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.

In what reads like science fiction, researchers have successfully weaponized bacteria to infiltrate tumors and deliver immune-boosting genetic payloads directly to cancer cells. The experimental therapy, called ACTM-838, shrank tumors in mice and prevented them from returning, even when scientists tried to re-infect cured animals with fresh cancer cells. The approach exploits a peculiar biological quirk: certain bacteria naturally gravitate toward tumors like moths to a flame.

The same plant extract that sweetens your diet soda might help treat male pattern baldness, according to new research that combines an ancient herbal remedy with modern drug delivery technology. Scientists have developed a dissolvable microneedle patch that uses stevioside,  a natural sweetener from the Stevia plant, to deliver minoxidil directly into the scalp. In mice with induced hair loss, the treatment prompted 67.5% coverage of the treatment area with new hair growth by day 35, significantly outperforming traditional minoxidil solutions.

The Amazon rainforest just experienced something scientists didn't see coming. In 2024, forest fires caused more carbon emissions than clear-cutting did for the first time on record, releasing roughly the equivalent of Germany's annual emissions into the atmosphere and signaling what researchers are calling a dangerous new phase in the region's ecological decline. The shift represents a fundamental change in how the Amazon is being destroyed.

Astronomers have spent decades scratching their heads over a cosmic puzzle: massive red supergiant stars should explode all the time, yet we rarely see them do it. The answer, it turns out, was hiding in plain sight. Or rather, hiding behind a thick veil of dust. A Northwestern University-led team used NASA’s James Webb Space ... Read more The post Dust-Cloaked Star Solves Supernova Mystery appeared first on European Space Agency Tracker.

Modern telescopes are magnificent gossips, generating millions of alerts every night about potential changes in the cosmos. The problem? Most of these whispers are lies – satellite trails, cosmic ray hits, instrumental hiccups masquerading as genuine discoveries. For years, astronomers have deployed specialized neural networks to separate wheat from chaff, but these systems operate as ... Read more The post AI Learns to Spot Exploding Stars From Just 15 Examples appeared first on NeuroEdge.

The problem with engineered immune cells has always been timing. By the time doctors extract a patient's cells, reprogram them to hunt cancer, grow enough copies to matter, and infuse them back, weeks have passed. The cancer keeps growing. Sometimes the patient's condition worsens. And sometimes, frustratingly, the immune system attacks the very cells designed to save it. Now researchers at MIT and Harvard Medical School think they have solved this rejection problem with a genetic sleight of hand that could transform how quickly cancer patients receive treatment.

Most 3D printing happens in reverse: you build something up, layer by layer, until you have a finished product. But researchers at Switzerland's EPFL have turned that logic on its head with a technique that grows metals and ceramics inside water-based gels, producing structures 20 times stronger than conventional methods while shrinking far less in the process. The work, published in Advanced Materials, solves one of additive manufacturing's most persistent headaches.

For the first time in Alzheimer's research, scientists examining brain tissue from African American donors have identified the same top genetic suspect that appears in white populations, a finding that could reshape how researchers approach treatments for a disease that strikes Black Americans at twice the rate of whites. The gene, called ADAMTS2, showed up with striking consistency. In deceased African American patients with Alzheimer's, this gene was cranked up to 1.5 times its normal activity level.

Scientists have developed tiny gold particles that work like molecular Trojan horses, sneaking lithium directly into the brain through the nose. The approach could sidestep the kidney damage and thyroid problems that have plagued lithium therapy for more than 150 years. The nanoparticles, about 2 nanometers across and coated with glutathione, clump together into aggregates that cells readily swallow. Once inside, the aggregates break apart and release their lithium cargo through a simple ion exchange, much like trading one metal for another at the atomic level.

If you have ever watched your blue dot jump erratically across a map while walking through downtown, bouncing from one side of the street to the other like a confused tourist, you are experiencing what researchers call an "urban canyon." Now, scientists at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology have figured out how to make cheap GPS receivers as accurate as equipment that costs thousands of dollars more.

When NASA sealed a tube of lunar soil in 1972 and locked it away for future scientists, they were making a bet on tomorrow's technology. That gamble just paid off in an unexpected way. Researchers analyzing samples from Apollo 17's final moonwalk have discovered sulfur compounds in the lunar mantle that don't match anything found on Earth. The findings, published this week, suggest the Moon either recycled its early crust in ways scientists didn't think possible, or it still carries chemical fingerprints from whatever cosmic collision created it 4.5 billion years ago.

