Deborah Bloomfield

An experimental mRNA vaccine that supercharges existing cancer treatments could be laying the groundwork for a “universal” cancer vaccine, according to the team behind the breakthrough.  Scientists at the University of Florida tested the innovation in mice and found it provoked a strong antitumor response when paired with immunotherapy. The surprising part was that the […]

Just your luck. After a week of fair weather from Monday to Friday, the weekend arrives and it’s gray, wet, and miserable. If you’ve ever noticed this trend of gloomier weekends, you’re not imagining it; Saturdays and Sundays can show slightly different weather patterns compared to the rest of the week. This might seem surprising, […]

Planet Earth is home to some pretty impressive predators, from mighty killer whales to polar bears and wolves. However one species puts even polar bears to shame and represents the largest mammalian carnivore to ever live in North America. Time to meet the giant short-faced bear.  How big was the short-faced bear? This giant short-faced […]

Tomorrow, on July 22, the length of the day is expected to be 1.34 milliseconds shorter than usual. Though there are clear reasons for the increased rotational speed this summer, the cause of the recent increase in speed is a little puzzling to scientists. The Earth’s rotation has altered significantly over time. Right now, the […]

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory dazzled us with its first light images just a few weeks ago, showing just what it is capable of discovering – from new asteroids to new galaxies – in a matter of hours. It is currently still being tweaked ahead of the official beginning of its science work, but as […]

The suspicion that some of Betelgeuse’s odd behavior is caused by a close companion star appears to have been confirmed using observations from the Gemini North telescope. It’s taken one of the world’s largest instruments to find something that, were it not for being outshone by the red supergiant, would be visible with binoculars. Betelgeuse’s […]

Rainforest life can be harsh. Sometimes, even for the predators, survival all comes down to how well you can hide. That’s certainly the case for silky anteaters, considered to be the world’s smallest anteaters, but these tiny, elusive hunters have a couple of tricks up their sleeves. Unthinkably adorable with golden fuzzy fur, they hardly […]

Is sex at birth a biological coin toss? That’s the question posed in a new study by researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and their findings appear to show that there might be a biological bias after all – though some aren’t so sure. In theory, the chance of having a […]

Higher job satisfaction, better physical health, improved mental health, enhanced work performance, fewer burnouts, lower levels of fatigue, and a reduction of sleep problems are just some of the benefits of four-day workweeks identified in a new study. The standard Monday-to-Friday workweek is not based on any inherent necessity or a natural cycle, but historical […]

How do we know when someone is truly dead? It used to be simple: no pulse + no breath = no life. Now, new discoveries are changing what we know about what happens when you die and blurring the line between life and death in the process, especially when it comes to donor organs and […]

A small fragment of rock found at Stonehenge in 1924 may provide the key that unlocks the mystery of how the prehistoric monument was constructed. Known as the Newall Boulder, the bullet-shaped lithic lump sits at the heart of a heated archaeological dispute over whether the stone circle’s enormous building blocks were brought to the […]

A black bear at Yellowstone National Park was killed by park staff last week after a series of incidents indicating that it had learned to associate the presence of people with food, something that the park says puts “both people and wildlife at risk.” According to a statement from Yellowstone, the first incident occurred back […]

It’s perhaps one of the greatest injustices of human bodily functions that the yawn has become so stigmatized in social settings. Crack one out and you’ll likely receive accusations of being bored or rude. It seems ironic, really, because the science of yawning tells us that, if anything, it’s a sign you’re trying harder to […]

A viral Reddit video shows the terrifying moment NASA astronaut Dale Gardner floated untethered in space to capture a satellite. There are a lot of terrifying things you can find in space, from mysterious massive voids 250 to 330 million light-years across, to tiny droplets of water in your space suit that could very easily drown you. […]

There are many obstacles that hinder our ability to establish a permanent presence on the Moon. One being the small problem of having to transport basic resources such as water, oxygen and fuel from Earth. Now, scientists have developed a new technique that could harness the satellite’s natural stocks, paving the way for a lunar […]

What exactly does it take to live a quote-unquote “good life”? Historically, there have been two schools of thought. The first – the hedonistic camp – emphasizes feelings of happiness and positive emotions. The second – revered by eudaimonics – calls for a life of greater meaning, marked by virtue and purpose. Now, psychologists are […]

If you’ve ever raised a child and watched them learn to read and write, you may notice that they can tend to get jumbled up with their letters, sometimes writing letters or words backwards, rather than in the usual direction. Known as “mirror writing”, the first thing you should know is likely that there is […]

A massive blob lives in Utah, and its name is Pando, which literally means “I spread”. The sprawling lump of quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) has lived up to its name in spreading across 42.6 hectares (105.3 acres) in Fishlake National Forest with a network of 47,000 stems that were created through asexual reproduction, essentially making Pando a […]

It’s a story that sounds vaguely dystopic. More than half of Tuvalu’s 10,000-strong population have entered a ballot offering them a chance to win a permanent visa to Australia with climate change posing an existential threat to the low-lying island nation.  According to the public service broadcaster SBS Australia, a grand total of 5,157 applications […]

Antarctica’s “oldest ice” has reached the next leg of its journey: a laboratory in Cambridge, England. Here, it is to undergo a detailed analysis later this month, which scientists hope will unravel the mysteries contained within this 1.5-million-year ice sample.  The project is part of an international effort to improve our understanding of the Earth’s […]