Today in Science: Hantavirus study canceled by budget cuts

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 HANTAVIRUS UPDATE 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 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  In 2025, the Trump administration eliminated funding for a pilot project aimed at studying the Andes hantavirus variant confirmed  to be on the MV Hondius. The project was designed to better understand how hantavirus passes from rodents to human and was shuttered last year by the NIH. | 4 min read TODAY'S NEWS NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA’s Curiosity rover got its robotic arm stuck inside a rock on Mars. Just shake it off, babe! | 2 min read  The “improbability principle" explains the FBI's case of missing scientists. | 4 min read  President Trump’s reinstatement of the Presidential Physical Fitness Award, part of a broader push to return annual physical fitness tests to schools, is unlikely to improve youth health or physical activity, experts say. | 3 min read We sit down with the winners of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences to discuss their work on the genetic causes of sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia, which set the stage for approved gene therapies. | 7 min read The FDA approved the sale and marketing of four flavored vapes, despite studies that show they carry health risks, such as high blood pressure and nicotine addiction and asthma in teens. | 3 min read More News Discover the awe of the universe with a subscription to Scientific American. Get 90 days for just $1! TOP STORIES Glimpsing an Ancient Climate 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. Solidified Snow Petrel stomach oil. Dominic Hodgson/British Antarctic Survey 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.

SCIENTISTS AT WORK Ugo Mellone 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 Content Courtesy of Nature Briefing​. ​ 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.   Send any comments and questions my way at newsletters@sciam.com. I'll be back tomorrow.   —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor

Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters here. Scientific American One New York Plaza, New York, NY, 10004 ​ Support our mission, subscribe to Scientific American here ​ Unsubscribe    Preferences     View in Browser