Science
Scientific discoveries and research
Overlooked DNA structures help organize the genome
Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered that little-studied DNA structures play a central role in organizing the human genome and controlling gene acti...
Eroding a virtue: AI trains people to expect instant answers, and that's bad news for patience
When I was growing up, teachers would assign research papers that required going to the library, or later, searching for relevant material on the internet. If t...
Teaching AI to design optical surfaces using real-world imperfections
Designing surfaces that precisely control how light behaves at the nanoscale is tricky. Optical Fourier surfaces, which are nanostructured gratings that redistr...
Climate vulnerable residents in Nigeria are creating makeshift adaptation systems
Residents in informal settlements in Lagos—who are among the most vulnerable to climate change—have developed sophisticated, multi-scale climate adaptation syst...
AI paired with tiny optical device corrects distorted light for sharper imaging
Blurry light from lens imperfections is a problem everywhere, from microscopes to telescopes to smartphone cameras. Using a tiny yet carefully engineered optica...
Users trust AI and human fact-checkers equally, but for different reasons
Users tend to trust artificial intelligence (AI)-powered fact-checkers as much as human fact-checkers, but for different reasons, according to a new study led b...
AI-guided catalyst turns CO₂ and waste into fertilizer at industrially relevant rates
Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a computation-guided strategy to produce urea more efficiently from carbon dioxide an...
Newfound velociraptor cousin probably glided on four 'wings' and hunted early birds
A fossil bed in northwestern China is littered with the remains of hundreds of prehistoric birds—including some whose broken bones were crushed into pellets, si...
Climate change and wine grapes: Go, stay or change?
On a hot afternoon in California wine country, the sun can do more than warm a vineyard. It can scorch it. When temperatures climb above 100°F, grape clusters c...
Ultrathin nanotubes reach 1 nanometer, opening path to smaller electronics
Researchers in Japan have created some of the world's smallest semiconducting nanotubes, structures 100,000 times thinner than a human hair. By growing molybden...
JWST 'weighs' dormant black hole 10 billion light-years away
The most distant, nearly invisible dormant black hole has been detected and "weighed" by an international team of astronomers that includes researchers from UCL...
Bumble bees show spontaneous problem-solving, challenging big-brain assumptions
In a new study, bumble bees solve a completely novel object-manipulation task. What makes this behavior especially remarkable is that the bees had never been tr...