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Scientists Discover a Hidden Hydrogen Pathway That Could Transform CO2 Into Valuable Fuel

Scientists have uncovered an unexpected pathway for hydrogen transfer during catalytic CO2 conversion. A computer model designed to predict how carbon dioxide becomes useful chemicals produced a surprising error: It identified formic acid as the main product instead of methanol. When scientists expanded the model to account for thousands of previously overlooked reactions, its predictions

Oct 10 • 12:19 PM EDT • Science • scitechdaily.com

Where does Earth's nitrogen go? Two atoms offer a clue

Nitrogen is one of life's building blocks, but it's only helpful in the right amounts. Too much nitrogen in water, for example, can lead to poor water quality and the gradual death of aquatic organisms. ...

Oct 9 • 10:00 AM EDT • Science • phys.org

Science on Target: Q3 Research We Fund

$2.4 million Invested in Biomarker Innovation ALS is a heterogeneous disease with distinct subpopulations of cases clustering together based on common underlying biology and with distinct differences in the clinical time course and manifestation of disease. Biomarkers are therefore critical for enabling precision medicine to deliver the right therapy to the right individual at the […]

Oct 7 • 3:48 PM EDT • Science • targetals.org

Hidden Risks and Costs of Maternal/Infant Health that Health Plans Miss

A new report from ProgenyHealth offers a window into how the business works with commercial and Medicaid plans to close gaps in maternity and NICU care management that traditional programs overlook.

Oct 6 • 7:30 AM EDT • Health • medcitynews.com

College of Ag Sciences clubs get philanthropy boost from visiting ag company

Three clubs in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences got a recent boost from a new donation from Pivot Bio, a company specializing in products that optimize crop production through specific nitrogen delivery.

Oct 5 • 5:02 PM EDT • Science • psu.edu

Why plugged-in pickle glows: Engineer burns 100-plus pickles to find answer

An engineer says glowing pickles owe their orange light to sparks igniting hydrogen near an electrode, with sodium ions supplying the color.

Oct 5 • 8:15 AM EDT • Science • yahoo.com

China develops plant to extract hydrogen, fresh water and uranium from the sea

Scientists improve on existing technology, plugging an overlooked energy leak to achieve a potentially profitable green solution.

Oct 5 • 12:00 AM EDT • Science • scmp.com

Mid-Atlantic Farmers Seek Early Fertilizer Price Protection Now

Mid-Atlantic farmers are locking in 2027 fertilizer contracts now, as nitrogen imports and market uncertainty make input-cost planning a key risk-management concern.

Oct 4 • 7:00 PM EDT • Business • rfdtv.com

Scientists just found a new way to make hydrogen from water

A new light-activated material can efficiently produce hydrogen from water without requiring an additional expensive metal catalyst. Researchers say its unusual sulfur-based chemistry could point toward cheaper and more practical ways to turn sunlight into clean fuel.

Oct 3 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Good science requires much more than evidence

