Seal milk more refined than breast milk

The Atlantic grey seal nurses its young for only 17 days. This means that the milk must be packed with good stuff to quickly prepare the seal pup for a tough life at sea. Researchers have analysed seal milk and discovered many new types of milk sugar.
Photo Credit: Patrick Pomeroy / contributing author

Researchers have discovered that milk from grey seals in the Atlantic Ocean may be more potent than breast milk. An analysis of seal milk found approximately 33 per cent more sugar molecules than in breast milk. Many of these sugars are unique and may pave the way for even better infant formulas for babies. 

During the 17 days that grey seal pups suckle, they need to get their digestive systems up and running and build up an immune system to protect them against diseases and other dangers they may encounter in the North Atlantic. It is reasonable to suspect that their mother's milk is extremely refined to accomplish this task. An international study with researchers from the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology in Nature Communications shows that this is indeed the case. 

“Our analysis shows that grey seal milk is extraordinary. We identified 332 different sugar molecules, or sugars, compared to about 250 in breast milk. Two-thirds were completely unknown previously. Some of these molecules had a previously unseen size of 28 sugar units, which exceeds the largest known sugar units in breast milk, which are 18 units in size,” says Daniel Bojar, senior lecturer in bioinformatics at the University of Gothenburg. 

Over half of global coastal settlements are retreating inland due to intensifying climate risks

Hurricane Florence moved toward the U.S. East Coast as it intensified to a Category 4 storm, with one-minute sustained winds of 130 mph Monday September 10, 2018. This image, captured by the GOES East satellite at 10:00 am ET, showed Florence in the western Atlantic, about 600 miles southeast of Bermuda, at Category 3 intensity. The storm had developed a small but well-defined eye and a symmetrical appearance typical of major hurricanes that are rapidly intensifying.
Image Credit: NOAA

For centuries, coastlines have attracted dense human settlement and economic activity. Today, more than 40 percent of the global population lives within 100 kilometers of the coast, facing accelerating sea-level rise, coastal erosion, flooding, and tropical cyclones. 

Although moving away from the coast - known as “retreat” - is often viewed as an adaptive strategy, its global extent and drivers have remained unclear. A new study published in Nature Climate Change fills this gap by providing the first global evidence that coastal retreat is driven more by social and infrastructural vulnerability than by historical exposure to hazards. 

The study was conducted by an international team led by researchers from Sichuan University and included remote sensing experts from the University of Copenhagen (Alexander Prishchepov and Shengping Ding, IGN). It maps settlement movements across 1,071 coastal regions in 155 countries. By integrating nighttime light observations with global socioeconomic datasets, the researchers found that 56% of coastal regions have retreated from the coast from 1992 to 2019, and 16% of regions, including the Copenhagen area in Denmark, have moved closer to the coast, while 28% have remained stable. 

New study shows why some minds can’t switch off at night

Photo Credit: Cottonbro Studio

Australian researchers have found compelling evidence that insomnia may be linked to disruptions in the brain’s natural 24-hour rhythm of mental activity, shedding light on why some people struggle to ‘switch off’ at night. 

Published in Sleep Medicine, the study led by the University of South Australia (UniSA) is the first to map how cognitive activity fluctuates across the day in individuals with chronic insomnia, compared to healthy sleepers. 

Insomnia affects about 10% of the population, and up to 33% of older adults, with many reporting an overactive or ‘racing’ mind at night. 

While this has long been linked to cognitive hyperarousal, it has remained unclear where these thought patterns stem from. 

After nearly 100 years, scientists may have detected dark matter

Gamma-ray image of the Milky Way halo (with details).
Gamma-ray intensity map excluding components other than the halo, spanning approximately 100 degrees in the direction of the Galactic center. The horizontal gray bar in the central region corresponds to the Galactic plane area, which was excluded from the analysis to avoid strong astrophysical radiation.
 Image Credit: ©2025 Tomonori Totani, The University of Tokyo

In the early 1930s, Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky observed galaxies in space moving faster than their mass should allow, prompting him to infer the presence of some invisible scaffolding — dark matter — holding the galaxies together. Nearly 100 years later, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope may have provided direct evidence of dark matter, allowing the invisible matter to be “seen” for the very first time.

Dark matter has remained largely a mystery since it was proposed so many years ago. Up to this point, scientists have only been able to indirectly observe dark matter through its effects on observable matter, such as its ability to generate enough gravitational force to hold galaxies together. The reason dark matter can’t be observed directly is because the particles that make up dark matter don’t interact with electromagnetic force — meaning dark matter doesn’t absorb, reflect or emit light.

