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May 19, 2025—How doctors might treat Biden's advanced prostate cancer. Plus, dogs that sniff out lanternflies; and where our imagination comes from. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Brandon Bell/Getty Images | | One of the dogs trained to track down spotted lanternflies. Angela K. Fuller | | Researchers trained a Labrador retriever and a Belgian Malinois to find the eggs of invasive lanternflies. They set the dogs to work in 20 Pennsylvania and New Jersey vineyards (one crop where the bugs have caused extensive damage) and compared their lanternfly egg hunting skills with those of humans. The humans did better within the vineyards, where they could search systematically up and down the vines—but the dogs detected over three times more egg masses in nearby forested areas. Why this matters: Many invasive species like lanternflies that feed on crops and forests in the U.S. are expanding and leading to widespread tree mortality and stressed forests. Those forests are more susceptible to drought and more diseases. Dogs on the case: Trained dogs are of huge use in the battle against invasives: In the U.S. they inspect watercraft for invasive mussels before the mollusks catch a ride to new waters. Dogs have also been tested at finding longhorn beetles, brook trout and nutria. In Montana, dogs identify dyer's woad, an invasive plant that can harm native vegetation and is hard for humans to detect during parts of its life cycle. | | Both memory and imagination rely on a brain region called the hippocampus. In fact, without memory, imagination is not possible. Fantasy is created by combining bits and pieces of experience with emotions, inner commentary and things people have read or heard about, says Donna Rose Addis, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto and the University of Toronto. Why this is interesting: From an evolutionary perspective, the purpose of memories is actually for future planning, according to one study. This chain of neural events even loops back on itself: we form memories of our mind's simulations of the future so that when we have an experience, we have something to draw on. What the experts say: "Memories allow you to take experiences that you have and retrieve them to make predictions about what will happen next," says Loren Frank, a systems neuroscientist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of California, San Francisco. | | - For more than half a century, NASA has been building toward a golden age of astrobiology, perhaps bringing us closer to finding alien life than we've ever been, writes Michael L. Wong, an astrobiologist, planetary scientist and science communicator. But the agency "now faces an existential threat in the form of short-sighted budget cuts proposed by the White House. If passed into law by Congress, these cuts would axe critical space missions, gut NASA's workforce, and abandon one of the most captivating quests in all of science," he says. | 5 min read
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- The regular dodecagon and the blue star inside it both have a side length of 1 unit. What is the area of the star? Click here for the solution!
| | Spotted lanternflies have shown up in 18 states so far, and they're expected to surge again this spring and summer. These pests are equal-opportunity feeders and have caused damage to hardwood forests and crops like grapes, hops, apples and walnuts. Keep a look-out for lanternflies in your area this season and stomp or smash them if you find them. The below images are from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and show the bugs in their different life stages. An even more effective tactic might be to get rid of the lanternfly's favorite host tree: the "tree of heaven," which comes from China, and is also an invasive. | | Spotted lanternfly nymphs are black with white spots in early stages of development and turn red before becoming adults. USDA | | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | | |
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