A sugar molecule found near our galaxy's core, and a vaccine for koalas

It's the first time this particular sugar has turned up anywhere outside our solar system. The team, reporting in Nature Astronomy, confirmed the signal against lab-measured spectral patterns. Erythrulose matters beyond its sweetness: it can convert into threose, a sugar many researchers think was a building block of the first nucleic acids that became RNA and DNA. "We were able to achieve this detection thanks to the combination of exceptionally sensitive observations, extensive frequency coverage, and highly accurate laboratory spectroscopic data," said co-author Izaskun Jiménez-Serra [19].

For decades, scientists assumed the retina's dozen-plus channels, the separate lines that carry color, motion, contrast, and night vision toward the brain, worked in isolation. Instead, when the team electrically stimulated a single bipolar cell in both mouse and human retinas, the response spread well past its own channel. The findings, published in Neuron, show these supposedly separate pathways are quietly cooperating through gap junctions the whole time.

They first confirmed the pattern in donated human ovarian tissue too, comparing samples from women aged 18 to 52, and found the same collagen buildup and stiffening that shows up in aging mice. Published in Nature Aging, the study also found the effect held in mice with ovarian damage from other causes, not just age.

That's the whole problem with older overdose vaccines: illicit chemists constantly tweak fentanyl's molecular structure to dodge both law enforcement and existing countermeasures. "The people selling the drugs are not going to give this line up but rather just keep tweaking the drugs structure," Janda said, describing the new approach as trying to force "a checkmate with the immune system" regardless of which variant shows up next [108].

That detail matters more than it sounds: roughly half of Australia's remaining koalas carry chlamydia, which can cause blindness and infertility, and in some groups up to 90% are infected, but until now, protecting a koala fully meant tracking it down twice. "This is a massive breakthrough where we are turning a two-injection vaccine into an injection and an implant that can be all applied in one examination," said Dr. Michael Pyne of Currumbin Wildlife Hospital [185].

Unlike a lot of long-lived lab animals, these mice aren't coddled: they still forage and dodge predators for years on end. Dixit's team found three markers tied to healthy aging in the mice, most notably elevated levels of a protein called clusterin, made by hyperactive immune cells in fat tissue, that's also linked to longevity in humans.

Juliana Stratton set out to hear about rent and grocery prices at a series of financial wellness conversations with women across the state, and instead kept hearing about menopause: what it was doing to their jobs, their money, their days [239]. The bill that followed, passed unanimously by the state legislature in late May, lets licensed healthcare professionals count specialized menopause and perimenopause training toward hours they're already required to complete for implicit bias awareness. No new mandate, no extra hours, just menopause education slotted into a requirement that already exists. Illinois is the first state to try it. The state currently has fewer than 200 physicians certified in menopause care for a population of nearly 13 million.

The department's own chief information officer, Dean Gialamas, cited "serious concerns around civil liberties and civil rights issues, particularly around privacy and the data that is being collected." The timing wasn't subtle: a July 10 audit from the LAPD's own Office of the Inspector General found the cameras generated 161 false stolen-vehicle alerts in just two months, alongside 337 accurate ones, an error rate of 32.3%, meaning officers had roughly a one-in-three chance of pulling over an innocent driver on an alert.