Top Science News
February 21, 2025
Feb. 21, 2025 — Researchers are blurring the lines between robotics and materials, with a proof-of-concept material-like collective of robots with behaviors inspired by ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — Narcissists feel ostracized more frequently than their less self-absorbed peers, according to researchers. This may stem not only from being shunned due to their personalities but from a tendency to misinterpret ambiguous social signals as ...
Feb. 19, 2025 — A new study led by researchers from Oxford Population Health has shown that a range of environmental factors, including lifestyle (smoking and physical activity), and living conditions, have a ...
Feb. 19, 2025 — From a tiny electric jolt when touching a doorknob to styrofoam peanuts that cling to a mischievous cat's fur -- the well-known and seemingly simple phenomenon of static electricity has puzzled ...
Latest Top Headlines
updated 10:48pm EST
Feb. 21, 2025 — Researchers have applied a visualization technique to depict the brain's activity related to visual perception as geometric patterns. They visualized different shapes as the ever-changing neuronal activity in the temporal and frontal lobes of the brain during object recognition and recalling memories. This achievement promises further extraction of brain activity observed in various aspects of ...
Feb. 21, 2025 — Researchers have discovered a fundamental mechanism that affects the size of the pupil, namely our breathing. The study shows that the pupil is smallest during inhalation and largest during exhalation -- something that could affect our ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — A new study analyzes the disease burden and the risk factors for severity among people who suffer from a condition called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome. Researchers say the condition occurs in people who are long-term regular consumers of cannabis and causes nausea, uncontrollable vomiting and excruciating pain in a cyclical pattern that often leads to repeated trips to the ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — Fetal acetaminophen exposure increases the likelihood that a child will develop attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a new ...
Feb. 21, 2025 — A hybrid microscope allows scientists to simultaneously image the full 3D orientation and position of an ensemble of molecules, such as labeled proteins inside cells. The microscope combines polarized fluorescence technology, a valuable tool for measuring the orientation of molecules, with a dual-view light sheet microscope (diSPIM), which excels ...
Feb. 19, 2025 — Engineers have developed a versatile swimming robot that nimbly navigates cluttered water surfaces. Inspired by marine flatworms, the innovative device offers new possibilities for environmental monitoring and ecological ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — In a leap forward for quantum computing, physicists unveiled an eight-qubit topological quantum processor, the first of its kind. The chip, built as a proof-of-concept for the scientists' design, opens the door to the development of the long-awaited topological quantum ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — Rapid, localized heat management is essential for electronic devices and could have applications ranging from wearable materials to burn treatment. While so-called thermoelectric materials convert temperature differences to electrical voltage and vice versa, their efficiency is often limited, and their production is costly and wasteful. Researchers have now used a 3D printing technique to ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — Research on the vanishing coastlines of Alexandria, Egypt, offers nature-based solutions for protecting coastal cities globally, including those in ...
Feb. 21, 2025 — Sweden's Viking Age population appears to have suffered from severe oral and maxillofacial disease, sinus and ear infections, osteoarthritis, and much more. This is shown in a study in which Viking skulls were examined using modern X-ray ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — A novel system that chases larval zebrafish around an arena with predator robots is enabling scientists to understand how these days-old fish quickly learn in the real ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — A team of researchers has outlined a new approach for better understanding the depths of animal consciousness, a method that may yield new insights into the similarities and differences among living ...
Health News
February 21, 2025
Feb. 12, 2025 — A biohybrid hand which can move objects and do a scissor gesture has been created. The researchers used thin strings of lab-grown muscle tissue bundled into sushilike rolls to give the fingers enough strength to contract. These multiple muscle ...
Feb. 13, 2025 — Who hasn't been there? The big meal is over, you're full, but the craving for sweets remains. Researchers have now discovered that what we call the 'dessert stomach' is rooted in the brain. The same nerve cells that make us feel full after a meal ...
Feb. 5, 2025 — Newly discovered brain cells count each bite before sending the order to cease eating a ...
Feb. 3, 2025 — To get treats, apes eagerly pointed them out to humans who didn't know where they were, a seemingly simple experiment that demonstrated for the first time that apes will communicate unknown information in the name of teamwork. The study also ...
Latest Health Headlines
updated 10:48pm EST
Feb. 21, 2025 — Workplace bullying affects not only the employee's sleep but their partner's too, according to new research published ...
