A third of peanut-allergy babies aren't, and squeezed bones help old mice

Of those babies, 778 later did a supervised food challenge, at a median age of 13 months. They got up to seven doses, from 15 to 1,300 milligrams of peanut protein, 15 minutes apart, with medical staff watching 13. Nearly 35% of them, 271 children, finished without a reaction 13. "This rate is much higher than we thought," said co-author Dr. Timothy Brettig, a pediatric allergist 13. An outside expert, Dr. Alexandra Santos, noted that under-ones are a tricky group: their immune systems are still developing fast, and existing tests may not reflect their allergic status well 13.

PIEZO1 levels fell with age in both mouse and human bone. When the team chemically destroyed the channel in adult mouse osteocytes, aging sped up well beyond the skeleton, hitting the brain, liver and muscles. Median lifespan dropped about 11% in females and 13% in males 182. Next, they rhythmically applied a tiny load to the shinbones of anaesthetized mice, starting at 20 months, which is old for a mouse. Median lifespan rose 9.4%, around 80 days. The mice also did better on strength, coordination and memory tests 182. Plasma from treated mice gave other old mice some of the benefit. One suspect is a protein called PEDF, which bone loading raised in the blood and which, when injected, improved cognitive and physical performance in old mice 182.

The process drew on 20 professional organizations, 18 international experts including regulators, and two patient advocacy groups. It yielded more than 60 recommendations on selecting, testing, manufacturing, giving and monitoring phages, plus lab infrastructure, quality control and record-keeping 7. Phages are viruses that kill bacteria, and they usually target one species or even one strain. A phage that clears one patient's infection may do nothing to the next patient's, so specialists have to test the match before treatment starts 7. Early findings in the write-up are encouraging: one study reported improvement in 77% of patients and disappearance of the targeted bacteria in 61% 7.

The twist is in the name of the story: the oil itself helps create the microscopic channels that do the filtering 3. The usual method, distillation, heats oil above 350 °C. Worldwide, that takes about 1,100 terawatt-hours a year, roughly what 130 one-gigawatt nuclear plants produce 3. The team estimates its approach could cut refining energy use by nearly 32%, carbon emissions by almost 38% and operating costs by 36%. The work was published in Nature 3.

They found a previously unknown migration into Scandinavia around 4,000 years ago from a group they call "Eastern Scandinavian," which seems to have originated in the Baltic states. It took around 500 years for their genes to spread through the population 250. The timing fits the spread of Germanic languages, along with burial rites, architecture, runic carvings and pottery. That is a thousand years later than the older theory of steppe migrants arriving about 5,000 years ago 250. A second surprise: northern Germans moved into Denmark and southern Sweden about 1,500 years ago, which lines up with the rise of Old Norse 250.

In vertebrates, turning a fleeting strengthening of a synapse into a lasting one requires new proteins. In the octopus, the team found a self-sustaining loop: nitric oxide boosts neurotransmitter release and also keeps reactivating the enzyme that makes it, nitric oxide synthase. That holds the synapse in its strengthened state without making new proteins 58. Octopus and vertebrate lineages split more than 500 million years ago, and about two-thirds of an octopus's neurons sit in its arms rather than its central brain 58.

It is not a sign of breast cancer. In a 2022 ten-year study of more than 1,000 women, those with BAC had about three times the odds of coronary heart disease and five times the odds of stroke, even after accounting for age 136. AI now makes the deposits easier to measure. In October 2026, Maryland became the first U.S. state to require mammography centers to tell patients in writing when they are found 136.