Empiricists believe that scientific theories are true only if they make correct empirical predictions: if we can't verify these predictions, then there is no reason to expect that they tell us anything about reality. However, Professor of Philosophy at King's College David Kyle Johnson argues that this is mistaken. In response to Bas van Fraassen, who has written on this subject for the IAI, he argues that we have many reasons for believing a theory to be true, such as it being parsimonious and having large scope — qualities which have been used throughout the history of science as criteria for judging theories. In 2024, Princeton philosopher Bas van Fraassen wrote a short article for IAI News entitled “Science Does not Describe Reality: The Limits and Benefits of Explanation.” At the time, I was working on two projects (a science book and a Great Course) that, when completed, would (among other things) defend science’s ability to describe reality. I wanted to write a response to van Fraassen, but the projects demanded too much of my attention. But now that those projects are complete, I am in a position to explain the objections to van Fraassen’s thesis. Summarizing van Fraassen’s argumentIn a nutshell, his argument is this: What scientists do is make predictions based on theories and then invite others to test to see whether those predictions are borne out. “If theory T is right, result R should happen in experimental condition C.” Many think that running an experiment that shows that R happens in condition C is proof that theory T is true (and should be believed). But, van Fraassen argues, that R happened in condition C is only a reason to think that R happens in condition C. That’s the only observable, or empirical, result we can actually see, so that is all that we are really justified in believing. (The underlying theory that made that prediction still may or may not be true.) That is why he calls those who accept his position “empiricists.”Before I explain what is wrong with this position, let me explain what it gets right. What van Fraassen Gets RightFirst, a theory correctly predicting the results of an experiment is not, strictly speaking, “proof” that the theory is correct. The basic line of reasoning is this:If the theory T is true, result R should happen. Result R did happen. Thus, theory T is true.In other words:“If T then R. R. Thus, T.”This is a deductively invalid, fallacious mode of reasoning, called “affirming the consequent.” Those premises do not guarantee that the conclusion follows. “If I am in Pennsylvania, then I am in the USA. I am in the USA. Thus, I am in Pennsylvania.” Clearly that argument doesn’t guarantee its conclusion; neither does the above argument.However, science is not a deductive method of reasoning; it is an inductive one. And inductive arguments merely try to raise the probability of their conclusion, not “prove” them for certain. Thus, the fact that an experimental result doesn’t prove a theory is true is irrelevant; it’s not supposed to. That is not what scientific reasoning is about.___If the hypothesis that something exists clearly provides the best explanation for what we can observe, then the belief that it exists is what is rational.___Second, it’s also true that a single experimental result doesn’t provide enough justification to believe that a theory is true. Scientists do not come to a consensus about whether a theory is true by looking at a single experiment; they look at all the evidence to determine where the preponderance of evidence points. The mere fact that I am in the USA raises the probability that I am in Pennsylvania, but not nearly enough to conclude that I am in Pennsylvania. However, if I am also regularly encountering people wearing Eagles and Phillies hats and seeing advertisements for Founding Father tours, I probably am. In the same way, a theory successfully predicting the outcome of one experiment is not enough to conclude that it is true; but if a theory makes a wide variety of predictions that are all vindicated by multiple experiments, performed by many different groups and people, all actively trying to prove the theory false (which is what good scientific experiments are designed to do)—that is a good reason to conclude that the theory is true. In other words, if you repeatedly try to prove something false but can’t, that is a very good indication that it isn’t. The problem of underdeterminationIn reply, those whom van Fraassen calls “empiricists” often point to the “problem of underdetermination.” For any given theory that makes successful predictions about what happens in experimental conditions, there are countless other possible theories that make exactly the same predictions—and since they do, the experimental evidence in question is just as much reason to accept any of those theories as it is to accept our original one. Thus, the argument goes, we have no way of knowing whether our original theory is true, or one of the other “predictively equivalent” theories is true. SUGGESTED VIEWING How Occam's Razor changed the world With Johnjoe McFadden As an example of underdetermination, philosophers often offer this example. The evidence of fossils seems to provide reason to conclude that the universe is quite old; ancient fossils are what the “ancient universe” hypothesis predicts. But it’s also possible that God created an ancient-looking universe 200 years ago, complete with a “fake” fossil record for us to find, to make it look old. The existence of fossils is what that theory predicts too. So, the argument goes, the fossil record can’t be used as evidence that the universe is ancient; the fossil record supports the “200-year-old ancient-looking universe” theory just as much. The problem of underdetermination points out that, for any theory with supporting evidence, we could invent another completely different theory that predicts exactly the same evidence, and thus undermine that evidence’s ability to support the original theory.But this “argument from underdetermination” betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what scientific reasoning is and how it works. To explain, let me use another rather strange (but very real and commonly discussed) philosophical thought experiment called “The Grue Problem.” The “Grue” ProblemSuppose I want to know what color emeralds are, so I observe a few, see that they all appear green, and form the theory that “all emeralds are green.” I thus predict that the next 100 emeralds I find will also appear to be green. And let’s say that happens, and so I thus conclude that my theory that all emeralds are green is true. Now, one might rightly point out that I don’t know for sure that all emeralds are green—I have not seen them all. Maybe some I haven’t found yet are blue. Fair enough. After all, we used to think that all swans were white, until we found some black ones. But let’s say that I go on a quest and collect every emerald in the universe—and, for the sake of the argument, let’s say I can do this, and can even know that I have every one of them. So, I collect them all, look at them all, and verify that they all appear green. Can’t I now rightly conclude that all emeralds are green?Inspired by the problem of underdetermination, a friend might argue that I cannot.Sure, they all appear green now—but there could be another kind of color called “grue.” Something is grue if it is green up to a certain point in time, but then spontaneously turns blue. And there could be an infinite number of “shades” of grue. Something that is one shade of grue will turn blue at noon today, but something that is another shade of grue will turn blue at noon tomorrow, etc. So yes, the emeralds appear green now; and since they haven’t turned blue yet, they are not some “past” shade of grue. But they might be some “future” shade of grue (e.g., they may turn blue at noon tomorrow). And since all future shades of grue are consistent with “being green up to this point in time,” the evidence you have is completely consistent with the notion that all emeralds are some future shade of grue, rather than green. Indeed, that they would appear green until now is what the “some future shade of grue” hypothesis predicts. So, we have just as much reason to conclude that all emeralds are some shade of grue as we do to conclude that they are green.You’re probably thinking “It’s not equally possible that the emeralds are grue; they are obviously green.” You are right! But explaining why your instinctive reaction to my friend’s argument is correct will help inform why van Fraassen’s “empiricist” is wrong and science actually does describe reality.The main mistake my friend makes is in thinking that the “empirical evidence” (of all the emeralds appearing green) is (or even should be) all I am using to draw the conclusion that all emeralds are green. It is not. I am also considering known facts about how colors typically work; things don’t usually change color, and when they do, they don’t do so suddenly, without cause, and all at once. So, even though the simple evidence of the emeralds all appearing green up to this point is consistent with them being some future shade of grue—that is even what the grue hypothesis “predicts”—it is still exceedingly unlikely that they are. The hypothesis that they are green is much more likely. Understanding science refutes the problem of underdetermination The misunderstanding about science that the “empiricist” pointing to “the problem of underdetermination” makes is similar to the one that my friend made. Science is not just about considering experimental evidence; in fact, it’s not even just about considering empirical evidence. As Ernan McMullin and many other philosophers of science have pointed out, the inference that makes science is “inference to the best explanation” (sometimes called “abduction” or “retroduction” by McMullin). While, depending on the circumstances, scientists use many different kinds of reasoning, science as a whole is, simply put, the process of considering multiple competing explanations and comparing them to certain criteria—explanatory criteria (the kinds of things explanations must be and do, by definition, to be a good explanation)—to see which explanation is the best.And these criteria do not deal only with empirical results. Yes, successful predictions raise the probability of a hypothesis, but it’s also the case that the more new assumptions a theory makes, the less likely it is to be true; every new assumption presents an opportunity for the theory to be false. (The fewer assumptions a theory makes, the simpler or “more parsimonious” it is said to be.) Likewise, the more existing evidence a theory contradicts, the less likely it is, because in order for a theory to be true, every piece of evidence it contradicts has to be somehow faulty. (The fewer established theories a new theory contradicts, the more “conservative” it is said to be.) And, obviously, the more something explains, the better explanation it is. (This is called having “scope.”) If a theory raises unanswerable questions, it’s not expanding our understanding, and thus is not wide-scoping. Scientists consider all these things when deciding which theory to accept, because the theory that adheres best to these explanatory criteria is most likely to be true.___the mere fact that a theory’s predictive success is why it “sticks around” or “becomes accepted” in the scientific community is not a reason to be skeptical about its truth.___The reason the grue hypothesis is no good is because it invents an entirely new kind of color—not just a new shade, but an entirely different category of color (a different way colors work)—and thus is not parsimonious. It raises unanswerable questions about how and why emeralds would just spontaneously change from green to blue (and thus does not have wide scope). And it contradicts what is already well established about how color works (and thus is unconservative).The theories that the problem of underdetermination points to do the same thing. Yes, the theory that God created an “ancient-looking universe” (complete with an ancient-looking fossil record) two hundred years ago is also consistent with the empirical evidence (of a fossil record) that presently exists; but that theory is monumentally unparsimonious (it requires many extra assumptions about infinite entities) and not wide-scoping (it raises unanswerable questions about why God would do such a thing). So, I can rationally conclude that it is false.Indeed, the history of science includes many examples of theories that were rejected because they lacked parsimony and/or scope, even before their falsity (and the truth of their competing theory) was confirmed by observation. As I point out in my book, geocentrism was rejected by the scientific community because it lacked parsimony, almost 200 years before the observation of parallax confirmed that the Earth moves around the sun. And the continuum theory of matter was completely rejected by 1860, because it couldn’t explain chemical reactions or organize matter into a periodic table, even though the experiments that eventually confirmed atomic theory weren’t even proposed until the 1870s. Solving the best of a bad lot problemIn response, the “empiricists” are likely to object, this time pointing to the “best of a bad lot” problem. “We have no reason to conclude that an explanation that has been shown to be better than others is true because we have no guarantee that the true theory was among those that we were considering.” If you have a “lot” (a collection) of poor explanations, even the best one is not true.The responses to this problem, however, are numerous. Peter Lipton argues that the set of hypotheses that scientists consider are not just randomly selected and thus unlikely to contain a theory that is true; they use existing knowledge to home in on what is most likely to be true. A doctor trying to explain abdominal pain is not going to bother wondering whether demons are causing it; they are going to stick with things like appendicitis and kidney stones, because they are most likely. Further, despite its name, inference to the best explanation is not just the process of comparing hypotheses and accepting the best one; we also want one that is a good explanation in its own right. If it’s not, we are going to keep looking until we find an explanation that is. And while that process does not guarantee that we will come across the exact truth, it’s very likely that the theory that emerges as the best will be at least approximately true, and thus we will be justified in believing it. And lastly, as I point out in my book, although many theories not based in scientific evidence (like geocentrism and continuum theory) have been completely overturned, science almost always progresses by the refinement of scientifically established theories—not their replacement. (Although our sun is not the center of the universe, heliocentrism was our first step in understanding the Earth’s true place in the universe.) So even if a theory we accept today may not be completely right, accepting it is a step on the journey toward the complete truth. The example of atomic theoryNow, it’s worth pointing out that most empiricists are not skeptical of all scientific theories; they are only skeptical of the ones that hypothesize the existence of “unobservables.” It’s not like they think that round Earth, heliocentrism, and germ theory are just useful (but untrue) “instruments” for making predictions about how to most efficiently navigate the seas, predict planetary motion, and treat diseases. They admit that the Earth actually is round, that the planets revolve around the sun, and that germs exist and cause disease. These facts and entities can be observed; the theories that suggest they exist are true. It’s only when theories start hypothesizing the existence of unobservables—like electrons, or quantum fields—that can’t be observed directly, that we should start doubting the theories’ truth. And to be fair to van Fraassen, in this published work, he doesn’t really say that we should doubt the truth of such theories. Only that scientific reasoning does not rationally force us to accept them as true. Skepticism, or agnosticism, he argues, is warranted. SUGGESTED READING Science is based in metaphor By Andrew Reynolds But the history of atomic theory throws a monkey wrench into that argument. Atoms used to be unobservable; again, scientists first accepted the theory that they exist because it had such grandiose explanatory power. But then atoms were seen with electron microscopes. They thus moved into the category of the observable. But this didn’t substantially change anything about what scientists were justified in believing; it certainly didn’t change any “atomic skeptics’” minds. It just confirmed what everyone already knew! If the hypothesis that something exists clearly provides the best explanation for what we can observe, then the belief that it exists is what is rational. The fact that the thing itself is not technically observable does not make doubting its existence rational.What’s more, the atoms were seen with an electron microscope. But electrons are themselves unobservable. How can an electron microscope reveal an atom if electrons are not real? This leads us to what is famously known as Hilary Putnam’s “miracle argument.” It’s (not) a miraclePhilosopher Hilary Putnam’s miracle argument is somewhat famous. Basically, he argued that a scientific theory being able to repeatedly make successful predictions—even about unobservables—without being at least approximately true would require a “miracle.” In other words, it would be such an improbable occurrence that it could not rationally be believed—the better explanation for why scientific theories about unobservables make the right predictions is because the unobservable entities and structures they hypothesize exist.Van Fraassen has addressed this argument. Indeed, in his original article, where he references Alison Gopnik’s point about orgasms not being “necessary for procreation” even though the desire for orgasm “drives the creation of progeny,” he is pointing to his own argument about how organisms are not naturally selected by evolution to get true beliefs; to the extent that belief-forming processes are selected for, the ones that are selected are the ones that are useful for survival—not the ones that produce true beliefs. In the same way, van Fraassen argues, scientific theories are accepted, not because they are true, but because they aren’t falsified; they make successful predictions; that’s what makes them “stick around.” So, the fact that they make successful predictions (and thus became accepted) is not a reason to think they are true.This argument is similar to C. S. Lewis’s “argument from reason,” which he used to argue against evolution: “The truth of evolution undercuts our ability to know that it is true.” Lewis’ argument famously failed; Elizabeth Anscombe, by Lewis’s own admission, demolished Lewis in a debate on the topic, and I have explained elsewhere why modified versions of the argument fail as well. In short, it’s because it fails to recognize that a belief-forming process can make an organism more likely to survive because it reliably produces true beliefs. It is therefore not the case that beliefs generated by naturally selected belief-forming processes are automatically false or unjustified.In the same way, the reason a theory “sticks around” could be because it’s not falsified, because it “makes correct predictions.” But the reason it makes correct predictions is most likely because it is true. (In pointing this out, I am echoing the arguments of Musgrave, Lipton, Psillos, and Kitcher, who refuted van Fraassen’s argument and analogy long before his 2024 article.) It would be a huge coincidence that it could do so without being true. And that is the point of Putnam’s miracle argument. Thus, contrary to van Fraassen’s suggestion, the mere fact that a theory’s predictive success is why it “sticks around” or “becomes accepted” in the scientific community is not a reason to be skeptical about its truth. ConclusionLet me close by saying something about the fact that empiricists don’t doubt the truth of all scientific theories, just the ones that hypothesize unobservables. In today’s society, this theory is dangerous to espouse publicly. The nuance between being skeptical about all of science, and just the highly technical theories about unobservables, is guaranteed to be lost to the average reader. And there is so much unjustified skepticism and doubt about the findings of science and experts that a headline like “Science Does Not Describe Reality” could easily fuel the anti-science movement, worsen climate change denial and cause the next pandemic.This is why I believe it was important to still respond to van Fraassen’s article, a full two years after he wrote it. Not only, as I have argued, does it represent a philosophically inaccurate view of how scientific reasoning works and what scientific reasoning can do, but it is a dangerous view to boot. It should thus be rejected.

