US Government Lost More Than 10,000 STEM PhDs Last Year
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science.org: Some 10,109 doctoral-trained experts in science and related fields left their jobs last year as President Donald Trump dramatically shrank the overall federal workforce. That exodus was only 3% of the 335,192 federal workers who exited last year but represents 14% of the total number of Ph.D.s in science, technol … ⌘ Read more

Scientists Launch AI DinoTracker App That Identifies Dinosaur Footprints
Scientists have released DinoTracker, a free AI-powered app that identifies dinosaur footprints by analyzing shape patterns rather than relying on potentially flawed historical labels. “When we find a dinosaur footprint, we try to do the Cinderella thing and find the foot that matches the slipper,” said Prof Steve Brusatte, a c … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Releases Prism, a Claude Code-Like App For Scientific Research
OpenAI has launched Prism, a free scientific research app that aims to do for scientific writing what coding agents did for programming. Engadget reports: Prism builds on Crixet, a cloud-based LaTeX platform the company is announcing it acquired today. For the uninitiated, LaTeX is a typesetting system for formatting scientific docume … ⌘ Read more

Doomsday Clock Ticks To 85 Seconds Before Midnight, Its Closest Ever
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on Tuesday set their symbolic Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds before midnight – the closest the timepiece has ever been to the theoretical point of annihilation since scientists created it during the Cold War in 1947.

The clock now stands four seconds nearer than last year’s setting, and this marks th … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI’s Science Chief Says LLMs Aren’t Ready For Novel Discoveries and That’s Fine
OpenAI launched a dedicated team in October called OpenAI for Science, led by vice president Kevin Weil, that aims to make scientists more productive – but Weil admitted in an interview with MIT Technology Review that the LLM cannot yet produce novel discoveries and says that’s not currently the mission.

U … ⌘ Read more

NASA Confident, But Some Critics Wonder if Its Orion Spacecraft is Safe to Fly
“NASA remains confident it has a handle on the problem and the vehicle can bring the crew home safely,” reports CNN.

But “When four astronauts begin a historic trip around the moon as soon as February 6, they’ll climb aboard NASA’s 16.5-foot-wide Orion spacecraft with the understanding that it has a known flaw — on … ⌘ Read more

Smartwatches Help Detect Abnormal Heart Rhythms 4x More Often In Clinical Trial
A clinical trial found that seniors at high stroke risk who wore an Apple Watch were four times more likely to have hidden heart rhythm disorders detected than those receiving standard care. The researchers noted that over half the time, these smartwatch wearers with heart rhythm problems hadn’t shown any symptoms … ⌘ Read more

Study Shows How Earthquake Monitors Can Track Space Junk Through Sonic Booms
A new study shows that earthquake monitoring networks can track falling space debris by detecting the sonic booms produced during atmospheric reentry, sometimes more accurately than radar. The Associated Press reports: Scientists reported Thursday that seismic readings from sonic booms that were generated when a discarde … ⌘ Read more

New Filtration Technology Could Be Gamechanger In Removal of PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals’
Bruce66423 shares a report from the Guardian: New filtration technology developed by Rice University may absorb some Pfas “forever chemicals” at 100 times the rate than previously possible, which could dramatically improve pollution control and speed remediations. Researchers also say they have also found … ⌘ Read more

When Two Years of Academic Work Vanished With a Single Click
Marcel Bucher, a professor of plant sciences at the University of Cologne in Germany, lost two years of carefully structured academic work in an instant when he temporarily disabled ChatGPT’s “data consent” option in August to test whether the AI tool’s functions would still work without providing OpenAI his data. All his chats were permanently delete … ⌘ Read more

US Formally Withdraws From WHO
The United States formally withdrew from the World Health Organization on Thursday, making good on an executive order that President Trump issued on his first day in office pledging to leave the international organization that coordinates global responses to public health threats. The New York Times: While the United States is walking away from the organization, a senior official with the Department of Health … ⌘ Read more

‘Active’ Sitting Is Better For Brain Health
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: A systematic review of 85 studies has now found good reason to differentiate between ‘active’ sitting, like playing cards or reading, and ‘passive’ sitting, like watching TV. […] “Total sitting time has been shown to be related to brain health; however, sitting is often treated as a single entity, without considering the specific … ⌘ Read more

