A study by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons has found that new cutting-edge techniques can accurately edit genes in human embryos—giving scientists indispensable tools for understanding normal human development—but has also uncovered important risks that currently preclude the use of the techniques in the clinic.

Editing the genome is an essential technique for scientists seeking to understand the genome. Editing genes in human embryos allows us to understand the earliest steps of human development. Early human embryos accrue a surprising amount of DNA damage as they grow, and most human embryos made with IVF stop their development in the first few days.

"By introducing such damage using editors, we are starting to understand how human embryos handle damage in their genomes. In the long term, we hope to learn how to prevent genetic and developmental abnormalities during IVF to create more efficient, safer and more affordable fertility treatments," says Dieter Egli, the study's leader and associate professor of developmental cell biology in the Department of Pediatrics.

In the study, published Sept. 9 in Nature, Egli's team used base editing—a more meticulous genetic editor than earlier techniques—to make changes in individual letters in the DNA of single-cell human embryos. They then followed each embryo's development for 6–7 days (a stage when IVF embryos can be implanted) to determine if the edit was made correctly and passed on to all cells in the embryo. Remarkably, in some experiments, the editing was 100% successful and development was apparently normal.

But the editing sometimes caused unpredictable changes and is not safe to use in the clinic. Editing human embryos has the potential to give people who carry disease-causing mutations an opportunity to have healthy children through IVF. "But given our findings, it is currently not possible to do so safely," says Egli.

"As a scientist, the first goal is to uncover new knowledge, which we hope will lead to new ways to help people. But identifying the risks is just as important because it draws the boundaries for meaningful use of a powerful technology. I think our study will discourage inappropriate use of these techniques in the clinic because we clearly demonstrate the risks."

Given that it's the closest planet to the sun, Mercury seems like it should be the hottest planet in our solar system.

However, at a blistering 900 degrees Fahrenheit (480 degrees Celsius), Venus tops Mercury's 800 F (430 C) highest surface temperature, despite being an average of 31 million miles (50 million kilometers) farther from the sun. So how can the second planet from our star be hotter than the closest planet to it?

It all comes down to reflectivity, atmospheric composition and geological history, experts told Live Science.

Totally different atmospheres
A planet's distance from its star is not the only factor that influences the planet's temperature.

"Distance tells us how much sunlight arrives at a planet, but it does not tell us how much is reflected … absorbed, how efficiently heat escapes, or how effectively the atmosphere transports heat around the planet," Stephen Kane, an astrophysicist who studies planetary habitability at the University of California, Riverside, told Live Science in an email. "Those properties can be just as important as distance, and sometimes much more important."

Mercury makes the case in miniature. According to Kane, the planet has essentially no atmosphere, so incoming sunlight strikes bare rock directly, heating it to extreme temperatures during the day. But with barely anything overhead to trap that warmth, Mercury radiates it straight back into space the moment the sun sets. As a result, nighttime temperatures plunge from roughly 800 F (430 C) during the day to about minus 290 F (minus 180 C) at night — a swing of well over 1,000 degrees, he added.

Venus tells the opposite story. Wrapped in an atmosphere that's roughly 90 times as dense as Earth's and consists almost entirely of carbon dioxide, Venus traps heat so effectively that its surface temperature barely changes at all, no matter where the sun happens to be, Kane explained...

Tyrannosaurus rex was a hottie with a body temperature similar to our own, according to a new analysis of their teeth. MThe finding supports the idea that T. rex was a fast, energetic predator and scavenger, not an animal that basked in the sun to gain energy like most modern-day reptiles.

T. rex, which lived between about 68 million and 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period (143.1 million to 66 million years ago), was one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs that ever lived.

Previous studies have already suggested that T. rex and its relatives were warm blooded, but now scientists have estimated the dinosaur's body temperature for the first time by studying different isotopes, or forms, of the same chemical elements in the enamel of three T. rex teeth from specimens found in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana.

Rare, heavy isotopes of carbon and oxygen bond together differently in growing tooth enamel depending on the temperature. The number of bonds formed between these rare isotopes is greater at cooler temperatures than it is at warmer temperatures, which means warm-blooded, or endothermic animals, that can regulate their own body temperature, have fewer of these chemical bonds in their teeth than cold-blooded, or ectothermic, animals, which rely on their environment for warmth...

Have you ever bought something not because you wanted it, but because you were afraid of what might happen if you didn't? Maybe you worried about looking older, falling behind at work or simply not fitting in.

While marketing often promises an aspirational lifestyle, some of the most effective campaigns work in the opposite direction: making you feel bad about your current reality, then presenting a product as the solution.

This is the logic of pain-point advertising, and emotions are central to its effectiveness.

Emotional content in advertising can be framed positively or negatively. When advertisers choose to frame it negatively, they aim to show that not using their product could lead to negative experiences, often illustrated by the characters' negative emotions in the ad.

