A Sea Slug Study Just Changed What We Know About How To Actually Make Memory Stick
If you have ever crammed the night before and found it mostly gone by morning, there is now a cellular explanation for why that happens, and it comes from an unlikely source: sea slugs. Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center studied the neurons of Aplysia, a sea slug whose brain cells mirror […]
TikTok Is Getting Gen Z To Quit Vaping
Social media influencer challenges have a complicated reputation, but a new one spreading across TikTok and Instagram is genuinely worth paying attention to. Throughout the past year, a wave of popular content creators with audiences numbering in the hundreds of millions began posting videos about quitting vaping, all in partnership with Truth Initiative, the nation’s […]
Science Just Confirmed That Art Is Not A Luxury It Is A Health Necessity
At a dance class in Boulder, Colorado, most of the participants have Parkinson’s disease. Some stay seated throughout. Others follow along using only their upper body or their hands. Occasionally someone starts singing. The class is part of a growing movement that has now attracted the attention of researchers, hospitals and public health officials: the […]
Jaden Smith Runs A Vegan Food Truck Where Homeless People Eat For Free
For his 21st birthday, Jaden Smith did not throw a party. He launched a restaurant. The son of Will Smith had been thinking about food insecurity on Skid Row in Los Angeles, where tens of thousands of people live without reliable access to meals, and he decided that a birthday was the right moment to […]
American Cigarette Smoking Just Hit A Record Low
For the first time in recorded history, fewer than 10 percent of American adults smoke cigarettes. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 9.9 percent of adults smoked in 2024, crossing a threshold that public health researchers describe as genuinely significant. In their field, events affecting fewer than 10 […]
Boy Learns Something Unsettling About Peanut Butter So He Built His Own Brand
Franco Leonardi was 18 and still finishing high school in Argentina when a family contact in the peanut industry told him something he could not stop thinking about. A significant portion of commercial peanut butter, the contact explained, is made using peanuts that cannot be sold in whole form: older batches, cracked kernels, product that […]
Vivid Dreams Actually Make You Sleep More Deeply
For decades, the scientific understanding of deep sleep rested on a simple idea: the more quiet and inactive the brain, the more restorative the rest. Dreaming was considered a sign of partial wakefulness, a kind of interruption in the deeper stages of sleep rather than a feature of them. A new study from the IMT […]
Scientists Found A Switch Drives Alzheimer’s And Turned It Off
Scientists at Heidelberg University in Germany believe they have identified a hidden mechanism deep inside the Alzheimer’s-affected brain that may be one of the primary drivers of the disease, and they have found a compound that can switch it off. The research centers on two proteins that under normal conditions operate independently and serve healthy […]
The Biggest Baby Study Ever Just Put A Major Parenting Worry To Rest
One of the most common questions among parents choosing vegetarian or vegan lifestyles is whether it is truly safe to raise a baby without animal foods, and a new study of nearly 1.2 million children just provided the most reassuring answer yet. Researchers at Ben-Gurion University in Israel analyzed national health records from routine clinic […]
A Teen Just Solved A Huge Microplastic Problem
Mia Heller is 18 years old, lives in Warrington, Virginia, and has invented a water filter that removes 96 percent of microplastics from drinking water using a magnetic oil and a clever self-recycling system she built herself in her garage and kitchen. The idea started when her local newspaper reported that her neighborhood’s water was […]