The four Artemis II astronauts who looped around the moon this week are expected to splash down soon. NASA's grand mission spells a return to human deep-space travel, with renewed interest in building a long-term moon base. [...]
Ahead of the NFL Draft's arrival in Pittsburgh on April 23, a West Virginia University professor is challenging one of football's most aggressive strategies and his data suggests teams are getting it wrong. [...]
Bird flu—specifically H5N1—is no longer just a poultry problem in Asia. What started as a major United States outbreak, first in wildlife, then in poultry, and later in dairy cattle, is raising new concerns about food security, the economy, the health of farm workers, and the potential for future human outbreaks. [...]
Living with friends may quietly be altering your gut bacteria, according to a new study from the University of East Anglia. Research on a colony of tiny island birds reveals they share more of their gut bacteria with the birds they spend the most time with. And the team says the same principle almost certainly applies to humans too. [...]
The Artemis II astronauts conducted a historic lunar flyby, gathered invaluable data and took in unprecedented moon views, but one of the most crucial moments of their 10-day mission is still to come: Friday's splashdown. [...]
While the Artemis II astronauts have been protected from the icy vacuum of space on their journey, their bodies have nonetheless been left exposed to possibly high levels of radiation—a danger of space travel that NASA is anxiously waiting to study. [...]
On Earth, extreme solar activity often appears as beautiful, benign auroras. But venturing beyond the safety of the Earth's magnetic field, one faces the full brunt of a temperamental star that can suddenly erupt with flares and coronal mass ejections. [...]
Materials databases lie at the heart of future data-driven discovery in energy-related fields, say researchers from Tohoku University. In an article published in the journal Precision Chemistry, they have examined how different types of databases, both computational and experimental, work together to support modern artificial intelligence (AI) tools used in materials science. [...]
An analysis of survey data on 77,567 people in 19 European countries, including the U.K., by Raphaël Piters, of Sorbonne University, France, found little change in attitudes to work between 1999 and 2017. The researcher analyzed answers to a series of questions about work asked for the European Values Study survey in 1999, 2008, and 2017. [...]
Generation Z men are less likely to vote for left-wing parties than women, and their political preferences can be linked to their sexist attitudes, a large-scale study has found. Research on 15,122 people in the UK and 23 other European countries found that politics is "increasingly a battle of the sexes, at a time of public concern about Generation Z men's involvement in online manosphere communities." [...]
Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed a method to convert a commonly discarded hydrocarbon polymer into gasoline- and diesel-like fuels. The team has applied for a patent for the discovery, which treats polyethylene—the stuff of white cutting boards and shopping bags—with aluminum chloride-containing molten salts that serve as both solvent and catalyst. The results are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. [...]
As large floods occur more frequently worldwide, many wonder what led to such devastating events. Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, improper land management and forest removal increase flood frequencies and severity. [...]
Daily travel plans and early warnings for extreme weather all rely on traditional numerical weather prediction. However, both traditional numerical weather prediction and AI forecasting large models have long suffered from systematic biases, which compromise forecast accuracy. [...]
Professor Gyu Rie Lee of the Department of Biological Sciences successfully designed artificial proteins that selectively recognize specific compounds using AI through joint research with Professor David Baker. The research, published in the journal Nature Communications, is characterized by using AI to design proteins that recognize specific compounds from scratch (de novo) and implementing them as functional biosensors. [...]
Less than half of parents are confident that their children's school is well prepared if their students become victims of "nudification AI" apps, a survey has found. The survey found that just 47% were confident or very confident that their child's school was ready to respond to AI-generated abuse, which may be perpetrated by other students. [...]
A new IIASA-led study finds that expanding street green space can reduce urban heat stress in cities worldwide, but even ambitious greening efforts are unlikely to offset a significant share of the additional heat expected under climate change. Instead, the research shows that street greenery should be part of a broader portfolio of urban adaptation measures. [...]
From refusing to doff hats in court to resisting hat-snatching highway robbers, England's relationship with hats goes far deeper than fashion, new research shows. [...]
