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COVID-19 Vaccines Saved Over 240,000 American Lives in Just 6 Months, Study Finds

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COVID-19 vaccines saved nearly 241,000 lives in the United States and prevented more than 1 million virus-related hospitalizations in the first six months of the country’s inoculation program, according to a new research model.    A research letter, published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA Network Open, found coronavirus vaccinations also prevented more than 14 … Read more

Microbes in The Ocean Depths Can Make Oxygen Without Sun. This Discovery Could Be Huge

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For most of life on Earth, oxygen is essential, and sunlight is usually needed to produce that oxygen. But in an exciting twist, researchers have caught a common, ocean-dwelling microbe breaking all the rules.   Scientists have found that a microbe called Nitrosopumilus maritimus and several of its cousins, called ammonia oxidizing archaea (AOA), are able to … Read more

Newly Discovered ‘Mini’ Supermassive Black Hole Is Among The Smallest Ever Found

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Because they emit nothing we can detect, there are many things about black holes we simply do not know. Amongst the most perplexing are supermassive black holes, millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun. Since black holes form from the cores of massive dead individual stars, how do supermassive behemoths grow so … Read more

Giant ‘Sea Dragon’ Unearthed From Mud Is The Largest Ever Found in The UK

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An astonishing fossil of an extinct ‘sea dragon’ discovered by a wetland conservationist one day at work has been hailed as the largest and most complete fossil of its kind ever found in Britain.   The fossil, identified as an ichthyosaur, an ancient marine reptile that swam in Earth’s prehistoric oceans when dinosaurs walked on … Read more

Chinese Lunar Lander Makes The First Ever On-Site Detection of Water on The Moon

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When China’s Chang’E-5 probe visited the Moon in December of 2020, it didn’t just collect a sample of lunar material to return to Earth. While it was there, the mission took observations of the surrounding lunar rock – data vital for contextualizing the sample in future studies.   Those observations have turned out to be … Read more

A Hungry Badger Discovered a Roman-Era Treasure Trove, Archaeologists Say

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A treasure trove of some 200 Roman-era coins was discovered in northwestern Spain thanks to the apparent efforts of a hungry badger hunting for food, archaeologists have said. Described as “an exceptional find”, the coins were discovered in April 2021 in La Cuesta cave in Bercio in the Asturias region, with details outlined in the … Read more

The Dolphin Clitoris Is Full of Surprises, Scientists Discover

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The bottlenose dolphin (Tersiops truncatus) appears to have a very large and well-developed clitoris, potentially better placed for coital pleasure than the clitoris of humans, according to new research.   The visible tip of the human clitoris is but the size of a pea and located slightly north of the vagina and urethra (although much … Read more

‘Deltacron’ Hybrid Virus Almost Certainly Doesn’t Exist, Scientists Say

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Experts said Monday that an alleged hybrid coronavirus mutation dubbed “Deltacron” reportedly discovered in a Cyprus lab is most likely the result of a lab contamination, and not a new worrying variant.   Cypriot media reported the discovery Saturday, describing it as having “the genetic background of the Delta variant along with some of the … Read more

Surgeons Implant Pig Heart Into Human Patient in World-First Case

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US surgeons have successfully implanted a heart from a genetically modified pig in a human patient, a first-of-its-kind procedure, the University of Maryland Medical School said Monday.   The surgery took place Friday, and demonstrates for the first time that an animal heart can survive in a human without immediate rejection, the medical school said … Read more