Food labels make calorie counts look straightforward. The number listed per serving is calculated from the food’s fat, carbohydrate, and protein content.

In reality, the digestive process is much more complex. As food moves through the body, it interacts with trillions of microbes in the gut that can affect how many calories are ultimately absorbed.

Researchers at Arizona State University have developed a mathematical model called DAMM, short for digestion, absorption, and microbial metabolism, to better capture this process. The model tracks food as it moves through the digestive system, estimating what is absorbed by the body, what reaches the colon, and how gut microbes transform the remaining material into substances that are either absorbed or eliminated.

The researchers say the model could improve understanding of obesity, diabetes, and other metabolic disorders by revealing how different diets influence both the body and the microbial communities living in the colon.

Gut Microbes Change the Calorie Equation
With further development, DAMM could help health care providers create more personalized nutrition plans.

“Digestion is not just a human process—it is a collaboration between our bodies and trillions of microbes living in the gut,” said Professor Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown. “DAMM gives us a powerful new way to quantify how those microbial partners contribute to human health and energy balance and also points at the importance of properly feeding our gut microbes.”

Unfortunately there’s more bad news to report on the clear skies front. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv from researchers at NASA’s Ames Research Center, reports that 73.3% of images the agency’s new SPHEREx space telescope collected between May and September of last year were contaminated by at least one artificial satellite trail. And it’s only going to get worse from here.

Unfortunately this doesn’t come as a surprise. The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) was designed to map the entire sky in near-infrared light. Meaning it would have long exposure times and cover a very large chunk of the visible sky at any one time. Both of which are a recipe for interruption from orbiting satellites.

Typically this type of light pollution is primarily associated with ground telescopes. But, SPHEREx is an orbital satellite, traveling along an orbit that is 700km above the Earth’s surface. Apparently even that wasn’t enough to escape from the light trails. On average there were 2.18 trails per exposure, most of which are concentrated in an “X” pattern that mimics the orbital paths of the satellite megaconstellations.

There appears to be no easy way to handle this interruption, either. SPHEREx uses an automated “sample up-the-ramp” algorithm to protect itself from stray cosmic rays. When a sudden energy blast from one of those rays hits a pixel, the system halts data collection on that pixel to prevent saturation. But commercial satellites are now so bright that they are triggering this system without the help of any stray cosmic rays.

The resultant images have what the authors describe as “railroad” tracks, where the blinding center of the trail is scrubbed out but parallel lines running alongside it are permanently etched into the science imagery. As a result, the images lose the photometric data of anything hidden beneath the rails.

As if that news wasn’t bad enough, SPHEREx isn’t the only one suffering from this fate. A few years ago another team led by Sandor Kruk published a study that found the fraction of Hubble images crossed by satellites rose from 2.8% in the early 2000s to 5.9% in 2021. Admittedly Hubble doesn’t take as wide of shots as SPHEREx, but the fact that one of the most venerable space telescopes still operating is suffering from the same problem is not a good sign.

Most people think they are open-minded and would like others to perceive them as such. But for the things that matter most—religious beliefs, for example, or the meaning of life—few of us are genuinely willing to consider that we might be wrong, let alone do the hard work of revising beliefs. At a fundamental level, we humans are somewhat closed-minded.

As a social psychologist, I research big questions, such as what makes life meaningful and the nature of humility. I've had a long-standing interest in why people are so resistant to changing their cherished core beliefs. After all, isn't it better to remain open-minded when you may be wrong or can't know for certain?

As decades of research have revealed, it turns out that our deepest convictions serve important psychological functions that make them hard to change. It's unsettling to admit that our core beliefs about how the world works may be wrong.

I call that openness "existential humility": a willingness to change our minds about our deepest convictions when presented with new evidence. And though holding beliefs in this way can be difficult, it can also be a bridge to creating stronger relationships and more inclusive communities.

Power of worldview
All of us hold myriad beliefs that range from the mundane to the magnificent. "Is pineapple a legitimate pizza topping?" is very different from "Is there life after death?" Yet these seemingly disparate beliefs are connected through an interlocking set of ideas and principles that help us make sense of ourselves and the world around us.

Psychologists call these sets of beliefs "worldviews," and they provide people with a sense of meaning in an otherwise confusing and chaotic world. They are a constellation of beliefs that shape what people value, view as important and perceive as morally right and wrong.

