Scientists Discover 73 Volcanic Calderas Hidden Across The Ocean Floor

07 July 2026, By M. Starr

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-discover-73-volcanic-calderas-hidden-across-the-ocean-floor

Deep beneath the ocean waves, dangers lurk.

Not from cryptic monsters like the kraken, but from powerful forces reshaping the ocean floor itself.

Most of Earth's volcanic activity takes place underwater. Yet the scars those volcanoes leave behind have remained largely hidden.

Now, through an AI-assisted search of the seafloor, a team led by volcanologist Andrea Verolino of Paris-Saclay University in France has identified 73 previously unknown volcanic calderas hidden beneath Earth's oceans.

Calderas are vast crater-like depressions left when a volcano empties enough of its underground magma chamber for the ground above to collapse in on itself. Some are long extinct, but others mark volcanic systems that could erupt again.

The global distribution of previously documented calderas.

 (Verolino et al., Commun. Earth Environ., 2026)

"Our dataset," writes the team in an early-access paper published in Communications, Earth & Environment, "fills a major observational gap and provides a reproducible, upgradeable framework for submarine volcano characterization, underscoring the need to incorporate submarine calderas into future global volcanic assessments."

Most of Earth's volcanic activity takes place beneath the sea, where tectonic plates are constantly pulling apart, colliding, and sliding beneath one another. These restless boundaries allow magma to rise toward the surface, building volcanoes across the ocean floor.

Most of that submarine volcanic activity consists of relatively gentle basaltic eruptions along spreading ridges – but every now and then, things get a little bit more dramatic.

Submarine calderas can generate enormous eruptions, tsunamis, shock waves, ash plumes, and tremendous amounts of steam as they explode deep under the ocean.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAYEndrV8zc

The 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai event, an explosive eruption from an undersea caldera in the Tongan archipelago, was something of a wake-up call. It produced atmospheric pressure waves that reached space, widespread tsunamis, and damage thousands of kilometers away.

If we don't know where submarine calderas are, we can't know which ones deserve closer monitoring. Yet before this survey, fewer than 30 had been documented beneath the oceans.

To address this gap in our knowledge, Verolino and his colleagues adapted an algorithm that was originally trained to detect impact craters on Mars, and applied it to bathymetric maps – those that record the topography of the seafloor.

The algorithm initially flagged 87,435 possible formations.

Most of those were false alarms. By applying a series of filters and then manually inspecting the remaining candidates, the researchers narrowed their final list down to 78 likely calderas.

A map showing the new calderas. 

(Verolino et al., Commun. Earth Environ., 2026)

Five of the candidates were already recognized as submarine calderas, lending confidence that the method can successfully identify real examples.

This means that the researchers found 73 possible calderas that we didn't know about before. If confirmed, their discovery would more than triple the number of known submarine calderas – and the algorithm may be refined to find even more in the future.

The discoveries also reveal where submarine calderas are most likely to occur.

Eight of the newly found features were at mid-ocean ridges at the boundary between two tectonic plates.

Nine were identified in volcanic arcs.

And a whopping 61 were found in interior tectonic settings, such as seamount chains, rather than at tectonic boundaries.

The researchers also highlighted seven of the newly identified calderas as especially worthwhile targets for future exploration because their location, water depth and shape suggest they could be important for understanding submarine volcanic hazards.

It's important to note that the paper did not assess whether any of these calderas are currently active.

However, several recent studies have found that even volcanoes we think are extinct may be quietly refilling with magma and may become active in the future.

So it's important to know where these locations are and make a closer examination of the ones that could cause the most disruption.

"This study lays a critical foundation for evaluating submarine volcanic risks and improving global preparedness," the researchers write.

"Our aim is not to produce a complete global inventory of submarine calderas, but to establish a transparent and reproducible framework that yields a conservative baseline dataset, which can be expanded as higher-resolution bathymetry and future studies become available."

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Octopus Brains Defy a Long-Held Rule About Why Animals Evolve Intelligence

09 July 2026, By J. Cockerill

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-size-of-cephalopod-brains-seems-curiously-related-to-their-habitat

(Eric VOLTO/500px/Getty Images)

Biologists have long believed that having a large brain, relative to your body, might go hand-in-hand with being part of a particularly social species.

This is called the social brain hypothesis, and it holds up pretty well for a particular branch of the animal family tree: ours.

We share this branch with a number of other social animals: hoofed herd animals like sheep and goats; pack carnivores, like wolves and lions; whales; dolphins; bats; primates; and possibly birds too.

All of these animals tend to follow the relationship described in the social brain hypothesis: Bigger social circles correlate with bigger brains, specifically with the mammalian neocortex.

But a few other, very different kinds of animals, on a very different branch of the tree, are also known for the size of their brains, and the complexity of their behaviors: cephalopods.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st8-EY71K84

These include squids, octopuses, and cuttlefish, none of which are particularly known for their social skills.

In fact, many cephalopods are actively hostile towards other members of their group, and only a few (mainly squid) are known to gather in larger groups at all. Even then, it's sometimes a bit of a bloodbath.

Cephalopods also die shortly after laying eggs, which means they don't even have the kinds of parenting behaviors that underlie the most basic of social structures.

In which case, why are their brains so darn big?

The authors of a new study published in iScience propose that cephalopods may be evidence that something else is the dominant driver of brain size.

They refer to the cultural brain hypothesis, first introduced in a 2018 paper by economic psychologist Michael Muthukrishna and colleagues.

Muthukrishna, who is based at the London School of Economics and Political Science, is also a principal investigator on this new research.

The giant cuttlefish that aggregate for breeding in the Spencer Gulf in Australia are some of the only cephalopods known to have large social gatherings. Here, one male fights off another. 

(wildestanimal/Moment/Getty Images)

In the new study, the researchers point out that the social brain hypothesis is held up only by correlation, which doesn't necessarily explain the mechanisms behind it.