Oct 1 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • iai.tv

Ancient hydrogen spotted in the early universe could open a new way to study space's baffling expansion

After seven years of work, Canada's CHIME telescope has a measurement of dark energy from 2019. More detailed studies are planned to expand the research.

Sep 30 • 5:28 PM EDT • Science • livescience.com

A hidden energy “treasure” under the Alps and Pyrenees? Scientists stunned - Futura-Sciences

A Secret Under Our Feet? Could hydrogen be the hidden energy of tomorrow? Recent breakthroughs are strengthening the case for this natural gas—also known as “white hydrogen”—as a key energy player in a decarbonized future. In France’s Lorraine region, for example, deep drilling has uncovered significant concentrations of natural hydrogen,...

Sep 30 • 7:00 AM EDT • Science • futura-sciences.com

Pregnancy 'Brain Fog' Is Real, Study Finds, And Scientists May Know Why

Researchers found that sustained high oestrogen levels disrupted a brain pathway linked to memory in mice, while a study of 70 women found that higher oestrogen levels were associated with poorer performance on some memory tests during late pregnancy.

Sep 29 • 2:04 AM EDT • Science • ndtv.com

Scientists Just Used Solar Panels To Convert Plastic Into Hydrogen Fuel

Solar power is awesome because it's emission free, but it's not limited to making electricity; one team is using it to extract hydrogen from plastic.

Sep 27 • 3:32 PM EDT • Science • tech.yahoo.com

In 1969, scientists began fertilising Ontario's Lake 227 with nitrogen and phosphorus; they stopped adding nitrogen in 1990, but annual algal blooms continued for decades as phosphorus additions remained

controlling phosphorus is central to controlling freshwater eutrophication.

Sep 27 • 1:22 AM EDT • Science • timesofindia.indiatimes.com

A Massive Jackpot of Green Fuel Is Locked Underground—and Scientists May Have Just Found the Key

A new study replicated the heat and pressure conditions of Western Australia’s vast iron-ore deposits to produce natural hydrogen gas.

Sep 23 • 9:30 AM EDT • Science • popularmechanics.com

'Babies' review: Child-free couples finally have a comedy that doesn't make them a punchline

Lauren Miller Rogen and Seth Rogen tackle a heteronormative stigma with humor.

Sep 20 • 5:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • mashable.com

Plug Power vs. Bloom Energy: Which Hydrogen-Adjacent Stock Actually Has a Real Business Model?

Bloom Energy is seeing massive earnings growth, while Plug Power is working to clean up its finances.

Sep 20 • 2:25 AM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com

Plug Power vs. Bloom Energy: Which Hydrogen-Adjacent Stock Actually Has a Real Business Model?

Bloom Energy is seeing massive earnings growth, while Plug Power is working to clean up its finances.

Sep 20 • 2:05 AM EDT • Business • fool.com

A20 Pro’s Packaging Shift And New Vapor Chamber Unlocks Peak Performance; Liquid Nitrogen Cooling Brings Less Than 3% Increase Thanks To These Optimizations

Discover how the A20 Pro chip packaging shift and custom vapor chamber unlock massive peak performance upgrades, making liquid nitrogen cooling practically obsolete with under 3% gains

Sep 19 • 2:00 PM EDT • Technology • wccftech.com

Menopause and estrogen patches dominated DC conversations. Now what?

Menopause took center stage in Washington, DC, with meetings about testosterone, estrogen patches, and how to improve women's health care.

Sep 18 • 6:26 PM EDT • Health • usatoday.com

Moeve breaks ground on $1.15B green hydrogen project

Sep 17 • 6:34 PM EDT • Business • cnn.com

NASA’s New Horizons spots signs of liquid nitrogen flowing on Pluto

Scientists have found the first evidence that liquid may have flowed across Pluto’s surface in the recent past. Dark features on the enormous Sputnik Planitia glacier appear consistent with liquid nitrogen rising through cracks from deep beneath the ice. Computer models show that nitrogen could melt at the glacier’s base and travel upward like fluid through small conduits. The finding reveals that Pluto may be much more geologically active than its frozen appearance suggests.

Sep 16 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

What Does the Science of Climate Change Really Look Like?

