Entertainment
Stem Cells Used To Cure Monkey's Vision, Humans Next?
By Matthew Swigonski
| Published
In a major step that could potentially lead to jaw-dropping recoveries in humans affected by conditions such as macular holes, researchers at the Kobe Eye Hospital in Japan have repaired a hole in a monkey’s retina utilizing human stem cells.
In the revolutionary study published in the medical journal, Stem Cell Reports, a team led by Dr. Michiko Mandai took a look at repairing a macular hole in the eye of a Japanese macaque. According to the study, following the placement of a patch comprised of human stem cells onto the macaque’s retina, the animal’s vision greatly improved over the course of its recovery.
A Cure For Macular Holes?
According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, a macular hole is described as a circular opening that forms in your macula, creating a vision that may be blurry, wavy, or even distorted. As the macular hole increases in size, a dark or blind spot appears in a person’s central vision, greatly impacting a person’s quality of life.
For Dr. Mandai and her team of researchers at the Kobe Eye Hospital, their years-long study focused on the development of small versions of retinas derived from human stem cells, aimed at creating a vision-restoring procedure.
In order to test the viability of the human-made retinal organoid sheets, Dr. Mandai and the research team came in contact with another lab that was studying how the eyes and brain process images. However, that secondary lab discovered that one of the macaques was not able to complete a series of vision-based tests that any of the other macaques were able to complete. After a closer inspection, it was determined that the macaque suffered from a macular hole, which greatly impacted its vision and made completing the visual tests too difficult.
Testing The Procedure On Macaques
Seeing an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, the vision-impaired macaque was sent to Dr. Mandai’s laboratory. The research team then developed a retinal sheet derived from humans stem cells and attached the sheet to the macque’s retina, all with hopes of improving the animal’s eyesight. According to the research team’s study, not only was the transplant perfectly safe and relatively low-impact but the monkey’s performance on vision-based tests improved following its recovery.
Despite the success of the transplant of the human stem cells sheet and the restoration of the macque’s improved vision, the procedure still had a minor complication in the form of a “mild rejection” of the retinal organoid sheet. According to Mandai, the macaque’s immune system briefly attacked the transplanted sheet, but that was cleared up with a series of steroid injections that suppressed the immune system’s attack. According to Mandai, “Transplantation of human tissue to a human would have less risk of immune response,” leading to fewer complications she said.
An Alternative To Surgery
Normally, conditions such as macular holes or retinal degeneration are not only debilitating but also difficult to effectively treat, often leading to complications or even partial blindness. In some cases of macular holes, doctors treat a patient by performing a surgery called vitrectomy, where a surgeon removes the vitreous that is pulling on their macula. A gas bubble is then inserted into the eye to help flatten the macular hole and hold it in place while the eye heals.
Following the procedure, the gas bubble in the eye slowly goes away on its own as the patient heals and the hole begins to close, restoring a portion of the patients vision, though results are often dependent on the size of the hole. With the new human stem cell-based procedure, vision treatments may eventually offer less risks to human patients with an increased chance of restored vision.
Source: Stem Cell Reports
Entertainment
Moon phase today: What the Moon will look like on March 1
It’s a new month, and while the Moon may appear totally full, we’re still a couple of days away from this yet. But in the meantime, there’s still lots to spot on its surface.
What is today’s Moon phase?
As of Sunday, March 1, the Moon phase is Waxing Gibbous. According to NASA’s Daily Moon Guide, 94% of the Moon will be lit up tonight.
With just your naked eye, tonight you’ll be able to see the Mares Imbrium and Crisium, as well as the Tycho Crater. If you have binoculars hanging about, dust them off and pull them out to catch a glimpse of the Mares Nectaris and Frigoris, and the Endymion Crater. And proud telescope owners will see all this and more, including the Apollo 15 and 17 landing spots, and the Schiller Crater.
When is the next Full Moon?
The next Full Moon will be on March 3. The last Full Moon was on Feb. 1.
What are Moon phases?
According to NASA, the Moon takes about 29.5 days to orbit the Earth. Over the course of this period, it moves through eight recognisable phases, what we call the lunar cycle. While the same side of the Moon always faces us, the amount of its surface lit by the Sun changes as it continues along its path. The shifts in sunlight create the different appearances we see from Earth, ranging from a fully illuminated Moon to a thin sliver or near darkness. The eight phases are:
New Moon – The Moon is between Earth and the sun, so the side we see is dark (in other words, it’s invisible to the eye).
Mashable Light Speed
Waxing Crescent – A small sliver of light appears on the right side (Northern Hemisphere).
First Quarter – Half of the Moon is lit on the right side. It looks like a half-Moon.
Waxing Gibbous – More than half is lit up, but it’s not quite full yet.
Full Moon – The whole face of the Moon is illuminated and fully visible.
Waning Gibbous – The Moon starts losing light on the right side. (Northern Hemisphere)
Third Quarter (or Last Quarter) – Another half-Moon, but now the left side is lit.
