Science Daily

1. This emerging treatment could help people avoid knee replacement surgery

   A minimally invasive procedure called genicular artery embolization could offer a new middle ground between conservative treatments and knee replacement for osteoarthritis. By blocking tiny blood vessels associated with inflammation, GAE can significantly reduce pain, with some patients reporting little or no pain afterward. Studies suggest the benefits may last two to four years in people who respond well.

2. Coffee doesn’t have to keep you awake to disrupt your sleep

   Caffeine may make sleep less restorative even when you fall asleep normally and stay in bed for eight hours, with EEG recordings revealing fewer of the slow brain waves associated with deep sleep. Individual sensitivity varies dramatically, meaning even caffeine consumed earlier in the day could affect nighttime recovery for some people.

3. One of America’s largest reservoirs just hit a record low

   Lake Powell has fallen to its lowest level on record after an exceptionally dry and warm winter left the Colorado River Basin with little mountain snow to melt. Lake Mead also reached record lows, raising concerns for a river system that supplies water and power to more than 40 million people. Federal officials have taken emergency steps to stabilize Lake Powell, including sending in water from another reservoir and reducing releases downstream.

4. The end of humanity? What would happen if the Yellowstone supervolcano erupted now

   A Yellowstone super-eruption would begin not with a sudden surprise, but with weeks of increasingly alarming warning signs such as migrating earthquake swarms, rapid ground uplift, changing geysers, and rising volcanic gases. In a worst-case scenario, those signals could culminate in a VEI 8 eruption that blasts ash tens of kilometers into the atmosphere, unleashes deadly pyroclastic flows, buries parts of the western United States in ash, and cripples transportation, electricity, water systems, agriculture, and communications across much of North America.

5. The LHC just ruled out another hiding place for quantum black holes

   Physicists searching through Large Hadron Collider data found no evidence that the machine has been producing microscopic quantum black holes, but the result sharply narrows where such exotic physics could still be hiding. These hypothetical black holes could form if extra spatial dimensions make gravity much stronger at extremely tiny scales, potentially offering clues toward the long-sought theory of quantum gravity.