"Correlations suggest possible factors in brain evolution, but by themselves they cannot tell us how or why brains evolved, nor disentangle cause from consequence among multiple confounding variables," first author and anthropologist Kiran Basava and team write in the new paper.

In other words, there are limits to what the social brain hypothesis can tell us.

"For decades the main story of why brains got big has been a social one where bigger brains evolve to manage bigger, more complex groups," Muthukrishna says.

"Cephalopods reveal that there's another path to bigger brains. They're often solitary, short-lived, sometimes even cannibalistic, and yet have large brains and intelligent behavior."

The cultural brain hypothesis proposes that "brains have been selected for their ability to store and manage information, acquired through asocial or social learning".

In other words, large social groups may indeed be one of the pressures that favor a larger brain in animal evolution.

But it's not necessarily the only one.

"Scientific dogma always needs to be questioned." – octopus psychologist Jennifer Mather

In the new paper, researchers identified that habitat, not sociality, is more likely to be a key selection pressure for the larger brains we see in cephalopods.

They compiled comparative data about the brain size of 79 cephalopod species, along with details about their ecology, behaviors, and sociality.

Those that live on the sea floor, and in shallower habitats, tended to have larger brains.

The results suggest that ecological factors are a primary selection pressure for larger brains, in environments where animals can access a lot of food, and encounter comparatively more complex landscapes.

Anyone who has seen a benthic, shallow-water octopus in action will know this theory describes them well.

Their soft molluscan bodies, freed from the structure of an exterior shell, can take on an endless variety of shapes (and degrees of leg co-ordination) to make use of what's around them.

They can hunt many different kinds of prey, fit in many different kinds of crevasses, use many different kinds of tools. They spend most of their lives flying solo – though sometimes they will team up with other animals in their vicinity.

And, they have really big brains relative to their body size.

Meanwhile, cephalopods that do display social behaviors – squid, bobtail squid, and cuttlefish – did not necessarily have larger brains the more social they were. This suggests the social brain hypothesis does not apply here.

"This should remind us that scientific dogma always needs to be questioned, and that once again it shows that cephalopods don't follow the predictable evolutionary paths," octopus psychologist Jennifer Mather from the University of Lethbridge, who co-led the study, says.

Of course, this research still ultimately relies on correlation. But it does suggest there's more to brain size than a species' level of sociality.

"Our research started with a mathematical model we built years ago to explain human brain evolution that predicted a second path to big brains," Muthukrishna says.

"Solitary animals could evolve large brains if their environment was rich and complex enough to reward learning. Octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish let us test that prediction and the data fit. It turns out there's more than one path to evolving intelligence."

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Humans And Neanderthals Shared a Culture For 20,000 Years, Cave Discovery Suggests

08 July 2026, By D. Nield

https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-and-neanderthals-may-have-shared-a-culture-for-20000-years

(Emissary_Filmworks/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

We know from the traces left behind in our DNA that Homo sapiens met and mingled with Neanderthals long before our species eventually came to dominate.

Now a new cave excavation points to an even closer relationship between these groups, which appears to have lasted for many thousands of years.

Experts from Türkiye, France, and Japan have been digging down into layers of sediment in the Üçağızlı II Cave in northern Türkiye, part of the Levant region that acted as a corridor for early modern humans to spread to Eurasia from Africa.

They found evidence of Neanderthals (starting from around 77,000 years ago) and modern humans (starting from around 59,000 years ago) living in the same location – but even as the inhabitants of the cave changed, a lot of the stone tools, hunting techniques, and collected objects stayed the same.

Some of the shells discovered at the site.

 (Baykara et al., PNAS, 2026)



It suggests some elements of a common culture between the groups that may have spanned as many as 20,000 years.

"Our findings indicate a deep level of cultural interaction," says anthropologist Naoki Morimoto from Kyoto University in Japan.

"These two distinct but closely related human groups were not just adapting to the same environment: they were probably sharing symbolic preferences."

The researchers used a technique known as optically stimulated luminescence, which estimates when grains of sediment were last exposed to sunlight, to date the items found in the cave.

In terms of a shared culture, the most notable discoveries were Columbella rustica snail seashells. These would have had no value as food, so must have been ornamental – and although these shells had previously only been associated with H. sapiens, it turns out that Neanderthals collected them too.

The site of the archaeological excavations. A distant view of the Üçağızlı II Cave in southern Türkiye. 

(Kyoto University / Naoki Morimoto)



The implication is that these two species were in direct contact, sharing knowledge and traditions over the centuries.

"Our findings suggest shared behaviors between Neanderthals and modern humans that extended beyond subsistence to include nonutilitarian behaviors within the specific geographic and temporal context studied here," write the researchers in their published paper.

Other discoveries in the cave sediment included teeth, a jawbone, engraved artifacts, and animal remains: including deer, goats, and wild boars.

"Our findings indicate a deep level of cultural interaction." – anthropologist Naoki Morimoto

The researchers didn't actually find Neanderthal and early modern human remains together in the same sediment layer (time period), but considering that these communities were hunting the same animals and collecting the same shells, the researchers suggest they were in regular contact.

"Although we cannot yet prove direct contact, the remarkable continuity in technology, hunting practices, and the transport of bead-seashells is consistent with the idea that these populations interacted and shared cultural traditions over time," archaeologist İsmail Baykara from Gaziantep University in Türkiye told Katie Hunt at CNN.

Peering back this far in time is of course tricky, but studies are regularly appearing that tell us more about the Neanderthals and how they lived – and how they went extinct too.

A lot of recent research indicates that Neanderthals and early modern humans interacted a lot more than may have been assumed in the past.

Despite the significance of the region in the history of human expansion, the fossil findings from the Levant are actually relatively scarce. This new analysis provides some much needed insight into a critical moment for our ancient ancestors.

A similar sort of "behavioral uniformity", in terms of tools and traditions, has been spotted by researchers once before, backing up the Neanderthal and H. sapiens theory developed in this study – though more digging will be needed to develop the idea further, and to map where and when these cultural crossovers might have happened.