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a three-part series on how the Right should think about environmental and climate policy. Read Chris Barnard on Reclaiming Environmental Policy from the Left. More than a decade ago, the world’s governments negotiated and signed the Paris Climate Agreement, committing to hold global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius. In the following years, climate had immense cultural power. Greta Thunberg emerged. Fortune 500 companies established net-zero plans. The U.S. got the Inflation Reduction Act. Then the pendulum swung back. President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office, speaking of green energy as a “scam” and carbon footprints as a “hoax” and on all matters of international policy emphasizing bilateral engagement and power over globalism and cooperation. The technology companies that had been at the forefront of net-zero pledges and green leadership discovered the importance of all-of-the-above power to their visions for artificial intelligence and began quietly postponing or removing their targets. On the left side of the political spectrum, rising concerns about inflation and cost pushed climate lower down in the stated priorities of voters and stump speeches of politicians. The moment is ripe for a reset on the politics of climate change and for conservatives especially to chart a course that acknowledges and addresses the real challenges in plausible ways. So what should we think about climate change as we enter a post-peak climate era? If it is neither an apocalypse nor a hoax, what will hold up as a durable view of climate change? And how does it project onto the concerns and priorities of the right-of-center’s emerging coalition? New to Commonplace_? Subscribe below to get the magazine in your inbox._ Subscribe A Solid Foundation As the politics and economics of climate careened over the past ten years, the physics carried on regardless. In 2015, the year the Paris Climate Agreement was adopted, the world emitted 41.2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide. By 2025, emissions had risen only 2.4%, to 42.2 gigatonnes, because falling emissions from land use offset increasing emissions from fossil fuels. But slow growth in annual emissions is not rapid decline, let alone net-zero, so carbon dioxide kept accumulating in the atmosphere, going from 399 to 426 parts per million. Global temperature kept rising too, from about 1.1 degrees Celsius above the 1850–1900 average in 2015, to 1.4 degrees above it in 2025. None of this should surprise anyone. Even most prominent skeptics, like the authors of the 2025 report commissioned by the Trump administration’s Department of Energy, accept the basic physics. Carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere at industrial volumes accumulates and traps heat that would otherwise escape to space. That heat warms the upper ocean and increases temperatures at the surface. Increased ocean heat and melting of land ice cause sea levels to rise. Changes in the climate become noticeable to us as subtle shifts in temperature and precipitation, seasons arriving early or late, changes in the surrounding ecosystem, and weather extremes. The much more meaningful debate is not about whether these things are happening, but about what it all means for human societies. (While it is a proxy measure of overall risk, no one experiences global surface temperature.) This debate invokes at least three interesting questions: how much today’s warming is showing up in regional climate trends, how much more warming we should anticipate, and how extreme weather events can be understood in the context of climate change. Recent scientific advances give us new insights into each of these, but there is still much to learn. This is the context in which the next generation of conservative leaders will be the first to deal with significant climate change as a fact, not a forecast. It will be with them for their entire careers. Our evolving scientific picture of climate change will come from weather and climate records stretching further into the past, new kinds of observations in the present, better modeling tools for the future, and simply more time to observe the emergence of climate signals and their tangible effects on ecosystems and communities in the United States and around the world. The policy landscape will be shaped by not only the impacts of changes in the climate, but also by the ways in which societies respond and by the emergence of new technologies for both altering the trajectory of emissions and adapting to new climate realities. Global climate records now show the fingerprints of warming in different phenomena around much of the world. The IPCC, in its most recent assessment report, documents warming trends over all land regions, even as natural variability adds substantial variance to local trends. And the highest temperature extremes have become more intense and frequent, almost everywhere, since the 1950s. Scientists are highly confident that these changes are attributable to human influence. But confidence in detecting trends and attributing them to human influence degrades across heavy precipitation events; drought trends are heterogeneous and not attributable to human activity with great confidence. For hurricanes, tornadoes, and other severe storms there is even less confidence in trends or their relationship to climate change. In general, a fair summary of the evidence is that for well-observed phenomena, like surface temperature or heavy rainfall, with a clear relationship to warming, our multidecadal observations are consistent with human influence overcoming natural variability over long time periods and extremes increasing. For regions that are sampled more sparsely, or phenomena with a higher noise-to-signal ratio, we will need to observe them longer to understand the magnitude of the climate signal or improve dynamical understanding using models and observations together. But for Climate For those who can’t wait, we also have new techniques that attempt to understand the role climate change has in influencing particular extreme events. When the climate is changing and disaster strikes, it is natural to ask whether that disaster was somehow “caused” by climate change. For scientists and policymakers acting in good faith, answering that question helps develop a more accurate picture of the problem, how it may be getting worse, and what preparations we should be making to respond to it. It may, at some point, give some weight to how liability is assigned by courts or adaptation funding is distributed by society. But how we ask this question is extremely important. It is easy to get the analysis wrong by discounting the role that meteorology plays. As meteorologist Theodore Shepherd explained in a clear 2016 review of climate attribution methods, “if a weather or climate event is truly extreme in the present climate, then perforce it requires unusual meteorological conditions, which means that climate change is at most a contributing factor.” Share Scientists have two ways to probe climate as a contributing factor, both of which have entered media coverage of extreme weather events. One asks a probabilistic question: How much more likely is a particular event (e.g., a temperature record over a particular area) amid global warming? The answer involves using historical records and computer simulations to estimate the likelihood of such an event in both a changed and a preindustrial climate. The findings are less about the specific event, and more about events of that nature. The other question is: How has the changed climate affected the specific event in question? Here, scientists try to understand what a similar event would have looked like in the preindustrial climate. This is sometimes called the storyline approach, where the story is the specific meteorological details of the event. These methods offer ways to test the intuition of scientists about real weather extremes. In late June and early July of 2021, a persistent high-pressure ridge, or heat dome, set up over the Pacific Northwest and an extraordinary heat wave affected the area from Oregon to British Columbia. For six days, it shattered temperature records across the region and hundreds died from heat-related causes, in an area where such high, and persistently high, temperatures were well outside of experience and many live without air conditioning. Scientists have studied its connection to climate change using multiple approaches. This specific event was created by a rare combination of meteorological factors, a strong high-pressure ridge created the conditions for extreme heat, which occurred on top of higher average temperatures in the region from global warming. Probabilistic analyses showed that climate change increased the likelihood of such an event by at least 8-fold to more than 100-fold. One standout example found that such an event had effectively zero probability of occurring in the preindustrial climate. The enormous range in these assessments reflects how hard it is to estimate probabilities of events at the tail of the historical record. Estimates of the effect on the temperature of the event are more clustered. A recent review paper documents how multiple methodologies have found a positive influence, roughly 1-2 degrees Celsius of an anomaly that exceeded 15 degrees, of climate change on the temperature magnitude of the event. Multiple studies have investigated and found some positive influence of climate change in other extreme events. Attribution studies found climate likely increased the heavy rainfall that accompanied Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and surrounding regions in 2024. The extensive fires that struck Los Angeles in 2025 illustrate how the causal chain can become messy, though. Studies do detect a positive influence of climate on the event’s likelihood, but while climate change likely contributed to underlying aridity, it would not have played a role in the heavy winds or land practices that preceded disaster. These event attribution studies will become more common for extreme, or damaging, weather events. They can be produced quickly, and often are reported before peer review. As the Pacific Northwest heatwave example shows, when multiple methods converge on a positive attribution, the finding should probably carry some weight even if you have to be careful about accepting the results from a single study. I expect that as climate change proceeds and the climate thus departs further from a preindustrial counterfactual, the influence will become more detectable across a variety of extreme events and more easily identified. This will be used to cast blame, but can also be used to inform how communities and society adapt to ongoing change. We May Still Be Surprised One positive development, insofar as less climate change is better, has been that our central estimates for future climate change should probably be revised downward. Mostly, that is because the high-end warmings that scientists regularly analyzed about ten to 20 years ago, driven by high emissions throughout the twenty-first century, now appear to be somewhere between unlikely and impossible. At one time, the upper end of mainstream climate projections extended well into 4 to 6 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of this century, which, models suggest, would have wrought enormous real-world damage. Current energy and policy trends now point toward 2.5 or 3 degrees. Damages and risks are commonly modeled as increasing steeply with more warming, so this is already a better-than-previously-expected outcome for the climate (which is independent of the physical response to emissions). But we should maintain a wide range for plausible outcomes and prepare for the possibility of being surprised. Emissions trajectories are subject to deep uncertainty, the physical climate response is still developing, and whatever change occurs in the climate will then be mediated through unpredictable economic, social, and political institutions. Over the past decade, the pace of warming surprised some keen observers and appeared to accelerate, though not yet outside the range of expectation provided by climate models. The reasons for that apparent acceleration are being actively studied (as was the apparent pause in warming from 1998 to 2012), but no single driver has emerged. Some blame it on the El Niño, variability which would have no bearing on climate. Some think it is a result of factories in East Asia and global shipping fleets cutting aerosol emissions, which in the strongest version of the argument would indicate higher climate sensitivity to carbon-dioxide emissions. Others are more measured, not yet ready to draw solid conclusions as to whether climate projections require revision. We will have to see. Long-Term Thinking Climate change asks us to think over long time scales. But the pace of human-driven warming is compressing a large global change into a century. Changing weather patterns and extreme events are already causing adjustment costs and damages and will do more. Adaptation will help, but it is not free. For some communities, these costs will erode livelihoods and well-being, and may force migration. Are we prepared for large-scale managed retreats in the United States? Thankfully, American wealth, geographical diversity, and moderate climates may leave us better prepared than many around the world. But wealthy countries can still suffer serious disruption from narrowly concentrated costs, even if they appear entirely manageable in aggregate. Readers of Commonplace are familiar with the challenges of rapidly adapting to economic forces. The displacement that came from the China Shock is barely perceptible in aggregate GDP and employment data, but it affected millions of people and those people were far less mobile than economic models tended to assume. Deindustrialization rippled through the nation with enormous effects for not only our economic vitality, but also our national security. The forces surrounding climate change may not be so different; the world gets richer and must accept some diffuse costs. Those may be modest overall, but cause all manner of unpredictable effects with which policymakers must cope. In the case of the China Shock, our faith in a growing pie served us poorly. We’ll need to do better on climate. Leave a comment

