Science Postcard

Bite-size Science 🧪✨

[Science Postcard @Sciencepostcard]

Hantavirus infection had been CONFIRMED in Switzerland, Hantavirus has a 35%-45% fatality rate, that's 440 times more than COVID’s. Here is what you need to know about the virus.

[Science Postcard @Sciencepostcard]

FDA Approves Hibsago First Drug That May Let Some Hep B Patients Stop Treatment

On Oct 20, 2026, the FDA approved Hibsago (bepirovirsen) by GSK the first-ever antisense oligonucleotide for chronic Hepatitis B.

Instead of just suppressing the virus like current daily pills, it attacks the virus's genetic instructions, lowering viral load and surface antigen (HBsAg) to help the immune system regain control.

Who it's for: Adults without cirrhosis who have been on antivirals for at least 6 months, with suppressed virus and HBsAg ≤ 3,000 IU/mL. It's given as injections for 24 weeks alongside antivirals.

Results from trials (B-Well 1 & 2):
- 24% of patients on Hibsago qualified to stop all antivirals vs. 0% on placebo -19% achieved a functional cure virus remained controlled and HBsAg undetectable 24 weeks after stopping all drugs

It's not a complete cure the virus may still be present at low levels. Side effects include injection site reactions, fatigue, and liver inflammation. Patients must be monitored and cannot stop current meds on their own.

It's a breakthrough because standard treatments rarely cure less than 4% achieve functional cure and usually require lifelong therapy.

[Science Postcard @Sciencepostcard]

The body types!

[Science Postcard @Sciencepostcard]

How to Prevent Ebola

[Science Postcard @Sciencepostcard]

Rainwater across the entire planet is no longer safe, scientists say. Contamination from toxic 'forever chemicals‘ is ubiquitous.

Rnvironmental research led by scientists at Stockholm University reveals that rainwater across every region of Earth now contains toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) at levels exceeding safety limits set by major health agencies.

Known as 'forever chemicals' due to their extreme resistance to natural degradation, these synthetic compounds have circulated through the global water cycle, contaminating even the most pristine and isolated regions, including Antarctica and the Tibetan Plateau.

The widespread dispersal means natural precipitation everywhere on the planet is no longer safe to consume without specialized purification.

PFAS chemicals have been widely manufactured for decades in products like nonstick cookware, waterproof gear, and firefighting foams, leaching into waterways and cycling into the atmosphere via ocean spray.

Exposure to these persistent pollutants is linked to severe long-term health risks, including various forms of cancer, compromised immune systems, decreased fertility, and developmental delays in children.

As global regulatory bodies scramble to tighten drinking water standards, environmental health experts warn that humanity has crossed a critical boundary, leaving atmospheric contamination virtually impossible to reverse with current technologies.

source: Cousins, I. T., Johansson, J. H., Salter, M. E., Sha, B., & Scheringer, M. (2022). Outside the safe operating space of a new planetary boundary for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Environmental Science & Technology, 56(16), 11172-11179.

[Science Postcard @Sciencepostcard]

Ford Shades Tesla

[Science Postcard @Sciencepostcard]

This is why the flight attendants always ask you to switch off or put your phone on Flight mode.

[Science Postcard @Sciencepostcard]

Scientists examining 53 skipjack tuna caught in southern Brazil found parasites in 96 percent of the fish. Using visual inspection, microscopy and scanning electron microscopy, researchers identified more than 1,600 worms belonging mainly to Anisakis and Trypanorhyncha. The intestines contained the largest number, followed by muscle tissue and the stomach. The discovery is notable because muscle is the part of the fish commonly eaten.

The researchers found parasites in several parts of the tuna, while the kidneys and hearts were consistently free of them. Some of the worms identified belong to groups that can infect humans, although parasite presence does not automatically mean that the fish is dangerous to eat. When certain parasites are consumed alive in raw or undercooked fish, they can cause digestive symptoms and other illness.

Parasites are a natural part of marine ecosystems and have evolved alongside fish and marine mammals. Their movement through a fish can also change after capture, which is why researchers emphasized rapid removal of the internal organs. The findings provide a detailed snapshot of parasite distribution in skipjack tuna and highlight how microscopic organisms can occupy tissues throughout a large marine animal.

RESEARCH PAPER 📄
DOI: 10.1590/2675-2824074.25039

[Science Postcard @Sciencepostcard]

That honeycomb up there is a real molecule, and nobody drew it.

No 3D render. No digital art touched up afterward.

For the first time, humanity actually “saw” a molecule. Zoom in and each bright corner is an individual atom. Those glowing edges linking them? Bonds. The dark pockets in the middle are just empty space.

Every chemistry textbook you ever opened showed you sketches of this stuff. Balls on sticks. Hexagons scribbled on a whiteboard by a tired teacher.

Turns out the hexagons were real all along.

[Science Postcard @Sciencepostcard]

You are a stranger to your cells

[Science Postcard @Sciencepostcard]

Making DNA Visible

[Science Postcard @Sciencepostcard]

Every Adult should know this.
For the first time, scientists have fully mapped the nerve network of the human clitoris about 30 years after the same was done for male anatomy.

