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• April 16, 2024 | Mystery Solved: The Cosmic Collision That Crafted Pluto’s Heart
• April 16, 2024 | Brightest Gamma-Ray Burst of All Time Challenges Element Formation Theories
• April 16, 2024 | Scientists Uncover Missing Link Between Poor Diet and Cancer
• April 16, 2024 | Stanford Medicine Unmasks the Surprising Instigators of Severe COVID in the Lungs
• April 16, 2024 | Unlocking the Mysteries of Cell Structure With Cutting-Edge Imaging

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Science April 16, 2024

AI Transforms Oil Field Operations With Predictive Analytics

Amplified Industries, founded by Sebastien Mannai, helps oil field operators eliminate spills and stop methane leaks. There is a staggeringly long list of things that…

Mind Mingle: Brain Synchrony in Family Dynamics

Quantum Leap in Window Technology Delivers Dramatic Energy Savings

Scientists Have Discovered the First Evidence of Microplastic Contamination in Archaeological Soil Samples

The Forever Chemical Crisis: Global Water Sources Exceed Safe PFAS Limits

When Dinosaurs Defy Science: A New Study Shakes Up Ecological Theories

NASA’s DC-8 Bids Farewell to the Stratosphere and Hello to the Classroom

Climate Change as a Catalyst: Decoding the Spread of Deadly Zoonotic Disease in the Amazon

7,200 Years Ago: How Neolithic Shepherds Navigated the Complexities of Early Agriculture

Science April 13, 2024

New Research Indicates That Loneliness Triggers Sugar Cravings in Women

Research indicates that lonely women show heightened brain activity in areas linked to cravings for food. A recent study by UCLA Health discovered that women…

From the Depths of Italy: Ancient Mysteries Unearthed in an Etruscan Bronze Lamp

A reassessment of the ancient bronze lamp has determined that it is a ritual artifact linked to the secretive worship of Dionysus. A recent study…

Science April 12, 2024

Unlocking Tomorrow’s Water Secrets Through Sci-Fi

Through a blend of science and storytelling, new research delves into the future of water management amidst changing environmental dynamics. Human activity is changing the…

Mystery Solved? Scientists Shed New Light on Mysterious Giant Bones That Have Puzzled Paleontologists for 150 Years

Several similar large, fossilized bone fragments have been discovered in various regions across Western and Central Europe since the 19th century. The animal group to…

How Genome Mapping Can Transform Sugarcane Into Green Fuel

Unveiling sugarcane’s genome, scientists set the stage for innovative breeding and renewable carbon sourcing, heralding a new era in agricultural research and sustainability. Researchers have…

Science April 11, 2024

Improved Attention and Memory: Scientists Uncover New Cognitive Benefits of Video Games

New research reveals that frequent video game players exhibited improved performance in cognitive tasks related to attention and memory. A new study, published in the…

This Math Problem Stumped Scientists for Almost a Century – Two Mathematicians Have Finally Solved It

Mathematicians at UC San Diego have discovered the secret behind Ramsey numbers. We’ve all been there: staring at a math test with a problem that…

Science April 10, 2024

New Research Debunks the Myth That Venting Your Anger Is Effective

Research indicates that rising physiological arousal intensifies feelings of anger. Venting about a source of anger might feel good in the moment, but it’s not…

Scientists Solve the Origin Mystery of Charlemagne’s Mysterious Silver Coins

Byzantine bullion fuelled Europe’s revolutionary adoption of silver coins in the mid-7th century, only to be overtaken by silver from a mine in Charlemagne’s Francia…

Science News

When is the next solar eclipse?

By Jamie Carter last updated 16 April 24

The next total solar eclipse will be visible from parts of Spain, Iceland and Greenland in 2026. Here's everything you need to know about how to watch the next solar eclipse.

AI pinpoints where psychosis originates in the brain

By Nicola Williams published 16 April 24

Scientists have moved a step closer to understanding the basis of the hallucinations and delusions that characterize schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Object that slammed into Florida home was indeed space junk from ISS, NASA confirms

By Mike Wall published 16 April 24

An object that smashed through a Florida home was part of a pallet jettisoned from the International Space Station along with 5,800 pounds of aging batteries back in March 2021.

