Creatine Is All the Rage. Should You Take It?
Creatine: It's what's hot and not just among the bodybuilder set.
The popular supplement may do more than boost athletic performance and muscle mass, scientists say. It is being studied—with good preliminary results—to improve bone health, cognition and sleep and reduce depression and anxiety symptoms.
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Forbes
9 minutes ago
- Forbes
What Are The Best Wildflowers To Attract Bees?
Not all commercial wildflower seed mixes are created equal in the eyes of our insect overlords. Now that summer has finally arrived, people are planting wildflower seed mixes to attract and support the dwindling number and variety of wild bees and other beneficial insect pollinators. Some of us create our own wildflower seed mixes whilst others purchase ready-made commercial seed mixes. Additionally, annual flowering seed mixes are often planted and grown in public gardens, parks, along roadsides, in traffic verges and in other urban areas. Farmers sometimes plant these mixes alongside food crops to enhance pollination. But some of the flower species included in these mixes may not be the most pollinator-friendly. So this raises the question: which wildflowers species are best for supporting our struggling insect friends? Is it best to plant native wildflowers seeds instead of non-natives? Should seed mixes contain only flowering plants, or is including some non-flowering plants in the mix also helpful? An international collaboration of scientists based at institutions throughout the UK and Denmark pondered these same questions. To find some answers, they surveyed 477 scientific papers, field tested four commercially available seed mixes and then developed and field tested two novel experimental wildflower seed mixes of their own by counting the numbers of beneficial pollinators – bumblebees, solitary bees and hoverflies – that visited the wildflowers. It's important to remember that ensuring a continuous and overlapping supply of flowers is essential to supporting a diverse population of wild pollinators, by accommodating different forage preferences and flight periods of different pollinator species. And of course, one mustn't forget the human factor: some of these wildflower seed mixes were simply more aesthetically pleasing to the public. Perhaps surprisingly, the study revealed that seed mixes containing non-native flowering plants along with native species had higher establishment rates and longer flowering periods. The study also finds that of those seed mixes that attracted pollinating insects in higher numbers, a small number of key wildflower species were visited frequently, and these preferred flower species differed between pollinator groups. But because many urban areas are more alike than they are different, are these 'best wildflower' species the same across urban areas in, say, the United States, Canada or Australia? 'The study was carried out in the UK, so the list of species is most appropriate for northern Europe,' the study's senior author, botanist Natasha de Vere, told me in email. Professor de Vere is Professor and Curator of Botany at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, where she is an expert on plant-pollinator interactions and the link between biodiversity and human well-being. That said, Professor de Vere and collaborators are still testing their novel wildflower seed mixes in different climates. 'We have just planted one of our seed mixes at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in the Botanical Garden so we can see how well it does in the Danish climate,' Professor de Vere explained in email. Do wildflower seed mixes provide everything that wild pollinators need? 'Annual seed mixes can provide a beautiful and colourful display of flowers in gardens and parks that can help to provide nectar and pollen for pollinators,' Professor de Vere replied in email. 'But seed mixes cannot replace abundant flowering plants within the wider landscape and it is important to think about all the needs of pollinators. As well as sufficient flowers through the year, bees need suitable habitat for foraging such as hollow cavities, bare ground and a range of grass height." You mentioned hoverflies in your study. Do hoverflies have different needs from bees? 'The larvae of different hoverfly species can have very different needs: some are predators on plants, whilst some need ponds or decaying wood,' Professor de Vere said in email. The larvae of other hoverflies are voracious predators of common pest insects, such as aphids. Keeping in mind the sensitivities of bees and the appetites of hoverfly larvae, it is strongly recommended not to use either herbicides or pesticides because these chemicals poison and kill the very insects we are working to protect and support. Based on their findings, the study's authors recommend adding these annual 'pollinator-friendly' wildflower seeds to your mixes to attract and support a variety of beneficial pollinating insects: Lucy Witter, Laura Jones, Abigail Lowe, Will Ritchie, Peter Dennis, Gemma Beatty, and Natasha de Vere (2025). The pick of the plot: An evidence-based approach for selecting and testing suitable plants to use in annual seed mixes to attract insect pollinators, Plants, People, Planet | doi:10.1002/ppp3.70041 © Copyright by GrrlScientist | hosted by Forbes | Socials: Bluesky | CounterSocial | LinkedIn | Mastodon Science | MeWe | Spoutible | SubStack | Threads | Tumblr | Twitter
Gizmodo
12 minutes ago
- Gizmodo
ISS Conference Scrapped as NASA Budget Cuts Threaten Crew and Cargo
