Showing posts with label headlines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label headlines. Show all posts

Monday, December 1, 2025

Headlines From the Future


Six months worth of science headlines that are so good you don't even need the article. 

Lab-grown teeth might become an alternative to fillings
Apr 2025, phys.org

via King's College London: Xuechen Zhang et al, Generating Tooth Organoids Using Defined Bioorthogonally Cross-Linked Hydrogels, ACS Macro Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.4c00520


Engineers turn toxic ancient tomb fungus into anti-cancer drug
Jun 2025, phys.org

via University of Pennsylvania: A class of benzofuranoindoline-bearing heptacyclic fungal RiPPs with anticancer activities, Nature Chemical Biology (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41589-025-01946-9

Edible microlasers made from food-safe materials can serve as barcodes and biosensors
Jul 2025, phys.org

Yo what the f*** are you talking about
Researchers have encoded an expiration date into a peach compote using microlaser barcodes embedded inside the food.

Still not getting it
It's composed of droplets of oil or water–glycerol mixtures doped with natural optical gain substances, such as chlorophyll or riboflavin, to create microlasers for optical barcodes or sensors.

via Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana Slovenia: Abdur Rehman Anwar et al, Microlasers Made Entirely from Edible Substances, Advanced Optical Materials (2025). DOI: 10.1002/adom.202500497

Muscle-inspired sheet-like robot navigates the tightest spaces
Aug 2025, phys.org

via Pohang University of Science and Technology: Hyung Gon Shin et al, Soft and flexible robot skin actuator using multilayer 3D pneumatic network, Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-60496-9

'Ghost sharks' grow forehead teeth to help them have sex, study suggests
Sep 2025, phys.org

via University of Florida: Karly E. Cohen et al, Teeth outside the jaw: Evolution and development of the toothed head clasper in chimaeras, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2508054122

'Wetware': Scientists use human mini-brains to power computers
Oct 2025, phys.org

via Swiss start-up FinalSpark: https://finalspark.com/

Bioelectronic-integrated artificial colon eliminates need for animal testing
Oct 2025, phys.org

via University of California Irvine: Jorge Alfonso Tavares‐Negrete et al, Development of a 3D Human Colon Model Along with Bioelectronics for the Induction and Monitoring of Diseases, Advanced Science (2025). DOI: 10.1002/advs.202506377

Post Script - Sometimes science is a foreign language:
Quantum state lifetimes extended by laser-triggered electron tunneling in cuprate ladders
Jun 2025, phys.org

via Emory University and the Paul Scherrer Institute: Hari Padma et al, Symmetry-protected electronic metastability in an optically driven cuprate ladder, Nature Materials (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41563-025-02254-2

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Tuesday, April 1, 2025

Headlines From the Front Lines


It may be April Fool's, but the headlines are real.

Iberian nailed head ritual was more complex than expected, isotope analysis reveals
Feb 2025, phys.org

Not trying to be anti-literacy here, it's just that sometimes the headline is all you need. (Although this particular headline below requires the accompanying image.)

via Autonomous University of Barcelona: Rubén de la Fuente-Seoane et al, Territorialisation and human mobility during the Iron Age in NE Iberia: An approach through Isotope Analyses of the Severed Heads from Puig Castellar (Barcelona, Spain) and Ullastret (Girona, Spain), Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2025.105035



Antioxidant carbon dot nanozymes alleviate depression in rats by restoring the gut microbiome
Sep 2024, phys.org

Some headlines just make me feel like how a cracked windshield can become the the quintessential heavy metal band name font, but for like a mad scientist type of science thing. 

via Henan Joint International Research Laboratory of Nanomaterials for Energy and Catalysis at Xuchang University: Huimin Jia et al, Antioxidant Carbon Dots Nanozymes Alleviate Stress-induced Depression by Modulating Gut Microbiota, Langmuir (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.4c02481


Google reacts angrily to report it will have to sell Chrome
Nov 2024, BBC News


'Alzheimer's in dish' model shows promise for accelerating drug discovery
Nov 2024, phys.org

(Alzheimer's isn't funny but Alzheimer's-in-a-dish is funny.)

via Massachusetts General Hospital: Yeganeah, PN et al. Integrative Pathway Analysis across Humans and 3D Cellular Models Identifies the p38 MAPK-MK2 Axis as a Therapeutic Target for Alzheimer's Disease, Neuron (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2024.10.029.


Topological quantum processor uses Majorana zero modes for fault-tolerant computing
Feb 2025, phys.org

It's got all the words - majorana fermion, topological things, and quantum computers - but I still don't buy it because it's Microsoft and they lie about shit all the time. In fact, I'm going to assume that specifically because it's a Microsoft press release, that it was engineered to have all these words on purpose. Shall we say, a kind of artificial headline generator trained on hype words more than the actual work that was done. 

