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A Discovery of Genetically-Varied Worms in Chernobyl Could Help Human Cancer Research
In a surprising discovery, researchers found that worms living in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone are not genetically damaged by chronic radiation exposure. The resilient worms could offer insights into human cancer research and DNA repair mechanisms. Despite high radiation levels in the area, these microscopic creatures seem to thrive without genetic harm. This study sheds light on individual variations in DNA repair and may lead to a better understanding of natural variation in humans' response to carcinogens.
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Why This Young Climber Vows To Never Give Up On Scaling The World's Highest Peaks
Ayaan Mendon isn’t spending his preteen years the way most kids do. The 11-year-old mountaineer from Dubai is preparing to take on Mount Lenin, a 7,134-metre peak in Kyrgyzstan, as part of his long term goal to climb some of the tallest mountains on Earth. For him, the appeal is simple. “It’s really challenging, the views are nice and it makes me stronger,” he told The National during a break from endurance training. “What I love most about climbing is that feeling of accomplishing something, going through an adventure that was so hard, that is very rare to do in your life… just remembering that you don't give up.” Ayaan began mountaineering at seven and quickly built a résumé that seasoned climbers would admire. By eight, he had already climbed Mount Kilimanjaro at 5,895 metres, Mount Kosciuszko in Australia at 2,228 metres and Mount Elbrus in Europe at 5,642 metres. Mount Lenin will be his first attempt above 7,000 metres — and a key step before the peaks he’s truly after. “My dream is to climb Mount Everest before I’m 18,” he said. He understands the difficulty. Thin air near the summit, unpredictable weather and the sheer physical demand test even experienced climbers. A failed attempt on Mount Aconcagua in Argentina last year drove that home. Climbers were forced to turn back at 6,000 metres due to high winds. Aconcagua, at 6,962 metres, remains on his list. Ayaan’s interest began after hearing about his father’s Kilimanjaro expedition in 2019. Since then, the family has taken on the challenge together. His parents climb with him when possible, using the years before age restrictions kick in to build the skills he’ll need at higher altitudes. “It’s a good time to get Ayaan stronger for the bigger mountains, and we will climb with him,” said his father, Saboor Ahmad. That training covers everything from rope skills to moving in heavy boots to learning crampon technique on ice. More importantly, it teaches him how to read his own body. “If something is not right, he needs to be able to understand and speak up so we can take the right measures.” Expeditions have become a family ritual — tents instead of screens, shared meals instead of emails. “We are away from electronics, really connecting with each other, enjoying nature and challenging ourselves,” Saboor said. His wife, Vani Mendon, joins every climb despite being afraid of heights. “I want to be there with Ayaan… I don’t summit any more because heights scare me, but Saboor goes with him all the way to the summit to make sure Ayaan is perfectly fine.” Preparation is year round. There are long weighted walks, endurance sessions, strength workouts and nights spent acclimatising in an oxygen tent. His coach, Kenyan trainer Ceejay Bollo, blends physical and mental conditioning. “We go case by case and mountain by mountain,” he said. “Your body could be strong, but if your mentality is not strong enough then the mountain will definitely conquer you.” Balance, coordination, core strength and stability work dominate the routine. “Sometimes we are running for a whole hour, other days we’re lifting heavy weights, like dead lifts, doing pull-ups,” Bollo said. Despite the intensity, Ayaan still finds moments to be a kid. At rest stops on snowy slopes, he pulls out a yo-yo — his second favourite hobby — tossing it into the air and looping it around his ears as climbers cheer him on. “I really want to win the world yo-yo contest,” he said. “It requires some serious skill.” For now, Mount Lenin is the next big test. Everest can wait. But not for long, if Ayaan has his way.
