Have you ever bought something not because you wanted it, but because you were afraid of what might happen if you didn't? Maybe you worried about looking older, falling behind at work or simply not fitting in.

While marketing often promises an aspirational lifestyle, some of the most effective campaigns work in the opposite direction: making you feel bad about your current reality, then presenting a product as the solution.

This is the logic of pain-point advertising, and emotions are central to its effectiveness.

Emotional content in advertising can be framed positively or negatively. When advertisers choose to frame it negatively, they aim to show that not using their product could lead to negative experiences, often illustrated by the characters' negative emotions in the ad.

How pain-point advertising works
Companies that develop goods and services need to establish a presence in the market, stimulate consumer demand and generate profits. Advertising uses a range of strategies to achieve those goals, but emotional content remains a staple across the industry.

Research in cognitive and behavioral science suggests that consumers don't make decisions through rational calculation alone, and that emotions play an important role.

One reason may be the way our brains make sense of the world. The human brain is a predictive machine that constantly uses past experiences to anticipate what will happen next.

Throughout our lives, we accumulate experiences that help us form increasingly accurate expectations and make better decisions. When our experiences confirm those expectations, there is little reason for the brain to change course. We can continue relying on what we already know.

But when reality contradicts what we expected, the mismatch can trigger a negative emotional response. The discrepancy signals that something about our expectations or behavior may need to change.

This is the very mechanism that pain-point advertising exploits. For instance, an advertisement might draw attention to a gap between how we see ourselves and how we believe we should look. The advertised product is then presented as a way to close that gap...

Webb reveals one of its largest images to date! 😲

This starry view shows the nearby star-forming region IC 348. Here, astronomers searched for brown dwarfs, objects which are less massive than the smallest stars. Read more 👉 esa.int/Science_Explor…

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X-ray technology and artificial intelligence—along with the discovery of lead in the ink of fragments from a collection of ancient Roman scrolls—could soon help scientists read long-lost texts buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, according to a study published Sept. 16, 2026, in the journal PLOS One by Douglas Seiler, an affiliate of the University of California, Berkeley, U.S.; Jacob Michael LaManna of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S.; David Kreimer of the University of California, Berkeley, U.S.; and colleagues.

The Herculaneum papyri scrolls were discovered in the ruins of the town of Herculaneum, near Naples, Italy. During the volcanic eruption, the scrolls were covered by 65–70 feet (20–21 meters) of rock and ash, "carbonizing" them in the extreme heat and making them very brittle. While some of the scrolls have been opened and read, revealing previously unknown writings by Epicurus and other ancient thinkers, many have proven too fragile to study.

Lead offers a clearer signal
Recently, AI and X-ray tomography have allowed researchers to virtually "unroll" some of the scrolls and read some of the text. That said, X-rays can have a hard time distinguishing the text because the ink and papyrus are made of similar materials: carbon. But some of the Herculaneum scroll letters have been found to contain lead. Since X-rays can more easily distinguish between papyrus and lead, the authors of this new paper suggest scanning the scrolls for lead and then attempting to virtually unroll those that contain it.

To test this, the team recreated some carbonized scrolls by writing on new papyrus using ink with various concentrations of lead, then heating the scrolls in a high-temperature furnace and carbonizing them. X-ray fluorescence was able to detect lead in the scrolls at each lead concentration level, and X-ray tomography, combined with a custom software program, allowed the team to reread some of the words they had written on these scrolls.

For centuries, scientists have thought of the brain as a single, unified organ. But new research led by Stanford Medicine reveals that what we call the brain is two distinct organs that evolved independently over hundreds of millions of years.

The discovery overturns a prevailing model of brain development. For decades researchers have subscribed to the theory that there is a single progenitor cell early in development that gives rise to the entire brain. This model suggested all parts of the brain shared a common developmental origin.