AI Boosts Research Careers But Flattens Scientific Discovery
Ancient Slashdot reader erice shares the findings from a recent study showing that while AI helped researchers publish more often and boosted their careers, the resulting papers were, on average, less useful. “You have this conflict between individual incentives and science as a whole,” says James Evans, a sociologist at the University of Chicago who … ⌘ Read more

South Korea Launches Landmark Laws To Regulate AI
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Korea Herald: South Korea will begin enforcing its Artificial Intelligence Act on Thursday, becoming the first country to formally establish safety requirements for high-performance, or so-called frontier, AI systems – a move that sets the country apart in the global regulatory landscape. According to the Ministry of Science and IC … ⌘ Read more

NASA Eyes Popular PC Hardware Performance Tool for Its Flight Simulators
NASA Langley has initiated the U.S. government software approval process to install CapFrameX, a benchmarking tool popular among PC gaming enthusiasts, on its cockpit simulators used to train test pilots. The space agency reached out to CapFrameX, not the other way around, according to an X post from the company.

NASA builds cu … ⌘ Read more

Moderna Curbing Investments in Vaccine Trials Due To US Backlash, CEO Says
An anonymous reader shares a report: Moderna does not plan to invest in new late-stage vaccine trials because of growing opposition to immunizations from U.S. officials, CEO Stephane Bancel said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday. “You cannot make a return on investment if you don’t have access to the U.S. market, … ⌘ Read more

Weight-Loss Drugs Could Save US Airlines $580 Million Per Year
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Weight-loss drugs like Ozempic have transformed millions of lives with easily administered treatments and quick results. Now it turns out the dropped pounds may have a surprising perk for airlines, too: lower fuel costs, as slimmer passengers lighten their aircraft’s loads.

According to … ⌘ Read more

Ozempic is Reshaping the Fast Food Industry
New research from Cornell University has tracked how households change their spending after someone starts taking GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy, and the numbers are material enough to explain why food industry earnings calls keep blaming everything except the obvious culprit.

The study analyzed transaction data from 150,000 households linked to survey responses on medicati … ⌘ Read more

HHS Announces New Study of Cellphone Radiation and Health
An anonymous reader quotes a report from U.S. News & World Report: U.S. health officials plan a new study investigating whether radiation from cellphones may affect human health. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said the research will examine electromagnetic radiation and possible gaps in current science. The initiati … ⌘ Read more

He Went To Prison for Gene-Editing Babies. Now He’s Planning To Do It Again
He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist who served three years in prison after creating the world’s first gene-edited babies in 2018, is now preparing for another attempt at germline editing – this time to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. In an interview, He said he has established an independent lab in south Beijing and raised $7 m … ⌘ Read more

The Fastest Human Spaceflight Mission In History Crawls Closer To Liftoff
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Preparations for the first human spaceflight to the Moon in more than 50 years took a big step forward this weekend with the rollout of the Artemis II rocket to its launch pad. The rocket reached a top speed of just 1 mph on the four-mile, 12-hour journey from the Vehicle … ⌘ Read more

The World’s Longest-Running Lab Experiment Is Almost 100 Years Old
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: It all started in 1927, when physicist Thomas Parnell at the University of Queensland in Australia filled a closed funnel with the world’s thickest known fluid: pitch, a derivative of tar that was once used to seal ships against the seas. Three years later, in 1930, Parnell cut the funne … ⌘ Read more

Is the Possibility of Conscious AI a Dangerous Myth?
This week Noema magazine published a 7,000-word exploration of our modern “Mythology Of Conscious AI” written by a neuroscience professor who directs the University of Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science:
The very idea of conscious AI rests on the assumption that consciousness is a matter of computation. More specifically, that implementing the right kind of computation, … ⌘ Read more

EHT Astronomers Will Film Swirling of a Supermassive Black Hole for the First Time
“Astronomers are preparing to capture a movie of a supermassive black hole in action for the first time,” reports the Guardian:

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) will track the colossal black hole at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy throughout March and April with the aim of capturing footage of the swirli … ⌘ Read more

SpaceX Launches New NASA Telescope to Help JWST Study Exoplanets
Last week a University of Arizona astronomy professor “watched anxiously…as an awe-inspiring SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried NASA’s new exoplanet telescope, Pandora, into orbit.”

