Daily Kos Community
This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.
When a science news roundup begins with debunking Mendel’s debunker and ends with a well-deserved ode to cryptogamic crusts, readers might anticipate that a lot of territory will be covered. However no one, whether reading here or sprawled under disaster debris, expects the paramedic cyborg cockroaches to show up. (I find it both grotesque and fascinating. Grotesque because here humans are, figuring out how to take over yet another species and make them work for us.)
Along the way are stories about
🧪 Statistics , genetics and glass houses … “A statistician's 1936 accusation of scientific fraud haunted Mendel's legacy for nearly a century—until modern re-analysis revealed the accuser's own math was wrong.”scienceblog.com/n-for-84-yea…
Gregor Mendel’s pea-plant experiments are the foundation most genetics textbooks still open with: cross a tall plant with a short one, count the ratios in the next generations, and watch the numbers fall into the neat 3:1 pattern that gave the world the basic laws of inheritance. For 83 years, that foundation carried an asterisk. The numbers, critics said, were too good to be true.
That accusation traces to a single 1936 paper by the statistician Ronald A. Fisher, “Has Mendel’s Work Been Rediscovered?”, published in the journal Annals of Science.. Fisher ran a statistical test on Mendel’s reported results and found they matched the theoretically expected ratios more closely than chance should allow. His conclusion was blunt: somewhere in the process, consciously or not, Mendel’s data had likely been adjusted, whether by Mendel himself or by an assistant eager to please him.
A re-audit published in the journal Hereditas in October 2019, led by Noel Ellis of the John Innes Centre alongside Julie Hofer, Martin Swain and Peter van Dijk, went back through Fisher’s own statistical method rather than Mendel’s raw data. What they found was not evidence that Mendel had cheated, and not proof that he hadn’t. It was a problem with Fisher’s test itself.
NASA’s new space telescope will reveal the universe like never before – Science News
“Anywhere you point Roman, somebody’s going to be able to say, ‘I discovered something,’” 
NASA is ready to explore the cosmos in a whole new way, thanks to its next-generation Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
Scientists and engineers have spent some twenty years designing and building the observatory, which weighs as much as a Tyrannosaurus rex and is the size of a tour bus. Now, NASA aims to launch the telescope as early as August 30, with plans to start delivering a flood of cutting-edge astronomical data early next year.
Within the mission’s first five years, scientists expect the Roman Space Telescope, named for NASA’s first head of astronomy and a vital advocate for the Hubble Space Telescope, to unlock mysteries about the enigmatic dark matter and dark energy that dominate our universe. It will also detect tens of thousands of alien planets, paint interactions between galaxies and spot exploding stars — and much, much more.
An Experimental Single-Time Treatment Slashed Cholesterol for a Year – NY Times
A one-time gene-editing treatment to lower cholesterol had long-lasting effects a year later, scientists reported on Friday. The results highlight the potential to treat even common diseases by altering people’s genes.
In the small study, which followed only 15 patients, participants who got the highest dose saw their cholesterol levels plunge by half — and stay that way for a year. The results were presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. […]
Both efforts are early safety studies and are years away from becoming an option people will be offered in a doctor’s office. But an approach that once seemed almost outlandishly far out has inched closer to reality as evidence accrues that it works, and that the results stick.
👏🏽👏🏽Thanks to vaccines, Australia is on track to become the first country to eliminate cervical cancer by 2035news.uq.edu.au/2026-08-20-y…
Some schools installing pepper-spraying drones to help stop active school shooters – ABC News
Reddit comment about the drones: “The drones work by flashing strobe lights, sounding sirens, and spraying pepper gel at the threat. The aircraft is called Campus Guardian Angel, and it can ram into a threat at 50 miles per hour.”
At least nine schools across the U.S. are being equipped with drones designed to distract a school shooter until police arrive. The drones work by flashing strobe lights, sounding sirens, and spraying pepper gel at the threat.
The aircraft is called Campus Guardian Angel, and it can ram into a threat at 50 miles per hour. Mithril Defense is the Austin-based company behind the drones. They say they’ll be stored at the schools so teachers can activate them during an emergency.
But some parents are raising concerns. “They are operated remotely from Texas. These are our tender babies, and they are now going to have to be in a place where there are drones flying around,” parent Kim Carroll said.
A field study in Scientific Reports found that attendees of a heavy metal festival in Germany were more tolerant to pain than a pre-festival group. go.nature.com/4wXFFhp 🧪
It Just Got Way Easier to Sue Fossil Fuel Companies Over Climate Change – Mother Jones
A new peer-reviewed study published earlier this month in Earth’s Future suggests that it is possible to demonstrate that “emissions from company X cause injury Y.” It also could potentially provide evidence so industry could be forced to answer for climate impacts. The new methodological framework has, for the first time, drawn a straight line from single corporate emitters like Exxon or Chevron, or even whole countries like the United States, to specific heatwaves and areas of extreme rainfall. 
A paper in Nature Communications presents a fully integrated smart ring that measures multiple chemical biomarkers from osmotically extracted sweat without iontophoresis, validated for daily analysis in both healthy and type 1 diabetic individuals. go.nature.com/4gyZ1D7 🧪
Scientists Gave Dogs MRIs and Learned That They’re Surprisingly Good at Distinguishing Between Human Emotions, Even Some Negative Ones – Smithsonian
…..researchers used machine learning to analyze the brain scans of pet dogs as they were shown images of human facial expressions. The study, published in the journal iScience this month, found that the animals process happy, scared and angry emotions differently. And, for the first time, they revealed that dogs can interpret a difference between negative emotions, such as fear and sadness or fear and anger.
