U.S. Measles Outbreak Accelerates With 211 New Cases: The U.S. measles outbreak is accelerating, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adding 211 infections in its latest weekly update—more than double the previous week’s increase. The national total has reached 2,777 cases in 2026, already surpassing 2025’s 2,289 cases, which had been the highest annual count since 1991. Pennsylvania accounted for 89 of the newest cases, while Ohio added 73. Infections have now been reported in 45 states, New York City and Washington, DC. Children and teenagers make up 66 percent of cases, and 7 percent of patients have been hospitalized. Vaccination remains a major dividing line: 94 percent of patients are unvaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status. No measles deaths have been reported this year. (CIDRAP)
Moon’s South Pole May Not Be Sterile: Some terrestrial microorganisms might survive surprisingly long periods near the lunar south pole, complicating efforts to search there for evidence of extraterrestrial biology. Researchers modeled conditions inside permanently shadowed regions where temperatures are extraordinarily low and sunlight—and therefore damaging ultraviolet radiation—is largely absent. Five common Earth microorganisms were evaluated under simulated lunar conditions, and the results suggest certain sheltered niches could permit microbial survival far longer than scientists traditionally assumed possible on the Moon. The discovery does not mean native lunar organisms exist. Instead, it raises a planetary-protection problem: astronauts and spacecraft inevitably carry traces of terrestrial microbes that could contaminate scientifically valuable sites. With NASA planning sustained exploration around the lunar south pole, researchers say biological contamination controls may require greater attention than previously anticipated. (Scientific American)
COVID Vaccine Hesitancy Varies Sharply Across Demographics: A survey analysis of 13,802 U.S. adults highlights substantial demographic differences in COVID-19 vaccination and the reasons people remained unvaccinated. Overall, 87.2% had received at least one dose, but uptake varied with race, education, age and insurance status. About 21% of people without a high school diploma were unvaccinated, compared with 6.2% of those holding graduate degrees. Unvaccinated rates were also higher among adults ages 18 to 24 and people without health insurance. Reasons for avoiding vaccination—including concerns about side effects, vaccine effectiveness and safety—also differed across demographic groups. Notably, distrust of institutions did not always translate into refusal. Researchers argue that future vaccination campaigns should be tailored to individual communities and make greater use of physicians, who remained comparatively trusted sources of health information. (CIDRAP)
Sediment Burial Determines How Clearly Fossils Record Time: A 20-year international effort involving more than 7,500 marine fossils has identified the dominant factor controlling how much geological time gets compressed into a fossil assemblage. Fossils collected from the same sediment layer may represent organisms separated by hundreds or thousands of years because burrowing animals, slow burial and other processes mix remains together. Researchers combined radiocarbon and amino-acid dating from sites around the world, then compared the observed age distributions with simulations of sedimentation, bioturbation and fossil destruction. Sediment accumulation rate emerged as the strongest predictor of “time averaging”: rapid burial preserves relatively sharp ecological snapshots, while slow deposition creates mixtures spanning longer periods. The result could allow paleontologists to estimate the temporal resolution of fossil deposits without individually dating enormous numbers of specimens. (Phys.org)
Ancient Synapsid Fossil Preserves Earliest Known Cloaca: An extraordinary 294-million-year-old trace fossil from Germany’s Bromacker locality preserves what researchers interpret as the oldest known cloacal opening in the evolutionary lineage leading toward mammals. The sandstone impression includes part of a tail, rows of epidermal scales and a narrow, vertically oriented slit interpreted as the animal’s vent. Footprints associated with the impression suggest the animal was probably a caseid synapsid, an early relative on the broad evolutionary branch that eventually produced mammals. Comparing the anatomy with living amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals suggests that early terrestrial vertebrates may originally have possessed vertically oriented cloacal openings. The researchers conclude that vent orientation changed independently several times during subsequent tetrapod evolution, providing rare anatomical evidence about reproductive and excretory structures almost never preserved in fossils. (ScienceDirect)
Famous Irish “Cow” Bones Were Never Cattle: Bones that helped underpin a decades-old theory about the arrival of farming in Ireland have been dramatically reidentified. Remains excavated at Ferriter’s Cove on County Kerry’s Dingle Peninsula were long classified as cattle dating to the end of Ireland’s Mesolithic period. Their apparent presence suggested hunter-gatherers had acquired domesticated animals through contact with Neolithic farming communities before agriculture became established locally. New analysis led by University College Dublin concludes the fragments actually belonged to bear and wild boar. That removes one of the most important pieces of evidence for unusually early domesticated cattle in Ireland and Britain and weakens arguments for pre-Neolithic livestock exchange across the region. The finding demonstrates how reassessing old archaeological collections with modern techniques can significantly rewrite narratives constructed around fragmentary animal remains. (EurekaAlert)
Record T. Rex Sale Renews Fossil Access Debate: The $50.13 million sale of a Tyrannosaurus rex nicknamed Gus is intensifying debate over the commercialization of scientifically important fossils. Writing for the American Association for Anatomy, scientists and commentators argue that exceptional dinosaur specimens occupy an uncomfortable position between private property and irreplaceable scientific evidence. Gus spent roughly 67 million years buried in what became privately owned land in South Dakota before entering the commercial market and ultimately selling anonymously at Sotheby’s. Unlike fossils permanently housed in public museums, privately owned specimens can become inaccessible to researchers or disappear from scientific study entirely. The soaring prices commanded by spectacular dinosaurs can also put museums at a severe financial disadvantage. Gus therefore represents more than an extraordinary auction: the specimen highlights growing tensions among fossil ownership, scientific access, collecting and public heritage. (EurekAlert!)
