Trump’s NSB Firings Escalate Fight Over NSF Independence: President Donald Trump’s dismissal of all 24 members of the National Science Board marks a dramatic escalation in his administration’s confrontation with the National Science Foundation. The NSB is not merely advisory: it has statutory authority over NSF policy and major spending decisions, making the mass firing a direct challenge to the agency’s traditional independence. Former board members and congressional Democrats argue the move follows months of tension, including NSB criticism of Trump’s proposed 55% NSF budget cut and White House pressure over a proposed Antarctic research icebreaker. Dismissed member Keivan Stassun says NSF officials had already begun disregarding board directives. Critics fear Trump may replace the board with loyalists, while others worry the administration may simply sideline NSF governance altogether. (Science)

Parasites Turn Mitochondria Into Organelle Factories: A new preprint suggests that mitochondria can do something far stranger than produce energy or coordinate immune signals: during infection, they can generate new organelles. Researchers studying Toxoplasma gondii found that the parasite tethers itself to mitochondria in human cells, causing them to shed outer-membrane structures called SPOTs. These SPOTs then engulf lysosomes, the cell’s acidic waste-disposal compartments, creating a new organelle that appears to help the parasite multiply. Blocking the new compartments’ acidification impaired parasite growth. The finding may also illuminate deep evolutionary history, supporting the idea that ancient mitochondria helped give rise to the complex internal compartments of eukaryotic cells. It is infection biology with origin-of-life implications. (Nature)

Clovis Crystal Points Suggest Beauty Had a Function: Quartz crystal is a frustrating material for stone-tool makers: hard, brittle, small, and prone to unpredictable fractures. That makes new work on Clovis crystal points especially interesting. Researchers used scaling and geometric morphometric analyses to compare crystal artifacts with points made from more practical stone. The result complicates a purely utilitarian picture of early North American technology. Clovis makers could produce functionally comparable tools from quartz, but the material’s difficulty suggests that appearance, rarity, or symbolic power may have mattered too. In other words, Ice Age toolmaking was not only about efficiency. It may also have been about choosing a material that carried social or ritual force. (Phys.org)

AIDS Left a Genetic Signature in South Africa: Before antiretroviral drugs became widely available, AIDS exerted intense evolutionary pressure in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, changing the frequency of immune-system genes within little more than a decade. Researchers analyzed stored blood samples from mothers and babies collected between 1998 and 2025, focusing on HLA alleles that shape how the immune system recognizes HIV-infected cells. Before treatment expanded in 2005, alleles linked to greater HIV susceptibility declined, while protective variants increased, suggesting that people with stronger immune responses were more likely to survive and have children. Once antiretroviral therapy reached much of the population, that natural selection slowed sharply. The study offers a rare modern example of rapid human evolution—and of medicine interrupting it. (Science)

The Oldest Dice May Rewrite the History of Chance: A study in American Antiquity argues that Native American dice games may reach back roughly 12,000 years, far earlier than the best-known Old World examples. Richard J. Madden examined prehistoric objects from sites across North America, including Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, and identified hundreds of likely dice. These were not modern cubes but binary lots: objects marked on one side and blank on the other, closer to a coin toss than casino dice. The finding matters because games of chance preserve an unusually human idea: randomness made social. Dice may have helped people trade, compete, build relationships, or ritualize uncertainty deep in the Pleistocene. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)

Roman Toilets Reveal an Earlier Trail of Disease: Mineralized remains scraped from ancient Roman toilets have yielded evidence of Cryptosporidium, a waterborne parasite associated with diarrheal disease. The study, published in npj Heritage Science, analyzed Roman chamber pots from the lower Danube region and suggests that sanitation infrastructure did not necessarily protect people from intestinal pathogens. The finding is a reminder that Roman engineering, impressive as it was, did not automatically equal modern public health. Latrines, chamber pots, water systems, and dense settlement could also preserve routes for infection. Paleoparasitology turns an unglamorous residue into a historical signal: daily life, disease ecology, and infrastructure all left chemical and biological traces. (Phys.org)