(Actual scientists working in academia are not convinced, by the way.)

via UC Santa Barbara and Microsoft Station Q: David Aasen et al, Roadmap to fault tolerant quantum computation using topological qubit arrays, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2502.12252


Biohybrid hand uses sushi-like rolls of lab-grown human muscle to move objects
Feb 2025, phys.org

via University of Tokyo: XINZHU REN et al, Biohybrid hand actuated by multiple human muscle tissues, Science Robotics (2025). DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adr5512.


Engineers develop a fully 3D-printed electrospray engine that can power tiny satellites
Feb 2025, phys.org

via MIT: Hyeonseok Kim et al, High‐Impulse, Modular, 3D‐Printed CubeSat Electrospray Thrusters Throttleable via Pressure and Voltage Control, Advanced Science (2025). DOI: 10.1002/advs.202413706

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Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Headlines and the Semantic Trance


Researchers discover that worms use electricity to jump
Jun 2023, phys.org

Travel by electric field -- "Caenorhabditis elegans worms can use electric fields to "jump" across Petri plates or onto insects, allowing them to glide through the air and attach themselves, for example, onto naturally charged bumblebee chauffeurs. Pollinators, such as insects and hummingbirds, are known to be electrically charged, and it is believed that pollen is attracted by the electric field formed by the pollinator and the plant."

via Hiroshima University: Takuma Sugi, Caenorhabditis elegans transfers across a gap under an electric field as dispersal behavior, Current Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.05.042



Single-particle photoacoustic vibrational spectroscopy using optical microresonators
Aug 2023, phys.org

^Who told you that was an ok title

(In defense, this is the title of the original article, which is usually changed by the writer of the press release, this one ostensibly from Peking University; assuming their AI title-generator had the day off.)

via Peking University: Shui-Jing Tang et al, Single-particle photoacoustic vibrational spectroscopy using optical microresonators, Nature Photonics (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41566-023-01264-3


The solution space of the spherical negative perceptron model is star-shaped, researchers find
Jan 2024, phys.org

One of the main reasons I subject myself to reading the headlines of 300 science articles every week, is that I'm trying to lapse into a semantic trance where I'm reading English and yet at the same time, I'm reading a completely alien language. The two different parts of the brain, the one that knows words and the one that tries to figure out "what the f**k is going on" when novel situations appear, they vacillate, flickering for domination; it's kind of like a very low-level form of epilepsy, and some people like that kind of thing.  

via Bocconi University, Politecnico di Torino and Bocconi Institute for Data Science and Analytics: Brandon Livio Annesi et al, Star-Shaped Space of Solutions of the Spherical Negative Perceptron, Physical Review Letters (2023). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.227301.

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Thursday, January 11, 2024

Officially Human


Researchers create embryo-like structures from monkey embryonic stem cells for the first time
Apr 2023, phys.org

via Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai: Zhen Liu, Cynomolgus monkey embryo model captures gastrulation and early pregnancy, Cell Stem Cell (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.stem.2023.03.009

Image credit: Logo for an app that allows users to take photos and submit them so that our company can create tactile sensory puzzles from the photo [link]


With in vitro model advances, group proposes refined legal definition of an embryo
Aug 2023, phys.org

(This doesn't seem to have made it to the national news, so I'm less suspicious that it's some political propaganda stuff; not not suspicious, just less.)

International Society for Stem Cell Research: "Stem cell research has enabled the formation of models capable of organizing into structures that rudimentarily resemble embryos and reflect various degrees of completeness and developmental stages," says first author Nicolas Rivron, a development biologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

"These new propositions are part of an effort to bring clarity to ongoing research—to better classify the types of structures formed in the laboratory, to refine the legal definition of human embryos, and to pinpoint what currently makes models and embryos different from the legal standpoint."

Officially human, their definition: "a group of human cells supported by elements fulfilling extra-embryonic and uterine functions that, combined, have the potential to form a fetus."

But this is the line that really hits me:

"This definition allows us to think about the conditions under which models, if improved, might eventually pass a tipping point and be legally considered embryos."

In other words, we are making people, and so we're starting to wonder at what point we will start calling them people. (Actually, these scientists are saying no, these embryos cannot form neonates, but that they are showing us things we never knew about the developing human, since it's hidden in the womb.)

via the International Society for Stem Cell Research and : Nicolas C. Rivron, An ethical framework for human embryology with embryo models, Cell (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2023.07.028.


