A new twist in protein engineering points toward smarter medicines that know where to act and when. University of Washington researchers report a protein toolkit that uses Boolean logic to steer therapies to the right place, improving targeted delivery while reducing off target effects. The study appears in Nature Chemical Biology, with experiments spanning purified proteins, hydrogels, and living mammalian cells.

Inside every person lives a vast community of microbes that quietly influences how we think, feel, and respond to the world. The University of South Australia's new review argues this microbial network, known as the gut microbiome, may be far more than a digestive companion, it could be a key to understanding mental health. Nearly one in seven people live with a mental health disorder, yet access to effective care remains limited.

This year’s EU Contest for Young Scientists showcased hard science with a social edge, with young scientists presenting innovations ranging from robot turtles to quantum discoveries. By Tom Cassauwers For Evan Budz, a 15-year-old science student from Canada, learning that his turtle-like undersea robot had earned him one of the four first prizes at this ... Read more The post From turtle robots to frontline physics: prize-winning young scientists shape the future appeared first on Horizon Magazine Blog.

From droughts to disease, coffee and chocolate are under threat, but scientists and farmers are working together to keep these daily treats on the table. By Tom Cassauwers In the hills above Matagalpa, Nicaragua, farmer Juan Pablo Castro has been growing coffee for 25 years. His two-hectare farm, dotted with citrus trees, is typical of the ... Read more The post Brewing resilience: researchers safeguard coffee and chocolate from climate threats appeared first on Horizon Magazine Blog.

EU-funded researchers are developing powerful new telescopes to help uncover Earth-like planets around distant stars and advance the search for extraterrestrial life. By Jonathan O’Callaghan Across the billions of galaxies and stars in the universe, only one place is known to host life – Earth. Yet the hope of finding other living worlds drives scientists ... Read more The post New telescope cuts through space noise in hunt for distant Earth-like worlds appeared first on Horizon Magazine Blog.

Smarter decisions about real-world problems start with better data – and Earth observation can provide just that, thanks to European efforts to open up access to massive amounts of satellite data collected every day. By Gareth Willmer Imagine using space technology not just to explore the stars, but to stop a disease outbreak before it starts, ... Read more The post Eyes in the sky: making Earth observation data work for people appeared first on Horizon Magazine Blog.

With support from EU-funded researchers, farmers across Europe are adopting smarter and better integrated pest management that protects crops and cuts chemicals – without cutting profits. By Michaela Nesvarova In sunny Tourinha, a small town north of Lisbon, farmer Bruno Neves proudly walks through his fields and greenhouses full of lettuce and cucumbers. Come Christmastime, ... Read more The post Smarter agriculture: farmers work with nature to cut pesticides appeared first on Horizon Magazine Blog.

In a quiet UCLA lab, a rat peers at a glowing touchscreen. Its task seems simple: tap the right icon to earn a sugary pellet. But there is a twist, because sometimes the reward appears, and sometimes it does not. That uncertainty, the researchers discovered, is what excites a newly identified group of brain cells the most. Scientists found that a cluster of neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex, a region just above the eyes, becomes highly active when the outcome of a choice is unknown.

On a gray Atlantic morning, a carbon fiber torpedo the length of a kayak sits at the dock in Woods Hole. Engineers nudge it into position, orange jackets dotting the pier while gulls wheel above the research vessels. The machine has a name, Redwing, and a near audacious plan. It will slip beneath the surface, ride the pulse of currents, and, if all goes as intended, return years from now after circling the planet.

At first glance, the picture looks like abstract art. A thin black ring encircles a speck of light while an orange glow spills across the frame, as if someone traced the cosmos with a neon crayon. But hidden inside this warped scene is what astronomers say may be the lowest mass dark object ever found far beyond our galaxy, a million suns worth of invisible gravity pinching starlight like a flaw in a funhouse mirror.

In the forests of California’s Sierra Nevada, what once looked like destruction is turning out to be renewal. A new study finds that low- and moderate-severity wildfires can benefit bird populations for decades, offering fresh evidence that fire is not always the enemy of wildlife it is often made out to be. The research, published ... Read more The post Fires Give Birds a Lasting Boost in Sierra Nevada Parks appeared first on Wild Science.

Smaller than a speck of dust yet pivotal to Earth's survival, coccolithophores, the ocean's microscopic, disc-shaped architects, are finally getting their moment in the spotlight. A coalition of five European research institutes has launched an effort to make October 10 International Coccolithophore Day, aiming to honor the plankton that quietly regulate our planet's climate. Under a microscope, a coccolithophore resembles a miniature planet wrapped in patterned armor: ornate calcium carbonate plates known as coccoliths.

