Good news, everyone!

As researchers around the world race toward the realization of 6G wireless communication systems, the need for antennas that can dynamically adapt to ever-changing signal environments has never been greater. A key requirement of 6G is intelligent beam control, which enables signals to be steered, shaped, and optimized in real time to support ultra-high data rates, low latency, and massive device connectivity.

Researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have set a record runtime with a new compressorless gas turbine. The burner, featuring a revolutionary pressure-gain combustion technology, operated for 303 seconds. This achievement not only exceeds NASA's previous record of 250 seconds but also sets new standards for the use of hydrogen in energy supply, which—unlike natural gas—can be produced using renewable energy sources.

Human hands are a wonder of nature and unmatched in the animal kingdom. They can twist caps, flick switches, handle tiny objects with ease, and perform thousands of tasks every day. Robot hands struggle to keep up. They typically miss the sense of touch, can't move many fingers at once, and lose track of what they are holding when their fingers block their camera's view. Scientists have now developed a smarter way to train a robot's brain to give its hands human-like dexterity.

An international research team, including VUB data scientist Yannick Jadoul, has shed new light on the rhythmic nature of sexual behavior in bonobos. By precisely analyzing the tempo of movements during sex, researchers aim to better understand which building blocks of rhythm and communication are present in other species—and what this implies for the evolution of uniquely human traits such as speech and music. The study is published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

For years, consumers have quietly edited themselves online. A harsh review softened. A detail left out. A complaint never posted at all. New research shows that when the legal threat behind that silence disappears, the internet gets more honest, and more useful, almost immediately.

Rutgers researchers have made a discovery that could change the future of seafood farming in New Jersey. A study led by marine scientist Daphne Munroe has shown that Atlantic surfclams can be successfully farmed in the open ocean. Her research, published in the North American Journal of Aquaculture, proves that offshore aquaculture is not only possible but promising. This method could help meet the increasing demand for seafood while protecting wild clam populations.

High-altitude flight is getting increasing attention from sectors ranging from telecommunications to emergency response. To make that airspace more accessible, NASA is developing an air traffic management system covering those altitudes and supplementing its work with real-time data from a research balloon in Earth's stratosphere.

Soaring in popularity, GLP-1 medications—from weekly injections to newly available pills—are rapidly reshaping how Americans think about weight loss. In fact, a recent poll finds 1 in 8 adults are now taking medications like Ozempic or Wegovy for weight loss or chronic conditions, and use is expected to keep rising.

The new moon on Feb. 17 marks the start of the Lunar New Year, a celebration originating in China that today is celebrated around the world. According to the Chinese zodiac, 2026 is the year of the Fire Horse, symbolizing energy and passion.

A new Alzheimer's treatment side effect that results in brain swelling may have an upside, according to a new study from Houston Methodist Research Institute. The research finds that beta amyloid—a protein that accumulates as plaques in the brain—may be cleared more in brain regions that had this side effect, signaling a stronger treatment response.

Just how small can a QR code be? Small enough that it can only be recognized with an electron microscope. A research team at TU Wien, working together with the data storage technology company Cerabyte, has now demonstrated exactly that. The QR code covers an area of just 1.98 square micrometers—smaller than most bacteria. The record has now been verified and officially entered into the Guinness World Records.

For 40 years, scientists have been monitoring the Neotropical otter (Lontra longicaudis) along the southern coast of Brazil. A study published in Estuarine Management and Technologies reveals that these charismatic mammals are far more than just inhabitants of the coast; they are "living sensors" providing information about ecosystem decay.

Liquid biopsies, which test body fluids that contain cancerous material, including circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), are a noninvasive way to learn about a cancer's biology. However, technological limitations with the small amount of ctDNA available from pediatric brain tumor liquid biopsies have previously stymied broad use of the approach for those patients. To address this, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists, in collaboration with scientists at the Hopp Children's Cancer Center Heidelberg (KiTZ), German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and other international centers, created Methylation-based Predictive Algorithm for CNS Tumors (M-PACT). M-PACT uses AI to sift through ctDNA in cerebrospinal fluid and molecularly classify tumors based on their DNA methylation pattern.

Understanding what complex chemical measurements reveal about materials and reactions can take weeks or months of analysis. But now, an AI-powered platform developed by researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) could reduce this interpretation cycle to minutes, enabling much faster insight into chemical processes relevant to energy storage, catalysis, and manufacturing.