The new research finding shows that the human brain consists of two ancient nervous systems cleverly packaged together — a more primitive part that regulates our hearts’ beating, our breathing and other functions, and another that makes us distinctly human, capable of poetry, mathematics and wondering about our own origins.

The discovery could help explain why scientists have struggled for decades to grow certain types of brain cells in the laboratory — and it opens new avenues for studying devastating diseases that affect the brain stem, such as spinal muscular atrophy (also known as SMA) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease).

“We’ve shown for the first time that the front of the brain arises from a totally different progenitor cell than the back of the brain,” said Kyle Loh, PhD, associate professor of developmental biology. “Our discovery means that we can now grow neurons from the back of the brain, the hindbrain, in a petri dish and study their functions.”

Two brains
The adult brain has three main regions: the forebrain, midbrain and hindbrain. The forebrain handles higher-level thinking — language, consciousness and abstract reasoning. In contrast, the hindbrain, located at the back of the skull and often called the brain stem, controls essential, automatic functions that keep us alive: breathing, sleeping, and regulating our heartbeat and hunger urges. The hindbrain neurons also control the muscles of the face, tongue and throat, which affect speech and swallowing.

Despite the critical importance of the hindbrain, scientists have struggled for decades to generate human hindbrain neurons in the laboratory. This gap has hampered research into devastating diseases affecting the brain stem, including spinal muscular atrophy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis...

We have long known that the Sun is active. It “flares” quite often, sending huge amounts of energy off in a certain direction - sometimes directly at Earth. But we also know that, compared to other Sun-like stars, it seems relatively quiet, and not capable of producing the “superflares” we sometimes see in its stellar equivalents. That sounds like great news for humanity, and some scientists have even argued that lack of superflares was a critical impetus for the development of complex life on Earth. But a new paper from Natalie Krivova of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and her co-authors in the journal Philosophical Transactions A calls the assumption that our Sun is incapable of such dramatic outbursts into question. That also means that, eventually, our highly technological society could bear the brunt of one of them.

Scientists have been collecting data on the Sun for decades, and one of the most interesting features they watch out for are solar flares. These massive outbursts of energy occur when the twisted magnetic fields located in what are known as the Sun’s “Active Regions” (ARs) snap and reconnect, releasing a huge amount of stored energy. Commonly known as “sunspots”, ARs also leave behind a residual glowing area known as “flare ribbons” that occur after their high-power snap-back.

Using data collected by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory between 2010 and 2016, the authors analyzed what they believed to be a critical relationship - between the total area of an Active Region, the size of its resultant flare ribbons, and the total energy released during their creation. They found a very accurate statistical correlation that also makes sense intuitively - the larger the active region, the larger the ribbon area, and the more maximum potential flare energy. And critically, they found the flare energy scales exponentially with the ribbon area...

The Human Genome Project was launched in 1990, preceded by decades of breakthroughs in genetics. It eventually gave us a sequence of the human genome. Yet, while the physical rules behind the genome's organization remain an active area of research, many questions are still largely unanswered. Among these is the impact of an omnipresent force influencing life on Earth: gravity.

A new study, which appears in the journal Science Advances, addresses some of these weighty questions by using an innovative technique: creating a zero-gravity, or microgravity, environment to reveal gravity's impact on a human cell.

The method serves two purposes: isolating gravity's impact on the genome by removing it as a factor in experiments while, at the same time, showing how the genome functions in outer space, where gravity is nonexistent.

"On Earth, the role of gravity is intriguing—it is a constant mechanical stress on everything," explains Alexandra Zidovska, an associate professor in New York University's Department of Physics, who led the study.

"We wanted to know what gravity's role is in the genome's organization and function here on Earth. To uncover it, you have to remove gravity as a force, so we simulated zero gravity in our experiments."

"Beyond Earth, the question of lack of gravity is also compelling: How will the human genome be affected when in outer space?" she continues.

"We think our findings can be useful in better understanding how space travel affects us."

