Scientists have pinpointed crucial genetic resistance to a fungal disease that threatens the global banana supply in a wild subspecies of the fruit. In a valuable step forward for banana breeding programs, Dr. Andrew Chen and Professor Elizabeth Aitken from the University of Queensland have identified the genomic region that controls resistance to Fusarium wilt Subtropical Race 4 (STR4). The study is published in the journal Horticulture Research.

"Fusarium wilt—also known as Panama disease—is a destructive soil-borne disease which impacts farmed Cavendish bananas worldwide through its virulent Race 4 strains," Dr. Chen said. "Identifying and deploying natural resistance from wild bananas is a long-term and sustainable solution to this pathogen that wilts and kills the host plant leaving residue in the soil to infect future crops.

The moon has many permanently shadowed regions (PSRs), which are craters that never see sunlight and are located at the lunar poles. They are ideal spots for high-precision instruments because they are extremely cold and remarkably quiet. Our planet experiences many environmental disturbances that can affect laser stability, such as ground shaking and changes in air pressure.

Lunar laser plan
To solve this, an international team, including researchers from NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has developed a conceptual plan for a lunar-based master clock. This would involve transporting the materials to the moon and building the laser system inside a dark, freezing crater.

The proposal is for a cryogenic silicon cavity laser, which is a specialized device that uses a block of pure silicon to keep light waves perfectly in sync. For this system to reach its full potential, it has to be kept at a steady -430°F [-257°C]. The crater is cold, but not always that cold. The temperatures there are roughly -350°F [-212°C], so to bridge the gap, the scientists plan to use passive cooling panels.

The system works by bouncing laser light back and forth between two mirrors inside a small hole in the silicon block. Because the block is kept at an optimum temperature, it doesn't shrink or grow. This keeps the distance the light travels exactly the same every time it bounces, creating extraordinary precision. On Earth, the distance would constantly change because of noise and heat.

Oh yeah, it's all coming together!

Roman is completely assembled at NASAGoddard and is undergoing final tests before being shipped to NASAKennedy, where it will be prepped for launch!
Check out this video highlighting the different telescope components.

Learn more about how the observatory came to be! go.nasa.gov/3OpqLQo

NASA has once again postponed the launch of Artemis II, the crewed lunar flyby mission, setting a new launch window for April. Although March 6 had been tentatively planned as the launch date, the US space agency revealed that a problem with the rocket has caused further delay.

Gravity feels dependable and unchanging, something we rarely question. Yet the planet behaves in strange ways defies intuition.

In reality, gravity is not uniform across Earth’s surface. Its strength shifts from place to place, and once the effects of Earth’s rotation are taken into account, it reaches its lowest point beneath Antarctica.

New research shows that this so called Antarctic gravity hole developed because of extremely slow movements of rock deep within the planet over tens of millions of years. The study also found that changes in this gravity low occurred during the same broad window of time as major shifts in Antarctica’s climate. Scientists say future investigations may determine whether evolving gravity patterns played a role in the expansion of the massive ice sheets that define the continent today.

“If we can better understand how Earth’s interior shapes gravity and sea levels, we gain insight into factors that may matter for the growth and stability of large ice sheets,” said Alessandro Forte, Ph.D., a professor of geophysics at the University of Florida and co-author of the new study recreating the Antarctic gravity hole’s past.

Fentanyl ranks among the most powerful medications available for treating intense pain. However, its benefits come with serious hazards, including a high potential for addiction and respiratory depression, a dangerous slowing of breathing that can be fatal. Because of these risks, doctors must carefully restrict its use even though it is highly effective. At the same time, fentanyl is inexpensive and relatively simple to manufacture, which has led to widespread illegal production and distribution. That surge has contributed to a devastating overdose crisis that claimed more than 70,000 lives in the United States in 2023.

Researchers at Scripps Research have now redesigned fentanyl at the molecular level, creating a new version that maintains its strong pain-relieving effects while reducing its tendency to suppress breathing. The study, published in ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters, indicates that further refinements could lead to safer opioid medications with lower risks of addiction, overdose, and death.

“For decades, the pharmaceutical industry has been constrained by the assumption that major structural changes to opioids would eliminate their analgesic properties,” says senior author Kim D. Janda, the Ely R. Callaway Jr. Professor of Chemistry at Scripps Research. “Our research has identified a different possibility—that fundamental structural redesign can preserve pain relief while improving safety.”

Over 40,000 years ago, our early ancestors were already carving signs into tools and sculptures. According to a new analysis by linguist Christian Bentz at Saarland University and archaeologist Ewa Dutkiewicz at the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte (Museum of Prehistory and Early History) in Berlin, these sign sequences have the same level of complexity and information density as the earliest proto-cuneiform script that emerged tens of thousands of years later, around 3,000 B.C.E.

