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June 11, 2025—State gun laws decrease childhood deaths from gun violence, study finds. Plus, the first view of the sun's south pole, and why some animals live for hundreds of years. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | A radiance map from Solar Orbiter's SPICE instrument shows the location of carbon ions in the region of the sun's atmosphere where the temperature abruptly rises. ESA and NASA/Solar Orbiter (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) | | - The spacecraft Solar Orbiter sent back the first ever images of the sun's south pole. | 4 min read
- U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., abruptly removed all 17 sitting members of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). An epidemiologist explains how this will affect people's health and vaccine access. | 5 min read
- Why do some animals live mere hours while others can survive for centuries? The answer may help us understand how aging works. | 14 min listen
- Last week, the Office of Management and Budget directed several agencies, including EPA, the Interior and Health and Human Services departments as well as the National Science Foundation, to freeze upward of $30 billion in spending on a broad array of programs. | 6 min read
| | | Gun Laws Prevent Child Deaths | A new study compared gun deaths among children in U.S. states before and after the landmark Supreme Court 2010 case McDonald v. City of Chicago. The Court's decision limited states' ability to regulate gun access, and many states loosened firearm ownership requirements after the ruling. The new research found that, since 2010, rates of gun deaths in kids have increased in states with permissive firearm laws, and decreased in states with strict laws.
What they examined: The researchers classified each U.S. state into one of three "buckets" depending on their respective gun laws: "strict," "permissive" and "most permissive." Those states with relatively strict laws have extensive requirements like gun safety training, required background checks and waiting periods for buying guns. Some of these states also forbid assault weapons and hardware that enhances how guns work. The more permissive states have limited requirements for gun ownership, as well as laws that allow carrying concealed firearms without a permit and that allow the use of deadly force as self-defense. With the states sorted into these categories, the scientists then looked at pediatric deaths in each state before and after the 2010 Supreme Court ruling. | | Amanda Montañez; Source: "Firearm Laws and Pediatric Mortality in the US," by Jeremy Samuel Faust et al., in JAMA Pediatrics. Published online June 9, 2025 (data) | | A broader trend: Gun violence has been the leading cause of death for kids under 18 in the U.S. since 2020. Science then, more kids died from gun violence than from car accidents. | | | | |
A custom publication sponsored by UL Research Institutes | | The New Materials that Could Ease Climate Impacts | | Safety scientists are speeding the invention of materials to help harvest water from air, capture carbon and produce hydrogen power. | | | | |
- How do we all go about our daily lives as distressing (and even horrifying) events play out in the world? Psychologists call the ability to "not see" social problems that should harness our attention "collective denial." Media, governmental leaders and social networks work in tandem to neutralize or evade disturbing information that threatens our emotional peace, write Marianne Cooper, a researcher at Stanford University, and Maxim Voronov, a professor at York University. For all distressing current events, "we need to work harder to catch ourselves in the act of staying silent or avoiding uncomfortable information and do more real-time course correcting," they say. | 5 min read
| | - A 2023 survey found that 90 percent of college students use chatbots to do their assignments. Teachers are in a state of despair.| New York ($)
- A compelling interactive article showing how heat waves are becoming more widespread in the ocean. | The New York Times
- Six stretches to help soothe sore, achy feet. | NPR
- The bizarre saga of a math proof that's only true in Japan. | New Scientist ($)
| | The above picture of the sun's south pole is just one of several different visualizations sent back from Europe's Solar Orbiter. It shows light coming from charged gas in the sun's atmosphere at 32,000 degrees C. But click through to see the image of the sun's south pole visualized at 1,000,000 degrees C. For humans, who can't really survive outside a range spanning about 100 degrees Celsius, these temperatures are beyond understanding. To really fry your mind, imagine the energy the sun churns every second extrapolated out to all the stars in the universe. Suddenly space seems like quite a hot place (if only everything weren't so far apart). | | Please send any comments, questions or feedback on this newsletter, to: newsletters@sciam.com. See you tomorrow! —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | | |
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