The human genome has a complex and compact hierarchical organization. It is a one-dimensional sequence encoded in 2 meters (6.6 feet) of DNA molecules packed in three dimensions inside a cell nucleus barely 10 micrometers in size—or about the width of a silk fiber.

Its structure is directly linked to its function, and deviations from it can lead to human diseases, such as cancer and developmental afflictions. Despite their significance, the physical principles governing the genome's organization are not well understood.

"We do not know if or how the presence of gravity affects this organization and if the absence of gravity would cause genomic aberrations," observes Zidovska...

The human brain is terrible at healing itself from injury or disease. But some animals can harness their own cellular abilities not only to repair injuries but also to regrow their brains entirely. Researchers from the University of Georgia have pinpointed several of the genes that make brain regeneration possible in one type of flatworm.

"Big picture: We would like to come up with ideas for how to better empower the human brain to regenerate itself," said Rachel Roberts-Galbraith, corresponding author of the study and an associate professor in UGA's Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

"The understanding of brain regeneration that we can develop using simple animals gives us a reason to be optimistic. It's not an inherent property of brains that makes them bad at regeneration. It's something specific to humans."

Flatworm and human brains are both made up of networks of specialized cells called neurons. These cells communicate with each other by sending electrical or chemical signals. Some neurons react to stimuli, such as light or touch, while others control movement.

Flatworms use stem cells to replace neurons after injury. Humans also have stem cells, but they are unable to transform into new neurons effectively enough to heal injuries. The new study sheds light on how shared genes work in flatworms and lays the groundwork for researchers to investigate similar pathways that might be activated in humans to design better therapies for traumatic brain injuries or diseases.

Some flatworms can regrow tissues, muscles and even their brains
Planarians can be found in freshwater, saltwater and even on land. They don't have circulatory or respiratory systems. But they do have stem cells that can change into whatever their body needs at a given time, making them valuable animals for brain and cognitive research.

Using stem cells, planarians can regrow their entire body from just a sliver of a body fragment. They can rebuild tissues, muscles and even their brains.

But how do these tiny creatures know what type of cell to make and where to send it?

The hydrogen in your body and present in every molecule of water came from the Big Bang. There are no other appreciable sources of hydrogen in the universe. The carbon in your body was made by nuclear fusion in the interior of stars, as was the oxygen. Much of the iron in your body was made during supernovas of stars that occurred long ago and far away. The gold in your jewelry was likely made from neutron stars during collisions that may have been visible as short-duration gamma-ray bursts or gravitational wave events. Elements like phosphorus and copper are present in our bodies in only small amounts but are essential to the functioning of all known life. The featured periodic table is color coded to indicate humanity's best guess as to the nuclear origin of all known elements. The sites of nuclear creation of some elements, such as copper, are not really well known and are continuing topics of observational and computational research.

Image Credit: NASA's GSFC, SVS

Unlike electric charge, as far as we know all mass is positive, and positive masses attract one another. Could negative mass exist, and if so, what would be the ramifications?

Antigravity between a positive mass and a hypothetical negative mass has received a fair bit of attention in both physics and science fiction over the years. For example, in 1901's "First Men in the Moon" author H. G. Wells imagines a substance he calls "cavorite" which creates a negative force of gravity and thus acts as a gravity shield. In Newton's theory of gravity, negative mass would effectively appear as his same equation but with the gravitational constant G replaced by -G. But Einstein's version of gravity, general relativity, is not so kind, and does not seem to consistently allow anti-gravity.

In a new paper in Physics of the Dark Universe, Shin'ichi Nojiri from Japan and S.D. Odintsovc from Spain dig deeper into the possibility of negative mass objects (NMOs) and conclude that the idea may not be as exotic as is thought. Using theoretical tools, they show that negative mass "does not always lead to any inconsistency."