NASA Mars samples, which could contain evidence of life, will not return to Earth as initially planned

NASA's plan to retrieve as many as 30 geological samples from Mars is getting a major rewrite, agency officials said on Monday. The initial plan, which would not return the samples to Earth until 2040, was deemed "too expensive" and "unacceptably too long."

Unusual octopus sex session captured in rare and comical footage

By Hannah Osborne published 16 April 24

Watch a female octopus drag a male around during sex in rare footage captured off the Indonesian island of Bunaken.

Explosive 'devil comet' 12P will soon be at its brightest and best. Here's how to see it before it disappears.

By Jamie Carter published 16 April 24

The explosive green 'devil comet' 12P/ Pons-Brooks is about to reach its closest point to the sun. Here's how to see the rare visitor at its best and brightest.

1st-of-its-kind Parkinson's treatment may slow aggressive disease, trial hints

By Sneha Khedkar published 16 April 24

A new antibody drug for Parkinson's disease appears to slow the progression of its movement-related symptoms, at least in some patients.

Infamous boat-sinking orcas spotted hundreds of miles from where they should be, baffling scientist

By Harry Baker published 16 April 24

Orcas that attack and sink boats in southwestern Europe have been spotted circling a vessel in Spain, hundreds of miles from where they should currently be. And scientists can't explain why.

6 strange things observed during the April 8 solar eclipse: From doomed comets to 'diamond rings'

During the recent total solar eclipse on April 8, scientists and other observers spotted some strange things in the sky and on the ground. Here are some of our favorites.

AI-powered 'digital twin' of Earth could make weather predictions at super speeds

By Emma Bryce published 16 April 24

An AI-driven supercomputer dubbed Earth's 'digital twin' could help us avoid the worst impacts of climate catastrophes headed our way.

Pluto's huge white 'heart' has a surprisingly violent origin, new study suggests

By Stephanie Pappas published 16 April 24

Tombaugh Regio — the large, pale heart that dominates Pluto's terrain — is made of nitrogen ice that accumulated after a huge, slow-motion impact, new research suggests.

Tired of your laptop battery degrading? New 'pulse current' charging process could double its lifespan.

By Keumars Afifi-Sabet published 16 April 24

Using pulse current charging, or a constant current divided with a few short breaks, lithium-ion batteries hold up better over hundreds of charging cycles and can last twice as long.

Most massive stellar black hole in the Milky Way discovered 'extremely close' to Earth

By Ben Turner published 16 April 24

Astronomers found the most massive stellar-mass black hole in the galaxy after spotting a star "wobbling" nearby. The baby monster is the 2nd-closest black hole to Earth ever detected.

2,000-foot-wide 'potentially hazardous' asteroid has just made its closest approach to Earth — and you can see it with a telescope

By Harry Baker published 15 April 24

The 2,000-foot-wide asteroid 2013 NK4 just made its closest approach to Earth in recorded history, sailing by at about eight lunar distances. You can still see the massive rock with a backyard telescope.

Tube-tying surgeries and vasectomies skyrocketed post-Roe

By Emily Cooke published 15 April 24

A new study suggests that the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 prompted a surge in young people undergoing sterilization procedures, especially women.

World's fastest camera captures footage at 156 trillion frames per second

By Edd Gent published 15 April 24

This camera can generate clips of breathtakingly quick processes — and could help scientists create ultrafast magnetic memory and pioneering ultrasonic medical treatments.

What happened when the moon 'turned itself inside out' billions of years ago?

By Robert Lea published 15 April 24

"For the first time, we have physical evidence showing us what was happening in the moon's interior during this critical stage of its evolution, and that's really exciting."

Cancer patients can now be 'matched' to best treatment with DNA and lab-dish experiments

By Diana Azzam published 14 April 24

Identifying the most effective cancer treatment for a given patient from the get-go can help improve outcomes.

