A fertilized human egg grows into a 200-cell hollow ball and inserts itself on the uterine wall in its first week. It splits into human tissues in three weeks. Those vital weeks are mostly unknown. “We know the basics, but the very fine details we just don’t know,” said Jacob Hanna, a developmental biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Dr. Hanna and other scientists are constructing lab models of human embryos to find out. They're getting stem cells to form embryo-like aggregates. These trials were reported by Dr. Hanna's Israeli team, Britain, the US, and China this month. While not yet published in scholarly publications, the experiments have drawn interest from other scientists who have hoped for years that such discoveries might ultimately illuminate early ...

Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, suddenly awoke in the late 1800s, according to a Nature research. According to the results, this black hole, which is 27,000 light years from Earth and four million times heavier than the Sun, awoke two millennia ago. Researchers say the celestial creature spent over a year swallowing cosmic objects before going dormant. "Imagine a bear going into hibernation after devouring everything around it," said research author Frederic Marin, according to AFP on Saturday. "At least a million times brighter than it is today," Marin said, the black hole was active in the late 19th century. "A single glowworm hidden in a forest suddenly became as bright as the Sun," according to French researchers CNRS, as adj...

The Environmental Science B.S. degree (ENVS), designed by academics from the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the School of Biological Sciences, has debuted and is enrolling students. Math, physics, chemistry, biology, earth sciences, and environmental policy form the foundation of the ENVS degree. Upper-level electives let students tailor their studies to their interests and professional ambitions. Greg Huey, professor and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, said the new degree will equip students to be future leaders who understand how human activity affects Earth systems and human well-being. “Graduates will be leaders in industry, academia, education, and communication to create innovative solutions to our greatest environmental challenges.” Ina...

Physical activity is healthy. A recent research based on 30 years of data questions the adage Mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body) and the value of exercise for brain health and cognition. Our health and neuroscience researchers published our study of over a quarter million participants a few days following that study. Our findings confirm the cognitive benefits of moderate and intensive physical exercise, fueling an important scientific debate. Is exercise pointless for cognition? First research released March 27, 2023. It is a more careful review of 24 meta-analyses of 11,266 healthy persons. Most of the 24 meta-analyses in this review found that exercise improved cognitive performance, but the authors say the studies were poor. The scientific comm...