There us something new to talk about around Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun.

Uranus is a “sideways planet” due to its extreme axial tilt, and the ice giant owes its cyan-color to a deep atmosphere composed of hydrogen, helium and methane.  And it has moons. Lots of moons. Now it has one more. A James Webb Space Telescope survey found the as-yet unnamed new one, provisionally designated S/2025 U 1, bringing the total to 29, thanks to 10 long exposures obtained by the JWST Near-Infrared Camera.

Why it escaped detection for so long

A new international, randomized clinical trial is evaluating a vaccine developed to protect against 21 strains of pneumococcus, up from the current 13 strains covered now. That means greater protection to babies against the common infection that causes pneumonia, sinusitis and meningitis.

Pneumococcal disease can lead to serious illness and death among children under two years of age. The US had 31,000 cases and more than 3,500 deaths from invasive pneumococcal disease (bacteremia and meningitis)

Participants will receive four doses of the vaccine at two, four, and six months of age and a booster dose at 12-15 months. To stay within real-world conditions they will still receive the usual vaccines.

A new computer simulation says that climate change may may ruin the tall beech trees common in Europe. Unfortunately, many other simulations already said it was too late to curb runaway emissions by India and China as of 2016.

For the last 2,000 years, the area from southern Sweden to central France has been a 
temperate deciduous forest zone, and beech tries thrived. The new estimate says that future summers will be warmer, drier and reminiscent of the Mediterranean climate, which are fine for people but not beech trees.

We usually associate smell with bad things, like body odors or fire or a gas leak, but a keen sense of smell helps us enjoy food and other pleasures in life.

Many things cause loss of smell; aging is number one, but also brain injuries and loss of smell was a common complaint about COVID-19 infections. It's not a life-threatening condition, which may be why there are very few effective treatments.

In all racket sports, a well-executed serve can establish a real advantage. Badminton is played by around 220 million people across the globe and a“spin serve” took badminton by storm when a Danish player at the Polish Open 2023 badminton tournament used it to dominant effect.

Like in table tennis, a spin-serve in badminton adds pre-spin before the racket touches the shuttlecock and the natural spin determined by its feathers’ inclination angles plus the pre-spin makes the flight trajectory even more unpredictable.

Naturally, instead of expecting players to adjust and improve, the community demanded the Badminton World Federation ban it. Coaches and players said extended rallies were more exciting for fans than good serves.

The most common cancer-causing strain of human papillomavirus, HPV16, can reprogram immune cells surrounding the tumor to help cancer grow, and new work in mice blocking this process helped treatments prevent the spread of cancer.

HPV is common in humans and in most cases clears naturally but HPV16 is linked to over half of cervical cancer cases and roughly 90% of HPV throat cancers. The HPV vaccine can prevent those cancers if vaccination occurs prior to HPV exposure but young people are the first generation to have the vaccine readily available.