current scientific research

Subscribe or renew today

Every print subscription comes with full digital access

Science News

‘Flavorama’ guides readers through the complex landscape of flavor

In her new book, Arielle Johnson, former resident scientist at the restaurant Noma, explains how to think like a scientist in the kitchen.

A new method of making diamonds doesn’t require extreme pressure 

How a sugar acid crucial for life could have formed in interstellar clouds.

In 2018, Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano erupted like a stomp rocket

The stomp rocket–like mechanism is a newly observed type of eruption.

Freshwater first appeared on Earth 4 billion years ago, ancient crystals hint

Warm water is sneaking underneath the thwaites glacier — and rapidly melting it.

Bird flu can infect cats. What does that mean for their people?

Pet owners can take precautions to avoid H5N1, such as keeping cats indoors and making sure they don’t eat raw meat or milk.

Privacy remains an issue with several women’s health apps

Malnutrition’s effects on the body don’t end when food arrives.

Thomas Cech’s ‘The Catalyst’ spotlights RNA and its superpowers

Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Thomas Cech’s new book is part ode to RNA and part detailed history of the scientists who’ve studied it.

50 years ago, chimeras gave a glimpse of gene editing’s future

Scientists find a naturally occurring molecule that forms a fractal

The protein assembles itself into a repeating triangle pattern. The fractal seems to be an accident of evolution, scientists say.

How two outsiders tackled the mystery of arithmetic progressions

A predicted quasicrystal is based on the ‘einstein’ tile known as the hat.

Scientists propose a hunt for never-before-seen ‘tauonium’ atoms 

Made of heavy relatives of the electron, the exotic atoms could be used to test the theory of quantum electrodynamics.

Two real-world tests of quantum memories bring a quantum internet closer to reality

Here’s how ice may get so slippery , science & society.

Inconsistent privacy policies and dodgy data collection in popular fertility and pregnancy tracking apps put women’s health information at risk.

Should we use AI to resurrect digital ‘ghosts’ of the dead?

A hidden danger lurks beneath yellowstone.

China’s Chang’e-6 snagged the first samples from the farside of the moon

The samples, which will be returned to Earth in late June, could help researchers figure out why the moon’s two sides are so starkly different.

The sun is entering solar maximum. Expect auroras, and more

Here’s how predictions of the sun’s corona during the 2024 eclipse fared.

Reinforcement learning AI might bring humanoid robots to the real world

Reinforcement learning techniques could be the keys to integrating robots — who use machine learning to output more than words — into the real world.

This robot can tell when you’re about to smile — and smile back

Trustworthy journalism comes at a price.

Scientists and journalists share a core belief in questioning, observing and verifying to reach the truth. Science News reports on crucial research and discovery across science disciplines. We need your financial support to make it happen – every contribution makes a difference.

Subscribers, enter your e-mail address for full access to the Science News archives and digital editions.

Not a subscriber? Become one now .

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Research News

• Subscribe to Health Newsletter

Later this year, the FDA plans to decide whether MDMA can be used to treat PTSD Eva Almqvist/Getty Images hide caption

Misconduct claims may derail MDMA psychedelic treatment for PTSD

June 3, 2024 • People with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may soon have a new treatment option: MDMA, the chemical found in ecstasy. In August, the Food and Drug Administration plans to decide whether MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD will be approved for market based on years of research. But serious allegations of research misconduct may derail the approval timeline.

Former President Donald Trump holds a press conference following the verdict in his hush-money trial at Trump Tower on May 31 in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption

Trump repeats claims — without evidence — that his trial was rigged

May 31, 2024 • Former President Donald Trump reiterated many of claims — without evidence — that his criminal trial was rigged, a day after a New York jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records.

Researchers have detected microplastics in human testicles. Volodymyr Zakharov/Getty Images hide caption

Shots - Health News

Plastic junk researchers find tiny particles in men's testicles.

May 22, 2024 • The new study has scientists concerned that microplastics may be contributing to reproductive health issues.

Harlan Gough holds a recently collected tiger beetle on a tether. Lawrence Reeves hide caption

To escape hungry bats, these flying beetles create an ultrasound 'illusion'

May 22, 2024 • A study of tiger beetles has found a possible explanation for why they produce ultrasound noises right before an echolocating bat swoops in for the kill.

A sea otter in Monterey Bay with a rock anvil on its belly and a scallop in its forepaws. Jessica Fujii hide caption

When sea otters lose their favorite foods, they can use tools to go after new ones

May 20, 2024 • Some otters rely on tools to bust open hard-shelled prey items like snails, and a new study suggests this tool use is helping them to survive as their favorite, easier-to-eat foods disappear.

Lauren Hill, a graduate student at Cal State LA, holds a bird at the bird banding site at Bear Divide in the San Gabriel Mountains. Grace Widyatmadja/NPR hide caption

On this unassuming trail near LA, bird watchers see something spectacular

May 13, 2024 • At Bear Divide, just outside Los Angeles, you can see a rare spectacle of nature. This is one of the only places in the western United States where you can see bird migration during daylight hours.

The inside of a cell is a complicated orchestration of interactions between molecules. Keith Chambers/Science Photo Library hide caption

AI gets scientists one step closer to mapping the organized chaos in our cells

May 13, 2024 • As artificial intelligence seeps into some realms of society, it rushes into others. One area it's making a big difference is protein science — as in the "building blocks of life," proteins! Producer Berly McCoy talks to host Emily Kwong about the newest advance in protein science: AlphaFold3, an AI program from Google DeepMind. Plus, they talk about the wider field of AI protein science and why researchers hope it will solve a range of problems, from disease to the climate.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a strong solar flare on May 8, 2024. The Wednesday solar flares kicked off the geomagnetic storm happening this weekend. NASA/SDO hide caption

NOAA Issues First Severe Geomagnetic Storm Watch Since 2005

May 10, 2024 • Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observed a cluster of sunspots on the surface of the sun this week. With them came solar flares that kicked off a severe geomagnetic storm. That storm is expected to last throughout the weekend as at least five coronal mass ejections — chunks of the sun — are flung out into space, towards Earth! NOAA uses a five point scale to rate these storms, and this weekend's storm is a G4. It's expected to produce auroras as far south as Alabama. To contextualize this storm, we are looking back at the largest solar storm on record: the Carrington Event.

Esther Nesbitt lost two of her children to drug overdoses, and her grandchildren are among more than 320,000 who lost parents in the overdose epidemic. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images hide caption

In a decade of drug overdoses, more than 320,000 American children lost a parent

May 8, 2024 • New research documents how many children lost a parent to an opioid or other overdose in the period from 2011 to 2021. Bereaved children face elevated risks to their physical and emotional health.

This illustration depicts a washed-up Ichthyotitan severnensis carcass on the beach. Sergey Krasovskiy hide caption

Largest-ever marine reptile found with help from an 11-year-old girl

May 6, 2024 • A father and daughter discovered fossil remnants of a giant ichthyosaur that scientists say may have been the largest-known marine reptile to ever swim the seas.

A survey shows that doctors have trouble taking full vacations from their high-stress jobs. Even when they do, they often still do work on their time off. Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images hide caption

Perspective

When pto stands for 'pretend time off': doctors struggle to take real breaks.

May 4, 2024 • What's a typical vacation activity for doctors? Work. A new study finds that most physicians do work on a typical day off. In this essay, a family doctor considers why that is and why it matters.

Weliton Menário Costa (center) holds a laptop while surrounded by dancers for his music video, "Kangaroo Time." From left: Faux Née Phish (Caitlin Winter), Holly Hazlewood, and Marina de Andrade. Nic Vevers/ANU hide caption

'Dance Your Ph.D.' winner on science, art, and embracing his identity

May 4, 2024 • Weliton Menário Costa's award-winning music video showcases his research on kangaroo personality and behavior — and offers a celebration of human diversity, too.

Researchers in a rainforest in Indonesia spotted an injury on the face of a male orangutan they named Rakus. They were stunned to watch him treat his wound with a medicinal plant. Armas/Suaq Project hide caption

Orangutan in the wild applied medicinal plant to heal its own injury, biologists say

May 3, 2024 • It is "the first known case of active wound treatment in a wild animal with a medical plant," biologist Isabelle Laumer told NPR. She says the orangutan, called Rakus, is now thriving.

