For The Better

Scientists may have solved the mystery of why Antarctica froze millions of years before the Arctic. Slow-moving waves deep inside Earth gradually lifted East Antarctica, building mountains and a high plateau where snow and ice could survive even in a m…

Older adults who received the Shingrix shingles vaccine were 24% less likely to be diagnosed with dementia over four years in a study of more than 500,000 people. Researchers estimate the difference could amount to roughly one dementia case prevented f…

Researchers have found a way to supercharge natural killer cells, powerful immune cells that can attack cancer, so they can penetrate solid tumors and keep fighting once inside. In mice, these specially prepared tissue-resident cells slowed the growth …

A huge section of Greenland’s Petermann Glacier has snapped off, forming an ice island about the size of Manhattan. Satellites watched cracks spread rapidly before the 76-square-kilometer slab finally broke free on August 4. It is the glacier’s biggest…

Scientists have created a highly efficient catalyst that breaks down stubborn lignin from plant waste into useful chemicals under relatively mild conditions. By revealing exactly how the catalyst works at the atomic level, the discovery could help turn…

A sweeping analysis of thousands of animal genomes suggests that chromosomes do not evolve randomly but instead follow a limited number of irreversible “evolutionary highways.” These one-way genetic changes preserve clues to more than 600 million years…

NASA scientists found that microbes brought by astronauts could survive in cold, shadowed niches around the Moon’s South Pole, potentially complicating future searches for pristine lunar chemistry. Some refuges may be no larger than a footprint, while …

A major study found that adults with depression show disrupted production of new neurons in the hippocampus, potentially weakening the brain’s ability to separate new experiences from painful memories. The researchers also identified broad molecular ch…

People who reach 110 and beyond appear to have unusually large numbers of rare immune cells capable of killing abnormal cells. These CD4 cytotoxic T cells became more common with age and often expanded into large groups of nearly identical cells, sugge…

A massive test of gravity across the cosmos found that it behaves almost exactly as Newton and Einstein predicted, even across galaxy clusters hundreds of millions of light-years apart. The result weakens some modified-gravity explanations and strength…