It's natural to take worldviews for granted, assuming that other intelligent people see the world the same way.

At the core of these worldviews are your most cherished beliefs: who you are, what the meaning of life is, what constitutes right and wrong. Ask yourself how willing you are to revise those beliefs. How sure are you that you are right? What would it take to alter those convictions?

Probably a lot.

Did you know that the New Mexico Whiptail Lizard is entirely female? 🦎

But how do they reproduce? Find out in this episode of Surprising Science!

Something doesn’t quite add up about the orbits of our solar system’s eight planets and their hundreds of moons, a new study hints.

According to the research — which compared more than 100 simulations of our cosmic neighborhood’s early history — there may have once been two extra giant planets careening around the outer solar system, helping to reshape the orbits of the other planets before ultimately being kicked out into interstellar space.

The infant solar system was constantly being reshuffled. One drastic rearrangement, called the giant planet instability, may have caused the giant planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — to migrate from their initial positions, ending up farther from the sun.

This migration, first proposed in 2005 by astronomers in Nice, France, as a part of the "Nice Model," likely started due to extra-close encounters between the planets and leftover planetary building blocks called planetesimals. Additionally, modifications proposed in 2011 suggested there may have been a fifth giant planet whose gravitational encounters with its neighbors ultimately tossed it out of our cosmic neighborhood.

However, astronomers don't know much about this missing planet. To find out more, the new study "systematically tested the effects of giant-planet close encounters on the orbital stability of their satellites," Matthew Clement, a research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the study's first author, told Live Science in an email.

Engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have developed a soft, wearable ultrasound patch that can continuously monitor a fetus for hours at a time while maintaining reliable performance even as the fetus and umbilical cord move throughout pregnancy.

The device could help physicians identify complications earlier in high-risk pregnancies. During clinical testing, the patch detected prolonged abnormal fetal signals in one case, prompting an early Cesarean delivery. Researchers said the intervention may have helped save the baby’s life. The technology could also improve access to prenatal care in low-resource regions where trained ultrasound specialists and continuous monitoring are often unavailable.

“Wearable ultrasound technology has the potential to enable continuous prenatal monitoring and improve pregnancy outcomes in ways that were previously not possible,” said study co-first author Geonho (Tom) Park, a chemical and nanoengineering PhD student at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Park co-led the study with fellow UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering co-first authors Yizhou Bian, Hao Huang, and Sai Zhou.

Autonomous Tracking Overcomes Fetal Movement Challenges
Most prenatal ultrasounds provide only a brief look at fetal health and require trained sonographers to operate the equipment. In contrast, the new patch is designed to remain on the body and continuously monitor a baby’s anatomy and blood flow in real time without the need to manually position an ultrasound probe.

“To comprehensively monitor mothers and babies over the amount of time needed to catch complications like preeclampsia, you need a system that can work continuously and largely on its own,” Bian said. “That is why the sensing depth, functional capabilities, and autonomy of this ultrasound technology are critical.”

Global migration has risen sharply from approximately 13 million people per year in 2000 to around 35 million people per year in 2023. This is according to a new dataset on human migration published in Nature by researchers from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), IIASA and the University of Hong Kong.

This rise in migration outpaces global population growth, showing a true per capita increase in human mobility. The trend is contrary to previous research efforts to quantify global migration flows.

Using deep learning, the researchers built the first dataset of migration flows between all countries for the period 1990–2023, offering a far more detailed picture of global movement than traditional data, which is highly fragmented.

Current analysis of migration is heavily reliant on migrant population data published at five-year intervals by the United Nations and at 10-year intervals by the World Bank, providing counts of migrants in each country by country of birth. Thus, they offer only a snapshot at a fixed point in time. As a result, big events—such as wars, recessions, pandemics or climate shocks—have sometimes been missed in the data capture.

More detailed migration data matters because it shows not just how many people move, but when, where and why—helping policymakers respond to crises, plan services and understand global trends.

How the dataset fills gaps
Through the use of advanced machine learning (deep neural networks) to combine official statistics, census data and other sources with geographic and economic factors, the new dataset helps fill in the gaps. It shows migration has become more common overall since 2000, with dips only during the 2008–09 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Globally, the Middle East experienced the highest total inflow of migrants, chiefly from South Asia and the Philippines, with immigration from Bangladesh to Saudi Arabia alone averaging around 300,000 people per year from 2010 onward.

