New snail species with shell shaped like Picasso's art discovered
The species, measuring only 3 millimetres (0.1 in) in size, has been named Anauchen picasso owing to the rectangularly angled whorls on its shell.
These whorl patterns 'look like a cubist interpretation of other snails with 'normal' shell shapes,' prompting researchers to name it after Picasso.
'This species looks like an Anauchen with rounded whorls painted in a Pablo Picasso -style resembling the art style known as Cubism,' scientists wrote in the study, published in the journal ZooKeys.
Its brown, conical shell consists of 4.5–5 whorls separated by a deep suture, scientists say.
There are several irregularly spaced whitish streaks crossing the shell's spiral.
The research describes 46 new species of microsnails from Cambodia Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.
These are tiny land snails with shell sizes less than 5 mm, found mostly in Southeast Asia, including former Indochina, Indonesia, and the Philippines, as well as parts of China.
Their distribution extends further westwards, across India to Pakistan, with significantly reduced diversity.
Researchers also propose a new method to classify snails by sorting them into similar groups based on overall shell shape, shell surface texture, and the arrangement of apertural barriers.
Many of the new species were collected only recently, while several others were discovered in the collection of the Florida Museum of Natural History, having been collected in the 1980s.
'Although the shell sizes of these snails are less than 5 mm, they are real beauties! Their shells exhibit extraordinary complexity,' scientists say.
'For example, the aperture ('opening' of the shell) is armed with numerous tooth-like barriers, which are most probably useful against predators,' they explained.
Several of the new species were found to have an aperture that turns either upwards or downwards, meaning some species carry their shells upside-down.
Researchers were able to distinguish the different snails based on the apertural barriers and the orientation of the last whorl on the shell.
Scientists caution that the locations where some of the snails were found in the 1980s may have already been destroyed by deforestation and limestone quarrying.
The study highlights these major threats that locally endemic land snails face in Southeast Asia.
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The Guardian
33 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Scientists warn US will lose a generation of talent because of Trump cuts
A generation of scientific talent is at the brink of being lost to overseas competitors by the Trump administration's dismantling of the National Science Foundation (NSF), with unprecedented political interference at the agency jeopardizing the future of US industries and economic growth, according to a Guardian investigation. The gold standard peer-reviewed process used by the NSF to support cutting-edge, high-impact science is being undermined by the chaotic cuts to staff, programs and grants, as well as meddling by the so-called department of government efficiency (Doge), according to multiple current and former NSF employees who spoke with the Guardian. The scientists warn that Trump's assault on diversity in science is already eroding the quality of fundamental research funded at the NSF, the premier federal investor in basic science and engineering, which threatens to derail advances in tackling existential threats to food, water and biodiversity in the US. 'Before Trump, the review process was based on merit and impact. Now, it's like rolling the dice because a Doge person has the final say,' said one current program officer. 'There has never in the history of NSF been anything like this. It's disgusting what we're being instructed to do.' Another program officer said: 'The exact details of the extra step is opaque but I can say with high confidence that people from Doge or its proxies are scrutinizing applications with absolutely devastating consequences. The move amounts to the US willingly conceding global supremacy to competitors like China in biological, social and physical sciences. It is a mind-boggling own-goal.' The NSF, founded in 1950, is the only federal agency that funds fundamental research across all fields of science and engineering, and which over the years has contributed to major breakthroughs in organ transplants, gene technology, AI, smartphones and the internet, extreme weather and other hazard warning systems, American sign language, cybersecurity and even the language app Duolingo. In normal times, much of the NSF budget ($9bn in 2024/25) is allocated to research institutions after projects undergo a rigorous three-step review process – beginning with the program officer, an expert in the field, who ensures the proposed study fits in with the agency's priorities. The program officer convenes an expert panel to evaluate the proposal on two statutory criteria – intellectual merit and broader impacts on the nation and people – which under the NSF's legal mandate includes broadening participation of individuals, institutions, and geographic regions in Stem (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. Applications from across the country which are greenlighted by the program officer are almost always funded, though may be subject to tweaks after revision by the division director before the grants directorate allocates the budget. That was before Trump. Now, Doge personnel can veto any study – without explanation, the Guardian has confirmed. 'We are under pressure to only fund proposals that fit the new narrow priorities even if they did not review as well as others,' said one current program officer. 