DNA Opens a Window on South America’s Southern Cone: An international team led by researchers at the University of Tübingen analyzed genetic material from 52 Indigenous individuals who lived over the past 6,000 years in the Pampas, northwestern Patagonia, the Paraná Delta, and Uruguay’s eastern lowlands. The study helps fill a major gap in ancient DNA research, since the Southern Cone has been less genetically studied than other parts of the Americas. The results point to a deeper and more regionally varied Indigenous history than colonial-era narratives often suggest. They also sharpen the contrast between past diversity and the severe demographic disruptions that followed European colonization. Ancient DNA, here, becomes both a population tool and a historical witness. (Phys.org)

Amazon Roadwork Unearths a More Connected Precolonial Past: Archaeological surveys tied to paving Brazil’s BR-156 highway in Amapá are revealing a richer precolonial Amazon than older stereotypes allowed. Excavations have produced pottery, possible funerary urns, anthropomorphic objects, and layers that mark shifts from Indigenous occupation to European arrival. The story is morally complicated: roadbuilding can accelerate deforestation, but legally required surveys are also opening windows into ancient settlement. The finds fit a broader picture of the Amazon as a human-shaped landscape, not an untouched wilderness. Satellite work from the Amazon Revealed project has also detected buried patterns and road networks linking settlements, suggesting long-term exchange, movement, and landscape management across the forest. (AP News)

A Stable Nile Helped Ancient Napata Thrive: A new University of Michigan-led study links the success of ancient Napata, a major Kushite center in Nubia, to the physical behavior of the Nile. Researchers combined archaeology and earth science to show that a relatively stable river deposited millennia of clay, producing a fertile floodplain while limiting flood risk. Napata flourished from about 800 BCE to 100 CE, and the work argues that its landscape was not incidental background but part of the city’s political and cultural story. The Nile’s Fourth Cataract may have helped slow river energy and encourage sediment accumulation. The result is a compelling geoarchaeological lesson: civilizations grow where water, risk, and opportunity meet. (EurekAlert!)

Stajnia Cave Teeth Reconstruct a Neanderthal Group: Ancient mitochondrial DNA from eight Neanderthal teeth at Stajnia Cave in Poland has allowed researchers to reconstruct a small group of Neanderthals from Central-Eastern Europe. The study, published in Current Biology, identifies at least seven individuals living around 100,000 years ago north of the Carpathians. That matters because Neanderthal genetic evidence often comes from isolated fossils scattered across sites and time periods. Here, the data offer something closer to a local population snapshot. The work also links the Stajnia individuals to a wider maternal lineage seen from Iberia to the Caucasus, reinforcing Central-Eastern Europe as a key region for understanding Neanderthal movement and connection. (EurekAlert!)

An Artificial Retina Adds Near-Infrared Vision: A new artificial retina described in Nature Electronics does more than try to restore visible sight. Researchers developed a device that can respond to near-infrared light, potentially giving prosthetic vision an added sensory channel. Retinal degeneration blinds people by damaging photoreceptor cells, which normally convert light into electrical signals. Artificial retina systems aim to bypass or replace some of that lost function. This design is striking because it imagines restored vision not simply as imitation, but as augmentation. In principle, a person with such a device might perceive information beyond ordinary human visual range. It is still early-stage work, but it reframes prosthetics as repair plus expansion. (Tech Xplore)

Battery-Free Fabric Turns Clothing Into a Blood Pressure Monitor: A battery-free textile could make clothing part of continuous cardiovascular monitoring. The system uses smart sensing metamaterials to track blood pressure in real time without requiring a conventional onboard battery. That is important because wearable health devices often face tradeoffs between comfort, power, durability, and data quality. A textile-based monitor could be easier to integrate into daily life than cuffs or rigid electronics, especially for long-term tracking. The technology still needs validation before it becomes a medical product, but the direction is clear: wearables are moving from gadgets strapped onto the body toward materials woven into ordinary garments. The shirt itself becomes the sensor. (Tech Xplore)

Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Carries Strange Heavy Water: The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is turning into a chemical messenger from another planetary system. A University of Michigan-led study found that its water contains an unusually high ratio of deuterium, a heavier form of hydrogen. According to the researchers, the comet’s deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio is about 30 times higher than that of any comet in our solar system and about 40 times Earth’s ocean water. That points to a birthplace much colder, and under different radiation conditions, than the region that formed our solar system. Since 3I/ATLAS is only the third known interstellar object, the work shows how future visitors could become probes of alien planetary nurseries. (sciencex.com)