“This is the first demonstration that the dog brain can distinguish between emotions from the same valence,” says study co-author Laura Cuaya, a neuroscientist at the University of Vienna, to Nicola Davis at the Guardian.
Cuaya and her colleagues trained 14 pet dogs to stay still and awake during ten-minute MRI scans without any restraints—no small feat. “They are very, very good at the task,” she says to Meghan Rosen at Science News. Once the dogs were ready, the researchers conducted two sets of experiments.
Toxic particles from freshwater algae blooms can go airborne—and likely into people’s lungs. #chemsky 🧪
El Niños stronger since industrial revolution – Science
A reconstruction of sea surface temperatures based on the geochemistry of Galápagos coral skeletons suggests that more strong El Niño events have been happening over the past 100 years as fossil-fuel emissions heat the world, compared to the millennium before the industrial revolution. However, the interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere that drive El Niño events are complex, so there is still uncertainty about how cycles of Pacific temperature will change this century. “Corals give us a time machine to look into the past,” says palaeoclimatologist Julia Cole. “They don’t give us a time machine to look into the future.”
🌡️ Heat is already costing the world moneyModelling crop and labour losses from extreme heat puts the hit to world GDP at about 1% by 2100 under current trends, rising to 3% in the tropics.🔗 doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ae9627#Climate #Economy #Heat #Science 🧪
Life’s ‘last universal common ancestor’ may predate life itself – Scientific American
How did life begin? This mystery has tantalized scientists since Charles Darwin mused on it in 1871, spawning no shortage of competing theories about the origins of Earth’s biology around four billion years ago. Yet, even today, a definitive answer remains elusive. Maybe, a team of scientists now suggests, that’s because we’ve been asking the wrong question all along.
In a paper in Science Advances, evolutionary biologist Bill Martin of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf in Germany and his colleagues present evidence that life might have, in effect, begun twice. They argue that the two earliest lineages of Darwin’s “tree of life” sprung independently from a single source that was itself not yet truly alive.
Cyborg cockroaches (Macropanesthia rhinoceros) are being tested as rescue helpers that can get into areas people can’t. They are remotely guided and may even be used to deliver doses of medication to patients who need emergency treatment! 🧪advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/…

Grow your own mushroom kits go rogue – New Scientist
A species of mushroom popular in grow-your-own kits has been declared a high-risk invasive species by the UK government after being spotted twice in the wild. The same traits that make the golden oyster mushroom (Pleurotus citrinopileatus) attractive to growers — fast growth, repeated fruiting and broad environmental tolerance — also mean that it could outcompete native fungi. Genetic sequencing suggests that commercial cultivation was the main source of introductions in the United States, where the species is already running rampant. Its native range is East Asia and eastern Russia.
A dolphin whistle contour may look like a simple line, but small gaps and errors can make a big difference when we use it to tell individuals apart. New research from our section tested how different algorithms perform, what happens when things get noisy, and what that means downstream. 🐬🧪🌐🌱 @au.dk
As the American West dries out, a secret savior emerges from the soil – SF Gate
It was well above 90 degrees the day I followed scientists out across the Needles district in Canyonlands National Park. As we stepped off the road, I kept my eyes on my feet, which I intentionally placed atop the sparse vegetation. Saltbush and bunch grasses crunched beneath my boots, their snap carrying in the still, late afternoon air. 
Anywhere else, this way of walking, referred to as plant hopping, would seem callous, like going out of my way to damage the few plants tough enough to eke out a living in this place. But in the desert, it’s the ground surrounding the plants that is perhaps the most crucial, yet fragile part of the landscape. 
We were there to learn about biocrust — the dark, craggy layer that grows slowly, over many decades, across the surface of drylands around the world. As its name suggests, biocrust is teeming with life, and national parks such as Canyonlands and Arches offer a living laboratory for studying these vibrant, miniature ecosystems. Scientists are now learning that biocrust plays important roles in everything from erosion control and nutrient cycling to bracing against the worst impacts of climate change. And as temperatures continue to rise, researchers are turning to these living soils as a potential tool for restoring healthy landscapes.
Alright everybody, time to text the teachers in your life. The fall semester is open at SkypeAScientist and we are ready to match classrooms, scout troops, library groups, and more with scientists!Tell the educators in your life, and send them to SkypeAScientist.com
We continue to be paywall-free. We continue to be supported by our readers, not billionaires or corporations. But we need to bring in more revenue. We are leaning on our community more than ever to help make ends meet.
Sign up for our daily top stories newsletter so you don't miss how it's being used—and what comes next.
This content was created by a Daily Kos Community member.
Make YOUR voice heard!
Recommending and sharing stories helps us decide which stories are most important to show our readers.
Comments didn't load?
It could be because of network issues or a problem with our commenting provider, or your browser or an extension may be blocking them. This can happen with Firefox Strict mode, uBlock Origin, Brave, or ad blockers. Try reloading the page, disabling your ad blocker for this site, or switching Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection to Standard mode.
93
54
305
31
332
52
66
18
Sign up for our daily top stories newsletter so you don't miss how it's being used—and what comes next.
Daily Kos is independent, reader-funded progressive media rooted in a partisan community.
© 2002 – 2026 Kos Media, LLC.
Daily Kos publishes its content for broad public use so that ideas and information can spread as widely as possible. Unless otherwise specified, site content may be reused or republished for any purpose without explicit permission. “Kos” and “Daily Kos” are registered trademarks of Kos Media, LLC.