Gravitational waves reveal 1st-of-its-kind merger between neutron star and mystery object

By Sharmila Kuthunur published 14 April 24

Ripples in space-time point to the merger of a neutron star with another mystery object. The object, which falls right within the mass-gap range, sheds light on a long-sought, murky realm.

Drowned land off Australia was an Aboriginal hotspot in last ice age, 4,000 stone artifacts reveal

By Emma Bryce published 14 April 24

The landscape features in the dreamtime stories of Australia's Indigenous people.

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Researchers resolve old mystery of how phages disarm pathogenic bacteria

New study details long-sought mechanisms and structures.

Depiction of bacteriophage PP7 (orange) at the cell surface of Pseudomonas aeruginosa detaching the bacterium's pilus (blue). The researchers identified protein structures and interactions using fluorescence microscopy, cryogenic-electron microscopy and computational simulations. This image is derived based on the findings from the team. (Jirapat Thongchol/Texas A&M AgriLife)

Bacterial infections pose significant challenges to agriculture and medicine, especially as cases of antibiotic-resistant bacteria continue to rise. In response, scientists at Texas A&M AgriLife Research are elucidating the ways that bacteria-infecting viruses disarm these pathogens and ushering in the possibility of novel treatment methods.

In their recent study published in Science , Lanying Zeng, Ph.D., a professor, and Junjie Zhang, Ph.D., an associate professor, both in the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, detailed a precise mechanism by which phages disable bacteria.

The collaborative effort also involved:

• Yiruo Lin, Ph.D., research assistant professor in the Texas A&M College of Engineering Department of Computer Science and Engineering.
• Matthias Koch, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Texas A&M College of Arts and Sciences Department of Biology.
• Zemer Gitai, Ph.D., and Joshua Shaevitz, Ph.D., professors in the Princeton University Department of Molecular Biology and Department of Physics, respectively.
• Yinghao Wu, Ph.D., associate professor in the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Department of Systems and Computational Biology.

Together, the team worked to explain a series of interactions scientists have sought to understand since the early 1970s.

The need for new treatments

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a type of bacteria that can cause infections in the blood, lungs and occasionally other parts of the body. These infections are especially common in healthcare settings, which often encounter drug-resistant bacteria. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were over 30,000 cases of multi-drug resistant P. aeruginosa infections among hospitalized patients in 2017.

The prevalence of antibiotic-resistant Pseudomonas infections makes them a practical point of focus for phage therapy, a type of treatment method using bacteriophages, or phages, that researchers at the Texas A&M Center for Phage Technology are exploring as an alternative to typical drugs.

Zeng and Zhang, co-directors at the center along with Jason Gill, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Animal Science, are exploring the usefulness of phages, even beyond phage therapy, by diving into the structures and mechanisms at play.

Targeting the pilus

One of the factors that allows P. aeruginosa to transmit antimicrobial-resistant genes among each other, as well as move around and create difficult-to-treat structures called biofilms, is an appendage called a pilus, named after the Latin word for spear. These cylindrical structures extend from the surface of bacteria.

Some phages make use of bacterial pili by attaching to them and allowing bacteria to reel the phage to the surface, where the phage can start infecting the bacteria.

In their study in Science , co-first authored by Texas A&M graduate students Jirapat Thongchol and Zihao Yu, the researchers studied this process step by step using fluorescence microscopy, cryogenic-electron microscopy and computational modeling. They observed how a phage called PP7 infects P. aeruginosa by attaching to the pilus, which then retracts and pulls the phage to the cell surface.

At the point of entry for the virus, the pilus bends and snaps off, and the loss of the pilus makes P. aeruginosa much less capable of infecting its own host.

Ongoing research

This work is a continuation of previous research published in 2020, when Zeng's team found a phage that can similarly break off the pili of E. coli cells, preventing the bacteria from sharing genes among each other -- a common way that antibiotic resistance spreads.

From left to right: Lanying Zeng, Ph.D., Junjie Zhang, Ph.D., Zihao Yu and Jirapat Thongchol. Along with others, these researchers at the Texas A&M Center for Phage Technology are searching for solutions to antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections and characterizing phage-bacterium interactions. (Zihao Yu/Texas A&M AgriLife)

The Science study on Pseudomonas is part of the team's recent suite of research studies. Last month, they published findings in Nature Communications on the interaction between another genus of bacteria, Acinetobacter, and a phage that infects it. Another study, expected to be published next month, will cover a third genus of bacteria and additional phage.

