, which is a desirable characteristic.

They turned to AI again for three-dimensional visualization and modeling. They found that NCT-503 can access that DNA-binding substructure of PHGDH, thanks to a binding pocket. With more testing, they saw that NCT-503 does indeed inhibit PHGDH’s regulatory role.

When the researchers tested NCT-503 in two mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease, they saw that it significantly alleviated Alzheimer’s progression. The treated mice demonstrated substantial improvement in their memory and anxiety tests. These tests were chosen because Alzheimer’s patients suffer from cognitive decline and increased anxiety.

The researchers do acknowledge limitations of their study. One being that there is no perfect animal model for spontaneous Alzheimer’s disease. They could test NCT-503 only in the mouse models that are available, which are those with mutations in those known disease-causing genes.

Still, the results are promising, according to Zhong.

[…]

Source: AI Helps Unravel a Cause of Alzheimer’s Disease and Identify a Therapeutic Candidate

Study finding persistent chemical in European wines raises doubts and concerns

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A report by the Pesticides Action Network (PAN Europe) and other NGOs that uncovered high concentrations of a forever chemical in wines from across the EU – including organic – is sparking debate about the causes of contamination and restrictions on the substance. 

The report found some wines had trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) levels 100 times higher than the strictest threshold for drinking water in Europe.

TFA is part of the PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl) family of substances used in many products, including pesticides, for their water-repellent properties. Extremely persistent in the environment, they are a known threat to human health.

“This is a wake-up call,” said Helmut Burtscher-Schaden, an environmental chemist at Global 2000, one of the NGOs behind the research. “TFA is a permanent chemical and will not go away.” 

The NGOs analysed 49 wines. Comparing modern wines with older vintages, the findings suggested no detectable residues in pre-1988 wines but a sharp increase since 2010.  

“For no other agricultural product are the harvests from past decades so readily available and well-preserved,” the study said.

PAN sees a correlation between rising levels of TFA in wine and the growing use PFAS-based pesticides.

Under the spotlight

Though nearly a quarter of Austria’s vineyards are cultivated with the organic method, Austrian bottles are over-represented in the list of contaminated wines, 18 out of 49, as the NGOs started testing from the country before expanding the reach of the research.

[… Winemakers complain about the study, who would have thought…]

In response, the European executive’s officials passed the buck to member states, noting they resisted the Commission’s proposal to quit renewing certain PFAS pesticides. An eventual agreement was reached on just two substances.

More could be done to limit PFAS chemicals at the national level under the current EU legislation, Commission representatives said.

Source: Study finding persistent chemical in European wines raises doubts and concerns – Euractiv

Toothpaste widely contaminated with lead and other metals, US research finds

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Toothpaste can be widely contaminated with lead and other dangerous heavy metals, new research shows.

Most of 51 brands of toothpaste tested for lead contained the dangerous heavy metal, including those for children or those marketed as green. The testing, conducted by Lead Safe Mama, also found concerning levels of highly toxic arsenic, mercury and cadmium in many brands.

About 90% of toothpastes contained lead, 65% contained arsenic, just under half contained mercury, and one-third had cadmium. Many brands contain a number of the toxins.

The highest levels detected violated the state of Washington’s limits, but not federal limits. The thresholds have been roundly criticized by public health advocates for not being protective – no level of exposure to lead is safe, the federal government has found.

“It’s unconscionable – especially in 2025,” said Tamara Rubin, Lead Safe Mama’s founder. “What’s really interesting to me is that no one thought this was a concern.”

Lead can cause cognitive damage to children, harm the kidneys and cause heart disease, among other issues. Lead, mercury, cadmium and arsenic are all carcinogens.

Rubin first learned that lead-contaminated ingredients were added to toothpaste about 12 years ago while working with families that had children with high levels of the metal in their blood. The common denominator among them was a brand of toothpaste, Earthpaste, that contained lead.

Last year she detected high levels in some toothpaste using an XRF lead detection tool. The levels were high enough to raise concern, and she crowdfunded with readers to send popular brands to an independent laboratory for testing.

Among those found to contain the toxins were Crest, Sensodyne, Tom’s of Maine, Dr Bronner’s, Davids, Dr Jen and others.

So far, none of the companies Lead Safe Mama checked have said they will work to get lead out of their product, Rubin said. Several sent her cease-and-desist letters, which she said she ignored, but also posted on her blog.

[…]

Source: Toothpaste widely contaminated with lead and other metals, US research finds | US news | The Guardian

Unique Study Is Latest to Show Shingles Vaccine Can Help Prevent Dementia

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[…] Scientists at Stanford University led the research, published in Nature. They compared people born before and after they were eligible to take the shingles vaccine in a certain part of the UK, finding that vaccinated people were 20% less likely to be diagnosed with dementia over a seven year period. More research is needed to understand and confirm this link, but the findings suggest shingles vaccination can become a cost-effective preventative measure against dementia.

