Science
Scientific discoveries and research
Motivated employees get more out-of-role work, even when it costs bonuses
A decade ago, when working as a junior analyst in a Chicago marketing firm, Sangah Bae was winding down her workday, hoping to make a happy hour with her collea...
Superconducting altermagnets could carry spin without energy loss
Researchers have proposed that a newly identified class of magnetic materials could extend the zero-resistance currents of superconductors to electron spins. Pu...
Scientists create wheat-only gel from bran fiber and gluten protein
Scientists in Sweden have for the first time created a fully wheat-based gel made entirely from wheat bran fiber and wheat gluten protein—an advance that could...
Predicting RNA activity expands therapeutic possibilities
With AI, it's now possible for researchers to predict the three-dimensional structures of proteins directly from their amino-acid sequences. But what biologists...
A student volunteer and a mesh suit helped us figure out how mosquitoes reach their targets
Undergraduate Chris Zuo sent me the note "Four minutes is too long" along with photos of countless mosquito bites on his bare skin. This full-body massacre wasn...
Moons orbiting wandering exoplanets could be habitable—with one catch
Provided they host thick, hydrogen-dominated atmospheres, moons orbiting free-floating exoplanets could retain much of the heat generated deep within their inte...
Expert opinion on AI, automation, and the future of work
What would happen if AI becomes capable of performing essentially all economically valuable work? In a wide-ranging Q&A, Yale economist Pascual Restrepo dives i...
Critically endangered monkey gives birth after surgery saves her foot
A critically endangered monkey has given birth just months after pioneering surgery saved her from undergoing an amputation. Masaya, a 15-year-old roloway monke...
Seattle tried to guarantee higher pay for delivery drivers. Here's why it didn't work as intended
If you've ever ordered food through DoorDash, Uber Eats or Instacart, you may have realized the person who delivers it isn't a salaried employee. They're gig wo...
Saturday Citations: Merging brown dwarfs, ancient machine guns, gravitational wave detection
This week, among a lot of other important findings, we learned that emperor cichlid fish have gaze sensitivity and dislike it if you look at them—or especially...
Kimchi-derived probiotic found to promote binding and excretion of intestinal nanoplastics
A lactic acid bacterium isolated from kimchi may help promote the removal of nanoplastics from the body by binding to them in the intestine. Nanoplastics are ul...
Physicists find electronic agents that govern flat band quantum materials
Physicists have directly visualized the fundamental electronic building blocks of flat-band quantum materials, a class of systems in which electron motion is ef...