"Our findings are consistent with a recent proposition – albeit one derived from an earlier timeframe (~100 ka) than that of our site – that a uniform culture could have existed across different human species in the Levant during the Late Pleistocene based on archaeological evidence," write the researchers.

The birth of modern Man

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Awe-Inspiring Science Facts to Make You Feel Better About Being Alive Right Now

08 July 2026, By F. MacDonald

https://www.sciencealert.com/science-fans-are-sharing-their-most-mind-bending-facts-and-these-are-the-weirdest

(NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington)

In case you missed it, last week the ScienceAlert team shared their favorite science facts for you to use as conversation starters over the 4th of July weekend.

We all enjoyed them so much we thought we'd ask you, our loyal readers, for your own go-to science facts to inspire family and friends.

And, wow, you guys blew us away!

We had more than 500 responses from our readers. Below are our favorites.

"Every breath you take contains air molecules that were also breathed by pretty much every other person in history."
– Joseph Johnson

"If you scale our Solar System down to the size of a red blood cell, the Milky Way would be the size of the United States."
– Huw F. Rees


"The thickness of Earth's atmosphere relative to the planet is roughly the same as the skin on an apple."
– Louis Macallistar-Menzies


"When you look at the night sky, you are literally looking back in time – some of those stars no longer exist."
– Rebecca Congreve


"Coyotes can't go extinct. If a pregnant female howls and doesn't hear a response from another expecting mother, she can nearly double the size of her litter."
– Joshua Riley

"The Sun is about 400 times wider than the Moon, but also about 400 times farther away – which is why they appear the same size in our sky. No other planet in the Solar System has this."
– Michael O'Brien

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJkVegBsNyE

"It took 45,000 years for a photon of light to travel from the core of the Sun to its surface. Then just eight minutes to reach your eyes."
– Michael Koa

"Birds are living dinosaurs. Every bird you've ever seen is a direct descendant of theropod dinosaurs."
– Sean Newell

"There is a mushroom – Chorioactis geaster – found almost exclusively in Texas and Japan. DNA tests show the two populations separated 20 million years ago, 7,000 miles apart, with no human explanation."
– Kenneth Shawn

"At -40 degrees, Celsius and Fahrenheit are exactly the same temperature. It's the one point where the two scales meet."
– William E. Davenport

" Mercury is actually the closest planet on average to every single planet in our Solar System – not just Earth. Because it orbits so close to the Sun, it never gets too far away from anything."
– @remuslup19

"In 1982, computers had switches that could open and close in the time it takes light to travel one foot. Light travels 186,000 miles per second – and we were already working at that scale over 40 years ago."
– Daniel Lockwood

"Less time separates us from T. rex (66 million years) than separates T. rex from Stegosaurus (76 million years)."
– Eric Dunlap

"When you look at the stars, you're looking back in time. The light from Polaris left 450 years ago. The Andromeda Galaxy? You're seeing it as it was 2 million years ago."
– George Zoric Jr.

"Your brain is nearly 60 percent fat. It's the fattiest organ in your body."
– Rebecca Dyer, ScienceAlert Assistant Editor

"Cuttlefish can change the colors displayed on their skin – and yet they are completely colorblind. Their eyes are sensitive to polarized light: an entirely different way of seeing."
– Jess Cockerill, ScienceAlert Journalist and Editorial Assistant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N564FjDwE5Y

"If your peripheral vision were as sharp as your central vision, you'd probably need a visual cortex the size of a classroom to process it all."
– Carly Cassella, ScienceAlert Senior Journalist

"There are more possible games of chess than there are particles in the observable Universe."
– @gurubob12

"Spider silk is so incredibly fine, a single pound of it would extend all the way around Earth – and keep going."
– Peter Dockrill, ScienceAlert Managing Editor

"Voyager 1 has been travelling through space since 1977 and still hasn't made it one light-year from Earth."
– Fiona MacDonald, ScienceAlert Co-Founder

"A day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus."
– @sad.foto

"The smell of fresh cut grass is actually a distress signal – the plant warning its neighbours it's been damaged."
– Wezze Van Ongevalle

"Flamingos can freeze into a lake overnight and simply walk away when the ice melts in the morning."
– Renee Michele

"In a double rainbow, the colors of the outer bow are inverted."
– Alex Mayberry

"The ovum that became you was created in your mother's ovaries three months before she was born – making your biological starting point older than her birth."
– Ian Graham

"There are more trees on Earth than stars in the Milky Way."
– Ben Fincher

"All the planets in our Solar System could fit in the space between Earth and the Moon."
– Melina O'Brien

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX3PIkbTQwQ

"Sharks are older than trees."
– Jacob Anthony

"When a star's core turns to iron, it signals the end of its life – iron is the one element that can't be fused to release energy, so fusion stops, gravity wins, and the star collapses."
– John Rider

"Coal exists because, for about 60 million years, trees evolved wood before fungi evolved to break it down – so dead trees just piled up, undecomposed, and became coal."
– Ben Bailey

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

https://scitechdaily.com/childhood-hardships-leave-biological-scars-that-last-a-lifetime-study-finds/

07 July 2026, By T. KOUMOUNDOUROS

https://www.sciencealert.com/one-super-predator-in-africa-instills-more-fear-than-lions

(Todd Ryburn Photography/Getty Images)

Lions are built for terror. With their bladed paws, wielded by a rippling mass of pure muscle, sharp eyes, agile reflexes, and crushing fanged jaws, lions are certainly not a predator most animals have any interest in messing with.

And yet, across thousands of recordings of wildlife on the African savannah, 95 percent of species respond with far greater fear to something else entirely.

This animal isn't even technically an apex predator.

It's us: humans.

"Lions are the biggest group-hunting land predator on the planet, and thus ought to be the scariest," conservation biologist Michael Clinchy from Western University in Canada said in 2023.

