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New AI tool helps scientists identify bacteria hidden in soil
A handful of soil holds a crowded world of bacteria, fungi and other organisms. Scientists can collect their DNA, but much of it remains difficult to identify. Now, researchers at the Hebrew University ...
Heated Tobacco: A New Trend That Is Raising Heart Health Concerns
By HealthDay Staff HealthDay ReporterFRIDAY, Oct. 30, 2026 (HealthDay News) — Heated tobacco is gaining popularity around the world, marketed as a less harmful alternative to cigarettes. But new research is raising red flags — finding that just one session can affect cardiovascular function. These ...
On Facebook and Instagram, Political Ads Are Increasingly Critical of Data Centers
Political ads about data centers on Facebook and Instagram have turned increasingly critical, with 57% opposed and just 3% supportive ahead of the midterms.
Snowfall and clouds may slow East Antarctic ice loss in a warmer world
A new modeling study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, suggests that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet may be more resilient to extreme long-term warming than previously estimated. Increased snowfall, greater cloud cover, and changes in atmospheric circulation could partially offset ice loss—even under very high carbon dioxide concentrations. Researchers from the IBS Center for Climate Physics at Pusan National University in South Korea conducted idealized simulations with different atmospheric CO2 levels, spanning 100,000 years using a coupled global climate–ice-sheet model. Unlike conventional studies that prescribe atmospheric and oceanic conditions, the model allowed climate and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to evolve together.
Hugging Face Launches ProtoStar to Tackle Science's Data Problem
There’s a lot of scientific data out there – and universities, government agencies, and research labs have spent decades collecting it. This includes everything from climate change to human biology. Much of it is publicly available. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean other researchers can easily use it. Sometimes, just getting the data into a usable […]
2026-2027 Audree V. Fowler Fellows in Protein Science
Graduate students Lenka Milojević (Zhou group), Akshaya Narayanasamy (Lindert group), Sarah Singleton (Conway group), and Janet Zhong (Feigon group) have been selected as 2026–27 Fowler Fellows and shared their research at a special event on Oct. 13, 2026. 2026-27 Fowler Fellows – Sarah Singleton, Lenka Milojević, Janet Zhong, and Akshaya Narayanasamy. Akshaya Narayanasamy and Prof. Steffen Lindert. Sarah Singleton and Prof. Stuart Conway. Janet Zhong and Prof. Juli Feigon. About the 2026-27 Audree Fowler Fellows in Protein Science Lenka Milojević is a fifth-year Biophysics Ph.D. candidate in the lab of Professor Z. Hong Zhou at UCLA. As an undergraduate at Maastricht University, she studied the structural basis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis virulence and amyloid-β fibril nucleation in the lab of Professor Peter Peters. She completed her bachelor’s thesis research at UCLA in the lab of Professor David Eisenberg, focusing on amyloid disaggregation, before beginning her doctoral studies. In the Zhou lab, Lenka uses cryo-electron tomography to visualize and characterize membrane-associated protein assemblies across a range of viral and cellular systems. Akshaya Narayanasamy is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA, mentored by Professor Steffen Lindert. She earned her B.S.-M.S. in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Thiruvananthapuram, where she worked in Professor Mahesh Hariharan’s lab investigating how single-atom substitutions influence crystal packing and charge transport behavior. She received her M.S. in Physical Chemistry from The Ohio State University before moving with the Lindert lab to UCLA. At UCLA, Akshaya develops integrative modeling methods that combine deep learning and Rosetta with experimental data, such as ion mobility mass spectrometry and cryo-EM, to improve protein structure prediction. Her current work focuses on developing an experimentally guided diffusion model and designing de novo protein binders with potential antibacterial activity. Ultimately, she aims to bridge AI-based structure prediction and experimental data to make computational protein models more reliable for drug discovery and therapeutic design. Sarah Singleton is a 4th year BMSB student, working in Professor Stuart Conway’s lab. She earned her B.S. in Biochemistry at Simmon University (Fenway, MA). Her research is centered on drugging the previously undruggable class of proteins—transcription factors. Zinc finger (ZF)-containing transcription factor proteins typically contain multiple ZF motifs, but little is known about the principles that govern the recognition of multi-ZF arrays by immunomodulatory imide drugs (IMiDs). In a multi-ZF array that contains several potentially targetable ZFs, which will be accessible and why? How does the surrounding protein architecture inform IMiD recognition? Sarah’s research aims to utilize her findings on the fundamental principles of ZF recognition to design IMiD therapeutics for transcription factors involved in health and disease. Janet Zhong is a fourth-year BMSB student, working in Professor Juli Feigon’s laboratory. She received her BSc and MRes from Imperial College London. At UCLA, Janet combines cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and biochemical approaches to investigate how proteins and RNAs assemble into ribonucleoprotein structures. Her research focuses on telomerase, the enzyme that maintains chromosome ends, with interests in its structure, assembly, and mechanisms. She has also worked on capturing the cryo-EM structure of a small bacterial non-coding RNA called raiA motif RNA. About Dr. Audree Fowler A strong supporter of the basic sciences and medicine at UCLA, alumna Dr. Audree Fowler (B.S. ’56 chemistry, Ph.D. ’63 biochemistry) established the Audree V. Fowler Fellows in Protein Science in 2008. Fowler was Director UCLA Protein Microsequencing Facility from 1984-1999 and is a Researcher Emeritus of the UCLA Department of Biological Chemistry. She is one of the first four women to receive a Ph.D. from the UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. In 2018, the women were awarded the department’s 2018 Alumni Legacy Awards in recognition of their achievements in life, and generous support and service to UCLA. “The sciences gave me a great life. Now I want to help others have access to the same opportunities I enjoyed,” Fowler explained when she established the Fowler Fellowships endowment. Applications for the fellowships are solicited from graduate students in the Molecular Biology Interdepartmental (MBI) Ph.D. Program, Biological Chemistry, and Chemistry & Biochemistry Departments. In addition to presenting their research at a special seminar, the recipients each receive a $5,000 award. Previous Fowler Fellows from the UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry 2025-26 – Nikki Cheung (Clubb Group), Jonathan Jih (Zhou Group), Eileen Olivares (Loo Group), and Lily Taylor (Rodriguez Group) 2024-25 – Andrew Goring (Clubb lab), Eric Pang (S. Clarke and Rodriguez labs), and Miranda Villanueva (Backus lab) 2023-24 – Alexandra Turmon (Backus lab), Cindy Wang (S. Clarke and C. Clarke labs) 2022-23 – Cody Gillman (Gonen lab), Declan Evans (Houk lab), Troy Lowe (S. Clarke lab), Ashley Julio (Backus lab), and Alex Stevens (Hong Zhou lab) 2021-22 – Weixian Deng (Wohlschlegel/Plath labs), Yi Xiao “Sean” Jiang (Eisenberg lab), Maria Flores (Rodriguez lab), Carter Lantz (Loo lab), and Logan Richards (Rodriguez lab). 2020-21 – Janine Fu (Loo lab), Calina Glynn (Rodriguez lab), and Jiahui Lu (Eisenberg lab) 2019-20 – David Boyer (Eisenberg lab), Orlando Martinez (Clubb lab) and John Muroski (Loo lab) 2018-19 – Scott McConnell (Clubb lab), Kevin Murray (Eisenberg lab), Rebeccah Warmack (S. Clarke lab) 2017-18 – Michael Hughes (Eisenberg lab), Yuxi Liu (Yeates lab), Kanishk Jain (S. Clarke lab) 2016-17 – Brendan Amer (Clubb Lab) and Jeff Vinokur (Bowie Lab) 2015-16 – Henry Chan (Feigon lab), Smriti Sangwan (Eisenberg lab), Nicholas Woodall (Bowie lab) 2014-15 – Dan McNamara (Yeates lab) 2013-14 – Alex Jacobitz (Clubb lab), Alexander Patananan (S. Clarke lab), Carly Ferguson (Loo lab) 2012-13 – Letian Xie (C. Clarke lab), Anni Zhao (Eisenberg lab) 2011-12 – Timothy Anderson (Clubb lab), Soohong Kim (Weiss lab) 2010-11 – Zeynep Durer (Reiser lab), Cecilia Zurita-Lopez (S. Clarke lab) 2009-10 – Luki Goldschmidt (Eisenberg lab), Kristofer Webb (S. Clarke lab), Sheng Yin (Loo lab) 2008-09 – Nathan Joh (Bowie lab), Neil King (Yeates lab) Photos courtesy of Helen Houldsworth, the Molecular Biology Institute.