I pulled a jar of pond water and discovered a swarm of microscopic piranhas known as Coleps. Watch what happens when these armored scavengers find their next meal under the microscope!

Meet the Coleps, a barrel-shaped, single-celled ciliate with a reputation as the vulture of the micro-world. In this video, we observe a sample of local pond water under high magnification to see how these microbes hunt and scavenge. Using chemosensation, they can "smell" injured prey like a dead blue water mite or a ruptured Stentor coeruleus.

You'll see them use their reinforced oral baskets (nematodesmata) to drill into tissue, and learn how they fire microscopic harpoons called toxicysts to paralyze struggling prey. Covered in interlocking plates of calcium carbonate, these tiny armored tanks are the ultimate cleanup crew of the microscopic ecosystem.

Timestamps
0:00 - Looking Inside the Pond Water
0:11 - Meet the Coleps (The Micro Vultures)
0:40 - Piranha-like Behavior (swarm)
1:08 - Feeding on a Blue Water Mite
1:33 - The Secret Weapon: Toxicysts & Toxins
2:11 - Calcium Carbonate Armor Plates
2:51 - A Giant Stentor Coeruleus Bursts
3:42 - The Stentor's Secret to Survival

Researchers have long linked perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often called “forever chemicals,” to serious birth defects.

However, scientists have struggled to explain exactly how these pollutants affect fetal development. A new study now offers the first detailed molecular explanation, revealing how a PFAS compound known as perfluorodecanoic acid (PFDA) can cause craniofacial abnormalities before birth.

“Most people are exposed to small amounts of PFAS in everyday life, but higher exposure can occur through contaminated water, living near manufacturing sites, or certain jobs like firefighting and ski waxing, which is why it’s so important to understand the chemicals better,” said the paper’s senior author, Jed Lampe, PhD, associate professor at University of Colorado Anschutz Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

“We wanted to understand which PFAS compounds are truly harmful during fetal development, especially for people with higher exposure, and how they cause damage.”

PFDA Identified as the Most Toxic PFAS
Around 15,000 PFAS compounds are used in consumer and industrial products, but growing evidence suggests only a portion of them present major health concerns. To identify the most harmful compounds, Lampe and colleagues Michaela Hvizdak and Sylvie Kandel examined 13 commonly detected PFAS. Their results showed that PFDA was the most toxic to craniofacial development in a fetus.

The researchers found evidence linking PFDA to significant facial abnormalities seen in both people and laboratory animals. Some estimates suggest the compound may increase the risk of these defects by about 10%, even at very low exposure levels.

“This finding moves us beyond association by providing a clear explanation for how PFDA can interfere with fetal development. It’s a critical step toward understanding a vast and complex class of environmental chemicals,” said Lampe.

The Very Large Array, the iconic field of radio antennas featured in the film "Contact" (inspired by Carl Sagan's novel), has a long and distinguished history of service. But after more than 45 years of studying the radio sky and probing the mysteries of the universe, the U.S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which operates the VLA, is looking to create a new generation of telescopes that will pick up where the VLA leaves off.

The first step in the process was the creation of the next-generation Very Large Array, or ngVLA, prototype, a single radio antenna located on the NSF VLA grounds in the deserts of New Mexico. This prototype recently achieved a major milestone by gathering its "first light," making independent observations and working in collaboration with the NSF VLA.

This achievement marks the transition from the construction phase to astronomical testing and will serve as the blueprint for the proposed 244-antenna array.

Tony Beasley, director of NSF NRAO and AUI vice president for radio astronomy operations, explained the significance of this event in an NSF NRAO press release:

"First light from the ngVLA prototype antenna is a real-world demonstration of the engineering progress required to build America's—and the world's—next great radio astronomy facility. This milestone reflects the leadership and expertise we've tapped into among NRAO staff, our contractors, and the U.S. and international scientific community."

Scientists at the SETI Institute recently searched for technological signals from 3I/ATLAS, the third interstellar object observed in our solar system. Using the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory in Northern California, the team scanned a wide range of radio frequencies for signs of extraterrestrial technology and found none, as expected based on other astronomical observations showing that the object exhibits natural comet-like composition and behavior. The paper is published in The Astronomical Journal.