"The fear of humans is ingrained and pervasive," said Clinchy. "There's this idea that the animals are going to habituate to humans if they're not hunted. But we've shown that this isn't the case."

In research published in 2023, Western University ecologist Liana Zanette and colleagues played a series of vocalizations and sounds to animals at waterholes in South Africa's Greater Kruger National Park and recorded their response.

This protected area is home to the world's largest remaining lion (Panthera leo) population, so the other mammals are well aware of the danger these carnivores represent.

The researchers broadcast the sounds of human conversations in local languages, including Tsonga, Northern Sotho, English, and Afrikaans, as well as the sounds of human hunting, including barking dogs and gunshots. They also played the sounds of lions communicating with each other.

"The key thing is that the lion vocalizations are of them snarling and growling, in 'conversation' as it were, not roaring at each other," said Clinchy.

"That way the lion vocalizations are directly comparable to those of the humans speaking conversationally."

Not all of the experimental subjects appreciated the researchers' efforts though.

"One night, the lion recording made this elephant so angry that it charged and just smashed the whole thing," Zanette said, referring to the camera setup.

Seems like a fair response!

Almost all 19 of the mammal species observed in experiments were twice as likely to abandon the waterholes when hearing humans talking compared to lions or even hunting sounds. The mammals include rhinos, elephants, giraffes, leopards, hyenas, zebras, and warthogs, some of which can pose dangers in their own right.

Since then, some of the same researchers have taken their experiment to the other side of the world – with the same result.

A 2024 study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B found that kangaroos, wallabies, and other Australian marsupials fear humans far more than any other predator – despite the fact that humans have only been present in Australia for around 60,000 years, a fraction of the time African mammals have lived alongside lions.

The fear, it seems, doesn't require millions of years of evolutionary conditioning. It runs deeper and faster than that.

All together, research on animal fear of humans now spans Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and Australia. Across every continent tested, the pattern holds: wildlife worldwide fear the human "super predator" more than any other animal on Earth.

As the most lethal animal on the planet by far and a major driver of evolution, humans have sadly earned every heart-racing beat of terror we instill in others.

"It was specifically hearing human vocalizations which inspired the greatest fear," the team explain in their paper, "suggesting that wildlife recognize humans as the real danger, whereas related disturbances such as barking dogs are merely lesser proxies."

Given how ubiquitous humans now are, escaping from us is only ever going to be a temporary situation, meaning that these mammals will unfortunately keep having their fears triggered.

This is not great for the already dwindling populations of many savannah species, including giraffes. As the team's previous research suggests, continued fear alone can reduce prey animal populations over generations.

But conservation biologists may be able to harness this knowledge to help these species, too. By playing human conversations in areas with known poaching in South Africa, they hope to keep the endangered Southern white rhino safely away.

"I think the pervasiveness of the fear throughout the savannah mammal community is a real testament to the environmental impact that humans have," said Zanette.

"Not just through habitat loss and climate change and species extinction, which is all important stuff. But just having us out there on that landscape is enough of a danger signal that they respond really strongly. They are scared to death of humans, way more than any other predator."

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Childhood Hardships Leave Biological Scars That Last a Lifetime, Study Finds

By Arizona State U., July 7, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/childhood-hardships-leave-biological-scars-that-last-a-lifetime-study-finds/

Cayo Santiago (colloquially referred to as “Monkey Island”) is a 38-acre island off Puerto Rico’s east coast. The island is inhabited by over 1,500 free-ranging rhesus macaques and managed by the University of Puerto Rico and Caribbean Primate Research Center. 

Credit: Arizona State University

Early life experiences leave lasting epigenetic marks across multiple tissues, shaping aging and health in complex ways that extend far beyond childhood.

Experiences during childhood may influence health far into adulthood, leaving biological traces that affect multiple systems throughout the body.

A study published in Science examined a rare population of free-ranging rhesus macaques whose life histories have been documented from birth. By combining those records with genomic data from 12 adult tissues, researchers found some of the strongest evidence to date that adversity early in life can produce long-lasting changes in the epigenome, the layer of biological regulation that controls how genes are activated and expressed.

The research was led by scientists at Arizona State University, Vanderbilt University, and several collaborating institutions. The team focused on DNA methylation, a key epigenetic marker associated with aging. Patterns of DNA methylation are commonly used to create “epigenetic clocks,” which estimate both chronological age (how long an organism has lived) and biological age (how old its body appears physiologically).

“Our goal was to understand how aging unfolds across the body, and how early experiences might influence that process,” said study co-senior author Noah Snyder-Mackler, a professor in Arizona State University’s School of Life Sciences. “What we found is that early life adversity leaves a coordinated epigenetic signature that spans multiple tissues—but it doesn’t simply accelerate aging in a uniform way.”

Multi-Tissue Epigenetic Clocks Reveal Diverse Aging Patterns

To investigate these effects, researchers developed highly accurate tissue-specific epigenetic clocks that could estimate age to within about one year of an animal’s actual age. The study included 237 macaques living in semi-natural conditions on Cayo Santiago, often called “Monkey Island,” a 38-acre (15-hectare) island off Puerto Rico’s eastern coast.

More than 1,500 free-ranging rhesus macaques inhabit the island, which is managed by the University of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean Primate Research Center. Using DNA methylation data collected from multiple tissues in adulthood alongside detailed records of each animal’s early life experiences, the researchers explored how adversity and aging interact at the molecular level.

Researchers developed highly precise tissue-specific aging clocks that predicted age within about one year. Studying 237 rhesus macaques living on Puerto Rico’s Cayo Santiago (“Monkey Island”), they combined DNA methylation data from multiple tissues with detailed early-life records to reveal how adversity influences biological aging at the molecular level. 

Credit: Arizona State University.

The analysis revealed that aging does not affect all tissues in the same way. Instead, age-related DNA methylation changes varied considerably depending on the tissue being examined.