Scientists develop new system to boost prime editing in dicot plants
A new gene-editing system could make it easier for researchers to introduce precise genetic changes into crops such as tomatoes, soybeans and rapeseed. Developed by researchers in China, SmartPE improves ...
A photo tour of the FSU Health Research and Collaboration Building
FSU Health held a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Research and Collaboration Building, which will be named after Wilton Simpson, Friday, Oct. 30.
Oura, UC San Diego Health collaborate to study GLP-1 outcomes using continuous smart ring data
Oura is pushing further into clinical healthcare research with its first clinical trial to study the link between smart ring data and obesity treatment outcomes. | Oura is pushing further into clinical healthcare research with its first clinical trial to study the link between smart ring data and obesity treatment outcomes.
Business Profile: Hopkinton Psychological Services offers therapy, scientific-based treatments
Combining treatments based on research with a relaxed, conversational psychotherapy, Keith Donohue, Ph.D., helps clients address a variety of mental
GW Is a Founding Partner in Hugging Face’s Project ProtoStar, a National Effort to Make Publicly Funded Science AI-Ready
The George Washington University is a founding partner in Project ProtoStar, a partnership with Hugging Face and other research institutions and universities to accelerate scientific discovery. The initiative aims to make publicly funded datasets, models and code easier for people and AI systems to find, understand and reuse. GW’s participation is led by its Open Source Program Office (OSPO).
Scientists reveal a hidden snakebite crisis killing up to 513,000 people a year
A startling new study suggests that venomous snakebites are killing far more people worldwide than official statistics indicate, with an estimated 274,000 to 513,000 deaths every year. Researchers found that as many as 7 million people could suffer snake envenoming annually, while more than 800,000 survivors are left with long-term disabilities.
The politics of war
Israel went to the polls last Tuesday and it is the turn of the United States next Tuesday. The differences in the two elections are self-evident. Compared with the US, which has favourable geography and does everything at scale, Israel is tiny and part of an unstable region. For its elections, it has adopted an almost pure form of proportional representation based on lists. This encourages multiple parties and can make it almost impossible to form a government, as we can now see. The US system is complex in its own way but discourages third parties. Yet for all the differences in size, geography, and political systems, the fates of the two countries are closely connected. Israel has come to depend on the US to sustain its military strength, and over the past few tumultuous years that dependence has created resentment in the United States. The Biden administration was punished for appearing to give Netanyahu a blank check after the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, and not holding Israel back as it employed ruthless tactics in Gaza. Because of the treatment of Palestinians, American views of Israel have grown progressively more negative over the past few years. Only a third now support the Israeli government. While on the left, this is largely because of how Israeli forces have operated in Gaza and, more recently, how the settler movement has behaved in the West Bank, for the American right the issue has been about how Benjamin Netanyahu persuaded Donald Trump to forget his wariness about more Middle Eastern wars and agree to a joint attack on Iran, which has gone badly wrong. The Palestine question was not a big issue for the two large Jewish blocs in last Tuesday’s election. Both supported a tough response to Hamas after October 2023 and neither accepts a two-state solution. It was, however, the threat posed by the ethno-nationalist policies of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the two extreme members of Netanyahu’s coalition, and their tolerance, even encouragement, of settler violence, that brought out the Arab voters. (In principle this should strengthen their position though to turn into real power would require the ‘Change Bloc’ overcoming their opposition to involving Arab parties. The alternatives are a National Unity government, defection from the Change Bloc to Netanyahu, or deadlock and another round of elections in the new year.) There was also broad support for the war against Iran among the Jewish parties. The difficulty here is that the objectives behind the war have yet to be met, and that continuing with military operations depends on the United States. In this way the two elections have come together at a crucial moment. If Netanyahu hoped that a victory over Iran would help him retain his majority, cementing his legacy as an Israeli war leader, it did not work out that way. Trump also expected a great victory about which he could boast. He promised at most the end of a hateful and aggressive regime, with a record of hostility to both the United States and Israel, or at least the elimination of Iran’s military capabilities and the end of its nuclear programme. Eight months on, there is not much to boast about; vital objectives remain elusive: the Iranian regime is even more hardline than before; the international economy is barely coping with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz; and Saudi Arabia is struggling with an unwanted conflict with the Yemeni Houthis. For all these reasons, the Iran War has been a dark cloud hanging over both elections. Yet the issue has been approached in different ways. Netanyahu sought to push the issue before the election while Trump has been more cautious. Trump’s essential claim is that there is nothing to worry about and he’s still working out what final steps need to be taken to provide a definitive conclusion to the conflict. Netanyahu’s final pitch was that there was lots to worry about. He focused on Israel’s dire security situation, with the Iran War unfinished and the prospect of imminent economic isolation because of international sanctions. For him it is imperative to defeat Iran decisively, and without delay. Why this different response to the same war? Part of the answer lies in how public opinion in the two countries responded to the war. In this post, I show how this came about. We await the outcome of the US midterms but know the result, at least in terms of the share of the vote if not yet the shape of the new government, of the Israeli election. With the elections out of the way Netanyahu is pressing for another round in the war. Trump is less sure. I conclude with thoughts on the importance of how he decides.
