Anita Sen writes on biology and the life sciences, turning dense research into stories you can actually picture. Precise, vivid, and careful never to oversell a finding.
Researchers found that a beam's underlying geometric structure guides how chirality — left- and right-handed rotational behaviour — emerges as light travels. The discovery could open uses in medical diagnostics, communications and quantum technologies.
The shape, called Chair44, was proposed by ChatGPT-6 Astra and closes a question posed by mathematicians in 2012. Its sole human author, Ioannis Tsiokos, says he has no mathematical training.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Halzen the 2026 prize for his decisive role in building IceCube, a cubic kilometre of South Pole ice lined with light sensors that detects high-energy neutrinos from deep space. Halzen first proposed the idea in 1988, and it took until 2013 for the observatory to confirm its first astrophysical neutrinos.
Average scores in reading, mathematics and science across OECD countries have hit their lowest point since 2015. Covid, screen time and weaker teaching of core skills are among the explanations, though the report does not weigh their relative effect.
Two teams independently built the first working thorium-229 nuclear clocks, shifting timekeeping from electron transitions to the atom's nucleus. Nature published both designs on the same day — and the Beijing prototype came out ahead.
The EU's Horizon Europe research arm wants to build a framework that can identify and attribute unauthorised attempts to alter the atmosphere by reflecting sunlight back into space. The move comes as private companies and governments step up work on solar geoengineering, with few international rules in place to govern it.
The 124-metre rocket hit 26,300 kilometres per hour and an altitude of 277 kilometres, carrying 26 advanced Starlink satellites. The milestone comes ahead of NASA's Artemis III lunar mission, expected as soon as next summer.
Sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific have already topped 3°C above normal, and Berkeley Earth projects a peak near 4°C in November — which would make this the strongest El Niño ever recorded. Citigroup has estimated a super El Niño could cause up to $7 trillion in global economic losses over five years.
Genomic data from 103 species combined with 44 fossils points to a European origin, challenging earlier theories that placed bats in Asia, Africa or North America. The research also confirms that powered flight and echolocation both appeared near the very start of bat evolution.
A new study finds that collisions reshape subsurface oceans on icy moons rather than creating them. Size is decisive: larger moons gain heat that can sustain an ocean for up to two billion years, while smaller ones may lose the insulating layer that keeps water liquid.
The 209-foot crossing over Interstate 25 in Douglas County cost $15 million and is projected to prevent more than 300 highway-speed crashes a year. At that rate, it could pay for itself in two to three years — a fraction of the usual 15-year return for wildlife crossings.
Microscopic hair-like structures lining coral polyps actively draw in oxygen-rich water — a mechanism discovered only in 2014. Lab experiments show they slow near 37°C and stop entirely at 39°C, suffocating the coral.
A major study finds that AI has sped up literature review, coding and hypothesis generation, but physical experiments, approvals and senior researchers' time haven't kept pace. Four in ten scientists say their backlog of untested ideas is growing.
Sea-surface temperatures could climb nearly 4C above average. Forecasters warn of drought across the Amazon, wildfires in South East Asia, and a 10% cut to Panama Canal traffic as rainfall drops.
Emergency excavations ran for three weeks in May and June 2026 at Nunalleq, on Alaska's Bering Sea coast, after a typhoon remnant tore away around 20 metres of coastal tundra the previous October. The site has now lost ground that archaeologists excavated as recently as 2009.
Lead-based ink absorbs up to 25 times more X-rays than charred paper, making it detectable without unwrapping a scroll. Scientists say portable XRF screening could help prioritise the 1,800 carbonised documents still held in Italy, France, and England — though it is not yet known how many of the ancient scrolls actually contain lead.
Chemical analysis of fossilised tooth enamel puts the dinosaur at 97.3°F (36.3°C) — just below the human average of 98.6°F. The findings strengthen the case that T. rex was warm-blooded, with food needs far higher than cold-blooded estimates suggest.
Scientists named Leopardus tilcayo after DNA analysis distinguished it from all known relatives. The only confirmed living specimen is Tigrino, a 10-year-old male at a Bolivian wildlife sanctuary, but researchers believe others survive in the wild.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched in August 2026 with a 10-year fuel budget. A highly accurate first thruster burn and a lighter-than-expected launch mass each added years to the estimate, though two more manoeuvres could yet change it.
Below-normal flows covered more than a third of global river basins in 2025 — the seventh consecutive year in which normal conditions were a minority. Glaciers lost 408 gigatonnes, groundwater levels are outside historical norms in most monitored wells, and Asia and Africa have borne more than 80% of water-related deaths over the past five years.
A five-year EU research project sampled 227 fields in 11 countries and found plastic particles in all of them. Researchers say the particles can carry pesticides, toxins and bacteria through the soil — and that smaller particles may be able to cross biological membranes and reach internal organs.
A white paper from the Basel Action Network projects that retiring AI infrastructure could produce between 31 and 46 million tonnes of waste annually by 2050 — 40 to 60 times higher than widely cited academic estimates. The equipment often contains lead, mercury and so-called forever chemicals, and only about a fifth of electronic waste is currently properly managed.
The longest satellite record of polar ice ever assembled finds the rate of loss in the 2010s was four times higher than in the 1980s. The combined melt has already added over three centimetres to global sea levels, enough to put up to nine million people at greater risk of coastal flooding.
The Mayukuyuku males left Kafue National Park in mid-2025 and trekked east across farms, roads and towns before settling in the Luangwa River Valley. Researchers say the journey suggests wild dog populations across eastern and southern Africa are more connected than previously thought.
A UNEP report says global temperatures will exceed the Paris Agreement limit before the end of the decade. It urges governments to manage an "overshoot, peak, and decline" pathway — cutting emissions rapidly while removing carbon already in the atmosphere.
Unintended emissions from satellite electronics — not their communications transmitters — are corrupting telescope data at observatories in Australia, South Africa, Botswana and the United States. Existing international rules cover only deliberate transmissions, leaving astronomers with no clear path to relief.
No Atlantic hurricane had formed through September 12, the latest such point since satellite tracking began in 1966. A record-strength El Niño has driven wind shear across the Atlantic, pushing storm activity nearly 90 percent below average.
The coprolite, found in Montana's Hell Creek Formation, also contains leg bones from a hesperornithiform — an aquatic diving bird closely related to the lineage that survived the mass extinction and gave rise to modern birds. The hesperornithiforms were not so lucky.
Analysis of hills and ridges mapped by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft puts Mercury's total contraction 10 to 30 percent higher than earlier estimates. The findings suggest the planet's surface has compressed significantly as it cooled over 4.5 billion years.
Wildfires have burned around 200,000 hectares of Indonesian Borneo since early July, the region's worst crisis in more than a decade. More than 12,000 of those sickened are children under five.
The project began in 2008 and was once dismissed as unfeasible. The finished map records 166,700 neurons and roughly 125 million synapses, making it the largest single-animal nervous-system map ever assembled.
A single particle interaction recorded deep underground in South Dakota has a 0.5% chance of being caused by known background sources. That falls far short of proof, but researchers say it appeared in exactly the region where a dark matter signal would be expected.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope reached orbit ten minutes after liftoff from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on 30 August 2026. Scientists say it is built to tackle some of the universe's biggest unsolved questions.
Severe convective storms have surpassed hurricanes as the world's costliest insured peril, with U.S. losses topping $50 billion for the third year running and $794 billion recorded globally over the past 25 years — forcing insurers to fundamentally rethink how they model and price the risk.
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