Researchers at the Institute of Materials Science of Seville (ICMS), a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the University of Seville (US), have created a hybrid device that can generate energy from both sunlight and rainfall at the same time.

At the core of the system is a patented thin film that protects perovskite solar cells and improves their durability, even in harsh weather. The same film also enables nanogenerators to produce more than 100 volts from the impact of a single raindrop, which is enough to power small portable electronics.

Halide perovskite solar cells are made from synthetic crystalline materials that absorb sunlight very efficiently. While silicon remains the dominant material in solar technology, perovskites are considered a promising alternative because they combine high performance with lower production costs.

DNA carries the genetic instructions for all living things, but it is also an extraordinarily dense way to store information. Just one gram can hold roughly 215 million gigabytes of data.

If that level of storage could be harnessed in electronics, it could lead to far more efficient data centers, faster processing, and the ability to handle much more complex information. The challenge has been making a biological molecule like DNA work within electronic systems. Researchers at Penn State say they have now found a way to connect the two.

The team’s approach, reported in Advanced Functional Materials with a patent application underway, relies on two main components. One is synthetic DNA, made from chemically engineered short sequences designed for specific electronic functions. The other is crystalline perovskite, a semiconductor widely used in solar cells, lasers, and data storage devices.

“Biology and electronics are different domains,” said Kavya S. Keremane, co-corresponding author and postdoctoral researcher in materials science and engineering at Penn State. “Bridging these two fields required developing an entirely new materials platform that allows them to function seamlessly together. By combining the information storage capabilities of DNA with the exceptional electronic properties of perovskite semiconductors, we created a bio-hybrid system that fundamentally changes how low-power memory devices can be designed.”

The Atlantic current system, or more formally the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), is more likely to weaken than previously thought. That's the conclusion of a new study published in the journal Science Advances, which used more refined modeling techniques to get a clearer picture of the future. If these new projections are correct, the consequences could be severe, particularly for Europe and Africa.

The AMOC is a major system of Atlantic Ocean currents that helps regulate climate by transporting heat from the tropics toward the North Atlantic. It is often likened to a conveyor belt because it carries warm water north, where it cools and sinks before flowing back south deep underwater.

While it was already known to be weakening, most climate models disagree on the exact magnitude of the decline, but generally point to a one-third reduction by 2100. However, this new study puts the figure at a much more substantial 51%.

NASA has given approval to begin implementing its project to support ESA's Rosalind Franklin mission. Scheduled to launch in 2028, this Mars rover will be the first to search for signs of past or present life under the Red Planet’s surface. go.nasa.gov/4vAIeX1

Why do some people struggle to adapt to new information and stay locked into outdated beliefs?

Scientists at MIT may have found a key reason. A newly identified gene mutation appears to disrupt a brain circuit that helps us update our understanding of the world. When this system fails, the brain may cling to old ideas even when reality changes.

In experiments with mice, researchers showed that this mutation interferes with the brain’s ability to adjust decisions based on new input, a problem that closely mirrors cognitive symptoms seen in schizophrenia.

The mutation occurs in a gene called grin2a, previously linked to schizophrenia in large genetic studies. The findings suggest that targeting this circuit could eventually help improve cognitive function in some patients.

“If this circuit doesn’t work well, you cannot quickly integrate information,” says Guoping Feng, the James W. and Patricia T. Poitras Professor in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, a member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, and the associate director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. “We are quite confident this circuit is one of the mechanisms that contributes to the cognitive impairment that is a major part of the pathology of schizophrenia.”

As the four Artemis astronauts approached a high point of their lunar mission—getting slung around the far side of the moon—NASA staffers crowded into Houston's famed mission control room Monday for a team photo.

They were all smiles as countdown clocks ticked and the Orion spacecraft flew ever closer to Earth's cratered neighbor, a mission years in the making come to fruition at last.

By most metrics it's been a rough year for science in the United States—the Trump administration has slashed funding, halted projects and devastated workforces.

But then, NASA sent astronauts around the moon for the first time in half a century, deeper into space than ever before.

The moonshot has served as a "massive positive moment," said exploration scientist Jacob Bleacher.

"People have been working on this for months, years—over a decade in some cases," he told AFP.

