Nautilus Magazine

11/29/2025

"They’re keeping mice alive with 3-D bioprinted heart chambers?!"

We desperately need new organs, and we’re running out of ways to get them.

Mary Roach offers some emerging solutions taking place in the lab.

Full story at link in comments.

11/29/2025

The origins of pet cats have long been unclear, in part because wild and domestic cat bones look similar and archaeological evidence is limited. Earlier clues pointed to a Levant origin, supported by ancient Cypriot remains and Egyptian depictions.

A new study in Science, based on 87 genomes from ancient and modern cats, suggests a different path. The results point to North African wildcats as the ancestors of domestic cats and propose that truly domesticated felines reached southwest Asia and Europe only about 2,000 years ago. Before that, cats in those regions appear to have been European wildcats shaped by ancient hybridization.

A commentary notes that the proposed timeline conflicts with some older artistic depictions and highlights gaps in genomic data, showing how much about cat domestication remains unresolved.

Full story at link in comments.

11/29/2025

Feline DNA findings have switched up the timing and birthplace of our furry friends.

The Story of Cat Domestication Just Got a Major Twist: Feline DNA findings have switched up the timing and birthplace of our furry friends.

11/29/2025

Little kid meltdowns leave clear evidence, like food spilled on floors or walls or, say, toys cast across the room. Now, scientists say that they can watch some children’s meltdowns unfold in their brains. This finding could pave the way for future treatments for kids with pronounced behavioral and emotional reactions to certain stimuli.

This is known as sensory over-responsivity, or SOR, the most common form of a condition called sensory processing disorder, which is not considered an official medical diagnosis. SOR, specifically, describes discomfort from typically harmless stimuli including flashing lights, vacuum cleaners, and certain food textures. This can result in behaviors such as meltdowns and withdrawal. SOR seems to be particularly prevalent among children with autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, but it’s estimated that some 5 to 12 percent of children in the United States experience sensory processing challenges.

Studying SOR could help scientists better understand how two types of crucial brain networks differ in neurodiverse children, according to a paper recently published in the Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders. The outward-focused exogenous systems are linked with functions including sensation and motor skills, while the inward-focused endogenous systems relate to functions such as impulse control and cognition. Brain activity in kids with SOR could offer valuable insights into this question because the condition involves both of these systems.

To this end, a team of U.S. researchers scanned the brains of 83 neurodivergent children between 8 and 12 years old. Around half were particularly sensitive to some lights, noises, or tactile sensations, according to results from a sensory processing assessment, while the other half were not. The team studied these children’s brains with functional MRI, which measures brain activity via shifts in blood oxygenation levels, while they looked at an object on a screen. Ultimately, scans from the two groups showed clear distinctions.

In the over-responsive children, activity in brain networks associated with outward functions was relatively low. But in the brain networks related to inward functions, activity was elevated. These results were flipped in the less sensitive children.

“We think that when you are overstimulated by sensory input, you compensate by dialing up your brain’s inward-focused networks to gain self-control. You also dial down your outward-focused networks to minimize sensory input,” said study author Pratik Mukherjee, a neuroradiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, in a statement. “The kids who aren’t emotionally overwhelmed by the input—some are even under-responsive to it—do the opposite.”

Treatment for children with sensory over-responsivity typically involves “gradually exposing them to sensory input over time so they learn to tolerate,” the statement noted. Now, Mukherjee thinks that doctors could personalize and boost these treatments “If we know an individual child’s brain patterns and how that maps to emotion and behavior.”

11/28/2025

A new explanation for oddly calm lava flows is a little like stirring honey in a jar.

Why Some Volcanoes Don’t Explode: A new explanation for oddly calm lava flows is a little like stirring honey in a jar.

11/28/2025

The ability to use especially complex and nuanced language to communicate sets humans apart from other animal species. But how did it evolve? It’s a staggeringly difficult question to answer (spoken words don’t leave fossils, after all). “There are influential persons among us … who claim to believe that language is a totally evolutionary process. That it has somehow appeared in the brain in a primitive form and then grown to usefulness,” Cormac McCarthy once wrote in Nautilus.

Now, a new framework published in Science is eschewing the tunnel-vision of any single perspective to chart a new, more comprehensive course for future researchers to take.

Full story at link in comments.

11/28/2025

The ability to use especially complex and nuanced language to communicate sets humans apart from other animal species. But how did it evolve? It’s a staggeringly difficult question to answer (spoken words don’t leave fossils, after all). “There are influential persons among us … who claim to believe that language is a totally evolutionary process. That it has somehow appeared in the brain in a primitive form and then grown to usefulness,” Cormac McCarthy once wrote in Nautilus.

Now, a new framework published in Science is eschewing the tunnel-vision of any single perspective to chart a new, more comprehensive course for future researchers to take.

How Did Language Evolve? A new biocultural perspective points the way, combining linguistics, psychology, molecular genetics, and more.

11/28/2025

If you’re a farmer, you know what a menace birds can be for your crops—eating the fruits, damaging the leaves, and p**ping on the plants. The bird droppings are not just an eyesore; they’re a food safety issue. Birds carry pathogens that can harm humans, such as the bacteria Salmonella and E. coli, which continue to trigger food safety concerns. A study published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology proposes a gentler way to deal with winged crop-menaces than nets or spray.

