Payal Dhar (she/they)

There are 600 species of venomous snakes across the world, and their bites account for over 130,000 deaths annually and three times that number of permanent disabilities, mostly in Asia and Africa. Because of the diversity of toxins, most antivenoms work against the venom of only a single species in a specific region, and possibly closely related species. Scientists have been working for decades to produce a broad-spectrum antivenom that would work across different types of toxins, , but this approach has proven difficult.

Screens are steadily taking over more and more of our life, leading some researchers to worry about the effect of long-term use on older adults’ brain. It has been suggested that this might lead to so-called digital dementia—that depending on digital technology throughout our life might detract from cognitive functioning in our later years. But new research indicates this hypothesis doesn’t appear to be true, at least for the generation of adults who first routinely used smartphones, computers and the Internet—and who are now reaching the age when cognitive impairment often starts to appear.

A new study shows that if rain-like droplets fall naturally through a narrow tube in a discontinuous flow—gaps of air between each drop, also known as plug flow—the amount of electricity generated increases by five orders of magnitude compared with an uninterrupted flow.

Temporary pacemakers can be used as a stopgap measure to regulate the heartbeat after surgery and in emergency situations. But the fact that they need to be surgically installed and removed also brings risk. Now researchers have developed a tiny temporary pacemaker that could eliminate some of that risk. Their device, just a few millimeters long, has no wires and needs minimally invasive placement. It can be injected into the body with a needle. And when its work is done, it simply dissolves.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, tools are great for handling boring tasks. Like going through thousands of job applications and pulling out the most promising ones. So companies often use AI apps to shortlist job applications. But these tools tend to show bias in which applicants they rank as the best fit for a job, a new study finds.

The moon is Earth’s closest neighbor in space and the only extraterrestrial body humans have visited. Yet scientists are still unsure exactly when a Mars-size meteorite slammed into early Earth, causing our natural satellite to form from the debris. Lunar rock samples suggest the event happened 4.35 billion years ago, but planet formation models and fragments of zircon from the moon’s surface put it at 4.51 billion years ago.

Biological cells process data and perform computations all the time. They take inputs in the form of external stimuli and produce specific responses. Recently, scientists have been looking at ways to use that mechanism to program certain behaviors in cells. In one new study, researchers built an artificial neural network using proteins and used it to classify signals in cells.

As generative AI tools flood the internet with a large amount of synthetic content, that content is being used to train future generations of those AIs. If this continues unchecked, it could be disastrous, it could be disastrous, researchers say.

Those bamboo sheets you splurged on may not be as environmentally sound as their label claims. A recent study finds that microplastics from biobased fibers like viscose and lyocell are more toxic to earthworms than those from petrochemical-based polyester

DNA has tremendous potential as a data storage medium, but the process of synthesizing DNA from scratch is time-consuming. It has to be done one nucleotide at a time in a specific sequence. New research now demonstrates an alternative approach, a synthesis-free method that uses a universal DNA template to encode data.

In the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, scientists clone dinosaurs from DNA that had been extracted from mosquitoes trapped in amber. Clearly, not everything in the movie was scientifically accurate. But it did spark an idea among scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. They developed a way to encase DNA in a material that functionally resembled the amber. In theory, they say, this could keep the DNA safe essentially forever.

Antibiotic-resistant genes (ARGs), which can pass into bacteria and make them immune to antibiotics, have been detected in more or less every environment on Earth. They are present even in Antarctica, despite its isolated location, small human population, and extreme weather. Scientists have known that penguins play a role as disseminators of pathogens with ARGs. But a recent study suggests that this might be happening on a bigger scale than previously thought.

Have you ever struggled with a task because having two arms just wasn’t enough? If so, you might appreciate a new device that could lend a helping hand — literally. You strap on this robotic arm, then control it with the muscle you use to breathe.
Right now, the robotic arm is worn in the middle of your chest. But it could go above your shoulders or at your side. It all depends on “what you want to do with it,” says engineer Giulia Dominijanni.

The blood–brain barrier, a selective, semipermeable border around the central nervous system, is the body’s built-in mechanism to protect these critical areas from toxins and parasites. But it can also keep out important molecules, like therapeutic proteins, that target this part of the body. In a recent study, scientists demonstrated a mechanism that piggybacks on a single-cell parasite that naturally crosses the blood–brain barrier to deliver a protein that’s used to treat a neurological disorder.