Using high-resolution X-ray imaging and 3D modeling on post-mortem tissue, researchers traced the full path of the main dorsal nerves and all their branches.

The nerves don't follow the simple path shown in old textbooks. They branch out in a complex, tree-like pattern into surrounding tissues.

For decades surgeons doing pelvic, reconstructive, and gender-affirming surgeries had no precise map, which increased risk of nerve damage and loss of sensation. This new high-definition roadmap allows for nerve-sparing techniques, improving surgical outcomes, sensation preservation, and quality of life.

Source: Lee, J. Y., et al. (2026). Neuroanatomy of the clitoris. bioRxiv.

[Science Postcard @Sciencepostcard]

A mirage.

[Science Postcard @Sciencepostcard]

The Diversity of Microbes is the reasons we have infectious diseases and also the reason we have an army of cleaners.

[Science Postcard @Sciencepostcard]

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been
originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet
has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a
beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and
are being, evolved.
—CHARLES DARWIN

[Science Postcard @Sciencepostcard]

He was not the fastest mind in the room. Not even close. But Kip Thorne understood something his brilliant peers did not: speed and depth are not the same thing, and only one of them finds gravitational waves.

Thorne grew up in Utah in the 1940s, a quiet, methodical boy who loved the way numbers described the physical world. When he arrived at Caltech as an undergraduate, he encountered classmates who worked at a different speed entirely. They finished problem sets while he was still parsing the first question.

He was slow. He knew it. He did not pretend otherwise.

What he did instead was adapt. He developed habits that let him work at his own pace without falling behind: he read deeply rather than broadly, returned to the same problem from different angles, and kept meticulous notes that served as an external memory for ideas he could not yet hold in his head at once.

His professors, by some accounts, were uncertain about him. The standard measures of academic speed did not tell the story he was writing.

But Thorne was building something the fast finishers were not. He was building intuition. The kind that comes not from covering ground quickly but from staying with a problem long enough to feel its shape.

He went on to complete his doctorate at Princeton under John Wheeler, one of the giants of 20th-century physics. He returned to Caltech as a professor. He spent decades working on a problem most physicists considered either impossible or at least impossibly far off: the direct detection of gravitational waves, the ripples in spacetime that Einstein had predicted in 1916 but never expected anyone to actually measure.

The instrument required to detect them, LIGO, took roughly four decades from concept to confirmed detection. Thorne was one of the three physicists who made it happen.

On September 14, 2015, LIGO detected the first gravitational wave signal in history, produced by two black holes merging 1.3 billion light-years away. It was a signal so faint that the entire distortion measured was a fraction of the width of a proton.

In 2017, Thorne shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery.

The man who could not finish exams on time had just confirmed a prediction Einstein himself doubted would ever be verified.

The physicist who learned slowly. The theorist who kept his own pace. The man who spent four decades on a single question because he trusted depth over speed.

Image: "Kip S. Thorne EM1B8790 (24027017497)" by Bengt Nyman from Vaxholm, Sweden · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

[Science Postcard @Sciencepostcard]

Scientists just discovered that old hearts become biologically younger inside younger bodies.

A fascinating study from Harvard University suggests that the biological age of an organ is not set in stone, but rather a flexible state influenced by its surrounding environment.

By transplanting hearts between young and old mice, as well as studying historical biopsy records from human heart transplant patients, researchers discovered a remarkable biological phenomenon: the transplanted organs adjusted their molecular age to match their new hosts.

Older hearts grafted into younger recipients showed signs of genetic rejuvenation, while younger hearts placed in older bodies experienced accelerated aging at a cellular level.

Published as a preprint on bioRxiv, these findings could revolutionize transplant medicine by potentially expanding the pool of viable organs.

Currently, surgeons typically prefer donor hearts from individuals under the age of 45 due to concerns about the durability of older tissue.

However, this research shows that an older donor organ can essentially 'age backward' inside a youthful body, adopting molecular signatures like DNA methylation patterns of its new host. While some age-related wear remains irreversible, this discovery suggests that strict age constraints on donor organs could be safely relaxed.

source: Poganik, J. R., Matsunaga, T., Tyshkovskiy, A., Lu, A., Haghani, A., Zhou, H., Martin, F., Horvath, S., Givertz, M. M., Tullius, S. G., & Gladyshev, V. N. (2026). Transplanted hearts assimilate the recipient's biological age. bioRxiv.

[Science Postcard @Sciencepostcard]

A clever substitution turns this trigonometric integral into a standard rational integral.

The key step is:

Let t = tan(x)

Then the integral becomes:

∫₁^√2 t²/(t² + 2) dt

Rewrite:

t²/(t² + 2) = 1 − 2/(t² + 2)

After integrating and applying the limits, the result is:

I = √2 − 1 − (√2π)/4 + √2 tan⁻¹(1/√2)

A nice example of how choosing the right substitution makes a complicated-looking trigonometric integral much easier. 🧠