Today's Science Pulse
UK-led study reveals hidden giant star clusters deep inside nearby galaxies
Astronomers using the VLA and ALMA uncovered previously unseen massive star clusters embedded in nearby galaxies, describing them as “ring factories” that produce giant clusters. The findings highlight how young stellar activity drives the evolution of their host galaxies.
Also developing:
By the numbers: Foundation Alloy raises $22M Series A
Blood Test May Predict Immunotherapy Response in Head and Neck Cancer
A Northwestern Medicine study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation reports a blood test that analyzes cell‑free DNA fragmentation patterns to predict which head and neck squamous cell carcinoma patients will respond to pembrolizumab immunotherapy. The test evaluated 185 samples from 68 patients in a phase‑II trial and, when combined with a machine‑learning model, distinguished responders with high accuracy, outperforming existing biomarkers. Researchers say the assay could spare the majority—about four in five—of patients from ineffective treatment and its side effects. Validation in larger, independent trials is the next step.
Metabolic Switch in Lung Cancer Reprograms Immune Cells to Slow Tumors
An international team led by Justus Liebig University Giessen discovered that the metabolite itaconate can reprogram lung‑tumor‑associated macrophages from a pro‑tumor to an anti‑tumor phenotype, thereby slowing tumor growth. The researchers also showed that a synthetic derivative, octyl‑itaconate, directly inhibits...
What Happens to a Star that Captures a Primordial Black Hole?
Researchers at MIT have developed the first comprehensive model of stars that capture primordial black holes (PBHs). Their simulations show that three‑body interactions with planetary companions, not direct friction, are the primary pathway for PBH capture, leading the black hole...
Challenges of Vitamin D Management in Inflammatory Rheumatic Diseases Highlighted in Review
An International Osteoporosis Foundation Osteoimmunology Working Group review in Osteoporosis International assesses vitamin D’s role across inflammatory rheumatic diseases. It finds that 40‑80 % of patients are deficient, and while supplementation safely corrects levels, evidence for a disease‑modifying effect is inconsistent and...
Check Out the Newest Fluorescent Amphibian
Researchers have discovered that the well‑known fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) fluoresces blue‑green under ultraviolet light. The glow originates from defensive secretions in the parotid glands, not from skin pigments, and is absent in juveniles whose glands are immature. Fluorophores identified...
Ornithologists Describe New Bird Species From Remote Indonesian Islands
Ornithologists have split the cinnamon‑tailed fantail into two species after discovering a distinct vocal signature on Indonesia’s Babar Islands. The newly described bird, Rhipidura laguceria, differs from its Tanimbar counterpart mainly in song structure, despite only subtle plumage variations. Researchers...
Plants Could Be Used to Grow Medicines in Space, Study Shows
UC San Diego engineers have created a reusable method to grow and harvest pharmaceutical compounds from plants under simulated space conditions. By extracting cowpea mosaic virus particles from the leaf apoplast, the technique avoids destroying the plant and can be...
Quantum Circuits Trim LLM Memory Use, Cutting Perplexity 1.4% with 6,000 Parameters
Multiverse Computing demonstrated that inserting quantum circuit modules into Meta's Llama 3.1 8B model reduces perplexity by 1.4% with just 6,000 extra parameters. The hybrid system runs the classical model on a standard computer and the quantum blocks on IBM's...
Engineered Stem Cells Cure New‑Onset Type 1 Diabetes in Mice, Study Shows
Researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina have engineered mesenchymal stem cells to produce alpha‑1 antitrypsin, achieving reversal of new‑onset type 1 diabetes in mice. The therapy not only protected remaining insulin‑producing cells but also reprogrammed the immune system, offering...
Washing Machines Could Support Skin Health for First Nations People – if We Get the Wash Settings Right
A systematic review finds washing at ≥60 °C for 15 minutes kills skin pathogens, a key step for reducing infections in remote First Nations communities. Current hot‑water limits (max 50 °C) and high machine costs hinder effective laundering. Community laundry facilities, supported by a recent A$11.4 million...
KAIST Unveils 2D Conductive MOF That Defies Performance Drop in Multilayer Stacks
KAIST announced the creation of a new two‑dimensional metal‑organic framework that retains single‑layer electronic properties even when stacked, delivering 0.58 S/cm conductivity without doping. The discovery removes a long‑standing bottleneck for multilayer nanoelectronics and quantum devices.