In 2018 NASA had approached Daniel Apai to help build the telescope, which he says will “shatter a barrier — to understand and remove a source of noise in the data … ⌘ Read more

Astronomers Finally Explain How Molecules From Earth’s Atmosphere Keep Winding Up On the Moon
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:

Particles from Earth’s atmosphere have been carried into space by solar wind and have been landing on the moon for billions of years, mixing into the lunar soil, according to a new study [published in the journal Nature Communications Ea … ⌘ Read more

China Builds ‘Hypergravity’ Machine 2,000X Stronger Than Earth
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this report from Futurism:

China has unveiled an extremely powerful “hypergravity machine” that can generate forces almost two thousand times stronger than Earth’s regular gravity.

The futuristic-looking machine, called CHIEF1900, was constructed at China’s Centrifugal Hypergravity and Interdisciplinary Exper … ⌘ Read more

Could We Provide Better Cellphone Service With Fewer, Bigger Satellites?
European satellite operator Eutelsat “plans to launch 440 Airbus-built LEO satellites in the coming years to replenish and expand its constellation,” Reuters reported Friday. And last week America’s Federal Communications Commission approved SpaceX’s request to deploy another 7,500 Starlink satellites, while Starlink “projects it … ⌘ Read more

How Much Do AI Models Resemble a Brain?
At the AI safety site Foom, science journalist Mordechai Rorvig explores a paper presented at November’s Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing conference:

[R]esearchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Georgia Tech revisited earlier findings that showed that language models, the engines of commercial AI chatbots, sh … ⌘ Read more

2026’s Breakthrough Technologies? MIT Technology Review Chooses Sodium-ion Batteries, Commercial Space Stations
As 2026 begins, MIT Technology Review publishes “educated guesses” on emerging technologies that will define the future, advances “we think will drive progress or incite the most change — for better or worse — in the years ahead.”

This year’s list incl … ⌘ Read more

NASA Livestreams the Rocket That Will Carry Four Astronauts Around the Moon
“A mega rocket set to take astronauts around the Moon for the first time in decades is being taken to its launch pad,” the BBC reported this morning.

NASA is livestreaming their move of the 11-million-pound “stack” — which includes the Artemis II Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft secured to it, al … ⌘ Read more

Le 10ème Homme – Dossier du mois : la génomique
Imaginez un instant que vous déteniez le manuel d’instruction de votre propre vie. Un code secret, logé au cœur de chacune de vos cellules, qui dicte non seulement votre passé, mais aussi votre futur de santé et de résilience. Ce code, c’est votre génome. Longtemps restée le domaine réservé de la science-fiction, la génomique est […] ⌘ Read more

Pesticides May Drastically Shorten Fish Lifespans, Study Finds
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Even low levels of common agricultural pesticides can stunt the long-term lifespan of fish, according to research led by Jason Rohr, a biologist at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Signs of aging accelerated when fish were exposed to the chemicals, according to the study, published in Sc … ⌘ Read more

Microplastics From Washing Clothes Could Be Hurting Your Tomatoes
A new study from Cornell and University of Toronto researchers has found that polyester microfibers shed from synthetic clothing during laundry can interfere with cherry tomato plant development [non-paywalled source] when these particles accumulate in agricultural soil. Plants grown in contaminated soil were 11% less likely to emerge, gre … ⌘ Read more

PhD Students’ Taste For Risk Mirrors Their Supervisors’
A researchers’ propensity for risky projects is passed down to their doctoral students – and stays with trainees after they leave the laboratory, according to an analysis of thousands of current and former PhD students and their mentors. From a report: Science involves taking risks, and some of the most impactful discoveries require taking big bets. However, scient … ⌘ Read more

Astronauts Splash Down To Earth After Medical Evacuation From ISS
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Four astronauts evacuated from the International Space Station (ISS) have landed back on Earth after their stay in space was cut short by a month due to a “serious” medical issue. The crew’s captain, Nasa astronaut Mike Fincke, exited the spacecraft first, smiling and wobbling slightly on his … ⌘ Read more

Many People Who Come Off GLP-1 Drugs Regain Weight Within 2 Years, Review Suggests
Many people who stop using weight loss drugs will return to their previous weight within two years, a new review of existing research has found. CNN adds: This rate of weight regain is significantly faster than that seen in those who have lost weight by changing other lifestyle factors, such as diet and exerc … ⌘ Read more