The federal government says it has taken steps toward developing a vaccine to protect against bird flu should it become a threat to humans. skodonnell/Getty Images hide caption

Launching an effective bird flu vaccine quickly could be tough, scientists warn

May 3, 2024 • Federal health officials say the U.S. has the building blocks to make a vaccine to protect humans from bird flu, if needed. But experts warn we're nowhere near prepared for another pandemic.

A Nazca booby in the Galápagos Islands incubates eggs with its webbed feet. Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images hide caption

The Science of Siblings

For birds, siblinghood can be a matter of life or death.

May 1, 2024 • Some birds kill their siblings soon after hatching. Other birds spend their whole lives with their siblings and will even risk their lives to help each other.

Planet Money

How do you counter misinformation critical thinking is step one.

April 30, 2024 • An economic perspective on misinformation

This image shows a brain "assembloid" consisting of two connected brain "organoids." Scientists studying these structures have restored impaired brain cells in Timothy syndrome patients. Pasca lab, Stanford University hide caption

Scientists restore brain cells impaired by a rare genetic disorder

April 30, 2024 • A therapy that restores brain cells impaired by a rare genetic disorder may offer a strategy for treating conditions like autism, epilepsy, and schizophrenia.

Katie Krimitsos is among the majority of American women who have trouble getting healthy sleep, according to a new Gallup survey. Krimitsos launched a podcast called Sleep Meditation for Women to offer some help. Natalie Champa Jennings/Natalie Jennings, courtesy of Katie Krimitsos hide caption

Helping women get better sleep by calming the relentless 'to-do lists' in their heads

April 26, 2024 • A recent survey found that Americans' sleep patterns have been getting worse. Adult women under 50 are among the most sleep-deprived demographics.

Bird flu is spreading through U.S. dairy cattle. Scientists say the risk to people is minimal, but open questions remain, including how widespread the outbreak is and how the virus is spreading. DOUGLAS MAGNO/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

As bird flu spreads in cows, here are 4 big questions scientists are trying to answer

April 26, 2024 • Health officials say there's very little risk to humans from the bird flu outbreak among dairy cattle, but there's still much they don't know. Here are four questions scientists are trying to answer.

A coyote at the Fort Worth Zoo is photographed in the hours leading up to the April 8 total solar eclipse. The Hartstone-Rose Research Lab, NC State hide caption

Animals get stressed during eclipses. But not for the reason you think

April 25, 2024 • After studying various species earlier this month, some scientists now say they understand the origin of animal behavior during solar eclipses.

Dr. Jeffrey Stern, assistant professor in the Department of Surgery at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, prepare the gene-edited pig kidney with thymus for transplantation. Joe Carrotta for NYU Langone Health hide caption

A woman with failing kidneys receives genetically modified pig organs

April 24, 2024 • Surgeons transplanted a kidney and thymus gland from a gene-edited pig into a 54-year-old woman in an attempt to extend her life. It's the latest experimental use of animal organs in humans.

Drug companies often do one-on-one outreach to doctors. A new study finds these meetings with drug reps lead to more prescriptions for cancer patients, but not longer survival. Chris Hondros/Getty Images hide caption

Oncologists' meetings with drug reps don't help cancer patients live longer

April 22, 2024 • Drug company reps commonly visit doctors to talk about new medications. A team of economists wanted to know if that helps patients live longer. They found that for cancer patients, the answer is no.

Science News

'The blade of the sword was still sharp': Lost metal detectorist discovers Bronze Age sword and ax in UK

By Jennifer Nalewicki published 5 June 24

A metal detectorist found the sword, ax head and bangle after he became separated from his peers during a treasure hunt in England.

10 'breathtaking' photos of our galaxy from the 2024 Milky Way Photographer of the Year contest

By Elise Poore published 5 June 24

From dangerous lion reserves to high mountain peaks, photographers go all out to capture the most spectacular images of our galaxy in this year's Milky Way Photographer of the Year competition.

4,000-year-old rock art of boats and cattle unearthed in Sudan paint a picture of a green Sahara

Thousands of years ago, a large swath of the Sahara may have been a green grassland ideal for raising cattle.

'Racism is a global public health crisis': Author Layal Liverpool says racist ideas still pervade medicine, and that hurts all of us

By Nicoletta Lanese published 5 June 24

In a new book, Layal Liverpool discusses how addressing racial biases in medicine and upending ideas like the "inferior Black pelvis" will lead to a healthier world.

'As beautiful as pregnancy sounds, it also scares me': Author Layal Liverpool on the reality of racism in reproductive health care

By Layal Liverpool published 5 June 24

In a new book, science journalist Layal Liverpool sheds light on pervasive, racialized inequities in health care, including in reproductive care.

100-foot 'walking tree' in New Zealand looks like an Ent from Lord of the Rings — and is the lone survivor of a lost forest

By Harry Baker published 5 June 24

An unusual northern rātā tree that looks like it is striding across an empty field has been crowned New Zealand's Tree of the Year. The giant plant, which looks strikingly similar to an Ent from "The Lord of the Rings," is centuries old.

LIFTOFF! Boeing Starliner carries 2 astronauts to space in 'final test' for NASA (watch live)

By Brandon Specktor published 5 June 24

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft successfully carried two NASA astronauts to space today (June 5) in the final test of the spacecraft's capabilities. Starliner is bound for the International Space Station.

Unistellar's new smart binoculars may change binocular observation as we know it

By Lloyd Coombes published 5 June 24

Deal These binoculars pull double duty in day and night-time, and you can save $400.

DARPA considers 6 new designs for uncrewed VTOL aircraft that carry weapons payloads — with test flights set for 2026

By Rory Bathgate published 5 June 24

Lightweight fighter aircraft with no pilots could support conventional military missions while being easier to launch and recover.

Save big on Unistellar telescopes just in time for Father's Day

Deals Give the gift of the cosmos with these Father's Day smart telescope deals.

Black hole 'morsels' could finally prove Stephen Hawking's famous theory right

By Robert Lea published 5 June 24

Stephen Hawking suggested nothing lasts forever, including black holes. Scientists may have a way to prove it at last.

A 'new star' could appear in the sky any night now. Here's how to see the Blaze Star ignite.

By Jamie Carter published 4 June 24

The "Blaze Star" T Coronae Borealis will erupt with a magnificent explosion sometime between now and September, becoming visible to the naked eye. Here's how to find it when it does.

Viking sword with 'very rare' inscription discovered on family farm in Norway

By Tom Metcalfe published 4 June 24

The ancient weapon seems to be a rare type of iron sword made in the Frankish Empire.

The brain can store nearly 10 times more data than previously thought, study confirms

By Emily Cooke published 4 June 24

Scientists harnessed a new method to precisely measure the amount of information the brain can store, and it could help advance our understanding of learning.

Stunning 'parade of planets' image shows 6 worlds aligned over Earth

By Ben Turner published 4 June 24

A stunning photo of the recent "parade of planets" shows Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in alignment over Earth. It was captured from the U.K. on June 1.

Huge cheetah that roamed China 1 million years ago would have stood face to face with a tiger

By Soumya Sagar published 4 June 24

Extinct colossal cat Acinonyx pleistocaenicus was the biggest species of cheetah to have ever lived, scientists reveal.

STEVE — the bizarre purple ribbon in the sky — has a 'secret twin' that appears only before dawn, study finds

By Stephanie Pappas published 4 June 24

An atmospheric phenomenon known as STEVE has a secret twin that appears before the break of dawn and flows in the opposite direction, new research finds.

Kids discover extremely rare teen T. rex fossils sticking out of the ground during North Dakota Badlands hike

By Patrick Pester published 4 June 24

'Teen Rex' is about to go on display for the first time and appear in a new T. rex documentary, thanks to a discovery made by three young boys.

Cobra venom kills by collapsing blood vessels, organ-on-a-chip shows

A new 3D model of a human blood vessel made in the lab may help accelerate the development of new antivenoms, researchers say.