Discovered in July 2025, 3I/ATLAS is the third confirmed object from another star system to enter our solar system, after 1I/'Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov. Its interstellar origin makes 3I/ATLAS a rare opportunity to study material from another stellar system and better understand how planetary systems form and evolve.

While observations strongly indicate that 3I/ATLAS is a natural object, interstellar visitors are also compelling technosignature targets because an artificial object—however unlikely—could represent detectable extraterrestrial technology and potentially provide the first evidence of life beyond Earth.

"Eventually, our own Voyager spacecraft will be extraterrestrial artifacts in other stellar systems," said Dr. Sofia Sheikh, lead author on the paper. "Given that, it is important that we understand the natural distribution of interstellar objects so that we will be able to identify any anomalies that could one day be signs of an artificial interstellar object."

The Spirit rover (Mars Exploration Rover A) left our planet to begin the journey to its new home OTD in 2003. This view captured 20 years ago at the beginning of 2006 shows rippled sand deposits of the "El Dorado" ripple field in Gusev Crater on Mars.

Designed for a 90-day mission, Spirit operated for more than 6 years on Mars. It's twin, Opportunity, operated for almost 15 years.

Ten days ago, in a moment of very high drama in orbit, NASA directed its astronauts living on the International Space Station to briefly seek emergency refuge in a Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Since then, neither the US space agency nor Roscosmos has provided additional public information about the situation in orbit. But according to sources who spoke to Ars, following the spectacle in space, the problem has been successfully fixed.

At issue were persistent cracks in a small area of the International Space Station attached to the Russian Zvezda service module, known as the PrK module. The problem has been ongoing since 2019, and Russian astronauts have been attempting various fixes, often using a sealant called Germetall-1.

A new study finds that plants respond to injury by actively redirecting sugars to damaged tissues, helping fuel the regeneration process. Using a fluorescent sensor to track sugar movement in living plants, researchers have discovered that wounds trigger a localized shift in energy transport, concentrating glucose around the injury site. The findings published in PNAS offer new insight into how plants coordinate repair and recovery and could help scientists better understand the mechanisms that support resilience in crops facing physical damage or environmental stress.

When a plant is damaged, whether by a storm, an animal, or a gardener's pruning shears, it faces an immediate challenge: how to deliver enough energy to the wounded area to rebuild lost tissue. The study reveals how plants solve that problem. The team discovered that injuries trigger a rapid rerouting of sugars, directing energy toward damaged tissues where repair and regeneration are underway.

Using a fluorescent sensor that allowed them to watch sugar movement inside living plants, the researchers found that glucose accumulates around wounds as regeneration progresses. They also identified several genes that help drive this process, providing new insight into how plants recover from injury.

Viruses are highly effective at infecting human cells, largely because of specialized proteins that cover their outer surfaces. These proteins are also a key focus for vaccine design. To study them, scientists often create lab-made versions to see how the immune system might respond. However, these simplified versions usually omit important sections embedded in the virus’ membrane. Without those pieces, the proteins do not fully behave the way they do in real viruses, making it harder to understand how antibodies recognize and disable them.

Researchers at Scripps Research, working with IAVI and other collaborators, have now developed a new platform that allows these viral proteins to be studied in a form that closely resembles their natural state. The method uses nanodisc technology, where the proteins are placed into tiny particles made of lipids. This creates a membrane-like environment that better preserves their structure and function. As a result, scientists can gain clearer insights into how viral proteins and antibodies interact.

Nanodisc Technology Improves Vaccine Research
The new platform, described in Nature Communications, was tested using proteins from HIV and Ebola. These viruses have been particularly difficult targets for vaccines because their surface proteins are not easily recognized by the immune system. The researchers say the same approach could also be used to study other viruses with similar membrane-bound proteins, including influenza and SARS-CoV-2.

“For many years, we’ve had to rely on versions of viral proteins that are missing important pieces,” says co-senior author William Schief, a professor at Scripps Research and executive director of vaccine design at IAVI’s Neutralizing Antibody Center. “Our platform lets us study these proteins in a setting that better reflects their natural environment, which is critical if we want to understand how protective antibodies recognize a virus.”

Researchers at MIT are testing a new propulsion technology that could give small satellites a major boost in capability. The system combines two very different forms of spacecraft propulsion in a single package, allowing satellites to perform both rapid maneuvers and highly efficient long-distance travel.