Common seal pups communicate in ways that are more similar to humans than previously thought. For instance, they take turns when "speaking" and their calls become increasingly alike when they spend time around each other. This is shown by research conducted by biologist Koen de Reus (affiliated with the Max Planck Institute), who will defend his Ph.D. thesis on this topic at Radboud University and Vrije Universiteit Brussel on 20 February. For his study, he and his colleagues recorded more than 1,000 hours of audio from seal pups in Pieterburen.

There is much debate about the role of social media in young people's lives. But what do adolescents themselves think about it? In any case, they feel they are not being listened to enough, according to a new study by Radboud University. The report outlines how young people experience social media and how they believe a more pleasant online environment can be created.

Fairy wrens are everywhere. Go anywhere in Australia and there will be at least one local fairy wren. They're not endangered. In fact, it would be hard to imagine an animal less endangered than fairy wrens. So what do we gain from researching them? Quite a lot actually.

Imagine a "smart fluid" whose internal structure can be rearranged just by changing temperature. In a new study published in Matter, researchers report a way to overcome a long-standing limitation in a class of "smart fluids" called nematic liquid crystal microcolloids, allowing for reconfigurable self-assembly of micrometer-sized particles dispersed in a nematic liquid crystal host.

Researchers at McGill University have improved the efficiency of a method for converting human urine into clean energy. The method employs microbial fuel cells (MFCs), which use bacteria to turn organic waste into electricity, providing a sustainable and low-cost means of treating wastewater while generating energy from an abundant source.

The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is a prestigious competition featuring talented high school students from around the world, in which competitors solve complicated mathematical problems. Geometry problems from these kinds of competitions—in particular, the formal logic and spatial reasoning involved—has been noted as a critical benchmark in artificial intelligence (AI) research.

Technology is making the ride-hail industry more accessible than ever, according to new research published in the Strategic Management Journal. The study, conducted by academics at the National University of Singapore (NUS), shows that navigation apps are not just a convenience—they're a game-changer for many drivers, especially those with less experience behind the wheel.

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, working with international partners, have uncovered surprising behavior in a specially engineered crystal. Composed of tantalum, tungsten and selenium—elements often studied for their potential in advanced electronics—the crystal demonstrates an unexpected atomic arrangement that hints at novel applications in spin-based electronics and quantum materials.

A new study from researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities shows how strategic changes in water treatment effectively treated a deadly outbreak of Legionnaires' disease. For the first time, the study, published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, provides evidence of an outbreak being stopped by introducing disinfection to previously untreated groundwater.

High-speed 3D printing has just gotten a lot faster. Researchers from Tsinghua University in China have developed a new high-speed printing technology capable of creating complex millimeter-scale objects in just 0.6 seconds. Traditional 3D printing is often slow because it builds objects one thin layer at a time. While a newer method called volumetric printing, which uses light to shape an object, has become progressively faster in recent years, it has hit a major speed bump.

Immunotherapy—which activates the body's own immune system to kill cancer cells—has not worked well against a rare and fatal liver cancer, but a new study finds an existing FDA-approved drug may allow the immunotherapy to fight the cancer as intended, opening the door to a potential treatment. Fibrolamellar carcinoma primarily affects children and young adults and accounts for up to 2% of all liver cancers. It currently has no cure and has often metastasized by the time it is detected, leaving patients with a short life expectancy.

What's the key to growing resilient crops that can survive tough conditions? Researchers at the University of Missouri are getting to the root of it—literally. Researchers in the Walter Gassmann lab at Mizzou's Bond Life Sciences Center have discovered how a specific protein known as SRFR1 plays a critical role in how deeply plant roots grow underground. Even more promising, they unlocked a way to manipulate this protein to encourage longer root growth, a trait that can potentially help plants better withstand drought.

When an electron travels through a polar crystalline solid, its negative charge attracts the positively charged atomic cores, causing the surrounding crystal lattice to deform. The electron and lattice distortion then move together through the material—like a single object. Physicists call these quasiparticles polarons. A team led by Professor Jochen Feldmann from LMU has succeeded in tracking the extremely brief formation process of this object for the first time, using an ultrafast imaging method.

A mystery novel, a history book, and a fantasy epic may have little in common in plot or style. But count the words inside them and a strange regularity appears: many new words show up early, then fewer and fewer as the author reuses what has already been introduced. That pattern, known as Heaps' law, turns out not to belong to books alone. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that the same rule also describes how many complex systems grow, from living cells and corporations to universities and government agencies—and could even be used to predict how they will change in the future.