Japanese Researchers Pinpoint Charge Noise Source, Boost Silicon Qubit Stability
Researchers from Tokyo University of Science and Japan's AIST have identified the microscopic source of charge noise in silicon spin qubits and demonstrated that modest temperature increases cut frequency drift. Their model provides a concrete design blueprint that could slash...
77 Headless Skeletons Found in a Field Date Back 7,000 Years
Archaeologists uncovered a mass burial of 78 individuals at the Neolithic settlement of Vráble, Slovakia, with 77 skeletons missing their heads. The remains date to 5250‑4950 BCE, belonging to the Linear Pottery culture, one of Europe’s earliest farming societies. Researchers argue...
Honeybees Inspire a Super-Efficient Navigation System for Drones
Researchers at Delft University of Technology have created Bee‑Nav, a bio‑inspired navigation system that lets lightweight drones return home without GPS or heavy mapping. The method mimics honeybee odometry and short learning flights, using a neural network as small as...
Nanoporous SiO2 Coatings Raise Ultraviolet Laser Damage Resistance
Researchers at the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics have created nanoporous SiO₂ coatings that boost ultraviolet laser damage resistance. By depositing a mixed Al₂O₃‑SiO₂ layer and chemically etching away Al₂O₃, they produce uniform porous SiO₂ monolayers on large...
Mediterranean Diet Boosts Mitochondrial Microproteins, Enhancing Aging Resilience
The Mediterranean diet may be doing something really interesting at the mitochondrial level. People with high Mediterranean diet adherence had significantly higher levels of two mitochondrial-derived microproteins known as Humanin and SHMOOSE. These are emerging molecules involved in cell stress resistance,...
Twisted Stacking Lets 2D Conductor Keep Single-Layer Performance in Bulk Form
Researchers at KAIST and the University of Oregon have introduced a twisted‑stacking approach that preserves the single‑layer electronic characteristics of a 2D conductive metal‑organic framework when assembled into bulk form. The new material, Ni₃(HITrip)₂, maintains a Dirac Kagome band structure...
Additive Research Update: Recyclable Resins, Musical Metasurfaces, Secret Spices, and More
Researchers at EPFL unveiled a volumetric 3D‑printing platform that is 70 times more efficient than prior holographic methods, enabling millimeter‑scale objects to solidify in seconds and centimeter‑scale parts in minutes, even with living cells embedded. A team from Hunan University discovered...
Van Der Waals Forces Can Play Unexpected Role in Thin Film Properties
Researchers at North Carolina State University used van der Waals forces to tune the thickness, strain state, and domain architecture of ferroelectric tin selenide (SnSe) thin films grown on a molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) monolayer. The strong vdW interaction, enabled by close lattice...
Donut Lab’s ‘Solid-State’ Battery Exposed as Regular Li-Ion in Damning Investigation
An investigation led by battery researcher Ziroth, with input from over 20 experts, has demonstrated that Donut Lab’s touted solid‑state battery is actually a conventional lithium‑ion cell. The analysis of voltage curves and cell‑expansion data shows an energy density of...
Research Uncovers Novel Electronic Properties in Quantum Material
Physicists from Florida State University and international partners have identified unconventional superconductivity and a quantum anomalous Hall effect in rhombohedral graphene, a few‑layer carbon crystal with chiral stacking. The study shows that electrons and holes localize on opposite surfaces, creating...
GLP-1 Drugs Tackle Both Skin Inflammation and Metabolism in Psoriasis
A recent narrative review in Frontiers in Immunology finds that GLP‑1 receptor agonists such as liraglutide and semaglutide improve psoriasis severity and systemic inflammation, independent of weight loss. Evidence in psoriatic arthritis (PsA) remains limited to a single small study,...
Your Empty Cuppa Could Capture Carbon
Researchers at Aarhus University have devised a method to up‑cycle discarded polystyrene into solid amine‑based sorbents for carbon capture. The technique brominates the polymer and swaps bromine for amine groups using gold and copper catalysts, creating a porous material that...
Physicists Create New Family of Schrödinger-Cat States
Physicists at the University of Oxford have demonstrated a new family of Schrödinger‑cat states by engineering superpositions of highly nonclassical motional components in a single trapped ion. The technique entangles the ion’s internal qubit with its vibrational motion, then uses...