At the heart of the design is a single propellant that can power both chemical and electric thrusters. Traditionally, these systems require separate fuel sources, adding complexity and taking up valuable space on a spacecraft.

“If you can have chemical and electrical propulsion in one small package, it’s the best of both worlds,” says Amelia Bruno, a former postdoctoral researcher in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro). “This opens the door for small satellites to do even more science, more observations, and more interesting missions, all on a smaller and cheaper platform.”

Bruno is the lead author of a study published in the Journal of Propulsion and Power. The research demonstrates that a type of environmentally friendlier monopropellant originally developed by the U.S. Air Force for chemical propulsion can also be used to operate miniature electric thrusters known as electrospray thrusters.

Day 121, orbit 1873 — Sunday morning science with Sophie, episode 9: Hunting for sounds, part 2.

Before anyone from the NASA engineering teams starts wondering why the TOCA is clicking while it’s switched off… I obviously could not turn it on just for the purpose of this video, so I recorded the sound later on during actual operations. It’s my absolute favourite sound onboard the Station! The sound consists of the checkout of several valves, which are used by this Total Organic Carbon Analyzer. This beautiful piece of engineering is used to test the quality of the Station's drinking water. 98% of the water onboard is recycled, isn’t it amazing?

At age 19, John McFall thought he might never walk again after his right leg was amputated above the knee following a motorcycle accident. Fast-forward more than two decades, and he is now on the verge of becoming the first physically disabled person in space.

McFall, 45, is a British surgeon and former Paralympic athlete who won multiple medals as a T42-class sprinter. In 2022, he joined the European Space Agency's (ESA) Fly! program, which aimed to see if a person with a physical disability could live and work in low Earth orbit. And in February 2025, he became the first member of the program to be cleared for a potential future mission to space.

More recently, on June 2, the U.K. government announced that McFall had been selected as a prospective member of the first crew to live on Haven-1, an upcoming commercial space station from U.S. company Vast that is scheduled to be the first of its kind in low Earth orbit, if it launches on time early next year.

A warming climate has been helping drive a global rise in sea levels. A new analysis now finds that hundreds of major studies missed just how much sea levels have risen. Past estimates were too low, the new study shows. On average, true sea levels are 20 to 30 centimeters (8 to 12 inches) higher than what past studies reported.

This means that the toll of future sea level rise is even greater than expected.

Katharina Seeger and Philip Minderhoud did the research. They work at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. These physical geographers evaluated data from 385 global and regional studies. All had been published between 2009 and 2025.

Some 99 percent of the studies had incorrectly estimated ocean height, they found. And 45 of the studies were used a few years ago in a major report. It was issued by a global panel of climate experts convened by the United Nations.

Knowing the rate of ocean rise is crucial for coastal planners around the world. It helps them predict when sea water will start to flood — and permanently cover — large swaths of land. The errors in past studies, the researchers say, mean that coastal land may disappear faster than expected. In some places, it could vanish as much as a century sooner than thought.

In a first, a large, international team led by multiple labs at Harvard Medical School and Princeton University has published a complete wiring diagram of all the connections between neurons in the central nervous system of an adult fruit fly.

The work allows researchers to begin to study how the brain and body interact to carry out complex behaviors such as walking and flying. It also empowers deeper investigations into the basic principles of how nervous systems work.

"We can see all of the neurons and their connections as a complete unit for the first time and ask, "What do we learn from that?'" said study co-senior author Rachel Wilson, the Joseph B. Martin Professor of Basic Research in the Field of Neurobiology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS.

The highly detailed diagram of neural connections—known as a connectome—adds a map of the fruit fly's spinal cord equivalent, called a nerve cord, to a previously published connectome of the fly brain.

"It is really important to have a central nervous system connectome that is as complete as possible so we can link up the brain and body and start thinking about behavior holistically," said study co-senior author Wei-Chung Allen Lee, associate professor of neurobiology at HMS and HMS professor of neurology at Boston Children's Hospital.

In analyzing the connectome, the team found that many fruit fly behaviors are controlled by local neural circuits in the body parts that are involved, rather than by a central hub in the brain.

The entire connectome is now freely available online so that other scientists can use it to propel neuroscience research.