The team's progress in determining precise protein structures and molecular interactions has been made possible with AgriLife Research's new cryo-electron microscope, which opened at Texas A&M at the end of 2022 and can resolve structures at the atomic level.

"In our earlier study on E. coli, we did not really explore much about the mechanism," Zeng said. "In our study of Pseudomonas, we were able to explain much more about what exactly is going on, including the force and speed of pilus detachment, and understand why and how this happens."

Uses in medicine

The implications of this ongoing research could prove to be important in treating antimicrobial infections. Zhang said doctors wouldn't need to use phages to kill the bacteria -- as is done in phage therapy -- but could simply allow the viruses to disarm the bacteria, which may give the immune system the chance to fight the infection on its own or allow doctors to treat patients with lower doses of antibiotics.

"If you simply kill the bacteria, you break the cells, and they're going to release toxic material from inside the cell into the host," Zhang said. "Our approach is to use a particular type of phage that disarms the bacteria. We remove their ability to exchange drug-resistance genes or to move around by breaking off this appendage."

The team of phage scientists said they will continue looking for similar instances of phages dampening the virulence of pathogenic bacteria.

"We're taking a synergistic approach," Zhang said. "We're trying to understand a universal mechanism for this type of phage and how they're capable of affecting other types of bacteria. That's the overall aim of our collaborative effort: to try to tackle the problem of multi-drug resistant bacteria."

• Microbes and More
• Microbiology
• Biotechnology and Bioengineering
• Geochemistry
• Drought Research
• Streptococcus
• Antibiotic resistance
• Immune system
• Dog skin disorders
• Microorganism

Story Source:

Materials provided by Texas A&M AgriLife Communications . Original written by Ashley Vargo. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Jirapat Thongchol, Zihao Yu, Laith Harb, Yiruo Lin, Matthias Koch, Matthew Theodore, Utkarsh Narsaria, Joshua Shaevitz, Zemer Gitai, Yinghao Wu, Junjie Zhang, Lanying Zeng. Removal of Pseudomonas type IV pili by a small RNA virus . Science , 2024; 384 (6691) DOI: 10.1126/science.adl0635

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The Widest-Ever Global Coral Crisis Will Hit Within Weeks, Scientists Say

Rising sea temperatures around the planet have caused a bleaching event that is expected to be the most extensive on record.

By Catrin Einhorn

The world’s coral reefs are in the throes of a global bleaching event caused by extraordinary ocean temperatures, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and international partners announced Monday.

It is the fourth such global event on record and is expected to affect more reefs than any other. Bleaching occurs when corals become so stressed that they lose the symbiotic algae they need to survive. Bleached corals can recover, but if the water surrounding them is too hot for too long, they die.

Coral reefs are vital ecosystems: limestone cradles of marine life that nurture an estimated quarter of ocean species at some point during their life cycles, support fish that provide protein for millions of people and protect coasts from storms. The economic value of the world’s coral reefs has been estimated at $2.7 trillion annually .

For the last year, ocean temperatures have been off the charts .

“This is scary, because coral reefs are so important,” said Derek Manzello, the coordinator of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch program, which monitors and predicts bleaching events.

The news is the latest example of climate scientists’ alarming predictions coming to pass as the planet heats. Despite decades of warnings from scientists and pledges from leaders, nations are burning more fossil fuels than ever and greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise .

Substantial coral death has been confirmed around Florida and the Caribbean, particularly among staghorn and elk horn species, but scientists say it’s too soon to estimate what the extent of global mortality will be.

To determine a global bleaching event, NOAA and the group of global partners, the International Coral Reef Initiative, use a combination of sea surface temperatures and evidence from reefs. By their criteria, all three ocean basins that host coral reefs — the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic — must experience bleaching within 365 days, and at least 12 percent of the reefs in each basin must be subjected to temperatures that cause bleaching.