2,000-year-old rock art, including nearly 140-foot-long snake, may mark ancient territories in Colombia, Venezuela

By Jennifer Nalewicki published 3 June 24

Archaeologists used cameras and drones to fully map 14 massive rock art sites scattered across Venezuela and Colombia.

• View Archive

Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now

Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.

• 2 Space photo of the week: James Webb telescope spots galaxy churning out stars in overtime
• 3 Auroras could paint Earth's skies again in early June. Here are the key nights to watch for.
• 4 32 of the loudest animals on Earth
• 5 2,000-year-old rock art, including nearly 140-foot-long snake, may mark ancient territories in Colombia, Venezuela
• 2 GPT-4 didn't ace the bar exam after all, MIT research suggests — it didn't even break the 70th percentile
• 3 The brain can store nearly 10 times more data than previously thought, study confirms
• 4 'She is so old': One-eyed wolf in Yellowstone defies odds by having 10th litter of pups in 11 years
• 5 Viking sword with 'very rare' inscription discovered on family farm in Norway

Along with Stanford news and stories, show me:

• Student information
• Faculty/Staff information

We want to provide announcements, events, leadership messages and resources that are relevant to you. Your selection is stored in a browser cookie which you can remove at any time using “Clear all personalization” below.

A new, nano-scale look at how the SARS-CoV-2 virus replicates in cells may offer greater precision in drug development, a Stanford University team reports in Nature Communications . Using advanced microscopy techniques, the researchers produced what might be some of the most crisp images available of the virus’s RNA and replication structures, which they witnessed form spherical shapes around the nucleus of the infected cell.

“We have not seen COVID infecting cells at this high resolution and known what we are looking at before,” said Stanley Qi , Stanford associate professor of bioengineering in the Schools of Engineering and of Medicine and co-senior author of the paper. “Being able to know what you are looking at with this high resolution over time is fundamentally helpful to virology and future virus research, including antiviral drug development.”

Blinking RNA 

The work illuminates molecular-scale details of the virus’ activity inside host cells. In order to spread, viruses essentially take over cells and transform them into virus-producing factories, complete with special replication organelles. Within this factory, the viral RNA needs to duplicate itself over and over until enough genetic material is gathered up to move out and infect new cells and start the process over again.

The Stanford scientists sought to reveal this replication step in the sharpest detail to date. To do so, they first labeled the viral RNA and replication-associated proteins with fluorescent molecules of different colors. But imaging glowing RNA alone would result in fuzzy blobs in a conventional microscope. So they added a chemical that temporarily suppresses the fluorescence. The molecules would then blink back on at random times, and only a few lit up at a time. That made it easier to pinpoint the flashes, revealing the locations of the individual molecules.

Using a setup that included lasers, powerful microscopes, and a camera snapping photos every 10 milliseconds, the researchers gathered snapshots of the blinking molecules. When they combined sets of these images, they were able to create finely detailed photos showing the viral RNA and replication structures in the cells. “We have highly sensitive and specific methods and also high resolution,” said Leonid Andronov, co-lead author and Stanford chemistry postdoctoral scholar. “You can see one viral molecule inside the cell.”

The resulting images, with a resolution of 10 nanometers, reveal what might be the most detailed view yet of how the virus replicates itself inside of a cell. The images show magenta RNA forming clumps around the nucleus of the cell, which accumulate into a large repeating pattern. “We are the first to find that viral genomic RNA forms distinct globular structures at high resolution,” said Mengting Han, co-lead author and Stanford bioengineering postdoctoral scholar.

Video showing the different colored fluorescent labels blinking on and off, revealing more precise locations for individual molecules. | Leonid Andronov, Moerner Laboratory

The clusters help show how the virus evades the cell’s defenses, said W. E. Moerner , the paper’s co-senior author and Harry S. Mosher Professor of Chemistry in the School of Humanities and Sciences. “They’re collected together inside a membrane that sequesters them from the rest of the cell, so that they’re not attacked by the rest of the cell.”

Nanoscale drug testing 

Compared to using an electron microscope, the new imaging technique can allow researchers to know with greater certainty where virus components are in a cell thanks to the blinking fluorescent labels. It also can provide nanoscale details of cell processes that are invisible in medical research conducted through biochemical assays. The conventional techniques “are completely different from these spatial recordings of where the objects actually are in the cell, down to this much higher resolution,” said Moerner. “We have an advantage based on the fluorescent labeling because we know where our light is coming from.” 

Seeing exactly how the virus stages its infection holds promise for medicine. Observing how different viruses take over cells may help answer questions such as why some pathogens produce mild symptoms while others are life-threatening. The super-resolution microscopy can also benefit drug development. “This nanoscale structure of the replication organelles can provide some new therapeutic targets for us,” said Han. “We can use this method to screen different drugs and see its influence on the nanoscale structure.”

Indeed, that’s what the team plans to do. They will repeat the experiment and see how the viral structures shift in the presence of drugs like Paxlovid or remdesivir. If a candidate drug can suppress the viral replication step, that suggests the drug is effective at inhibiting the pathogen and making it easier for the host to fight the infection. 

The researchers also plan to map all 29 proteins that make up SARS-CoV-2 and see what those proteins do across the span of an infection. “We hope that we will be prepared to really use these methods for the next challenge to quickly see what’s going on inside and better understand it,” said Qi.

For more information

Acknowledgements: Additional Stanford co-authors include postdoctoral scholar Yanyu Zhu, PhD student Ashwin Balaji, former PhD student Anish Roy, postdoctoral scholar Andrew Barentine, research specialist Puja Patel, and Jaishree Garhyan, director of the In Vitro Biosafety Level-3 Service Center . Moerner is also a member of Stanford Bio-X and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, and a faculty fellow of Sarafan ChEM-H . Qi is also a member of Bio-X, the Cardiovascular Institute , the Maternal & Child Health Research Institute (MCHRI), the Stanford Cancer Institute, and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, an institute scholar at Sarafan ChEM-H , and a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub – San Francisco Investigator.

This research was funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health. We also acknowledge use of the Stanford University Cell Sciences Imaging Core Facility.

Taylor Kubota, Stanford University: [email protected]

14 recent scientific breakthroughs

From photos of the infant universe to an energy advancement that could save the planet

• Newsletter sign up Newsletter

1. Menstrual blood as a diagnostic tool

2. first pig kidney transplant, 3. cell therapy for melanoma, 4. rhino ivf, 5. pristine configuration, 6. restoring reefs, 7. ai to find aliens, 8. inverse vaccines, 9. sequencing the y-chromosome, 10. discovering the motion of space-time, 11. gene therapy for muscular dystrophy, 12. improving heart health, 13. ai mind reading, 14. slowing alzheimer's.

Editor's note : This article was updated April 18, 2024.

Scientists in many fields received little recognition for the last couple of years, as the world focused on the emergency push to develop vaccines and treatments for Covid-19. But that doesn't mean they weren't still busy researching a dizzying series of developments that are now being reported as major discoveries and achievements.

Menstrual blood can potentially be used to measure blood sugar. In early 2024, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new diagnostic menstrual pad called the Q-Pad and A1C Test by the biotechnology research company Qvin. The Q-Pad is an organic cotton period pad that "collects the blood, which a laboratory then uses to analyze the individual's average blood sugar over three weeks through the A1C biomarker," said Forbes .

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

"There is a lot of clinically relevant information in this bodily fluid that comes every month," Sara Naseri, the CEO and co-founder of Qvin, said to Axios . "We've built a way for women to get insights about their health regularly. Non-invasively, using blood that comes every month, the menstrual blood." Diagnostic capabilities can potentially be extended to diagnose HPV or endometriosis. 

Scientists successfully transplanted a pig's kidney into a human. If the organ takes successfully, it could be a game-changer for those waiting in vain on the kidney transplant list. "I saw it not only as a way to help me, but a way to provide hope for the thousands of people who need a transplant to survive," said Richard Slayman, who received the transplant, to The Associated Press . The surgery took four hours and 15 people to execute.