Using a computational approach, the team examined over 3,000 signs found on 260 objects to reveal insights into the origins of writing. Their findings, which have been published in the journal PNAS, were clear—and surprised even the researchers.

Paleolithic objects dating back between 34,000 and 45,000 years bear mysterious sign sequences—often repeated lines, notches, dots and crosses. Many of these artifacts were discovered in caves in the Swabian Jura, such as a small mammoth found in the Vogelherd Cave in Lone Valley in southwestern Germany.

A Stone Age human carved the mammoth figurine out of a mammoth tusk and carefully engraved it with rows of crosses and dots. Other artifacts found in the Swabian Jura are also etched with signs.

One of these objects is the "Adorant," a mammoth ivory plate uncovered in the Geißenklösterle cave in the Ach Valley that depicts a hybrid lion-human creature. The object is likewise adorned with rows of dots and notches. Upon close inspection, another mythical depiction of a human-lion hybrid, the Lion Human from the Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave in the Lone Valley, reveals notches placed at regular intervals along the arm.

New findings show that these marks are there for a reason—Stone Age humans used them to convey information and to record their thoughts. "Our research is helping us uncover the unique statistical properties—or statistical fingerprint—of these sign systems, which are an early predecessor to writing," explains Professor Christian Bentz of Saarland University.

The arrival of 3I/ATLAS in our solar system spawned multiple proposals for a rendezvous mission to study it up close. As the third interstellar object (ISO) ever detected, the wealth of information direct studies could provide would be groundbreaking in many respects. However, the mission architecture for intercepting an interstellar comet poses numerous significant challenges for mission designers and planners. Chief among them is the technological readiness level (TRL) of the proposed propulsion systems, ranging from conventional rockets to directed-energy propulsion (DEP).

So far, mission proposals have focused on chemical rockets launched from Earth, like NASA's Janus mission and the ESA's Comet Interceptor, or on existing missions like the Juno probe adjusting their trajectories to rendezvous with it. In a recent paper, researchers from the Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is) propose foregoing a direct transfer mission that would launch from Earth today. Instead, they demonstrate how a mission launching in 2035 could intercept 3I/ATLAS using an indirect Solar Oberth maneuver.

The main challenges for a direct mission to rendezvous with 3I/ATLAS stem from the target object's celestial mechanics, its high heliocentric speed, and the late initial detection. The first issue effectively rules out a rendezvous mission that relies on an onboard propulsion system to match the comet's velocity, thereby enabling a prolonged close-up study of the body. As a result, a flyby mission is the preferred option. However, the second and third considerations rule out a direct mission because the optimal launch date had already passed before it was detected. As Hibberd summarized these for Universe Today via email:

"For the direct mission, the object 3I/ATLAS was detected too late, when it had already travelled inside the orbit of Jupiter, and with a velocity in excess of 60 km/s. It turns out, this was after the optimal launch date for a direct mission to intercept it. One paper found that there would even have been difficulties for a ‘Comet Interceptor’ spacecraft had it been already loitering at the sun/Earth L2 point when 3I/ATLAS was discovered."

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have discovered a way to turn plastic waste into acetic acid, the main ingredient of vinegar, using sunlight. The breakthrough offers a promising new approach to reducing plastic pollution through photocatalysis, while simultaneously creating a useful, value-added chemical product through a process inspired by nature.

When exposed to sunlight, the material drives a series of chemical reactions that transform plastic polymers into acetic acid with high selectivity. The reaction takes place in water, making it particularly relevant for addressing plastic pollution in aquatic environments.

Acetic acid is widely used in food production, chemical manufacturing and energy applications. The study shows it can be produced from common plastic wastes, including PVC, PP, PE and PET, and remains effective across mixed plastic compositions.

This makes the approach well suited to real-world waste streams, offering a promising alternative to plastic incineration, and could support more circular approaches to material use while providing a new strategy for upcycling plastics.

Perseverance has a new skill: It can pinpoint its location without needing help from humans!

The technology is made possible by tapping into a commercial processor originally used to communicate with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. Learn more: jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-per…

LEDs no wider than a human hair could soon take on work traditionally handled by lasers, from moving data inside server racks to powering next-generation displays. New research co-authored by UC Santa Barbara doctoral student Roark Chao points to a practical path forward. The study is published in the journal Optics Express.

"We're talking about devices that are literally the size of a hair follicle," said Chao, who studies electrical engineering. "If you can engineer how the light comes out, those microLEDs can start to replace lasers in short-distance data communication."