The International Space Station (ISS) still has a few years left in orbit before it's due for retirement, but the future of the orbital lab is looking a little shaky as NASA is forced to tighten its purse strings. The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), which operates the ISS National Lab, is canceling an upcoming space station research conference, SpaceNews reported. The ISS Research and Development Conference was due to be held at the end of July in Seattle, but CASIS announced this week that, after consulting with NASA, 'the current regulatory and budgetary environment does not support holding' the annual conference this year. The announcement comes a little over a month after the release of the current administration's so-called skinny budget, which included funding for NASA in 2026. The budget proposes a $6 billion cut to the agency, 24% less than NASA's current $24.8 billion budget for 2025. The budget also proposes reducing the size of the ISS crew ahead of its planned retirement in 2030, when it's expected to be replaced by multiple commercial space stations. Funding for the ISS could be reduced by a quarter, from $1.24 billion to $920 million, according to the proposed budget for 2026. 'Crew and cargo flights to the station would be significantly reduced,' the budget proposal read. 'The station's reduced research capacity would be focused on efforts critical to the Moon and Mars exploration programs.' During a briefing held in late May, Dana Weigel, NASA's ISS program manager, revealed that the space agency had already been facing resource issues regarding the space station before the 2026 budget proposal. 'The station has been faced with a cumulative multi-year budget reduction,' Weigel is quoted in SpaceNews as saying. 'That's the challenge that I've had that we've been managing through today. That has left us with some budget and resource challenges that result in less cargo.' The cargo includes supplies for onboard crew members. For more than two decades, the space agency has maintained a crew of at least four NASA astronauts on board the ISS, along with international crew members from Russia, Japan, Canada, and other countries. NASA has previously flown four or five cargo missions a year, but the agency has only planned for three drop-offs in 2025. 'We're evaluating the potential for moving to three crew,' Weigel said during the briefing. 'That's something that we're working through and trying to assess today.' NASA is also considering extending the duration of missions on the ISS from six to eight months, Ars Technica previously reported. Meanwhile, five commercial space stations, including Orbital Reef, Axiom Station, and Starlab, are currently in the works but nowhere near being ready to host astronauts in low Earth orbit. The ISS maintains a steady presence of orbital science above Earth's surface, which would leave behind a major gap to fill.
Gizmodo
26 minutes ago
- Gizmodo
Astronomers Discover Most Energetic Cosmic Explosions Ever Observed
Astronomers in Hawaii have discovered a new kind of explosion, and they're the most energetic stellar explosions ever recorded. Meet 'extreme nuclear transients' (ENTs): when supermassive black holes tear apart stars at least three times heavier than the Sun, triggering an immense release of energy. An international team of researchers describes the discovery of this newly observed phenomenon in a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, shedding light on events that will help astronomers study the distant universe. 'We've observed stars getting ripped apart as tidal disruption events for over a decade, but these ENTs are different beasts, reaching brightnesses nearly ten times more than what we typically see,' Jason Hinkle, lead author of the study and PhD student at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, said in a W. M. Keck Observatory statement. Tidal disruptions consist of supermassive black holes tearing apart any star that wanders too close, so ENTs are a kind of tidal disruption. 'Not only are ENTs far brighter than normal tidal disruption events, but they remain luminous for years, far surpassing the energy output of even the brightest known supernova explosions,' he added. Their discovery took place almost by accident. While searching for enduring flares projecting from the center of galaxies in data from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission, Hinkle came across two strange signals from 2016 and 2018, which started a multi-year investigation. At the same time, two separate teams found a comparable flare from 2020 in an astronomical survey called the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). More data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii confirmed the 2020 event's similarity to the two Gaia events. Given that these events unleashed more energy than any supernova known to science, Hinkle and his colleagues concluded that they weren't your average stellar explosions. The enormous energy release and the shape of the event's light curves indicated the presence of a supermassive black hole actively absorbing material, a process called accretion. Unlike regular black hole accretion, however—which sees nearby matter heat up and project irregular light—the astronomers discovered that these astrophysical events clearly involve a supermassive black hole systematically shredding and eating a giant star. ENTs represent the most energetic known explosions in the universe. Gaia18cdj, the team's strongest documented ENT, released 25 times more energy than the most energetic supernovae known to science. More broadly, each ENT releases as much energy as 100 Suns would emit over their entire 10-billion-year lifespans. For comparison, a regular supernova usually unleashes similar amounts of energy to a single Sun. 'These ENTs don't just mark the dramatic end of a massive star's life,' Hinkle explained. 'They illuminate the processes responsible for growing the largest black holes in the universe.' ENTs are also at least 10 million times rarer than supernovae. Nevertheless, their massive energy outputs will prove to be extremely useful for astronomers studying far-away massive black holes. 'Because they're so bright, we can see them across vast cosmic distances—and in astronomy, looking far away means looking back in time,' said Benjamin Shappee, study co-author and Associate Professor at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy. 'By observing these prolonged flares, we gain insights into black hole growth during a key era known as cosmic noon, when the universe was half its current age when galaxies were happening places—forming stars and feeding their supermassive black holes 10 times more vigorously than they do today.' From theories of black holes leading to white holes to the suggestion that the universe might exist in a black hole and that supermassive black holes could replace particle colliders, the recent study joins a host of research shedding light on one of the most mysterious components of our universe.