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San Diego Zoo Welcomes Adorable Long-Legged Jacana Hatchling
A California zoo welcomed an adorable arrival earlier this year. Footage taken by the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance shows a newly hatched wattled jacana chick at the San Diego Zoo in January. “Chick out this new arrival,” the zoo wrote on X. “A wattled jacana chick recently hatched at the San Diego Zoo. With long toes perfect for walking on lily pads and a devoted dad keeping a watchful eye, this tiny adventurer is ready to explore.” Native to South America, the wattled jacana species has an unusual family structure where a large female has a harem of males she provides eggs for, according to the zoo. The matriarch even defends the males from other females while they incubate her eggs. 📸 San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance via Storyful
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Scientists Build a Pacemaker So Small It’s Like Injecting a Grain of Rice
More than a decade after developing the first dissolvable pacemaker, Northwestern University professor Igor Efimov and his team have taken the idea to an entirely new scale. They’ve created what they describe as the world’s tiniest known pacemaker, a device small enough to inject and delicate enough for the newborns it’s meant to help. “We were motivated by an unmet need: children born with congenital heart defects,” Efimov told IEEE Spectrum. The new device is smaller than a grain of rice, slips into the body through a minimally invasive injection, and disappears once it’s no longer needed. For the babies it’s designed for, that simplicity solves a long standing problem. “About 1% of children are born with congenital heart defects,” Efimov said in a statement for Northwestern University. “The good news is that these children only need temporary pacing after a surgery. In about seven days or so, most patients’ hearts will self-repair. But those seven days are absolutely critical.” Traditional temporary pacemakers get the job done, but they rely on external wires threaded through the chest, and removing those wires can be risky. Efimov put it plainly. “Wires literally protrude from the body, attached to a pacemaker outside the body. When the pacemaker is no longer needed, a physician pulls it out. The wires can become enveloped in scar tissue. So, when the wires are pulled out, that can potentially damage the heart muscle.” It’s not a hypothetical danger. “That’s actually how Neil Armstrong died. He had a temporary pacemaker after a bypass surgery. When the wires were removed, he experienced internal bleeding,” Efimov said. The team’s dissolvable design removes that risk entirely. Once the heart recovers, the pacemaker breaks down naturally inside the body. No surgery, no wire removal, no scarring. And the engineering doesn’t end there. Efimov’s group paired the tiny pacemaker with a small, flexible chest patch. It rests on the skin, senses irregular heart rhythms, and responds automatically. When something is off, the patch sends near infrared light to wirelessly activate the implanted device and bring the heartbeat back to where it should be. Tests showed the system worked across a wide range of models. The dissolvable pacemaker performed well in small animals, large animals, and even donor hearts. Despite its size, it provided stimulation comparable to today’s full size devices. Efimov and his team see this as more than a breakthrough for pediatric care. They believe the underlying approach could reshape other implanted devices too, especially temporary ones that currently require removal procedures. Their goal is simple: build technology as gentle as the patients who rely on it.
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When Wind Blew a Baby Stroller Into Lake Michigan — Two Strangers Jump Into Action And Save A Life
In a dramatic turn of events at Chicago's Belmont Harbor, two quick-thinking individuals saved an infant from Lake Michigan after the wind swept a stroller off the dock. Lio Cundiff, 30, was on a phone call when he heard a woman's scream that left no room for doubt about what had just happened. The strong gusts had caught the bassinet, sending it tumbling into the water. Cundiff immediately sprang into action. "I just realized that the lady wasn’t able to help because she was in too much panic, which is understandable. So I’m like, ‘I guess I’m going in,’ and I just jumped," he recounted to the Chicago Tribune. Without any plan but driven by instinct, he dove in after the sinking stroller. When Cundiff reached the stroller, he struggled to free the baby as it started to sink further. Enter Luis Kapost, an American Airlines pilot who arrived just in time with a more composed approach. Recognizing Cundiff's predicament—treading water while holding onto 14 kilograms of wet stroller—Kapost threw him one sleeve of his Chicago Cubs jacket for support. "It helped a lot," Cundiff admitted. Holding on to his end of the jacket, Kapost kept Cundiff afloat until they managed to retrieve the stroller with help from the baby's nanny who had hurried over. First responders soon arrived and transported both Cundiff and the infant to a nearby hospital for evaluation. Despite fair weather conditions, Lake Michigan’s water remained cold enough to concern doctors at the hospital. They discovered elevated heart enzymes in Cundiff and recommended he stay overnight for observation. Kapost didn't hold back praise for his fellow rescuer either: "That’s the epitome of a hero, someone who’s going to act, to help somebody else they don’t know even though they’re placing their own life in danger," he told the Tribune. "He’s an absolute rock star." Cundiff later shared that being labeled as a hero felt strange; he saw himself merely as a server and stand-up comedian who was simply at Belmont Harbor at the right moment. The incident underscores how crucial quick thinking and teamwork can be during unexpected emergencies.
