Science News
New insect genus and four species named for Taylor Swift and her albums
Taylor Swift is now the namesake of a genus of plant-feeding insects from Australia that were previously unknown to science.
Science News
Latest science news, discoveries and scientific developments.
Science News
End impunity for targeted attacks on schools and universities, urge experts
Scholasticide—deliberate attacks on a society's education system in armed conflict—is a war crime that must be publicly condemned and its perpetrators held to account, insists an editorial published by The BMJ.
Science News
AI ethics problem may lie with organizations, not engineers, study finds
AI engineers often recognize ethical risks associated with the systems they build, but many lack the authority, incentives and organizational support needed to act on them, according to new research from the University of Manchester.
Science News
Natural clay reveals a new way to control ion transport at the angstrom scale
Researchers at the National Graphene Institute have shown that naturally occurring channels within a common clay mineral can respond to pressure, voltage and pH, offering possibilities for controlling the movement of ions through extremely small, confined spaces. The study, published in Advanced Materials, focuses on vermiculite, a naturally abundant layered clay whose structure contains channels only a few angstroms high, providing naturally confined pathways through which ions can move.
Science News
Molecular surface design achieves over 100 million-fold tuning of porous liquid viscosity
Porous liquids combine permanent nanoscale cavities with fluidity, making them promising for applications like carbon dioxide capture, gas separation and other chemical processes. Their viscosity must be tailored to the intended application: Lower-viscosity liquids are easier to pump and circulate while facilitating faster heat and mass transfer, whereas higher-viscosity liquids provide greater structural stability in membrane formation.
Science News
Africa's rocks hold ancient stories. We need better ways to document and protect them
From the Vredefort Dome in South Africa (the world's oldest and largest known meteorite impact structure) to the volcanic lakes of the Great Rift Valley in Kenya, Africa's landscapes hold some of Earth's oldest stories. Morocco's M'Goun UNESCO Global Geopark records more than 200 million years of geological history, while Tanzania's Ngorongoro-Lengai landscape brings together a vast caldera, an active volcano and the fossil record of Olduvai Gorge.
Science News
How adoption of a new crop reshaped land use in Bronze Age Europe
A new study published in Science Advances reveals how Bronze Age communities in Central Europe adapted to changing environmental and social conditions by adopting broomcorn millet, a fast-growing, climate-resilient crop.
Science News
'America's Nobel' prizes go to sleep and hemophilia researchers, and to Michael J. Fox for Parkinson's advocacy
This year's Lasker Awards — coveted prizes for biomedical research that are sometimes called "America's Nobel Prizes" — have gone to scientists behind fundamental discoveries in sleep science and to researchers who developed a groundbreaking treatment for hemophilia.Additionally, a Lasker Award for public service went to actor Michael J. Fox for his advocacy for patients with Parkinson's disease that has helped advance research into the neurodegenerative condition. The prizes, each of which comes with an honorarium of $250,000, will be presented in person Sept. 17 in New York City. The awardees were announced Wednesday (Sept. 9) by the Lasker Foundation, which was established in 1942 by the ...
Science News
From drought to floods in North Africa: What could the super El Niño do next?
Morocco spent most of the last decade drying out. Between 2019 and 2024, the country recorded six consecutive years of below-average rainfall, the longest on record. The 2023–24 hydrological year was the driest in more than six decades, with a national total of just 106.4 mm.
Science News
Molecular antennae make light-activated molecular switches more sensitive
From targeted cancer treatments to self-healing materials and microscopic robots, many emerging technologies depend on molecules that can be controlled with light. Researchers at Tohoku University have now developed a way to make these light-responsive molecules much more sensitive to visible light by using a molecular antenna. The breakthrough gives scientists better control over molecular photoswitches remotely and potentially expands their use in medicine and advanced materials. The findings are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Science News
Beryllium signal identifies stars that have swallowed rocky planets
An international team led by researchers from the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil has developed an innovative method to identify stars that have consumed the planets around them. The technique detects variations in the abundance of beryllium, a relatively rare chemical element, and could open a new window into studying the evolution of planetary systems.
Science News
Chandra uncovers 'hypersoft X-ray sources' that may solve two astrophysical puzzles
Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, scientists have discovered a new class of objects behaving unlike any they have seen before. Astronomers suggest these newly spotted objects in other galaxies may help solve not one, but two long-standing questions in astrophysics.
Science News
If alien civilizations use hyper-efficient computers, they will have a distinct energy signal we can detect
Love it or hate it, artificial intelligence is likely here to stay. Its ravenous need for computational power has overwhelmed chip manufacturers and power companies alike. While our current AI obsession is likely a bubble ready to burst, we won't simply stop using computers. Since their first invention, computers have continued to grow more powerful, and our civilization has grown ever more dependent on them. Computation defines our civilization. Perhaps computational power is what defines any advanced civilization. If that's the case, then the most advanced civilizations in the universe would push computing to its most powerful and efficient state.
Science News
Terbium's elusive plus-4 form emerges under ordinary lab conditions, opening possibilities for rare-earth metals
Chemists in a new study led by the University of Iowa report they have isolated and described in detail an atypical state of the rare-earth metal terbium, an advance that could expand its use in quantum technologies, including computing and advanced sensors. The study, "Structural and spectroscopic characterization of a Tb(IV) polyoxometalate," is published in the journal Nature Communications.
Science News
Cacao genetics could help breeders reduce heavy metal levels in cocoa beans
Cadmium is a naturally occurring, toxic heavy metal found in many soils across Latin America and the Caribbean, where cacao trees are widely cultivated. It makes its way into cocoa seeds, called beans, that are roasted and made into chocolate, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)—but some cacao varieties take up less of the toxic element than others. An international team of researchers, including Penn State scientists, found genetic differences in how two varieties managed cadmium uptake and facilitated the metal's movement throughout the plant.
Science News
How seeds decide whether to wake up in salty soil
Researchers have discovered a system that helps seeds survive when there is too much salt in the soil. The system helps young germinating embryos keep the right balance of sodium and potassium as they begin to grow. Understanding how it works could eventually help scientists develop crops that grow better in salty soils.
Science News
These bacteria can change their diet to survive inside the body
The human body fights staph infections by starving it of essential nutrients. Staph, it turns out, is remarkably good at changing what's on the menu. Staphylococcus aureus—the infamous agent behind MRSA and most staph infections—needs sulfur to build proteins and other materials essential for survival. In a new Michigan State University study, published in the Journal of Bacteriology, researchers found the bacterium can adjust its diet depending on what sources remain available.
Science News
Researchers chart new course for AI-powered biomedical discoveries
University of Missouri researchers are paving the way as artificial intelligence transforms biomedical research. A team from the College of Engineering and collaborators recently published one of the most comprehensive reviews to date of an emerging AI approach for biology known as flow matching. The work, published in Nature Machine Intelligence, provides scientists around the world with a roadmap for applying the technology to accelerate drug discovery, precision medicine and other biomedical advances.
Science News
American women in communities with ample broadband access lose less time waiting for services, reducing time poverty
Drawing on 14 years of data, we examined whether access to broadband internet could improve Americans' use of time and found that a 10% increase in broadband adoption across a community corresponds to a 1.19% reduction in waiting time.
Science News
Europe's forests are still standing, but many are losing the ability to recover
A forest can look intact from the roadside and still have lost much of its capacity to bounce back. That gap between appearance and function is at the center of a new policy brief published by eLTER, the European research infrastructure for long-term ecosystem, critical zone and socio-ecological research.