Feb. 21, 2025 — Because almost no existing programs focus specifically on reducing ultra-processed food (UPF) intake, researchers recently designed an intervention that included a variety of tactics to target the uniquely problematic aspects of UPFs. On average, participants successfully reduced their UPF intake by almost ...
Feb. 21, 2025 — Adding engineered human blood vessel-forming cells to islet transplants boosted the survival of the insulin-producing cells and reversed diabetes in a preclinical study. The new approach, which requires further development and testing, could someday enable the much wider use of islet transplants to cure ...
Feb. 21, 2025 — Researchers have pioneered a new catalytic transformation that converts epoxides into fluorinated oxetanes, a coveted but difficult-to-make class of drug molecules that escaped synthetic preparation for years. By unlocking a pathway to these valuable drug scaffolds, this discovery potentially opens the door to new medicines for drug discovery ...
Feb. 21, 2025 — Infection with Zika virus in pregnancy can lead to neurological disorders, fetal abnormalities and fetal death. Until now, how the virus manages to cross the placenta, which nurtures the developing fetus and forms a strong barrier against microbes and chemicals that could harm the fetus, has not been clear. Researchers now report a strategy Zika ...
Feb. 21, 2025 — Researchers have investigated how microbubbles tiny gas bubbles can deliver drugs into cells in a targeted manner using ultrasound. For the first time, they have visualized how tiny cyclic microjets liquid jets generated by microbubbles penetrate the cell membrane enabling the drug ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — Seeking mental health help is a significant step, but that first intake session can often feel more like paperwork than progress, and a significant proportion of people 'drop out' or never return for a second visit, previous research has shown. In a new review investigators confirmed that single-session interventions (SSIs) can significantly improve mental health outcomes in both youth and ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — Human evolution has revolved around food, from identifying and foraging for it to growing and preparing it. Researchers have identified a region in the brain's visual cortex that responds to food and have developed a theoretical framework that could explain the origins of this selectivity. The team outlines how visual and nonvisual signals contribute to the brain's cortical responses when people ...
Feb. 19, 2025 — Research has found that people who strive for dominance, whether in personal or professional life, are more confident in their decision-making but are no more accurate in their choices than those of a lower social ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — A longer paternity leave after the birth of a child can improve the co-parenting relationship between moms and dads in a key way, a new study finds. Researchers found that mothers were less likely to discourage fathers' involvement in parenting if the dads had taken more time off after their child was ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — A little movement could help prevent dementia, even for frail older adults, suggests a new ...
Feb. 19, 2025 — Breast cancer incidence trends in U.S. women under 40 vary by geography and supports incorporating location information with established risk factors into risk prediction, improving the ability to identify groups of younger women at higher risk for early-onset breast ...
Physical/Tech News
February 21, 2025
'Out of Science Fiction': First 3D Observations of an Exoplanet's Atmosphere Reveal a Unique Climate
Feb. 18, 2025 — Astronomers have peered through the atmosphere of a planet beyond the Solar System, mapping its 3D structure for the first time. By combining all four telescope units of the European Southern ...
Feb. 13, 2025 — What if time is not as fixed as we thought? Imagine that instead of flowing in one direction -- from past to future -- time could flow forward or backward due to processes taking place at the quantum ...
Feb. 12, 2025 — Scientists have just detected a neutrino that is thirty times more energetic than any previously detected anywhere in the world. This exceptional discovery opens up new perspectives for understanding extreme energy phenomena in the Universe and the ...
Feb. 10, 2025 — Euclid, the European Space Agency's dark Universe detective, has made an astonishing discovery -- right in our cosmic ...
Latest Physical/Tech Headlines
updated 10:48pm EST
Feb. 21, 2025 — Agricultural fertilizers are critical for feeding the world's population, restoring soil fertility and sustaining crops. Excessive and inefficient use of those resources can present an environmental threat, contaminating waterways and generating greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide. Now, researchers have addressed those challenges with glass fertilizer beads. The beads control nutrient release, ...
Feb. 21, 2025 — Scientists have now mapped the forces acting inside a proton, showing in unprecedented detail how quarks -- the tiny particles within -- respond when hit by high-energy photons. The international team includes experts who are exploring the structure of sub-atomic matter to try to provide further insight into the forces that underpin the natural ...
Feb. 21, 2025 — Perovskite solar cells are highly efficient and low cost in production. However, they still lack stability over the decades under real weather conditions. An international research collaboration has now explored the effects of multiple thermal cycles on microstructures and interactions between different layers of perovskite solar cells. They conclude that thermal stress is the decisive factor in ...