What smart people are saying about the $6 billion Binance hack
After hackers stole more than $6 billion from Binance, executives and researchers raced to figure out what went wrong.
Digital Science acquires AI research and writing platform Jenni AI
Acquisition to connect Jenni AI with Digital Science’s research data, beginning with Dimensions and its database of 171 million publications
Americans open to AI in health care but want humans calling the shots
A new survey from the Pew Research Center shows Americans are open to the use of AI in some areas of medicine, but they're far from ready to hand the reins of their health care over to the technology.
Forensic Science Professor Helps Discover Vulnerability in Technology
What started with an unexpected connection at a national conference grew into a research collaboration examining a critical question in forensic science: How secure is digital DNA evidence?
Drake actuarial science professor shares national award for research connecting insurers and InsurTech data
A research paper coauthored by Dr. Changyue Hu, assistant professor of actuarial science in Drake University’s Zimpleman College of Business, has received the North American Actuarial Journal (NAAJ) Annual Prize for the best paper published in 2025. The NAAJ, published by the Society of Actuaries (SOA), has honored one outstanding paper each year since 1983. ...
Smith/Patterson Science Journalism Lecture hosts CNN journalist
The Missouri School of Journalism partnered with the Pulitzer Center for this semester’s Smith/Patterson Science Journalism Lecture on Oct. 26. The lecture, “Growing Pressure on Cancer Care and Research,”featured CNN science journalist Caleb Hellerman. Hellerman has been reporting on cancer care and research in a long-running series with CNN for the past year. The main...
Neanderthal DNA still survives in our human family tree. What were our ancient relatives' relationships like?
Developing research suggests that ancient interbreeding wasn't random — it was socially patterned, directional and far more complicated than the headlines suggest.
Less than 42 minutes of bright daylight linked to higher dementia risk
Getting more daylight could be linked to a surprisingly powerful benefit for brain health. In a study of more than 87,000 adults, researchers found that higher daytime light exposure was associated with a 16% lower risk of dementia, with longer exposure to bright light linked to even greater reductions. Remarkably, getting less than 42 minutes of bright daylight daily was a stronger predictor of dementia than six established risk factors.
Purdue Basic Medical Sciences faculty member honored with Showalter Early Career Award
Purdue University has named a dozen faculty members as recipients of the 2026 Showalter Early Career Awards, including Pradip Bajgain, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Basic Medical Sciences. The 12 early career faculty members received the research support for their innovative projects
Exclusive | Asian scientists are looking to South Korea as it becomes harder to stay in the US
Seoul university says it’s luring researchers in energy, quantum materials and biomedicine while still working with US and Chinese partners.
An AI Breakthrough Has Made Decades of Computer Science Research ‘Irrelevant’
Anthropic and OpenAI say they’ve disproved a key tenet of computer science. Researchers are struggling with the fall but also feel like “overexcited bunnies” as they look at new questions to explore.
Alphabet should split its search business from its cloud business, says D.A. Davidson's Gil Luria
Gil Luria, D.A. Davidson head of technology research, joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss the quarterly earnings results of Alphabet and Microsoft, impact of AI chatbots on Alphabet's search business,
Political anxiety is a unique form of distress
Building on previous research into how politics can cause anxiety, scholars Kevin Smith and Aaron Weinschenk recently published an article establishing general anxiety and political anxiety as two distinct animals.
The science of a sporting edge
At Tel Aviv University’s new Sylvan Adams Sport Science Institute, researchers and athletes are joining forces to turn Israeli innovation into better performance—and, ultimately, more Olympic medals
Collaboration is not optional – and conservation science shows why
Today’s research challenges are too complex to be solved in isolation. Conservation science offers lessons for academics everywhere about how to build collaborations that genuinely work
The surprising science-backed ingredient in this $198 anti-aging serum
DefenAge 8-in-1 BioSerum costs $198 and uses Age-Repair Defensins®. Here's the science behind the anti-aging serum and what research shows.
CU Boulder professor Steve Nerem to co-chair NASA survey | ETIH EdTech News
University of Colorado Boulder professor Steve Nerem will co-chair NASA's 2028–2037 Earth science decadal survey, reviewing satellite capabilities and more than 250 research submissions. ETIH edtech news covers the appointment and the university's role in space research.
University of Arkansas researchers lead maternal health project
The Institute for Integrative and Innovative Research (I3R) at the University of Arkansas is leading a maternal health research project in partnership with Springdale-based healthcare provider Community Clinic. According to...
Scientists Crack Solar Panels' 33% Efficiency Ceiling
Researchers in Spain increased theoretical efficiency by harnessing extra light reflected from solar cells after it has been absorbed.
University of Arkansas researchers lead maternal health project
The Institute for Integrative and Innovative Research (I3R) at the University of Arkansas is leading a maternal health research project in partnership with Springdale-based healthcare provider Community Clinic. According to...
Americans open to AI in health care but want humans calling the shots
A new survey from the Pew Research Center shows Americans are open to the use of AI in some areas of medicine, but they're far from ready to hand the reins of their health care over to the technology.
ADOCIA Reports Third Quarter 2026 Financial Results and Provides a Business Update
LYON, France, October 29, 2026--Regulatory News: Adocia (Euronext Paris: FR0011184241 – ADOC, the "Company"), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the research and development of innovative therapeutic solutions for the treatment of metabolic diseases including diabetes and obesity, reports financial results for the third quarter of 2026 and provides a business update.
What killed 500-plus penguins? How scientists solved the mystery
The penguins that perished lived on the Danger Islands in Antarctica. The prime suspect was avian flu. Researchers were surprised by what they found.
What killed 500-plus penguins? How scientists solved the mystery
The penguins that perished lived on the Danger Islands in Antarctica. The prime suspect was avian flu. Researchers were surprised by what they found.
Digital Science Acquires Jenni AI, Expanding Research Tools to 8 Million Users
Digital Science has acquired Jenni AI, an artificial intelligence-powered research and writing platform used by more than 8 million students... Read More
After Reinventing Mathematics, Can A.I. Eradicate Computer Bugs?
Using the same techniques that allowed A.I. technologies to crack a million-dollar math problem, researchers are building new systems that aim to solve the world’s cybersecurity crisis.
Why do scientists study toast crumbs, itching and head-banging? A new analysis identifies seven ways research gets funny
An analysis of 269 humorous scientific papers found that 48.3% applied rigorous methods to everyday subjects, while researchers identified six other recurring humor strategies.
CU Denver Researchers Among the Top 2% of Highly Cited Scientists in the World
The impact of CU Denver research is reflected in the 2026 Highly Cited Research lists, published in October by Stanford University and Elsevier.
University of Arkansas researchers lead maternal health project
The Institute for Integrative and Innovative Research (I3R) at the University of Arkansas is leading a maternal health research project in partnership with Springdale-based healthcare provider Community Clinic. According to...
