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Bathing warning issued after 'potential water pollution incident'
People have been advised to not enter the water at Portstewart Strand in County Londonderry as officials investigate a "potential water pollution incident".
The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera) said it was made aware of the incident at the popular beach at 20.18 BST on Tuesday and has issued a temporary advice against bathing notice.
The Northern Ireland Environment Agency's (NIEA) pollution response team and Daera marine staff are now investigating the source of the suspected pollution.
As a precautionary measure on Wednesday, Daera said swimming was not recommended and that dogs must be kept on leads and away from the water.
Cause yet to be confirmed
A spokesperson for Daera said the advice was "intended to protect public health while further information is gathered".
The National Trust, which manages the beach, said officials from Daera and Northern Ireland Water were at the site on Wednesday carrying out investigations.
A spokesperson said the pollution could potentially be linked to food waste or grease entering the sea via the River Bann, but that the cause had not yet been confirmed.
"We are waiting for Daera Bathing Water to carry out sample testing and we will keep the advice against bathing in place until we know that the water is clear," the spokesperson said.
The temporary notice will remain in place while water samples are analysed and investigations continue.
A brief hantavirus update, some good news about death, and more health news from Morning Rounds
When they're being eaten, bean plants release chemicals that draw in parasitic wasps.
How elevators, pizza and card shuffles reveal the surprising math of everyday life
From slow elevators to perfectly split pizza, math quietly explains the quirks of everyday life
By Rachel Feltman , Manon Bischoff , Fonda Mwangi & Alex Sugiura
Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American ’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman.
If you love math, you’re probably already subscribed to Scientific American ’s weekly newsletter Proof Positive . But if you’re under the impression that you don’t love math, Proof Positive may prove you wrong.
Here to give us a taste of some of the surprising and delightful stories you’ll find in Proof Positive is Manon Bischoff. Manon is a theoretical physicist and an editor at Spektrum der Wissenschaft, the German-language sister publication of Scientific American .
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing . By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
Thank you so much for coming on to chat with us today.
Manon Bischoff: Thank you for inviting me.
Feltman: So one of the things that you cover in your newsletter is how math impacts our everyday lives. One recent example is that mathematicians figured out why waiting for the elevator can seem to take forever, which is very relevant to my life—my building has two elevators, and one of them is currently out of commission. [Laughs.] So can you tell us more about how that experiment worked?
Bischoff: Yeah, so you just described it: you press the elevator button, and you’re hoping to go down or up or whatever, and the first elevator that comes, it just goes the wrong direction, right?
Bischoff: And it almost feels personal, so like the building is plotting against you. [Laughs.] I know that feeling. [Laughs.] But actually, it’s not just bad luck or Murphy’s Law; it’s really happening—the building is really plotting against you. [Laughs.…
Edison may not have been the first to record the human voice, new evidence suggests
Could a predecessor to the phonograph have appeared a century earlier?
On December 7, 1877, Thomas Edison walked into the offices of Scientific American in New York City and placed a metal device on a desk. With a turn of a crank, Edison astonished the dozen or so staffers who had gathered around the contraption.
The machine spoke. “Good morning,” it said in Edison’s voice. “How do you do?”
SciAm ’s editors described the demonstration in the December 22, 1877, issue . “There can be no doubt,” they wrote, “but that the inflections are those of nothing else than the human voice.” Accompanying the report was a detailed sketch of Edison’s device, which the inventor called a phonograph .Virtually overnight, the article catapulted Edison to fame and established the phonograph as the first machine to record and reproduce human speech.
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing . By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
On May 15, 2026, at the annual meeting of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections in Memphis, audio historian Patrick Feaster proposed another candidate for the title—a recording machine that would have preceded Edison’s by nearly a century.
Feaster, a tenacious researcher with a photographic mind for everything phonographic, began investigating this possibility more than 20 years earlier, when he came across a German article from the early 1900s surveying mechanical devices that synthesized (but did not record) some of the sounds of human speech. The article mentioned a man identified only by his last name, Müller, who had exhibited some kind of talking machine in the 1780s. Although the article’s author branded Müller’s machine an obvious hoax, Feaster was intrigued.
His occasional investigations over …
<p>Är du missnöjd med temperaturen på kontoret eller i ditt bostadshus? En ny studie visar att komplicerad ”smart building”-teknik inte är det enda svaret på kontor som känns för varma efter lunch eller för kalla på morgonen.</p>
<p>The neurologist Orlando Swayne doesn’t suggest everyone can recover. But he does argue that early, targeted and intense therapy can sometimes bring about life-changing improvements – and we have a moral obligation to provide it</p><p>Claire was in bad shape. She had been brought to the ward on a stretcher and hoisted on to a bed where she lay curled up in a ball. She was unable to speak, her eyes flat and face expressionless. While she could move her right arm a little, her left arm and both legs were immobile.</p><p>Life had changed dramatically for Claire, a mother of three in her late 30s, many months earlier, when she collapsed while on a night out with friends. A weakness in an artery at the base of her brain had ruptured, spilling blood around her frontal lobe. She was taken to hospital, where surgeons removed two side plate-sized pieces of bone from her skull to relieve the pressure on her brain. She spent months in intensive care.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jun/03/orlando-swayne-neurologist-stroke-head-injury-recovery-doctor-interview">Continue reading...</a>
A survey finds that ultra-processed foods are a cross-partisan concern. And yet policy has been slow to follow.
“Much of the rhetoric, imagery, and policy messaging from the Trump administration centers on extreme masculine ideals,” First Opinion author writes.
“The financial side effects of care have become clinical ones,” writes Darshak Sanghavi.