[…]

the researchers took advantage of a natural experiment that occurred in Wales, UK, over a decade ago. In September 2013, a shingles vaccination program officially began in Wales, with a well-defined age eligibility. People born on or after September 2, 1933 (80 years and under) were eligible for at least one year for the shingles vaccine, whereas people born before then were not.

The clear cutoff date (and the UK’s well-maintained electronic health records) meant that the researchers could easily track dementia rates across the two groups born before or after September 1933. And because the people in these groups were so close together in age, they also shared many other factors in common that could potentially affect dementia risk, such as how often they saw doctors regularly. This divide, in other words, allowed the researchers to study older people in Wales during this time in a manner similar to a randomized trial.

The researchers analyzed the health records of 280,000 residents born between 1925 and 1942. As expected, many vaccine-eligible people immediately took advantage of the new program: 47% of people born after the first week of the eligibility date were vaccinated, while practically no one born before the cutoff date received the vaccine, the researchers noted.

All in all, the researchers calculated that shingles vaccination in Wales was associated with a 20% decline in people’s relative risk of developing dementia over a seven-year period (in absolute terms, people’s risk of dementia dropped by 3.5%). They also analyzed data from England, where a similar cutoff period was enacted, and found the same pattern of reduced dementia risk (and deaths related to dementia) among those vaccinated against shingles.

[…]

“For the first time, we now have evidence that likely shows a cause-and-effect relationship between shingles vaccination and dementia prevention,” Geldsetzer said. “We find these protective effects to be large in size—substantially larger than those of existing pharmacological tools for dementia.”

There are still unanswered aspects about this link. Researchers aren’t sure exactly why the vaccine seems to lower dementia risk, for instance. Some but not all studies have suggested that herpes zoster and other germs that linger in our bodies can overtly cause or worsen people’s dementia, so the vaccine might be having a direct preventative effect there. But it’s also possible the vaccine is triggering changes in the immune system that more broadly keep the brain sharper, and that other vaccines could do the same as well.

Importantly, this latest study only looked at the earlier Zostavax vaccine, which has largely been replaced by the more effective Shingrix vaccine. This might mean that the results seen here are an underestimate of the benefits people can expect today. Just last July, for instance, a study from researchers in the UK found evidence that the Shingrix vaccine reduced people’s risk of dementia noticeably more than Zostavax. This finding, if further supported, would also support the idea that the herpes zoster virus is contributing to dementia.

[…]

Source: Unique Study Is Latest to Show Shingles Vaccine Can Help Prevent Dementia

Using the Earth’s atmosphere as a global sensor shows promise

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AtmoSense, which began in late 2020, set out to understand the fundamentals of energy propagation from the Earth’s surface to the ionosphere to determine whether the atmosphere can be used as a sensor. A fundamental science effort, AtmoSense aimed to measure acoustic and electromagnetic waves propagating through the atmosphere to see if they could provide clues about the nature, location, and size of a disturbance event that occurred on Earth. Precisely locating illicit underground explosions by a rogue nation or identifying other national security-relevant events could be done in the future just by using signals detected and modeled from the atmosphere. The open-source tools developed under AtmoSense may be the first step toward “reading” — from extended distances — information contained in atmospheric waves propagating from an event happening anywhere in the world.

Benefits for a range of computationally complex problems

“High-resolution surface-to-space simulation of acoustic waves was considered impossible before the program began, but we accomplished it,” said Michael “Orbit” Nayak, DARPA AtmoSense program manager. “We used to call the ionosphere the ‘ignorosphere,’ but AtmoSense made some key interdisciplinary breakthroughs to address what used to be a massively intractable problem. We can now model across six orders of magnitude, in 3D, what happens to the energy emanating from a small, meters-scale disturbance as it expands up into the atmosphere to propagate over thousands of kilometers, and potentially around the world.”

[…]

An unplanned discovery: SpaceX Falcon 9 re-entries detected

Following one of the New Mexico test-range detonations in 2024, a performer team noticed something unusual in their analysis of sensor data.

“As the team was looking at the data, they saw a huge drop in what’s called total electron content that puzzled them,” Nayak said. “Imagine that you have water going through a hose. That’s a flow of electrons, and if you put your fist in front of the hose, you’ll notice a significant drop in water volume coming out of the hose.”

In preparing to analyze their field test data, the team noticed a similar sizable dip in the electron content compared to the background electron readings at a specific location in the atmosphere. As they did more forensics, they correlated the disturbance to a SpaceX Falcon 9 re-entry that happened the same day of the detonation test. Their sensor data had unexpectedly captured the SpaceX reentry into the atmosphere, resulting in the specific drop in electron content.

“Then they decided to pull other SpaceX reentry data, across dozens of launches, to see if they could spot a similar electron drop,” Nayak said. “The phenomenon is highly repeatable. We discovered an unplanned new technique for identifying objects entering the earth’s atmosphere.” The Embry-Riddle University team, led by Jonathan Snively and Matt Zettergren, in collaboration with Pavel Inchin of Computational Physics, Inc., have submitted their novel results for peer-reviewed publication.

[…]

Source: Using the Earth’s atmosphere as a global sensor shows promise | DARPA