Feb. 21, 2025 — Rubidium could be the next key player in oxide-ion conductors. Researchers have discovered a rare rubidium (Rb)-containing oxide-ion conductor with exceptionally high conductivity. Identified through computational screening and experiments, its superior performance stems from low activation energy and structural features like large free volume and tetrahedral motion. Its stability under various ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — An international research collaboration has overturned the long-standing belief that the atomic nucleus of lead-208 is perfectly spherical. The discovery challenges fundamental assumptions about nuclear structure and has far-reaching implications for our understanding of how the heaviest elements are formed in the ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — Researchers have found that stars in the early universe may have formed from 'fluffy' molecular clouds. Using the ALMA telescope to observe the Small Magellanic Cloud -- whose environment is similar to the early universe -- they observed that about 60% of the observed clouds had the common filamentary structure, while the remaining 40% had a 'fluffy' shape. These results could provide new ...
Feb. 19, 2025 — Within the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument's early data, scientists have uncovered the largest samples ever of intermediate-mass black holes and dwarf galaxies hosting an active black hole, more than tripling the existing census of both. These large statistical samples will allow for more in-depth studies of the dynamics between dwarf galaxy ...
Feb. 18, 2025 — Astrophysicists have observed our central supermassive black hole. They found the accretion disk is constantly emitting flares without periods of rest. Shorter, faint flares and longer, bright flares appear to be generated by separate ...
Feb. 21, 2025 — Groundbreaking study shows machine learning can decode emotions in seven ungulate species. A game-changer for animal welfare? Can artificial intelligence help us understand what animals feel? A pioneering study suggests the answer is yes. Researchers have successfully trained a machine-learning model to distinguish between positive and negative emotions in seven different ungulate species, ...
Feb. 21, 2025 — Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly large language models like GPT-4, has shown impressive performance on reasoning tasks. But does AI truly understand abstract concepts, or is it just mimicking patterns? A new study reveals that while GPT models perform well on some analogy tasks, they fall short when the problems are altered, highlighting key weaknesses in AI's reasoning ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — A research team has unveiled a new artificial intelligence (AI) system that uses satellite imagery to track urban green spaces more accurately than prior methods, critical to ensuring healthy ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — Researchers have developed Deep Nanometry, an analytical technique combining advanced optical equipment with a noise removal algorithm based on unsupervised deep learning. Deep Nanometry can analyze nanoparticles in medical samples at high speed, making it possible to accurately detect even trace amounts of rare particles. This has proven its potential for detecting extracellular vesicles ...
Environment News
February 21, 2025
Feb. 17, 2025 — Animals are not just inhabitants of the natural world -- they are its architects. A new study has revealed how hundreds of species shape the landscapes we depend on, from vast termite mounds visible ...
Feb. 19, 2025 — Scientists have discovered how to turn common minerals into materials that spontaneously remove and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In the lab, the materials pull CO2 from the air thousands of times faster than occurs with natural rock ...
Feb. 19, 2025 — Researchers present a global assessment of ice loss since the beginning of the millennium. In a global comparison, the glaciers in the Alps and Pyrenees are melting the ...
Feb. 18, 2025 — For years, scientific divers at a research station in the Mediterranean Sea had a problem: at some point in every field season, local fish would follow them and steal food intended as experimental rewards. Intriguingly these wild fish appeared to ...
Latest Environment Headlines
updated 10:48pm EST
Feb. 21, 2025 — Using underwater microphones and machine learning (ML), researchers have developed a new method to estimate North Atlantic right whale numbers -- offering a potentially safer and more cost-effective way to monitor this critically endangered ...
Feb. 21, 2025 — Experts say a focus on re-wetting our parched peat would significantly dampen down the UK's fire-driven carbon emissions and help mitigate against climate ...
Feb. 21, 2025 — A recent study has shown that oyster management practices in the Rappahannock River benefit both the health of the oyster reefs as well as the ...
Feb. 21, 2025 — Researchers have developed a fully biobased hair conditioner using lignin gel emulsions, offering a sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative to conventional haircare ...
Feb. 21, 2025 — Scientists outline the urgency to better identify the significant damage sand extraction across the world heaps upon marine ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — One of nature's most disliked creatures may very well unlock a breakthrough in disaster response. A multidisciplinary research team is recreating mosquito antennae to better study their sensitivity to ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — Biologists, using a technique that explores both genes and structural characteristics, have introduced 10 new species of marine sponge. Despite their distinction as one of Earth's oldest lifeforms and the key role they play in sustaining coral reef ecosystems, marine sponges are vastly ...
