NuseReal science news

2026

Experimental pill promises new hope for deadly pancreatic cancer: daraxonrasib nearly doubled survival times for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer compared to chemotherapy (LINK) — 31 May 2026

Scientific American: CERN finds hint of "weird new physics" beyond standard model (LINK (restricted)) — 31 May 2026. Conversation April 20 report — (LINK)

Scientists challenge a 70-year-old theory of language with a surprising discovery: language is not organized mainly around emotion, but around a deeper pattern shaped by power, danger, and order (LINK) — 30 May 2026

WHO urges governments to protect young people from addiction to tobacco and nicotine products (LINK) — 29 May 2026

Jeff Bezos' New Glenn rocket explodes into mushroom cloud, dealing massive blow to NASA's Blue Origin moon plans (LINK) — 28 May 2026

— Futurism: The space agency announced a slew of "Moon base" missions to build out a permanent presence on the lunar surface — and they hinged on New Glenn rockets launching two of Blue Origin's Blue Moon lunar landers that are delivering payloads, including rovers, there before the end of this year.

Uganda closes its border with Congo as cases of Ebola surge (LINK) — ground.news: media reports (LINK) — 27 May 2026

CNN: DRC is no stranger to Ebola outbreaks. Why isn't there a vaccine or treatment to help now? (LINK) — 26 May 2026

— The fast-growing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is already the third-largest on record and the 17th outbreak the country has dealt with since the virus was discovered there in 1976. A vaccine was developed during the West Africa outbreak of the different Zaire strain and trialled successfully there in 2015. Called Ervebo,

Climate change reportedly fueling 10% rise in antibiotic resistance (LINK) — ground.news: 20 media reports (LINK) — 27 May 2026

Nasa selects Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin for first of three uncrewed lunar missions (LINK) — 26 May 2026

— Three lunar landings are planned for this year in preparation for the construction of a $20bn moon bases

Pope Leo XIV declares Artificial Intelligence a moral crisis in sweeping manifesto (LINK) — 25 May 2026

Rising seas will swallow New Orleans. People need to start relocating now, scientists say (LINK) — 25 May 2026

— Approximately 99% of the population in New Orleans is at high flood risk, according to a recent study. Coastal Louisiana faces sea level rise of around 10 to 23 feet [3-7m], according to the analysis published in May in the journal Nature Sustainability. The impacts will be bleak: around 75% of its remaining wetlands are set to be lost and its shoreline could retreat inland by up to 62 miles [100km], the scientists found.

Suspected Ebola cases in DR Congo pass 900 as health workers face attacks and shortages (LINK) — 24 May 2026

— Guardian: There have been arson attacks on Ebola treatment centres in the country's east — two centres in two towns were hit last week, exposing the anger in a region beset by violence linked to armed rebel groups, the displacement of a large number of people, the failure of local government and international aid cuts that experts say have stripped health facilities in vulnerable communities. The World Health Organization has said the outbreak now poses a "very high" risk for the Democratic Republic of Congo, but that the risk of the disease spreading globally remains low.

Heatstroke kills 16 in India's southern state of Telangana as temperatures climb (LINK) — ground.news: 28 media reports (LINK) — 24 May 2026

We were wrong about fasting, massive study finds: no meaningful difference in cognitive performance between people who were fasting and people having regular meals (LINK) — 24 May 2026

WHO: 79th World Health Assembly — Daily update: 23 May 2026: adopted more than 20 decisions and 13 resolutions on health issues including stroke, liver disease, tuberculosis, antimicrobial resistance, diagnostic imaging, emergency care, haemophilia, precision medicine and radiation (LINK) — 23 May 2026

Scientists discover simple way to relieve knee arthritis pain without pills or surgery: turning toes slightly inward or outward when walking (LINK) — 22 May 2026

Scientists may have finally cracked why 90% of humans are right-handed — and the answer has nothing to do with our hands, it has to do with our legs (LINK) — 22 May 2026

— Space Daily: An Oxford team's approach was to test all the major hypotheses simultaneously against data from 41 different species, looking for which combination of factors actually explained the cross-species pattern in which humans are the extreme outlier. No single factor explained the pattern. No other primate species shows population-level handedness anywhere close to this scale. Chimpanzees, our closest relatives, show only mild handedness preferences, and the preferences are roughly evenly split between left and right across the population.

— The Oxford team found that two factors together accounted for the human anomaly. The first factor was brain size, specifically the dramatic expansion of brain size that occurred in the human lineage over the last several million years. The second factor was the ratio between arm length and leg length, which is a standard anatomical marker of bipedal locomotion. The 90 percent right-handedness figure was what their model predicted for an animal with our specific combination of brain size and bipedal commitment. The other primates, with smaller brains and more arboreal locomotion, were predicted by the model to have weaker handedness preferences, which is what the data show. The proposal is that bipedalism freed the hands from the task of locomotion. The specialization could include, among other things, the development of strong handedness, in which one hand becomes the dedicated tool-using and fine-manipulation hand while the other becomes the assisting hand.

Civil engineering professor Moussa Leblouba from the University of Sharjah (UAE)'s invention of a vibration-dissipation device could save a building in the event of an earthquake (LINK) — 21 May 2026

Vaccine to tackle Ebola outbreak will take six to nine months, says WHO, as the number of suspected cases rose to 600 (LINK) — 20 May 2026

WHO chief "deeply concerned about the scale and speed" of Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda that has resulted in a spike in deaths — to at least 130 — and more than 500 suspected cases (LINK) — 19 May 2026

— The outbreak is complicated by the rare strain of the disease, known as Bundibugyo, that standard field tests often miss and for which there are no vaccines or therapeutics. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned of emerging cases in urban areas, including reports of cases in Uganda's capital, Kampala, and Goma, a crossroads city in Congo that borders Rwanda. The Intercept: Experts say Trump administration policies — like dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development and withdrawing from WHO — have further undermined global health security and negatively impacted the response to the outbreak.

