Earth’s sluggish core, ants that can smell cancer, arctic monkey fossils found and more!

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January 25, 2023

Geology Why Earth's Inner Core May Be Slowing Down The planet’s solid inner core might rotate at a different rate than the rest of the planet, and that rate might be changing By Stephanie Pappas

Cancer Ants Can Sniff Out Cancer Supersmeller ants quickly learn to recognize tumors’ signatures in mouse urine By Jude Coleman

Paleontology Monkey-like Animals Once Lived in the Arctic, New Fossils Show Two newly identified primatelike mammals once lived in the Arctic, which could help us understand how species there today may adapt as the climate heats up By Darren Incorvaia

Renewable Energy Making the Entire U.S. Car Fleet Electric Could Cause Lithium Shortages Converting the existing U.S. car fleet to electric vehicles would require more lithium than the world currently produces, showing the need to move away from private cars as a primary means of travel By Mike Lee,Hannah Northey,E&E News

Medicine Better Patient Care Calls for a 'Platinum Rule' to Replace the Golden One A new principle in medicine focuses on understanding patients’ values, not assuming they share your own By Claudia Wallis

Renewable Energy This Common Aquatic Plant Could Produce Buckets of Biofuel Engineered duckweed could be a prolific “green” oil producer By Cari Shane

Vaccines An Old TB Vaccine Might Help Stave Off Diabetes, Cancer Alzheimer's, and More  The BCG vaccine might assist in preventing a range of major diseases By Viviane Callier

Archaeology Lasers Reveal Massive, 650-Square-Mile Maya Site Hidden beneath Guatemalan Rain Forest A sprawling Maya site has been discovered beneath a Guatemalan rain forest By Jennifer Nalewicki,LiveScience

FROM THE STORE Special Editions Volume 28, Issue 3s

FROM THE ARCHIVE Ultra Rare Diamond Suggests Earth's Mantle Has an Ocean's Worth of Water A diamond contains the only known sample of a mineral from Earth’s mantle—and hints at oceans’ worth of water hidden deep within our planet By Stephanie Pappas | September 2022

QUOTE OF THE DAY "We are hypothesizing that this [slowed rotation] will continue in the coming years and decades, and we should be able to see that in [our] relatively short human time frame." Xiaodong Song, geophysicist at Peking University in China.

WHAT WE'RE READING How I Broke the Last Taboo We talk about sex and politics and religion. So why is it still so hard to divulge our salaries? By Aki Ito | Business Insider | Jan. 16, 2023

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