/ 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. In 2020, haunting images of corroded metal barrels in the deep ocean off Los Angeles leapt into the public consciousness. Initially linked to the toxic pesticide DDT, some barrels were encircled by ghostly halos in the sediment. /news/2025-09-decades-barrels-industrial-impacting-ocean.html Environment Tue, 09 Sep 2025 08:00:01 EDT news676541881 A research team has developed a next-generation display core material with excellent stretchability and superior color reproduction. The team developed a high-performance color-conversion layer that is more flexible and vivid than conventional ones. This layer was successfully applied to the development of a stretchable micro-LED display, drawing significant attention. /news/2025-09-quantum-dot-polymer-linking-enables.html Nanomaterials Mon, 08 Sep 2025 15:14:03 EDT news676563241 LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, has been called the most precise ruler in the world for its ability to measure motions more than 10,000 times smaller than the width of a proton. By making these extremely precise measurements, LIGO, which consists of two facilities—one in Washington and one in Louisiana—can detect undulations in space-time called gravitational waves that roll outward from colliding cosmic bodies such as black holes. /news/2025-09-algorithm-hushes-unwanted-noise-ligo.html Astronomy Thu, 04 Sep 2025 14:00:23 EDT news676195681 Strawberries are delicate and hard to harvest—easily bruised and often hidden under a canopy of leaves. This creates headaches for scientists trying to design robotic harvesters. Now a Washington State University-led team has designed one that combines an artificial-intelligence vision system, soft silicone "fingers," and a fan that gently moves leaves out of the way to get at hidden fruit. /news/2025-09-robotic-harvester-ai-vision-soft.html Biotechnology Agriculture Thu, 04 Sep 2025 09:50:03 EDT news676198201 Researchers have developed a powerful tool capable of scanning thousands of biological samples to detect transfer ribonucleic acid (tRNA) modifications—tiny chemical changes to RNA molecules that help control how cells grow, adapt to stress and respond to diseases such as cancer and antibiotic‑resistant infections. This tool opens up new possibilities for science, health care and industry—from accelerating disease research and enabling more precise diagnostics, to guiding the development of more effective medical treatments for diseases such as cancer and antibiotic‑resistant infections. /news/2025-09-automated-tool-enables-rapid-large.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 03 Sep 2025 16:15:04 EDT news676134901 A team of researchers at the TechMed Center of the University of Twente has transformed real sperm cells into tiny, magnetically controlled microrobots. These sperm bots can now be tracked in real time using X-ray imaging, a breakthrough in medical microrobotics. /news/2025-09-sperm-bots-cells-coated-magnetic.html Bio & Medicine Wed, 03 Sep 2025 13:39:20 EDT news676125555 All living beings, big or small, are formed through the hard work of many different cells. To keep the body ready for any challenge, cells need to be dynamic. Often, this means the same types of cell—for example, red blood cells—look and function differently to one another to work together en masse. /news/2025-08-variation-diverse-cell-muscle-remodeling.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Thu, 28 Aug 2025 14:00:12 EDT news675512822 Hydrogels are soft, water-rich polymeric materials that can swell or shrink in response to environmental stimuli. This ability to change shape makes them valuable in miniaturized devices for flexible electronics, microrobotics, intelligent surfaces, and biomedical applications such as drug delivery. For example, hydrogel pores can be engineered to trap and release tiny drug particles on demand. /news/2025-08-origami-strategy-hydrogel-pores-enables.html Polymers Analytical Chemistry Wed, 27 Aug 2025 13:00:01 EDT news675517920 The Southern Ocean plays an important role in global climate and carbon cycling. Understanding carbon export in this region is critical for modeling Earth's changing climate and evaluating potential ocean-based climate interventions. /news/2025-08-ai-approach-sharpens-picture-carbon.