Researchers develop biodegradable optical fiber to measure or modulate electrical current in the body
Sep 2023, phys.org

A biocompatible and biodegradable optical fiber based on agar, a substance extracted from Gracilaria seaweed, when excited by coherent light, produces granular light patterns that modulate the agar's refraction index and create disturbances in the granular patterns, which can be used to detect bioelectrical stimuli, so it can be part of a sensor system for living things. 

via State University of Campinas's School of Mechanical Engineering in São Paulo, Gleb Wataghin Institute of Physics, and Gunma University in Japan: Eric Fujiwara et al, Agar-based optical sensors for electric current measurements, Scientific Reports (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-40749-7

AI Art - Old Worker with Sombrero Operating a 3D Printer in Cosmic Space Graffiti - 2023

A non-invasive way to turn a cockroach into a cyborg
Sep 2023, phys.org

First, we made remote control roaches by smashing an electric circuit through their head. But now, it's as simple as slipping over their antennae a sleeve made of gold and plastic, and fixed in place by a blast of ultraviolet light, like plastic shrink-wrap.

Note to self -- insects don't get injured, they get damaged: "damaging cockroaches during attempts to control them results in a very short life expectancy, which then results in very little payoff for a lot of work".

via Nanyang Technological University in Singapore: Qifeng Lin et al, Resilient conductive membrane synthesized by in-situ polymerisation for wearable non-invasive electronics on moving appendages of cyborg insect, npj Flexible Electronics (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41528-023-00274-z

Note: For a cockroach, their antenna is their nose, and so this is how we'll do it for humans too. (Except I see the laser pulses through the retina as a likely candidate as well.)

Artist's representation of a person with a robotic arm - Ekaterina Ivanova QMUL - 2023

One hour of training is all you need to control a third robotic arm
Sep 2023, phys.org

Today we bring you "Supernumerary Body Parts", because humans, as they were originally designed, are just not enough and we need to do better -- The study, published in the IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology, investigated the potential of supernumerary robotic arms to help people perform tasks that require more than two hands. 

via Queen Mary University of London, Imperial College London and The University of Melbourne: Yanpei Huang et al, Can Training Make Three Arms Better Than Two Heads for Trimanual Coordination?, IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1109/OJEMB.2023.3305808

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Monday, February 27, 2023

Headlines For Me But Not For Thee


Axolotls can regenerate their brains, revealing secrets of brain evolution and regeneration
Sep 2022, phys.org

Researchers develop hierarchically self-assembled homochiral helical microtoroids
Nov 2022, phys.org

Jet lagged plants pave the way to first digital plant
Nov 2022, phys.org

Heart attack on a chip shows how heart changes after the event
Dec 2022, phys.org

Feline genetics help pinpoint first-ever domestication of cats
(Feline geneticist Leslie A. Lyons come on)
Dec 2022, phys.org


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Tuesday, September 20, 2022

Tell You What


Studying schizophrenia in plants? Researchers are giving it a shot
Jun 2022, phys.org

"Schizophrenic-like plant"

via Yale: Alexandra Ralevski et al, Plant mitochondrial FMT and its mammalian homolog CLUH controls development and behavior in Arabidopsis and locomotion in mice, Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1007/s00018-022-04382-3


New laser breakthrough to help understanding of gravitational waves
Jun 2022, phys.org

"Metasurfaces" and "Eigenmodes"

via University of Western Australia Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery: Metasurface Enhanced Spatial Mode Decomposition, arXiv:2109.04663v2 [physics.optics] arxiv.org/abs/2109.04663

Also: Aaron W. Jones et al, Metasurface-enhanced spatial mode decomposition, Physical Review A (2022). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.105.053523


Amazon employees say the company cracked down on union organizing following Amazon Labor Union victory
Jun 14 2022, The Washington Post [soft paywall]

"Aggressively avoiding"

Amazon fired warehouse worker Rakyle Johnson, a member of Amazonians United who alleged in a labor board filing earlier this month that Amazon fired him because he “joined or supported a labor organization.” Amazon’s Nantel disputed those allegations, saying Desatnik was terminated for aggressively avoiding a security screening...


Study finds toxicity in the open-source community varies from other internet forums
Jul 2022, phys.org

"Politeness Detector"

via Institute for Software Research in Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science, and Wesleyan: "Did You Miss My Comment or What?" Understanding Toxicity in Open Source Discussions, Courtney Miller et al, International Conference on Software Engineering, May 2022. 