Research lobbies cautious over proposed Commission shake-up
Read the latest news and analysis from Science|Business.
How Can Science Better Support Interdisciplinary Researchers?
Academics and industry experts discuss how science can better support interdisciplinary researchers through reforming funding applications, collaboration, and traditional career advancement.
Statement on the Rescission of Appropriated Funds -
The American Political Science Association (APSA) condemns the unlawful actions taken by the Trump Administration to illegally withhold $810 million dollars of federal funding appropriated by Congress, much of which supports the research of political [...]
Could AI ever build itself? Scientists map the road to the 'last AI built by humans.'
Researchers hope recursive self-improvement could tackle the skyrocketing costs of developing advanced AI models. But is it viable?
UConn Professor Co-Chairs National Academies Study of Federal Small Business Innovation Programs
Two-year study examines how Department of Energy research investments support innovation, entrepreneurship, national priorities
California researchers awarded grant to develop sudden cardiac arrest early warning system
DALLAS, Oct. 29, 2026 — More than 600,000 cardiac arrests occur in the U.S. each year, and survival rates remain low both in and out of the hospital, according to the American Heart Association. A new research project funded by the Association will...
Neil Garg named recipient of the 2026 Science and Education Pioneer Award
Distinguished Professor Neil Garg has been named the recipient of the UCLA College, Division of Physical Sciences’ 2026 Science and Education Pioneer Award for his contributions to science and education. He will be honored at Exploring Your Universe, UCLA’s free science festival, on Sunday, Nov. 8, in the Court of Sciences. The ceremony and Garg’s remarks will take place at noon in Young Hall CS50, and will be livestreamed here. He will also give a family-friendly lecture, “Organic Chemistry in the Movies”, at 3 pm in Young Hall CS76. The Pioneer Award recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to science and inspired public engagement with science education, particularly among young people. Previous award recipients include astronaut and UCLA alumna Dr. Anna Lee Fisher (2017), mathematician and UCLA alumna Danica McKellar (2018), actress, author and neuroscientist Dr. Mayim Bialik (2019), Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Andrea Ghez (2020) and UCLA mathematics professor and Fields Medalist Terence Tao (2025). Garg is the Distinguished Kenneth N. Trueblood Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA. He received his B.S. from New York University and Ph.D. from Caltech, and completed postdoctoral studies at UC Irvine before joining the UCLA faculty in 2007. Garg is an internationally recognized organic chemist whose research focuses on developing new chemical reactions, often challenging long-standing rules in chemistry. He has published more than 200 scientific papers. Beyond his research accomplishments and award-winning classroom teaching, Garg is passionate about making chemistry accessible and engaging for students and the broader public. He has developed innovative websites, apps, and games used in more than 175 countries, authored The Organic Coloring Book series, and created outreach programs that introduce children to chemistry, including his popular Chem Kids camp. His honors include the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Horizon Prizes for both research and education, the Cherry Award for Great Teaching, the California Professor of the Year Award, and the AAAS Mani L. Bhaumik Award for Public Engagement with Science. In 2026, he received the Royal Society of Chemistry’s prestigious Centenary Prize.
FSU Health opens new research and collaboration building, names it for Florida Ag Commissioner Wilton Simpson
Florida State University cut the ribbon Friday on its new FSU Health Research and Collaboration Building and announced that the facility will be named for
FSU opens new health facility, names it after Wilton Simpson
FSU Health is celebrating the completion of its Research and Collaboration Building, naming it after Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson.
Bottom Jokes Fueled Around a Third of the Taboo Humor in 269 Famously Funny Science Papers
An analysis of 269 humorous scientific papers found that 12.3% used sex, bodily functions or other taboo subjects, though the study did not test readers' reactions.
Why Do People Feel the Presence of 'Ghosts'? Scientists Are Starting to Understand
New research reveals how spirituality and psychology shape our encounters with unseen presences.
Top Science Democrat probes cuts to research spending at National Science Foundation
A key Democrat is looking into a massive amount of money that was appropriated to the National Science Foundation (NSF) but reportedly not spent. In a letter first shared with The Hill, House Commi…
New orca tracking bracelets support FIU research
FIU and Fahlo have teamed up once again with the release of the new orca killer whale bracelets featuring the company’s first-ever hand-painted charm.
UCD recognises Jocelyn Bell Burnell for achievements in science and philanthropy
UCD has recognised the achievements of Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell and her commitment to creating the researchers of the future.
‘The potential to destroy:’ Invasive pest sparks action from Florida scientists
University of Florida researchers have secured $200,000 in federal funding to investigate how an emerging threat could possibly be managed.
Support Hubs Help New Researchers Break Through Bottlenecks at Big Science Facilities
A formative evaluation of a Horizon Europe project finds that dedicated support hubs significantly raise the odds that new researchers clear technical feasibility checks at European research infrastructures, while a downstream gap between laboratory validation and industrial
Humans accidentally canceled the next ice age — but it’s no reason to celebrate, scientists say
A shrinking ice cap in Arctic Canada tells a striking story of how burning fossil fuels may have stopped an ice age in its infancy, new research finds
Europe needs to measure research infrastructure by the science people can use
Explore how brighter beams and major upgrades unlock scientific discoveries, while budgets, specialist support and scheduling shape access
FSU cuts ribbon on new health research building, first under new FSU Health branding
Florida State University cut the ribbon on a major milestone for healthcare in Tallahassee with the opening of its new research building.
Japanese Safety Science Symposium Brings Everyday Health Risks to the Public
The Japanese Environmental Mutagen and Genome Society opened its 2025 symposium to the public, presenting research on pharmaceutical and food safety, PFAS, radioactive substances in food, indoor formaldehyde, and colibactin.
Oxford Science Enterprises targets UK’s first trillion-pound deep-tech company
Recent landmark exits in quantum computing and biotech show that the OSE’s model of building companies around university research, recruiting entrepreneurial leaders and providing patient capital produces results. The next step is taking the model global.
Brian May, Queen guitarist and astrophysicist: ‘To be a complete human being, you need art and science’
The scientist and Starmus founder resumed his research on interplanetary dust 30 years after putting it on hold for a life in music
700 GB in 15 seconds: Smart system helps scientists keep pace with atom-scale microscope
Researchers run an advanced electron microscope in plain English, from tomography to ptychography, with data processed in seconds.