Sep 16 • 4:30 PM EDT • Science • commonplace.org

Popular drugs for bone health linked to significantly lower Alzheimer's risk

A Hong Kong study of 121,492 older adults links nitrogen-containing bisphosphonates for osteoporosis to a 16% lower Alzheimer's disease risk.

Sep 16 • 3:41 PM EDT • Health • foxnews.com

EPA Science Panel Questions Nitrogen Dioxide Pollution Science

An EPA committee on Wednesday kicked off a scientific review of nitrogen dioxide amid concerns about the uncertainty of the existing science.

Sep 16 • 12:51 PM EDT • Science • news.bloomberglaw.com

The Missing Science Of Robotic Systems

More capable robots require systems that realize capabilities through appropriate paradigms, compose them across time, distribute them across heterogeneous compute, and govern them under explicit constraints.

Sep 16 • 3:04 AM EDT • Science • semiengineering.com

Congress set to discuss this once taboo topic in women's health

Congress will talk about vaginal estrogen and hot flashes at its first-ever hearing on menopause Wednesday, Sept. 16.

Sep 15 • 1:58 PM EDT • Health • yahoo.com

Underground Hydrogen: Two High-Reward Bets, One Indispensable Science

Regardless of the commercial implications, there is a solid scientific case for research into underground hydrogen storage and natural hydrogen production.

Sep 15 • 9:28 AM EDT • Science • eos.org

Seth Rogen reveals NSFW advice Judd Apatow ‘screamed’ at “Knocked Up” cast

The actor and director explained he’s “gotten a lot out of” the risqué request over the years.

Sep 13 • 4:56 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

Seth Rogen’s wife “really” enjoyed directing Anna Kendrick’s love scenes with her husband: ‘Touch all of her body!’

“I was like, ‘Can you get closer?’” Lauren Miller Rogen said of directing husband Seth and Kendrick in “Babies.”

Sep 13 • 2:56 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

China’s FAST telescope maps neutral hydrogen, the cosmic gas for making stars

Survey identifies more than 156,000 extragalactic sources, offering an unprecedented pool for studying the universe’s biggest questions.

Sep 13 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • scmp.com

Researchers Discover a Green Hydrogen 'Goldmine' Beneath Australia's Red Dirt

"Could be transformative for our energy future."

Sep 12 • 10:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencealert.com

Seth Rogen makes rare comment on long-gestating Figment movie based on Disney World ride

Seth Rogen made a rare comment on Disney’s upcoming Figment movie, which was first announced in 2022 as an adaptation of Disney World’s beloved Epcot ride.

Sep 12 • 4:29 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com

Experts just found an enormous volcano lurking under England

454 million years ago, an eruption as powerful as several thousand hydrogen bombs tore through the English east coast

Sep 11 • 2:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencefocus.com

Chinese team achieves fourfold leap in fuel-cell power

The proton-transfer breakthrough could improve hydrogen vehicles and space systems, while reducing the use of costly platinum.

Sep 10 • 2:00 PM EDT • Science • scmp.com

Autism Decoded: New Science Is Opening Paths to Better Treatments

In the past few decades, researchers have identified hundreds of genes that increase the risk of autism spectrum

Sep 10 • 2:30 AM EDT • Science • technology.org

Liquid nitrogen leak triggers emergency response at Wisconsin business

FITCHBURG, Wis. (WFRV) — A Wisconsin business had a hazmat scare after the Fitchburg Fire Department was alerted to a liquid nitrogen leak, according to a press release. Bruker Nano Services,…

Sep 9 • 5:55 PM EDT • Business • wearegreenbay.com

Dutch scientists pipe office urine into bacteria-filled cells that generate electricity and recover nitrogen and phosphorus, while a related system can produce hydrogen

Pee breaks are one of the most relaxing times in the office when you finally get to have some sane moments to yourself. Which is why most employees take numerous such breaks within a day.

Sep 9 • 6:15 AM EDT • Science • timesofindia.indiatimes.com

U.S. Department of Health Announces Key Leadership Changes at FDA

Sept ⁠8 (Reuters) - ⁠The U.S. ⁠Department of Health ‌and ‌Human ⁠Services on ⁠Tuesday named four senior leaders at ⁠the U.S. ⁠Food ⁠and Drug Administration, including the ⁠heads ⁠of its drug center and ⁠vaccines and biologics unit. (Reporting by Christy ⁠Santhosh in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim ...

Sep 8 • 4:35 PM EDT • Health • usnews.com

Colombia business association labels hydrogen a $20bn ‘investment opportunity’

The National Business Association of Colombia (ANDI) believes the country’s hydrogen sector is an “investment opportunity worth over $20bn,” saying a pipeline of announced projects could attract enormous capital.

Sep 8 • 6:20 AM EDT • Business • gasworld.com

Weak hydrogen bonds dethrone copper as the most stable metal binder, opening a new path for metal selection

- KAIST researchers reversed a decades-old metal-complex stability trend by tuning weak hydrogen bonds around the complexes without altering the metals’ direct coordination environments - The discovery could provide new design strategies for selective metal separation and recognition, catalysis, and biomimetic systems

Sep 5 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • eurekalert.org

Scientists detect signals of hydrogen from billions of years ago. Could this help us map out the universe?

"Hydrogen intensity mapping has long been seen as a promising way to map the universe efficiently."

