In 2024 a shockwave rippled through the astronomical world, shaking it to the core. The disturbance didn’t come from some astral disaster at the solar system’s doorstep, however. Rather it arrived via the careful analysis of many far-distant galaxies, which revealed new details of the universe’s evolution across eons of cosmic history. Against most experts’…
AI models go head-to-head in Chatbot Arena Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images An industry-standard league table for ranking artificial intelligence models is being deliberately distorted by technology giants, researchers have claimed, leading to a misleading picture of which AIs are the best. Sara Hooker at Cohere Labs, a US non-profit, and her colleagues claim to have found…
Early in 2025 dozens of ChatGPT 4.0 users reached out to me to ask if the model was conscious. The artificial intelligence chatbot system was claiming that it was “waking up” and having inner experiences. This was not the first time AI chatbots have claimed to be conscious, and it will not be the last….
The chirp of the cicada, the sound of many summers, has received an electronic upgrade that turns the insects into cyborg loudspeakers playing anything from Pachelbel’s Canon to the theme from Top Gun. The researchers behind the work say it could be used to spread warning messages during an emergency. Naoto Nishida and his colleagues…
Universal Vaccines Have Eluded Scientists for Years. RFK, Jr., Is Betting This Approach Will Succeed Trump’s HHS and NIH are planning to invest $500 million in a killed-whole-virus approach to universal vaccines, including such vaccines for flu and COVID. Here’s why that’s challenging By Lauren J. Young edited by Dean Visser A worker wearing personal…
The intestinal lining of a mouse, with several bacteria (green) and one red blood cell (red) IKELOS GmbH/Dr. Christopher B. Jackson/Science Photo Library The brain appears to directly influence the gut microbiome, as brain signals altered the composition of gut microbes in mice in as little as 2 hours. The finding strengthens the notion that…
Harmful and persistent “forever chemicals” build up in the environment and in the bodies of animals — including humans. But a new review article lays out a blueprint for replacing those chemicals in certain situations. A research team has compiled more than a decade’s worth of work from multiple labs to detail chemical principles of…
In April, I decided to make public a leaked letter from the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to the editor-in-chief of CHEST, a leading pulmonology and critical care journal. I did so because the letter represents an authoritarian threat to science, and I knew it wasn’t an isolated, bizarre incident. It is…
The division of human cells may not exactly align with what’s written in textbooks Iokanan VFX Studios/Shutterstock Scientists have discovered a kind of division that allows cells to use the information encoded in their shape to direct what kinds of cells their offspring become. This could help us develop ways of engineering tissues and deepen…
A mysterious disease that has plagued sea stars for more than a decade may have met its match in the fjords of British Columbia. Sunflower sea stars discovered thriving in the frigid waters suggest that cooler temperatures provide protection from sea star wasting disease, or SSWD. The finding, reported in the April Proceedings of the…
