Cholesterol is tricky — your body needs the waxy substance to build cells and make hormones, but there’s a bad type of cholesterol called “LDL” (low-density lipoprotein). Too much LDL can put people at risk for heart attacks or stroke, so controlling cholesterol levels can be life-saving.
Luckily, a new gene editing therapy called VERVE-102 may be able to help with high cholesterol. There’s a trial running now that’s small but mighty, involving only 35 patients, all of whom have either inherited high cholesterol or have had a heart attack at a young age. They continued their regular medication but added this new gene editing therapy to their treatment.
Not only did results show levels of bad cholesterol reduced by up to 62%, but the level continued to remain low after a year, suggesting that patients may only need one treatment to feel the effects of this treatment for the rest of their lives. Is it magic? Close! It’s science!
The idea behind the gene editing plays off of the liver’s role. It’s supposed to clear bad cholesterol from the blood and stop it from clogging up vessels, unless a protein called PCSK9 gets in the way. PCSK9! It even kind of sounds like “pesky”! The new medicine edits PCSK9’s gene, so that it stays out of the way and the liver can do its job.
Chemotherapy works. It also takes a serious toll — on energy, on the immune system, on everyday quality of life. For decades, that trade-off has been treated as unavoidable. A new drug being used to treat ovarian cancer suggests it might not have to be.
The treatment works by attaching a chemotherapy drug to an antibody — a protein the body uses naturally to identify and target specific cells. When the drug enters the body, the antibodies seek out cancer cells specifically, binding to them and leaving healthy tissue alone. Once inside the cancer cell, the antibody breaks down and releases the chemotherapy drug, destroying the cancer from within. The rest of the body barely notices.
For patients like Patricia Hill, the difference has been significant. After multiple rounds of conventional chemotherapy in the 3 years since her ovarian cancer diagnosis, she describes finally feeling well enough to socialize and enjoy daily life again. That shift — from surviving treatment to actually living alongside it — is what researchers have spent decades working toward.
The drug is still being studied, but early results point in two directions that matter: better quality of life during treatment, and the possibility of longer survival afterward. Those two things don't always come together in cancer research. When they do, it tends to mean something genuinely new is happening.
What happens when a zoo animal gets sick? For most of the history of zoos, that question had an answer most visitors never saw. Now, one of the world's oldest zoological societies is building a facility designed to change that — and what they're planning goes well beyond routine checkups.
The Zoological Society of London is constructing a new wildlife health center that will allow visitors to observe animals receiving medical care firsthand. Some of what they'll see will be routine — weight checks, dental exams, the kind of maintenance that keeps zoo populations healthy. But onlookers may also get a window into surgical procedures, and in some cases, postmortems. It's an unusually transparent approach for an institution that has traditionally kept its medical operations behind closed doors.
Not everyone is convinced. Critics argue the center is more about capitalizing on public curiosity than genuinely benefiting the animals in its care — that making medicine into a spectator sport serves the zoo's revenue more than its residents.
ZSL pushes back on that framing. The center is designed to be more than an exhibit. It's intended to function as a global training resource for wildlife vets, a hub where expertise in animal medicine can be developed and shared across institutions worldwide. The argument is that visibility and conservation aren't in conflict — that showing people what it actually takes to keep wild animals healthy is exactly the kind of thing that builds the public understanding zoos increasingly depend on to justify their existence.
The deeper question the center raises isn't really about one zoo or one building. It's about what zoos are actually for — and whether letting people watch is a compromise of that mission or an extension of it.
When it comes to gathering water data, the “employee of the month” may look a little on the “green and cubical” side. Alongside Yorkshire rivers, there are multiple green boxes working hard to gather data on river quality that should, in a couple years, be available for river users and potential swimmers to access through an app that tracks pollution.
Though there are currently apps that show pollution data, that information is old and outdated. This upcoming app is special, because it will use live data from an on-site sensor to provide real-time pollution levels in the water. It’s not meant to tell people “safe” or “not safe” or “swim” or “don’t swim,” but it can give people what they need to make an informed decision... mostly.