Where negative mass could arise
Mass comes from a particle's interaction with the Higgs field, and most of a particle's mass is actually binding energy (remember Einstein: m=E/c²) between its constituents. Protons, 1,836 times more massive than electrons, are composed of three quarks and gluons bound together. The quark masses are only about 9% of the proton's mass, according to lattice gauge theories of quantum chromodynamics. The rest comes from the field energy of gluons that mediate the dynamics inside the proton...

Scientists built a swallowable paper battery that can power medical devices inside the body and then gradually break down after its job is done.

So far, the battery has been tested only in pigs, in which it powered devices for up to three days. If proven safe and effective in people, the battery could someday power temporary devices inside the gut while avoiding surgery to retrieve a conventional battery from the body when the device is no longer needed.

"I'm very excited about this work," said Reza Ghodssi, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the study. "The battery is one component that takes up most of the space in an ingestible device, so anything that can provide the required power while reducing the size of the capsule is very promising."

Examples of ingestible medical devices include those that detect bleeding, dispense medicines, or stimulate specific tissues or organs.

How does the battery work?
Conventional batteries used in ingestible devices are not only large; they also need to stay sealed to prevent their internal materials from leaking into surrounding tissue and causing damage. The new battery, described Monday (Sept. 21) in the journal Nature Chemical Engineering, is made from materials that gradually dissolve in the acidic gastrointestinal tract and can then be safely absorbed without leaving behind harmful fragments or toxic byproducts...

Two decades ago, scientists seemed on the verge of understanding biology in a new, quantum way.

Life unfolds over an incomprehensible span of scales, from our planet-enveloping biosphere at one end, to individual cell-building biomolecules at the other. Even at its most microscopic, though, biology doesn’t really reach down to the quantum realm, in which particles act like waves, become entangled with one another, and exist in superpositions of multiple states at once. But scientists in the field of quantum biology are searching for ways that organisms might be able to push quantumness into the space, time, and temperature domains relevant to life, to make use of its strange properties.

In photosynthesis, for example, organisms use specialized pigments and proteins to harvest light with nearly perfect quantum efficiency; they convert almost every incoming photon into useful chemical energy. In 2007, new evidence suggested that life might accomplish this feat by taking advantage of a quantum effect called coherence. The result buoyed the controversial idea that, despite being a warm, wet, and decidedly classical environment, a living cell could maintain — and even exploit — fragile quantum states.

Gregory Scholes, a chemist at Princeton University, was initially enthusiastic about the result. He and colleagues followed up with experiments on photosynthesizing proteins and pigments and came away with similar conclusions. But today, Scholes is skeptical that quantum effects play a role in life. In fact, he’s convinced that the way forward for quantum biology might not be quantum at all. Rather than taking advantage of genuine quantum effects, Scholes proposes, life might be imitating them instead. In several papers published over the past three years, Scholes and colleagues have shown that complex networks of classical objects can conspire to produce phenomena that mathematically mimic quantum objects.

Don’t be fooled: The states that these networks produce are not truly quantum; they’re only “quantumlike.” They arise when many interacting, oscillating parts add up to a collective whole whose behavior obeys the same mathematics that makes predictions about the quantum world.

Fusion-powered space travel has long held the promise of rapid trips across the solar system: Mars in weeks, Saturn in months, Pluto in years.

For decades, such possibilities have remained theoretical, like something plucked out of a science fiction novel. But several companies are now working to build practical nuclear fusion propulsion engines, with significant milestones being hit.

Pulsar Fusion, a U.K.-based startup, hopes to launch a demonstration mission to space in 2027, while Princeton University and Helicity Space in the U.S. are continuing their own work on fusion drives.

If any of these efforts prove successful, missions across the solar system for robots and humans could be unlocked like never before, turning us into a true spacefaring species.

"If we continue on the current trajectory, everything we know about space travel is going to change within a decade," Stephane Lintner, CEO and co-founder of Helicity Space, told Live Science.

But is it too good to be true? Can the dream of nuclear fusion propulsion ever be fully realized, or will it remain a sketchbook fantasy? After decades of dreaming, we might be on the cusp of finding out...