Infinity invites resistance. Aristotle rejected the existence of the infinite entirely; to him, infinity was simply a limit that could never be reached, not a true mathematical entity. In the early 17th century, Galileo wrote that typical ways of thinking about sets and numbers held no meaning in the realm of the infinite, and that mathematicians would only find paradoxes if they tried to apply their usual tool kit to it. And when, 200 years later, Georg Cantor formalized the idea that infinity comes in many sizes, he was met with anger and fear. His colleagues dismissed his work as that of a madman.

But in time, Cantor’s work on sets and infinity would form the bedrock of modern mathematics. As David Hilbert, another mathematical great, later wrote: “No one shall expel us from the paradise that Cantor has created for us.”

So how can infinity have different sizes?

Welcome to Cantor’s paradise.

A study published in Molecular Psychiatry suggests that the biology underlying autism and ADHD does not fit neatly into current diagnostic categories. Although clinicians have long recognized that autism and ADHD frequently occur together, scientists have struggled to pinpoint the shared mechanisms behind that overlap.

Researchers from the Child Mind Institute and collaborating centers found that the intensity of autism symptoms, rather than whether a child carries a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), is linked to specific patterns of brain connectivity and gene activity. The results add to a growing shift in psychiatry toward understanding neurodevelopmental conditions along dimensions of traits and biology, rather than as strictly separate disorders.

Symptom severity reveals shared biology
The research team, led by Adriana Di Martino, MD, Founding Director of the Autism Center at the Child Mind Institute and Senior Research Scientist, analyzed resting-state functional MRI scans from 166 verbal children between the ages of 6 and 12 who had been diagnosed with autism or ADHD (without autism). Resting-state imaging allows scientists to measure how different brain regions communicate while a person is not engaged in a specific task, offering insight into underlying network organization.

Children with more pronounced autism symptoms showed stronger connectivity between regions in the frontoparietal (FP) and default-mode (DM) networks. These networks play central roles in executive functioning, attention, and social cognition. In typical development, connectivity between these networks tends to decrease over time as the brain becomes more specialized. The heightened connectivity observed in children with greater symptom severity suggests differences in how these networks mature.

Importantly, this pattern appeared across the full group of children, regardless of whether they were formally diagnosed with ASD or ADHD. The connectivity differences also aligned with maps of gene expression in the brain, particularly genes involved in neural development that have previously been linked to both conditions. This overlap points to biological pathways that may cut across diagnostic labels.

“We see in the clinic that some children with ADHD share symptoms qualitatively similar to those observed in autism, even if they do not fully meet the diagnostic criteria for ASD,” says Dr. Adriana Di Martino. “By focusing on shared brain–gene expression patterns linked to autism symptoms across both ASD and ADHD, we can point towards a shared biological basis of these clinical observations. Our findings provide a more nuanced, dimensional understanding of neurodevelopmental conditions.”

Australian scientists have uncovered strong evidence that chronic insomnia may stem from disruptions in the brain’s internal 24-hour cycle of mental activity. The findings help explain why some people find it so difficult to “switch off” at night, even when they are physically tired.

In a study published in Sleep Medicine, researchers from the University of South Australia (UniSA) tracked how thinking patterns rise and fall across the day in people with long-term insomnia compared with healthy sleepers. This is the first study to chart daily cognitive rhythms in this way.

Insomnia affects roughly 10% of the population and up to one-third of older adults. Many people with the condition describe their minds as overactive or constantly racing at night.

Although this nighttime mental alertness has often been described as cognitive hyperarousal, its underlying cause has remained uncertain. The researchers set out to test whether difficulty calming the mind at night, a defining feature of insomnia, might be linked to abnormalities in circadian rhythms, the body’s internal timekeeping system.

Scientists at the Kunming Institute of Zoology (KIZ) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have shown for the first time in non-human primates that sound stimulation at 40-Hz can significantly increase β-amyloid levels in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of aged rhesus monkeys. Notably, this effect lasted for more than five weeks after treatment ended.

The findings, published in PNAS, provide the first experimental evidence in non-human primates that 40-Hz stimulation could serve as a non-invasive physical approach for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The study also highlights important differences between primate and rodent models, which are often used in preclinical research.

Led by Dr. Xintian Hu at KIZ, the research team worked with nine elderly rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) between 26 and 31 years old. These monkeys naturally developed widespread amyloid plaques in their brains, closely resembling the Aβ pathology seen in human AD. Because of this similarity, they offer a valuable model for testing potential therapies before moving to human trials.

Webb maps the mysterious upper atmosphere of Uranus 🔵

This first vertical view of its ionosphere reveals auroras shaped by the planet's tilted magnetic field and how Uranus’s atmosphere has continued to cool over the past three decades.

Read more 👉 esa.int/Science_Explor…