Jealousy in the Wild: Baboons Interrupt Mom Like Human Siblings: A new field study reports strong evidence of jealousy-like behavior in wild chacma baboons, focusing on what researchers call “sibling interference” during mother–offspring grooming. Working in Namibia’s Tsaobis Nature Park, the team analyzed when juveniles disrupted a mother grooming another offspring and tested three explanations: jealousy (disrupting a valued bond), seeking the mother’s attention, or trying to interact with the sibling. The patterns best matched jealousy. Juveniles approached and interrupted far more when their mother was grooming a sibling than when she was socially available, and they preferentially targeted younger, same-sex siblings and “maternal favourites” that received disproportionate grooming. Crucially, interference more often succeeded at disrupting the mother–sibling interaction than at winning grooming for the interrupter, suggesting the goal wasn’t immediate reward but breaking up the affiliative moment. (Royal Society)
FDA Declines to Review Moderna’s mRNA Flu Vaccine Filing After Comparator Dispute: FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) refused to file—meaning it will not review—Moderna’s application for its mRNA influenza vaccine for adults 50+. Moderna says FDA now contends the 40,000-person phase 3 trial was not “adequate and well-controlled” because the comparator vaccine did not reflect the “best-available standard of care” in the United States, despite earlier FDA correspondence saying a licensed standard-dose flu shot comparator was acceptable. CIDRAP reports Moderna leaders expressed surprise and requested a meeting, while outside experts warned the reversal could chill vaccine investment by making expectations feel unstable. STAT reporting cited by CIDRAP says CBER director Vinay Prasad overruled career staff preparing to proceed. FDA officials defended the move as an ethical issue for seniors and emphasized it is procedural, not a safety/efficacy rejection. (CIDRAP)
Alexandria on the Tigris, Found Again: A city founded by Alexander the Great has been “lost” in plain sight—until a fresh wave of remote sensing pinned it down. An international team led by archaeologist Stefan Hauser confirmed that the port city known as Alexandria on the Tigris sits at Jebel Khayyaber in modern Iraq, matching ancient textual references to Alexander’s Mesopotamian refoundation push after his return from the east. Using aerial photography, drone imagery, surface survey, and geophysics, researchers mapped a tightly organized urban plan: streets, walls, canals, and insulae laid out at a scale that rivals the biggest residential blocks known from the ancient world. Imaging also picked up large temple precincts and industrial zones, helping move the site from “probable” to confidently mapped cityscape. (Archaeology Magazine)
A Mithras Temple Emerges in Regensburg’s Old Town: Construction prep can be archaeology’s best friend. In Regensburg, Germany, excavations ahead of new apartment buildings revealed a Mithraeum—an underground-style cult space dedicated to Mithras—identified during 2023 work in the city’s historic core. The structure itself survives only faintly because it was built largely from wood, but the artifact trail is loud: an inscribed votive stone and fragments of metal votive plaques point directly to ritual use associated with the Mithraic cult. The find is notable not just for the deity, but for the urban context: Mithraea are often discovered on the edges of Roman settlements or military zones, so locating evidence in a dense old town setting sharpens questions about who worshipped there and how the cult fit into local civic life. (Archaeology Magazine)
Pompeii’s Faint Graffiti Comes Back to Life—Including a Love Note: Pompeii is famous for preserving the big stuff—houses, frescoes, streets—but the new thrills are small, intimate, and nearly invisible. Using advanced imaging, researchers identified 79 previously unreadable pieces of graffiti on a wall in the city’s theater district, inscriptions that had been too faint for the naked eye. The newly recovered texts and drawings widen the emotional bandwidth of the site: a hurried message (“I’m in a hurry; take care… make sure you love me!”), declarations of affection by named individuals (including an enslaved laborer), and fresh sketches of gladiators that researchers interpret with an eye for movement—like a snapshot of what spectators felt in the arena. The result is less “ruins” and more “voices,” returning daily-life texture to a heavily studied city. (Smithsonian Magazine)
The Cerne Abbas Giant Gets a Protective Buffer Zone: Sometimes the archaeology headline is not a new artifact, but a new layer of protection around an old mystery. A fundraising campaign has enabled the National Trust to purchase land surrounding England’s Cerne Abbas Giant—an enormous chalk hillside figure carved by cutting trenches and packing them with chalk. The move safeguards not only the 180-foot-long figure itself, but the broader landscape that shapes how the site endures: erosion control, access management, and habitat stewardship in the immediate environs. The Giant remains historically puzzling, with debates about its age and meaning still lively, but the preservation logic is straightforward: protecting a geoglyph isn’t just about the lines; it’s about the hillside system that keeps those lines legible across centuries. In other words, conservation as context—because context is the monument. (Smithsonian Magazine)
Guano as Geopolitics: Bird Droppings and the Rise of Chincha: A new archaeological synthesis argues that one of the Andes’ most powerful “technologies” wasn’t metal or masonry—it was fertilizer. Researchers report evidence that seabird guano, harvested along Peru’s coast, dramatically boosted maize production and may have helped drive the prosperity and regional influence of the pre-Inca Chincha Kingdom. The claim is not simply “better crops”; it’s a political economy story: surplus agriculture feeding trade, wealth, population growth, and strategic leverage—right up to Chincha’s alliance with the Inca Empire. Lead author Jacob Bongers frames guano as a surprisingly potent agent of sociopolitical change, turning a coastal ecological resource into an engine of expansion inland. The broader implication is a useful reminder for archaeologists: power can hinge on unglamorous inputs—soil nutrients and logistics—just as much as on kings and conquest. (EurekAlert!)