NASA astronauts study cancer and cartilage treatments aboard the ISS as spacewalks near (LINK) — 20 May 2026

Deep in Ethiopia's badlands, scientists found 2.8-million-year-old fossil teeth that don't fit any known humanoid species (LINK) — 19 May 2026

— An international team reports that the teeth belong to two different types of early human ancestors that lived in the same place at the same time. One is an early member of the genus Homo, the lineage that leads to modern humans. The other is a previously unknown species of Australopithecus, a group of upright-walking hominins with ape-sized brains. The Ledi-Geraru australopith does not match any known species. Its molars are broad and squared off rather than tapered toward the back. They lack the distinctive outer contour seen in Australopithecus afarensis, the species of the famous Lucy skeleton. The canine tooth wears down from the tip rather than along a slanted groove, which is how A. afarensis canines typically erode. The study notes that as many as four hominin species may have shared eastern Africa between 3.0 and 2.5 million years ago.

— "This new research shows that the image many of us have in our minds of an ape to a Neanderthal to a modern human is not correct," said Kaye Reed, a paleoecologist at Arizona State University who has co-directed the Ledi-Geraru Research Project since 2002. "Human evolution is not linear, it's a bushy tree."

AI-generated fake citations are flooding scientific literature across publications, scientists warn: pattern of researchers using AI yet failing to fact-check the output (LINK) — 18 May 2026

Global scramble to contain new Ebola outbreak as US looks to relocate 'small number' of citizens affected (LINK) — 18 May 2026

WHO declares Ebola outbreak in DR Congo a global health emergency (LINK) — 17 May 2026

— However, it said the outbreak in DR Congo's eastern Ituri province, which has seen around 246 suspected cases and 80 deaths reported, does not meet the criteria of a pandemic emergency. The current strain of Ebola is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, the health agency said, for which there are no approved drugs or vaccines. The global health agency added the virus has spread beyond DR Congo, with two confirmed cases reported in neighbouring Uganda.

UK: Satellites and AI used to track UK hedgehogs in bid to slow decline (LINK) — 19 May 2026

Physicists just debunked the idea that we're living in a simulation: new theoretical study argues the universe includes truths beyond computation, making a full simulation of reality impossible (LINK) — 17 May 2026

New York Post: Billions have been wasted on UN's climate change lies (LINK) — 18 May 2026

Declare climate crisis a global public health emergency, experts on the independent pan-European commission on climate and health, which was convened by the WHO, tell the organization (LINK) — 16 May 2026

US: NH Senate kills looser rules on childhood vaccine exemptions; approves bill requiring DHHS to inform parents of exemptions (LINK) — 15 May 2026

The science of dying: what happens in the last minutes of life (LINK) — 13 May 2026

Millions died from the Super El Niño in 1877. What will happen this time? (LINK) — 12 May 2026

NASA satellite images show how a massive tsunami in Alaska changed the landscape forever (LINK) — 12 May 2026

— On August 10, 2025, a tsunami larger than the Eiffel Tower ripped through Tracy Arm fjord in southeast Alaska. The rapid retreat of the South Sawyer Glacier triggered a landslide that swept huge rocks down the picturesque waterway visited by millions aboard Alaskan cruises every summer. At least 64 million cubic meters of rock slid down the slope of the glacier. The rocks created an enormous tsunami that stripped trees and other vegetation from the opposing fjord wall up to 1,578 feet (480m) above sea level.

Common sweetener erythritol may harm critical brain barrier, risking stroke (LINK) — 12 May 2026

'Insect apocalypse' is already fueling malnutrition in some regions, first-of-its-kind study reveals (LINK) — 11 May 2026

— In a new paper published May 6 in the journal Nature, researchers have quantified the impact of insect pollinator declines on human health for the first time.

UK: Army parachutes onto Tristan da Cunha to help Briton with suspected hantavirus who lives on Britain's most remote inhabited overseas territory (LINK) — 10 May 2026

— He first reported symptoms two weeks after leaving the vessel and is said be in a stable condition while isolating. Six cases of the virus have now been confirmed, including of two other Britons currently being treated off the ship. Almost a month after the first death onboard the MV Hondius, the vessel has now arrived in Tenerife, where authorities are helping more than 100 people disembark to be repatriated.

Up to 16% of planet species face extinction by 2100, driven by habitat loss rather than migration limitations, UC Davis Study Finds — (LINK) — ground.news: 45 media reports (LINK) — 7 May 2026

— Yale University's Junna Wang noted that wet regions like the eastern United States and India will gain species richness, while the western United States, Australia, and Europe face significant diversity losses as species' ranges shrink.

Kenya's plans to host a $1 billion data centre backed by Microsoft and UAE-based G42 have stalled, after President William Ruto said the country lacks sufficient power capacity to support the project. (LINK) — 6 May 2026

DNA from 258 ancient skeletons rewrite the history of the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages (LINK) — 5 May 2026

Plaster-making technique previously attributed to the Romans appears 8,000 years earlier in Motza: has archaeologists looking at Neolithic craftsmen in a new light (LINK) — 4 May 2026

Australian scientists build a quantum battery that charges almost instantly: system absorbs light in a single, giant 'super absorption' event (LINK) — 3 May 2026

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Science News 2026