Pigs have long been used in medicine for procedures like skin grafts and implantations of heart valves. However, "transplanting entire organs is much more complex than using highly processed tissue," said the AP, adding that the pig was "genetically edited to remove harmful pig genes and add certain human genes to improve its compatibility." Slayman now needs to be monitored for any rejection of the kidney. "He would have had to wait five to six years for a human kidney. He would not have been able to survive it," Dr. Winfred Williams, an associate chief of the nephrology division at Mass General, said to The New York Times .

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first cellular therapy for aggressive forms of melanoma. The treatment, called Amtagvi, is "designed to fight off advanced forms of melanoma by extracting and replicating T cells derived from a patient's tumor," said NPR . These cells are also called tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL). T cells are integral in the immune system but can become "dysfunctional inside tumors." 

"The approval of Amtagvi represents the culmination of scientific and clinical research efforts leading to a novel T cell immunotherapy for patients with limited treatment options," Dr. Peter Marks, the director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement . The treatment won't work for everyone, but research by the National Institutes of Health showed a "56% response rate among patients with melanoma, and 24% of patients had a complete disappearance of their melanoma, regardless of where it was," Axios said. "This is the tip of the iceberg of what TIL can bring to the future of medicine," Patrick Hwu, CEO of Moffitt Cancer Center, said to Axios .

Scientists were able to impregnate a southern white rhino using in-vitro fertilization (IVF).  Researchers in Kenya implanted a southern white rhino embryo into another of the same species using the technique in September 2023, resulting in a successful pregnancy. The technique could be used to save the northern white rhino from total extinction. "We achieved together something which was not believed to be possible," Thomas Hildebrandt , head of the reproduction management department at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, said in a press conference. 

There are two species of white rhinos: northern and southern. The northern white rhino is on the verge of extinction due to poaching, with only two females remaining. Luckily, scientists have sperm preserved from the last male rhino, which could be combined with an egg from the female and implanted into a southern white rhino female to act as a surrogate. Using a white rhino embryo to test the procedure was a "proof of concept" which is a "milestone to allow us to produce northern white rhino calves in the next two, two and a half years," Hildebrandt said.

Scientists discovered six exoplanets that revolve around a star in a rare pattern called orbital resonance, said a study published in the journal Nature . This means that "for every six orbits completed by planet b, the closest planet to the star, the outermost planet g completes one," CNN said, adding that "as planet c makes three revolutions around the star, planet d does two, and when planet e completes four orbits, planet f does three."

The system was deemed a "rare fossil" by Rafael Luque, a postdoctoral scholar in the University of Chicago's Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. "We think only about one percent of all systems stay in resonance," Luque said in a statement . "It shows us the pristine configuration of a planetary system that has survived untouched." The discovery could help further the study of sub-Neptunes, which are planets larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. They are not present in our solar system. "There is little agreement among astronomers about how these planets form and what they're made of — so an entire system consisting of sub-Neptunes could help scientists determine more about their origin," Luque said.

Coral bleaching has been a rapidly growing problem as climate change worsens. Without intervention, the reefs will continue to deteriorate. To counter this, scientists have explored the idea of a "coral gym," essentially a "laboratory to make corals stronger," NPR said. The goal is to "train" coral to survive more extreme conditions.

Warming oceans and rising temperatures are the largest contributors to coral degradation. "One of the things that we do in this lab is subject them to different environmental conditions and evaluate who's a little bit stronger," Ian Enochs, lead of the Coral Program at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said to NPR. Researchers created a "complex matrix of aquariums" where they can "subject different types of corals to different environments and not only understand how they might survive, but perhaps help them to do so."

Scientists have created an artificial intelligence model that can detect alien life , said a study published in the journal PNAS . The algorithm can "distinguish between samples of biological and nonbiological origin 90% of the time," after being "trained using living cells, fossils, meteorites and lab-made chemicals," Live Science said. "Put another way, the method should be able to detect alien biochemistries, as well as Earth life," Robert Hazen, co-author of the study, said in a statement .

The AI "does not involve a machine having to look for specific things," but rather "looks for differences between samples," BBC said. "These results mean that we may be able to find a lifeform from another planet, another biosphere, even if it is very different from the life we know on Earth," Hazen continued. "And, if we do find signs of life elsewhere, we can tell if life on Earth and other planets derived from a common or different origin."

Scientists may have found a way to calm immune responses for those with autoimmune disorders using an " inverse vaccine ," said a study published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering . The immune system responds to specific identifying markers on invaders like viruses and bacteria called antigens, "but some immune cells react to self-antigens," which are "molecules from our own cells," said Science . "In autoimmune diseases, these misguided immune cells turn against patients' own tissues."

The new research worked by "directing potential self-antigens to the liver," where "immune cells there pick up self-antigens and then stifle T cells that could target these molecules." The experiment was performed on mice. "The method they use is promising and potentially can induce better tolerance," neurologist and neuroimmunologist A.M. Rostami said to Science, adding that "we don't know" whether this approach is "applicable to human disease in which we don't know the antigen."

Scientists have finally sequenced the entire Y chromosome, one of the human sex chromosomes present in those assigned male at birth. The feat has been "notoriously difficult" because of the Y chromosome's "complex repeat structure," said a research paper published in the journal Nature .

"Just a few years ago, half of the human Y chromosome was missing" from knowledge of the human genome, Monika Cechova, co-lead author on the paper, said to CNN . "I would credit new sequencing technologies and computational methods for this," Arang Rhie, who also worked on the paper, said to Reuters . The X chromosome was fully sequenced back in 2020.

Understanding the Y chromosome can help with a number of health issues, including fertility. Genes have also "been shown to be required for the prevention of cancer and cardiovascular disease," Kenneth Walsh, a professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, said to CNN.

Scientists found evidence that the fabric of space and time gets warped by gravitational waves. "What we measure is the Earth kind of moving in this sea," astrophysicist Michael Lam said to The Washington Post . "It's bobbing around — and it's not just bobbing up and down, it's bobbing in all directions." The findings affirm a facet of Einstein's Theory of Relativity that "space is not serenely empty, and time does not march smoothly forward," the Post said.

What scientists discovered was the "low-pitch hum of gravitational waves resounding throughout the universe," and the findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters . While the cause of the hum is not certain, scientists believe it originated from supermassive black holes circling each other, said The Wall Street Journal . "Before now, we didn't even know if supermassive black holes merged, and now we have evidence that hundreds of thousands of them are merging," said Chiara Mingarelli, a Yale University astrophysicist and a member of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), which led the research, to the Journal.

The gravitational wave finding "does not put any torque on everyday human existence," said the Post, "but it does offer potential insight into the physical reality we all inhabit."

The Food and Drug Administration approved gene therapy for children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, said NPR . The treatment is limited to children aged four and five while more research is being done on its safety and effectiveness.

Muscular dystrophy appears in boys far more often than girls and can be debilitating, or even fatal in a person's 30s or 40s. The treatment, developed by Sarepta Therapeutics, has faced some criticism, as there are some concerns about whether it is actually safe and effective.

A daily pill, bempedoic acid, has proved its ability to reduce the risk of heart disease, especially in those who have adverse reactions to statins, said a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine . Statins are normally prescribed to reduce cholesterol; however, many individuals cannot take them or choose not to take them because of side effects. "Statins are known to cause muscle aches in a subset of people," said USA Today .

Bempedoic acid works similarly to statins, but since it is only activated in the liver, is less likely to cause muscle aches. Side effects include an increased risk of gout.

Scientists have created an AI-based decoder that can turn a person's brain activity into text, said a paper published in the journal Nature . The system is non-invasive, meaning it doesn't require any surgical implants, and uses the same AI technology as chatbot ChatGPT . The technology scanned brain activity and predicted what words a person was listening to.

"We don't like to use the term mind reading," Alexander Huth, who worked on the research, said to CNN . "We think it conjures up things that we're actually not capable of." He said the "real potential application of this is in helping people who are unable to communicate." To allay any concerns about whether the technology could pose a threat to privacy once further developed, Jerry Tang, the lead author of the paper , said everyone's brain data should be private. "Our brains are kind of one of the final frontiers of our privacy."

