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2 weeks ago | 
sciencenews.org | McKenzie Prillaman
Summertime soaks in the pool often leave fingertips shriveled and pruney. Each time someone goes for a dip, their digits wrinkle in the exact same patterns, researchers report in the May Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials. That’s because the folds follow the paths of blood vessels below the skin’s surface, which generally stay in place. Many people think that fingers and toes wrinkle when wet because the skin swells when it absorbs water.
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2 weeks ago | 
sciencenews.org | McKenzie Prillaman
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is changing its policy on who should get COVID-19 shots, potentially limiting access to new vaccine formulations as they enter the market. New and updated jabs will be approved only for people ages 65 and up, as well as those between 6 months and 64 years with at least one medical condition that heightens their risk for severe outcomes, according to the new FDA framework unveiled May 20 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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3 weeks ago | 
sciencenews.org | McKenzie Prillaman
Orange cats are so goofy that people joke that the chaotic kitties share one communal brain cell. But most of these domestic felines — along with multicolored calicos and tortoiseshells — actually do share something: a single genetic mutation that makes their fur ginger, researchers report in two studies published May 15 in Current Biology.
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3 weeks ago | 
sciencenews.org | McKenzie Prillaman
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ potential plan to alter vaccine testing has baffled health experts, who worry it could reduce protection from infectious diseases and waste time and money. The agency said in a recent statement that it intends to require all new vaccines be compared with inert placebos, like saline shots, in clinical trials.
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1 month ago | 
sciencenews.org | McKenzie Prillaman
Covering stents with hairlike structures called cilia may help keep the implanted medical tubes clean, preventing infection, researchers report April 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. When exposed to ultrasound waves — which would be generated by equipment outside the body — the cilia wiggle and flush out substances stuck to the devices.
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1 month ago | 
sciencenews.org | McKenzie Prillaman
For at least 1,400 years, poets in China have penned pieces about the Yangtze River’s sights and sounds. Now, scientists are using those artworks to reconstruct an animal’s past. Ancient poems can help track the vanishing range of the Yangtze finless porpoise, researchers report May 5 in Current Biology. The only known freshwater porpoise (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis) is critically endangered, with just over 1,000 estimated living in the wild.
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1 month ago | 
sciencenews.org | McKenzie Prillaman
The ship was more than 160 kilometers offshore when biological oceanographer Rasmus Swalethorp spotted yellow smoke billowing above Los Angeles. Swalethorp and nearly 40 others had set sail less than a week earlier to survey water and marine life off California’s coast. But on January 7, reports of erupting wildfires — including the Palisades and Eaton fires — began popping up on the television in the ship’s galley.
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1 month ago | 
aarp.org | McKenzie Prillaman
Getty Images Facebook Twitter LinkedIn We often think of vaccines as a tool to help prevent common infections like the flu or COVID-19, or at least lessen their severity. But evidence is building that some vaccines may also lower the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia.
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1 month ago | 
sciencenews.org | McKenzie Prillaman
Dubbed the “bone collector,” this caterpillar species sports remains of prey as camouflage while it stalks spider webs for trapped bugs, researchers report in the April 25 Science. The carnivorous caterpillar, found on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, is the first known by scientists to live in spider hunting grounds and fully decorate itself with body parts. Relatively few caterpillars eat meat, with about 300 carnivorous varieties out of nearly 200,000 documented moth and butterfly species.
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1 month ago | 
sciencenews.org | McKenzie Prillaman
For kidney transplant recipient Janet Handal, the recent push to phase out COVID-19 research could have a deadly outcome. In early 2021, Handal participated in a study that found almost half of organ transplant recipients had no immune response to two doses of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. The finding came at a time when most people were celebrating that two shots could help them safely re-enter the world.