The majority of Americans, including NASA scientists, weren't yet born when the Apollo era first sent astronauts to the moon in the late 1960s.

In a discovery that could reshape how scientists think about fluids, researchers at Drexel University have found that under certain conditions, a simple liquid can break apart like a solid. The study, published in Physical Review Letters, shows that viscous liquids can suddenly fracture when stretched with enough force.

This unexpected behavior points to viscosity, or a liquid’s resistance to flowing, as a key factor in how liquids respond to stress. It also suggests new ways liquids could be controlled in technologies ranging from hydraulics and 3D printing to biological systems like blood flow.

“Our findings show that if pulled apart with enough force per area, a simple liquid — a liquid that flows — will reach what we call a point of ‘critical stress,’ when it will actually fracture like a solid. And this is likely true for all simple liquids, including common examples, such as water and oil,” said Thamires Lima, PhD, an assistant research professor in Drexel’s College of Engineering, who helped to lead the research. “This fundamentally changes our understanding of fluid dynamics.”

Loneliness is something most of us will experience at some point. It is a normal emotion, not a character flaw. But it is also something that can quietly affect how we think and remember, and researchers have long debated whether it might even raise the risk of dementia.

A new study, published in [the journal] Aging and Mental Health, suggests the picture is more complicated than either side of that debate has allowed for.

First, it is worth being clear about what dementia actually is. It is not a single diagnosis but an umbrella term covering a range of conditions — the most familiar being Alzheimer's disease — that cause memory loss, confusion, difficulties with language and a gradual loss of independence.

Cognitive decline, meaning a general slowing or weakening of mental function, is not the same thing. The two terms are often used interchangeably, but they should not be: you can experience cognitive decline without ever developing dementia.

We do not fully understand what causes Alzheimer's. We know that a healthy lifestyle lowers the risk, but it is no guarantee. Plenty of people who have done everything right still develop it. The disease is shaped by genetics, aging and biological factors we are still working to understand.

The new study followed just over 10,000 adults aged between 65 and 94 over six years. All were in good health at the outset, fully independent and free of dementia. Researchers tracked their memory over that period and asked whether loneliness played a role in how it changed.

The answer was nuanced.

Five years ago today, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter took its first flight on Mars!

After 72 flights, 11 miles flown, and a top altitude of 24 meters, Ingenuity ended its mission on January 25, 2024.

On April 17, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California sent commands to shut down an instrument aboard Voyager 1 called the Low-energy Charged Particles experiment, or LECP. The nuclear-powered spacecraft is running low on power, and turning off the LECP is considered the best way to keep humanity's first interstellar explorer going.

The LECP has been operating almost without interruption since Voyager 1 launched in 1977—almost 49 years. It measures low-energy charged particles, including ions, electrons, and cosmic rays originating from our solar system and galaxy. It has provided critical data about the structure of the interstellar medium, detecting pressure fronts and regions of varying particle density in the space beyond our heliosphere. The twin Voyagers are the only spacecraft that are far enough from Earth to provide this information.

The choice of which instrument to turn off next wasn't made in the heat of the moment. Years ago, the Voyager science and engineering teams sat down together and agreed on the order in which they would shut off parts of the spacecraft while ensuring the mission can continue to conduct its unique science. Of the 10 identical sets of instruments that each spacecraft carries, seven have been shut off so far. For Voyager 1, the LECP was next on that list. The team shut off the LECP on Voyager 2 in March 2025.

Only one chance in this lifetime…

Like watching sunset at the beach from the most foreign seat in the cosmos, I couldn’t resist a cell phone video of Earthset. You can hear the shutter on the Nikon as Christina H Koch is hammering away on 3-shot brackets and capturing those exceptional Earthset photos through the 400mm lens. Victor Glover was in window 3 watching with Jeremy R. Hansen next to him.

I could barely see the Moon through the docking hatch window but the iPhone was the perfect size to catch the view…this is uncropped, uncut with 8x zoom which is quite comparable to the view of the human eye. Enjoy.

Blue Origin, the U.S. space company of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, on Sunday successfully reused and recovered a booster for its New Glenn rocket, confirming its mastery of a technical feat that could boost its launch cadence and expand its rivalry with SpaceX.

