Payal Dhar (she/they)

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.

Sometimes science fiction does inspire science research. À la Jurassic Park’s entombed mosquito, scientists have developed a method to store DNA in an amberlike material and still extract it easily when required. This storage method is cheaper and faster than existing options, the researchers report in the June issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Scientists have been studying how proteins fold for decades. This research got a boost in late 2020, when AlphaFold proved it could predict protein structures with great accuracy. But what exactly happens as proteins transition from unfolded to folded states and vice versa? This is information that scientists have struggled to visualize. So now they have turned to sound instead.

With millions of users globally, the women’s health app market is projected to cross $18 billion by 2031. Yet these apps are among the least trusted. They collect data about users’ menstrual cycles, sex lives and pregnancy status, as well as information such as phone numbers and email addresses. In recent years, some of these apps have come under scrutiny for privacy violations.

Free-swimming bacteria are some of the peskiest water pollutants around. They can travel and spread very quickly. They also form films, adhering to the inner walls of tanks and pipes; in this state, they become far more antibiotic resistant. Researchers at Martin Pumera’s Future Energy and Innovation Lab at the Central European Institute of Technology have come up with a novel way to deal with these microbes.

When you think of getting tested for a disease, you might think first of nasal swabs, urine tests, blood draws. Even though around 1.8 billion people across the world menstruate, period blood doesn’t come to mind. But that might soon change. Earlier this year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the first time approved a health test based on period blood. The at-home test, which detects a biomarker for diabetes, offers an alternative to the blood draws typically required to diagnose the disease.