Leprosy, Status, and Burial “Real Estate” in Medieval Denmark: Medieval cemeteries had their own prestige map: closer to the church, higher the status—and often the price. A new study used that spatial logic to ask a sharper question: were people with stigmatized illnesses (especially leprosy, culturally linked to sin) pushed to the margins in death? Examining 939 adult skeletons from five Danish cemeteries (urban and rural), researchers looked for osteological signs of leprosy and tuberculosis, then plotted burials against status markers such as proximity to church buildings. The surprise is social: overall, the visibly ill were not systematically excluded from high-status areas, challenging a stock image of uniform medieval ostracism. One urban site (Ribe) showed patterns consistent with different exposure, not stigma, and the team notes that genomics could reveal infections that never left skeletal traces. (EurekAlert!)
630,000 Charcoal Kilns: LiDAR Maps an Invisible Industrial Landscape: Forests can hide industrial history almost too well—until LiDAR turns the canopy transparent. Researchers working with the Polish Academy of Sciences mapped more than 630,000 historic charcoal kiln (hearth) sites across Poland, revealing the massive footprint of charcoal production that powered metalworking, glassmaking, and other high-heat trades for centuries. The project combined airborne laser scanning with historical records, place names, and environmental data to reconstruct land-use patterns that written sources barely register. Charcoal hearths show up as subtle circular depressions; once located at scale, they become an archive of shifting extraction rather than total deforestation—patches cut, burned, and regrown over long cycles. The reporting also underscores how the method changes the research question: not “where was one kiln?” but “how did an entire fuel economy reshape settlement, forests, and soils nationwide?” (Archaeology News Online Magazine)
Gawroniec Hill: A Neolithic Site That Humans Literally Re-Sculpted: A Neolithic mining settlement can modify more than tools—it can modify topography. New survey work at Gawroniec Hill in Poland’s Świętokrzyskie region reports several thousand archaeological features and suggests that the hill’s present geometry—terraces, depressions, and a notably “shaped” form—reflects overlapping human activity spanning millennia. Using airborne laser scanning (LiDAR) and magnetic methods across roughly 7.5 hectares, researchers identified dense clusters of pits and industrial structures (up to ~100 features per hectare) and flagged a long, wide anomaly interpreted as a defensive ditch separating the settlement from the most accessible plateau edge. The site is linked to major striped flint mining landscapes (including the UNESCO-listed Krzemionki region), implying a production-and-distribution hub rather than a small camp. The article also notes ongoing erosion, framing documentation as preservation triage as much as discovery. (HeritageDaily – Archaeology News)
Candida auris: Resistance Patterns Keep Worsening in the USA: A CDC analysis underscores why Candida auris remains one of the most unsettling hospital pathogens: it’s hard to kill, and it spreads. Reviewing 8,033 clinical isolates processed by the CDC’s Antimicrobial Resistance Laboratory Network in 2022–2023, researchers found that more than 95% were resistant to fluconazole, with resistance above 90% in every US region except the Midwest (83%). Resistance to amphotericin B was 15%, while echinocandin resistance stayed comparatively low at 1%—supporting echinocandins as first-line therapy for now. But the trendline is the warning label: resistant isolates have increased, and patient-to-patient spread has been documented. CIDRAP also highlights the scale-up in cases since 2016 (from 51 clinical cases to 4,514 in 2023) and the pathogen’s tendency to cause outbreaks in health care settings, where containment is notoriously difficult. (CIDRAP)
EPA’s Endangerment Finding Faces a Major Rollback—and a Long Court Fight: WIRED reports that the US Environmental Protection Agency is expected to roll back the 2009 “endangerment finding,” the legal-scientific cornerstone that enables greenhouse gases to be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The move would be seismic because nearly every major federal climate regulation since 2009 rests on that foundation—power plant rules, vehicle emissions standards, and more. Legal experts quoted in the piece forecast a protracted battle that is likely to end up at the Supreme Court, potentially reopening the logic of Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), the decision that compelled EPA action on greenhouse gases in the first place. Beyond the courtroom, the article stresses regulatory whiplash: industries planning multi-year investments (autos, energy, heavy industry) may face uncertainty about what standards will exist, when, and whether states can fill gaps. The story also notes that attempts to attack the underlying climate science are expected to be a key fault line in litigation. (WIRED)
China Targets Universities in New Research-Integrity Crackdown: China’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) says it will tighten enforcement against universities that fail to investigate or sanction serious research misconduct, shifting pressure from individual researchers to institutional accountability. According to the notice, institutions should prioritize investigations of papers retracted by international journals for misconduct, and the outcomes of those probes will be publicized to strengthen deterrence. MOST also warns universities could face “serious penalties” if they conceal wrongdoing or tolerate it, though the specific punishments were not detailed. The policy builds on recent national efforts to address high retraction volumes, including a 2024 nationwide audit of retracted papers and a national database recording serious misconduct cases used to evaluate eligibility for funding, talent programs, and awards. (Nature)
Rhine–Meuse People Kept Hunter-Gatherer Ancestry for Millennia: A Nature study reports that communities in the Rhine–Meuse river delta—wetlands, river dunes, and coastal zones across parts of today’s Netherlands, Belgium, and western Germany—remained genetically and economically distinct long after farming spread across most of Europe. By analyzing genomes from 112 individuals dating from about 8500 BC to 1700 BC, researchers found unusually high hunter-gatherer ancestry persisted for thousands of years after neighboring regions shifted toward farmer and later steppe-derived ancestries. The landscape’s “water world” ecology may have made intensive farming less viable while still enabling cultural exchange, including pottery and burial practices. When admixture did occur, signals on the X and Y chromosomes suggest a sex bias: early farmer ancestry entered mainly through women. Steppe ancestry rises sharply after ~2500 BC alongside Bell Beaker material culture, helping explain later expansions into Britain. (Nature)