This week in science: A strange hybrid bird; the cancer clues hidden in your toenails; a reverse Big Bang; and much more!
Huge Study Links 99% of Heart Attacks And Strokes With 4 Risk Factors
A huge study has linked 99 percent of all heart attacks and strokes to four risk factors: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, and smoking.
High blood pressure was the factor most commonly tied to cardiovascular events. In both the US and South Korea, more than 93 percent of individuals who experienced a heart attack, stroke, or heart failure had hypertension beforehand.
Managing this risk factor could be key to preventing serious cardiovascular disease down the road.
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The 2025 Nobel Prizes Were Awarded This Week, Celebrating Major Scientific Breakthroughs
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This year, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Shimon Sakaguchi from Osaka University in Japan, Mary E. Brunkow from the Institute for System Biology and Fred Ramsdell from Sonoma Biotherapeutics, both in the US, for discovering how the body stops its own immune system from turning against itself.
Read the full story here.
The Nobel Prize in Physics went to Briton John Clarke, Frenchman Michel Devoret, and American John Martinis for putting quantum mechanics into action and enabling the development of all kinds of digital technology from cellphones to a new generation of computers.
Read the full story here.
And the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Susumu Kitagawa from Kyoto University, Japan, Richard Robson from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Omar M. Yaghi from the University of California, Berkeley, for discovering a new form of molecular architecture: crystals that contain large cavities.
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There Are 5 Profiles of Sleep – Here's What Yours Says About Your Health
"The different sleep profiles were also supported by unique patterns of brain function measured with MRI, suggesting that sleep experiences are reflected not just in health and behavior, but also in the brain's wiring and activity," says Aurore Perrault, neuroscientist at Concordia University in Canada.
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'Grue Jay' Spotted in a Texas Backyard Is First-of-Its-Kind Hybrid
"We think it's the first observed vertebrate that's hybridized as a result of two species both expanding their ranges due, at least in part, to climate change," says ecologist Brian Stokes of the University of Texas at Austin.
Read the full story here.
Your Toenails Can Reveal if You've Been Exposed to an Invisible Lung Cancer Cause
"The data will form the evidence that could lead to the inclusion of more patients, whose lung cancer is not caused by tobacco smoke, in potentially life-saving early screening and diagnosis," says biochemist Aaron Goodarzi at the University of Calgary in Canada.
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Physicists Predict When The Universe Will End in a Reverse Big Bang
"For any life, you want to know how life begins and how life ends – the end points," says astrophysicist Henry Tye of Cornell University in the US.
"For our Universe, it's also interesting to know, does it have a beginning? In the 1960s, we learned that it has a beginning. Then the next question is, 'Does it have an end?' For many years, many people thought it would just go on forever. It's good to know that, if the data holds up, the Universe will have an end."
Read the full story here.