Author: Ms. R.

It goes like this: When six and seven appear together in print, or in speech, or on television, or in a YouTube video, or even just when you write them down on loose-leaf paper, that’s “six-seven.” “Six-seven!” you say, you probably being a middle-school-age child. Such is the youth phenomenon known by this name. Now you know, but chances are you already did, especially if a preteen has lived in your house anytime since this spring. Six-seven-ing seems to……

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A natural chemical in dark chocolate may play a role in slowing certain signs of biological aging. Researchers at King’s College London have identified theobromine, a plant compound found in cocoa, as a possible contributor to this effect. The study, published on December 10 in Aging, analyzed how much theobromine was present in participants’ blood and compared those levels with biological aging markers measured in blood samples. What Biological Age Reveals Biological age reflects how well a person’s body is functioning,……

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This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a glittering blue dwarf galaxy called Markarian 178 (Mrk 178). The galaxy, which is substantially smaller than our own Milky Way, lies 13 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major (the Great Bear). Mrk 178 is one of more than 1,500 Markarian galaxies. These galaxies get their name from the Armenian astrophysicist Benjamin Markarian, who compiled a list of galaxies that were surprisingly bright in ultraviolet light. While the bulk of……

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Sea urchins play a crucial role in the ocean, acting as ecosystem engineers much like large grazers on land. As they feed on seaweed and seagrass, they trim back algae and help protect slow-growing species such as corals and certain calcifying algae. In turn, sea urchins are an important food source for many marine mammals, fish, crustaceans, and sea stars. When sea urchin populations grow too large, however, especially if their natural predators are heavily hunted or overfished, the……

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Waves of heavy rainfall in early December 2025 spurred landslides and flooding in parts of the Pacific Northwest. The deluge was the result of a potent atmospheric river that took aim at the region starting around December 7. Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow bands of moisture that move like rivers in the sky, transporting water vapor from the tropics toward the poles. They occur around the planet, most often in autumn and winter, with the U.S. West Coast typically……

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The School of Science welcomed 11 new faculty members in 2024. Shaoyun Bai researches symplectic topology, the study of even-dimensional spaces whose properties are reflected by two-dimensional surfaces inside them. He is interested in this area’s interaction with other fields, including algebraic geometry, algebraic topology, geometric topology, and dynamics. He has been developing new tool kits for counting problems from moduli spaces, which have been applied to classical questions, including the Arnold conjecture, periodic points of Hamiltonian maps, higher-rank……

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Glioblastoma is the most common form of brain cancer in adults, and its consequences are usually quick and fatal. After receiving standard-of-care treatment (surgery followed by radiation and chemotherapy), fewer than half of patients will survive longer than 15 months. Only 5 percent of patients survive longer than five years. Researchers have explored immune checkpoint inhibitors as an avenue for boosting glioblastoma survival rates. This type of immunotherapy, which has proven effective against a range of tumor types, turns……

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It’s rude to boast, but here in 2025, you’ve got to take the wins where you can get them. This morning, Time magazine announced its Person of the Year, and it’s me. It’s you too. If you want to get all technical about it, Time’s Person of the Year is actually not a person at all but a collection of people: the architects of AI. One of the two covers Time released is a re-creation of the “Lunch Atop……

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In a first, this week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a brain stimulation device designed to treat depression at home. The approval of the first such device for home depression treatment expands therapeutic options for depression beyond drugs. Made by Flow Neuroscience, the device is worn as a headset that delivers electric current to a part of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is known to be implicated in mood disorders and depression. The technique,……

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Picture this: You’re just about done with a transoceanic flight, and the tracker in your seat-back screen shows you approaching your destination airport. And then … you notice your plane is moving away. Pretty far away. You approach again and again, only to realize you’re on a long, circling loop that can last an hour or more before you land.  If this sounds familiar, there’s a good chance the delay was caused by issues with trajectory prediction. Your plane……

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