Michigan State University scientists led research that investigated a diminutive falcon, the American kestrel (Falco sparverius), as a living scarecrow for biological control. As the smallest birds of prey in the United States, American kestrels feed mostly on insects but will take down an occasional bird or small mammal. So, the researchers wondered whether roosting kestrels could serve as deterrents to crop-pest birds, such as robins, starlings, and grackles.

The study was conducted in 16 of northern Michigan’s sweet cherry orchards, half of which contained kestrel nesting boxes and half of which didn’t. By surveying birds, bird p**p, and crop damage along transects in the orchards, the researchers compared the fields with kestrels to the fields without. Using thin nets to capture pest birds, they collected fresh f***l samples, which were analyzed for bacteria. The researchers focused on the most common foodborne pathogen carried by birds, Campylobacter spp., which causes diarrhea in humans.

The orchards with active kestrel nest boxes had significantly fewer pest birds and a threefold reduction in bird droppings than the sites without. Kestrels apparently make good scarecrows. “They’re really good at keeping the amount of p**p down,” said study author and agroecologist Olivia Smith in a statement.

About 10 percent of the f***l samples the scientists analyzed contained Campylobacter spp. While that doesn’t guarantee that the bacteria would have been transmitted to humans through the cherry harvest, it highlights a safety risk that warrants keeping birds off crops. Maintaining kestrel boxes could be a win-win for farmers and falcons, since American kestrel populations are decreasing, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

“Our findings suggest that the promotion of birds of prey using nest boxes may be one way for growers to conserve a declining species, reduce crop damage, and reduce in-field f***l contamination that could cause foodborne illness,” wrote the study authors.

Increased food safety with a cherry on top—raptor conservation.

11/28/2025

New research into white dwarfs could help us measure our universe.

Scientists Gaze Into the Heart of a Cosmic Vampire: New research into white dwarfs could help us measure our universe.

11/28/2025

It’s billions of years in the future, but at some point, our warm, friendly sun exhausts its fuel and eventually collapses into a white dwarf. It’s a common fate for stars that aren’t massive enough to become black holes or neutron stars. Using an X-Ray telescope orbiting the Earth, researchers were able to take a peek into the heart of a unique “vampire” white dwarf system (EX Hydrae) for the first time, publishing their findings recently in the The Astrophysical Journal.

White dwarfs are incredibly dense—they have the mass of the sun collapsed into a space about the size of Earth—and their gravitational tugs are monstrous. When a white dwarf orbiting another star siphons off matter from the “donor star,” the binary star system is known as a “cataclysmic variable.”

In addition to their strong gravitational tide, some white dwarfs also have a magnetic pull. In a cataclysmic variable whose white dwarf has a strong enough magnetic field, it can become what’s called an “intermediate polar.” In this situation, in addition to pulling in matter around the white dwarf, it will also pull matter onto its magnetic poles, perpendicular to the accretion disc. Such is the case in the vampire binary star system EX Hydrae.

“If you were able to stand somewhat close to the white dwarf’s pole, you would see a column of gas stretching 2,000 miles into the sky, and then fanning outward,” study co-author Massachusetts Institute of Technology postdoc Sean Gunderson said in a statement. That 2,000-mile-high fountain of white-hot stellar material was larger than researchers previously thought—around half the radius of the white dwarf itself. Because the jettisoned material is so hot—with temperatures reaching into the millions of degrees Fahrenheit range—the curtain of searing star matter emits x-rays. By measuring these x-rays, researchers were able to get a better idea of how star systems like EX Hydrae work.

Going forward the team plans to study other vampire white dwarfs, and their research could help us measure the size of the universe. “There comes a point where so much material is falling onto the white dwarf from a companion star that the white dwarf can’t hold it anymore, the whole thing collapses and produces a type of supernova that’s observable throughout the universe, which can be used to figure out the size of the universe,” MIT astrophysicist and co-author Herman Marshall said.

This peek into the bizarre heart of a dying star could turn out to shed light on the nature and scale of everything.

11/27/2025

If anyone recently spotted advanced aircraft buzzing over Easter Island to surveil the mysterious moai statues, they weren’t UFOs. Instead, these drones belonged to terrestrial researchers, interested in answering a very down-to-earth question: Who was in charge of this megalithic endeavor?

Historic and archaeological investigations of the Rapa Nui people who carved the statues between 400 and 1,000 years ago suggest they lived in decentralized, close-knit family clans. However, many have assumed that their construction and transportation imply a more top-down hierarchical civilization, like the ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids. New research published in PLOS One suggests that, unlike the statues themselves, there was no big head at the top of the Rapa Nui directing the work.

Using more than 11,000 aerial images taken by drones of the site, Carl Lipo of Binghamton University and Terry Hunt of the University of Arizona constructed a detailed 3-D model of the primary quarry, Rano Raraku. This model showed a hodgepodge of moai carved from multiple sites with statues in various stages of completion. Analysis of the statues remaining in the quarry revealed a variety of carving types as well. Rather than a centralized, top-down construction effort, the authors say, it more closely matches the works of a patchwork of freelancers consistent with their decentralized living arrangements.

This new finding is bolstered by Lipo and Hunt’s earlier research, which showed that it only takes a handful of humans to move these moai, around 18 in a test case. If anything, these studies make the construction and transportation of these magnificent megaliths an even more impressive achievement.

11/27/2025

“If this is correct, to the extent of my knowledge, it would mark the first time humanity has ‘seen’ dark matter.”

Was Dark Matter Just Detected for the First Time? “It would mark the first time humanity has ‘seen’ dark matter.”