AI Models Are Starting To Crack High-Level Math Problems
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Over the weekend, Neel Somani, who is a software engineer, former quant researcher, and a startup founder, was testing the math skills of OpenAI’s new model when he made an unexpected discovery. After pasting the problem into ChatGPT and letting it think for 15 minutes, he came back to a full solution. He ev … ⌘ Read more

The Swedish Start-Up Aiming To Conquer America’s Full-Body-Scan Craze
An anonymous reader quotes a report from DealBook: Fifteen years ago, Daniel Ek broke into America’s digital-content wars with his streaming music start-up, Spotify, which has turned into a publicly traded company with a $110 billion market value. Now he and his business partner, the Swedish entrepreneur Hjalmar Nilsonne, aim to crack … ⌘ Read more

NASA Acknowledges Record Heat But Avoids Referencing Climate Change
An anonymous reader shares a report: Global temperatures soared in 2025, but a NASA statement published Wednesday alongside its latest benchmark annual report makes no reference to climate change, in line with President Donald Trump’s push to deny the reality of planetary heating as a result of human activities.

That marks a sharp break … ⌘ Read more

NASA, Department of Energy To Develop Lunar Surface Reactor By 2030
NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy plan to deploy a nuclear fission reactor on the Moon by 2030 to provide continuous, long-duration power for lunar bases, science missions, and future Mars exploration. space & defense reports: NASA said fission surface power will provide a critical capability for long-duration missions by delivering … ⌘ Read more

Doubt Cast On Discovery of Microplastics Throughout Human Body
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: High-profile studies reporting the presence of microplastics throughout the human body have been thrown into doubt by scientists who say the discoveries are probably the result of contamination and false positives. One chemist called the concerns “a bombshell.” Studies claiming to have revealed … ⌘ Read more

You Can Now Reserve a Hotel Room On the Moon For $250,000
A newly founded startup called GRU Space is taking deposits of up to $1 million to eventually build inflatable hotels on the Moon. The bet is that space needs destinations, not just rockets, even if the first customers are essentially early adopters of sci-fi optimism. Ars Technica reports: It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? After all, GRU Space had, as of late Dec … ⌘ Read more

China is Geoengineering Deserts With Blue-Green Algae
An anonymous reader shares a report: Deserts are hard to reclaim because plants cannot survive on shifting sand, but scientists in northwest China are changing that – by dropping vast amounts of blue-green algae onto the dry terrain. These specially selected strains of cyanobacteria can survive extreme heat and drought for long periods, according to China Science Daily on … ⌘ Read more

Revolutionary Eye Injection Saved My Sight, Says First-Ever Patient
Doctors say they have achieved the previously impossible – restoring sight and preventing blindness in people with a rare but dangerous eye conditon called hypotony. From a report: Moorfields hospital in London is the world’s first dedicated clinic for the disorder and seven out of eight patients given the pioneering treatment have respon … ⌘ Read more

Exercise is as Effective as Medication in Treating Depression, Study Finds
A major new review by the Cochrane collaboration – an independent network of researchers – evaluated 73 randomized controlled trials involving about 5,000 people with depression and found that exercise matched the effectiveness of both pharmacological treatments and psychological therapies.

The biological mechanisms overl … ⌘ Read more

How Many Years Left Until the Hubble Space Telescope Reenters Earth’s Atmosphere?
“The clock is ticking” on the Hubble Space Telescope,
writes the space news site Daily Galaxy, citing estimates from the unofficial “Hubble Reentry Tracker” site (which uses orbital data from the site space-track.org, created by tech integrator SAIC):

While Hubble was initially launched into low Earth orbit at … ⌘ Read more

Nature-Inspired Computers Are Shockingly Good At Math
An R&D lab under America’s Energy Department annnounced this week that “Neuromorphic computers, inspired by the architecture of the human brain, are proving surprisingly adept at solving complex mathematical problems that underpin scientific and engineering challenges.”

Phys.org publishes the announcement from Sandia National Lab:

In a paper published in Nature M … ⌘ Read more

China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ Breaks Nuclear Fusion Limit Thought to Be Impossible
“Scientists in China have made a breakthrough with fusion energy that could finally overcome one of the most stubborn barriers to realising the next-generation energy source,” reports the Independent:

A team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said its experimental nuclear reactor, dubbed the ‘artificial Sun’, a … ⌘ Read more

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Why Wrong Answers Matter #science href=”https://we.loveprivacy.club/search?q=%23experiment”>#experiment** ⌘ Read more