Monica Cull

5 days ago | discovermagazine.com | Monica Cull

The anticipation is over. After over 20 years of hard work, the first images from NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory (Rubin) are finally here. With a 10-hour period of observation, the telescope captured 10 million galaxies, thousands of asteroids, and stars across the Milky Way. And because of funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science (DOE), these images are only just scratching the surface of Rubin's mission for the next 10 years.

1 week ago | discovermagazine.com | Monica Cull

In 2022, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), along with other health organizations, approved the drug lenacapavir as a groundbreaking HIV/AIDS treatment. The FDA, as of June 18, 2025, has now approved the drug as an HIV preventive, or HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). In a 2024 clinical trial, lenacapavir had a 100 percent success rate at preventing HIV transmission with only two injections per year.

1 week ago | discovermagazine.com | Monica Cull

The extinct mastodon continues to have an impact on modern ecosystems in South America. Although this prehistoric ancestor of the elephant species went extinct around 11,000 years ago, the large fruit plants that relied on them for seed dispersal are still around, albeit critically endangered. A new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution highlights how Notiomastodon platensis, a South American mastodon, was a frugivore and an essential seed spreader.

2 weeks ago | discovermagazine.com | Monica Cull

Could seeing the luminescent twinkle of fireflies on summer evenings soon be a thing of the past? Recent claims circulating on social media say that we may be the last generation to have grown up with fireflies. But how true is that? A 2024 study in Science of The Total Environment compiled 24,000 North American surveys from Firefly Watch, a citizen science initiative, revealing that firefly populations in North America are declining.

2 weeks ago | discovermagazine.com | Monica Cull

According to a new study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution , archosauromorphs, early ancestors of dinosaurs and crocodiles, migrated across 10,000 miles of uninhabitable terrain after the end-Permian mass extinction event. Using a new computer model, researchers from the University of Birmingham and the University of Bristol in the U.K. have conducted a geographical analysis to help determine how these prehistoric creatures dispersed across a changing environment.