/ en-us Â鶹ÒùÔº internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Â鶹ÒùÔºics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. A private lunar lander from Japan crashed while attempting a touchdown Friday, the latest casualty in the commercial rush to the moon. /news/2025-06-private-lunar-lander-japan-falls.html Space Exploration Thu, 05 Jun 2025 16:49:19 EDT news668360952 Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) can "catch" yawns from an android imitating human facial expressions, according to new research from City St George's, University of London. /news/2025-06-chimpanzees-androids.html Plants & Animals Ecology Thu, 05 Jun 2025 12:45:06 EDT news668346304 A private lunar lander from Japan is closing in on the moon, aiming for a touchdown in the unexplored far north with a mini rover. /news/2025-06-private-japanese-lunar-lander-touchdown.html Space Exploration Thu, 05 Jun 2025 04:42:56 EDT news668317366 Researchers from the University of Waterloo have achieved a feat previously thought to be impossible—getting a sphere to roll down a totally vertical surface without applying any external force. /news/2025-06-redefining-physics-ball-vertically.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Soft Matter Mon, 02 Jun 2025 14:11:03 EDT news668092261 Artificial intelligence (AI) is ubiquitous in this era. As a result, human-AI interactions are becoming more frequent and complex, and this trend is expected to accelerate soon. Therefore, scientists have made remarkable efforts to better understand human-AI relationships in terms of trust and companionship. However, these man-machine interactions can possibly also be understood in terms of attachment-related functions and experiences, which have traditionally been used to explain human interpersonal bonds. /news/2025-06-human-ai-relationships-scale-patterns.html Social Sciences Mon, 02 Jun 2025 11:34:04 EDT news668082841 A team of engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has outlined the decade-long development and testing of what was originally known as the Europa Lander prototype—a partially autonomous robot designed to find out if Jupiter's moon Europa harbors life beneath its icy surface. /news/2025-06-shelved-europa-lander-mission-concept.html Space Exploration Astrobiology Mon, 02 Jun 2025 10:19:21 EDT news668078352 A study published in Nature Communications presents a way to create deployable structures that transform from compact folded states into expansive configurations with perfectly smooth surfaces. /news/2025-05-origami-unfold-seamless-surfaces-deployable.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Fri, 30 May 2025 06:50:01 EDT news667732062 Open water swimming can be strangely claustrophobic. Immerse your face in cloudy water and your view might dwindle to a few centimeters. Yet, harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) manage to negotiate the turbid coastal waters in which they reside with ease, detecting their surroundings through various senses, including their dexterous whiskers. /news/2025-05-gaming-reveal-cloudy.html Plants & Animals Ecology Thu, 29 May 2025 18:00:02 EDT news667728091 SpaceX's prototype Starship exploded over the Indian Ocean on Tuesday, capping another bumpy test flight for the rocket central to billionaire Elon Musk's dream of colonizing Mars. /news/2025-05-starship-megarocket-indian-ocean-latest.html Space Exploration Wed, 28 May 2025 04:41:54 EDT news667625477 Marine life plays a pivotal role in Earth's carbon cycle. Phytoplankton at the base of the aquatic food web take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, convert it to organic carbon, and move it around as they become food for other organisms. Much of this carbon eventually returns to the atmosphere, but some ends up sequestered in the deep ocean via a process called carbon export. /news/2025-05-robotic-quantify-carbon-southern-ocean.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 27 May 2025 13:00:07 EDT news667569120 Researchers have developed a machine learning model called DreaMS, which significantly accelerates the analysis of previously unknown molecules. The study is published in Nature Biotechnology. /news/2025-05-unknown-molecules-ai.html Biotechnology Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 27 May 2025 10:00:02 EDT news667557728 Kirigami is a traditional Japanese art form that entails cutting and folding paper to produce complex three-dimensional (3D) structures or objects. Over the past decades, this creative practice has also been applied in the context of physics, engineering, and materials science research to create new materials, devices and even robotic systems. /news/2025-05-intuitive-geometric-method-inverse-kirigami.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Sun, 25 May 2025 09:00:01 EDT news667223147 Throughout its nearly 100-year manufacturing history, the crack resistance of natural rubber—one of the world's most widely used biomaterials—hasn't improved much. Until now. Materials researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have devised a way to produce natural rubber that retains its key properties of stretchiness and durability while greatly improving its ability to resist cracking, even after repeated cycles of use. /news/2025-05-rubber-material-ten-stronger-resistant.html Polymers Thu, 22 May 2025 13:11:41 EDT news667138295 Soft-bodied robots are unlocking a new era of adaptive machines that can safely interact with the human body, squeeze through tight spaces, and propel themselves autonomously. /news/2025-05-pneumatic-soft-robot-mimics-rotating.html Biotechnology Thu, 22 May 2025 09:51:05 EDT news667126258 How do insects perceive mechanical stress? This is a question of interest in many different fields, including comparative morphology, neurobiology and robotics. /news/2025-05-sensation-legs-flies-dont.html Plants & Animals Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 21 May 2025 15:32:29 EDT news667060345 Astrobee is a free-flying robotic system developed by NASA that is made up of three distinct cube-shaped robots. This system was originally designed to help astronauts who are working at the International Space Station (ISS) by automating some of their routine manual tasks. /news/2025-05-astrobee-soft-cargo-source-simulator.html Space Exploration Mon, 19 May 2025 08:00:01 EDT news666624973 Whether diving off docks, cannonballing into lakes or leaping off the high board, there's nothing quite like the joy of jumping into water. /news/2025-05-manu-physics-humongous-splashes-pool.