Egyptian Tomb Reveals Centuries of Burial Reuse: A detailed investigation of a Theban tomb shows how ancient Egyptian burial spaces could be repeatedly reopened, rearranged and reused across generations. Researchers examined human remains and archaeological evidence from a tomb at the Theban necropolis, reconstructing changes in funerary practice over hundreds of years rather than treating the chamber as a single burial event. The evidence indicates an early phase involving individuals placed in coffins, followed by later episodes when the tomb was reused for additional mummy interments. Such continual modification complicates archaeological interpretation because bodies and objects discovered together may come from very different periods. The research demonstrates how burial chambers functioned as evolving social spaces rather than sealed time capsules. Reconstructing those sequences can reveal changing attitudes toward ancestors, tomb ownership and funerary traditions within ancient Egyptian communities. (Ars Technica)
Life’s Common Ancestor May Not Have Been Alive: A provocative new hypothesis challenges the familiar image of LUCA—the last universal common ancestor—as a primitive cell from which all modern organisms descended. Researchers led by evolutionary biologist Bill Martin argue that LUCA may instead have been a partially biological chemical system embedded in mineral structures at deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Such a system could have possessed rudimentary genetic encoding and metabolic chemistry while still relying heavily on metals and geological reactions rather than sophisticated enzymes. The researchers propose that bacteria and archaea, the two deepest branches of cellular life, could subsequently have emerged separately from this shared geochemical precursor. If correct, the scenario blurs the boundary separating nonliving chemistry from biology and suggests life’s earliest evolutionary branching began before fully autonomous cells existed. It also strengthens hydrothermal-vent theories for life’s origin. (Scientific American)
Fastest Known Star Could Measure Black Hole Spin: Astronomers have discovered the fastest known star in the Milky Way, racing around Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at our galaxy’s center, at roughly 25,000 kilometers per second—more than eight percent of light speed. Named S301, the star follows an extremely elongated 8.7-year orbit and approaches Sagittarius A* to only about a dozen times the Earth-Sun distance, substantially closer than previously known stars. Its extraordinary trajectory may provide astronomers with a long-sought method for directly measuring the black hole’s rotation. General relativity predicts that a spinning black hole drags surrounding spacetime with it, subtly shifting S301’s orbit through an effect called frame dragging. Continued observations through the star’s next close approach in 2031 could reveal both the speed and orientation of Sagittarius A*’s spin. (Reuters)
AI Agent Automates Complex Biomedical Research Tasks: Researchers have unveiled Biomni, an artificial-intelligence agent designed to perform complex biomedical research workflows by coordinating databases, analytical tools and computational methods. Described in Science, the system is intended to move beyond conventional chatbots that primarily generate text by allowing an AI agent to plan and execute multistep scientific tasks. Biomedical research increasingly depends on navigating fragmented software, databases and analysis pipelines, making many otherwise routine investigations labor-intensive. Biomni attempts to automate portions of that process by interpreting research questions, selecting appropriate tools and integrating resulting data. Its developers tested the approach across a range of biomedical problems to assess whether an agent could reproduce or accelerate research workflows. The broader significance lies in increasingly autonomous scientific AI: systems that participate directly in analysis rather than merely explaining existing knowledge. (Science)
Parasite Protein Helps Toxoplasma Survive Crowded Brain Cysts: Scientists have discovered a molecular mechanism that helps Toxoplasma gondii survive the intensely crowded conditions inside chronic tissue cysts. Using a genome-wide CRISPR screen, researchers identified a previously little-known protein called TgPRO that becomes particularly important when large numbers of parasites occupy the same cell. TgPRO binds and stabilizes RNA messages governing nutrient use, mitochondrial activity and iron-sulfur cluster production, helping the parasite limit damaging oxidative stress. Parasites lacking functional TgPRO accumulated reactive oxygen molecules, showed disrupted metabolism and struggled at high densities. In mice, they also produced smaller brain cysts, connecting the laboratory findings to chronic infection. Because TgPRO differs substantially from analogous regulatory machinery in humans, researchers say pathways controlled by the protein could eventually provide targets for therapies designed to weaken persistent Toxoplasma infections. (MIT News)
Thunderstorms Can Map What Lies Underground: Thunder may provide scientists with an unexpectedly cheap tool for imaging the ground beneath cities. Researchers analyzed more than 450 “thunderquakes”—tiny seismic vibrations created when intense thunder-generated pressure waves transfer energy from the atmosphere into the Earth—recorded during two and a half years beneath Penn State’s University Park campus. Existing fiber-optic telecommunications cables detected the vibrations through minute changes in the travel time of light. By processing those signals like conventional seismic data, the researchers reconstructed geological structures to depths of roughly 100 meters. The resulting images revealed previously unidentified weak zones in the limestone beneath the campus, including areas potentially susceptible to sinkholes. Because thunderstorms can generate strong signals across large areas, urban fiber networks could potentially transform routine storms into recurring, low-cost subsurface surveys without deploying conventional seismic equipment. (Science News)
IMAGE CREDIT: NASA.