The green boxes have a big shortcoming: they’re unable to detect some really nasty bacteria like E.coli, which can only be measured in a lab. But don’t worry, old-school scientists are on the case, manually taking samples to send away for analysis. These findings will be used to build a data set that will be combined with green box data, and AI learning will infer when E.coli (and other bugs) are present in the river.
So, today, we celebrate a beautiful marriage — one of traditional testing, new technology, and AI. It may not be the pairing you’re rooting for on Love Island, but it shows great promise for water safety!
Your phone goes in a pouch the moment you walk in. If it's seen or heard, it's gone — for 4 weeks. That's the policy at Astrea Academy, one of the strictest phone bans in the UK, and yes, those 4 weeks can run straight through school holidays.
Harsh? Maybe. But teachers say it's working. Focus is up, behavior has improved, and students' overall wellbeing has shifted noticeably since the policy took hold.
Student reactions are split. Some think the rules go too far. Others — perhaps surprisingly — admit they don't really need their phones during the school day anyway. Both groups are probably right about something.
Parents are largely on board, and for reasons that go beyond test scores. They're noticing their kids coming home and actually talking — asking questions, making eye contact, and reconnecting in small ways that are easy to dismiss until they're gone. One thing the ban has surfaced that nobody quite expected: parents realizing they have a phone problem too. Several reflected that if they want their kids to put the devices down, they probably need to do the same. Role modeling, it turns out, works both ways.
Phone-free schools aren't going away. The UK is already moving toward national guidelines pushing schools in this direction, alongside measures to encourage more moderate social media use. The experiment at Astrea Academy may be ahead of its time — or just ahead of the curve.
It’s officially the “Beijing International Automotive Exhibition,” but its friends call it “Auto China,” and it’s now the largest car show in the world. Nearly 1000 companies flock to the exhibits taking up more than 380,000 square meters, or over 50 football fields! Or 1,246,719 feet and 50 soccer fields, if you’re from America! Or 9,329,989 beep-boop-zoinks and 50 astro-space-ball fields if you’re a Martian from outer space! Any way you spin it, this car show is a big deal, and there were two standout trends.
The first was electric vehicles. There’s always been an issue with charging, as makers have tried to maximize how far cars can travel on single charge while minimizing how long that charge takes. Now, a company called BYD claims to have an ultra-fast charging system that can provide 400 km of range with only 5 minutes of charging. What’s more, it’s designed to operate under extreme weather conditions. Since batteries are usually sensitive to high or low temperatures, addressing this is a major step in making electric vehicles as reliable as gas cars.
The other big topic was also fully autonomous, or self-driving cars. The company Geely developed a self-driving car built specifically for ride-hailing, so there’s no steering wheel or driver’s seat. That means you can pick your nose without fear of the driver judging you! Xpeng’s driverless car uses a combination of lasers, radar, and cameras to build a real time picture of the road, but we hope it works just as well in the clouds, because they may be extending this technology into flying cars as early as next year. It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s just my Uber! That’s one way to beat traffic.
Did you put on sunscreen today? Yes? Go put on some more.
Tans may be fashionable, but the risks that come with sun damage are anything but — and they can last a lifetime. That's why England banned tanning beds for anyone under 18 back in 2011. Even so, people as young as 14 have found ways to use them illegally. Now, the rules are getting stricter: businesses will be legally required to check ID before letting anyone near a sunbed, and salons will need to post clear health warnings — including dropping any misleading claims that certain beds can prevent sunburn or help with weight loss.
Even with stronger laws, misinformation is still a problem. Rumors about tanning beds offering benefits like vitamin D have a way of spreading while the risks get quietly ignored. Experts say that even a single tanning bed session before the age of 35 increases the risk of skin cancer by nearly 60% — and young skin is especially vulnerable. Skin cancer is already the most common cancer in the world. The tan isn't worth it.
The “global space economy” refers to pretty much everything having to do with human progress through space, including exploration, research, management, and use. It also generates hundreds of billions of dollars every year.