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Rescue Team Finds Missing Dog Alive After 43 Days in Colorado Wilderness
A New Jersey man has been reunited with his dog after a 43-day disappearance in the Colorado wilderness — a stretch of subzero nights, deep snow and near-impossible terrain that few animals survive. Steven Maa was driving cross-country from New Jersey to California with his 10-year-old dog, Rocky, when they stopped in Montezuma, Colorado, on December 28. Maa planned to ski and arranged a pet sitter for a few hours. But minutes after the handoff, Rocky slipped out of his harness and ran straight into the mountains at roughly 3,000 metres above sea level. Maa and his partner searched until 3 a.m. in a snowstorm before calling Summit Lost Pet Rescue, a Colorado nonprofit that specializes in finding missing pets. Volunteers quickly deployed trail cameras, scent stations and alerts to neighbours. After three days, a front-door camera picked up Rocky alive. Then he vanished again — for 40 long days. Founder Brandon Ciullo told NJ.com that vehicles, predators and exposure are the biggest dangers in cases like this. As the weeks passed with no sightings, the team started preparing to scale back. Everything changed on February 9, when a Ring camera captured a small black dog matching Rocky’s size and shape. Ciullo rushed to the scene. “This dog has been missing for 43 days, and I'm sure it is extremely starving and very, very close to dying,” he recalled. Using Maa’s clothing, rescuers created a scent trail and set a humane trap. Rocky stepped in but didn’t trigger it. Ciullo reset it, added peanut butter and made a promise: “I’m not leaving this godd--- mountain until this dog is in the back of my truck.” Hours later, Rocky was finally secured. He was emaciated — dropping from about 23 kilograms to just 12 — but still full of energy. “We couldn't believe that this dog, that hasn't probably eaten in 43 days, had this much energy and this much life [in] him,” Ciullo said. For Maa, the reunion on February 13 felt unreal. “Getting to see Rocky and seeing how happy he was to see me was definitely very emotional,” he said. “It was amazing.” Rocky is now in California settling into his new home and, Maa added, acting like his old self again. Against the odds, a dog lost in deep winter at 10,000 feet survived 43 days alone — and made it back to the person who never stopped looking.
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Mathematicians Just Solved a 2,000-Year-Old Mystery On Curves
Mathematicians have chased the same question for more than 2,000 years: how many rational points — points whose coordinates are whole numbers or fractions — can lie on a given curve? It’s an idea that captivated ancient Greek thinkers and has stayed stubbornly out of reach ever since. Curves look simple. They’re just the paths carved out by polynomial equations. But rational points behave in ways that are anything but simple. Some curves have none. Some have infinitely many. And many mathematical breakthroughs, including the foundations of modern cryptography, have come from trying to understand them better. Now, three Chinese mathematicians have taken a step researchers have dreamed about for decades. In a preprint posted on February 2, they unveiled the first uniform formula that applies to every curve — no matter its shape, degree or quirks — and gives a hard upper limit on how many rational points it can have. “This really is an amazing result that sets a new standard for what to expect,” said Hector Pasten of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, who was not involved in the work. To appreciate the leap, it helps to see where mathematicians were stuck. For nearly a century, researchers knew that curves with sufficiently high degree — meaning the powers of x and y in their defining equations — could only have a finite number of rational points. That was Louis Mordell’s conjecture in 1922, finally proved in 1983 by Gerd Faltings, who went on to win the Fields Medal for it. But Faltings’s theorem came with a catch: it didn’t say how many rational points might exist. The number could be three. It could be a hundred. Mathematicians believed a formula was out there somewhere, but it remained hidden. The new proof doesn’t give an exact count, but it does set an explicit upper limit — and does so for all curves at once. “This one statement gives us a broad sweep of understanding,” said Barry Mazur of Harvard University. The formula depends only on two ingredients. The first is the curve’s degree: the higher it is, the weaker the bound becomes. The second is something called the Jacobian variety, a geometric object tied to every curve that acts like a kind of mathematical fingerprint. Jacobians already play a central role in number theory, and the new result gives researchers a fresh way to probe them. It’s