But the uncrewed mission also suffered a partial setback: the satellite carried into space by the rocket did not settle into the right orbit.

The company has launched the New Glenn twice before, but only with new rocket boosters. It has previously launched its smaller New Shepard rocket, primarily used for suborbital space tourism, with reused components in a less technically challenging operation.

The novel recycling approach comes amid fierce competition between Bezos's firm and fellow tech titan Elon Musk's SpaceX, which has also recovered a booster from a launched rocket.

The New Glenn rocket, standing at 98 meters (321 feet) tall, lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral with its reused booster at about 7:25 a.m. (1125 GMT) carrying a communications satellite for the company AST SpaceMobile.

After liftoff, the rocket's two stages separated, with the upper stage continuing its journey carrying the satellite into space. Its booster successfully landed on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean about nine minutes and 30 seconds after takeoff.

Blue Origin said later in a statement on X that the satellite turned on properly but was placed in "an off-nominal orbit." The gravity of this error was not immediately known. The company said it was assessing the mishap.

In November, Blue Origin recovered a New Glenn booster for the first time, succeeding in the complex technical challenge that culminated with a controlled vertical landing on a floating platform.

A previous attempt in January 2025 to recover the booster was unsuccessful after its engines failed to reignite during descent.

The booster used in Sunday's launch was refurbished after its previous flight. For this first reuse, the company replaced all of its engines and made several other modifications.

A beautiful launch of New Glenn's third mission. This mission was the second flight of the booster Never Tell Me The Odds, which also launched NG-2.

Recent findings from research we have been carrying out at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern in Geneva suggest that we might be closing in on signs of undiscovered physics.

If confirmed, these hints would overturn the theory, called the Standard Model, that has dominated particle physics for 50 years. The findings suggest the way that specific sub-atomic particles behave in the LHC disagrees with the Standard Model.

Fundamental particles are the most basic building blocks of matter—sub-atomic particles that cannot be divided into smaller units. The four fundamental forces—gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force and the strong force—govern how these particles interact.

We've run the numbers and the verdict is in: Honeybees do have the ability to process numerical information. New research led by Monash University has now addressed recent international debate over whether bees are truly assessing numbers or simply reacting to visual patterns.

The study highlights the necessity of designing cognitive experiments that align with an animal's specific sensory and biological constraints. When stimuli are evaluated from a bee's-eye view, the evidence for numerical cognition is strengthened rather than diminished.

The study, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, re-examined previous critiques of bee intelligence by accounting for the honeybee's unique sensory and perceptual constraints. By evaluating experimental stimuli from a biologically relevant perspective, researchers demonstrated that previous criticisms, which suggested bees were merely sensitive to visual cues like spatial frequency, do not hold up.

Monash University Senior Lecturer Dr. Scarlett Howard, from the Monash School of Biological Sciences, said the findings underscore the importance of avoiding human-centric biases in animal research.

"We must put the animal's perspective first when assessing their cognition or we may under or overestimate their abilities," said Dr. Howard. "We see and experience the world quite differently from animals, so we must be careful of centering human perspectives and senses when studying animal intelligence."

The research team argues that to accurately assess cognitive abilities, experiments must be designed to match the natural sensory capacities of the subject species.

Dr. Mirko Zanon, from the Center for Mind Brain Sciences at the University of Trento and first author on the study, said that ignoring how an animal perceives the world risks leading scientists to the wrong conclusions.

"There has been a debate about whether bees are really 'counting' or just reacting to visual patterns. Our results show that this criticism doesn't hold when you consider the biology of the animal," said Dr. Zanon. "When we analyze the stimuli in a way that reflects how bees actually see the world, what remains is actual sensitivity to number."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first-ever gene therapy for inherited deafness.

The therapy, called Otarmeni, is approved to treat a form of hearing loss caused by mutations in the OTOF gene, which codes for a protein called otoferlin. Cells in the inner ear need otoferlin to translate vibrations into signals that can be interpreted by the brain. When people carry two defective copies of the OTOF gene — one from each parent — this line of communication between the inner ear and brain is cut, resulting in severe-to-profound hearing loss.