Engineers at North Carolina State University have built something that looks like a paper craft and behaves like a pocket transformer. The team reports a polymer structure that resembles a Chinese lantern and can rapidly snap into more than a dozen three dimensional shapes when nudged by compression, twisting, or a magnetic field. The hook is not just the flourish. Speed, control, and reprogrammability are the point, and the group frames this as a general blueprint for mechanical metamaterials that store and release elastic energy on cue.

Light bulbs have changed a lot since Edison, yet few could be mistaken for wallpaper. Now, researchers in China have engineered a light-emitting diode (LED) so thin it could roll onto your wall like a sticker—and it glows with a sunlike warmth. The breakthrough, published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, could transform how we ... Read more The post Paper-Thin LED Shines Like the Sun Indoors appeared first on SciChi.

A council of five artificial intelligence systems working together scored higher on the United States Medical Licensing Examination than any single chatbot tested to date, according to a new study published October 9, 2025 in PLOS Digital Health. The team, composed of multiple GPT 4 instances guided by a facilitator algorithm, reached 97 percent, 93 percent, and 94 percent accuracy on questions aligned with USMLE Steps 1, 2 CK, and 3.

After a quarter century of speculation, scientists have finally proven how Europe's largest bat, the greater noctule, pulls off its most audacious feat: catching and eating songbirds while flying more than a kilometer above the ground. The discovery, published in Science, confirms that these elusive bats do not merely scavenge bird remains but actively hunt, strike, and devour migrating passerines during nocturnal flights.

The numbers tell a story that unfolds in waves. In January 2024, health workers in Gaza screened 722 children under five for malnutrition. Thirty-four showed signs of acute wasting, their upper arms measuring too thin against calibrated tape. By January 2025, after months of severe aid restrictions, that rate had tripled. Of 11,619 children screened that month, more than 1,600 were wasting away.

Nurses across Australia and the UK routinely snap on disposable gloves before preparing intravenous antibiotics. They have been taught this in nursing school. Hospital protocols demand it. There is just one problem: no scientific evidence supports the practice. A comprehensive review from Edith Cowan University has revealed what researchers call a "critical gap" in healthcare guidelines. After scouring five databases and grey literature for studies published between 2009 and 2024, the team found exactly zero studies directly examining whether non-sterile gloves should be worn when preparing and administering IV antimicrobials.

Scientists studying elderly rats have uncovered something that might make you reconsider your living arrangements: longtime roommates could be the key to staying mentally sharp as you age. In findings published in the journal Aging, researchers showed that aged rats who lived in socially enriched environments throughout life retained better memory and cognitive flexibility than those housed alone, performing just as well as much younger animals on complex cognitive tests.

Here's something most oncologists already suspected but rarely acted on: people with cancer who quit smoking live longer than those who don't. What's surprising is how much longer, and that the benefit holds even for patients with advanced disease—a group often overlooked when it comes to smoking cessation support. A new study tracking more than 13,000 cancer patients at Washington University's Siteman Cancer Center found that those who continued smoking after diagnosis faced nearly double the risk of death compared to patients who quit within six months.

Stressed? Try watching a five-minute inspirational video. According to new research, it might be just as effective as meditation at calming your nerves. Scientists at UC Santa Barbara compared different approaches to stress reduction in over 1,000 American adults during the 2023 holiday season. They divided participants into groups: some watched daily inspirational videos about people overcoming adversity, others viewed comedy clips, a third group listened to guided meditations, and a fourth scrolled through their phones.

The medications transforming diabetes and weight loss treatment might have an unexpected side effect: reducing cravings for alcohol, opioids, and cigarettes. A new review published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society examines how GLP-1 receptor agonists, the drug class that includes Ozempic and Wegovy, could represent a promising approach to treating substance use disorders, conditions that claimed millions of lives last year while existing treatments reached only a fraction of those who needed help.

Every year, humans toss out more than 500 billion plastic water bottles. Most end up in landfills or oceans, stubbornly resisting decomposition for centuries. But what if those discarded bottles could store electricity instead? Researchers at Michigan Technological University have figured out how to transform used PET water bottles into high-performance supercapacitors (devices that charge faster than batteries and can withstand thousands more charge cycles).

The ground beneath our feet is doing something strange. Somewhere in the opaque depths of saturated soil, where sunlight never reaches, bacteria are powering chemical reactions with energy they stored hours earlier, when the sun was still up. Scientists have now figured out how they do it, and the answer reads like something from science fiction. Researchers at Kunming University of Science and Technology and the University of Massachusetts Amherst discovered that common soil bacteria can team up with iron minerals to form what amounts to a biological capacitor.

Forget the 30-minute treadmill sessions you keep postponing. A new analysis of exercise research suggests that physically inactive adults might boost their fitness with something far less daunting: brief spurts of intentional movement scattered throughout the day, each lasting no more than five minutes. The approach, dubbed "exercise snacking" by researchers, involves short bursts of moderate to vigorous activity performed at least twice daily.