Science News
Nine generations of virtual dating reveal how fish shape their ideal mates
Fish have "designed" their perfect partners in a new experiment—revealing simple male preferences and more complex female tastes.
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Latest science news, discoveries and scientific developments.
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Revisiting a Young Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton is typically portrayed as a solitary scientist with intense focus who was obsessed with power and deeply egotistical. But a new book by Caltech historians Jed Buchwald and Mordechai Feingold takes a deeper look at Newton's life in the two decades leading up to the 1687 publication of his groundbreaking text, Principia Mathematica, when he was 44. Using newly digitized scans of Newton's early writings, Buchwald and Feingold uncover a portrait of the young polymath as a curious and social scholar whose interests were often fleeting.
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Why monkeys handle conflicts better than we do
Conflicts with our colleagues, loved ones or team members can quickly stifle communication, heighten tensions and undermine relationships. However, a decision or compromise is not always enough to restore cooperation—for a solution to last, we must also repair the bond that will allow people to continue moving forward together.
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Rethinking liquid hydrogen storage with metal-organic frameworks
Liquid hydrogen (LH₂) is attractive for long-distance energy transport because of its high volumetric energy density. But even well-insulated tanks cannot completely prevent heat from entering. As the liquid warms, hydrogen evaporates and pressure builds, leading to boil-off losses during storage and transport.
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How a new textile fabric could triple production in strawberry plants
A new textile used to cover strawberry plants more than tripled fruit yields in tunnel field tests without harming plant health. The technology could also significantly reduce water and pesticide use in strawberry fields.
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Wild tomatoes still hold the flavor we bred away: New map shows breeders where to look
Modern tomatoes are a breeding success story. Generations of selection have made them bigger, firmer, more productive and easier to ship. But that progress came at a cost. Domestication and breeding reduced much of the crop's genetic diversity, and flavor has proven stubbornly hard to breed back in.
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Blockbuster retatrutide trial signals a ‘new high-water mark’ for weight-loss drugs
The experimental weight-loss drug is a triple agonist and the first of its kind to reach a phase 3 clinical trial
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Light-driven nickel catalyst forms chemical bonds using less metal
Pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals, and agrochemicals are produced industrially using a wide range of chemical reactions. These processes need to become more efficient, less expensive, and more sustainable.
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Christian amulets preserved Roman traditions of protection
For centuries, the Romans turned to amulets to protect themselves or their surroundings. Research by Ph.D. candidate Patricia Kret shows that this tradition continued into the early days of Christianity.
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New Irish language tool makes school more accessible for autistic children
A new Irish-language tool developed by researchers at Trinity College Dublin is allowing autistic children from Irish-language communities to participate more fully in school and their communities.
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Molecular simulations reveal how an enzyme's shape guides molecular recognition
Enzymes are often described as molecular machines that recognize and process specific molecules. However, they are not rigid structures. Their shapes can change, affecting how molecules enter, interact with and remain within their active sites.
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Dyed liquid crystals enable light-only control of optical components
A new technique for controlling optical components with light could help usher in a generation of high-efficiency signal-processing technology that could drive futuristic applications such as holographic video.
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Physics-grounded AI framework aims to make predictions about new materials more testable
Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to discover new materials, but conventional data-driven approaches can struggle to explain their predictions, work reliably beyond their training data and remain consistent with physical laws. A new perspective proposes a framework called Physics-Grounded Materials AI (PhysMat AI), which integrates fundamental physical knowledge into the materials discovery process. The research is published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.
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New index links changing ocean food webs to Bermuda's spiny lobster fishery
Spiny lobster larvae spend six to nine months drifting in the open ocean, feeding within the plankton community, before eventually settling into shallow-water habitats such as mangroves, seagrass beds or coral reefs. This means the number of young lobsters reaching Bermuda is strongly influenced by ocean conditions across the wider North Atlantic and Caribbean region.
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LISA to the rescue: Using light to fix cell division
Cell division is a complex process. At the heart of this complexity is a membraneless organelle called the centrosome, which is made up of more than 200 components. It is responsible for clustering mitotic spindles, threadlike structures needed to separate genetic material. It has long remained unclear which parts of the centrosome are necessary and sufficient for spindle assembly.
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Genetic audit of wheat: Researchers determine the actual variability of a gene responsible for bread quality
A team at the University of Córdoba (UCO) has reviewed and updated the catalog of versions of the wheat gene GLU-B1, which is responsible for a protein that makes up gluten. The team has also made a collection of wheat representing the gene's true variability available to the research community.
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Protein signaling cascade helps explain how plants respond to touch
Plants cannot run away when the wind picks up, rain lashes down or a hungry herbivore begins chewing on their leaves. Instead, they must sense their surroundings and adapt. Now, researchers have uncovered an important piece of the puzzle of what happens inside plants when they are exposed to touch, injury or other physical stimuli.
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New device measures curved mirrors' absolute shape to within 2 nanometers without touching them
Researchers at AIST have developed a device that measures the absolute surface profile of curved optical elements with high precision without touching them.
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Canada's 2023 wildfires broke longstanding media caution around climate reporting
Fueled by record-breaking drought and unusually high temperatures, Canada's 2023 wildfire season was the worst in the country's history, with more than 15 million hectares (37 million acres) charred. Smoke blanketed the eastern seaboard, with health alerts keeping people indoors as skies turned an eerie orange.
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AI structure prediction speeds discovery of 'molecular glues' to treat disease
A Baylor College of Medicine-led team has developed a strategy that combines the analysis of thousands of proteins with artificial intelligence to accelerate the discovery of small molecules called molecular glues to treat disease. Their approach, published in Nature Communications, has uncovered a new class of molecular glues that could neutralize harmful proteins linked to blood cancers and autoimmune diseases. The work also shows how AI-based structural modeling can help chemists optimize compounds well before experiments reveal how they work.