Waning Crescent – A thin sliver of light remains on the left side before going dark again.
Entertainment
Men are paying to have negative posts removed from Tea app
As reported by 404 Media, online service Tea App Green Flags will scrub negative posts from anonymous gossip app Tea and similar online forums where women post about negative experiences they’ve had with men they’ve dated.
According to 404 Media’s interview with Tea App Green Flags’ founder, simply identified as Jay, the company launched two years ago to tackle posts on the many Are We Dating the Same Guy Facebook groups. His focus has turned to Tea in the past year.
“We just want to take down posts about people who are being defamed,” Jay told 404 Media. “And when I say defamed, it means like, ‘this guy has a small penis,’ or ‘this guy smells.’ That doesn’t fit the mission statement of what the Tea app was for, which is to warn women against people who are harmful, who are abusive, who are cheaters.”
Tea App Green Flags’ site claims to have removed over 2,500 posts from the Tea App for over 759 clients. Most of the service’s clients are men, although Jay noted that occasionally the wives and girlfriends of men posted on the app will reach out.
Prospective Tea App Green Flags clients must provide their name, age, location, and photo to the service, as well links to specific posts targeting them. According to Tea App Green Flags’ FAQs, they can only remove posts with direct references to a client. On average, the site says, a Tea App “takedown campaign” will take 21 – 30 days. The lengths of other takedowns depend on the platform.
Price-wise, it costs $1.99 to report one Tea account and up to $79.99 to report 25 of them. The company also offers “24/7 Reputation Monitoring,” which costs $19.99 per month and alerts clients when they appear on Tea or Facebook.
Mashable Trend Report
Jay would not share the details of the takedown process with 404 Media. Tea does have a free form for takedown requests on its website, and says that it will “only reply to takedown requests submitted via the takedown portal.”
Jay emphasized to 404 Media that Tea App Green Flags does not extend its services to people who have been accused of sexual assault multiple times on Tea, or who have been accused by one person using their real name and photo in a Facebook group.
“Sometimes we find along the process that there are pedophiles or people who actually did what they did, and they’re very bad,” Jay told 404 Media. “So we say, ‘we’re not doing this.’ We can’t take a rap for that. We’re ethical. We just want to take down people who are being defamed.”
Tea markets itself as presenting “dating safety tools that protect women.” In July 2025, it was the target of a large-scale cyberattack that exposed thousands of user images including drivers’ licenses, leaving users vulnerable to doxxing and harassment. These images were provided as verification for accounts, although the app itself is otherwise anonymous.
Jay claimed to 404 Media that Tea’s anonymity “causes a cesspool of defamation,” and that he would prefer if women shared their faces, even if they are speaking out against dangerous men who have done them harm.
While Tea is meant to be a women-only app, Tea App Green Flags is proof of men’s infiltration of these online dating spaces. (Tea itself was founded by a man: Sean Cook.)
“I have a Tea app account. I’m a dude,” Jay told 404 Media. “All my reps have Tea app accounts. They’re men.”
Mashable has reached out to Tea for further comment.
Entertainment
NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for February 28, 2026
Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is for people who love golf.
As we’ve shared in previous hints stories, this is a version of the popular New York Times word game that seeks to test the knowledge of sports fans.
Like the original Connections, the game is all about finding the “common threads between words.” And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier — so we’ve served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.
If you just want to be told today’s puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for the latest Connections solution. But if you’d rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.
What is Connections: Sports Edition?
The NYT‘s latest daily word game has launched in association with The Athletic, the New York Times property that provides the publication’s sports coverage. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there’s only one correct answer.
If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake — players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.
Mashable Top Stories
Here’s a hint for today’s Connections: Sports Edition categories
Want a hint about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:
Here are today’s Connections: Sports Edition categories
Need a little extra help? Today’s connections fall into the following categories:
-
Yellow: Golf Equipment
-
Green: Materials in a Baseball
-
Blue: SEC School Locations
-
Purple: First Names of Chicago Bears
Looking for Wordle today? Here’s the answer to today’s Wordle.
Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today’s puzzle before we reveal the solutions.
Drumroll, please!
The solution to today’s Connections: Sports Edition #523 is…
What is the answer to Connections: Sports Edition today?
-
Golf Equipment – CLUB, GLOVE, RANGEFINDER, TEE
-
Materials in a Baseball – CORK, LEATHER, RUBBER, YARN
-
SEC School Locations – ATHENS, AUBURN, LEXINGTON, OXFORD
-
First Names of Chicago Bears – CAIRO, CALEB, LUTHER, ROME
Don’t feel down if you didn’t manage to guess it this time. There will be new sports Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we’ll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.
Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today’s Strands.
If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
Not the day you’re after? Here’s the solution to today’s Connections.
Chicago Fire score twice in stoppage time, blank CF Montreal
Layne Riggs holds on to claim first NASCAR Trucks street race
