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In 2001, a truck mechanic and snake enthusiast named Tim Friede started injecting himself with low doses of snake venom, in an attempt to protect himself from his growing collection of highly lethal snakes. Now, his eccentric efforts to develop immunity could help lead to better treatments for snakebites.

Source paper: Adenoviral Inciting Antigen and Somatic Hypermutation in VITT

The increase only represents a small step toward restoring funding to former levels, meaning universities must still search for other sources of revenue.

Some 10,109 doctoral-trained experts in science and related fields left their jobs last year as President Donald Trump dramatically shrank the overall federal workforce. That exodus was only 3% of the 335,192 federal workers who exited last year but represents 14% of the total number of Ph.D.s in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) or health fields employed at the end of 2024 as then-President Joe Biden prepared to leave office.

A Science analysis reveals how many were fired, retired, or quit across 14 agencies

Osuna-Mascaró hopes the work will inspire scientists to pay more attention to farm animals as well. Though he’s largely studied chimpanzees and cockatoos until now, he wants to continue to work with cows. He’s even put a cow screensaver on his phone. “I think most animals are living a rich life and have something really interesting to tell us,” he says. “We just have to ask the right questions.”

China’s EAST tokamak fusion reactor has achieved a breakthrough by reaching a “density-free regime” where plasma remains stable at densities far above traditional limits[1][2].

China’s EAST tokamak fusion reactor has achieved a breakthrough by reaching a “density-free regime” where plasma remains stable at densities far above traditional limits12.

Any dog owner will tell you that dogs understand many words, and studies support this impression. In addition to dogs with regular, “family dog” knowledge levels are dogs with an extraordinary level of word comprehension. These dogs have been called “gifted word learners” and they appear idiosyncratically across countries, breeds, and households. Dror et al. examined the ability of these dogs to pick up words through conversations not directed at them. Using an approach designed to study understanding in toddlers, they found that the dogs were able learn words through overhearing just like, or even better than, 1.5-year-old children. —Sacha Vignieri [Editor]

Archived copies of the article: * web.archive.org * archive.today

At some point today you will disengage from the rest of the world and just think. It could happen any number of ways: if your mind wanders from work, while you're sitting in traffic, or if you just take a quiet moment to reflect. But as frequently as we drift into our own thoughts, a new study suggests that many of us don't like it. In fact, some people even prefer an electric shock to being left alone with their minds.

Between 6000 B.C.E. and 1000 B.C.E., the people living in the Carpathian Basin of central Eastern Europe experienced a whirlwind of social and technological change. The first farmers brought domesticated crops. Smaller communities grew into larger settlements, broke apart, and reformed. New technologies such as plows, draft animals, standard measurements, and metalworking transformed working life. Elsewhere in the ancient world, such changes often heralded increasingly unequal and socially stratified societies.

Archive link: https://archive.is/20240503184140/https://www.science.org/content/article/human-speech-may-have-universal-transmission-rate-39-bits-second

Archiced copy of the article

“I always like to think that for many technological achievements that benefit humans,” Dawson says, “some organism somewhere has already developed it through some evolutionary process.”

Edible sensors made of glowing droplets could improve food and drug monitoring

This is from 2019. But I just wanted to revisit this. In case people hadn't heard of this.

A humorous look at FOOF by the inimitable Derek Lowe

Don't like the F-word? Blame farmers and soft food. When humans switched to processed foods after the spread of agriculture, they put less wear and tear on their teeth. That changed the growth of their jaws, giving adults the overbites normal in children. Within a few thousand years, those slight overbites made it easy for people in farming cultures to fire off sounds like "f" and "v," opening a world of new words.

arXiv url: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2202.12330.pdf