A new topology-based method predicts atomic charges in metal-organic frameworks from bond connectivity alone, making large-scale computational screening practical. [...]

Carbon nanotube sandpaper polishes semiconductor surfaces down to a few atoms, reducing defects by 67% and eliminating chemical slurry waste. [...]

Bluetooth 6 is gaining traction in audio, but its best features ultimately lie in new hardware. [...]

I often get asked about cheap power banks with hard-to-believe claims. Well, I bought one and tested it. [...]

Researchers developed an advanced AI system named YORU that can identify specific animal behaviors with over 90% accuracy across multiple species. By combining this high-speed recognition with optogenetics, the team successfully demonstrated the ability to shut down specific brain circuits in real-time using targeted light. [...]

AI agents are a risky business. Even when stuck inside the chatbox window, LLMs will make mistakes and behave badly. Once they have tools that they can use to interact with the outside world, such as web browsers and email addresses, the consequences of those mistakes become far more serious. That [...]

For millions of years, a frozen wanderer drifted between the stars before slipping into our solar system as 3I/ATLAS—only the third known interstellar comet ever spotted. When scientists turned NASA’s Swift Observatory toward it, they caught the first-ever hint of water from such an object, detected through a faint ultraviolet [...]

James J. Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science at MIT and faculty co-lead of the Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health, is embarking on a multidisciplinary research project that applies synthetic biology and generative artificial intelligence to the growing global threat of antimicrobial resistance [...]

A distant star system with four super-sized gas giants has revealed a surprise. Thanks to JWST’s powerful vision, astronomers detected sulfur in their atmospheres — a chemical clue that they formed like Jupiter, by slowly building solid cores. That’s unexpected because these planets are far bigger and orbit much farther [...]

The DuRobo Krono is one of the few e-reading devices that fits comfortably in my pants. [...]

Looking for a budget-friendly OLED upgrade? The LG B5 at half price is one of the best deals ahead of Presidents' Day. [...]

A security device made from gold nanoparticles uses light alone to create, verify, and reset uncopyable identities, enabling repeated defense against counterfeiting. [...]

The signals that drive many of the brain and body’s most essential functions — consciousness, sleep, breathing, heart rate, and motion — course through bundles of “white matter” fibers in the brainstem, but imaging systems so far have been unable to finely resolve these crucial neural cables. That has left [...]

A silicon-based nanothrombolytic combines clot dissolution with local microenvironment regulation, enhancing safety and efficacy in thrombotic disorders. [...]

In September, Alfred Stephen, a freelance software developer in Singapore, purchased a ChatGPT Plus subscription, which costs $20 a month and offers more access to advanced models, to speed up his work. But he grew frustrated with the chatbot’s coding abilities and its gushing, meandering replies. Then he came across [...]

A long-standing mystery in spintronics has just been shaken up. A strange electrical effect called unusual magnetoresistance shows up almost everywhere scientists look—even in systems where the leading explanation, spin Hall magnetoresistance, shouldn’t work at all. Now, new experiments reveal a far simpler origin: the way electrons scatter at material [...]

Researchers at the University of Michigan have created an AI system that can interpret brain MRI scans in just seconds, accurately identifying a wide range of neurological conditions and determining which cases need urgent care. Trained on hundreds of thousands of real-world scans along with patient histories, the model achieved [...]

Olympic figure skating looks effortless. Athletes sail across the ice, then soar into the air, spinning like a top, before landing on a single blade just 4-5 millimeters wide. To help figure skaters land quadruple axels, Salchows, Lutzes, and maybe even the elusive quintuple without looking the least bit stressed, [...]

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Lots of influential people in tech last week were describing Moltbook, an online hangout populated by AI agents interacting with one another, as a glimpse into the future. [...]

For years, our newsroom has explored AI’s limitations and potential dangers, as well as its growing energy needs. And our reporters have looked closely at how generative tools are being used for tasks such as coding and running scientific experiments.  But how is AI actually being used in fields like health [...]

A firm that wants to use a large language model (LLM) to summarize sales reports or triage customer inquiries can choose between hundreds of unique LLMs with dozens of model variations, each with slightly different performance.To narrow down the choice, companies often rely on LLM ranking platforms, which gather user [...]

Baker’s yeast isn’t just useful in the kitchen — it may also be built for space. Researchers found that yeast cells can survive intense shock waves and toxic chemicals similar to those on Mars. The cells protect themselves by forming special stress-response structures that help them endure extreme conditions. This [...]

Inspired by the shape-shifting skin of octopuses, Penn State researchers developed a smart hydrogel that can change appearance, texture, and shape on command. The material is programmed using a special printing technique that embeds digital instructions directly into the skin. Images and information can remain invisible until triggered by heat, [...]

A new light-based breakthrough could help quantum computers finally scale up. Stanford researchers created miniature optical cavities that efficiently collect light from individual atoms, allowing many qubits to be read at once. The team has already demonstrated working arrays with dozens and even hundreds of cavities. The approach could eventually [...]

Scientists warn that rapid advances in AI and neurotechnology are outpacing our understanding of consciousness, creating serious ethical risks. New research argues that developing scientific tests for awareness could transform medicine, animal welfare, law, and AI development. But identifying consciousness in machines, brain organoids, or patients could also force society [...]