The NIH deemed an Andes hantavirus pilot study "unsafe" ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
May 7, 2026—Scientists are using creative tactics to examine Earth's ancient climate. Plus, a dangerous hantavirus experiment is playing out on the cruise ship MV Hondius, and the Mars rover Curiosity gets its robotic arm stuck in a rock.
—Andrea Gawrylewski
Chief Newsletter Editor
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Health personnel evacuate patients onto a boat from MV Hondius while stationary off the port of Praia, the capital of Cape Verde. AFP via Getty Images
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- The outbreak of hantavirus aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius is giving scientists a rare real-world look at how the Andes virus—the only hantavirus known to spread person-to-person—may transmit between humans. At least eight passengers or crew have been infected and three have died, amid fears the virus could mutate as it spreads. All remaining passengers are isolating on the ship where researchers plan to gather samples to sequence their genome. Though hantavirus mortality rates can be as high as 50 percent, fewer than 900 U.S. cases have been recorded over three decades. The current outbreak, researchers say, offers an unusually valuable—and alarming—window into how the pathogen works. | 4 min read
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Glimpsing an Ancient Climate
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We don’t have a time machine, sadly. To gather data about what Earth’s climate was like thousands, even millions of years ago, scientists examine tree rings, ice cores and fossilized pollen. Most of those sources have been well studied, so scientists are getting creative to find other records of the ancient climate. Seabird stomach oil: Snow Petrels spit out oil in front of their nests, primarily to ward off predators with its smell and stickiness. That vomit accretes in layers across avian generations, trapping 50,000 years’ worth of data about the birds’ diets and the sea ice environment. Seabird oil is a good proxy because it’s composed of waxes and fats, which degrade more slowly than proteins and carbohydrates do. Chunks can be radiocarbon-dated and biopsied to determine the source of their carbon and nitrogen.
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Solidified Snow Petrel stomach oil. Dominic Hodgson/British Antarctic Survey
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Ancient eggshells: Geochemists and archaeologists look for samples of ostriches’ eggs buried among early human settlements whose inhabitants ate the birds and used the eggshells as water containers. When ostriches eat plants that grow in rainy conditions, a signature isotope ratio of nitrogen in the soil transfers into their body and, ultimately, their eggs. The eggs’ nitrogen isotope ratios can help scientists to reconstruct the rainfall experienced by early humans across Africa and Asia.
Leaf wax: As plants use rainwater to grow, their leaves pick up the rain’s characteristic ratio of hydrogen isotopes—atoms with the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons. Hydrogen isotope ratios, specifically, can be traced back to reveal how much and when water fell onto a plant, creating an indirect weather report of the ancient climate.
What the experts say: “The more different tools you can use to look at the same question from more angles, the better and better we get toward having a good consensus on what actually happened,” says Tyler Karp, a paleoecologist at the University of Chicago.
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Many of the fishers in the Amvrakikos Gulf in Greece participate in the conservation project By ElasmoCatch. They allow researchers such as marine scientist Roxani Naasan Aga-Spyridopoulou on board their boats to collect data on shark and ray species they occasionally catch. Her work has shown that, when handled with care, these creatures can survive a trip through a fisher’s net. “The results show that when handling is done correctly, the short-term survival rate is very high—for some species, over 95 percent,” she says. Nature | 3 min read
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I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels a twinge of panic when I read the word "outbreak." Any new virus or unexplained cluster of cases brings up memories of COVID lockdowns, booster debates, and the strange emotional exhaustion of living through a pandemic. We humans remain very vulnerable to emerging diseases, a hard lesson I suspect we will continue to learn in the coming years.
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—Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor
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