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Soft Matter Fri, 16 May 2025 10:22:04 EDT news666609722 A research team has synthesized a novel red sea star-inspired polyurethane, which can achieve rapid underwater self-healing. The study was published in Macromolecules. /news/2025-05-red-sea-star-polyurethane-enables.html Polymers Materials Science Fri, 16 May 2025 09:48:02 EDT news666607681 Nestled in dark burrows, with a limited sense of vision, mice brush their whiskers against their environment to navigate and to detect objects around them. This behavior, termed whisking, has been extensively studied in the past few decades and has traditionally been viewed as purely an act of touch. /news/2025-05-whisker-generated-encoded-auditory-cortex.html Plants & Animals Molecular & Computational biology Thu, 15 May 2025 10:17:04 EDT news666523021 Researchers have created a new kind of nanoparticle that could make ultrasound-based cancer treatments more effective and safer, while also helping prevent tumors from coming back. /news/2025-05-drug-nanoparticles-precision-safety-ultrasound.html Bio & Medicine Thu, 15 May 2025 01:40:15 EDT news666492005 Researchers at the University of Tokyo and their collaborators have developed a digital laboratory system that fully automates the material synthesis and the structural and physical property evaluation of thin-film samples. /news/2025-05-team-digital-lab-robot-driven.html Analytical Chemistry Materials Science Wed, 14 May 2025 05:00:01 EDT news666272101 In a breakthrough that blends biology and robotics, researchers at the University of Osaka have created a new type of insect cyborg that can navigate autonomously—without wires, surgery, or stress-inducing electrical shocks. The system uses a small ultraviolet (UV) light helmet to steer cockroaches by taking advantage of their natural tendency to avoid bright light, especially in the UV range. This method not only preserves the insect's sensory organs but also maintains consistent control over time. /news/2025-05-driven-cockroach-cyborgs-wires-surgery.html Plants & Animals Biotechnology Tue, 13 May 2025 09:28:16 EDT news666347293 Flamingos standing serenely in a shallow alkaline lake with heads submerged may seem to be placidly feeding, but there's a lot going on under the surface. /news/2025-05-flamingos-tornados-prey.html Plants & Animals Ecology Mon, 12 May 2025 17:30:04 EDT news666289801 An international study featuring scientists from Curtin University's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Space Science and Technology Center offers new insights into the moon's history and provides a better understanding of what lies beneath its cratered surface. /news/2025-05-glass-beads-window-moon-hidden.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 12 May 2025 09:17:02 EDT news666260221 Researchers have developed an innovative dual-receptor T-cell therapy that promises safer and more effective cancer treatments. This study, published in Cell, demonstrates that engineering T-cells to express both a Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) and a T-cell Receptor (TCR) can improve their ability to distinguish between cancerous and healthy tissues—addressing a major challenge in current immunotherapy. /news/2025-05-cells-cars-tcrs-distinguish-cancerous.html Cell & Microbiology Biotechnology Sat, 10 May 2025 05:10:04 EDT news665330629 Researchers at McGill University, in collaboration with Polytechnique Montréal, pioneered a new way to create hydrogels using ultrasound, eliminating the need for toxic chemical initiators. This breakthrough offers a faster, cleaner and more sustainable approach to hydrogel fabrication, and produces hydrogels that are stronger, more flexible and highly resistant to freezing and dehydration. /news/2025-05-ultrasound-safer-greener-hydrogels.html Polymers Materials Science Thu, 08 May 2025 13:20:07 EDT news665928650 A new study uncovers how fine-tuning the interactions between two distinct network-forming species within a soft gel enables programmable control over its structure and mechanical properties. The findings reveal a powerful framework for engineering next-generation soft materials with customizable behaviors, inspired by the complexity of biological tissues. /news/2025-05-programmable-network-gels-interspecies-interactions.html Soft Matter Tue, 06 May 2025 16:56:02 EDT news665769361 Our lungs are fairly susceptible to diseases. Unlike most other organs, the lungs are in direct contact with the outside world. When we breathe in, our lungs can also take in things besides the oxygen we need, including irritants, pollutants, viruses and bacteria which may cause diseases like pneumonia, bronchitis and cancer. /news/2025-05-hard-meds-lungs-breathable-algae.html Bio & Medicine Tue, 06 May 2025 12:52:05 EDT news665754721 Researchers at the University of Tsukuba in Japan have invented a method to manipulate the musical scales of cicadas' chirps by using electrical muscle stimulation (EMS). A hybrid biological-electronic speaker was produced using live cicadas controlled through precise voltage, capable of producing variable sound frequencies. /news/2025-05-exploring-cyborg-cicada-bioacoustic-modulations.html Biotechnology Tue, 06 May 2025 07:20:02 EDT news665678046 The first case of an electric circuit created using a simple marker and a laser beam shows that simple and sustainable materials can generate innovative applications on any surface, such as a coffee cup. /news/2025-04-marker-ink-graphene-based-electric.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Wed, 30 Apr 2025 03:30:02 EDT news665197504