The human ability to tune into one voice at a crowded party while tuning out others (a phenomenon scientists have puzzled over for decades) appears to happen entirely in the brain's cortex, not in the earlier processing stages researchers had long suspected. A new study from the University of Michigan and University of Rochester used innovative electrode technology to simultaneously track neural responses across the entire auditory pathway, from the ear's nerve fibers through the brainstem and into the cortex.

For nearly 140 years, astronomers puzzled over the brilliant jet streaming from what Charles Messier catalogued as "87: Nebula without stars." The answer lay hidden at the heart of galaxy M87, where a black hole containing six and a half billion solar masses spins furiously and launches particles at nearly light speed across 5,000 light-years of space. Now, physicists at Goethe University Frankfurt have revealed that black holes use not one but two mechanisms to power these cosmic particle accelerators.

In a Bulgarian village, researchers dropped four live forest ants into warm milk, tucked the jar into an ant mound overnight, and retrieved it the next morning to find something remarkable: the milk had transformed into tangy, coagulated yogurt. The tradition, nearly forgotten across the Balkans and Turkey, turns out to have solid scientific foundations that could reshape how we think about fermented foods.

In a Penang laboratory, researchers have figured out how to turn one environmental problem into a solution for another. Oil palm ash, the residue left behind when palm kernel shells burn in Malaysian mills, can capture carbon dioxide from the air with surprising efficiency. The material performs this trick despite having a surface area far smaller than most commercial carbon-capture products.

The electric vehicle revolution has a parking problem. More specifically, it has an apartment dweller problem. While suburban homeowners install sleek charging stations in their garages, millions of urban residents who park on the street have been left wondering where they're supposed to plug in their hypothetical electric cars. The answer, according to researchers at Penn State, might be hanging over their heads.

When a Ukrainian soldier takes shrapnel from a mine blast, every second counts. Now, artificial intelligence is making those seconds matter more than ever before, analyzing vital signs in real-time and directing scarce medical resources to those most likely to survive. A new study analyzing 68 wounded soldiers reveals how Ukraine has quietly become a testing ground for AI-powered battlefield medicine.

The numbers from the morgue paint a stark picture that recreational cannabis laws apparently can't change: More than 40% of drivers killed in car crashes in a major Ohio county had active THC coursing through their bloodstreams when they died, and the state's 2023 move to legalize recreational marijuana didn't budge that figure even slightly. A six-year analysis of 246 deceased drivers in Montgomery County reveals a public health problem that researchers say has been overshadowed by the push toward legalization.

Egypt's Karnak Temple, a sprawling monument that welcomes millions of tourists annually, began its existence on something far more humble: a patch of high ground surrounded by rushing water, possibly chosen for reasons that had nothing to do with strategic advantage and everything to do with matching an ancient creation story. A comprehensive geoarchaeological survey has mapped the temple's origins with unprecedented detail, drilling 61 sediment cores through the site to reconstruct how the Nile's channels carved out the land beneath one of antiquity's largest religious complexes.

Ernest Shackleton wrote to his wife before departing for Antarctica in 1914, confessing he would trade his ship Endurance for his previous vessel any day. The famed polar explorer knew what awaited him in the crushing ice of the Weddell Sea, and he sailed anyway. That admission, buried in personal correspondence for over a century, forms the centerpiece of a new structural analysis that upends the romantic narrative surrounding one of exploration's most legendary disasters.

The ocean's biological carbon pump, normally a reliable conveyor belt carrying carbon from sunlit waters to the deep sea, keeps jamming during marine heatwaves, and scientists have finally figured out why by watching microscopic organisms for more than a decade. A new study published today in Nature Communications reveals that marine heatwaves reshape ocean food webs in unexpected ways, causing carbon particles to pile up at intermediate depths instead of sinking to the abyss where they would be locked away for millennia.

When a rocket blasted off from northern Sweden in November 2022, it carried an unusual passenger: freeze-dried bacteria that live in human intestines. The microbes were about to experience forces that would kill most living things: 13 times Earth's gravity on ascent, six minutes of weightlessness at 260 kilometers altitude, then a screaming re-entry spinning 220 times per second while enduring 30 g of deceleration.

Scientists combing through old spacecraft data have discovered something that makes Saturn’s tiny moon Enceladus look increasingly like a place where life could exist. Fresh organic molecules, spewing from cracks in the moon’s icy surface, suggest that sophisticated chemical reactions are happening in the ocean beneath. The findings, published today in Nature Astronomy, come from ... Read more The post Cassini Data Uncovers Complex Molecules on Icy Moon appeared first on European Space Agency Tracker.