a breakthrough with implications far beyond curves. Rational points are just the beginning. Once you move from curves to surfaces or even higher-dimensional shapes known as manifolds, the questions multiply. These structures sit at the heart of modern mathematics and theoretical physics, shaping ideas about space, time and symmetry. Progress has been building. Pasten and mathematician Jerson Caro set upper bounds for certain surfaces last year. Other teams have recently delivered new results on rational points for special families of curves. The collective momentum has researchers buzzing. “This is an exciting, fast-moving area,” Mazur said. “There’s something big happening right now.” For a field that measures progress in decades or centuries, the arrival of a formula mathematicians once considered out of reach feels like a turning point — the start of a new chapter in one of math’s oldest sagas.
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A Father Joined TikTok To Save His Son’s Life. Millions Answered His Call
Juan Uribe didn’t join TikTok to post dance videos or jokes. He joined because he was running out of options. “I'm posting this because I need your help to save my son,” he said in his very first video on Feb. 10. He apologized for being new to social media, but the message was clear. His 15-year-old son Max has a rare blood disorder that could soon develop into a deadly cancer if he doesn’t find a stem cell donor. Finding that donor is complicated. Max is half-Colombian on his dad’s side and part Italian, British and German on his mom’s. That genetic mix makes matching harder, and minorities remain underrepresented in national registries. The NMDP, the nonprofit that manages what it calls the world’s most diverse stem cell registry, says donor match rates vary widely by ethnicity. Black and African American patients have just a 29% chance of finding a perfect match, compared with 48% for Hispanic patients and 79% for non-Hispanic white patients. Max’s doctors had searched through 40 million registered donors and found only two potential matches. Neither worked out. Even his twin sister wasn’t a match. So Uribe turned to the internet. He wondered whether influencers would help spread the word, but instead became one himself. His first post brought in 20.5 million views and 4.3 million likes. Celebrities including Joe Jonas and Meghan Trainor shared his plea. Soon “Team Max” had more than 100,000 followers. Within 24 hours, 12,000 people had requested cheek-swab kits to join the registry, according to the NMDP. Although only 13% of its members identify as Hispanic, nearly 56% of the people signing up after Uribe’s post were Latino or Hispanic. That uptick amounts to a 40% increase, the organization told USA TODAY. The surge gave the family hope, but the clock hasn’t stopped. “With my son's timeline, it's crunch time,” Uribe said. Doctors estimate Max has only weeks before his condition worsens. “We're in a little bit of a race against the clock, because of the progression.” Max’s health problems began when he was six. His platelets and blood cell counts were far too low, though doctors ruled out leukemia. Years of testing followed. In late 2024, his counts dropped again. In August 2025, a bone marrow biopsy revealed what doctors called “pink flags” — signs that made one specialist tell the family, “You should add a transplant doctor to Max's care team.” “That made us realize that this is super serious,” Uribe said. Doctors still don’t know what caused Max’s disorder, but they now agree that without treatment, it will become MDS, a group of blood cancers that can progress to acute myeloid leukemia. A transplant remains his only cure. Uribe’s mission has grown far beyond his own home. Families across the country have reached out with their own stories — a 3-year-old in Utah with Cambodian and Norwegian heritage, a 22-year-old with Haitian and Irish roots, even another child in Max’s school community. Many face the same problem: ethnic background plays a major role in finding a match. “This is more widespread than you think,” Uribe said. “There's lots of other patients that are searching and struggling and don't want to be public identified.” That’s why he’s pushing hard to bring one million new people into the registry by April 1. He talks about Max like any proud father would — how he stands up for bullied kids, how he looks after his sister, how he splits his time between sports and composing his own piano music on Spotify. Uribe knows that even if a match for Max doesn’t come in time, thousands of other lives could be changed by the wave of new donors. “Everyone should really get added to the registry as quick as possible,” he said. “It's the easiest way to save a life.” For anyone interested in joining the registry, NMDP offers free, mail-in cheek swab kits at https://go.nmdp.org/formax.