Sep 4 • 5:00 PM EDT • Science • space.com

Drone business opens Winchester manufacturing facility

Sterling-based Heven AeroTech opens a 56,000-square-foot Winchester facility to manufacture hydrogen-powered drones

Sep 4 • 10:45 AM EDT • Business • virginiabusiness.com

In 2001, scientists began adding 5 to 6 nanograms per litre of synthetic estrogen to an Ontario lake; after 2 seasons its minnow population collapsed

A tiny concentration of a synthetic hormone was enough to trigger a dramatic ecological change in a remote Ontario lake. In 2001, scientists began adding the synthetic estrogen 17α-ethynylestradiol (EE2) to Lake 260 in northwestern Ontario, maintaining concentrations of about 5 to 6 nanograms per litre.

Sep 3 • 5:30 AM EDT • Science • timesofindia.indiatimes.com

The universe has plenty of hydrogen. So why is star formation collapsing?

Star formation across the universe has fallen dramatically over the past 4.5 billion years, but astronomers have uncovered a surprising twist: the supply of neutral hydrogen, a key ingredient for making stars, has barely declined. Using China’s FAST radio telescope and data from roughly 2.5 million galaxies observed by DESI, researchers found that star formation was about 2.5 times higher 4.5 billion years ago, while neutral hydrogen levels were only about 1.4 times higher.

Sep 2 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Australia’s red soil may be hiding a massive clean energy source

Researchers have discovered that Western Australia’s iron-rich rocks can naturally generate hydrogen and that the process may be boosted to produce much larger amounts. If it can be scaled up, the vast formations beneath the Pilbara could become a major new source of low-emission energy for Australia and potentially the world.

Aug 28 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Minnesota company is tackling nitrogen pollution with ag science in volatile fertilizer market

Pivot Bio, a company selling farmers a self-sustaining, non-synthetic, bacterial source of nitrogen, aims to lower the nitrogen levels that are the source of significant water pollution in farm states.

Aug 28 • 7:00 AM EDT • Science • minnesotareformer.com

Seoul National University of Science and Technology researchers develop AI framework for optimizing solid oxide electrolysis cells

As countries invest in green hydrogen to decarbonize heavy industry, transportation, and energy systems, researchers are seeking faster ways to accelerate the development of hydrogen technologies. Solid oxide electrolysis cells are among the most efficient systems for producing green hydrogen from steam, but identifying their optimal operating conditions requires thousands of computationally intensive simulations, slowing innovation and increasing development costs.

Aug 25 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • eurekalert.org

Eastlake science students make district history

Three Eastlake High School students made Sweetwater Union High School District history this year when they became the first students from the district to qualify for the International Science and Engineering Fair, an international competition that brings together some of the top high school researchers from around the world. Ronald Wyatt, Giles Del Priore and Ihan Sung advanced to the competition after successful runs at regional and state science fairs. Sung went a step further, placing fourth in the chemistry category at ISEF. The students were recognized on Aug. 10 during a Sweetwater Union High School District board meeting at the district office in Chula Vista.For Wyatt and Del Priore, recent Eastlake graduates, the journey began with a shared concern about dementia and the challenges faced by families caring for loved ones with memory impairment. Their engineering project, “Design and Evaluation of a Behaviorally Grounded Caregiver-Governed AI Companion for Individuals with Memory Impairment,” earned the Sweepstakes Award at the Sweetwater District STEM Fair and first place in its division at the Greater San Diego Science and Engineering Fair. The project explored whether Artificial Intelligence could provide companionship and support while helping reduce stress for people with dementia and their caregivers. “Our inspiration came from personal experience. Both of us have seen family members and loved ones affected by dementia, and we’ve witnessed how overwhelming the caregiving process can be,” Wyatt said. Del Priore said the students also wanted to address the high cost of third-party health care services while creating something that could potentially help their own families as well as people elsewhere. The students developed an AI system designed with safeguards intended to prevent misinformation reinforcement, emotional escalation and unsafe responses. In 240 controlled trials involving memory, identity, agitation and neutral scenarios, they said the system consistently prevented harmful incorrect reinforcement while using context-aware silence, de-escalation and caregiver verification. The project required the students to combine Artificial Intelligence, psychology, neuroscience and human-computer interaction. For Del Priore, one of the biggest technical challenges was getting the AI companion to communicate verbally with a patient. Hardware limitations required the students to collaborate with multiple Python libraries for speech-to-text and text-to-speech functions while keeping the cost of the companion low. “For us, the biggest challenge was translating complex behavioral and cognitive care principles into a functioning AI system,” Wyatt said.Qualifying for ISEF was a milestone that student expected. The international competition proved to be another milestone. “Competing at ISEF was an incredible experience and unlike anything we’ve ever done before,” Del Priore said. “Being surrounded by some of the most talented young researchers from around the world was both inspiring and motivating.” He said the experience stood out because of the emphasis on collaboration, innovation and scientific discovery. “The most memorable part was seeing how people from completely different backgrounds and disciplines approached solving real-world problems with creativity and passion,” he said. The students also credited teachers and mentors who supported their work. Del Priore said his sophomore-year AP Physics teacher, Dr. Price, was particularly influential. “Through all of my personal and academic struggles, Dr. Price always believed in me,” Del Priore said. “All of his faith in me really molded me into the person I am today and helped create my love for science even through tough times.” Wyatt is continuing his education at UC Santa Cruz, where he plans to study biomolecular engineering and bioinformatics, with an interest in research involving Artificial Intelligence, biology and health care. Del Priore plans to double major in chemistry and accounting. Sung, a rising Eastlake senior, qualified for ISEF after winning first place in the Engineering: Energy, Materials & Transport category at the Greater San Diego Science and Engineering Fair and first place in chemistry at the California Science and Engineering Fair. His project, “Renewable Ammonia Electrochemical Synthesis by Glow Discharge with an Iron-Based Catalyst,” involved a device he designed and engineered to produce renewable ammonia, with potential applications in fertilizer production and energy storage. Sung became interested in the project after considering the relationship between food insecurity and fertilizer costs. His system uses plasma to break apart nitrogen molecules so they can interact with hydrogen and form ammonia. At ISEF, Sung competed against more than 1,700 students from 65 countries and earned fourth place in chemistry. “I am proud to become one of te first students in the district to qualify for ISEF because this milestone can inspire others in the district to attain similar goals,” Sung said.

Aug 23 • 1:00 PM EDT • Science • thestarnews.com

In 2011, scientists injected yellow-green fluorescein dye into Maui’s wastewater wells; 84 days later, it appeared near the Pacific, supporting an underground wastewater connection

For years, environmental groups and residents near Lahaina, Maui, suspected that treated wastewater pumped underground was somehow finding its way into the Pacific Ocean, a concern later confirmed by a University of Hawaii tracer study that Earthjustice and other groups cited in their legal campaign against Maui County’s disposal practices. Divers had documented unusual submarine springs bubbling up off Kahekili Beach Park as early as 2007, and elevated nitrogen isotope readings in nearby macroalgae hinted that these springs carried something other than ordinary groundwater, according to USGS-led research on nearshore groundwater discharge at the site.

Aug 22 • 10:00 AM EDT • Science • timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Neutrogena issues first statement on Hayden Panettiere amid backlash

Following Hayden Panettiere's shocking death, fans are resurfacing some of the career revelations she shared in her final months, including her allegation that Neutrogena attempted to end their

Aug 21 • 10:30 AM EDT • Entertainment • centraloregondaily.com

Neutrogena breaks silence after Hayden Panettiere's past claims spark backlash following her death

Neutrogena admitted making Hayden Panettiere "feel unsupported" after she spoke about postpartum depression, pledging a significant new investment.

Aug 21 • 7:45 AM EDT • Business • foxbusiness.com

Neutrogena responds to Hayden Panettiere backlash, acknowledges making her 'feel unsupported' after she revealed postpartum depression

Hayden Panettiere said Neutrogena tried to drop her after she disclosed postpartum depression, resurfacing scrutiny of the brand after her death.