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 27 Aug 2025 08:23:07 EDT news675501781 The way someone walks, talks, smiles, or gestures gives a clue to who they are. Whether through the flick of an eyebrow, the rhythm of our walk, or the tilt of a head, movement speaks volumes. /news/2025-08-movement-signatures-gesture-facial-unique.html Social Sciences Mon, 25 Aug 2025 11:05:04 EDT news675338701 Researchers at North Carolina State University have unveiled Rainbow, a first-of-its-kind multi-robot self-driving laboratory that autonomously discovers high-performance quantum dots—semiconductor nanoparticles critical for next-generation displays, solar cells, LEDs and quantum-engineering technologies. /news/2025-08-rainbow-multi-robot-lab-quantum.html Nanomaterials Mon, 25 Aug 2025 10:13:03 EDT news675335581 These are exciting times to explore the largest unanswered questions in physics thanks to high-tech experiments and very precise data. That's particularly true of dark energy, the name given to the mysterious driver of the universe's accelerating expansion. /news/2025-08-black-holes-universe-dark-energy.html Astronomy Thu, 21 Aug 2025 12:52:40 EDT news674999555 The complex 3D shapes of brains, lungs, eyes, hands, and other vital bodily structures emerge from the way in which flat 2D sheets of cells fold during embryonic development. Now, researchers at Columbia Engineering have developed a novel way to use light to influence an animal's own proteins in order to control folding in live embryos. /news/2025-08-tissue-origami.html Biotechnology Molecular & Computational biology Thu, 21 Aug 2025 09:02:08 EDT news674985716 The ancient Japanese art of paper-folding, or origami, is already inspiring the design of the next generation of space vehicles, but now there's a new family of origami shapes that could make them even more compact and reliable. /news/2025-08-spacecraft-boost-origami-patterns.html Space Exploration Thu, 21 Aug 2025 07:00:01 EDT news674915930 For decades, researchers around the world have searched for alternatives to iridium, an extremely rare, incredibly expensive metal used in the production of clean hydrogen fuels. /news/2025-08-hydrogen-iridium-problem-afternoon-megalibrary.html Analytical Chemistry Materials Science Tue, 19 Aug 2025 13:29:22 EDT news674828952 Solitonic waves—waves that keep their shape and direction of motion for a long time—have intrigued physicists for almost two centuries. In real-world circumstances, these waves eventually die out due to energy loss. A team of UvA physicists have now discovered how a particular type of interaction can be used to create very stable solitons, even in circumstances where energy is not conserved. /news/2025-08-physicists-stable-solitons-energy.html Condensed Matter Tue, 19 Aug 2025 10:33:04 EDT news674818381 For millennia, developing resilient crops relied on pollination by nature or humans—making the process long and often costly. Now, scientists from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology (IGDB) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have reimagined the pollination process by developing a new system that uses gene editing to create flowers that can be easily pollinated by AI-controlled robots working round the clock. /news/2025-08-redesigned-robots-gene-ai-faster.html Biotechnology Agriculture Fri, 15 Aug 2025 10:34:28 EDT news674472860 Farmers might be able to get help tending and harvesting crops using a new sensing technology from Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute (RI). Researchers have invented a tool called SonicBoom that can find crops like apples based on the sound they make. The novel technology, still in the early stages of development, may someday be used by farm robots for tasks like pruning vines or locating ripe apples hidden among the leaves. /news/2025-08-agricultural-sensor-crops-vibrations-alternative.html Biotechnology Agriculture Thu, 14 Aug 2025 16:23:04 EDT news674407382 In the not-too-distant future, the search for signs of life on Mars and the moon could see the next generation of robots exploring a new frontier: subsurface lava tubes. These missions could also help us determine the best locations for establishing human bases. /news/2025-08-robots-team-explore-planetary-lava.html Space Exploration Planetary Sciences Thu, 14 Aug 2025 11:50:01 EDT news674387372 Scrolling through social media, you may have dallied on reels of Leonardo DiCaprio dancing or Tom Cruise crooning, only to realize they're spoofs created with artificial intelligence. Hyper-realistic videos and images like these—also called deepfakes—are notorious for celebrity pranking. But the technology has serious scientific applications, too. In the field of ecology, for example, AI doppelgängers of rare species could improve efforts