Currently, more than 54 percent of the world’s coral area has experienced bleaching-level heat stress in the past year, and that number is increasing by about 1 percent per week, Dr. Manzello said.

He added that within a week or two, “this event is likely to be the most spatially extensive global bleaching event on record.”

Each of the three previous global bleaching events has been worse than the last. During the first, in 1998, 20 percent of the world’s reef areas suffered bleaching-level heat stress. In 2010, it was 35 percent. The third spanned 2014 to 2017 and affected 56 percent of reefs.

The current event is expected to be shorter-lived, Dr. Manzello said, because El Niño, a natural climate pattern associated with warmer oceans, is weakening and forecasters predict a cooler La Niña period to take hold by the end of the year.

Bleaching has been confirmed in 54 countries, territories and local economies, as far apart as Florida , Saudi Arabia and Fiji. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is suffering what appears to be its most severe bleaching event; about a third of the reefs surveyed by air showed prevalence of very high or extreme bleaching, and at least three quarters showed some bleaching.

“I do get depressed sometimes, because the feeling is like, ‘My God, this is happening,’” said Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a professor of marine studies at the University of Queensland who published early predictions about how global warming would be catastrophic for coral reefs.

“Now we’re at the point where we’re in the disaster movie,” he said.

The most recent confirmation of widespread bleaching, prompting Monday’s announcement, came from the Western Indian Ocean, including Tanzania, Kenya, Mauritius, Seychelles and off the western coast of Indonesia.

Swaleh Aboud, a coral reef scientist at CORDIO East Africa, a research and conservation nonprofit group based in Kenya and focused on the Indian Ocean, said coral species that are known to be thermally resistant are bleaching, as are reefs in a cooler area considered to be a climate refuge.

Recently he visited a fishing community in Kenya called Kuruwitu that has worked to revive its reef. Many of the restored coral colonies had turned ghostly white. Others were pale, apparently on their way.

“Urgent global action is necessary to reduce future bleaching events, primarily driven by carbon emissions,” Mr. Aboud said.

Scientists are still learning about corals’ ability to adapt to climate change. Efforts are underway to breed coral that tolerate higher temperatures. In a few places, including Australia and Japan, coral appear to be migrating poleward, beginning to occupy new places. But scientists say a variety of factors, such as how much light penetrates the water and the topography of the sea floor, make such migration limited or unlikely in much of the world. Plus there’s the problem of ocean acidification; as seawater absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it becomes more acidic, making it harder for coral to build and maintain reefs.

Dr. Hoegh-Guldberg, who has studied the impact of climate change on coral reefs for more than three decades, was an author of a 2018 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that found the world would lose the vast majority of its coral reefs at 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, and virtually all at 2 degrees. Current pledges by nations put the Earth on track for about 2.5 degrees by 2100. Still, he has not lost hope.

“I think we will solve the problem if we get up and fight to solve the problem,” Dr. Hoegh-Guldberg said. “If we continue to pay lip service but not get on with the solutions, then we’re kidding ourselves.”

Catrin Einhorn covers biodiversity, climate and the environment for The Times. More about Catrin Einhorn

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Nasa next-generation solar sail boom technology ready for launch.

Tara Friesen

Nasa’s new lightweight sailor , enabling future solar sails.

Sailing through space might sound like something out of science fiction, but the concept is no longer limited to books or the big screen. In April, a next-generation solar sail technology – known as the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System – will launch aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from the company’s Launch Complex 1 in Māhia, New Zealand. The technology could advance future space travel and expand our understanding of our Sun and solar system.  

Solar sails use the pressure of sunlight for propulsion, angling toward or away from the Sun so that photons bounce off the reflective sail to push a spacecraft. This eliminates heavy propulsion systems and could enable longer duration and lower-cost missions. Although mass is reduced, solar sails have been limited by the material and structure of the booms, which act much like a sailboat’s mast. But NASA is about to change the sailing game for the future.  

The Advanced Composite Solar Sail System demonstration uses a twelve-unit (12U) CubeSat built by NanoAvionics to test a new composite boom made from flexible polymer and carbon fiber materials that are stiffer and lighter than previous boom designs. The mission’s primary objective is to successfully demonstrate new boom deployment, but once deployed, the team also hopes to prove the sail’s performance.  