'The NSF's gold standard review process has 100% been compromised.' Research aimed at addressing the unequal impact of the climate crisis and other environmental hazards is particularly vulnerable, according to several sources. New proposals are also being screened for any direct reference or indirect connection to diversity, equity or inclusion (DEI). 'NSF is being asked to make science racist again – which contradicts evidence that shows that diversity of ideas is good for science and good for innovation. We are missing things when only white males do science,' said one program officer. In addition to Doge interfering in new proposals, at least 1,653 active NSF research grants authorized on their merits have so far been abruptly cancelled – abandoned midway through the project, according to Grant Watch, a non-profit tracker of federal science and health research grants canceled under Trump. Multiple NSF scientists who oversee a diverse range of NSF programs described the grant cancellations as 'unprecedented', 'arbitrary' and a 'colossal waste of taxpayer money'. Almost 60% of the projects abandoned are in states which voted for Joe Biden in 2024, Guardian analysis found. Meanwhile more than one in nine cancelled grants – 12% of the total – were at Harvard University, which Trump has particularly targeted since coming to power in January. In addition, studies deemed to be violating Trump's executive orders on DEI and environmental justice – regardless of their scientific merit, potential impact or urgency – are being abruptly terminated at particularly high rates. It's not uncommon for the NSF and other federal research agencies to shift focus to reflect a new administration's priorities. Amid mounting evidence on the crucial role of diversity in innovation and science, Biden priorities included increased effort to tackle inequalities across the Stem workforce – and a commitment to target underserved communities most affected by the climate crisis and environmental harms. Trump's priorities are AI, quantum information science, nuclear, biotech and translational research. 'It's normal that a new administration will emphasize some areas, de-emphasize others, and we would gradually transition to new priorities. During the George W Bush administration there were shenanigans around climate change, but it was nothing like this kind of meddling in the scientific review process. You never just throw proposals in the garbage can,' said one current NSF staffer. 'Our mandate is to advance science and innovation. And we just can't do that if we're not thinking about diversifying the Stem workforce. We don't have enough people or diversity of thought without broadening participation – which is part of the NSF mission mandate,' said a former program officer from the Directorate for Computer and Information Science who recently accepted a buyout. 'It has been soul-sucking to see projects that went through the review process being changed or terminated over and over again,' they added. The Federal Reserve estimates that government-supported research from the NSF and other agencies has had a return on investment of 150% to 300% over the past 75 years, meaning US taxpayers have gotten back between $1.50 and $3 for every dollar invested. Trump's big, beautiful bill calls for a 56% cut to the current $9bn NSF budget, as well as a 73% reduction in staff and fellowships – with graduate students among the hardest hit. Last week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (Hud) announced that it will be moving into the NSF headquarters in Virginia over the course of the next two years. The shock announcement – which did not include any plans on relocating more than 1,800 NSF employees – has triggered speculation that the administration eventually plans to defund the agency entirely. For now, program officers are also being instructed to return research proposals to scientists and institutions 'without review' – regardless of merit and despite having been submitted in response to specific NSF solicitations to address gaps in scientific and engineering knowledge around some of the most pressing concerns in the US. This includes projects that have in fact undergone review, and others which can no longer be processed due to staff and program cuts, according to multiple NSF sources. In one case, a 256-page proposal by scientists at four public universities to use ancient DNA records to better forecast biodiversity loss as the planet warms was apparently archived without consideration. In an email seen by the Guardian, the NSF told Jacquelyn Gill, a paleoecologist and principal investigator (lead scientist) based at the University of Maine, that all proposals submitted to the Biology Integration Institute program were returned without review. A second email said their specific proposal had been 'administratively screened' and the area of proposed study was 'inappropriate for NSF funding'. An estimated 40% of animals and 34% of plants across the US are currently at risk. The proposed study would have used an emerging technology to extract ancient DNA from lake sediments, ice cores and cave deposits to better understand which species fared better or worse when the planet naturally warmed thousands of years ago – in order to help model and protect biodiversity in the face of human-made climate change. Gill told the Guardian the team took great care to avoid any reference to DEI or climate change. The grant would have created much-needed research capacity in the US, which is lagging behind Europe in this field. 