to understand, monitor and protect them. /news/2025-08-deepfake-whales-key-tool.html Ecology Biotechnology Wed, 13 Aug 2025 15:49:49 EDT news674318977 Weaver ants have solved a problem that has plagued human teams for centuries: individuals contribute less to tasks when more people join in. New research published in Current Biology on 12 August shows individual weaver ants instead get stronger as their group grows. /news/2025-08-weaver-ants-reveal-secrets-superefficient.html Biotechnology Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 12 Aug 2025 11:50:01 EDT news674217811 Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and their collaborators have created a new class of programmable soft materials that can absorb impacts like never before, while also changing shape when heated. /news/2025-08-programmable-soft-material-absorbs-energy.html Polymers Analytical Chemistry Thu, 07 Aug 2025 12:30:22 EDT news673788615 How can a horde of active robots be automatically brought to a standstill? By arresting their dynamics in a self-sustained way. This phenomenon was discovered by physicists at Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf (HHU) and La Sapienza University in Rome. The threshold principle of static friction with the ground plays a decisive role here: it removes the kinetic energy of two robots after a mutual collision so efficiently that they can no longer set themselves in motion. /news/2025-08-friction-cools-threshold-effects-enable.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Soft Matter Wed, 06 Aug 2025 12:10:04 EDT news673700769 MBARI researchers have developed an innovative imaging system that can be deployed at great depths underwater to study the movement of marine life. The team used the system to study deep-sea octopus and shared their findings in the journal Nature. /news/2025-08-high-resolution-imaging-captures-3d.html Plants & Animals Ecology Wed, 06 Aug 2025 11:00:11 EDT news673602841 A robot crab has helped scientists understand how male fiddler crabs compete over females. /news/2025-08-wavy-dave-robot-crab-reveals.html Plants & Animals Biotechnology Tue, 05 Aug 2025 19:10:02 EDT news673515781 Research shows that while connections between innovations speed discovery, they also sharply increase the risk of total system collapse—with the sweet spot for sustainable innovation proving surprisingly narrow. /news/2025-08-scientists-limit-networks-collapse.html Mathematics Economics & Business Tue, 05 Aug 2025 12:41:05 EDT news673616462 Researchers at The University of Manchester's National Graphene Institute have developed a new class of programmable nanofluidic memristors that mimic the memory functions of the human brain, paving the way for next-generation neuromorphic computing. /news/2025-08-programmable-2d-nanochannels-brain-memory.html Bio & Medicine Nanomaterials Mon, 04 Aug 2025 10:00:07 EDT news673518362 Microrobots formed in droplets could enable precision-targeted drug delivery, improving on I.V. drug delivery that sends only 0.7% of the drug to the target tissue, according to a recent study in Science Advances, conducted through simulations at the University of Michigan and experiments at the University of Oxford. /news/2025-07-microrobots-drugs-drug-delivery.html Bio & Medicine Nanomaterials Thu, 31 Jul 2025 15:57:13 EDT news673196227 School of Â鶹ÒùÔºics Associate Professor Elisabetta Matsumoto is unearthing the secrets of the centuries-old practice of knitting through experiments, models, and simulations. Her goal? Leveraging knitting for breakthroughs in advanced manufacturing—including more sustainable textiles, wearable electronics, and soft robotics. /news/2025-07-strength-physics-stiff-fabrics.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Soft Matter Wed, 30 Jul 2025 11:46:04 EDT news673094761 A desert region in northern Mexico sparked the imagination of Prof. Joel Stavans, a physicist who studies the physics of biological processes and is particularly interested in natural bacterial communities. He learned about a unique aquatic environment in the Cuatro Ciénegas Basin—whose name means "four marshes" in Spanish—located in the Mexican state of Coahuila. This area is home to an extraordinary diversity of life forms, including rare microbial communities that thrive in extreme conditions similar to those that existed on Earth during the Precambrian era, some 700 million years ago. /news/2025-07-bacterial-communities-kaleidoscopic-patterns-synchronized.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 30 Jul 2025 10:40:04 EDT news673090801