Adjusting the size and chemistry of nanocrystals within an ultrathin surface can speed up light-driven chemical reactions, according to a University of Michigan Engineering study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The new method works by matching the crystals' electronic rhythm to the internal vibrations of target molecules.

Younger and older adults alike are able to adopt new socio-emotional behaviors. Even older adults benefit from a personality intervention aimed at handling stress and challenging social situations better. This is the conclusion of a psychological aging research study conducted by researchers from Germany and Switzerland led by Prof. Dr. Cornelia Wrzus (Heidelberg University) and Prof. Dr. Corina Aguilar-Raab (University of Mannheim). The study examined the effects of an intervention program in participants of varying ages. It concluded that social and emotional skills training benefits both younger and older adults.

Canine cancer patients receiving a new form of immunotherapy lived longer or shorter depending on the composition of their microbiome, the community of organisms living in their gut. Results of the clinical trial led by Oregon State University scientists were published in Veterinary Oncology.

Astrophysicists from the University of Waterloo have observed a new jellyfish galaxy, the most distant one of its kind ever captured. Jellyfish galaxies are named for the long, tentacle-like streams that trail behind them. They move quickly through their hot, dense galaxy cluster, and the gas within the cluster acts like a strong wind pushing the jellyfish galaxy's own gas out the back, forming trails. The technical term for this process is ram-pressure stripping. The Waterloo scientists found this galaxy in deep space data captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It is at z = 1.156, meaning we're seeing it as it was 8.5 billion years ago, when the universe was much younger.

Humans have climbed to the top of the food chain by skillfully hunting, trapping, and fishing for other animals at scales that far exceed other predators, altering how the animals behave and earning the tag of a "super-predator." But a new study led by the Center for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), suggests that there is a bit more nuance to this idea. While animals clearly respond with fear to humans who hunt or kill, they are far less consistent in how they react to non-lethal human presence.

Jessica Allen crunched through fallen leaves among Manzanita trees hunting for something few have spotted before: the Manzanita butter clump—a rare and little-known yellow mushroom found, so far, only along North America's Western coastlines.

Extreme heat can have a devastating effect on seagrass, but new research from Edith Cowan University (ECU) could shape how these vitally important marine ecosystems are managed and restored. In separate studies carried out on both the west and east coasts of Australia, researchers have investigated how seagrasses stand up to marine heat waves and prolonged ocean warming.

Survival of the fittest. Nature red in tooth and claw. The common view of natural selection is based solely on the individual: A trait allows an organism to out-compete its rivals and is thus passed down to its offspring. To suggest otherwise can provoke the ire of certain segments of the scientific community, acknowledged Binghamton University Associate Professor Emerita of Biological Sciences Anne Clark.

Scientists have long seen a puzzling pattern in tokamaks, the doughnut-shaped machines that could one day reliably generate electricity from fusing atoms. When plasma particles escape the core of the magnetic fields that hold the plasma in its doughnut shape, they stream down toward the exhaust system, known as the divertor. There, plasma particles strike metal plates, cool down and bounce back. (The returning atoms help fuel the fusion reaction.) But experiments consistently show that far more particles hit the inner divertor target than the outer one.

In an early test of how AI can be used to decipher large amounts of health data, researchers at UC San Francisco and Wayne State University found that generative AI tools could perform orders of magnitude faster—and in some cases better than computer science teams that had spent months poring over the data.

For years, rising rates of myopia—or nearsightedness—have been widely attributed to increased screen time, especially among children and young adults. But new research from scientists at the SUNY College of Optometry suggests the story may be more complicated—and more human.

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have discovered that a crucial developmental process in the brain's hypothalamus may influence how susceptible individuals are to obesity. Their preclinical findings, published in Neuron, show that a transcription factor called Otp acts as a molecular "switch" that directs immature hypothalamic neurons toward either appetite-suppressing or appetite-stimulating fates—their ultimate identities as specialized cells. The researchers found that disrupting this switch alters feeding behavior and protects mice from diet-induced obesity.

A single dose of the psychedelic drug dimethyltryptamine (DMT), given with psychological support, rapidly reduced depressive symptoms in 34 adults with major depressive disorder, according to a clinical trial published in Nature Medicine. The improvements, which continued over the ensuing two weeks, suggest that this short-acting treatment could be a more practical therapy compared with other longer-acting psychedelic therapies.

