A Strain of Tuberculosis Traveled Across The Pacific Thousands of Years Pre-Contact

Centuries before first contact with Europeans, new research suggests a strain of tuberculosis was already circulating from the South American coasts to the mountains. Deadly European diseases, like tuberculosis (TB), whooping cough, and smallpox, were spread around the world with colonization, but recent evidence indicates this wasn’t the first time TB arrived in South America. … Read more

In The Year 2080, Your City Will Feel Like It’s 500 Miles Away

When you’re older, your home town will feel different. That’s true for everybody. But for people living today, the changes will be impossible to ignore. We usually measure climate change in terms of rising temperatures. But scientists say there’s another way of thinking about it: spatial displacement.   In a study from 2019, researchers found … Read more

Russia halts Soyuz rocket launches from South America over European sanctions on Ukraine invasion

The Russian space agency Roscosmos is stopping all Soyuz rocket launches from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana due to European Union sanctions on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  “In response to EU sanctions against our enterprises, Roscosmos is suspending cooperation with European partners in organizing space launches from the Kourou cosmodrome and withdrawing its personnel, including … Read more

Newly Discovered Dinosaur From Argentina Belongs to a Rather ‘Armless’ Family

Paleontologists in Argentina have identified a new species of dinosaur which likely had such feeble forearms, it would make Tyrannosaurus rex look like Popeye in comparison. The dinosaur, named Guemesia ochoai and identified from a single skull, is thought to belong to a clade of tiny-armed carnivores known as abelisaurids, which once tramped across Europe, Africa, South … Read more

North America Could Expect Over 1 Million More Opioid Deaths by 2029

A new analysis from researchers at Stanford University and the scientific journal, The Lancet, has revealed a large number of Americans and Canadians are still becoming addicted to prescription opioids each year.   Without “urgent interventions“, the members of the Stanford-Lancet Commission estimate this deepening disaster could claim the lives of up to 1.2 million people … Read more

Planet Earth Contains Over 9,000 Tree Species Yet to Be Discovered, Scientists Say

An ambitious, first-of-its-kind effort to estimate how many different kinds of trees exist on Earth suggests our planet is teeming with thousands of tree species that still haven’t been discovered.   The huge international research effort – involving the work of over 100 scientists – estimates that there are approximately 73,000 tree species in total … Read more

COVID Threatens to Bring a Wave of Hikikomori to America

In 2014, a vibrant and well-traveled patient I will call Alice, whom I (Berman) was treating for bipolar disorder, began refusing to leave her home after a prolonged course of physical rehabilitation for a spinal injury. None of the usual diagnoses—depression, anxiety or agoraphobia—explained her withdrawal, which continued after medications stabilized her mood. Patients with … Read more

Why cat-like creatures vanished from North America for 6 million years

By Chelsea Whyte Ken Barber/Alamy; Schankz/Shutterstock; Advia Image/Shutterstock; Koktaro/Shutterstock LOOKING out over an expanse of scrubby sagebrush, it is hard to imagine that the high desert in eastern Oregon was once home to large creatures that resembled sabre-toothed cats. The land here is mostly dry and grassy, punctuated by sharp hills. There isn’t a lot … Read more

Spectacularly Rare, Enormous Eagle Shows Up in North America, 5,000 Miles From Home

Bird watchers in Massachusetts have been given an early Christmas present in the form of an incredibly rare sighting – a Steller’s sea eagle, which is native to Asia almost 8,000 km (5,000 miles) away.   The large sea eagles are native to the Kamchatka Peninsula in far eastern Russia, and also seen in Japan, … Read more

How a Geological Secret Passageway Under Panama Moves Rocks Thousands of Miles Away

A geological secret passage beneath Panama may explain why rocks from Earth’s mantle are found more than 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) from where they originated.  This opening, located some 62 miles below Earth’s surface, may allow a flow of mantle materials to travel all the way from beneath the Galápagos Islands to beneath Panama.    … Read more