Immunology: In-Depth Description

Image Credit: Scientific Frontline / AI generated

Immunology is the branch of biomedical science concerned with the structure, function, and disorders of the immune system—the complex network of cells, tissues, and organs that protect an organism from foreign invaders. Its primary goal is to understand how biological systems identify and eliminate pathogens (such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites) while maintaining tolerance for the body's own healthy tissue (distinguishing "self" from "non-self").

Flowering discovery could lead to more reliable mungbean yields

Mungbean flowers at UQ Gatton.
Photo Credit: Megan Pope

New breeding opportunities for an important cash crop have been unlocked by University of Queensland and Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC)-supported research. 

Queensland Alliance of Agriculture and Food Innovation PhD candidate Caitlin Dudley, supported by a GRDC Research Scholarship, has revealed key insights about mungbean flowering through extensive field trials. 

“Our research found that when mungbean flowers, and how long they flowers, are independent traits with distinct genetic controls,” Ms Dudley said. 

“That’s important to know because it opens opportunities for breeders to optimize flowering time to improve yield for specific growing environments. 

Laparoscopic surgery significantly reduces blood loss and improves jaundice recovery for severe newborn liver disease

Pediatric surgery ward at Nagoya University Hospital, where laparoscopic surgery for biliary atresia is performed.
Photo Credit: Merle Naidoo, Nagoya University

Biliary atresia affects newborns when bile ducts become blocked, leading to liver damage that often requires transplants—a new study evaluates an alternative to traditional open surgery.

Nagoya University researchers and their collaborators have found that minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery significantly reduces blood loss and improves jaundice recovery compared to traditional open surgery for treating biliary atresia—a serious liver condition in newborns. The study, published in Hepatobiliary Surgery and Nutrition, also found that high-dose steroid therapy after surgery does not necessarily improve outcomes for treating this condition.

Biliary atresia affects 1 in 15,000 newborns and is the leading cause of liver transplants in children. It occurs when bile ducts become blocked or do not develop properly, which prevents effective liver function and leads to progressive damage. What causes this blockage is unknown, and surgery is usually performed within the first two to three months of birth when the condition is diagnosed. 

New observations suggest Mars’ south pole lacks lake beneath the ice

An artist's concept of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been orbiting the Red Planet since 2006. The antenna is part of SHARAD, a radar that peers below the Martian surface.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A new study published in Geophysical Research Letters casts doubt on a 2018 discovery of a briny lake potentially lurking beneath Mars’ south polar cap.

SHARAD, the Shallow Radar sounder on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), performed a maneuver that allowed it to peer deeper beneath the polar ice than ever before. It recorded only a faint signal where MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding), the low-frequency radar on the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, found a highly radar-reflective surface under the ice in 2018, which that team interpreted to be due to the presence of liquid water.

“The existence of liquid water under the south pole is really compelling and exciting, but if it is there, SHARAD should also see a very bright reflectance spot, and we don’t,” said study lead author Gareth Morgan, a SHARAD co-investigator and Planetary Science Institute senior scientist.

Scientific Models Overestimate Natural Processes That Mitigate Climate Change

Silky lupine plants at Lassen National Park in California
Photo Credit: Duncan Menge

High levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide intensify climate change, but high carbon dioxide levels can also stimulate plant growth. Plant growth removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, partially mitigating the effects of climate change. However, plants only grow faster in the presence of high levels of carbon dioxide if they can also acquire enough nitrogen from the atmosphere to do so. The actual amount of nitrogen acquired from the atmosphere was reassessed in a study co-led by Columbia faculty that was released this summer; it was shown to be significantly lower than previously estimated.

Concordia researchers identify key marker linking coronary artery disease to cognitive decline

Zacharie Potvin-Jutras, with Claudine Gauthier:
“Our goal is to examine conditions at the onset of a heart disease, before there has been any significant impact on the brain”
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Concordia University

Individuals with coronary artery disease (CAD) — a constricting or blocking of blood vessels feeding the heart — face increased risks of strokes, cognitive impairment and dementia. However, the link between CAD and cognitive function is not fully understood. 

A new study led by Concordia researchers looks at how the disease affects the brain’s white matter, the network of nerve fibers that connects different regions of the brains and is critical to transmitting information efficiently. 

The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, applied a novel multivariate approach using 12 separate metrics. The researchers compared test results and MRI scans of 43 patients with CAD to those of 36 healthy individuals. All participants were over the age of 50.