A drug from pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly showed signs of slowing the advance of Alzheimer's disease by approximately one-third, BBC said. The drug, called donanemab, acts as an antibody specifically created to attack and remove "sticky gunk" called beta-amyloid, which "builds up in the spaces between brain cells, forming distinctive plaques that are one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's," BBC said. "We are now entering the time of disease modification, where we might realistically hope to treat and maintain someone with Alzheimer's disease, with long-term disease management rather than palliative and supportive care," Dr. Cath Mummery of the U.K.'s National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery said to the outlet.

A side effect, however, is fatal swelling in the brain, which potentially affected three of the clinical trial participants.

Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox

A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com

 Devika Rao has worked as a staff writer at The Week since 2022, covering science, the environment, climate and business. She previously worked as a policy associate for a nonprofit organization advocating for environmental action from a business perspective.  

• Harold Maass, The Week US

Today's Newspapers A roundup of the headlines from the US front pages

By The Week Staff Published 5 June 24

Speed Read Baby 'Elsa', rescued in sub-zero temperatures, is third abandoned child born to the same unknown parents, court hears

By Julia O'Driscoll, The Week UK Published 5 June 24

The Week Recommends Benedict Cumberbatch is 'mesmerising' as a narcissistic puppeteer searching for his missing son in this Netflix series

By Irenie Forshaw, The Week UK Published 5 June 24

In Depth A running list of the space agency's most exciting developments

By Devika Rao, The Week US Published 31 May 24

The explainer Getting to the Red Planet requires planning and a whole lot of knowledge

By Devika Rao, The Week US Published 28 May 24

The Explainer Meteor showers, eclipses and more are coming to the skies

By Devika Rao, The Week US Published 23 May 24

In Depth The number of records set in the past year is a stark reminder of the destructiveness of climate change

By Devika Rao, The Week US Published 17 May 24

The Week Recommends The cosmos infiltrates Planet Earth's cinemas

By Devika Rao, The Week US Published 14 May 24

Speed Read A Sumatran orangutan in Indonesia has been self-medicating to heal a wound on his cheek

By Peter Weber, The Week US Published 3 May 24

Under The Radar Researchers seeking the elusive Earth-like planet beyond Neptune are narrowing down their search

By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK Published 19 April 24

The Explainer New analysis of its violent journey confirms scientific theories on the origin of our planet's H2O

By Sorcha Bradley, The Week UK Published 17 April 24

• Contact Future's experts
• Terms and Conditions
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Advertise With Us

The Week is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site . © Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

• June 5, 2024 | Dazzling New Blue Ant Species Unearthed in India
• June 5, 2024 | Millions Are at Risk – Fluoride Consumption During Pregnancy May Harm Fetal Brain Development
• June 5, 2024 | Unlocking the Genetic Giant: Tiny Fern Has the Largest Genome of Any Organism on Earth
• June 5, 2024 | Don’t Miss: Planets Dominate the Morning Sky
• June 5, 2024 | Turning Eggshells Into Green Tech Gold

Biology News

Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms, encompassing various sub-disciplines such as microbiology, botany, zoology, and physiology. We’re dedicated to bringing you the latest research findings, innovative technologies, and thought-provoking discoveries from top scientists, research institutions, and universities around the world.

This section on biology news includes new research related to many related subjects such as biochemistry, genetics, cytology, and microbiology. Popular sub-topics include Biotechnology , DNA ,  Microbiology , Neurology , Evolutionary Biology , Genetics , Stem Cells , Neuroscience , Bioengineering , and Cell Biology .

Whether you are a professional biologist, an aspiring scientist, or simply someone with a passion for learning about the living world, our Biology News page offers a wealth of information and insights to keep you informed and inspired.

Biology June 5, 2024

Dazzling New Blue Ant Species Unearthed in India

A team of entomologists has discovered a rare blue ant, named Paraparatrechina neela, in Arunachal Pradesh, India. The find, part of the Siang Valley biodiversity…

250-Year-Old Mystery Solved: Scientists Unveil Surprising Man-Made Origins of the German Cockroach

Secret “Persimmon” Ingredient Could Boost Ethanol Production

Breaking Evolution’s Rules: Scientists Uncover Surprising Reemergence of Once-Lost Biological Traits

Pregnancy Workouts Alter Brain Chemistry to Fight Offspring Obesity

Sexual Parasitism: Anglerfish’s Strategy To Conquer the Deep Sea Amid Global Warming

Does Fruit Really Fuel Brain Growth? New Study Challenges Old Ideas

Challenging Conventional Wisdom: Scientists Uncover Hidden Waves in Brain Blood Flow

Evolutionary Ingenuity: How Ancient Sharks Survived Earth’s Hottest Oceans

Biology June 3, 2024

Metabolic Manipulators: How Parasitic Archaea Transform Their Hosts From the Inside Out

Microbiologists from NIOZ, the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, have discovered that certain parasitic microbes, specifically a group known as DPANN archaea, not only…

Biology June 2, 2024

Scientists Unveil the Secret Sex Life of Coral

A new study utilizing aquarium data has uncovered the key factors that orchestrate mysterious synchronized coral spawning. Corals play an essential role in ocean ecosystems,…

Biology June 1, 2024

Human IVG Paves the Way for Universal Fertility Treatments

New IVG research offers promising methods for creating human germ cells from stem cells, potentially transforming fertility treatments. According to the World Health Organization (WHO),…

Chilling Forecast: Jellyfish Set To Dominate Arctic Waters by 2050

New AWI research reveals that jellyfish in the Arctic Ocean are benefiting from climate change and expanding further north. Climate change is exerting immense pressure…

Record-Breaking Migration – Silky Shark Travels Four Times the Width of the U.S.

Researchers documented the longest recorded migration of a silky shark, uncovering critical conservation gaps that need immediate attention. In a recent study, scientists have documented…

Caffeine and Ants: A Potential Game Changer in Pest Control

Caffeine increases the navigational efficiency of Argentine ants towards sugary baits, suggesting a new method to enhance the effectiveness of pest control efforts. Research on…

Biology May 31, 2024

On the Brink of Extinction – Scientists Develop Genetic Rescue Plan for Arabian Leopards

Research on the critically endangered Arabian leopard indicates that reintroducing carefully selected, captive-bred individuals into the wild could substantially aid in the recovery of their…

The Love Life of Plants: How Female Flowers Pick Their Perfect Match

In a new study, published in EMBO Reports, researchers explore the selective attraction and repulsion mechanisms in Arabidopsis plants during reproduction. Using a novel microscopic…

Biology May 30, 2024

Trailblazers in Genetics: Researchers Chase the Cure for Rare Hereditary Diseases

The dynamic structure of FLVCR proteins and their role in nutrient transport within our cells have been revealed. It is known that malfunctions of the…

The Long-Overlooked Molecule That Will Define a Generation of Science

By Thomas Cech

Dr. Cech is a biochemist and the author of the forthcoming book “The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life’s Deepest Secrets,” from which this essay is adapted.

From E=mc² to splitting the atom to the invention of the transistor, the first half of the 20th century was dominated by breakthroughs in physics.

Then, in the early 1950s, biology began to nudge physics out of the scientific spotlight — and when I say “biology,” what I really mean is DNA. The momentous discovery of the DNA double helix in 1953 more or less ushered in a new era in science that culminated in the Human Genome Project, completed in 2003, which decoded all of our DNA into a biological blueprint of humankind.

DNA has received an immense amount of attention. And while the double helix was certainly groundbreaking in its time, the current generation of scientific history will be defined by a different (and, until recently, lesser-known) molecule — one that I believe will play an even bigger role in furthering our understanding of human life: RNA.

You may remember learning about RNA (ribonucleic acid) back in your high school biology class as the messenger that carries information stored in DNA to instruct the formation of proteins. Such messenger RNA, mRNA for short, recently entered the mainstream conversation thanks to the role they played in the Covid-19 vaccines. But RNA is much more than a messenger, as critical as that function may be.

Other types of RNA, called “noncoding” RNAs, are a tiny biological powerhouse that can help to treat and cure deadly diseases, unlock the potential of the human genome and solve one of the most enduring mysteries of science: explaining the origins of all life on our planet.

Though it is a linchpin of every living thing on Earth, RNA was misunderstood and underappreciated for decades — often dismissed as nothing more than a biochemical backup singer, slaving away in obscurity in the shadows of the diva, DNA. I know that firsthand: I was slaving away in obscurity on its behalf.