You may not have heard the term “global space economy,” but you’ve probably heard of at least two of the big players: Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. As founders of Blue Origin and SpaceX, their companies are estimated to be worth $100 billion and $1.8 trillion, respectively. If you took 1.8 trillion standard dollar bills end-to-end, it would stretch 100 million miles — more than the distance from the Earth to the Sun! Imagine walking to the Sun on a bridge made of money! You couldn’t, because of all of the “zero gravity.” Your feet would also get very tired. There’s also no oxygen. But we know all of this because of how much we’ve studied space!
So why spend so much time and money on the space industry, which has expanded massively in the last few decades? Don’t only a few select astronauts go to space? Shouldn’t we be focusing on Earth? Well, what we learn in space has a big impact on what we do on the ground. Our findings from space show up as the GPS on our phones, in ships navigating the oceans, even as farmers using satellite photography to plan their crops.
There’s no sign of slowing down on the space front — the UK is focusing on small satellites, America is hoping to put astronauts back on the moon by 2028, and China is planning its own lunar landing by 2030. These explorations could provide valuable minerals, insight to getting past the Moon (like to Mars), and open up space tourism opportunities.
Did somebody say CAT scan? The Norfolk Zoo is doubling down on the idea of a big CAT scan by giving a big cat a scan! A tiger named Mishka is one of many animal patients that the zoo is sending through a CAT, or CT, scan. Short for “computerized axial tomography” or “computed tomography,” depending on how much time you have and how much you want to impress your friends, CT scans use a combination of X-rays and computer technology to help see inside bodies, produced detailed images of bones, organs, and soft tissue.
To the untrained eye, the scan’s grey and white blobs may look like, well, blobs. But, skilled professionals will be able to see if they show any abnormalities in bones or soft tissues. In addition to Mishka, the zoo also checked out other animals like a vulture, penguin, and sloth.
Their scans will not only help animals at the zoo, but in the wild, too. The findings will be added to the base knowledge on a species or animal, which can be shared with experts and vet colleagues globally.
The greatest show on Earth is happening right now — and it's bigger than ever. The 2026 FIFA World Cup spans three countries (the U.S., Canada, and Mexico), features a record-breaking 48 teams, and runs from June 11 through July 19. The final? It's being played right here — at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, just outside New York City. No pressure.
Since 1930, the World Cup has produced legendary goals, shocking upsets, and moments that stopped entire nations in their tracks. It's the one tournament where a tiny island nation can send a footballing giant home crying — and usually does.
Think you know your Pelés from your Mbappés? Your golden boots from your offside traps? Whether you're a die-hard who tracks every group stage table or someone who only tunes in for the final — this quiz will put what you know to the test. Let's see if you can go all the way.
Football is thousands of years old, but who says there's no room for a little new technology? And there's no better place to explore the advancements in football tech than FIFA’s global headquarters in Zurich, where the research team has been paying special attention to the MVP of every match: the football itself.
Meet the Trionda ball. It may look like a standard football, until you open it up to reveal a sensor inside the ball. It’s synced to a computer, and tracks the ball’s behavior on a graph that shows when contact is made with the ball — light touches are small peaks, hard hits are big spikes. This will make it easier to see if a player has actually touched the ball, which is sometimes hard to determine with the naked eye.
For those who are always squinting to watch those teeny tiny players on that giant field, FIFA is also introducing a ref cam. The head-mounted technology lets broadcasters record first-person footage, so spectators can see the game from the referee’s point of view. This means they can get an on-field perspective of the action, even if means an up-close look of players getting mad at the refs! Nothing more authentic than that!
Chimpanzees are among the most intelligent animals on Earth — and they just happen to be our closest living relatives. Sharing about 95–98% of their DNA with humans, chimpanzees can use tools, solve problems, communicate with one another, and even pass knowledge from one generation to the next.
Found in the forests and woodlands of central and western Africa, chimpanzees live in complex social groups called troops. They spend their days searching for food, caring for their young, and navigating a world that is increasingly threatened by habitat loss and human activity.
From cracking nuts with stones to using sticks to fish for termites, chimpanzees continue to amaze scientists with their creativity and intelligence. But how much do you know about these remarkable primates?
Whether you're a wildlife enthusiast, an animal expert, or simply curious about our closest cousins in the animal kingdom, this quiz will put your chimpanzee knowledge to the test. Let's see if you have what it takes to become a Chimp Champion!