“At a molecular level, aging looks very different depending on which tissue you examine,” said Amanda Lea, assistant professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University, co-senior author of the study. “Blood, which is most commonly measured in human studies, only captures part of the picture.” The thymus and pituitary gland, for example, displayed especially strong age-related signatures, while other tissues showed more modest changes.

Despite these differences, the researchers also found evidence of coordination across the body. Animals that appeared biologically older in one tissue were often older in other tissues as well, suggesting that aging is partly synchronized across organ systems.

Early Life Adversity Leaves Coordinated Genomic Signatures

Some of the study’s most significant findings came from examining early life adversity, including maternal loss, low maternal social status, and growing up in crowded social groups. These experiences were linked to DNA methylation changes that appeared across multiple tissues.

“We found that each type of adversity tends to affect specific regions of the genome,” said Lea. “But once it targets those regions, the effects are often shared across multiple tissues.”

The researchers identified thousands of genomic regions where DNA methylation patterns were associated with adverse early life experiences. Many of these regions overlapped with areas affected by aging, but the relationship was not straightforward.

“In some cases, adversity-related changes looked like accelerated aging. In others, they went in the opposite direction,” explained co-lead author Rachel Petersen, a Vanderbilt postdoctoral researcher. “This tells us that early adversity doesn’t simply ‘speed up’ aging. Instead, it reshapes the epigenome in more complex ways.”

The findings challenge the common idea that adversity in childhood consistently speeds biological aging. Instead, the results suggest that early experiences can alter the course of molecular aging in different ways across the body. In some tissues, including the pituitary gland, adversity appeared to strengthen aging-related effects, while other tissues showed different responses. The results also indicate that some health consequences linked to early adversity may arise through biological pathways that are separate from aging itself.

Why Whole-Body Aging Research Matters

The study underscores the value of examining multiple tissues when studying aging and environmental influences. Many previous investigations have focused on blood samples because they are relatively easy to collect, but the new findings suggest that blood alone may overlook important biological changes occurring elsewhere in the body.

“Different tissues have their own epigenetic landscapes and respond differently to both age and adversity,” said co-lead author Baptiste Sadoughi, an ASU postdoctoral researcher. “To fully understand health and disease, we need to take a whole-body perspective.”

The study examined telltale aging hallmarks of the epigenome—called DNA methylation patterns. DNA methylation is one of the most well-studied markers of aging and can be used to build “epigenetic clocks” that estimate both an organism’s chronological age (how long it has been alive) and biological age (how old it appears physiologically). 

Credit: Lucca Cristiano, Arizona State University

Rhesus macaques are particularly useful for this type of research because they share many biological and social characteristics with humans. Unlike laboratory animals, they live in complex social environments that naturally expose them to a wide range of life experiences.

“This kind of dataset is incredibly rare,” said Lea. “It allows us to connect detailed life histories with molecular changes across the body in a way that simply isn’t possible in most human studies.”

Implications for Lifelong Health and Disease Risk

Beyond advancing knowledge of aging biology, the study offers new insights into the developmental origins of health and disease. By demonstrating how early experiences influence the epigenome across many tissues, the research provides a potential explanation for how childhood conditions affect health later in life.

“Early life is a critical window for biological development,” said Snyder-Mackler. “Our findings suggest that experiences during this period can leave lasting marks on the genome that influence health trajectories over the lifespan.”

The researchers caution that the effects of adversity are highly complex. Different forms of adversity do not produce identical outcomes, meaning that long-term consequences likely depend on factors such as timing, context, and individual differences.

“This is not a simple story,” Lea said. “But that’s what makes it exciting. We’re beginning to see how life experiences are written into our biology—and why those signatures might vary within and between individuals.”

As scientists continue investigating the connections among environment, epigenetics, and aging, findings like these are reshaping our understanding of growing older. Aging appears to be more than the passage of time. It is also influenced by the unique experiences that leave lasting marks on our biology throughout life.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

This Gut Microbe Could Be the Secret to Staying Strong as You Age

By BMJ Group, July 6, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/this-gut-microbe-could-be-the-secret-to-staying-strong-as-you-age/

Researchers say the compound converts muscle fibers into fast-twitch type II fibers, which support short bursts of intense movement, and may hold promise as a nutraceutical for treating age-related muscle wasting. 

Credit: Stock

Scientists have identified a gut microbe that appears to be associated with stronger muscles and better fitness, with levels declining as people age.

What if some of the microbes living in your gut could help determine how strong your muscles are? New research suggests that one bacterial species, Roseburia inulinivorans, may play an important role in muscle strength, raising the possibility that the gut microbiome could one day become a target for preserving physical function as people age.

In a study published online in the journal Gut, researchers found that R. inulinivorans was associated with greater muscle strength in people and improved muscle performance in mice. The bacterium also appeared to alter muscle metabolism and promote a higher proportion of fast-twitch (type II) muscle fibers, which are specialized for short bursts of powerful movement such as sprinting, jumping, and weightlifting.

The findings are particularly significant because age-related loss of muscle mass and strength, known as sarcopenia, is a leading contributor to frailty, disability, and loss of independence in older adults. With few effective treatments currently available, the Dutch and Spanish researchers suggest that R. inulinivorans could represent a promising probiotic candidate for helping maintain muscle health.

Scientists have increasingly recognized that gut microbes influence far more than digestion, affecting processes linked to metabolism, immunity, brain health, and cardiovascular disease. Emerging evidence also points to a “gut-muscle axis,” prompting researchers to investigate whether specific bacterial species might contribute to muscle strength and performance—and how they might do so.

One bacterium tracks strength

To investigate this, they analyzed stool samples from 90 healthy young adults (18-25 year olds) and 33 older adults (65+) to identify the bacteria present.

Physical fitness was assessed using hand grip strength, leg press and bench press performance, and VO2 max (maximal oxygen consumption during exertion), which is an indicator of cardiorespiratory fitness.