Like a sailboat turning to capture the wind, the solar sail can adjust its orbit by angling its sail. After evaluating the boom deployment, the mission will test a series of maneuvers to change the spacecraft’s orbit and gather data for potential future missions with even larger sails.

“Booms have tended to be either heavy and metallic or made of lightweight composite with a bulky design – neither of which work well for today’s small spacecraft. Solar sails need very large, stable, and lightweight booms that can fold down compactly,” said Keats Wilkie, the mission’s principal investigator at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “This sail’s booms are tube-shaped and can be squashed flat and rolled like a tape measure into a small package while offering all the advantages of composite materials, like less bending and flexing during temperature changes.”

After reaching its Sun-synchronous orbit, about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) above Earth, the spacecraft will begin unrolling its composite booms, which span the diagonals of the polymer sail. After approximately 25 minutes the solar sail will fully deploy, measuring about 860 square feet (80 square meters) – about the size of six parking spots. Spacecraft-mounted cameras will capture the sail’s big moment, monitoring its shape and symmetry during deployment.

With its large sail, the spacecraft may be visible from Earth if the lighting conditions are just right. Once fully expanded and at the proper orientation, the sail’s reflective material will be as bright as Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky.

“Seven meters of the deployable booms can roll up into a shape that fits in your hand,” said Alan Rhodes, the mission’s lead systems engineer at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. “The hope is that the new technologies verified on this spacecraft will inspire others to use them in ways we haven’t even considered.”

Through NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology program , successful deployment and operation of the solar sail’s lightweight composite booms will prove the capability and open the door to larger scale missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. 

This boom design could potentially support future solar sails as large as 5,400 square feet (500 square meters), about the size of a basketball court, and technology resulting from the mission’s success could support sails of up to 21,500 square feet (2,000 square meters) – about half a soccer field. 

“The Sun will continue burning for billions of years, so we have a limitless source of propulsion. Instead of launching massive fuel tanks for future missions, we can launch larger sails that use “fuel” already available,” said Rhodes. “We will demonstrate a system that uses this abundant resource to take those next giant steps in exploration and science.”  

Because the sails use the power of the Sun, they can provide constant thrust to support missions that require unique vantage points, such as those that seek to understand our Sun and its impact on Earth. Solar sails have long been a desired capability for missions that could carry early warning systems for monitoring solar weather. Solar storms and coronal mass ejections can cause considerable damage on Earth, overloading power grids, disrupting radio communications, and affecting aircraft and spacecraft. 

Composite booms might also have a future beyond solar sailing: the lightweight design and compact packing system could make them the perfect material for constructing habitats on the Moon and Mars, acting as framing structures for buildings or compact antenna poles to create a communications relay for astronauts exploring the lunar surface. 

“This technology sparks the imagination, reimagining the whole idea of sailing and applying it to space travel,” said Rudy Aquilina, project manager of the solar sail mission at NASA Ames. “Demonstrating the abilities of solar sails and lightweight, composite booms is the next step in using this technology to inspire future missions.” 

NASA Ames manages the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System project and designed and built the onboard camera diagnostic system. NASA Langley designed and built the deployable composite booms and solar sail system. NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology (SST) program office based at NASA Ames and led by the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD), funds and manages the mission. NASA STMD’s Game Changing Development program developed the deployable composite boom technology. Rocket Lab USA, Inc of Long Beach, California is providing launch services. NanoAvionics is providing the spacecraft bus.   

Related Terms

Ames Research Center

• Langley Research Center
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Space Technology Mission Directorate

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The order your siblings were born in may play a role in identity and sexuality

Selena Simmons-Duffin

Rachel Carlson

Rebecca Ramirez

It's National Siblings Day ! To mark the occasion, guest host Selena Simmons-Duffin is exploring a detail very personal to her: How the number of older brothers a person has can influence their sexuality.

