San Diego’s Leanne Fan, 18, built a device to simulate microgravity and tested red light on injured flatworms; tissue regeneration sped up by 95.2%, helping her win $80,000

Fan built her own $200 device instead of using NASA’s $50,000 clinostat. (Society for science photo) Leanne Fan, an 18-year-old student from San Diego, has been named a finalist in the 2026 Regeneron Science Talent Search for her research into wound healing in space. Her project looks at whether red light therapy can help wounds […]

In 1958, 58 feral pigs were removed from Clipperton Island, helping a seabird colony grow from 650 to more than 137,000

In 1958, Clipperton Island was a very different place from the huge seabird colony it would later become. The tiny Pacific atoll had once supported thousands of breeding birds, but decades of human occupation had left a heavy mark. Feral pigs, introduced when people settled on the island, had multiplied and were feeding on land […]