Of all the bacteria detected in the stool samples, only the Roseburia group (genus) showed a positive association with muscle mass and strength.

The species R faecis and R intestinalis were not significantly linked to hand grip strength or VO₂ max in either age group.

Among older adults, however, those with detectable R inulinivorans in their stool had 29% higher handgrip strength than those without the bacterium. This increase occurred without a corresponding rise in peak oxygen uptake, suggesting better fitness.

In younger adults, higher levels of R inulinivorans were positively linked to both handgrip strength and VO₂ max. The relative abundance of both R inulinivorans and R intestinalis was also positively associated with leg press and bench press strength.

By contrast, the relative abundance of R faecis and R hominis was not associated with any muscle strength measure. The researchers say this suggests that different Roseburia species may affect different aspects of muscle strength.

Roseburia was also more common in young adults. In this group, the proportion of R faecis ranged from 0% to 3.3%; R intestinalis ranged from 0% to 5.5%; and R inulinivorans ranged from 0% to 6.6%.

Among older adults, the proportion of R faecis ranged from 0% to 2.2%; R intestinalis ranged from 0%-0.7%, while R inulinivorans ranged from 0% to 1.3%.

Mouse tests suggest causality

To explore whether Roseburia might play a causal role in muscle strength, the researchers gave Roseburia species once a week for 8 weeks to 32 mice whose gut microbiomes had first been depleted with a cocktail of antibiotics for two weeks.

The mice were randomly divided into one of 4 groups. Three groups received a different Roseburia strain, while one group received no Roseburia (control group).

None of the Roseburia species improved how long the mice could run before exhaustion. Compared with the control group, however, R inulinivorans produced a clear increase of about 30% in forelimb grip strength, a proxy for muscle function, after 4, 6, and 8 weeks of treatment.

Mice treated with R inulinivorans also had larger muscle fiber size and a significantly higher proportion of type II (‘fast twitch’) fibers in the soleus muscle located in the calf, compared with the other groups. This difference was not significant when compared with mice treated with R intestinalis.

A closer look at fiber size distribution showed that fibers were distributed relatively evenly in the control group. In mice treated with R inulinivorans, larger fibers were more common than in mice treated with the other Roseburia species or in control mice.

These muscle changes were accompanied by shifts in proteins and enzymes that are important for muscle energy production.

Probiotic promise remains early

The researchers note several limitations. In the animal study, none of the human Roseburia species colonized the mouse gut. The researchers also did not directly assess specific pathways related to inflammation or neuromuscular signaling, even though these may have played a role.

Long-term studies are needed to determine whether changes in R inulinivorans abundance cause changes in muscle function or occur as a result of them, the researchers emphasize.

Nevertheless, they suggest: “Collectively, our findings provide robust evidence supporting a gut-muscle axis in which R inulinivorans positively modulates muscle metabolism and muscle strength.”

And they conclude: “Additionally, we observed that the relative abundance of R inulinivorans is lower in older adults than in young adults. Its abundance appears to decline with advancing age, a period during which the prevalence of sarcopenia [muscle loss] increases, suggesting a potential role for R inulinivorans as a probiotic candidate for preserving muscle strength.”

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You're Not Imagining It: A Sound Moving Toward You Can Literally Warp Your Sense of Time

07 July 2026, By I. Farkas

https://www.sciencealert.com/youre-not-imagining-it-a-sound-moving-toward-you-can-literally-warp-your-sense-of-time

The world-famous Prague Astronomical Clock. 

(Jorge Royan/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Albert Einstein taught us that time is relative in a physical sense, but personal experiences teach us that time is also perceptually relative.

As evidenced by dental appointments, traffic jams, or enigmatic bouts of explosive diarrhea (not mutually exclusive, unfortunately), our perception of time is constantly changing based on external and internal factors.

Furthermore, the fundamental nature of time remains a conceptual conundrum.

Physicists and experimental psychologists have proposed various definitions of time, including a thermodynamic view of ever-increasing entropy, or a self-ordering series of quantum effects.

Psycho-physiologically, the human sense of time may rely on pulsating internal 'clocks,' such as neuronal oscillations. Alternatively, the brain may base time on a weighted sum of current perception and past experience.

So, in a unique, recent study, human sciences researchers Achille Pasqualotto and Hiroto Kawarada from the University of Tsukuba in Japan conducted a sensory substitution experiment and used a computational model to explore how auditory stimuli (sounds) can alter participants' perception of time.

"This study investigated the effect of background moving sounds on the estimation of time durations, and we discovered that an approaching background sound significantly accelerated the perceived time when compared to a receding sound," the researchers write in their paper.

Approaching sounds lead to an overestimation of time, the research suggests. 

(geralt/Pixabay/Canva)



In the experiment, the scientists split 48 blindfolded participants, aged 22 years on average, into three groups, each assigned to a different auditory test.

Equipped with headphones, one group heard background sounds that seemed to be approaching them. Another group heard background sounds that seemed to be receding. The third group, the control group, heard scrambled background sounds.

The researchers subjected all three groups to an additional, foreground sound, a short-duration sine-wave tone, meaning it was clear and markedly distinct from the background sounds.

Immediately after hearing these foreground tones, the participants pressed and held down the spacebar for as long as they felt the foreground tones lasted, estimating their total duration.

The researchers then applied a computational model to analyze these experimental effects.

The experimental data and modeling results seem to generally agree, suggesting that approaching sounds lead to an overestimation of time.

In other words, when we hear something approaching us, it increases our alertness and arousal, therefore accelerating our sense of internal time – a process possibly facilitated by factors such as dopamine activity.

Receding sounds, conversely, seem to produce the opposite effect, leading to underestimations of duration.

"Our general explanation is supported by the studies on the detection of moving targets; they reported that detection is faster for targets closer to the observers, thus supporting the engagement of the attention," the researchers explain.

