The Voyager 1 spacecraft, a relic from the 1970s, has been sending data back from the outer reaches of our solar system for over four decades. Recently, its team decided to turn off more experiments on board in order to conserve the limited power that remains. The move came after an unexpected drop
The Breakthrough Prize, launched by Silicon Valley leaders in 2012, awarded three Bay Area scientists for groundbreaking work in mathematics and physics. The ceremony, dubbed the “Oscars of Science, ” highlighted researchers who tackled long‑standing mysteries in their fields. UC Berkeley phys
Scientists have long struggled to see which proteins and RNA strands mingle inside the tight folds of DNA. A new class of “proximity labeling” methods helps researchers spot these interactions right in living cells, giving both a map of where things are and when they happen. The core idea is simp
The study set out to find out how well dogs stay calm when they receive two doses of a sedative called dexmedetomidine or when a different drug is added after the first dose. The researchers used a randomized crossover design, meaning each dog got both treatment plans at different times so they coul
Four Boston-based scientists walked away with top honors from an awards event that values breakthroughs more than Hollywood does. Held on a Saturday in Los Angeles, the ceremony recognizes discoveries that can take a decade or more to prove, unlike Oscars that focus only on the previous year’s films
Cyrano de Bergerac, a French writer of the 1600s, imagined rockets long before scientists or filmmakers did. In his 1657 story about a journey to the Moon, he described a machine that could lift a person into space by attaching fireworks to it. Although the idea was fanciful, he also tried to explai
Plants face changing weather every day, so they must turn short‑term stress into lasting growth plans. A new idea calls this process an “epigenetic set‑point, ” where the structure of DNA and its associated proteins works like a smart switch. The switch gathers two kinds of signals: the plant’s ener
A 34‑year‑old scientist who helped start a lab that studies anti‑gravity was found dead in Huntsville, Alabama, on June 11, 2022. Police said the death was a self‑shot. They have not shared any details about how they reached that conclusion. Before she died, the woman publicly warned that her life
In the Iguaçu National Park, researchers collected blood from 73 coatis across three locations. They used PCR tests to look for DNA from several tick‑borne bacteria and parasites: Anaplasma, Ehrlichia, Borrelia, and piroplasms. Almost half of the animals—about 48%—showed Anaplasma DNA, while n
Plants close their tiny pores, called stomata, to keep water from escaping during dry spells. Even then, a small amount of moisture still drips out – this is called minimum conductance or gmin. Scientists measured gmin in 101 different plant species, ranging from ferns to flowering trees, and found