Modern Science: New research on a Megacauda fossil involving an Ohio University professor disrupts previous timeline of mammal evolution
ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) —A researcher at Ohio University was part of an international team that uncovered new evidence illuminating the evolutionary origins of one of the defining features of mammals: t
Bruna David: A Busy ESMO 2026 Filled with Science, Friends and Meaningful Connections
Bruna David: A Busy ESMO 2026 Filled with Science, Friends and Meaningful Connections / Barcelona 2027, Bruna David, cancer, Cancer research, ESMO, esmo 2026,
World Conference on Traditional Medicine 2026 delivers landmark outcomes for global health
Expert Committee Meeting members at the World Conference on Traditional Medicine 2026© WHOThe World Conference on Traditional Medicine 2026 concluded in Beijing on 18 October with several key outcomes aimed at strengthening global cooperation for health and well-being. These included the adoption of the Beijing Initiative on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Traditional Medicinal Plant Resources, the promotion of the New-Era Shennong Herbal Project, and the publication of the Report on artificial intelligence empowering global traditional medicine development (2026). The conference also marked the establishment of the Global Alliance for Traditional and Integrative Medicine (GATIM) to foster international scientific collaboration.The biennial conference, held on 17–18 October at the China National Convention Center in Beijing, was co-hosted by the People's Government of Beijing Municipality, the National Health Commission, the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and the National Medical Products Administration. WHO joined the Conference as co-sponsor, aligning with the country’s Healthy China initiative, which is overseen by President Xi Jinping. The initiative seeks to expand inclusive, high-quality health services, drive innovation in traditional medicine, and reinforce the principle that a healthy population is fundamental to national prosperity and strength. H.E. Li Qiang, Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, addressed the opening ceremony, emphasizing the critical role of traditional medicine as a unique force in safeguarding human health and advancing civilization. "Traditional medicine has followed a distinctive path of development through long-term practice," Li stated. He called on the international community to strengthen cooperation, make better use of global traditional medicine resources, and jointly address challenges to human health. Premier Li also highlighted the necessity of harnessing science and technology to accelerate the innovative development of traditional medicine. He announced that China would promote the digital and intelligent transformation of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and encourage active participation from both Chinese and foreign research institutions and enterprises. Furthermore, he expressed China's willingness to expand pilot programs to open up the medical service sector and work with all parties to advance the development of Belt and Road medicinal resources conservation centre.Addressing the Conference participants via a video message, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, said, "This is not a choice between tradition and science. It is about bringing knowledge systems together through research, innovation, regulation and quality assurance. We need stronger evidence on what works, for whom, and under what conditions."Dr Saia Ma'u Piukala, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific, addressed the opening session, underscoring the importance of integrating traditional medicine into mainstream health systems in line with the call of the WHO Global Strategy on Traditional Medicine 2025–2034. In the closing session, Dr Shyama Kuruvilla, Director of the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre, expressed appreciation for the achievements of the conference, where different world views and scientific and programmatic advances were exchanged with a clear focus on practical action to advance traditional medicine for the health and well-being of people and the planet.The conference, held under the theme Technology Empowerment and Integrated Development: Advancing Traditional Medicine for All, featured a government forum, ministerial round table and eight parallel forums to advance all four objectives of the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025–2034: strengthening evidence, ensuring safety through regulation, integrating traditional, complementary and integrative medicine into health systems, and realizing its value through action across sectors.Over the two-day event, nearly 2000 participants, experts and scholars from 103 countries and areas, including 16 ministerial-level health officials, delivered over 150 high-level speeches and reports. Discussions covered key areas such as the integration of traditional medicine into international health systems, evidence-based development, drug regulation and the application of artificial intelligence in traditional medicine.
Research report: The prince and the scientists
A commentary in EMBO Reports argues that scientific leadership is a distinct, neglected skill and that institutions should be managed as ecosystems built on trust.
Defense Logistics Agency CIO: Agentic AI a business change, not IT project
Award-winning, Silicon Valley-based research and advisory firm focused on helping early adopters harness the transformative power of exponential technology.
Americans Are Open to AI in Healthcare, but Want Humans Making Final Calls
Americans are generally open to AI handling administrative and medical tasks, but they largely don’t want AI operating without human oversight. About half (47%) say AI will make the relationship between patients and their doctors worse, compared with 10% who say it will make it better.
Physical is better than streaming and I've got the science to prove it
Streaming may be convenient, but research indicates you might be more likely to finish a piece of content when you experience it in a physical format.
John Wallace named director of Penn State Regenerative Agriculture Center
John Wallace, associate professor of weed science in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, has been named director of the Penn State Regenerative Agriculture Center to help guide research and collaboration aimed at advancing regenerative farming practices across Pennsylvania.
The surprising science-backed ingredient in this $198 anti-aging serum
DefenAge 8-in-1 BioSerum costs $198 and uses Age-Repair Defensins®. Here's the science behind the anti-aging serum and what research shows.
Rising Healthcare Costs Force Cuts to 401(k) Savings: LIMRA
LIMRA research finds rising healthcare premiums are forcing workers to reduce retirement contributions, especially Gen Z employees
Fall 2026 Credo Awards announced
Established in 2008, the Credo Award recognizes individuals who consistently demonstrate exceptional credo behavior by making those they serve their highest priority, having a sense of ownership, conducting themselves professionally, respecting privacy and confidentiality, communicating effectively, and exhibiting commitment to their colleagues. The Fall 2026 Credo Award winners are: Shannon Blaisdell, DNP, MSN, RN, Associate Nursing Officer, Inpatient Obstetrics and IV Team, Vanderbilt University Hospital Sara Hanai, MS, Director, Junior League Family Resource Center, Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt Kelly Harper, Research Program Manager, Neuro-Movement Disorders Division, Department of Neurology The Credo Award recognition is announced quarterly through the Vanderbilt Health Hub. A total of 12 winners will be recognized each year. Each winner is honored with an award video, a profile article in VUMC Voice following the award announcement, and recognition during the biannual Leadership Forum. View the Fall 2026 Credo Award videos. If you are a Vanderbilt Health employee, you can nominate a colleague, leader or team for a Credo Award, C. Wright Pinson Leader Award, or Vanderbilt Health Team Award. Visit the Awards and Nominations SharePoint site to fill out a nomination form. Employees demonstrate credo behaviors when: they make those they serve the highest priority; respect privacy and confidentiality; communicate effectively; conduct themselves professionally; have a sense of ownership; and are committed to their colleagues. Award nominations are accepted year-round. If a nomination is received after the cutoff for an award selection period, the nomination will be considered for the next period.
UTC Nanoengineering Center receives $600,000 for Army materials research
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s Nanoengineering Center, a research center within the UTC Research Institute, has received a $600,000 award to contribute advanced computational modeling expertise to an Army-supported research project focused on developing and manufacturing advanced materials for demanding applications. Dr. Murat Barisik, director of the Nanoengineering Center and an associate professor of mechanical engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, is leading UTC’s work on the project.
The health effects of time change as push for permanent standard time continues
Research shows permanent standard time would decrease the rate of obesity and stroke.