"Additionally, we found evidence for the Vierordt effect, with a significant difference between estimations of shorter and longer time durations where the former are overestimated and the latter underestimated."

Future research may focus on asking participants to 'produce' time: Instead of estimating the duration of a noise, they could be explicitly asked to hold down a button for several seconds, or other specified period of time.

The researchers also surmise that an approaching background noise that increases in tempo may produce an even more pronounced acceleration of internal time, as it would require more focused, immediate attention.

Yet overall, the results of this work appear to be in general accordance with previous temporal perception studies as well as theories like the scalar expectancy theory, which posits that animals and humans have internal clocks composed of three main components: an internal pulsating pacemaker that 'ticks,' our ongoing decision-making processes, and our memories.

The evolutionary explanation seems clear. Throughout the history of life, individuals who were able to react appropriately to approaching objects – be they a stalking leopard, visiting friend, or an oncoming automobile – exhibited a survival advantage.

And although we no longer face rampaging mammoths, our precise timing and subsequent motion prediction abilities still dictate daily life, whether we're enjoying a leisurely game of catch at a cookout or piloting 4,000 pounds of steel through a busy intersection.

The Life of Earth

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People Who Live to 100 Have One Thing in Common – And It Has Nothing to Do With Diet

07 July 2026, By M. Starr

https://www.sciencealert.com/one-personality-trait-stands-out-among-people-who-live-to-100

(PeopleImages/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

When it comes to aging well, diet, exercise, and social interaction may get most of the attention – but researchers are increasingly finding there's more to the story.

A study of people living in Sardinia, Italy – one of the world's so-called 'Blue Zones', where people may be more likely to celebrate their 100th birthday – found that an overlooked factor might be just as important.

The missing piece may be your personality.

That's because personality influences the way we respond to challenges and engage with the world around us, helping shape the habits and behaviors that keep us active as we age, according to a team led by psychologist Maria Chiara Fastame of the University of Cagliari in Italy.

"These findings suggest that the combination of adaptive personality traits and coping resources promotes a more active lifestyle," the researchers write in a paper published in the International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology, "providing insights into the mechanisms of successful aging."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGEEHb6gTy8

Untangling the role of personality isn't easy. Healthy aging is shaped by everything from our genes to our environment, making it difficult to isolate the influence of any single factor.

That's one reason researchers are so interested in the world's handful of Blue Zones, where people supposedly outlive the global average, and disease rates are reportedly lower.

Fastame and her colleagues focused their efforts on the Sardinian Blue Zone.

They wanted to know whether personality traits were linked to psychological well-being and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) – a measure that captures both physical and mental health.

Previous studies, including those led by Fastame, had found that people living in Blue Zones scored higher on traits such as resilience, psychological well-being, and optimism, but a more detailed investigation into personality had not been conducted.

The researchers predicted that more adaptive personality traits would be associated with better health-related quality of life.

They also expected that people with these traits would have greater psychological well-being and spend more time engaging in hobbies, compared with people not living in the Blue Zone.

Diet, exercise, and social connection are the most commonly linked factors to healthy aging. 

(David Sacks/The Image Bank/Getty Images)



They conducted their research on 125 adults aged 71 to 101 – 55 living in the Blue Zone and 70 from a nearby community outside the Blue Zone.

These communities were chosen because their socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds are very similar, and they have access to the same free healthcare provided by the Italian government.

Each participant underwent a series of tests, questionnaires, and interviews to assess their mental and physical health, their lifestyle (including leisure and hobbies), and their Big Five personality traits – openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

One result stood out: people in the Blue Zone did not score significantly higher on health-related quality of life.

What they did have was a much higher level of openness, one of the big five personality traits. That means they showed a higher level of curiosity and interest in learning, as well as a willingness to engage intellectually with new ideas and try new things.

Blue Zone residents also had better coping skills, higher emotional competence, and spent more time engaged in mentally or physically stimulating leisure activities.

Looking at the group as a whole, rather than separating them into Blue Zone and non-Blue Zone groups, some interesting patterns emerged.

People with higher openness tended to have better psychological well-being and spend more time on hobbies.

People with higher conscientiousness tended to report greater life satisfaction and had better coping skills.

People with higher neuroticism, conversely, tended to report lower health-related quality of life.

The researchers don't think personality plays a direct role in longevity; rather, it might influence how you live your life.

For example, someone who is curious and intellectually engaged with the world might be more likely to seek new experiences, maintain social connections, take up hobbies, stay active, and keep learning.

Rather than acting independently of diet or exercise, personality may help shape the behaviors that make healthy aging more likely in the first place.

The study was relatively small and observational, so it cannot show that personality causes healthy aging. Further studies will be needed to ascertain the directionality of these associations, the researchers say.

One of the longest centenarian studies, for instance, has found that intergenerational parenting or personality factors, including a strong sense of purpose, could be a factor in longevity.

But it adds to growing evidence that psychological traits may play a role alongside more familiar factors such as diet, exercise, and social connection.

The Birth of Modern Man

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Leave This Fruit Out of Your Next Berry Smoothie, Experiments Suggest

05 July 2026, By C. Cassella

https://www.sciencealert.com/you-might-want-to-leave-this-fruit-out-of-your-next-smoothie-experiments-suggest

(Xsandra/Getty Images)

Next time you're making yourself a berry smoothie, you might want to hold off on the banana.

Sure, it's full of potassium and makes a drink deliciously thick and creamy, but it could actually be impacting the nutritional benefit of your fruity drink.

According to research from the University of California, Davis (UCD), there's something in bananas that might overpower the antioxidants in berries.

The antioxidants in this case are called flavonols.

They are found in plant-based foods like berries, tea, cocoa, apples, pears, and peaches, and many of us do not get enough of them in our diet.

When a person eats food rich in flavonols, the compounds are rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream, where they are processed.

The resulting metabolites have been associated with benefits like improved cardiovascular health and cognitive function.