In the early 1980s, when I was much younger and most of the promise of RNA was still unimagined, I set up my lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder. After two years of false leads and frustration, my research group discovered that the RNA we’d been studying had catalytic power. This means that the RNA could cut and join biochemical bonds all by itself — the sort of activity that had been thought to be the sole purview of protein enzymes. This gave us a tantalizing glimpse at our deepest origins: If RNA could both hold information and orchestrate the assembly of molecules, it was very likely that the first living things to spring out of the primordial ooze were RNA-based organisms.

That breakthrough at my lab — along with independent observations of RNA catalysis by Sidney Altman at Yale — was recognized with a Nobel Prize in 1989. The attention generated by the prize helped lead to an efflorescence of research that continued to expand our idea of what RNA could do.

In recent years, our understanding of RNA has begun to advance even more rapidly. Since 2000, RNA-related breakthroughs have led to 11 Nobel Prizes. In the same period, the number of scientific journal articles and patents generated annually by RNA research has quadrupled. There are more than 400 RNA-based drugs in development, beyond the ones that are already in use. And in 2022 alone, more than $1 billion in private equity funds was invested in biotechnology start-ups to explore frontiers in RNA research.

What’s driving the RNA age is this molecule’s dazzling versatility. Yes, RNA can store genetic information, just like DNA. As a case in point, many of the viruses (from influenza to Ebola to SARS-CoV-2) that plague us don’t bother with DNA at all; their genes are made of RNA, which suits them perfectly well. But storing information is only the first chapter in RNA’s playbook.

Unlike DNA, RNA plays numerous active roles in living cells. It acts as an enzyme, splicing and dicing other RNA molecules or assembling proteins — the stuff of which all life is built — from amino acid building blocks. It keeps stem cells active and forestalls aging by building out the DNA at the ends of our chromosomes.

RNA discoveries have led to new therapies, such as the use of antisense RNA to help treat children afflicted with the devastating disease spinal muscular atrophy. The mRNA vaccines, which saved millions of lives during the Covid pandemic, are being reformulated to attack other diseases, including some cancers . RNA research may also be helping us rewrite the future; the genetic scissors that give CRISPR its breathtaking power to edit genes are guided to their sites of action by RNAs.

Although most scientists now agree on RNA's bright promise, we are still only beginning to unlock its potential. Consider, for instance, that some 75 percent of the human genome consists of dark matter that is copied into RNAs of unknown function. While some researchers have dismissed this dark matter as junk or noise, I expect it will be the source of even more exciting breakthroughs.

We don’t know yet how many of these possibilities will prove true. But if the past 40 years of research have taught me anything, it is never to underestimate this little molecule. The age of RNA is just getting started.

Thomas Cech is a biochemist at the University of Colorado, Boulder; a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1989 for his work with RNA; and the author of “The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life’s Deepest Secrets,” from which this essay is adapted.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• 31 May 2024

What is science? Tech heavyweights brawl over definition

• Fred Schwaller

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

X owner Elon Musk (left) and artificial-intelligence pioneer Yann LeCun sparred on the social-media platform about scientific publications. Credit: Slaven Vlasic/Getty for The New York Times, Benjamin Girette/Bloomberg via Getty

If you do research and don’t publish it, is it science? That’s the question at the heart of an ongoing debate on X between entrepreneur Elon Musk and pioneering computer scientist Yann LeCun. Over the past few days, the conversation sprawled into a brawl about the definition of science, attracting thousands of commentators including researchers of all stripes.

The discussion started on 27 May, after Musk posted on the social-media platform X (formerly Twitter): “Join xAI if you believe in our mission of understanding the universe, which requires maximally rigorous pursuit of the truth, without regard to popularity or political correctness.” (Musk founded the company xAI to build artificial intelligence (AI) capable of enhanced reasoning. Its first product is a generative-AI chatbot called Grok.)

Thousands of scientists are cutting back on Twitter, seeding angst and uncertainty

LeCun, chief AI scientist at tech giant Meta, is known for his foundational work in deep learning and neural networks. He called out the post, saying that Musk “claims to want a ‘maximally rigorous pursuit of the truth’ but spews crazy-ass conspiracy theories on his own social platform”. It escalated quickly , with Musk questioning what science LeCun had done in the past five years. LeCun, who also holds an academic post in AI at New York University in New York City, replied: “Over 80 technical papers published since January 2022. What about you?”

LeCun then posted saying “if you do research and don’t publish, it’s not Science”. He argued that research is only ‘science’ when it is collected as a body of knowledge, tested for correctness and reproducibility and then published. “Technological marvels don’t just pop out of the vacuum. They are built on years (sometimes decades) of scientific research,” he said . Without sharing that scientific information, “technological progress would slow to a crawl”.

LeCun’s definition of science sparked a backlash. Some people criticized him for not mentioning that science is not just a collection of facts, but is often considered a systematic method . Another tech entrepreneur — Palmer Luckey, who developed the virtual-reality headset Oculus — condemned the idea that “people who don’t publish their research for peer review will die bitter and forgotten”. Still others argued that scientific experiments done at companies are often kept private; even outside the private sector, 40% of data from academic and government scientists goes unpublished, according to some estimates .

“LeCun still misses the very essence of how science works. Saying ‘science is only science if it is published’ gatekeeps the idea that science is a method of understanding that people can use in their daily lives,” says Peter Coveney, a computer scientist at University College London.

The importance of feedback

LeCun later clarified his definition, posting: “science progresses through the collision of ideas, verification, analysis, reproduction, and improvements. If you don’t publish your research *in some way* your research will likely have no impact.”

He also hinted in his posts that there is need for more openness in AI research, in particular the source code underlying neural networks. Coveney and philosopher of science Janet Stemwedel at San José State University in California agree with LeCun on this point, especially amid criticisms that AI algorithms — such as those underlying the chatbot ChatGPT and text-to-video tool Sora, made by OpenAI in San Francisco, California, and AlphaFold3 , the protein-structure-prediction tool created by Google DeepMind in London — are being developed and launched without the publication of their code.

“The big issue is that you need to expose your knowledge claims to rigorous examination, and you need to be responsive to the feedback that emerges from that,” says Stemwedel. She added that philosophers of science now see responsiveness to feedback as a cornerstone of modern definitions of science, alongside principles such as the utility of science for making predictions and providing explanations.

Coveney pointed to the development of generalist AI tools, which aim to interpret data and produce advanced reasoning abilities without being specifically trained for individual tasks. “At the heart of it is a large language model like ChatGPT, but they implement what’s called foundation models to solve problems.” He says that it’s questionable how scientific their methods are, even when their processes can be scrutinized by scientists.

Twitter changed science — what happens now it’s in turmoil?

xAI, for instance, is making the AI tools that it develops open source. “Musk argues that we can provide scientific explanations by using explainable AI like xAI, thereby replacing conventional ways of doing science,” says Coveney. “The problem is that a machine ingesting scientific literature and then creating statistical inferences does not confer understanding to the machine. It’s not an objective and rational way of creating scientific theories.”

Debated definition

The definition of science will always be contentious, says Stemwedel, who has studied how scientists use Twitter and X. Before Musk took over, Twitter had a beneficial role in overall discussions about science, and people showed that science could be responsive to feedback. “Early discussions showed objectivity is not a property of individual scientists, but rather of the collective efforts of a knowledge-building community. In the Musk era , I’m afraid things have gotten less responsive to reason.”

Amid the debate, Coveney says that it’s crucial to maintain the fundamental ideas of science that stem from the Enlightenment.

“The central element is, if you can’t have an objective discussion, then you’re not doing science, because you’re just articulating your opinions,” he says. The irony, adds Coveney, is that this is exactly what was happening during the debate on X.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01626-z

Reprints and permissions

Related Articles

• Scientific community

China seeks global impact and recognition

Nature Index 05 JUN 24

China’s research clout leads to growth in homegrown science publishing

Chinese science still has room to grow

Jaw-dropping views of the Milky Way and more — May’s best science images

News 04 JUN 24

Harassment of scientists is surging — institutions aren’t sure how to help

News Feature 21 MAY 24

Mount Etna’s spectacular smoke rings and more — April’s best science images

News 03 MAY 24

Proteomics expert (postdoc or staff scientist)

We are looking for a (senior) postdoc or postdoc-level staff scientist from all areas of proteomics to become part of our Proteomics Center.