Aug 20 • 4:44 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

Roundup: ExxonMobil / SBA workforce initiative / New HoganTaylor CEO

Anti-trust charges tossed: A Texas Business Court judge dismissed Clean Hydrogen Works’ antitrust claims against ExxonMobil’s Denbury subsidiary, ruling Texas courts cannot address alleged antitrust injuries occurring outside the state. Clean Hydrogen Works alleges Exxon used its control of Denbury’s 620-mile carbon dioxide pipeline network to block a planned $7.5 billion clean-fuels project in Louisiana, […]

Aug 20 • 3:35 PM EDT • Business • businessreport.com

Pluto Planetary Science is the Gift that Keeps on Giving

Something's wetting the surface of dwarf planet Pluto along the northern edge of Sputnik Planitia, and planetary scientists have found a good explanation for it. A recent study of new Horizons images taken during the 2015 flyby revealed evidence that liquid nitrogen is rising up through cracks in Sputnik Planitia. That's the giant heart-shaped glacial basin we see in all the Pluto images taken by the spacecraft.

Aug 19 • 4:12 PM EDT • Science • universetoday.com

Opinion: The Tijuana River Valley pollution crisis is trapped in politics

San Diego residents will continue to bear the cost.

Aug 19 • 9:00 AM EDT • Politics • sandiegouniontribune.com

Hayden Panettiere's comments about Neutrogena dropping her after she revealed postpartum depression resurface following her death

Hayden Panettiere said Neutrogena tried to drop her after she disclosed postpartum depression, resurfacing scrutiny of the brand after her death.

Aug 18 • 3:30 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

Hayden Panettiere's death sparks renewed backlash against Neutrogena

Following Hayden Panettiere's shocking death, fans are resurfacing some of the career revelations she shared in her final months, including her allegation that Neutrogena attempted to end their

Aug 17 • 8:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • centraloregondaily.com

Center-right politics between two revolutions

A heterogeneous new-right counterrevolution is rising against postmodern-green elites, reshaping politics toward nationalism and protectionism.

Aug 17 • 2:00 AM EDT • Politics • gisreportsonline.com

Radio telescopes help scientists map molecules in space and uncover where and how stars form

You may have heard the phrase "we are made of star-stuff." This statement by the astronomer Carl Sagan refers to the fact that elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were forged in the centers of the ...

Aug 16 • 6:40 PM EDT • Science • phys.org

Estrogen’s Role in Female Athlete Muscle Health

Brandon Pfeifer and Dr. Robert Hyldahl explore how estrogen affects muscle recovery and growth in female athletes.

Aug 13 • 10:00 AM EDT • Health • lifesciences.byu.edu

Scientists develop innovative hybrid material for hydrogen peroxide production

Recently published research from a team led by scientists at Argonne National Laboratory demonstrates how a hybrid of biological components and technology can be used to efficiently produce hydrogen peroxide and other chemicals.

Aug 13 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • anl.gov

Scientists discover a hidden switch inside silver nanocatalysts

Silver nanocatalysts have been found to switch where they perform their most important reactions depending on whether a solid oxide cell is making electricity or hydrogen. The discovery could enable smarter catalyst designs that boost clean power generation while making green hydrogen more energy-efficient.

Aug 10 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Silver nanocatalysts switch reaction sites between power generation and hydrogen production

For the first time, researchers have discovered that the same silver (Ag) nanocatalyst operates at different reaction sites depending on whether a solid oxide cell is generating electricity or producing ...

Aug 8 • 2:50 AM EDT • Technology • phys.org

'Don't Try This at Home Day' will bring explosive science experiments to the Franklin Institute

The Aug. 15 event features a 500-ball liquid nitrogen blast, hydrogen balloon explosion, watermelon gravity drops and other live demonstrations.

Aug 7 • 9:06 AM EDT • Science • phillyvoice.com

Cell-inspired nanoreactor turns sunlight into hydrogen peroxide

A new hollow nanoreactor mimics living cells to make hydrogen peroxide more efficiently using visible light. Its light-trapping cavity and proton-shuttling shell could open new possibilities for cleaner chemical manufacturing and artificial photosynthesis.

Aug 6 • 7:07 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Molten, Mushy Planet

35 light years away from Earth is a planet a bit bigger than ours that’s probably not hospitable to life -- because it’s molten. Scientists have known about L98-59d for years, but new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope helped reveal an atmosphere rich in hydrogen sulfide, which could only be explained if the planet was in a rare molten state. Living on Earth’s El Wilson and Bella Smith teamed up on this note on emerging science.

Jul 31 • 10:20 AM EDT • Science • loe.org

Hydrogen-powered shipping could deliver $284 billion in annual health benefits

Researchers modeled how replacing conventional global shipping fuels with hydrogen could change PM2.5 and ozone pollution, premature mortality, and monetized health benefits. Under complete transition, the model estimated 129,458 fewer premature deaths and US$284 billion in annual monetized health benefits, although some regions experienced increased pollution from hydrogen production or altered ozone chemistry.

Jul 31 • 12:13 AM EDT • Health • news-medical.net

Scientists Unearth Mechanism That Helps Plants “Feel Full”

NYU researchers determine how plants sense nitrogen sufficiency—and what this means for addressing global challenges related to fertilizers

Jul 30 • 12:05 PM EDT • Science • nyu.edu

Killing slime: an AI-first biotech solution | Investors Lab

We love public science lessons, like the algae debacle that turned Washington, D.C.'s Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool a vibrant green this summer after a renovation. It's not exactly a new development. Algal blooms have intermittently plagued the site for generations, including during the last big overhaul in 2012. But the latest episode lingers despite treatments with hydrogen peroxide and an ozone nanobubble system. As Bethany Brookshire makes clear for Science News, there's another option that might have managed the crisis far more effectively, had it been used from the start.

Jul 29 • 9:30 AM EDT • Science • sciencenews.org

Plastic Waste Has Been Turned Directly Into Hydrogen Fuel

"Solving two urgent global problems at the same time."

Jul 29 • 6:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencealert.com

When It Comes to Fusion, Materials Matter

Fusion at high temperatures powers the sun and, if harnessed, could provide a potential source of energy here on Earth. But controlling fusion reactions has other benefits. The process also generates subatomic particles called neutrons that are used in a range of applications spanning medicine, research, and national security. Now, scientists at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), and the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have found that the materials surrounding a fusion reaction can dramatically increase how often it occurs, particularly at low energies where fusion is rare. The study was published July 18 in Nature Communications. Their approach sets up a way to study and engineer nuclear reactions within solid materials, opening a new field of “materials-driven fusion.” Instead of designing materials just to survive the harsh conditions of fusion, researchers might be able to design materials that boost the reaction in specific conditions, similar to the way catalysts speed up chemical processes. “It gives you a new knob to turn that you didn’t have before,” said Arun Persaud, head of the Fusion Science & Ion Beam Technology group in Berkeley Lab’s Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics (ATAP) Division. “If we understand this effect better, it opens the door to engineering new materials that would affect the fusion rate under certain conditions. Someday future progress might enable more compact and efficient neutron generators, which have all kinds of applications, like cargo screening, planetary science, and medical therapy and imaging.” In the experiment, researchers used two different methods to pack deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen atoms that is often used in fusion, into thin foils of palladium and titanium. They then fired a beam of deuterium ions at the foils at different energies and measured how often fusion happened. Then they compared the rates from the different materials and methods with the “bare” fusion reaction (not in a material). The team found that fusion rates depended on how the deuterium was loaded into the metal foils. The biggest effect was at the lowest energies, below 2.5 kiloelectronvolts (keV), where theory predicts fusion rates drop off sharply. Instead, researchers found a surprising plateau: Some samples showed elevated fusion rates roughly a quintillion times higher than bare fusion reactions. (A quintillion is a 1 followed by 18 zeroes.) Researchers are not exactly sure why that’s happening, though they have some ideas and ways to test them. The electrons and defects within the material might partially shield repulsive electrostatic forces between deuterium nuclei, making it easier for them to get close together and fuse. Tuning the electronic structure, defects, and composition of materials could help make nuclear reactions happen more readily. “It comes down to better understanding the mechanism so that we can try to enhance it,” said corresponding author Jeremy Munday, a professor at UC Davis. “We’ve seen that we can increase fusion rates, but what is the limit? Can we bring it to lower temperatures or energies? There’s obviously a lot of interest and excitement about fusion, so if there’s something we can learn about the physics at these lower energy scales, maybe there’s something we can translate to other areas of nuclear science.” The team plans to explore a wider range of materials and continue probing the unexpected fusion plateau at lower energies. Their work establishes a reproducible experimental platform to study how solid materials influence nuclear reactions, creating a new area of research that links fusion science with materials science and chemistry. “The work shows conclusively that the material environment where fusion occurs at low temperatures is an active participant rather than a passive container,” said Cameron Geddes, director of ATAP. “That adds a new dimension to fusion research.” This work was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). ### Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.