A golden age of science is coming
It’s almost hard to remember, but just a few years ago, a lot of very smart people thought that science was in terminal decline. Respected researchers were writing papers with titles like “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?”, “Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time”, and “Slowed canonical progress in large fields of science”. In 1996, science writer John Horgan even published a book called The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age. The fundamental idea was that the Universe only has so many insights to discover, and that we’ve picked the low-hanging fruit. It was the idea that Joseph-Louis Lagrange expressed when he said that “we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.” As the big ideas and the simple ideas get mined out, we’re forced to throw ever more brains at the mysteries of nature just to keep scientific progress going at a fraction of its old pace: It looked like science was hitting a wall. Then along came AI. It’s far too early to tell how much AI will eventually speed up the growth of total factor productivity. But already we can see signs of a speedup in science. Anthropic Founder Jack Clark assembled some of the hopeful data points in a recent lecture: [ Dror Poleg@drorpoleg "If you pick different parts of science, you see the same pattern show up: Progress is accelerating, and it has started to accelerate in the last two years." Jack Clark @jackclarkSF I’m speaking at the IMF in an hour about the singularity and why I believe it has begun and the choices we'll need to make. Watch live here: https://t.co/Hj9HzcXx5h 6:08 PM · Oct 18, 2026 · 21.2K Views 2 Replies · 10 Reposts · 123 Likes ](https://x.com/drorpoleg/status/2111882070376980529) Anthropic is accelerating its investment into drug discovery, and is already announcing some impressive preliminary results: [ BioTender@Junioryu136689 BREAKING: Anthropic unveils early results from six Claude-powered drug development collaborations. • 70% shorter CAR-T signaling domain • ~35,000 antibody designs • >10× tighter antibody binding • 89% less batch-record review time Still largely preclinical. Anthropic @AnthropicAI Over the past few months, Anthropic scientists have engaged in deep research partnerships with six organizations developing new medicines. We've also begun drug discovery efforts of our own. In doing so, we’ve learned much more about how Claude can support the many stages of 9:43 PM · Oct 27, 2026 · 11.2K Views 3 Replies · 24 Reposts · 205 Likes ](https://x.com/Junioryu136689/status/2115197821150495150) Claude also appears to be enabling rapid progress toward a treatment for food allergies. OpenAI, meanwhile, announced a possible breakthrough treatment for neurodegenerative disease. Meanwhile, Google Cloud Chief Scientist Pushmeet Kohli has a list of recent scientific advances that have been enabled by its new Gemini model, including breakthroughs in nuclear fusion reactor design, rare disease research, and quantum computing: [ Pushmeet Kohli@pushmeet Gemini 4 Argon is a step change in model performance. In recent weeks, it has had a transformative impact on the Science projects in our team at @GoogleDeepMind and our external collaborators, and helped make a number of remarkable advances across scientific disciplines. 🧵👇 4:47 PM · Oct 13, 2026 · 36.5K Views 8 Replies · 41 Reposts · 497 Likes ](https://x.com/pushmeet/status/2110049807385702623) But as cool as these stories sound, they’re just very minor, preliminary efforts. There are a number of reasons to think that AI is going to propel us into a golden age of scientific discovery. That age might not last forever — AI might still run into diminishing returns eventually. But the next few decades are probably going to be an absolutely amazing time for human science. The number of “effective researchers” is no longer limited The most important input into science is scientists themselves. Until this year, that meant human brains — talented, highly trained human brains. The number of trained human brains could be increased by sending more people to grad school, but only to a point — the smartest people tend to be sent into the hardest research fields first, and if you 10x the number of researchers, the average quality will go down. This constraint was already starting to bite, as Ekerdt and Wu argued in 2024: We argue that a substantial portion of the downward historical trend in U.S. research productivity is a composition effect resulting from self-selection in researcher ability and the dramatic expansion of the research sector…[W]e find that this composition effect has lowered average researcher ability by between 37% and 53%[.] And of course, low fertility was making the problem worse, because fewer children meant fewer people who were able to become future scientists. AI just blows up this constraint completely. If an AI agent can function as an autonomous researcher, there’s no constraint on the number of researchers in the world — you can just build more of them, by building more computer chips and data centers that enable the running of more AI agents. Whether or not massive hordes of agents can collaborate to solve individual problems much faster, increasing the number of agents allows them to tackle many different research questions in parallel. What’s more, these AI “researchers” can be trained incredibly quickly compared to human beings. A human scientist takes decades to train, and more years to reach the frontier of their research field by diligent reading and conversation. This is the “burden of knowledge”, and it’s commonly believed to be one reason ideas have been getting harder to find — by the time human scientists can get up to speed, they’re often so old that their ideas are no longer novel. AI just annihilates this constraint — it can assimilate the entire literature and reach the frontier of research extremely quickly, and it can also tell human scientists where the frontier lies without forcing them to discover that for themselves. It can also pivot to new research directions more easily than humans can. And there’s also a self-reinforcing economic cycle here. Because scientific advances enable higher GDP, they enable more resources to be invested into the creation of yet more electronic “scientists”. Now that doesn’t mean the amount of scientific research goes to infinity — there may still be some essential bottleneck task that human researchers are still needed to perform. There are some indications that AI’s progress on open-ended conceptual research tasks is slower than in other dimensions, and it may be that humans are still needed to provide some of this long-term conceptual thinking. I’d bet against this being true for much longer, but it might be true for a long time. Even in this most “pessimistic” case, though, the amount of effective capital that scientists can use to leverage their work just went up by a lot. AI eliminates the theory bottleneck Science proceeds by an iterative process of theory and experiment. The theory part of that cycle is typically short, but non-trivial — it took a couple of years after the blackbody radiation spectrum was observed for Max Planck to come up with the quantum hypothesis to explain it, and decades longer before quantum theory as we now know it was created. It took about a year for Watson and Crick to figure out the shape of DNA after the requisite data was gathered. AI will basically eliminate the theory bottleneck entirely — or at least shorten the turnaround time between experiment and theory by an order of magnitude. AI is an absolute beast at math. Recently, an OpenAI model solved some of the most important open problems in computer science, math, and theoretical physics, and no one even batted an eyebrow because that sort of triumph is becoming increasingly commonplace. One