Nanogenerator turns seawater into a clean energy source. “the addition of solar light and heat can enhance energy production by a factor of five. This natural effect has always existed, but we are the first to harness it.” EPFL researchers […]
Plants weaponize caffeine. The chemical serves as a natural pesticide that “disturb[s] the behavior and growth of numerous insects and their larvae,” which helps explain why plants make it in the first place. In tests, some pests became uncoordinated and […]
Biology is a burrito. “But a cell looks more like a burrito,” says Michael Elowitz. The essay makes the case that cells are absurdly crowded, and you need numbers to really feel how fast and chaotic the inside of a […]
Al suit teaches you new skills by taking control of your muscles. “A user approaches an unfamiliar window, says ‘EMS, help me open this,’ and the system identifies the handle type and electrically guides their fingers, wrist, and elbow through […]
Why I may ‘hire’ AI instead of a graduate student. “AI requires no ramp-ups, no meetings, and absolutely no emotional support.” A professor writes about the quiet temptation to hand the messy early parts of research to a machine, and […]
A way to rejuvenate the immune system. Stimulating the liver to produce some of the signals of the thymus can reverse age-related declines in T-cell populations and enhance response to vaccination, which is evidence of boosted immune reaction. ~ learn […]
How exercise can lower Alzheimer’s risk. “Now, closely examining cells from geriatric animals’ blood-brain barriers, the researchers noticed that a damaging protein, known as TNAP, proliferated on the surface of those cells in far greater numbers than on cells from […]
Fasting hype meets a meta-analysis. “Intermittent fasting just doesn’t seem to work for overweight or obese adults trying to lose weight,” said Luis Garegnani, after a Cochrane-backed review of 22 randomized trials found IF was no better than standard dietary […]
Never trust The Science™. “Once you’re savvy to all of this and you get into the habit of reading papers in full (yes, methods and supplementary data too), then these lenses through which the data are distorted become very obvious […]
Unlocking a taxpayer-funded dataset. “Microfiche is so old that most of you don’t even know what it is.” Cremieux Recueil digitized and organized the National Collaborative Perinatal Project, a 60,000 pregnancy cohort that was effectively trapped in film scans, and […]