Cholesterol is tricky — your body needs the waxy substance to build cells and make hormones, but there’s a bad type of cholesterol called “LDL” (low-density lipoprotein). Too much LDL can put people at risk for heart attacks or stroke, so controlling cholesterol levels can be life-saving.
Luckily, a new gene editing therapy called VERVE-102 may be able to help with high cholesterol. There’s a trial running now that’s small but mighty, involving only 35 patients, all of whom have either inherited high cholesterol or have had a heart attack at a young age. They continued their regular medication but added this new gene editing therapy to their treatment.
Not only did results show levels of bad cholesterol reduced by up to 62%, but the level continued to remain low after a year, suggesting that patients may only need one treatment to feel the effects of this treatment for the rest of their lives. Is it magic? Close! It’s science!
The idea behind the gene editing plays off of the liver’s role. It’s supposed to clear bad cholesterol from the blood and stop it from clogging up vessels, unless a protein called PCSK9 gets in the way. PCSK9! It even kind of sounds like “pesky”! The new medicine edits PCSK9’s gene, so that it stays out of the way and the liver can do its job.
Chemotherapy works. It also takes a serious toll — on energy, on the immune system, on everyday quality of life. For decades, that trade-off has been treated as unavoidable. A new drug being used to treat ovarian cancer suggests it might not have to be.
The treatment works by attaching a chemotherapy drug to an antibody — a protein the body uses naturally to identify and target specific cells. When the drug enters the body, the antibodies seek out cancer cells specifically, binding to them and leaving healthy tissue alone. Once inside the cancer cell, the antibody breaks down and releases the chemotherapy drug, destroying the cancer from within. The rest of the body barely notices.
For patients like Patricia Hill, the difference has been significant. After multiple rounds of conventional chemotherapy in the 3 years since her ovarian cancer diagnosis, she describes finally feeling well enough to socialize and enjoy daily life again. That shift — from surviving treatment to actually living alongside it — is what researchers have spent decades working toward.
The drug is still being studied, but early results point in two directions that matter: better quality of life during treatment, and the possibility of longer survival afterward. Those two things don't always come together in cancer research. When they do, it tends to mean something genuinely new is happening.
What happens when a zoo animal gets sick? For most of the history of zoos, that question had an answer most visitors never saw. Now, one of the world's oldest zoological societies is building a facility designed to change that — and what they're planning goes well beyond routine checkups.
The Zoological Society of London is constructing a new wildlife health center that will allow visitors to observe animals receiving medical care firsthand. Some of what they'll see will be routine — weight checks, dental exams, the kind of maintenance that keeps zoo populations healthy. But onlookers may also get a window into surgical procedures, and in some cases, postmortems. It's an unusually transparent approach for an institution that has traditionally kept its medical operations behind closed doors.
Not everyone is convinced. Critics argue the center is more about capitalizing on public curiosity than genuinely benefiting the animals in its care — that making medicine into a spectator sport serves the zoo's revenue more than its residents.
ZSL pushes back on that framing. The center is designed to be more than an exhibit. It's intended to function as a global training resource for wildlife vets, a hub where expertise in animal medicine can be developed and shared across institutions worldwide. The argument is that visibility and conservation aren't in conflict — that showing people what it actually takes to keep wild animals healthy is exactly the kind of thing that builds the public understanding zoos increasingly depend on to justify their existence.
The deeper question the center raises isn't really about one zoo or one building. It's about what zoos are actually for — and whether letting people watch is a compromise of that mission or an extension of it.
When it comes to gathering water data, the “employee of the month” may look a little on the “green and cubical” side. Alongside Yorkshire rivers, there are multiple green boxes working hard to gather data on river quality that should, in a couple years, be available for river users and potential swimmers to access through an app that tracks pollution.
Though there are currently apps that show pollution data, that information is old and outdated. This upcoming app is special, because it will use live data from an on-site sensor to provide real-time pollution levels in the water. It’s not meant to tell people “safe” or “not safe” or “swim” or “don’t swim,” but it can give people what they need to make an informed decision... mostly.
