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August 6, 2025—A self-cooling plant, the state of NASA funding, and a universal method to detect consciousness. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | - Scientists are working on a universal strategy to detect consciousness—in humans, in animals, and even AI. | 10 min read
- NASA faces historic budget cuts that could shutter missions and stall vital research, prompting a bipartisan outcry from all the agency's former science chiefs. | 17 min listen
- In a recent study, infectious bird flu virus was found in milk, on equipment, within wastewater and aerosolized in the air on California dairy farms. | 4 min read
- The landmark Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 has protected whales, dolphins, sea otters, polar bears and many other animals for more than 50 years. Republicans want to gut it. | 6 min read
- Serious accidents can happen in MRI machines, and it's usually because people ignore one very important rule. | 4 min read
- mRNA vaccine technology could transform medicine and cure diseases. RFK Jr. just cancelled its funding. | 3 min read
| | The clustered carline thistle blooms despite intense heat. undefined undefined/Getty Images | | | Secret Life of the Humble Thistle | The humble carline thistle, with its pretty, yet unremarkable, yellow flowers, has a secret power that helps it thrive in Southern Spain's scorching arid habitat. Its flower heads are routinely nine degrees Fahrenheit cooler than their surroundings, with the difference approaching 18 degrees F for some flowers on the hottest days of the summer. What's going on here: Scientists speculate the plant may be, essentially, sweating. By opening pores (called stomata) on its flower petals, water can evaporate and cool the local area, protecting delicate reproductive organs from overheating. Most plants keep their stomata closed during hot days to prevent losing too much water to evaporation. What the experts say: The finding is exciting and could confirm a risky plant survival strategy that has, until now, only been theorized, says Sanna Sevanto, a physicist and plant physiologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who studies how plants respond to environmental stress. As heat waves become more frequent and intense with climate change, plants with unusual adaptations that help them survive heat stress are promising areas of research. | | Jeffery DelViscio/Scientific American | | Last year our Chief Multimedia Editor Jeffery DelViscio trekked to the Greenland ice sheet on the northeastern edge of the continent. He was joining a group of researchers at an ice-coring camp run by a project called GreenDrill. The team was attempting to drill through hundreds of feet of ice and take a sample of the bedrock underneath. What is it like to live and work on an ice sheet? "I was absolutely not prepared," DelViscio told Science, Quickly host Rachel Feltman. His first night was long and frigid: "I'm not gonna lie about it; it was painful. And you have a sleeping bag that's rated at –40 degrees [F, or –40 degrees C], and you have a hot-water bottle that you put in too, to try to warm yourself up, but my face was sort of sticking out of the mummy-bag hole, and I would breathe and there would just be ice crystals forming on my beard and face." Listen to the full conversation here. | | | | |
- Eighty years ago today, the U.S. used an atomic bomb for the first time in history, against the city of Hiroshima, Japan. A second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later, the two bombs instantly killing an estimated 100,000 people. But an equally disturbing and important story should not be forgotten—the fate of the more than 500,000 Japanese civilians who survived, Arthur Caplan, professor of bioethics and founding head of the division of medical ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, wrote on the 78th anniversary. Survivors, without consent, provided key data on blast injuries and radiation effects that proved useful for American military planning in the event of a nuclear war, he says. "Civilian casualties went many years with no systematic treatment since the research findings about radiation were kept secret." | 4 min read
| | - The Trump administration asked NASA to draw up plans to decommission satellites that scientists, oil companies and farmers rely on for carbon dioxide data and crop health. | NPR
- The human body is "contaminated" by plastics and other chemical build-up. | The New York Times
- A giant, 40-cm-long (15-inch) stick bug was discovered in Australia. | The Guardian
| | Joseph Rotblat was a Polish physicist who worked at Los Alamos Laboratory on the Manhattan Project for less than a year. He left the project when it became clear that Germany did not have a nuclear bomb under development. Rotblat became a vocal advocate for nonproliferation and spread the necessity for scientists to consider the ethical implications of their work. He spent the rest of his life campaigning against nuclear weapons and in 1995 shared a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts toward nuclear disarmament. Science does not operate in a vacuum. Rather, it is intricately linked to the sociological and political challenges of the world. | | Thank you for being a part of this science-loving community. You can reach out to me anytime: newsletters@sciam.com. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor
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