of those solutions was a proof that the Standard Model of Particle Physics could be mathematically well-defined — a problem that human theorists had so far been unable to tackle. Not all research relies equally on theory, but understanding novel experimental results almost always involves some important component of either mathematical or spatial reasoning. That part of the task has now been made much, much faster. And on top of that, science is now open to a greater number of humans who aren’t naturally good at theorizing. AI can read the whole literature Much of the work of human scientists involves reading and understanding endless amounts of papers and going to endless conferences and seminars. The purpose of that work is to understand the existing scientific literature. Understanding the literature allows scientists to do the following things: Come up with new ideas for hypotheses to test Avoid doing research that someone else has already done Synthesize approaches from different areas or fields AI can reduce this effort to almost zero. Consider this excerpt from OpenAI’s blog post about their new research into neurodegenerative disease: The team divided the analysis among thousands of AI agents powered by GPT‑Rosalind, an approach we call distributed biological reasoning. The agents examined a whole-brain CRISPR atlas…a dataset showing how gene disruptions affect different types of cells across the mouse brain. Each agent investigated a gene disruption, analyzed cellular responses, searched scientific literature, and proposed explanations for the results. Their reports were combined into a reasoning atlas linking genes, cellular effects, relevant publications, and possible biological mechanisms. The research team estimated that comparable human analysis and literature review, conducted one perturbation at a time, would take months to a year. The agents reproduced findings from human analyses while uncovering additional leads. Their assessments of novelty and scientific value also aligned with judgments from blinded human experts. These findings help prioritize further experiments needed to test the proposed biological mechanisms. Some of these insights point to new leads for understanding brain disease. [emphasis mine] This is one case in which parallel work by a large number of agents really does make a huge difference: [ Haider.@haider1 this is actually insane openai deployed thousands of GPT-Rosalind agents to analyze millions of mouse brain cells in 32 minutes, work that could take human researchers months to a year also the agents uncovered new leads for brain diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's OpenAI @OpenAI GPT-Rosalind surfaced a new lead for drug discovery: could restoring cholesterol transport protect neurons from degeneration? DCTN1 is a gene linked to Perry syndrome, a rare neurodegenerative disorder. In mouse-brain data, disrupting it increased expression of genes involved in 2:41 PM · Oct 21, 2026 · 51.5K Views 26 Replies · 95 Reposts · 1.26K Likes ](https://x.com/haider1/status/2112917197903540516) Not only does instantaneous literature review vastly speed up the research process, but it allows AI to make novel conceptual leaps from combining approaches from wildly different fields of research. AI regularly does this in math research, combining results, approaches, and theorems from far-flung places that no human mathematician would have thought to combine. It can do it in science, too. Much of scientific innovation, historically, has been “recombinant” innovation — scientists applying insights from one field to another. With AI, essentially all research is now cross-disciplinary — AI can read not just the literature on a particular subject, but the literature on a million other subjects that might have produced useful techniques or insights for the problem at hand. Superscience So far, all of the factors I’ve listed are ways that AI can speed up science as it’s already done. I’ve basically described how AI can send gigantic hordes of superhumanly fast, superhumanly well-read, superhumanly mathematically gifted researchers to re-accelerate scientific discovery. But it’s also possible that AI will enable types of discovery — and ways of understanding the natural world — that no network of humans, no matter how large or how brilliant it was or how long it had to work, would ever be able to discover. In a post back in July, I wrote about how that might work: What if there are lots of…aspects of the Universe that [are] too complex to understand in terms of simple laws, but not so complex that they just dissolve into unknowable chaos? It’s possible that we can reliably control these complex phenomena with AI, even if we never reduce them to the kind of principles that we can teach a grad student in a textbook… Another way of saying this is that there may be laws of the universe that humans can’t understand but AI can. I call these “cloud laws” — causal regularities that can be exploited by technology, but which are too diffuse and complex for an individual human being to either intuit or communicate… Perhaps social sciences like economics, sociology, and political science obey similarly complex regularities, and AI can help us find them. Perhaps there are physical processes — plasma, or topological materials, or aerial turbulence, etc. — that obey cloud laws instead of chaos?… [H]uman collaboration is bottlenecked — it’s limited by our ability to intuit patterns at an individual level, and to communicate these patterns from one individual to another. AI, being a computer, just doesn’t have this sort of limitation; it can work with vast, diffuse patterns without having to break them into pieces or simplify them in order to compress them into the tiny pipelines of person-to-person explanation… If much of the Universe turns out to be ruled by cloud laws, we could be on the precipice of a scientific renaissance. In order to discover cloud laws, AI will need huge amounts of data about the natural world. AI figured out human speech by assimilating essentially all of the text humans have ever written. If it’s going to figure out hidden patterns in biology, neuroscience, materials science, etc., it’s going to need similarly massive amounts of data from physical instruments. That data will be far, far more than humans — individually or collectively — would be able to parse, label, characterize, or model. But AI was built to do this. If scientists simply build huge arrays of sensors to measure complex phenomena like the brain, the cell, the economy, etc., they may be able to feed this flood of data to AI directly and bypass human cognitive intermediation entirely. AI would then learn about the world directly, and it might learn things that humans never could. This “superscience”, if you want to call it that, would actually go beyond the kind of science humans have done heretofore. Many of the technologies it yielded would be beyond human comprehension — indistinguishable from magic. But to the AIs, they would make perfect scientific sense. In any case, it seems clear that the scientific slowdown that threatened human progress will now be delayed — at least for a while. Unless humans have somehow found most of the actual exploitable regularities in our Universe, we’re about to enter a new golden age of science. Subscribe Share
Interview: Life Science Hub leadership talks impacts on RI
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November’s Max Mondays give you more chances to battle and catch Dynamax Pokémon at Power Spots. Check the schedule below for each featured Pokémon and date, including changes during this month’s special events. Looking for more coverage? Check out our Current Raid Bosses, Current Season’s Field Research Tasks and Current Egg Chart. Here is the […]
Science Begins With Wonder and Sometimes With a Salamander.