The green boxes have a big shortcoming: they’re unable to detect some really nasty bacteria like E.coli, which can only be measured in a lab. But don’t worry, old-school scientists are on the case, manually taking samples to send away for analysis. These findings will be used to build a data set that will be combined with green box data, and AI learning will infer when E.coli (and other bugs) are present in the river.
So, today, we celebrate a beautiful marriage — one of traditional testing, new technology, and AI. It may not be the pairing you’re rooting for on Love Island, but it shows great promise for water safety!
Your phone goes in a pouch the moment you walk in. If it's seen or heard, it's gone — for 4 weeks. That's the policy at Astrea Academy, one of the strictest phone bans in the UK, and yes, those 4 weeks can run straight through school holidays.
Harsh? Maybe. But teachers say it's working. Focus is up, behavior has improved, and students' overall wellbeing has shifted noticeably since the policy took hold.
Student reactions are split. Some think the rules go too far. Others — perhaps surprisingly — admit they don't really need their phones during the school day anyway. Both groups are probably right about something.
Parents are largely on board, and for reasons that go beyond test scores. They're noticing their kids coming home and actually talking — asking questions, making eye contact, and reconnecting in small ways that are easy to dismiss until they're gone. One thing the ban has surfaced that nobody quite expected: parents realizing they have a phone problem too. Several reflected that if they want their kids to put the devices down, they probably need to do the same. Role modeling, it turns out, works both ways.
Phone-free schools aren't going away. The UK is already moving toward national guidelines pushing schools in this direction, alongside measures to encourage more moderate social media use. The experiment at Astrea Academy may be ahead of its time — or just ahead of the curve.
It’s officially the “Beijing International Automotive Exhibition,” but its friends call it “Auto China,” and it’s now the largest car show in the world. Nearly 1000 companies flock to the exhibits taking up more than 380,000 square meters, or over 50 football fields! Or 1,246,719 feet and 50 soccer fields, if you’re from America! Or 9,329,989 beep-boop-zoinks and 50 astro-space-ball fields if you’re a Martian from outer space! Any way you spin it, this car show is a big deal, and there were two standout trends.
The first was electric vehicles. There’s always been an issue with charging, as makers have tried to maximize how far cars can travel on single charge while minimizing how long that charge takes. Now, a company called BYD claims to have an ultra-fast charging system that can provide 400 km of range with only 5 minutes of charging. What’s more, it’s designed to operate under extreme weather conditions. Since batteries are usually sensitive to high or low temperatures, addressing this is a major step in making electric vehicles as reliable as gas cars.
The other big topic was also fully autonomous, or self-driving cars. The company Geely developed a self-driving car built specifically for ride-hailing, so there’s no steering wheel or driver’s seat. That means you can pick your nose without fear of the driver judging you! Xpeng’s driverless car uses a combination of lasers, radar, and cameras to build a real time picture of the road, but we hope it works just as well in the clouds, because they may be extending this technology into flying cars as early as next year. It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s just my Uber! That’s one way to beat traffic.
Did you put on sunscreen today? Yes? Go put on some more.
Tans may be fashionable, but the risks that come with sun damage are anything but — and they can last a lifetime. That's why England banned tanning beds for anyone under 18 back in 2011. Even so, people as young as 14 have found ways to use them illegally. Now, the rules are getting stricter: businesses will be legally required to check ID before letting anyone near a sunbed, and salons will need to post clear health warnings — including dropping any misleading claims that certain beds can prevent sunburn or help with weight loss.
Even with stronger laws, misinformation is still a problem. Rumors about tanning beds offering benefits like vitamin D have a way of spreading while the risks get quietly ignored. Experts say that even a single tanning bed session before the age of 35 increases the risk of skin cancer by nearly 60% — and young skin is especially vulnerable. Skin cancer is already the most common cancer in the world. The tan isn't worth it.
The “global space economy” refers to pretty much everything having to do with human progress through space, including exploration, research, management, and use. It also generates hundreds of billions of dollars every year.