Europe Pours Money Into Ocean Research as Trump Guts Science Funding
The European Commission unveiled the OceanEye program, allocating roughly $101 million to boost ocean observation and data analytics as the United States dismantles its $368 million NSF‑run coastal monitoring network. OceanEye is part of the Horizon Europe research framework and aims to...
Tabletop Experiment Helps Reconcile Fundamental Physics
Assistant Professor Haocun Yu and her team published a Physical Review Letters paper describing a 50‑kilometer fiber‑optic interferometer that fits on a tabletop and can detect gravitationally induced phase shifts in single‑photon experiments. The device achieves the stability and phase...
UN Warns Rapidly Changing Ocean Putting Future of Humanity at Risk
The United Nations warned that without immediate, coordinated action the ocean’s health will continue to decline, jeopardizing climate stability, food security and the wellbeing of billions. Its new World Oceans Assessment highlights that only 8.4 percent of marine areas are protected,...
Ultrasound Converts Anticancer Drug Into Potent Anti‑pneumonia Agent
Ultrasound switched the anticancer molecule TLD1433 into a bacteria-killing agent for deep, oxygen-poor lung infections. The approach boosted reactive oxygen species and worked in antibiotic-resistant pneumonia models. science
Fighting Parkinson’s by Restoring Protein Degradation
Researchers identified the proteasome activator Blm10 (human PA200) as a key factor that restores degradation of α‑synuclein, the protein that drives Parkinson’s disease. In yeast, Blm10 stability rises when phosphorylated α‑synuclein (S129) blocks autophagy, and massive overexpression of Blm10 clears...
Frozen Rat Chromosome Springs Back to Life Inside a Mouse Embryo
Japanese researchers have revived a single frozen rat chromosome by transplanting it into a mouse oocyte, creating a viable rat‑mouse hybrid embryo that reaches the blastocyst stage. The chromosome, extracted from rat blood cells frozen for over a year, remained...
Some Pterosaurs May Have Boasted Bold Iridescence
Scientists analyzing a 120‑million‑year‑old Sinopterus dongi fossil from northeast China have identified layered melanosomes that would have produced iridescent greens and magentas. The discovery, published on bioRxiv, marks the first evidence that pterosaurs displayed structural coloration similar to modern birds....
Thanks to Natural Selection, Indigenous Andeans May Digest Potatoes Better than Anyone Else in the World, Study Finds
Indigenous Andeans in Peru carry an average of ten copies of the salivary amylase (AMY1) gene, the highest worldwide, a trait linked to the region’s early potato domestication about 10,000 years ago. Global populations average seven copies, highlighting a strong...
'A Disease Anywhere Can Be a Disease Everywhere Tomorrow Morning': Public Health Expert on Ebola and the Threat of Future...
The WHO has declared a public‑health emergency as an Ebola outbreak driven by the Bundibugyo virus spreads across the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, with 515 confirmed cases and 91 deaths in the DRC and 19 cases with...
Wearables Spark Anxiety, Precision Probiotics Offer New Relief
A surge of evidence shows consumer wearables can amplify anxiety by exposing users to unexpected physiological data, while a breakthrough study on indole‑producing gut microbes points to precision probiotics as a novel anxiety therapy. The findings reshape how clinicians and...
Astronomers Pinpoint Binary Origin of Repeating Radio Burst ASKAP J1745
An international team of astronomers has identified the binary star system behind ASKAP J1745, the first known source that emits both radio and X‑ray bursts on each orbital cycle. The discovery, published in Nature Astronomy, provides a concrete reference point...
KAIST Uses DNA Nanocoating to Boost Hydrogen Production Efficiency
A team led by Professor Jimin Park at KAIST announced a DNA‑based nanocoating for gold nanoparticle catalysts that sharply improves hydrogen evolution efficiency and glycerol oxidation selectivity. Published in JACS, the work shows how programmable DNA sequences can tune the...
JHU and APL Unveil Seven‑Fold Accurate Noise Model for Superconducting Qubits
Johns Hopkins University and the Applied Physics Laboratory have published a comprehensive noise‑modeling framework for superconducting quantum processors that promises a seven‑fold increase in projected accuracy. The model, validated on 39 cloud‑accessed qubits across seven devices, aims to streamline error...
