Stay informed about scientific discoveries, research developments and new findings from around the world.
A new way of measuring how materials interact at the atomic level could help scientists develop better-performing, longer-lasting batteries.
Just as a leaf drifts along with a stream, objects in other moving fluids normally drift along with the flow. That is, unless they exert energy to move against it. Although it may be less intuitive, light waves or photons work similarly. To move against a stream of light, an object or particle, like a photon, must either have an external force acting on it or actively use energy to move upstream.
Science fiction suggests that life on other planets, if it exists, is likely far more advanced than life on Earth. A recent study suggests otherwise.
To better assess the spatial extent of mining facilities and their environmental impact, a research team at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has developed a satellite-based remote sensing tool.
A new study by neuroscientists in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT shows how the brain encodes information throughout the decision-making process to keep options clearly in mind and to ensure that chosen and unchosen options are remembered.The key, the researchers show in the journal iScience, is that the brain convenes ensembles to produce coordinated patterns of electrical activity that distinctly represent and sort options, both during consideration and after choice. “It keeps different neural ensembles, different thoughts, distinct from one another, preventing interference between them,” says senior author Earl K. Miller, Picower Professor in MIT’s Department of Brain...
The crater, named after geologist and lunar surface expert Tom McGetchin, spans more than two football fields wide
Archaeologists have discovered a 3,400-year-old fragment of the world's oldest known peace treaty, the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism has announced. The agreement, known as the Treaty of Kadesh, was signed around 1269 B.C. by Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II and Hittite king Hattusili III. Other parts of the treaty have already been found, but the new fragment was unearthed during an excavation at Hattusha, in north-central Turkey. "We have found traces of peace, thousands of years old, in the soil of Anatolia," Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, Turkey's minister of culture and tourism, said in a Sept. 21 translated statement. The newly discovered cuneiform tablet fragment contains text from a section...
Researchers found the record-breaking Incendiamoeba cascadensis amoeba in Lassen Volcanic National Park, California. (Image credit: Felix Mikus)A newly-discovered amoeba has set the record for the hottest temperature at which complex life can thrive.The amoeba, found in Lassen Volcanic National Park in California, grows and divides at temperatures up to 145 degrees Fahrenheit (63 degrees Celsius) and can survive brief stints in up to 158 F (70 C) environments, a new study finds. Prior to the discovery, no complex cells were known to replicate at temperatures above 140 F (60 C)."I was very surprised," study first author Beryl Rappaport, a microbiologist at Syracuse University in New York, tol...
Engineers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have designed a new type of quantum nanostructure that could enable optical neural networks. This emerging technology has the potential to make artificial intelligence systems, like large language models and image generation, faster and significantly more energy efficient.
When nearby lightning forces officials to delay a big college football game, the backlash from fans can be fierce, especially if the sky over the stadium is still mostly blue.
Scents govern most key events in the lives of mosquitoes, and there is extensive research on their sense of smell. A new study reveals how a young female mosquito shifts from focusing entirely on nectar to seeking only blood. An odor receptor that reacts to camphor was found to play a key role.
For parents whose children have just entered kindergarten or first grade, new fall routines can bring excitement—and some anxiety.
The Van Allen radiation belts are huge, doughnut-shaped regions of highly energetic charged particles trapped by Earth's magnetosphere. These charged particles play a major role in space weather, so studying them is important for predicting and managing risks to satellites, astronauts, power grids and other infrastructure.
Patricia and James Poitras ’63, longtime MIT supporters, have launched a fellowship program for graduate students and postdocs studying major mental illness, expanding their MIT philanthropy to directly support early-career scientists. The commitment establishes 50 two-year fellowships through the Poitras Center for Psychiatric Disorders Research at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Five fellowships will be awarded every year for the next decade, creating a long-term talent pipeline focused specifically on psychiatric disorders.The $10 million gift is the latest in a series of philanthropic investments from the Poitras family to strengthen MIT’s capacity to address the growing bur...
Sheep grazing, rather than honey bees, could be the bigger threat to wild pollinators on Scotland's moorlands, according to a new University of Bristol-led study. The research, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, has found that grazing in spring can remove much of the nectar emerging bumblebees need, while commercial honey bee hives introduced during the summer heather flowering period have a much smaller impact.
Which genes need to be controlled to guide a stem cell toward a desired cell type or modulate an immune cell's inflammatory response? A Korean research team has developed a general-purpose computational framework that identifies the key targets needed to steer a cell toward a desired state with a single temporary intervention, without permanently altering its genes.
During the production of fermented products such as kefir, Parmesan, or mountain cheese, as well as in the production of protein powders, bitter-tasting peptides can form, which impair the taste and thus the acceptability of the products. A research team led by the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich has now developed and successfully tested an AI-based method that can predict the bitterness of peptides. It also makes it possible to design new, bitter-tasting peptides from scratch. This is another important step forward in taste and food research.
Rice bran is a plentiful agricultural byproduct that is often underused, but research from the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station shows it could be a source of biodegradable food packaging with built-in antibacterial properties.
The more astronomers learn about the universe's earliest galaxies, the stranger they seem. Many of their surprising properties may be explained by differences between their massive stars and those in galaxies like our own Milky Way. A new University of Utah-led survey with the Hubble Space Telescope is shedding light on the stellar astrophysics operating in early galaxies.
Kristen Eichensehr. Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer Nation & World Old global order has been ‘ruptured.’ What will new one look like? Law School initiative examines U.S. national security, role of Congress, emergence of AI in bid to prepare future leaders amid seismic shifts Liz Mineo Harvard Staff Writer September 22, 2026 7 min read Early this year, in remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada declared that there had been a “rupture” in the rules-based global system of military, economic, and diplomatic alliances by the West, an arrangement that has helped preserve peace for more than 80 years. Carney’s speech arrived in respon...
An interdisciplinary team of researchers has created an open-source website for learning what different organisms eat and what eats them. The site—called Who Eats Whom—draws on data from a worldwide citizen science platform and serves as both a valuable resource for ecological research and an educational tool to advance public understanding of the global food web.
Google made a major breakthrough in quantum computing. To prevent the results from being misused, the company kept them secret. That backfired
A research team led by Professor Jung-Il Hong of the Department of Physics and Chemistry at DGIST has successfully used current pulses to alter the spin configuration within a ferrimagnetic material, lowering its "compensation temperature"—the temperature at which opposing magnetizations cancel each other out—by up to approximately 110 K.
When is a billiard ball not a billiard ball? When mathematicians get involved and view a popular game as a model computer.