USC Stem Cell-led team creates a renewable cell source for cancer immunotherapy and beyond
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Updates every hour. Last Updated: 23-Jun-2026 05:16 ET (23-Jun-2026 09:16 GMT/UTC)
Arabian Sea humpback whales have, at some point during their evolutionary history, adapted to living hyper-locally within the confines of the Arabian Sea. Now, researchers monitored their dives using satellite tags which allowed them to track their movement across the Arabian Sea. The results showed most whales are homebodies – moving within a narrow latitudinal band spanning just a few hundred kilometers. Just one whale broke the pattern and travelled across the Arabian Sea. This is the first direct evidence of a long-distance journey made by an Arabian Sea humpback whale. The team said better understanding of these whales’ movement could provide important insights for the endangered species’ conservation.
Chewing sugar-containing gum enhances the cardiovascular benefits of nitrate-rich vegetables.
For a long time, scientists have thought that four-legged land animals (tetrapods) evolved from amphibian-like creatures that grew up from tadpoles. But scientists have now found fossilized baby early tetrapods, which skipped the tadpole metamorphosis scientists had expected to see. The finding means that the first land-dwelling vertebrates were less like modern amphibians than had previously been thought— upending scientists’ understanding of how animals conquered the land.
The experiences we face early in life may leave their marks on our health in ways that echo across decades—and even across the entire body.
A new study examined a unique group of free-living, rhesus macaques who have been followed their entire lives to document their experiences. Pairing these histories with genomic data from 12 tissues collected in adulthood, the study provides some of the clearest molecular evidence yet that early life adversity leaves a lasting, system-wide impression at the epigenome, the biological layer on top of the human genome that regulates gene activity.
While modern amphibians start life in a larval stage, a new fossil study suggests these tadpole-like stages were not present in earlier times. In studying the origin of tetrapods, including the transition from water to land, an important hypothesis has been that early tetrapods may have exhibited gradual metamorphosis – including an aquatic larval stage. The larval stage was characterized by transient organs that were lost in a later transition to adulthood, and it has been hypothesized that this transition may have facilitated the larger transition from water to land. To seek evidence for this larval stage, Jason Pardo et al. looked at many fossils of stem tetrapods from the Mazon Creek Lagerstatte in Illinois. Their soft tissue was especially well-preserved. In these tissues, the authors found no evidence of larval morphological change. Instead, both before and after the fin-to-limb transition, growth from hatchling to adult proceeded through a direct development model, say the authors. Their findings suggest that acceleration of limb development may have been a prerequisite for completing the transition to land in early tetrapods.
For reporters interested in research integrity-related themes, Pardo told SciPak: “Research integrity is a critical part of the work we do. For us, our work relies on ensuring our interpretations of fossils are replicable by other researchers. We achieve this by ensuring our specimens are in public museums and research collections. We have worked closely with amateur collectors to ensure that the scientifically important fossils we report here will always be available to any researcher by making certain that they have been donated to public museums. We would like to see more partnerships like this.”