Scientists Use Ancient DNA to Reveal How Natural Selection Shaped West Eurasians over 10,000 Years
Researchers led by Harvard’s Ali Akbari analyzed DNA from 15,836 ancient West Eurasians, sequencing over 10,000 genomes to map directional selection across the past 10,000 years. They identified hundreds of variants influencing immunity, diet, blood type, disease risk and traits...
Sonrotoclax (BGB-11417)
Sonrotoclax (Beqalzi®) received FDA approval in May 2026 for patients with relapsed or refractory mantle‑cell lymphoma who have failed at least two prior therapies. The drug is an oral Bcl‑2 inhibitor engineered from the venetoclax scaffold to improve potency against both...
NASA Advances Interoperable Space Networks with Successful PExT Demonstration
NASA completed the primary technology demonstration of its Polylingual Experimental Terminal (PExT), showing that a single Ka‑band terminal aboard a York Space Systems satellite can hop between government relays and commercial networks such as Viasat and SES. The test used...
Ultra-Thin MoS₂ Computer Packs 1,400 Transistors Onto One Chip
Researchers from Nanjing University, Suzhou Laboratory and Huawei have built a fully functional computer using the 2‑D semiconductor molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂). The chip integrates more than 1,400 transistors on a single die, achieving a density of 9,336 transistors per mm² and...
Black Hole Feeding Bursts May Explain JWST's Little Red Dots in Early Universe
A new theoretical study posted on arXiv argues that the mysterious “Little Red Dots” observed by JWST are early black holes undergoing brief, super‑Eddington feeding bursts. The authors model black‑hole seeds forming before redshift 20 and growing to 10⁵‑10⁶ solar masses...
Geoscientists Find Vast Fan-Shaped Structure Beneath Antarctica’s Ice
Researchers using seismic, gravity and topographic data identified a 2,000‑km fan‑shaped subglacial province in East Antarctica, named the East Antarctic Fan‑Shaped Basin Province (EAFBP). The province unifies well‑known basins such as Wilkes, Aurora and the Lake Vostok basin into a...
BostonGene to Present High-Impact AI Models and Biomarker-Driven Frameworks at EHA2026 Congress
BostonGene announced that six abstracts featuring its AI-driven multi‑omics platforms will be presented at the European Hematology Association (EHA) 2026 Congress in Stockholm. The studies, conducted with leading institutions such as Memorial Sloan Kettering, Weill Cornell, University of Miami and...
Half the World's Reservoirs Could Be Clogged up with Dirt by 2060
An analysis of 550,000 reservoirs using satellite data and machine learning finds that each decade the world loses over 7% of freshwater storage to sediment buildup. At the current rate, more than half of global reservoirs will be functionally dead...
Myostatin Inhibitor Preserves 55% Lean Mass with Tirzepatide
Preserving lean mass during tirzepatide (Zepbound) treatment. A randomized trial of a myostatin inhibitor for muscle mass building shows proof-of-concept. A 55% retention of lean mass compared with placebo https://t.co/urw9Gvy11L just published @NatureMedicine https://t.co/ukUhLbAXFL
CRISPR Shreds Undruggable Cancer Cells with Precision
Researchers at the Innovative Genomics Institute have engineered a CRISPR‑Cas12a2 system that detects mutant p53 mRNA and triggers chromatin shredding, selectively killing cancer cells. The approach demonstrated potent tumor regression in mouse models of lung and liver cancer while sparing...
A Drug May Help People on GLP-1 Meds Preserve Muscle
A proof‑of‑concept study published in Nature Medicine shows that the experimental myostatin‑blocking antibody apitegromab can halve lean‑mass loss in patients taking tirzepatide, a GLP‑1 weight‑loss drug. In a 24‑week trial of 102 overweight or obese adults, both groups lost similar...
Jeff Bezos Is Funding a Wild Hunt for the Brain's 'Core Algorithm'
Jeff Bezos has invested $500 million in Flourish, a neuro‑AI startup now valued at $2.5 billion, to pursue brain‑inspired artificial intelligence that learns continuously and consumes far less power than current large language models. Founded by neuroscientist Thomas Reardon and former Amazon...
WHO's New Estimates of Foodborne Diseases May Improve Global Prevention
The World Health Organization released its latest global burden of food‑borne diseases, estimating 57.1 million disability‑adjusted life years lost in 2021 across 42 hazards. The estimates, produced by WHO’s Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group with methodological input from DTU National...