'Ancient DNA records allow you to reconstruct entire ecosystems at a very high level. This is a very new and emerging science, and grants like this help catalyze the research and reinvest in US infrastructure and workforce in ways that have huge returns on investments for their local economies. It's an absolute slap in the face that the proposal was returned without review,' Gill said. In another example, two academic institutions chosen to receive prestigious $15m grants for translational research – a Trump priority – after a 30-month cross-agency review process led by the engineering directorate and involving hundreds of people will not be honored. The proposals selected for the award through merit review will be returned without review for being 'inappropriate for NSF funding', the Guardian understands. 'This is complex, very high-impact translation science to achieve sustainability across cities and regions and industries … we're being instructed to put the principal investigators off, but nothing's going to get funded because there's DEI in this program,' said an NSF employee with knowledge of the situation. Meanwhile scores of other proposals approved on merit by program officers are disappearing into a 'black box' – languishing for weeks or months without a decision or explanation, which was leading some to 'self-censor', according to NSF staff. 'It's either NSF staff self-censoring to make sure they don't get into trouble, or it is censorship by somebody inserted in the scientific review process from Doge. Either way it's a political step, and therefore problematic,' said Anne Marie Schmoltner, a program officer in the chemistry division who retired in February after 30 years in the agency. In addition to distributing funds to seasoned researchers, the NSF supports students and up-and-coming scientists and engineers through fellowships, research opportunities and grants. This next generation of talent is being hit particularly hard under Trump, who is attempting to impose sweeping restrictions on visas and travel bans on scores of countries. The proposed 2026 budget includes funding for only 21,400 under- and postgraduate students nationwide – a 75% fall on this year. Like many scientists across the country, Gill, the paleoecologist, is not accepting new graduate students this fall due to funding uncertainty. 'That's a whole generation of young scientists who see no pathway into the field for them. I cannot stress enough how deeply upsetting and demoralizing these cuts are to a community of people who only ever wanted to solve problems and be of use.' Yet the NSF student pipeline provides experts for the oil and gas, mining, chemical, big tech and other industries which support Trump, in addition to academic and government-funded agencies. 'Industry is working on optimizing what they're doing right now, whereas NSF is looking 10, 20 years down the road. The US wants a global, robust economy and for that you need innovation, and for innovation you need the fundamental research funded by the NSF,' said Schmoltner. The NSF declined to comment, referring instead to the agency website last updated in April which states: 'The principles of merit, competition, equal opportunity and excellence are the bedrock of the NSF mission. NSF continues to review all projects using Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts criteria.' The sweeping cuts to the NSF come on top of Trump's dismantling of other key scientific research departments within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Agriculture (USDA) and US Geological Service (USGS). The USGS is the research arm of the Department of Interior. Its scientists help solve real-life problems about hazards, natural resources, water, energy, ecosystems, and the impacts of climate and land-use change for tribal governments, the Bureau of Land Management, fish and wildlife services, and the National Parks Service among other interior agencies. Trump's big, beautiful bill cuts the USGS budget by 39%. This includes slashing the entire budget for the agency's ecosystems mission area (EMA), which leads federal research on species & ecosystems and houses the climate adaptation science centers. EMA scientists figure out how to better protect at-risk species such as bees and wolverines, minimize harmful overgrazing on BLM lands, and prevent invasive carp from reaching the Great Lakes – all vitally important to protect food security in the US as the climate changes. The EMA has already lost 25 to 30% of employees through Doge-approved layoffs and buyouts, and is now facing termination. 'We've already lost a lot of institutional memory and new, up-and-coming leaders. [If Trump's budget is approved], all science in support of managing our public lands and natural resources would be cut,' said one USGS program officer. 'Our economy is driven by natural resources including timber, minerals and food systems, and if we don't manage these in a sustainable way, we will be shooting ourselves in the foot.' Like at the NSF, the USGC's gold standard peer-review system for research approval and oversight is now at the mercy of Doge – in this case Tyler Hasson, the former oil executive given sweeping authority by the interior secretary. According to USGS staff, Hasson's office accepts or rejects proposals based on two paragraphs of information program officers are permitted to submit – without any dialogue or feedback. 'The gold standard scientific review is being interfered with. This is now a political process,' said one USGS scientist. A spokesperson for the interior department said: 'The claim that science is being 'politicized' is categorically false. We reject the narrative that responsible budget reform constitutes an 'assault on science'. On the contrary, we are empowering American innovation by cutting red tape, reducing bureaucracy and ensuring that the next generation of scientists and engineers can focus on real-world solutions – not endless paperwork or politically motivated research agendas.' The USGS, office of management and budget and White House did not respond to requests from comment.