“Public health is going to have to talk about the Amish more and more”: Listen to STAT’s "First Opinion Podcast" on the Amish and health care.
Advocates were already dreading Medicaid's work requirements. New rules are worse than they feared.
While NIH-funded centers weren’t on the front lines of virus responses like the CDC or USAID, some researchers involved in the network said the cuts have damaged relationships with experts…
<p>More than 5,300 years after Ötzi’s death, researchers found genetic material from his gut microbiome and identified yeasts that continue to exist despite the mummy being kept below freezing</p>
<p>1 | Hur kommer det sig att det blev en bok om gran? – Det skulle egentligen bli en bok om de problem med skadegörare …</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://fof.se/artikel/man-tyckte-att-granen-var-ett-ogras-som-trangde-sig-pa/">”Man tyckte att granen var ett ogräs som trängde sig på”</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://fof.se">Forskning & Framsteg</a>.</p>
What next for Upton Heath after charity buys land?
Restoring a section of neglected heathland habitat could take two to three years, a charity has said.
Dorset Wildlife Trust has completed the purchase of 110 acres at Upton Heath, near Poole, after a successful fundraising campaign.
CEO Brian Bleese says the first job has been to clear large amounts of litter that had accumulated and to carry out surveys to assess the health of the habitat.
Other priorities include scrub clearance and re-establishing fire breaks to prevent the spread of wildfires.
Upton Heath is an internationally important area of heathland and home to all six of Britain's native reptiles, including the rare sand lizard and smooth snake.
The 110-acre plot had previously been leased to the trust and was managed as part of the wider nature reserve but the lease was terminated "a few years ago" and the land offered for sale earlier this year with mineral extraction rights.
A community campaign raised more than £100,000 of the £300,000 to £500,000 asking price, allowing the charity to halt the planned auction and bring the land back under its management.
Bleese said: "It's a manmade habitat, created by human intervention over thousands of years.
"If it's left, it tends to scrub over, the heather becomes long and not good for wildlife, sandy patches will scrub over.
"It's also important to manage fire breaks to prevent the spread of wildfires and getting on top of scrub encroachment like pine trees.
"All of that improves the quality of the habitat."
Volunteers have been key to managing the wider heath, cutting gorse and heather in winter and removing pines.
"There's also a big litter problem," said Bleese.
"One of the first things we are doing is getting volunteers to pick up litter. We want to make sure it can be effectively grazed."
The improvements will be a gradual process and the land will remain accessible throughout the process.
"We will be looking at two or three years of consistent managemen…
<p>Understanding whale sounds could help prevent strikes from ships and even aid in search for extraterrestrial life</p><p>If you stand on certain shorelines and listen carefully you might just hear deep rumbling noises. Sharp-eared fishers, lighthouse keepers and sea kayakers have been haunted by these late-night sounds for centuries and now, for the first time, scientists have recorded these thrums and pinpointed them to humpback whales, proving that whales have a far larger vocabulary than previously thought.</p><p>Fred Sharpe from the <a href="https://www.alaskawhalefoundation.org/">Alaska Whale Foundation</a> and his colleagues set up land-based microphones to tune in to the mysterious ocean noises. Tip-offs from Alaskan coastal communities helped to narrow down the best recording locations. Along with the previously documented trumpets, blows and shrieks that humpback whales make, the researchers recorded very low frequency rumbles, a bit like distant thunder, and new sounds including pizzle, howl and hooting noises. The night thrums travelled through the air and could be heard up to 6 miles (10km) away.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/03/haunting-thrums-sea-humpback-whales-specieswatch">Continue reading...</a>
Some of the microbes lingering on the 5300-year-old remains of “Ötzi the Iceman” may still be metabolically active, despite being kept in icy conservation conditions.
Ötzi’s mummified body was discovered in 1991 thawing out of an Alpine glacier close to the border of Austria and Italy. He is estimated to have lived at some point between 3350 and 3120 BC, and in the 35 years since he was found, studies of his remains have revealed a treasure trove of information, including that he was probably dark-skinned and balding , had numerous tattoos and had a wound in his shoulder from an arrow , suggesting he was murdered .
Read more Ancient DNA may rewrite the story of Iceland's earliest settlers
Ancient DNA may rewrite the story of Iceland's earliest settlers
Ötzi is now kept at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy, in conditions designed to mimic some of those inside the glacier where he was found: a temperature of -6°C (21°F) and a relative humidity of 99 per cent.
Frank Maixner at Eurac Research’s Institute for Mummy Studies in Bolzano and his colleagues have analysed the bacteria and fungi found in skin swabs, tissue fragments and internal thawed water samples from the mummified remains taken in 1992, 2010 and 2019 and compared them with soil and ice samples collected from the discovery site in the 1990s.
On Ötzi, they found both ancient and modern-day microbes, some of which may be metabolically active. “We can really distinguish between the Iceman’s endogenous gut bacteria and microbes that joined from the environment as soon as he died,” says Maixner.
Each month, Michael Marshall unearths the latest news and ideas about ancient humans, evolution, archaeology and more.
The team’s metagenomic analysis of internal tissues revealed specialist bacteria that thrive without oxygen inside the mammalian gut, including species of Treponema and Kineothrix . Based on the level of damage to the DNA of these bacteria, which accumulates over time, the…
A senior NIH scientist and his research fellow were charged with smuggling vials of deactivated mpox virus into the country from Africa and lying about it.
The cold-loving yeasts from Ötzi’s remains suggest the Iceman’s microbiome may not be completely frozen in time.
"It’s a reminder of how human activity is changing the natural world in unanticipated ways.”