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These Orphaned Baby Otters Found In a Field Are Finally On The Mend
Two baby otters are on the mend after being rescued from a waterlogged field in Stoke by Clare, West Suffolk. The cubs, found earlier this month by a passerby, were weak and unable to crawl. Rescuers believe their mother was lost after floods washed them away from her side. Now under the care of South Essex Wildlife Hospital, these young otters are making significant progress. Sue Schwar, who founded the wildlife hospital 36 years ago, shared insights into their recovery journey. "They've had coccidia, a common parasitic illness," Schwar said. Thanks to the efforts of vets Tom and Alda, the pair is responding well to treatment. The otters arrived at the hospital in Orsett, Essex, on 12 February in poor condition—subdued, hypothermic, and underweight. Initial treatments involved gentle warming and fluid therapy to boost hydration levels. The staff noted a quick turnaround as they began eating well within hours. Caring for otters comes with its own set of challenges. Schwar explained that while seals have an easier diet consisting of mackerel or herring, otters prefer trout—a more challenging dish to source. Despite these hurdles, the team remains committed to their care. The plan is for these cubs to stay at the hospital for about a year until staff can find a suitable river location for their release back into the wild. "Then we will try to find a good bit of river for them to be released into," Schwar said. South Essex Wildlife Hospital takes on around 12,000 animals annually and relies heavily on volunteers and donations. Its founder started it while she was still working as a police officer, dedicating her life to animal welfare. These two otters remain unnamed but have captured the hearts of those caring for them. The story highlights both the dangers wildlife face during extreme weather conditions and the dedication of those who work tirelessly to rescue them.
Score (97)
Colossal Biosciences Unveils Bio Vaults to Combat Extinction Crisis at World Governments Summit
Colossal Biosciences arrived at last week’s World Governments Summit in Dubai with a pitch that sounded equal parts futuristic and urgent. The company best known for its attempts to revive species like the woolly mammoth and the dodo unveiled a new tool it says will help protect life on Earth right now: “bio vaults.” Founder and CEO Ben Lamm said the idea isn’t just to bring back extinct animals, but to prevent today’s species from meeting the same fate. “I think the most exciting thing in 2026 is bringing back extinct species and also protecting them through bio vaults, which we're launching here at the World Governments Summit,” he told Euronews. Lamm argued that many people don’t grasp the scale of the crisis. “I do not believe that people understand the extinction crisis we're in,” he said. “But we are in the sixth mass extinction, which is being accelerated by man.” Colossal has made headlines for its de-extinction work, and Lamm leaned into that reputation. “Colossal is the world's first de-extinction and species preservation company,” he said. “Most people just know us for the Woolly Mammoth, the Dire Wolf, the Dodo bird and others.” He pushed back on doubts that the science is real. “We actually engineered the world's first woolly mouse last year,” he said. “We engineered the traits from a mammoth into those of a mouse.” He went further, describing another project: “We actually then took a 73,000-year-old skull and made puppies and brought dire wolves back, which had been extinct for 12,000 years,” he said. The conversation shifted to whether well-loved species overshadow lesser-known ones that also need help. Lamm said attention can be split. “This is not an either-or; this is an and,” he said. “We do need a de-extinction toolkit because we're going to lose up to 50 per cent of all biodiversity between now and 2050.” That’s where bio vaults come in. The first facility, launched at the summit, is designed to store genetic material from a wide range of species, not just the charismatic ones that attract headlines. “That’s why building bio vaults is so critical to our success,” he said. The inaugural vault is opening at Dubai’s Museum of the Future, and Lamm said the location was intentional. “We're launching it at the Museum of the Future so that we can bring people in and wrap educational content around it for kids.” He linked the effort directly to climate change. “I think species go hand in hand with climate change,” he said. “If we can save and preserve biodiversity, they will actually help us with our climate crisis.” The summit brought global officials face to face with the pitch. Lamm said leaders immediately began asking how the tools could help their own countries. “People from Malaysia, people from Africa have come up to me after my talk saying, oh my gosh, how can we apply these technologies to save my critically endangered X or Y?” he said. “So, I think launching at the World Governments Summit was the perfect place to do it.” The company’s bold claims have always invited debate, but in Dubai, Lamm made it clear he sees the goals as linked: revive what’s gone, protect what’s left and convince world leaders that both can happen at the same time.
