Category: Global News

An international team of astronomers co-led by an IAS scholar has identified what appears to be a universal rule governing one of the most dramatic behaviors of black holes: the production of powerful jets. The researchers found that black holes can launch jets at the same critical stage of their…

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a new way to transform polyethylene, one of the world’s most common plastics, into gasoline- and diesel-like fuels. Polyethylene is widely used in products such as shopping bags and white plastic cutting boards, and large amounts of it…

A new type of brain implant could give scientists a more precise way to study the brain and may eventually contribute to treatments for neurological conditions such as epilepsy. Researchers from DTU, the University of Copenhagen, University College London, and other institutions have developed a long, needle-thin brain electrode equipped…

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has reached another major milestone in space. Mission teams have successfully powered up the Wide Field Instrument, a 300-megapixel infrared camera designed to survey enormous areas of the universe rapidly while still capturing extremely fine detail. Roman’s planet-imaging system, the Coronagraph Instrument, has also…

At some point between the tiny world of particles and atoms and the much larger world we experience every day, quantum behavior appears to fade away. Quantum mechanics allows particles to exist in combinations of possible states, a phenomenon known as superposition. That strange feature inspired Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment…

Calcium and vitamin D supplements are widely taken to support bone health, especially by older adults. But a large review published in The BMJ suggests that, for most older people, these supplements provide little to no meaningful protection against falls or broken bones. Falls are a major health concern as…

Common food preservatives found across the processed food supply may be associated with a greater risk of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, according to research published in the European Heart Journal. The study was led by Dr. Mathilde Touvier, a research director at INSERM (the French National Institute for…

Cats rely heavily on scent to learn about one another, often gathering information from urine and other odor marks left behind in their surroundings. These chemical traces can continue communicating long after the animal that produced them has moved on. That creates a puzzle. Many odor molecules evaporate, break down,…

A longstanding mystery surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls may have a new explanation. Researchers have debated for decades whether the Qumran sect actually followed its unusual 364-day calendar or whether the system existed mainly as a religious and theoretical ideal. A study from Tel Aviv University argues that both possibilities…

Engineers at the University of Toronto have developed a new type of dye-sensitized nanoparticle that can detect chemicals at extremely low concentrations while also telling apart molecules that are nearly identical in shape. The tiny particles produce a light signal after attaching to the chemical they are designed to detect.…

For 10 years, physicist Stephan Schlamminger had been chasing one of the most stubborn numbers in science. Now, after a decade of experiments, corrections, and painstaking analysis, the answer was sitting inside a sealed envelope. He was not entirely sure he wanted to open it. Schlamminger, a physicist at the…

The Black Death is best known for the catastrophic wave of plague that swept through Europe between 1347 and 1353, killing millions of people. But the disease did not vanish once that initial disaster passed. Plague returned again and again for more than four centuries, repeatedly disrupting cities, economies, and…

For more than a century, scientists have tried to reconstruct the biology of Tyrannosaurus rex from bones, teeth, footprints, and other traces left behind more than 60 million years ago. Fossils discovered as far north as Alaska have suggested that T. rex could tolerate cold conditions, adding to evidence that…

Physicists at the University of Oxford have helped demonstrate that one of quantum physics’ strangest phenomena, quantum entanglement, can persist even among some of the heaviest and shortest-lived particles ever produced. The finding, made with CERN’s powerful Large Hadron Collider, has been published in Physical Review Letters. Quantum entanglement occurs…

Tropical cyclones generally need to become vertically organized before they can grow much stronger. That means the storm’s rotating centers at different levels of the atmosphere must line up rather than remain tilted away from one another. Using nearly three decades of observations from NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft, researchers have…

Researchers have identified early molecular warning signs of inflammatory bowel disease that may appear before symptoms and remain active even when patients seem to be doing well. The study, led by WEHI in partnership with the Royal Melbourne Hospital, uncovered a hidden defect in intestinal cells that can make them…

A growing outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo is drawing attention to a broader problem in global health: how to prepare for dangerous diseases that appear only rarely but can still cause deadly outbreaks. In a review article published in the New England Journal…

Drywood termites are remarkably good at disappearing into the very material they destroy. Instead of building obvious nests, they can spend nearly their entire lives hidden inside beams, framing, furniture, and other dry wood, slowly carving out galleries as a colony grows. That hidden existence makes them difficult to find…

Mars’ innermost moon, Phobos, has puzzled planetary scientists for decades. One of the biggest unanswered questions is where it came from. Some researchers think Phobos is an asteroid that was captured by Mars, while others argue that it formed from debris thrown into orbit after a massive object slammed into…

Microorganisms are capable of some extraordinary chemistry. One example is nitrogen fixation, a process that converts nitrogen gas (N2) into a form living organisms can actually use. Nitrogen makes up about 78 percent of Earth’s atmosphere, but plants and animals cannot use it directly because the two nitrogen atoms in…

A tiny aquatic organism made of just one cell can compress its body to one quarter of its original length in under five milliseconds, hundreds of times faster than a person can blink. Scientists have now identified the unusual mechanism behind this remarkable movement. The organism, Spirostomum ambiguum, relies on…

Perfection may not always be the best recipe for stability, especially in complex systems such as electrical grids, ecosystems, and advanced materials. For years, researchers often worked from the assumption that networks should perform more reliably when their individual parts behave as similarly as possible. Real systems, however, rarely look…

More than half a century after scientists first encountered a mysterious marker on human red blood cells, researchers finally traced it to its genetic source. The breakthrough established MAL as a human blood group system and gave doctors a new way to identify the exceptionally rare people whose blood lacks…

Paleontologists have identified the first known evidence of Diplodocus outside North America, a discovery that changes scientists’ understanding of where the iconic dinosaur lived during the Late Jurassic. The sauropod fossils were described by researchers from the Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis in the peer-reviewed Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. The…

Coal ash, red mud, and mine tailings are usually treated as major waste problems. Yet these enormous waste streams also contain valuable materials, including silica, rare earth elements, and other critical minerals. A research team led by Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) has received a $3.3 million award from the National…

Scientists uncover a cellular survival mechanism that helps severely damaged tissue regenerate and may also reveal why some cancers return after treatment. Tissues such as skin, along with the epithelial layers that cover and line many organs, have a remarkable ability to rebuild themselves after extensive damage. Scientists have known…

A routine check of NASA lunar data unexpectedly led to a major discovery. Robert Wagner, a scientist who works with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), was examining a large map of the Moon when something unusual stood out on his computer screen. He noticed an unusually bright patch surrounded by…

People who have both atrial fibrillation and Alzheimer’s disease may experience slower cognitive decline when treated with newer NOAC blood thinners, according to research from Karolinska Institutet published in the European Heart Journal. Atrial fibrillation is a common heart rhythm condition in older adults and also affects many people living…

Memory problems, thinning skin, and declining bone mass may seem like separate consequences of growing older. Yet experiments in mice suggest that changes in a protein deep inside the brain can influence all three. Restoring that protein, called Menin, improved several signs of aging, while a separate treatment with the…

GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic have reshaped treatment for Type 2 diabetes. These drugs can help patients manage blood sugar, lower cardiovascular risk, and, in many cases, lose a substantial amount of weight. But researchers are still trying to determine whether those physical health improvements also extend into other parts…