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- The malaria parasite is able to detect changes in its host's environment and respond by increasing the production of sexual forms capable of being transmitted to mosquitoes. A study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) identifies the molecular mechanism underlying this process. The findings, published in Nature Microbiology, answer what has been one of the major unanswered questions in malaria research for decades.
- The electronic properties of materials are typically determined by their structure under normal, undisturbed conditions, when they are in a state known as equilibrium. Intense light beams, however, can temporarily reshape a material's electronic band structure (i.e., the range of energy states available to electrons), potentially giving rise to new electronic behaviors.
- Cells rely on complex signaling networks in which different molecular pathways communicate with one another. Small GTPases act as molecular switches in these networks, controlling diverse cellular processes such as intracellular transport and cell morphogenesis. Although crosstalk between different families of small GTPases is established in animal cells, whether and how such crosstalk occurs in plants has remained largely unknown.
- Researchers at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have released LandScan Mosaic, a next-generation global population distribution dataset that estimates where people are by modeling how buildings are used and occupied throughout the day. Built on the foundation of ORNL's widely used LandScan Global, one of the world's most accurate population distribution datasets, Mosaic's enhancements will improve disaster response, humanitarian assistance, infrastructure planning and national security missions worldwide.
- For decades, an idea has grown in paleontology that, long before scientists began digging up and reconstructing dinosaur bones, the Indigenous San and Basotho in southern Africa noticed them too, incorporating them into songs, myths and immortalizing them on cave walls. But under closer scrutiny, these claims begin to crumble.
- Scientists map the hidden protein network that helps red blood cells adapt to oxygen
- A study initiated by Dr. Dan Theodorescu, a physician-scientist at the University of Arizona Cancer Center, revealed that the loss of the Y chromosome in men's body tissue could pave the way for cancer to develop. According to research recently published in JCI Insights, the loss of the chromosome, which is common in men as they age, creates a preneoplastic field effect, a hidden zone of genetic vulnerability in normal tissue that provides fertile ground for cancer to develop.
- Many of the moons orbiting Saturn, Uranus and Neptune likely conceal oceans of liquid water beneath miles of icy shell. Because life as we know it needs water, these buried oceans rank among the most promising places to search for life beyond Earth.
- Between 2006 and 2017, North Korea conducted six underground nuclear tests at its vast testing site at Mount Mantap in North Hamgyong province. Typically, underground explosions trigger an intense burst of minor earthquakes that die down once testing stops. But geologists have detected far more seismic activity after the final detonation, and it has persisted for years.
- Ancient Chinese authorities used many creative ways to punish people, often with methods designed to mark them for life. One brutal example mentioned repeatedly in historical texts is cutting off a person's nose. However, archaeologists in China have never found skeletal evidence to prove that it occurred. But that may have changed following the discovery of a skeleton of a woman who lived in China about 700 years ago.
- Douglas Seiler painstakingly sourced papyrus and reed pens from Egypt and traditional lampblack ink from Japan, then paid some high school students to inscribe the papyrus with lines from Star Wars and the Bible and a quote from the '60s sci-fi TV show The Outer Limits.
- Seeing a bachelor's thesis published in a scientific journal is relatively uncommon. For three theses linked to the same research group to result in scientific publications within just three months is downright rare. Yet that is exactly what has happened in Elsebeth Schröder's research group at the Division of Quantum Device Physics.
- Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have extended the search for evidence of microscopic black holes produced at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The formation of these tiny, fleeting objects at the LHC represents one way theorists have sought to resolve anomalies in our understanding of the basic structure of spacetime, while the method used to look for them demonstrates a new way of searching for new particles.
- Researchers have engineered a new material that is an extreme thermal insulator, is exceptionally stiff and can be printed as a thin film at large scales. The material has one of the lowest thermal conductivity profiles of any dense, or nonporous, material—approaching the theoretical limit of how good a material can be as a thermal insulator.
- Magnetic reconnection is a process that occurs when the magnetic fields of a conductive plasma quickly rearrange and release massive amounts of stored magnetic energy. It is widely thought to be the underlying mechanism behind cosmic events such as solar flares and substorms in Earth's magnetosphere.
- Each summer, researchers from Hokkaido University returned to the Qaanaaq Ice Cap in northwestern Greenland to measure changes in the ice surface using aluminum poles drilled into the ice. Their 13-year record shows how the ice cap changed from 2012 to 2025.
- CRISPR may be a powerful technology for gene editing, but the system existed in bacteria long before scientists began using it. For billions of years, CRISPR has acted as a natural immune system in bacteria and other microbes, helping defend them against invading viruses. But now, two new studies, published in Science, describe a similar RNA-guided system that originated in the viruses themselves and appears to be a precursor to CRISPR.
- Korean researchers have developed a method to strengthen biodegradable plastics using hemp hurd, an agricultural byproduct. The approach is expected to be applicable to other large-volume agricultural residues, including soybean stalks and rice straw.
- The humble coffee filter has the relatively simple job of letting the coffee through and leaving the grounds behind. But researchers from the ARC Center of Excellence for Carbon Science and Innovation (COE-CSI) are exploring whether a filter operating on the molecular scale can do something much more difficult: separate the caffeine from the coffee itself.
- Molecular gases are a new form of artificial quantum matter. However, when these molecules collide, they are often lost extremely rapidly. Researchers from Radboud University and Columbia University have been able to suppress this collisional loss, paving the way for strongly interacting quantum matter. This new artificial quantum matter allows researchers to study quantum behavior relevant to electrons in real materials. Their results are published in Science.
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