As the global aging population advances and countries face shrinking workforces, a new study focusing on China by IIASA researchers and colleagues from Nanjing University reveals how economic growth can persist despite these changes in age structures. Drawing on detailed data from 336 cities between 2000 and 2020, the research shows that China's long-standing demographic advantage, once powered by a large working-age population, has been steadily overtaken as the primary driver of growth by a new engine: the skills of its workforce. The work is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [...]
Microbial methane leaking from non-producing oil and gas wells is being emitted at rates about 1,000 times higher than previously estimated, according to a new study led by McGill University researchers. "Origins of Subsurface Methane Leaking from Nonproducing Oil and Gas Wells in Canada," by Gianni Micucci and Mary Kang, is published in Environmental Science and Technology. [...]
Quitting tobacco could give a major economic uplift to the incomes of more than 20 million households in India, suggests an economic analysis published in the open access journal BMJ Global Health. [...]
Optical vortices—light beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM)—are characterized by helical wavefronts and phase singularities. While they have been widely studied in recent decades, two fundamental limitations have restricted their broader impact: generating large numbers of vortices simultaneously and achieving high peak power in such configurations. Until now, large vortex arrays have been limited to low-power systems, whereas high-power demonstrations have typically involved only single vortices. [...]
While precision seems critical for science, researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Texas A&M University are embracing uncertainty, using it to fine-tune artificial intelligence (AI)-based molecular design models. The resulting models can generate molecules with better predicted properties than those offered by the original models. The work is featured on the February 2026 cover of Molecular Systems Design & Engineering. [...]
Drawing ever closer to Earth, the Artemis II astronauts tidied up their lunar cruiser for the upcoming "fireball" return and reflected on their historic journey around the moon, describing it as surreal and profound. [...]
Researchers at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center have solved a long-standing mystery of how a model green microalga reorganizes its central metabolism to supercharge growth when given access to both light and a carbon source—a finding with broad implications for developing algae as a sustainable source of renewable fuels, bioproducts, and biomass. Their study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [...]
Research from MIT Sloan School of Management has demonstrated a new way of designing social science experiments that can uncover patterns invisible to common approaches. In their paper titled "Integrative experiments identify how punishment affects welfare in public goods games," published in Science, MIT Sloan associate professor Abdullah Almaatouq and recent MIT Sloan Ph.D. graduate in Information Technology Mohammed Alsobay, alongside Cornell University professor David G. Rand and University of Pennsylvania professor Duncan J. Watts, have shown what becomes possible when researchers move beyond studying factors in isolation. [...]
Every time we flush the toilet, wastewater containing more than tens of thousands of unknown substances, some of which may be toxic to animals and plants, runs into streams and the marine environment. In a study published in Science of The Total Environment, a team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen investigated what happens to antidepressant medication on its journey from our bodies into the wastewater system, and finally into the natural environment. [...]
A research team led by Prof. Sangwon Seo of the Department of Physics and Chemistry at DGIST has developed a catalytic technology that can easily and elaborately assemble key structural frameworks that serve as the scaffold of bioactive compounds. Using an abundantly available and inexpensive nickel (Ni) catalyst, the team has successfully synthesized β-methylene carbonyl derivatives, which form the core framework of many pharmaceuticals, exclusively in a single mirror-image isomer form. [...]
Pennsylvania is the fourth-largest wine producer in the United States, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. The industry supports nearly 11,000 jobs and directly contributes $1.77 billion to the state economy annually. In an effort to produce more and better grapes at a lower cost and with less environmental impact, vineyard growers have increasingly planted grass between rows of vines. These groundcovers root shallowly, but can benefit vineyard soils and reduce the need for herbicide applications. [...]
African swine fever (ASF) is one of the most devastating diseases affecting domestic pigs and wild boars worldwide. Since its introduction into Europe, this deadly virus has spread widely, threatening pig production and causing significant economic losses. Understanding the mechanisms of transmission between domestic pigs and wild boars is essential for developing effective control strategies. However, this has proven to be highly challenging—not only due to the multiple transmission pathways between animals and farms, but also because surveillance data on ASF in wild boar populations remain limited. [...]
On April 10, Artemis II—humanity's first mission to the moon in more than half a century—will draw to a close when the Orion capsule carrying four crew members detaches from its service module. [...]