Ward: Education

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Diversifying US Midwest farming for stability and resilience

Researchers find that diversifying crops and integrating livestock improves farm efficiencies and ecosystem services in the US Midwest. The work is published in PNAS Nexus.

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Vine-inspired robotic gripper gently lifts heavy and fragile objects

The new design could be adapted to assist the elderly, sort warehouse products, or unload heavy cargo.

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Scalable method enables ultrahigh-resolution quantum dot displays without damaging performance

Over the past decade, colloidal quantum dots (QDs) have emerged as promising materials for next-generation displays due to their tunable emission, high brightness, and compatibility with low-cost solution processing. However, a major challenge is achieving ultrahigh-resolution patterning without dam…

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18,000 years ago, ice age humans built dwellings out of mammoth bones in Ukraine

Some people in Ukraine weathered the harshest moments of the last ice age by creating shelters made partly of mammoth bones and tusks.

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Hagfish olfactory genes hint at ancient origins of vertebrate sense of smell

Researchers at University of Tsukuba and their collaborators have conducted a comprehensive analysis of the olfactory receptor repertoire of the hagfish (Eptatretus burgeri), a jawless vertebrate. This organism retains many primitive features yet possesses a highly developed olfactory system.

220

Anything-goes “anyons” may be at the root of surprising quantum experiments

MIT physicists say these quasiparticles may explain how superconductivity and magnetism can coexist in certain materials.

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High-achieving adults rarely began as child prodigies

It's easy to assume that the most talented adults among us were once gifted children, but it turns out that talent during childhood is no guide to later success

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De-extinction was big news in 2025 – but didn't live up to the hype

Biologists poured cold water on Colossal Biosciences’ claim to have brought the dire wolf back from extinction, and some worry the overblown headlines will undermine conservation work

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Emphasizing immigrants' deservingness can shift attitudes

A study conducted during the 2024 French elections finds that information about immigrants' efforts to overcome poverty and learn French reduces negative beliefs about immigration and modestly decreases opposition to immigration among voters. The study is published in the journal PNAS Nexus.

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Single-image method can accurately evaluate fibrous material porosity

Researchers from Skoltech Engineering Center's Hierarchically Structured Materials Laboratory have developed a new method to determine the porosity of fibrous materials using a single image taken with a standard optical microscope.

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Best acronym? Best use of AI? We present our end-of-year awards

Feedback has spent some time sifting through 2025's key scientific achievements to come up with a range of weird and wonderful (and less wonderful) winners for our inaugural Backsies awards

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Earth's seasons vary wildly, even at the same latitude, new research finds

Earth's seasons look very different at locations not far from each other, 20 years' worth of satellite data reveals.

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Roman soldiers defending Hadrian’s Wall had intestinal parasites

Excavations of sewer drains at a Roman fort in northern England have revealed the presence of several parasites that can cause debilitating illness in humans

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A molecular switch for green hydrogen: Catalyst changes function based on how it's assembled

Hydrogen production through water electrolysis is a cornerstone of the clean energy transition, but it relies on efficient and stable catalysts that work under acidic conditions—currently dominated by precious metals like iridium and platinum.

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A hidden T cell switch could make cancer immunotherapy work for more people

Scientists have discovered that T cell receptors activate through a hidden spring-like motion that had never been seen before. This breakthrough may help explain why immunotherapy works for some cancers and how it could be improved for others.

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Ultrafast fluorescence pulse technique enables imaging of individual trapped atoms

Researchers at the ArQuS Laboratory of the University of Trieste (Italy) and the National Institute of Optics of the Italian National Research Council (CNR-INO) have achieved the first imaging of individual trapped cold atoms in Italy, introducing techniques that push single-atom detection into new …

212

Molecular mechanisms behind speciation in corals identified

Matías Gómez-Corrales, a recent biological sciences Ph.D. graduate from the University of Rhode Island, and his advisor, Associate Professor Carlos Prada, have published a paper in Nature Communications, revealing key mechanisms in speciation in corals and proposing a new hypothesis on the origin of…

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