Jul 23 • 11:00 AM EDT • Science • newscenter.lbl.gov

EPA Requests Comments on Draft Science NOx Science Assessment

What: On July 17, 2026, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a document titled “Integrated Science Assessment for Oxides of Nitrogen—Health Criteria, External Review Draft” (“draft ISA”) for public comment.Why: Under the Clean Air

Jul 20 • 1:42 PM EDT • Science • advocacy.sba.gov

Neutrogena puts science above virality with ‘Break the Rules’ campaign

The Kenvue brand is using similar tactics to competitors CeraVe and Dove in an effort that spans TV, social, creators and experiential.

Jul 15 • 5:49 AM EDT • Science • marketingdive.com

Independent Testing Shows Which Business Security Products Actually Hold Up When It Matters

When Iranian-linked hackers breached medical device maker Stryker in March 2026, they did not need a sophisticated zero-day exploit to cause chaos. Once inside, they triggered simultaneous factory resets on more than 200,000 corporate devices across 79 countries, grinding order processing, production and shipping to a halt for days. Two months later, Foxconn confirmed that the Nitrogen ransomware group had stolen an alleged 8 terabytes of data from its North American factories, including project

Jul 15 • 4:00 AM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com

Independent Testing Shows Which Business Security Products Actually Hold Up When It Matters

When Iranian-linked hackers breached medical device maker Stryker in March 2026, they did not need a sophisticated zero-day exploit to cause chaos. Once inside, they triggered simultaneous factory resets on more than 200,000 corporate devices across 79 countries, grinding order processing, production and shipping to a halt for days. Two months later, Foxconn confirmed that the Nitrogen ransomware group had stolen an alleged 8 terabytes of data from its North American factories, including project

Jul 15 • 4:00 AM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com

Scientists are deep-freezing koala eggs and sperm to protect the species from extinction

Researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia want to freeze koala sex cells in liquid nitrogen, which could preserve the DNA for decades until we need it, an expert said.

Jul 14 • 5:15 PM EDT • Science • livescience.com

The tiny cell that broke a big rule of biology

It took two scientists decades to find a new nitrogen-fixing organelle. It could change the future of sustainable agriculture.

Jul 9 • 4:30 AM EDT • Science • grist.org

‘The Invite’: When Does Olivia Wilde’s New Comedy Hit Streaming?

Wilde directs a script by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack and costars with Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz, and Edward Norton.

Jul 8 • 4:09 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

Air pollution may be changing sperm

Harmful nitrogen dioxide and ozone levels could affect fertility and pregnancies.

Jul 6 • 7:01 PM EDT • Science • popsci.com

Seth Rogen shares awkward moment with 'Lion King' collaborator Pharrell Williams at dinner party (exclusive)

'The Invite' star Seth Rogen is recounting an incident where Pharrell Williams confronted him at a dinner party over Rogen's 'Lion King' interviews.

Jul 1 • 9:30 AM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com

Seth Rogen shares awkward moment with “Lion King” collaborator Pharrell Williams at dinner party (exclusive)

The music superstar didn't appreciate Rogen's interviews.

Jul 1 • 9:30 AM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

“The Invite”'s Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde talk hot air balloon rides with Diddy and other awkward celebrity encounters

The stars of the upcoming drama face off in EW's "Lie vs. Lie" game.

Jun 30 • 12:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

Learn Science with Dr. V: Is air weightless?

Air is a mixture of gases, mainly nitrogen and oxygen, along with small amounts of other gases such as carbon dioxide, argon, and water vapor.

Jun 29 • 2:00 AM EDT • Science • ruidosonews.com

What science tells us about the algae bloom in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool

Algal blooms are not maintenance failures requiring paint or treatment with hydrogen peroxide and nanobubbles. They are ecological warning signs.

Jun 28 • 8:30 AM EDT • Science • theconversation.com

Marine biobanks: the science of 'stopping time' for an ecosystem under pressure

In labs around the world, the ocean is being kept in jars. Some of it is alive, bubbling in flasks, while some lies frozen in liquid nitrogen. These marine biobanks are collections of coral cells, algae,…

Jun 27 • 6:18 AM EDT • Science • rfi.fr

'The Invite' review: Olivia Wilde's sex comedy is outrageous fun

Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz, and Edward Norton dazzle as flirty neighbors.

Jun 26 • 6:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • mashable.com

Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat are 'The Wrong Girls' in first look at new stoner comedy (exclusive)

EW has your exclusive first look at the stoner comedy 'The Wrong Girls' from writer-director Dylan Meyer, starring Kristen Stewart, Alia Shawkat, LaKeith Stanfield, Seth Rogen, and Kate McKinnon.

Jun 26 • 1:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com

Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat are “The Wrong Girls” in first look at new stoner comedy (exclusive)

LaKeith Stanfield, Seth Rogen, Kate McKinnon, and Geena Davis also star in the Neon film.

Jun 26 • 1:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

New science on algae die-offs is too late for the Reflecting Pool

Iron and hydrogen peroxide trigger cell death via ferroptosis, which cascades killer molecules through the population, causing mass die-offs of algae.

Jun 25 • 4:22 PM EDT • Science • sciencenews.org

Could mountains be key to unlocking hydrogen’s potential?

Researchers assessed likelihood gas was produced during creation of Alps, Pyrenees and Baetic mountains

Jun 24 • 1:00 AM EDT • Science • theguardian.com

These 3 Kenvue brands target common skin problems through science

Neutrogena®, Aveeno® and Lubriderm® each offer science-backed solutions to common skin issues.

Jun 23 • 11:16 AM EDT • Science • kenvue.com

Workers seen adding hydrogen peroxide to treat algae-plagued Reflecting Pool

Jun 16 • 9:21 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

Scientists just found a hidden weakness in forever chemicals

Researchers discovered that hydrogen radicals generated by intense UV light can break down stubborn PFAS “forever chemicals” without added chemicals. The breakthrough reveals a key mechanism that could lead to greener and more effective technologies for permanently destroying these pollutants.

Jun 15 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Dr. Picklestein’s wild ride: living a dual life of chemistry professor and K-12 science celebrity

Eggs, rubber chickens, liquid nitrogen, boiling water, canning wax, plastic bottles and a very old...

Jun 15 • 11:48 AM EDT • Science • boisestate.edu

Seth Rogen said he has no plans to work with James Franco

After James Franco was accused of sexual exploitation by several women in 2018, a once-close friend and fellow actor, Seth Rogen, said he had no plans to work with him again.

Jun 14 • 9:11 PM EDT • Entertainment • latimes.com