Daily Mail
5 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Startling discovery about The Pill and cancer that's rising in young people
Thousands of women who take the Pill are not at higher risk of potentially deadly liver cancer, research today suggested. Studies have long suggested there may be a link between the combined oral contraceptive pill and the risk of developing tumours in the liver. This is because the birth control pill contains the hormone oestrogen, which scientists believe can stimulate some cancer cells to grow. But now, in one of the largest studies to date involving more than 1.5million British women, researchers discovered there was 'little to no association' between taking the Pill and liver cancer. Experts, who said the study was the 'most comprehensive to date', concluded there was 'no overall link'. Liver cancer now kills 5,800 people in the UK each year compared with 2,200 in the late 1990s, making it the UKs fastest rising killer and responsible for double the deaths of skin cancer. It's currently the eighth most common cause of cancer death in the UK, but by 2040, the charity warns that it could rank sixth. Cancer Research UK figures also suggest rates of the disease have increased by 86 per cent among 25-to-49-year-olds since the 1990s. In the study, researchers analysed data from 23 previous studies as well as the UK biobank health study involving over a million women. They compared women who had ever used a birth control pill with those who never used them and found there were 5,400 liver cancer cases logged across all studies. Writing in the journal The Lancet Oncology, the researchers said there was 'no association with liver cancer risk'. However, they added, there was 'weak evidence that women who used the birth control pill for longer periods had a very slight increased risk of liver cancer (6 per cent) per 5 years of use.' This they said, was likely to due to unmeasured factors such as patients who had Hepatitis B or C infection—a major risk factor for liver cancer. Around one in four liver cancer cases in the UK are also caused by obesity, while a fifth are related to smoking, and one in 14 are due to excessive alcohol, research shows. Latest NHS figures for suggest there were almost 3million prescriptions for the combined pill and more than 4million for the mini pill, which just contains progestogen. Around a quarter of all women aged 15 to 49 are on either the combined or progesterone only pill. The proportion of women taking oral contraceptives has fallen by more than two-thirds, from 420,600 in 2012/13 to 126,400 in 2022/23, according to the NHS data. Around 555,400 women turned to the health service's sexual and reproductive health services in 2022/23 — equivalent to four per cent of 13 to 54-year-olds Taken every day, it works by stopping the ovaries releasing an egg each month. It also thickens the cervical mucus and thinning the womb lining to stop sperm reaching an egg, and attaching itself in the womb. It is over 99 per cent effective with perfect use but if used incorrectly—such as missing a pill or experiencing nausea and diarrhoea while on it—around one in ten women (9 per cent) may get pregnant. Known side effects of the Pill include nausea, breast tenderness, mood swings and headaches. Others claim they pile on pounds while taking the because of increased fluid retention and appetite, yet the NHS says there is no evidence it leads to weight gain. Decades of research has failed to provide any conclusive evidence that this supposed side effect is real. However, rarer side effects include blood clots and a slightly heightened risk of breast and cervical cancer.
Daily Mail
17 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Women get angrier as they age - but they learn to manage it better from midlife, study suggests
Women get angrier as they age but they learn to manage it better from midlife as their 'emotional regulation' improves, a study suggests. Educating women about mood changes and managing the symptoms can have a 'profound effect' on their quality of life, experts say. The frequency with which women feel anger and the intensity of the emotion actually increases over time, the findings show. But they typically learn to calm themselves down and control how they externalise it, becoming less likely to express anger indiscriminately. The same is true of their propensity to react angrily when criticised or treated unfairly and to act aggressively towards other people and objects. Researchers from the University of Washington examined data on more than 500 women aged 35 to 55 years, who provided details of their menstrual cycles and regularly answered questions designed to assess their anger. Analysis revealed that chronologic and reproductive age both have a significant effect on a woman's level of anger and her ability to manage it. Anger was defined as 'antagonism toward someone or something, often accompanied by a propensity to experience and express it indiscriminately'. Writing in Menopause, the journal of the Menopause Society, the study authors said: 'Aging was significantly related to anger, with anger expression indicators decreasing with age, suggesting emotion regulation may occur during midlife.' Studies of anger and its health implications in midlife women date back to 1980 but have predominantly focused on heart disease, blood pressure and depression. Dr Monica Christmas, associate medical director for The Menopause Society, said: 'The mental health side of the menopause transition can have a significant effect on a woman's personal and professional life. 'This aspect of perimenopause has not always been acknowledged and managed. 'It is well recognised that fluctuations in serum hormone concentrations during the postpartum period, as well as monthly fluctuations in reproductive-aged women corresponding with their menstrual cycles and during perimenopause, can result in severe mood swings associated with anger and hostility. 'Educating women about the possibility of mood changes during these vulnerable windows and actively managing symptoms can have a profound effect on overall quality of life and health.' The researchers would like to see further studies of women's anger in the context of everyday life to help inform emotion regulation and anger management strategies and their consequences for midlife and older women.