How pain-point advertising works
Companies that develop goods and services need to establish a presence in the market, stimulate consumer demand and generate profits. Advertising uses a range of strategies to achieve those goals, but emotional content remains a staple across the industry.

Research in cognitive and behavioral science suggests that consumers don't make decisions through rational calculation alone, and that emotions play an important role.

One reason may be the way our brains make sense of the world. The human brain is a predictive machine that constantly uses past experiences to anticipate what will happen next.

Throughout our lives, we accumulate experiences that help us form increasingly accurate expectations and make better decisions. When our experiences confirm those expectations, there is little reason for the brain to change course. We can continue relying on what we already know.

But when reality contradicts what we expected, the mismatch can trigger a negative emotional response. The discrepancy signals that something about our expectations or behavior may need to change.

This is the very mechanism that pain-point advertising exploits. For instance, an advertisement might draw attention to a gap between how we see ourselves and how we believe we should look. The advertised product is then presented as a way to close that gap...

Webb reveals one of its largest images to date! 😲

This starry view shows the nearby star-forming region IC 348. Here, astronomers searched for brown dwarfs, objects which are less massive than the smallest stars. Read more 👉 esa.int/Science_Explor…

High quality in comments

X-ray technology and artificial intelligence—along with the discovery of lead in the ink of fragments from a collection of ancient Roman scrolls—could soon help scientists read long-lost texts buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, according to a study published Sept. 16, 2026, in the journal PLOS One by Douglas Seiler, an affiliate of the University of California, Berkeley, U.S.; Jacob Michael LaManna of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S.; David Kreimer of the University of California, Berkeley, U.S.; and colleagues.

The Herculaneum papyri scrolls were discovered in the ruins of the town of Herculaneum, near Naples, Italy. During the volcanic eruption, the scrolls were covered by 65–70 feet (20–21 meters) of rock and ash, "carbonizing" them in the extreme heat and making them very brittle. While some of the scrolls have been opened and read, revealing previously unknown writings by Epicurus and other ancient thinkers, many have proven too fragile to study.

Lead offers a clearer signal
Recently, AI and X-ray tomography have allowed researchers to virtually "unroll" some of the scrolls and read some of the text. That said, X-rays can have a hard time distinguishing the text because the ink and papyrus are made of similar materials: carbon. But some of the Herculaneum scroll letters have been found to contain lead. Since X-rays can more easily distinguish between papyrus and lead, the authors of this new paper suggest scanning the scrolls for lead and then attempting to virtually unroll those that contain it.

To test this, the team recreated some carbonized scrolls by writing on new papyrus using ink with various concentrations of lead, then heating the scrolls in a high-temperature furnace and carbonizing them. X-ray fluorescence was able to detect lead in the scrolls at each lead concentration level, and X-ray tomography, combined with a custom software program, allowed the team to reread some of the words they had written on these scrolls.

For centuries, scientists have thought of the brain as a single, unified organ. But new research led by Stanford Medicine reveals that what we call the brain is two distinct organs that evolved independently over hundreds of millions of years.

The discovery overturns a prevailing model of brain development. For decades researchers have subscribed to the theory that there is a single progenitor cell early in development that gives rise to the entire brain. This model suggested all parts of the brain shared a common developmental origin.

The new research finding shows that the human brain consists of two ancient nervous systems cleverly packaged together — a more primitive part that regulates our hearts’ beating, our breathing and other functions, and another that makes us distinctly human, capable of poetry, mathematics and wondering about our own origins.

The discovery could help explain why scientists have struggled for decades to grow certain types of brain cells in the laboratory — and it opens new avenues for studying devastating diseases that affect the brain stem, such as spinal muscular atrophy (also known as SMA) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease).

“We’ve shown for the first time that the front of the brain arises from a totally different progenitor cell than the back of the brain,” said Kyle Loh, PhD, associate professor of developmental biology. “Our discovery means that we can now grow neurons from the back of the brain, the hindbrain, in a petri dish and study their functions.”

Two brains
The adult brain has three main regions: the forebrain, midbrain and hindbrain. The forebrain handles higher-level thinking — language, consciousness and abstract reasoning. In contrast, the hindbrain, located at the back of the skull and often called the brain stem, controls essential, automatic functions that keep us alive: breathing, sleeping, and regulating our heartbeat and hunger urges. The hindbrain neurons also control the muscles of the face, tongue and throat, which affect speech and swallowing.

Despite the critical importance of the hindbrain, scientists have struggled for decades to generate human hindbrain neurons in the laboratory. This gap has hampered research into devastating diseases affecting the brain stem, including spinal muscular atrophy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis...

We have long known that the Sun is active. It “flares” quite often, sending huge amounts of energy off in a certain direction - sometimes directly at Earth. But we also know that, compared to other Sun-like stars, it seems relatively quiet, and not capable of producing the “superflares” we sometimes see in its stellar equivalents. That sounds like great news for humanity, and some scientists have even argued that lack of superflares was a critical impetus for the development of complex life on Earth. But a new paper from Natalie Krivova of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and her co-authors in the journal Philosophical Transactions A calls the assumption that our Sun is incapable of such dramatic outbursts into question. That also means that, eventually, our highly technological society could bear the brunt of one of them.

