A comparable hot gas bubble around the sun shields Earth from galactic cosmic rays A young star nicknamed the Moth plows through a dense cloud of interstellar dust and gas. That movement pushes the star's own dust disk back into a winglike shape, as seen in this simulation, but does not affect the bubble of

CHICAGO — ­New clinical trial results on the diabetes and obesity drug tirzepatide have doctors buzzing about its potential to treat heart failure, keep weight off and prevent type 2 diabetes. One of the newer heavy hitters in the ever-growing lineup of this class of drugs, tirzepatide is sold under the brand names Mounjaro (for

Unbearable heat waves around the world killed scores of people and upended daily life A boy in Delhi pours water on himself to cool off during a heat wave in May. The territory set a record-high temperature of nearly 122° Fahrenheit. SONU MEHTA/HINDUSTAN TIMES/GETTY IMAGES Over and over, the numbers tell the same story: 2024

Pablo Guerrero has been visiting cacti in the Atacama Desert his whole life, first on family trips to the Chilean coast and later as a researcher studying the impacts of climate change and illegal poaching on the fragile flora. The desert, which is the driest spot on Earth beyond the planet’s poles, can be so

Certain fungi give trees nutrients and water, but heat and drought put both at risk  For trees and fungi that rely on one another to survive, moving into new suitable habitats as climate change progresses is a particularly complicated process. Michael Rucker/500px, Getty Images More than one-third of the world’s tree species, from tropical magnolias

Males still wrap surprises for female spiders in silk but inside there’s just a bit of junk A male Paratrechalea ornata woos with a silk-wrapped gift. Its contents might be a morsel of insect meat or something far less delectable, like a bit of exoskeleton. Biologists are studying how an unpredictable climate can affect gift

ESA’s Proba-3 mission will demonstrate precision flying and study the sun’s mysterious corona The two Proba-3 spacecraft (illustrated) will be the first to fly in precision formation, which will let them make observations of the sun that are nearly impossible any other way. P. Carril/ESA A pair of spacecraft just launched to create hundreds of

A new study finds that rising placebo responses may play a part in the increasingly high failure rate for clinical trials of drugs, but the authors of the study say that the increase in placebo responses occurred only in trials conducted in the United States. Accepted for publication in the journal Pain, the study analyzed

Oxybenzone, a UV-filtering compound used in sunscreens, has been found in high concentrations in the waters around popular coral reefs in Hawaii and the Caribbean. According to new research, the chemical not only kills coral, it causes DNA damage in adults and deforms the DNA in coral in the larval stage, making it unlikely they

Around one third of people with depression have high levels of inflammation markers in their blood. Now, new research appearing in in Molecular Psychiatry shows that persistent inflammation affects the brain in ways that are connected with stubborn symptoms of depression, such as anhedonia (the inability to experience pleasure). The findings bolster the case that