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by the Don & Beth Straus Center at Birch Bay Village. BAR HARBOR—The children had come to see the axolotls, those odd little salamanders with pink frills around their heads and the remarkable ability to grow back what they lose. But also there were stickers. There were crafts. There was the kind of excitement that makes a roomful of kindergarteners forget, for a little while, that sitting still is ever a requirement. And then there were the animals themselves, alive in their clear cases at the MDI Biological Laboratory, where 12 children from Pemetic Elementary School got to meet the creatures they had been learning about in class. “Do you love them?” their teacher, Carol Null, asked. The answer came back in a chorus. “I do!” “I do!” “I do too,” Null said, smiling. “I love them even more now.” That was the thing about a day at the lab. Science was no longer a picture in a book, or a word on a classroom wall. It had a face, a tail, and a set of extraordinary powers. And for a child, sometimes that is where wonder begins. Sometimes learning about science is about stickers. Sometimes it’s about bright pink feathers and getting super excited about that glow in the dark. Sometimes learning about science is joy—pure and simple joy. That’s how it was October 28 at the MDI Bio Lab as Miss Hannah (known in the lab as Dr. Hannah Lust, director of STEM, undergraduate and graduate Training), other scientists, graduate students, and MDI Bio Lab staff, hosted 12 students from Carol Null’s Pemetic Elementary School’s kindergarten class. The 2.5-hour program created by Dr. Lust focused on axolotls, a species of mole salamanders, a superhero in the animal world: a superhero with some scientific-study worthy superpowers. One of those superpowers come from the axolotls’ ability to regenerate body parts, including entire limbs. But also, they’re cute. This fall, before coming to the internationally renowned lab nestled in Salsbury Cove, Null has been integrating axolotls into her class. They’ve been part of the kids’ vocabulary and their storytelling. They’ve been part of science. They’ve been part of the children’s learning about facts vs opinions. The Pemetic Elementary kindergarten students learn about invasive species and the impact on the ecology and one student related it to their dad, who lobsters, and his worries about green craps, an invasive species in Maine. “Are they bigger or smaller than you thought they’d be?” the children are asked after the scientists show them multiple see-through cases of axolotls, lined up on a table that they’re told not to jiggle. “Bigger!” “I think they’re bigger.” “Smaller!” The bio lab opening its doors to the collaborations and to students and families is a norm, but this is the first program of this kind. It’s meant to encourage kindergarten students about axolotls. But when the students come to the bio lab something else happens too—something beyond Null’s child-focused teaching—the students see science—and the regenerating creatures in real life. They do crafts. They speak with them. They meet people who know all about them: scientists and educators who talk to the kids like they’re equals. That’s a superhero power, too. Null speaks about meeting the kids where they’re at in her classroom, letting their interest and hearts lead her in their learning. That requires recognition of interests, of individuality, of empathy. Some would argue that’s a super power, too, but it’s also in those 12 students as they listen to the storybook, encounter those live axolotls, and hear about how axolotls might help advance society’s understanding of human health. As Eddie Seckeler (comparative animal models, CORE facility manager), carefully puts the axolotls on a cart and rolls them away, some of the children stop what they’re doing to watch. “Bye axolotls.” “Bye!” “Bye!” The axolotls are not just images in a book, Hello, I’m an axolotl by Hayley and John Rocco; they are real and cool. MDI Biological Laboratory scientists Dr. Prayag Murawala and Dr. James Godwin who both feature in the Roccos’ book. The kindergarteners get to meet them in real life, off the page, in the world, doing science. They learn from them, laugh with them. “The visit is about more than meeting an unusual animal. By introducing children to scientists working in their own community, the experience helps make science tangible and accessible. Students can see that science is not just something they read about in books or learn about at school. It is something real people do every day by asking questions, making observations and working to understand how the world works,” explains MDI Biological Laboratory Director of Communications Rebecca Woods. While the students make axolotl-related crafts around tables, graduate students and staff help out. Ryan holds up his construction paper setting and axolotl to show Omar Maged, a graduate student. “Do you like it?” Ryan asks, eyes wide, turning from his axolotl to look up at Omar. Omar studies the construction paper for a moment, smiles and says definitively, each word important. “It is beautiful.” Null says that she’s so thankful for all the “amazing” community partners that her school and her students get to interact with as they learn and grow and live, but emphasized how the MDI Bio Lab goes out of its way to create something meaningful, something that allows her young students to build their own agency, to know that they can be impactful in their community, to show them how how things they learn about in text is connected to themselves and their community. Woods explains, “Axolotls have an extraordinary ability to regenerate, or regrow, certain body parts, including limbs. Scientists study these animals to understand how regeneration works and what their biology might teach us about tissue repair and healing in humans.” The children enter the space for “a memorable introduction to a big scientific question,” Woods said. “How can some animals regrow body parts? The encounter encourages children to look closely, wonder about what they see and begin to understand how scientists use observations and experiments to investigate questions.” “For the students, the visit is an opportunity to explore a fascinating animal and meet scientists in their own community,” Woods explains. “For MDI Biological Laboratory, it is a chance to share the excitement of research, nurture curiosity, and help young learners discover that science begins with asking questions.“ At the beginning of the school year, Pemetic kindergarteners didn’t know what the axolotl was—at least not exactly—now they know all about the axolotl’s life cycle. “It’s different than a butterfly,” one student told Mrs. Null. It is. The change and knowledge might seem small**,** but it offers a glimpse of what happens when a subject moves beyond the pages of a book and into a child’s world. The children have been learning about butterflies at the Charlotte Rhoades Park and Butterfly Garden. At both the garden and the MDI Bio Lab, the children see the animals, meet the scientists who study them and at the lab encounter a question that researchers are still working to answer: how can some creatures regenerate body parts, and what might that teach us about healing in humans? They leave with gift bags, paper-plate salamanders, new things to wonder about and a connection between the science they learn in school and the work happening in their own community. The axolotls may be remarkable for their ability to grow back what they have lost. For these young students, the day offers something different: a chance to discover how much there is to ask, observe, and imagine. When Null’s students had time to use chalk and draw whatever they want, in the beginning of the year, they drew rainbows. Now? They’re using that chalk and choosing to draw axolotls instead. About MDI Bio Laboratory For more than 125 years, MDI Bio Lab has been a center for training and research in comparative biology. In the last two decades its biomedical research has focused on aging, regeneration, and environmental toxins. The Laboratory houses 11 research groups staffed by an international team of world-class scientists and graduate students. It also leads a statewide network of colleges, universities and research institutions that collaborate to provide training, research experiences and financial support to help young Mainers play a bigger role in today’s biomedical revolution. Located on Maine’s rugged coast, the Laboratory’s 100+ acre campus houses research facilities, cottages and dorms that house visiting scientists and students. It is also home to MDI Bioscience, a subsidiary working to design innovative techniques to speed the drug discovery process. The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Rick Osann Art. LINKS TO LEARN MORE NIH INBRE MDI BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY Pemetic Elementary School Hello, I’m an Axolotl Photos: Carrie Jones/Bar Harbor Story HELP SUPPORT THE BAR HARBOR STORY When we started The Bar Harbor Story, we didn’t know if anyone would read it. But you showed up. You shared. You sent tips. Now—over 400,000 views every month later—it’s clear: people here care about their community and each other. We’ve kept everything free because news should never be out of reach, but every one of our stories takes time to write, and your support keeps The Bar Harbor Story going. If you value our work, please consider a paid subscription, a founding membership, or a sponsorship. It truly helps us cover one more meeting, tell one more story, shine one more light. Even $5 a month makes a difference. Click here to become a one-time supporter now. Thank you so much for being here. Founding member information can be found here. Have questions about sponsorships? Just send Shaun an email at sfarrar86@gmail.com, he’d love to hear from you. Subscribe Share Bar Harbor Story Share Leave a comment
Johns Hopkins Researchers’ Cancer Cell Mapping Technology Chosen for Anthropic AI for Science Project
Johns Hopkins University astrophysicist Alexander Szalay, Ph.D., and Johns Hopkins Medicine Department of Dermatology and Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center pathologist Janis Taube, M.D., M.Sc., were chosen for a research project in Anthropic's AI for Science program. They were selected for their pioneering AstroPath technology, which combines astronomy, pathology and artificial intelligence (AI) to create detailed maps of tumors, revealing how cancer cells interact with surrounding cells
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