Frankfurt am Main, Hessen (DE)

Goethe University (GU) Frankfurt am Main - Institute of Molecular Systems Medicine

Tenured Position in Huzhou University School of Medicine (Professor/Associate Professor/Lecturer)

※Tenured Professor/Associate Professor/Lecturer Position in Huzhou University School of Medicine

Huzhou, Zhejiang (CN)

Huzhou University

Electron Microscopy (EM) Specialist

APPLICATION CLOSING DATE: July 5th, 2024 About the Institute Human Technopole (HT) is an interdisciplinary life science research institute, created...

Human Technopole

Post-Doctoral Fellow in Chemistry and Chemical Biology

We are seeking a highly motivated, interdisciplinary scientist to investigate the host-gut microbiota interactions that are associated with driving...

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Harvard University - Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Postdoc Position (f/m/d) in “Building Healthcare Resilience Against Cyber-Attacks"

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) – The Research University in the Helmholtz Association creates and imparts knowledge for the society and th...

76344, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen (DE)

Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) Campus Nord

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

New open-source platform allows users to evaluate performance of AI-powered chatbots

Researchers have developed a platform for the interactive evaluation of AI-powered chatbots such as ChatGPT.

A team of computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians and cognitive scientists, led by the University of Cambridge, developed an open-source evaluation platform called CheckMate, which allows human users to interact with and evaluate the performance of large language models (LLMs).

The researchers tested CheckMate in an experiment where human participants used three LLMs -- InstructGPT, ChatGPT and GPT-4 -- as assistants for solving undergraduate-level mathematics problems.

The team studied how well LLMs can assist participants in solving problems. Despite a generally positive correlation between a chatbot's correctness and perceived helpfulness, the researchers also found instances where the LLMs were incorrect, but still useful for the participants. However, certain incorrect LLM outputs were thought to be correct by participants. This was most notable in LLMs optimised for chat.

The researchers suggest models that communicate uncertainty, respond well to user corrections, and can provide a concise rationale for their recommendations, make better assistants. Human users of LLMs should verify their outputs carefully, given their current shortcomings.

The results, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) , could be useful in both informing AI literacy training, and help developers improve LLMs for a wider range of uses.

While LLMs are becoming increasingly powerful, they can also make mistakes and provide incorrect information, which could have negative consequences as these systems become more integrated into our everyday lives.

"LLMs have become wildly popular, and evaluating their performance in a quantitative way is important, but we also need to evaluate how well these systems work with and can support people," said co-first author Albert Jiang, from Cambridge's Department of Computer Science and Technology. "We don't yet have comprehensive ways of evaluating an LLM's performance when interacting with humans."

The standard way to evaluate LLMs relies on static pairs of inputs and outputs, which disregards the interactive nature of chatbots, and how that changes their usefulness in different scenarios. The researchers developed CheckMate to help answer these questions, designed for but not limited to applications in mathematics.

"When talking to mathematicians about LLMs, many of them fall into one of two main camps: either they think that LLMs can produce complex mathematical proofs on their own, or that LLMs are incapable of simple arithmetic," said co-first author Katie Collins from the Department of Engineering. "Of course, the truth is probably somewhere in between, but we wanted to find a way of evaluating which tasks LLMs are suitable for and which they aren't."

The researchers recruited 25 mathematicians, from undergraduate students to senior professors, to interact with three different LLMs (InstructGPT, ChatGPT, and GPT-4) and evaluate their performance using CheckMate. Participants worked through undergraduate-level mathematical theorems with the assistance of an LLM and were asked to rate each individual LLM response for correctness and helpfulness. Participants did not know which LLM they were interacting with.

The researchers recorded the sorts of questions asked by participants, how participants reacted when they were presented with a fully or partially incorrect answer, whether and how they attempted to correct the LLM, or if they asked for clarification. Participants had varying levels of experience with writing effective prompts for LLMs, and this often affected the quality of responses that the LLMs provided.

An example of an effective prompt is "what is the definition of X" (X being a concept in the problem) as chatbots can be very good at retrieving concepts they know of and explaining it to the user.

"One of the things we found is the surprising fallibility of these models," said Collins. "Sometimes, these LLMs will be really good at higher-level mathematics, and then they'll fail at something far simpler. It shows that it's vital to think carefully about how to use LLMs effectively and appropriately."

However, like the LLMs, the human participants also made mistakes. The researchers asked participants to rate how confident they were in their own ability to solve the problem they were using the LLM for. In cases where the participant was less confident in their own abilities, they were more likely to rate incorrect generations by LLM as correct.

"This kind of gets to a big challenge of evaluating LLMs, because they're getting so good at generating nice, seemingly correct natural language, that it's easy to be fooled by their responses," said Jiang. "It also shows that while human evaluation is useful and important, it's nuanced, and sometimes it's wrong. Anyone using an LLM, for any application, should always pay attention to the output and verify it themselves."

Based on the results from CheckMate, the researchers say that newer generations of LLMs are increasingly able to collaborate helpfully and correctly with human users on undergraduate-level maths problems, as long as the user can assess the correctness of LLM-generated responses. Even if the answers may be memorised and can be found somewhere on the internet, LLMs have the advantage of being flexible in their inputs and outputs over traditional search engines (though should not replace search engines in their current form).

While CheckMate was tested on mathematical problems, the researchers say their platform could be adapted to a wide range of fields. In the future, this type of feedback could be incorporated into the LLMs themselves, although none of the CheckMate feedback from the current study has been fed back into the models.

"These kinds of tools can help the research community to have a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of these models," said Collins. "We wouldn't use them as tools to solve complex mathematical problems on their own, but they can be useful assistants, if the users know how to take advantage of them."

The research was supported in part by the Marshall Commission, the Cambridge Trust, Peterhouse, Cambridge, The Alan Turing Institute, the European Research Council, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

• Computer Modeling
• Mathematics
• Computers and Internet
• Mathematical Modeling
• Neural Interfaces
• Communications
• Distributed Computing
• Computer Science
• Computer security
• Scientific visualization
• Mathematical model
• John von Neumann
• Videoconferencing
• Virtual reality
• Game theory

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Cambridge . The original text of this story is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License . Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Katherine M. Collins, Albert Q. Jiang, Simon Frieder, Lionel Wong, Miri Zilka, Umang Bhatt, Thomas Lukasiewicz, Yuhuai Wu, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, William Hart, Timothy Gowers, Wenda Li, Adrian Weller, Mateja Jamnik. Evaluating language models for mathematics through interactions . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 2024; 121 (24) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2318124121

Cite This Page :

Explore More

• Myelination May Drive Drug Addiction
• Freshwater On Earth 4 Billion Years Ago
• Extended Battle: 3,500-Year-Old Mycenaean Armor
• Oral Insulin Drops: Relief for Diabetes Patients
• AIs Are Irrational, but Not Like Humans
• Bronze Age Cuisine of Mongolian Nomads
• Poor Quality Diet Makes Our Brains Sad
• AI Improves Performance Across Fusion Devices
• New Explanation for Why Earthquakes Happen
• Electrified Charcoal 'Sponge' Soaks Up CO2 ...

Trending Topics

Strange & offbeat.

Medical School Admissions Doctor

Premeds and Emerging Medical Research

Aspiring physician-scientists should bone up on areas such as gene editing, nanotechnology and regenerative medicine.

Zach Grimmett May 14, 2024

1 in 5 U.S. Cancer Patients Join in Medical Research

HealthDay April 3, 2024

CDC: Tuberculosis Cases Increasing

While the U.S. has one of the lowest rates of tuberculosis in the world, researchers found that cases increased 16% from 2022 to 2023.

Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder March 28, 2024

Researchers Find New Way to Curb Asthma Attacks

HealthDay March 26, 2024

Biden to Sign Order Expanding Health Research in Women

HealthDay March 18, 2024

Politics Hasn't Shaken Most Americans' Faith in Science: Study

HealthDay March 12, 2024

Jill Biden Announces $100 Million for Research on Women's Health

HealthDay Feb. 22, 2024

Study Links Living Alone to Depression

New research bound to influence conversations about America’s ‘loneliness epidemic’ suggests living alone could have implications for physical and mental health.

Steven Ross Johnson Feb. 15, 2024

Scientists Discover New Way to Fight Estrogen-Fueled Breast Cancer

HealthDay Feb. 14, 2024

Food Insecurity Tied to Early Death

An inability to get adequate food is shaving years off people’s lives in the U.S., a new study suggests.

Steven Ross Johnson Jan. 29, 2024

America 2024

Opaque AI research tools could undermine trust and accuracy of scientific findings

Overdependence on ‘opaque’ artificial intelligence (AI) systems in research could make scientific findings less reliable and limit their usefulness to solving real world challenges, a report by the Royal Society has found.

The Science in the Age of AI report from the UK’s national academy of sciences explores the opportunities and challenges of machine learning and large-language models as transformative tools for 21st century research.

From coding and statistical analysis, to generating novel insights from vast datasets, AI tools are already transforming fields, from drug discovery to climate modelling.

However, the report warns, the complexity and ‘black box’ nature of sophisticated machine-learning models means their outputs cannot always be explained by the researchers using them.

This does not stop AI generating useful insights. However, a growing body of irreproducible AI and machine learning-based studies raises questions about the soundness of their conclusions. 

Ultimately, the report warns that unreliable or untrustworthy AI technologies pose risks to science and to society’s trust in its findings. 

To mitigate these challenges and maximise the benefits AI can bring, the report recommends: 

• Establishing ‘open science’, environmental, and ethical frameworks for AI-based research to help assure findings are accurate, reproducible and support the public good. This could include agreements to make the data AI models are trained on available to researchers or ‘red teaming’ exercises to test the guardrails of what they can be used for.
• Investing in ‘CERN-style’ regional and cross-sector AI infrastructure, to ensure all scientific disciplines can access the computing power and data resources to conduct rigorous research and maintain the competitiveness of non-industry researchers.
• Promoting AI literacy among researchers and collaboration with developers to assure its accessibility and usability.

The peer-reviewed report was led by an expert working group of academics and industry figures and involved evidence reviews, interviews and workshops on emerging applications and trends in AI-supported, safety risks and the patent landscape.

Professor Alison Noble CBE FREng FRS, Vice President of the Royal Society and Technikos Professor of Biomedical Engineering, University of Oxford and Chair of the report’s working group, said:

“This report captures how the rapid adoption of AI across scientific disciplines is transforming research and enabling leaps in understanding that would not have been thinkable a decade ago.

“While AI systems are useful, they are not perfect. We should think of them almost like a scientific peer, they can offer valuable insights, but you would expect to be able to verify them yourself – and that isn’t always the case with current AI studies.”

“In my field, healthcare research, researchers have always struck a balance between confidentiality and transparency. Ensuring AI systems are as open as possible is a vital step to assuring its development benefits science and society.”

Dr Peter Dayan FRS, Director, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics and a member of the working group, said: 

"Science is constantly enjoying the introduction of disruptive new methodologies, from the microscope to computers, but adoption can be limited by things like cost, availability of the technology, and skills.

"Now machine learning is set to transform vast swathes of research, we need to ask what that requires in terms of access.

"The report's recommendations look at how we can achieve that confluence of high-quality data, processing power and researcher skills in a suitably equitable manner.

"The UK has always been good at generating large volumes of high-quality data in everything from large cohort studies, like UK Biobank, to areas like neuroscience; for these machine learning will be a particularly critical tool."

The pace of change in the AI-landscape is showcased in a review of the international patent filings up to 2021, undertaken by IP Pragmatics Limited on behalf of the report working group, which found that approximately 74% of all AI patent filings occurred in the previous five years.

It suggests that China and the US lead on, respectively, the number and value of patents filed, but the UK is well positioned for growth in this area. While it ranks 10th globally on patents, it is second in Europe behind Germany and has a 14.7% share of the AI life sciences market. 

Email updates

We promote excellence in science so that, together, we can benefit humanity and tackle the biggest challenges of our time.

Subscribe to our newsletters to be updated with the latest news on innovation, events, articles and reports.

What subscription are you interested in receiving? (Choose at least one subject)

TEST STORY: University of Arizona Pediatrics Department Celebrates Groundbreaking Research in Child Health

Pediatrics is doing amazing (subhead)

The University of Arizona’s Pediatrics Department is making headlines with its latest research initiatives aimed at improving child health outcomes. Our dedicated team of researchers and healthcare professionals is committed to advancing the field of pediatrics through innovative studies and cutting-edge treatments.

Spotlight on Innovation:

This month, we are proud to highlight several key projects that are setting new standards in pediatric care:

• New Vaccine Development: Our scientists are on the verge of releasing a groundbreaking vaccine that promises to significantly reduce the incidence of childhood illnesses. This development represents a major leap forward in preventive medicine.
• Mental Health Initiatives: Recognizing the importance of mental health in overall wellness, our department is launching new programs focused on early detection and intervention for mental health issues in children and adolescents.
• Telemedicine Expansion: To increase accessibility to quality care, the University of Arizona is expanding its telemedicine services. This initiative aims to provide comprehensive healthcare to children in rural and underserved areas.

Department of Biological Sciences

• TTU Biology

ECOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL BIOLOGY

•Landscape Ecology •Community Ecology •Community Ecology and Conservation Biology of Bats • Fire Ecology •Invertebrate Ecology •Coastal Marine Communities •Molecular Ecology •Sky Islands •Plant Physiology •Chihuahuan Desert •Coral Reef Ecology •Disease Ecology •Behavioral Ecology •Vector Ecology •Fire Ecology •Soil/Sediment Microbial Ecology •Bioremediation •Restoration Ecology •Sustainability Science

Are you interested in nature and want to help make the world a better place? A B.S. degree with an emphasis in Ecology and Environmental Biology is designed to give students an understanding of the interrelationships between organisms and their environment, and to prepare them for careers in conservation, ecosystem health, environmental consulting, education, and many others.

Members of our department engage in a wide variety of research topics aimed at creating a sustainable future. From deserts to wetlands to polar icecaps, we examine how changes to our environment affect microbes, plants, fungi, viruses, and animals (including people). We engage in field work, build computer models, and conduct experiments in labs and greenhouses. Students who are curious about conducting undergraduate / graduate research are encouraged to reach out to faculty whose research topics align with their own interests.

TTU Biology offers a wide range of ecology and environmental courses from Microbial Ecology, Plant Ecology, Community Ecology, Landscape Ecology, to Global Change Ecology. Core courses like Ecology and Environmental Problems (non-majors) and Principles of Ecology (majors) are offered year round as face-to-face or online courses. Many courses like Herpetology, Mammalogy, Marine Biology, Invertebrate Zoology, Ornithology, or Tropical Marine Biology discuss the roles of animal/plant groups in the various ecosystems. Many courses have labs and/or require field work. Students majoring in Biology for the B.S. degree may gain a concentration in Ecology and Environmental Biology .

Current course offerings via Open Classes

TTU CLIMATE CENTER

The TTU Climate Center is one of six consortium members of the South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center.  The Climate Center conducts interdisciplinary research to address the interactive effects of climate variability across the full array of landscapes within Texas, the South Central U.S. and the world. We provide the science, tools, and information to link current conditions with regional climate projections, and examine the real-world decision making and planning that can be used to best anticipate, monitor, and adapt to this projected climate change. Read more about the TTU Climate Center .

NATURAL SCIENCE RESEARCH LABORATORY

Research collections play an important role in understanding of species distributions and morphological characteristics, species diversity of a given area. Scientific collections can help establish a baseline for any future environmental changes. Many Ecology and Environmental Biology researchers collect specimens as part of their research efforts, and curate and deposit these specimens in collections such as the Natural Science Research Laboratory or the E.L. Reed Herbarium . Read more about the Natural Science Research Laboratory . 

Contact TTU