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Stockholm’s Flying Ferry is Cutting Commute Times In Half And Emissions Almost Entirely
Stockholm rolled out something unusual on its waterways in late 2024, and commuters didn’t take long to notice. An electric ferry that lifts out of the water as it moves started shuttling riders between Ekerö and the city centre. A year later, Sweden’s transport regulators say the pilot didn’t just work, it exceeded expectations. They found the boat cut emissions by up to 94 percent compared with similar diesel ferries. It also cut the travel time almost in half, dropping a 55-minute trip to roughly 30 minutes. For a city built across 14 islands and stitched together by more than 50 bridges, that kind of time savings is hard to ignore. Diesel ferries haven’t helped the region’s climate goals either, accounting for nearly half of public-transport emissions. The hope was that Candela’s P-12 Shuttle could show another way. The early results made local leaders call the project a possible “paradigm shift” for how Stockholm moves people across the water. The boat itself is different from anything the city has seen. Candela describes the P-12 as the world’s fastest electric passenger vessel in service, and it works by rising above the surface once it picks up speed. Carbon fibre foils tucked underneath act like underwater wings. When they lift the hull clear of the water, drag drops sharply. Less drag means the boat can travel farther and faster on battery power. A computer system handles all of the adjustments. Sensors read the water conditions in real time and constantly tweak the angle of the foils to keep the ride steady while the boat “flies.” The design also has a side benefit that matters in crowded waterways. The ferry creates a wake about the size of a small dinghy’s, according to the government report. Smaller waves mean less shoreline erosion, fewer disturbances to sensitive habitat and a smoother ride for the people on board. Sound readings showed it was as quiet as a car travelling at 45 kilometres per hour and barely noticeable from 25 metres away. Because the wake is so small, authorities granted the ferry a speed exemption. Stockholm normally caps vessels at 12 knots, but the P-12 can run its route at about 25 knots. That lets the electric shuttle take full advantage of its design. Ridership responded. Passenger numbers on the Ekerö line rose by 22.5 percent during the trial, suggesting that commuters and tourists were more than willing to swap the slower trip for the faster electric option. The report also pointed out something city planners tend to watch closely: cost. Charging upgrades for the P-12 were relatively modest compared with what conventional electric ferries typically require. Paired with lower maintenance and no fuel costs, the economics looked promising. The Swedish Transport Administration ran the numbers on what a scaled-up service could do. Replacing two diesel ferries with six P-12 vessels could raise capacity by about 150 percent, allow departures every 15 minutes instead of once an hour, and generate an estimated SEK 119 million in socioeconomic benefits. That’s roughly €12 million. Gustav Hasselskog, Candela’s founder and CEO, said the data affirms the company’s bet on hydrofoils. “The Candela P-12 can transform urban waterways,” he said. “By combining high speed, minimal energy use, and near-zero emissions, we can unlock faster, cleaner, and more cost-efficient waterborne transport for cities worldwide.” Cities are paying attention. Berlin and Mumbai, along with destinations in the Maldives and Thailand, have announced plans or orders for similar vessels starting in 2026. For Stockholm, the agency recommended expanding exemptions so more routes can use the technology. If that happens, the city known for its bridges may start to rely a little more on the space between them.