A mushroom trip reshapes the brain for weeks, and Congo hides a new monkey

They measured something called brain "entropy," basically how varied and unpredictable neural activity gets, and found that the bigger the entropy spike during the trip, the more emotional insight a person reported the next day, and the more improved their well-being was a full month later. "Psychedelic means 'psyche-revealing,'" said senior author Robin Carhart-Harris. The data suggests the trip itself, not just the drug sitting in someone's bloodstream, is doing the therapeutic work 10. That idea has a surprisingly long paper trail: in the canyons of West Texas, murals of antlered shamans beside peyote cacti date back roughly 6,000 years, evidence that humans have been chasing this same insight through ritual since long before anyone owned an EEG machine 113.

It's only the fifth new primate species identified in Central Africa in 75 years of research there. Between 2018 and 2022, researchers logged 114 sightings across roughly 900 square miles, and when they interviewed people in 52 nearby villages, only residents of 8 had ever laid eyes on it. "This discovery is both exciting and deeply personal," said Congolese co-author Junior Amboko, "highlighting the extraordinary biodiversity of my homeland and how much remains undocumented" 227.

"It was a mix of excitement and disbelief," said lead author Gérard Zinzindohoué, "because after all this time thinking about this reef, suddenly there was something real in front of us." What they found was a living mesophotic reef, one that survives in deeper, dimmer water than a typical shallow reef, hosting eight kinds of coral and eight fish species, including golden African snappers and Guinean angelfish 229. It's the first confirmed living reef of its kind ever recorded on that stretch of continental shelf.

That's starting to change. Companies like Quaise Energy are pursuing drilling deep enough into hot rock that the "unique combination" of heat, water, and permeable rock stops mattering. "If you measure in terms of the energy stored within the Earth's crust, geothermal heat exceeds by orders of magnitude all hydrocarbons," says Quaise co-founder Matt Houde 29. Iceland already gets more than a quarter of its electricity from geothermal, running steady no matter the weather, and the new approach is aimed at giving every country that same option. "Ultimately, the whole world is the goal," Houde says.

"Caffeine consumed in coffee is a key part of daily life for millions of people, and in our review of the most recent research... intake of up to 400 mg of caffeine/day... is safe and does not increase cardiovascular risk," said Dr. Gregory Marcus of UCSF, who chaired the statement. The line the AHA draws isn't about caffeine in general, it's about concentration: energy drinks and energy shots pack caffeine tightly enough to spike blood pressure and trigger irregular heart rhythms in a way a normal cup of coffee doesn't 6.

Ninety-six percent of Americans still eat meat, and more than half do so daily, but the reservations run deep: two-thirds cite the cost, 64 percent cite personal health, and another 64 percent cite animal welfare, a figure that's grounded in real numbers, since 70 percent of cows, 98 percent of pigs, and nearly all chickens in the US are raised on factory farms 203. Younger adults, 18 to 34, are nearly 50 percent more likely than people over 55 to say animal welfare would actually push them to make the swap.

That recognition is exactly why toddlers start saying "no" more, refusing help with the diaper, insisting on dressing themselves. The piece lays out what actually calms the moment down: offering real choices ("wash your hands yourself, or with help?"), letting a toddler change their mind, and following through calmly rather than rushing the transition 149.

That matters because standard biopsies are painful enough in a sensitive area that patients with lesions needing repeat monitoring often just stop showing up. "We were genuinely astonished by the fact that the brush swab test performance is comparable to a microbiopsy," said oral oncologist Muy-Teck Teh, who expects the test could reach clinics within two years 247.