But experiments suggest that when just a single banana is added to a berry mix, these metabolites are not nearly as abundant.

In a controlled, blinded study published in the journal Food and Function in 2023, researchers at UCD gave a small group of eight participants either a flavonol-rich berry smoothie or a simple flavonol capsule.

Tests later showed an increase in levels of the flavonol metabolites in their blood.

(Anjana Sharma/500px/Getty Images)



When volunteers consumed a banana-berry smoothie, however, the metabolites in their blood were 84 percent lower than after a pure dose of flavonol.

"We were really surprised to see how quickly adding a single banana decreased the level of flavonols in the smoothie and the levels of flavanol absorbed in the body," said nutritionist Javier Ottaviani from UCD at the time.

"This highlights how food preparation and combinations can affect the absorption of dietary compounds in foods."

The reason why bananas have this effect on flavonols probably has to do with an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase (PPO), which is involved in the oxidation process that turns bananas brown when they're peeled.

Exposed to the banana, the PPO 'mops up' the antioxidants, preventing them from doing all that good work inside our bodies.

When a banana-berry smoothie with high PPO was left at room temperature in experiments, researchers found it contained fewer flavonols than a pure berry smoothie after an hour of sitting.

When PPO in the bananas was inhibited, however, the flavonols persisted.

This suggests that PPO can limit the availability of flavonols before they enter the human body.

To see if bananas can 'disarm' antioxidants in the stomach, too, researchers had 11 participants consume two separate drinks at the same time: a banana drink and a berry drink.

This prevented PPO from interacting with the flavonols before ingestion. Even still, researchers found that flavonol metabolites were not as present in participants' bloodstreams after drinking the two smoothies separately, compared to when they drank none of the banana drink.

The research was only conducted among a small number of male participants; however, researchers at UCD think that their initial findings deserve further scientific attention.

"This study highlights that consideration needs to be given not only to the types of fruits and vegetables and plant-based products to recommend to increase intake, but also how they are prepared, stored, and consumed as part of a regular meal in order to maximize their potential to support health," the researchers conclude.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

This Strange Sea Creature Can Survive Five Years Without Food – Scientists Finally Know Why

By Chinese Academy of Sciences Hq., July 5, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/this-strange-sea-creature-can-survive-five-years-without-food-scientists-finally-know-why/

Deep-sea supergiant isopod.

 Credit: Prof. LI Xinzheng

Supergiant deep-sea isopods endure years without food by pairing an enlarged stomach with cold-adapted metabolic control.

Going without food for a day is difficult. Going without food for five years seems impossible. Yet the supergiant bathynomid, a giant deep-sea isopod that can grow larger than a football, routinely survives for years between meals in one of the most food-starved environments on Earth.

This apparent contradiction has long puzzled scientists. How can an animal that reaches such impressive sizes thrive in the deep ocean, where nutrients are scarce, and feeding opportunities are unpredictable?

A research team from the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOCAS) set out to answer that question. Using multiomics analyses and functional experiments, they discovered that deep-sea isopods combine an enormous food-storage stomach with an exceptionally low basal metabolic rate (BMR), allowing them to endure prolonged periods of starvation.

The findings were published in the journal Cell.

Survival depends on restraint

For the study, the researchers examined two isopod species living at different depths: Bathynomus jamesi from approximately 898 meters and Bathynomus doederleini from around 300 meters. By combining comparative genomics with analyses of anatomy, physiology, behavior, and associated microbes, they identified a survival pattern described as “increasing revenue and reducing expenditure” in response to limited food.

In deep-sea isopods, the stomach takes up about two-thirds of the body, making it much larger than the stomachs of related species from shallower water or intertidal habitats. When packed with food, the stomach holds a finely ground, heavily digested, mud-like mixture with relatively few digestive bacteria, such as Firmicutes.

This simulated image shows deep-sea isopods and their living environment. 

Credit: Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences/Handout via Xinhua



It is instead rich in Chlamydiae, which are linked to lipid storage. Together, these traits suggest that deep-sea isopods may eat large meals whenever food becomes available and then sharply lower their BMR, allowing stored reserves to be digested and used slowly over long periods.

A borrowed gene changes metabolism

The researchers also found a horizontally transferred gene, ND1, that came from an outside symbiotic bacterium and later became part of the isopod genome. The gene is homologous to a component of Complex I in the electron transport chain and is thought to have an important role in energy metabolism.

Although horizontally transferred genes can face limits after entering a new genome, ND1 appears to have overcome some of those barriers by duplicating after transfer and reaching extremely high expression levels.

The researchers also identified a mechanism controlling gene expression in deep-sea isopods through epigenetic changes to histones, achieving “high efficiency, energy conservation, and precise control.” The extremely high expression of ND1 is specifically controlled by histone acetylation.

Mechanism diagram showing the survival strategy and horizontally acquired energy metabolism-related gene in reprogramming energy allocation in deep-sea isopods. 

Credit: YUAN Jianbo, et al.

To examine what ND1 does, the researchers inserted it into zebrafish, nematodes, and human 293T cells. At normal temperatures, ND1 increased energy metabolism and made the organisms less able to tolerate starvation. Under low temperature conditions (which simulate the deep-sea environment), however, ND1 knock-in suppressed energy metabolism and lowered mitochondrial activity. In zebrafish, this raised starvation tolerance by 37%.
Deep-sea giants balance trade-offs

The results suggest that ND1 helps adjust the mitochondrial metabolic network by fine-tuning metabolic depression. This appears to help solve the central tradeoff between the high energy needs of gigantism and the need to conserve energy in extreme environments.

This study is the first to show a new evolutionary strategy in which deep-sea megafauna reshape energy allocation through horizontal gene transfer combined with epigenetic optimization.

“Our work not only deciphers the mystery of ultra-long starvation tolerance in deep-sea isopods,” said Jianbo Yuan, first author of the study, “but also provides an important paradigm for understanding how life balances growth and survival in extreme environments.”

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