Women with endometriosis waited an average of 9 years for a diagnosis. A saliva test just changed that

Happy Monday. Today's lead story is about endometriosis, a condition that affects one in ten women of reproductive age and has historically taken an average of nine years to diagnose. The NHS just approved two non-invasive tests that can do it in days.

We also have a Japanese research team that found bacteria in a tree frog's gut that wiped out colorectal cancer tumors in mice with a single dose, a Quebec firm that extracts gold without cyanide and turns arsenic into inert glass, and Britain's first hospital where the patients are houseplants.

Here's your good news.

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—Stephanie S

Endometriosis affects one in ten women of reproductive age. Tissue similar to the womb lining grows in other parts of the body, causing chronic pain. Until now, a definitive diagnosis required laparoscopic surgery under general anesthesia. The average wait from first symptoms to confirmed diagnosis: more than nine years.

Two new tests are changing that. Endotest analyses a saliva sample for microRNAs that indicate whether endometriosis is likely present. EndoSure measures electrical signals in the gut using sensor pads on the abdomen, with results in 45 minutes. Both are now approved by NICE and funded by the NHS.

The patient stories are extraordinary. Ami Robertson, 23, had symptoms at 16 and was told for years it was irritable bowel syndrome. "I started to doubt myself, wondering if it was all in my head." Simran Chavda, 15, had severe pelvic pain since 13. Even her mother, a GP, struggled to get a referral. Ebony Dowdell, 20, had periods lasting up to four months. Her diagnosis took eight years.

"They give us answers much earlier, without the need for invasive surgery, and that means we can start the right treatment sooner," said Dr. Gail Busby of Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. "An earlier diagnosis doesn't just change one person's life, it frees up appointments and surgical slots for everyone waiting." Read the full story.

Professor Eijiro Miyako and his team at Japan's Advanced Institute of Science and Technology screened 45 bacterial strains from the intestines of Japanese tree frogs, fire belly newts, and grass lizards. Nine showed anti-tumor activity. One was extraordinary. A naturally occurring bacterium called Ewingella americana, isolated from a frog's gut, achieved a 100% tumor elimination rate in mice with colorectal cancer using a single intravenous dose.

The bacteria didn't just destroy the tumors directly. It also triggered the animal's immune system to join the fight, producing what the researchers described as "comprehensive tumor destruction." It outperformed both immune checkpoint inhibitors and standard chemotherapy. Its safety profile was equally striking: the bacteria cleared the bloodstream within hours and showed zero colonization of normal organs.

The study, published in Gut Microbes, opens a new approach to cancer treatment built on the unexplored biodiversity of lower vertebrates. "Our study underscores the critical importance of microbial biodiversity in advancing cancer treatment strategies," the authors wrote. The team plans to expand testing to breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, and melanoma. Read the full story.

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Dundee Sustainable Technologies, based in Quebec, has developed two processes that could significantly clean up gold mining. The first, called the CLEVR process, uses sodium hypochlorite and hypobromite to extract gold from ore in just two hours, compared to 36 hours for conventional cyanide leaching, in a fully closed loop where all chemicals are recycled. The second, called GlassLock, takes arsenic, one of mining's most hazardous byproducts, and vitrifies it into a stable, insoluble glass that can be safely removed and processed.

Together the processes eliminate the need for tailings ponds, the manmade lakes that hold toxic mine waste and pose significant environmental risk in extreme weather. The company operates within Canada's ESG framework for private sector accountability, and its processes are already being tested by Freegold Ventures at the Golden Summit project in Alaska, one of the largest undeveloped gold deposits in the Americas.

In those tests, GlassLock recovered 95% of the gold while isolating 98% of the arsenic as inert glass, reducing toxicity from 7% to 0.17%. "The results were extremely positive and encouraging," Freegold wrote in a press release. Read the full story.

Rosanna Costello had always wanted a place where she could drop off a struggling houseplant and have someone who actually knew what they were doing take care of it. When she couldn't find one, she built it. The Hilda Houseplant Hospital in Edinburgh is Britain's first dedicated houseplant care facility, offering consultations, repotting, pest quarantine, liquid drip feeding, and detailed aftercare advice sized to each customer's living space.

Patients arrive for a consultation where Rosanna takes a full history: how long they've had the plant, what they think is wrong, what they want to happen. Pests trigger quarantine. Rootbound plants get repotted. Overgrown ones get trimmed and trained. The most common patient is the monstera, which Rosanna gets mounted on a moss pole so it grows up rather than taking over someone's living room.