World's first self-calibrated photonic chip: An interchange for optical data superhighways
Jul 2022, phys.org

Some things aren't exactly new or novel I just like the way they sound together:

"self-calibrating optical microcomb chip"

via Monash University: Xingyuan Xu et al, Self-calibrating programmable photonic integrated circuits, Nature Photonics (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41566-022-01020-z


Overconfidence bolsters anti-scientific views, study finds
Jul 2022, phys.org

"Anti-consensus"

via Portland State University: Nicholas Light et al, Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views on controversial scientific issues, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abo0038


Neural networks and 'ghost' electrons accurately reconstruct behavior of quantum systems
Aug 2022, phys.org

Just here for the ghost electrons.

via Simons Foundation: Javier Robledo Moreno et al, Fermionic wave functions from neural-network constrained hidden states, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2122059119


Public database of standardized linguistic features
Jun 2022, phys.org

Words in general:

It's called Lexibank, like GenBank for sequenced genomes, but for languages; it's a standardized wordlist for more than 2,000 languages. "We decided to create our own standards, called Cross-Linguistic Data Formats, which have now been used successfully in a multitude of projects in which our department is involved."

"Thanks to our standardized representation of language data, it is now easy to check how many languages use words like 'mama' and 'papa' for 'mother' and 'father,'" reports List. "It turns out that this pattern can indeed be found in many languages of the world and in very different regions," adds Simon J. Greenhill, one of the founders of the Lexibank project. "Since all the languages with this pattern are not closely related to each other, it reflects independent parallel evolution, just as the great linguist Roman Jakobson suggested in 1968."

"When investigating which languages use the same word for 'arm' and 'hand,' we found that these languages typically also use the same word for 'leg' and 'foot,'" List reports. "While this may seem to be a silly coincidence, it shows that the lexicon of human languages is often much more structured than one might assume when investigating one language in isolation."

via Max Planck Society: Lexibank, A public repository of standardized wordlists with computed phonological and lexical features, Scientific Data (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41597-022-01432-0


Post Script:
One of the silver linings of the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine happened when listening to the news describe the Snake Island Go Fuck Yourself story -- since the news can't say things like "go fuck yourself", even if they are quoting someone else, they say instead that the Snake Island soldiers "...told them what to do with themselves...".

There's something special about listening to people talk about something you're explicitly not allowed to talk about, a premium exercise in syntactical engineering. And possibly similar to the Don't Say Gay law, which makes it illegal to say the name of the law that makes it illegal to say the law. ... Golden Braids for Days!


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Monday, September 19, 2022

Headlines Are For Clicking


'Google' is most searched word on Bing, Google says
Oct 2021, BBC News

But isn't that exactly what Google would say?

Image credit: Anatoly Fomenko's Topological Zoo, 1967


KP Snacks hack prompts crisp and nut supplies warning
Feb 2022, BBC News

This is what English must look like to a non-English speaker.
(Translation for Americans: KP is a brand of potato chips etc. who got hacked.)


Repurposed drug-seeking AI system generates 40,000 possible chemical weapons in just six hours
Mar 2022, phys.org

Maybe one of the greatest scifi headlines of all time?

via Collaborations Pharmaceuticals and King's College London: Fabio Urbina, Filippa Lentzos, Cédric Invernizzi & Sean Ekins, Dual use of artificial-intelligence-powered drug discovery, Nature Machine Intelligence (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s42256-022-00465-9


Dyson headphones come with air vacuum for mouth
Mar 2022, BBC News

Does not sound appetizing.


Major cryptography blunder in Java enables “psychic paper” forgeries: A failure to sanity check signatures for division-by-zero flaws makes forgeries easy.
Apr 2022, Ars Technica

Another one, this headline makes me feel as if English is my second language; a combination of words, each of which I know, but when combined don't mean anything to me, and fills my brain with a flickering Necker cube of autocompletes.


Algorithm predicts which students will drop out of math courses
May 2022, phys.org

Eight weeks in advance: We can say when they develop a latent tendency to drop out, which is not yet directly observable at the time, based on their own statements about how they feel and how they are doing in their studies. Their data was a pile of five-minute surveys, three times a week, over 131 semester days.

via University of Tübingen: Augustin Kelava et al, Forecasting Intra-individual Changes of Affective States Taking into Account Inter-individual Differences Using Intensive Longitudinal Data from a University Student Dropout Study in Math, Psychometrika (2022). DOI: 10.1007/s11336-022-09858-6


Scientists observe large-scale, ordered and tunable Majorana-zero-mode lattice
Jun 2022, phys.org

Because the future is a majorana fermion.

via Chinese Academy of Sciences: Meng Li et al, Ordered and tunable Majorana-zero-mode lattice in naturally strained LiFeAs, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04744-8


In trial, brain zaps gave seniors a month-long memory boost
Aug 2022, phys.org

They call it "transcranial alternating current stimulation".

via Cognitive & Clinical Neuroscience Laboratory at Boston University: Robert Reinhart, Long-lasting, dissociable improvements in working memory and long-term memory in older adults with repetitive neuromodulation, Nature Neuroscience (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41593-022-01132-3


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