Scientific research on sexuality has a dark history, with long-lasting harmful effects on queer communities. Much of the early research has also been debunked over time. But not this "fraternal birth order effect." The fact that a person's likelihood of being gay increases with each older brother has been found all over the world – from Turkey to North America, Brazil, the Netherlands and beyond. Today, Selena gets into all the details: What this effect is, how it's been studied and what it can (and can't) explain about sexuality.

Interested in the science of our closest relatives? Check out more stories in NPR's series on the Science of Siblings .

Email us at [email protected] — we'd love to hear from you.

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify , Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts .

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave .

This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and fact-checked by Brit Hanson. Maggie Luthar was the audio engineer.

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Harvard Center for Brain Science Receives Up to $1.7 Million Gift from NTT Research

Harvard University’s Center for Brain Science received a gift of more than $300,000 per year for up to five years from the NTT Research Foundation, the foundation announced Thursday.

According to the announcement, the program will be funded for two years with a possible three-year extension. The gift will establish a fund supporting postdoctoral research in the physics of intelligence, which intends to use physics to address fundamental questions in intelligence while bridging the areas of computer science, neuroscience, and psychology.

Kazu Gomi — president and CEO of NTT Research, the global research and development arm of NTT — said the foundation hopes “the center is going to use that money to hire postdoctoral fellows.”

Venkatesh Murthy, director of the Center for Brain Science and a Harvard professor, said that the center is looking for “a lot of amazing new Ph.D.s, graduate doctoral students who are really excited about this thinking, this interdisciplinarity new thing.”

Gomi said that allowing the Center to take “the lead on this research field, from the worldwide scale perspective” will usher in a “new wave of computations using a new physics.”

The gift — which comes after a 2021 joint research agreement between the Center for Brain Science and the NTT Research Physics & Informatics Lab — came from “some bidding process,” according to Gomi.

Before selecting Harvard’s Center for Brain Science as the gift recipient, NTT Research embarked on a process of getting to “know the professors and laboratories of each institution” to “find the professors or the directors that are in line with what we think and what we dream of,” Gomi said.

The gift is structured with the option for an extension in order to allow for innovative research “without putting too much pressure” on quickly returning a product, Gomi said.

With the gift and more postdoctoral fellows, the CBS will embark on its efforts to explain “how brains produce intelligent behavior.”

One core focus of the center is neural circuits — in particular, their structure, development, and various functions. With the rise of artificial intelligence, researchers at CBS have also begun to explore how it can be applied to fields like neuroscience.

Hidenori Tanaka, a CBS associate and NTT Research Physics & Informatics Laboratories researcher, highlighted “how interdisciplinary our research agenda is.”

“What’s really crucial when trying to build such a new field is to have people from diverse backgrounds,” Tanaka said.

Receiving industry funding from NTT Research will allow flexible recruitment of Ph.D. students from different departments, such as “physics, neuroscience, even psychology, and then electrical engineering, computer science and applied math,” he added.

Despite the Center’s broader goals to explore intelligence, Murthy said the exact next steps are yet to be determined.

“This is new for all of us,” he said. “How do you explain intelligent behavior in equations or in physics terms?”

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Science News

What  science news  saw during the solar eclipse.

Science News staffers traveled across the United States to laud at the extraordinary astronomical event

By Brandon Standley

April 9, 2024 at 3:51 pm

Science News staffers watch the eclipse from DuPont Circle in Washington, D.C., on Monday, April 8, 2024.

Courtesy of Emily Conover

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On Monday, North America experienced the last major eclipse that will cross over the continent for the next 20 years . The astonishing event brought totality to over 30 million people, and hundreds of millions more were witness to partial eclipses.

Science News staffers were among them.

In places ranging from Washington, D.C., to Painesville, Ohio, to Wills Point, Texas, and beyond, Science News staff gazed up at the diminution of the sun above them and took in the sights with their fellow sky watchers — including groups of scientists studying the eclipse’s effect on Earth .

Take a look at how Science News staff, family, friends, and the people around them took in the eclipse across the United States.

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Not all cultures value happiness over other aspects of well-being

‘Space: The Longest Goodbye’ explores astronauts’ mental health

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