Computed tomography scans – also known as CT, or Cat, scans – may be causing 1 in 20 cancers, a study has found. About five million of the scans, which use X-rays to create detailed internal pictures of the body, are carried out each year on the NHS. But new research from the University of California (UC) suggests they could lead to lung, breast and other cancers, with a tenfold increased risk for babies. Modelling showed that nearly 103,000 cancers were expected from the 93 million CT scans that were...

(CNN) — A new type of antibiotic for treatment of urinary tract infections in women could also work against gonorrhea infections, a new study finds. This could put the medication, called gepotidacin, on track to become the first new antibiotic for gonorrhea since the 1990s. “Gepotidacin is a novel oral antibacterial treatment with the potential to become an alternative option for the treatment of gonococcal infections, supported by an acceptable safety and tolerability profile,” the researchers wrote in the study published Monday in The Lancet, adding that the drug “could...

Creatine is a popular supplement used to help build muscle, but researchers in Australia are questioning its effectiveness. Investigators from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney found that individuals who took creatine while performing a three-month weightlifting regimen put on the same amount of muscle as those who did not take the supplement while lifting. That’s according to their recent study, which was published in the journal Nutrients. COMMON SUPPLEMENT COULD HELP YOU LIVE LONGER, RESEARCH SUGGESTS "We’ve shown that taking 5 grams of creatine supplement per...

Dyson spheres, the hypothetical mega-structures that advanced alien civilizations might use to enclose a star and harness its energy, suffer from a fatal flaw: They are catastrophically unstable. But now an engineer claims to have figured out a way to stabilize these structures — and all it takes is two stars. In the 1960s, physicist and polymath Freeman Dyson cooked up the idea of these eponymous spheres. He envisioned that a sufficiently advanced society would have an insatiable need for living space and energy. And if they were industrious enough,...

To many, they’re just nuisances, but houseflies, fruit flies and other maligned flying insects are major migratory players that deserve further study, according to new research that calls them a “vital” part of global ecosystems. The analysis looks at the order Diptera, which includes more than 125,000 species of what the insect world calls “true flies.” Despite their abundance and diversity, the researchers write in the journal Biological Reviews, the flies’ migratory behavior is not as well studied as that of more “charismatic” insects such as butterflies. In a literature...

Wild salmon are swimming quicker due to painkillers and other drugs dumped in rivers and the sea, reveals new research. Traces of a sleeping pill shortened the time it took for juvenile salmon to navigate through two hydropower dams along their regular migration route that usually slow up the journey, say scientists. Levels of clobazam — a medication often prescribed for sleep disorders — also increased the river-to-sea migration success of juvenile salmon in the wild, according to the findings of the largest study of its kind. An international team...

Long-distance seafarers crossed the Mediterranean far earlier than scientists had believed, a new study has found. Excavations at a cave on the island of Malta have uncovered stone tools, cooking site and animal skeletons from 8,500 years ago — 1,000 years before the first farmers arrived on the island, according to findings published in the journal Nature. The findings “force a re-evaluation of the seafaring abilities of Europe’s last hunter-gatherers, as well as their connections and ecosystem impacts,” said Eleanor Scerri of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology and the...

If you enjoy a refreshing stick of gum now and then, you may be biting off more than you should chew. A recent pilot study found that chewing gum – even those labeled "natural" – can release hundreds to thousands of microplastics into the body, according to researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).Lisa Lowe and Jamie Leonard, graduate students at UCLA, along with Sanjay Mohanty, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at UCLA, shared the findings at the American Chemical Society's 2025 meeting in San Diego...