You may not have heard the term “global space economy,” but you’ve probably heard of at least two of the big players: Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. As founders of Blue Origin and SpaceX, their companies are estimated to be worth $100 billion and $1.8 trillion, respectively. If you took 1.8 trillion standard dollar bills end-to-end, it would stretch 100 million miles — more than the distance from the Earth to the Sun! Imagine walking to the Sun on a bridge made of money! You couldn’t, because of all of the “zero gravity.” Your feet would also get very tired. There’s also no oxygen. But we know all of this because of how much we’ve studied space!
So why spend so much time and money on the space industry, which has expanded massively in the last few decades? Don’t only a few select astronauts go to space? Shouldn’t we be focusing on Earth? Well, what we learn in space has a big impact on what we do on the ground. Our findings from space show up as the GPS on our phones, in ships navigating the oceans, even as farmers using satellite photography to plan their crops.
There’s no sign of slowing down on the space front — the UK is focusing on small satellites, America is hoping to put astronauts back on the moon by 2028, and China is planning its own lunar landing by 2030. These explorations could provide valuable minerals, insight to getting past the Moon (like to Mars), and open up space tourism opportunities.
Did somebody say CAT scan? The Norfolk Zoo is doubling down on the idea of a big CAT scan by giving a big cat a scan! A tiger named Mishka is one of many animal patients that the zoo is sending through a CAT, or CT, scan. Short for “computerized axial tomography” or “computed tomography,” depending on how much time you have and how much you want to impress your friends, CT scans use a combination of X-rays and computer technology to help see inside bodies, produced detailed images of bones, organs, and soft tissue.
To the untrained eye, the scan’s grey and white blobs may look like, well, blobs. But, skilled professionals will be able to see if they show any abnormalities in bones or soft tissues. In addition to Mishka, the zoo also checked out other animals like a vulture, penguin, and sloth.
Their scans will not only help animals at the zoo, but in the wild, too. The findings will be added to the base knowledge on a species or animal, which can be shared with experts and vet colleagues globally.
The greatest show on Earth is happening right now — and it's bigger than ever. The 2026 FIFA World Cup spans three countries (the U.S., Canada, and Mexico), features a record-breaking 48 teams, and runs from June 11 through July 19. The final? It's being played right here — at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, just outside New York City. No pressure.
Since 1930, the World Cup has produced legendary goals, shocking upsets, and moments that stopped entire nations in their tracks. It's the one tournament where a tiny island nation can send a footballing giant home crying — and usually does.
Think you know your Pelés from your Mbappés? Your golden boots from your offside traps? Whether you're a die-hard who tracks every group stage table or someone who only tunes in for the final — this quiz will put what you know to the test. Let's see if you can go all the way.
Football is thousands of years old, but who says there's no room for a little new technology? And there's no better place to explore the advancements in football tech than FIFA’s global headquarters in Zurich, where the research team has been paying special attention to the MVP of every match: the football itself.
Meet the Trionda ball. It may look like a standard football, until you open it up to reveal a sensor inside the ball. It’s synced to a computer, and tracks the ball’s behavior on a graph that shows when contact is made with the ball — light touches are small peaks, hard hits are big spikes. This will make it easier to see if a player has actually touched the ball, which is sometimes hard to determine with the naked eye.
For those who are always squinting to watch those teeny tiny players on that giant field, FIFA is also introducing a ref cam. The head-mounted technology lets broadcasters record first-person footage, so spectators can see the game from the referee’s point of view. This means they can get an on-field perspective of the action, even if means an up-close look of players getting mad at the refs! Nothing more authentic than that!
Chimpanzees are among the most intelligent animals on Earth — and they just happen to be our closest living relatives. Sharing about 95–98% of their DNA with humans, chimpanzees can use tools, solve problems, communicate with one another, and even pass knowledge from one generation to the next.
Found in the forests and woodlands of central and western Africa, chimpanzees live in complex social groups called troops. They spend their days searching for food, caring for their young, and navigating a world that is increasingly threatened by habitat loss and human activity.
From cracking nuts with stones to using sticks to fish for termites, chimpanzees continue to amaze scientists with their creativity and intelligence. But how much do you know about these remarkable primates?
Whether you're a wildlife enthusiast, an animal expert, or simply curious about our closest cousins in the animal kingdom, this quiz will put your chimpanzee knowledge to the test. Let's see if you have what it takes to become a Chimp Champion!