Scientists have been collecting data on the Sun for decades, and one of the most interesting features they watch out for are solar flares. These massive outbursts of energy occur when the twisted magnetic fields located in what are known as the Sun’s “Active Regions” (ARs) snap and reconnect, releasing a huge amount of stored energy. Commonly known as “sunspots”, ARs also leave behind a residual glowing area known as “flare ribbons” that occur after their high-power snap-back.

Using data collected by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory between 2010 and 2016, the authors analyzed what they believed to be a critical relationship - between the total area of an Active Region, the size of its resultant flare ribbons, and the total energy released during their creation. They found a very accurate statistical correlation that also makes sense intuitively - the larger the active region, the larger the ribbon area, and the more maximum potential flare energy. And critically, they found the flare energy scales exponentially with the ribbon area...

The Human Genome Project was launched in 1990, preceded by decades of breakthroughs in genetics. It eventually gave us a sequence of the human genome. Yet, while the physical rules behind the genome's organization remain an active area of research, many questions are still largely unanswered. Among these is the impact of an omnipresent force influencing life on Earth: gravity.

A new study, which appears in the journal Science Advances, addresses some of these weighty questions by using an innovative technique: creating a zero-gravity, or microgravity, environment to reveal gravity's impact on a human cell.

The method serves two purposes: isolating gravity's impact on the genome by removing it as a factor in experiments while, at the same time, showing how the genome functions in outer space, where gravity is nonexistent.

"On Earth, the role of gravity is intriguing—it is a constant mechanical stress on everything," explains Alexandra Zidovska, an associate professor in New York University's Department of Physics, who led the study.

"We wanted to know what gravity's role is in the genome's organization and function here on Earth. To uncover it, you have to remove gravity as a force, so we simulated zero gravity in our experiments."

"Beyond Earth, the question of lack of gravity is also compelling: How will the human genome be affected when in outer space?" she continues.

"We think our findings can be useful in better understanding how space travel affects us."

The human genome has a complex and compact hierarchical organization. It is a one-dimensional sequence encoded in 2 meters (6.6 feet) of DNA molecules packed in three dimensions inside a cell nucleus barely 10 micrometers in size—or about the width of a silk fiber.

Its structure is directly linked to its function, and deviations from it can lead to human diseases, such as cancer and developmental afflictions. Despite their significance, the physical principles governing the genome's organization are not well understood.

"We do not know if or how the presence of gravity affects this organization and if the absence of gravity would cause genomic aberrations," observes Zidovska...

The human brain is terrible at healing itself from injury or disease. But some animals can harness their own cellular abilities not only to repair injuries but also to regrow their brains entirely. Researchers from the University of Georgia have pinpointed several of the genes that make brain regeneration possible in one type of flatworm.

"Big picture: We would like to come up with ideas for how to better empower the human brain to regenerate itself," said Rachel Roberts-Galbraith, corresponding author of the study and an associate professor in UGA's Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

"The understanding of brain regeneration that we can develop using simple animals gives us a reason to be optimistic. It's not an inherent property of brains that makes them bad at regeneration. It's something specific to humans."

Flatworm and human brains are both made up of networks of specialized cells called neurons. These cells communicate with each other by sending electrical or chemical signals. Some neurons react to stimuli, such as light or touch, while others control movement.

Flatworms use stem cells to replace neurons after injury. Humans also have stem cells, but they are unable to transform into new neurons effectively enough to heal injuries. The new study sheds light on how shared genes work in flatworms and lays the groundwork for researchers to investigate similar pathways that might be activated in humans to design better therapies for traumatic brain injuries or diseases.

Some flatworms can regrow tissues, muscles and even their brains
Planarians can be found in freshwater, saltwater and even on land. They don't have circulatory or respiratory systems. But they do have stem cells that can change into whatever their body needs at a given time, making them valuable animals for brain and cognitive research.

Using stem cells, planarians can regrow their entire body from just a sliver of a body fragment. They can rebuild tissues, muscles and even their brains.

But how do these tiny creatures know what type of cell to make and where to send it?

The hydrogen in your body and present in every molecule of water came from the Big Bang. There are no other appreciable sources of hydrogen in the universe. The carbon in your body was made by nuclear fusion in the interior of stars, as was the oxygen. Much of the iron in your body was made during supernovas of stars that occurred long ago and far away. The gold in your jewelry was likely made from neutron stars during collisions that may have been visible as short-duration gamma-ray bursts or gravitational wave events. Elements like phosphorus and copper are present in our bodies in only small amounts but are essential to the functioning of all known life. The featured periodic table is color coded to indicate humanity's best guess as to the nuclear origin of all known elements. The sites of nuclear creation of some elements, such as copper, are not really well known and are continuing topics of observational and computational research.

Image Credit: NASA's GSFC, SVS