"There's an awful lot of feelings and emotions attached to the houseplants that we see," she said. "When they come to collect and get care information, there's so much relief and joy." Rosanna plans to open a second branch and runs workshops for those who want to learn to do it themselves. She believes city dwellers genuinely need their houseplants, and their houseplants genuinely need her. See the photos and read the full story.

🚶 USA: A man who set out to walk the equivalent of Earth's circumference completed the feat in 14 years using 49 pairs of New Balance shoes, covering 24,901 miles entirely on local trails and roads near his home, the distance confirmed by GPS data his daughter shared online where it went viral.

🖼️ UK: A British artist has spent years creating stunningly detailed portraits and landscapes using only typewriter keystrokes, producing intricate works from Xs, slashes, and punctuation marks that, from a distance, are indistinguishable from pencil drawings or photographs.

🌀 USA: A South Florida teenager has built a hurricane preparedness program that has now taught hundreds of students how to stay safe before, during, and after major storms, filling a gap in school curricula in one of the most hurricane-vulnerable regions in the country.

🧱 Global: LEGO has debuted a 12,000-piece Sagrada Família set to mark the simultaneous completion of Antoni Gaudí's Barcelona masterpiece and the 100th anniversary of his death, one of the most complex LEGO builds ever released.

📰 USA: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, one of America's oldest newspapers, has been saved from bankruptcy through a sale to a nonprofit journalism institute, securing its future as an independent local news organization in a city that has covered for more than 200 years.

On July 13, 1985, Bob Geldof pulled off something that had never been attempted: simultaneous benefit concerts on four continents, broadcast live via satellite to an estimated 1.5 to 2 billion viewers. London, Philadelphia, Sydney, and Moscow. Queen, Bowie, McCartney, U2, Madonna, and dozens more. Sixteen hours. $200 million raised for famine relief in Ethiopia and across Africa.

The moment everyone remembers: Freddie Mercury commanding Wembley Stadium with a four-minute improvised vocal workout that music journalists have since called the greatest live rock performance of all time. He had 72,000 people in the palm of his hand within seconds, leading call-and-response sequences that had nothing to do with any song. Entirely spontaneous. Backstage, other artists reportedly said they couldn't follow that. Some didn't try.

Other notable July 13 events:

1919: The R34 airship completed the first transatlantic crossing from west to east, 107 years ago today, arriving in Norfolk after 75 hours. Passengers slept in hammocks along the keel and ate meals cooked on a steel sheet welded to the exhaust pipe. Major Pritchard parachuted ahead of the ship onto Long Island, becoming the first person to reach American soil by air from Europe.

1923: The Hollywood sign was officially dedicated in Los Angeles, 103 years ago today, originally reading "Hollywoodland" and designed by an Englishman named Thomas Fisk Goff as a real estate advertisement.

1939: Frank Sinatra sang on his first commercial record, From the Bottom of My Heart, 87 years ago today, a 78 rpm that sold 8,000 copies.

1960: John F. Kennedy won the Democratic presidential nomination in Los Angeles, 66 years ago today, setting up his historic November victory over Richard Nixon.

— Arthur Ashe

Every day brings amazing advances and uplifting moments that remind us just how wonderful the world can be. Here are five reasons why today is the best time ever to be alive:

🧬 Reading the Epigenome: Scientists can now read the layer of chemical switches that control which genes are turned on or off in each cell, revealing how stress, diet, and experience leave lasting marks on DNA that influence health across a lifetime and potentially across generations.

🌊 The Ocean Is Absorbing More Than We Thought: New satellite measurements have confirmed that the world's oceans are absorbing significantly more CO2 than previously estimated, providing a larger natural climate buffer and reshaping scientific models of how quickly critical thresholds may be approached.

🔬 Cracking Antibiotic Resistance: Scientists have identified the precise molecular mechanism that allows MRSA and other drug-resistant bacteria to survive antibiotics, and are now developing compounds that specifically disrupt it, potentially restoring drugs that resistance had made useless.

🧠 Controlling Brain Circuits With Light: Optogenetics, a technique that makes individual neurons respond to light pulses, now allows researchers to switch specific brain circuits on and off with extraordinary precision, opening new treatments for depression, chronic pain, and movement disorders.

🩸 Cancer Caught in a Blood Test: Liquid biopsies that detect fragments of tumor DNA in the bloodstream can now identify more than 50 cancer types at early stages before symptoms appear, with clinical validation studies showing sensitivity rates above 90% from a single blood draw.

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