Feb. 20, 2025 — After a cyber attack or natural disaster, a backup network of decentralized devices -- like residential solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and water heaters -- could restore electricity or relieve stress on the grid, engineers ...
Feb. 14, 2025 — The cool conditions which have allowed ice caps to form on Earth are rare events in the planet's history and require many complex processes working at once, according to new ...
Feb. 13, 2025 — The field of evolution examines how organisms adapt to their environments over generations, but what about the evolution of evolution ...
Feb. 14, 2025 — Humanity may not be extraordinary but rather the natural evolutionary outcome for our planet and likely others, according to a new model for how intelligent life developed on ...
Feb. 11, 2025 — Researchers have uncovered the origins and genetic diversity of the Fulani, one of Africa's largest pastoral populations. The study reveals a complex genetic ancestry with influences from both North and West Africa, shaped by historical migrations that have left a lasting impact on their genetic ...
Society/Education News
February 21, 2025
Jan. 31, 2025 — In India, tigers haven't just survived they're making a comeback. Despite a growing population and increasing pressure on their habitats, the number of wild tigers is rising. The reason? According to a new study, it's a combination of ecological ...
Jan. 15, 2025 — A groundbreaking study finds evidence that land was inherited through the female line in Iron Age Britain, with husbands moving to live with their wife's community. This is believed to be the first time such a system has been documented in European ...
Jan. 13, 2025 — Scientists have mapped the amount of water stored beneath volcanic rocks at the crest of the central Oregon Cascades and found an aquifer many times larger than previously estimated -- at least 81 cubic kilometers. The finding has implications for ...
Dec. 11, 2024 — A new study shows that long-term exposure to air pollution contributes to millions of deaths in India. The research emphasizes the need for stricter air quality regulations in the ...
Latest Society/Education Headlines
updated 10:48pm EST
Feb. 20, 2025 — The whitefin swellshark has been assessed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as Critically Endangered for a number of years due to declines largely attributed to fishing practices. New research suggests it will be forced to move and adapt under the future ocean conditions presently forecast as a result of climate change, ...
Feb. 19, 2025 — The new post-pandemic national hospital occupancy average is 75% -- a full 11 percentage points higher than the pre-pandemic average, largely due to a reduction in staffed hospital beds. This puts the U.S. on track for a severe shortage of hospital beds by 2032 unless action is ...
Feb. 19, 2025 — Scientists across Africa, America, Asia, Australia, and Europe outline for the first time how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can transform the landscape of infectious disease research and improve pandemic ...
Feb. 18, 2025 — A new psychological therapy has been found to reduce rates of violence and aggression among male offenders with antisocial personality disorder ...
Feb. 18, 2025 — New research adds evidence that learning a successful strategy for approaching a task doesn't prevent further exploration, even if it reduces ...
Feb. 13, 2025 — Many Japanese mothers are reluctant to send their children to childcare before the age of three due to the 'Three-Year-Old Myth,' which suggests that healthy development requires a child to stay at home and be raised by their mother. However, a recent study has shown that enrolling a child in kindergarten before they turn three may actually benefit their social, motor, and problem-solving ...
Feb. 7, 2025 — Embedded counseling services are becoming increasingly common in veterinary medical programs, but their effectiveness has not historically been measured. A new study revealed that these programs may not only enhance access to mental health care but also lead to significant reductions in psychological distress among veterinary ...
Feb. 5, 2025 — Students attending schools that ban the use of phones throughout the school day aren't necessarily experiencing better mental health and wellbeing, as the first worldwide study of its kind has found that just banning smartphones is not enough to tackle their negative ...
Feb. 14, 2025 — Companies around the world are underestimating their total greenhouse gas footprints because of inconsistent accounting standards for methane emissions, finds a new ...
Feb. 5, 2025 — A study by economists shows a wide gap between the kinds of math problems kids who work in retail markets do well and the kinds of problems kids in school do ...
Feb. 4, 2025 — Is it better to work in large groups? Smaller ones? With other people who are similar or different? New research offers insight into these questions -- and some of the results are not what you'd ...
Feb. 3, 2025 — A recent study by management scholars underscores the importance of organizations' dynamic capabilities for greener business practices. Analyzing data from 139 manufacturing companies, the research reveals that financial and technological expertise combined with adaptability to regulations and evolving consumer demands, are key to advancing the ...