Researchers investigating how to increase participation in physical activity by autistic children and teens say key strategies include creating predictable routines, involving family members and ensuring safe and sensory-friendly spaces.

Victoria's Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) Act came into effect in 2019. Initially erring on the side of caution, the VAD Act has recently been revised to be more accessible. While death is a sensitive topic for many, these changes are an important move towards people with terminal illnesses gaining autonomy over their lives by removing the barriers and obstacles often involved in seeking relief of suffering on their own terms.

Year after year, government records show late summer is when most babies are born, with August as the most common birth month. That means—right now—tens of thousands of future parents are planning nursery colors, work leave, and childbirth classes.

The use of solar cells, devices that can convert sunlight into electricity, has grown exponentially over the past decades. These devices are enabling the production of clean and renewable energy, which could contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions on Earth and help to mitigate climate change.

An international team led by National University of Singapore researchers has linked secondary lymphedema to excessive cholesterol buildup inside skin and around lymphatic vessels. Excess cholesterol deposition tracked with dermal fat cell enlargement, fat cell dysfunction, cell death, and fibrosis, while cholesterol-clearing interventions reduced swelling and improved lymphatic drainage in mouse models, alongside reduced tissue cholesterol and clinical procedures that improved drainage.

Elon Musk's SpaceX and wholly owned subsidiary xAI are competing in a secretive new Pentagon contest to produce voice-controlled, autonomous drone swarming technology, according to people familiar with the matter.

In the future, regional flights such as Trondheim-Oslo could become much more environmentally friendly with the help of a hybrid aircraft engine. This type of engine combines an electric motor and a combustion engine to drive a propeller. The innovation should be able to reduce CO2 emissions by up to 30%.

Fully customizable virtual companions or avatars—and even "digital clones" of deceased people or living ex-partners—are among the new possibilities that artificial intelligence is bringing to the love lives of humans. But the use of AI in romance isn't limited to these extreme cases. Human–AI relationships fall along a broad spectrum that also includes dating apps that apply algorithms to predict compatibility and help users make the best possible use of their online dating time.

As the global transition toward clean energy accelerates, the demand for sustainable, low-cost, and scalable energy storage technologies continues to grow. While lithium-ion batteries have dominated the market for decades, concerns over lithium resource availability and cost volatility are driving intense research into alternative chemistries.

Let's say you want to encourage more drivers to shift to battery-electric vehicles. What's the best way to do it? Globally, billions have been poured into incentives to encourage drivers to switch. The most popular approaches are rebates to cut the purchase cost and schemes to fund fast public chargers. The logic is simple: make EVs cheaper and public charging easier and consumers will follow.

A miniaturized radar chip, developed by researchers at Science Tokyo, advances Integrated Sensing and Communication for Beyond 5G and 6G systems. Measuring just 0.24 mm2 and consuming only 9.8 mW, the compact, low-power device generates high-speed, highly linear chirps by embedding linearization directly into the hardware, overcoming traditional speed-versus-accuracy limits and enabling precise sensing for edge and Internet-of-Things devices.

At first glance, few materials would seem to have less in common than metals and textiles. And yet, by manufacturing nickel-titanium alloys as a highly deformable, interwoven material, more similar to fabric than a typical metal component, researchers from IMDEA Materials Institute and the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) have unlocked previously unachievable properties.

Solar power continues to grow—accounting for most new capacity added to U.S. electric grids in 2024—but the mid-1950s technology most often used to capture the sun's energy comes with environmental costs.

Government departments across South Africa are increasingly relying on digital tools to evaluate public programs and monitor performance. This is part of broader public-sector reforms. Their aims are to improve accountability, respond to audit pressure and manage large-scale programs with limited staff and budgets.

Fighting fires could be done remotely without the need to place firefighting crews directly in potentially dangerous situations by using collaborative teams of artificial intelligence-powered robots with extinguishing equipment on board, with an initial soft trial of the technology proving successful.

Generative AI can be used to combat misinformation. However, it can also exacerbate the problem by producing convincing manipulations that are difficult to detect and can quickly be copied and disseminated on a wide scale. In a new study, researchers have defined seven distinct roles that AI can play in the information environment and analyzed each role in terms of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks.

China watchers arguing that Beijing's artificial intelligence controls are dependent on its authoritarian government are peddling a "stereotypical narrative," according to new research. Xuechen Chen, associate professor in politics and international relations at Northeastern University in London, has co-written a paper that explores how traditional Chinese values and commercial interests have also played a part in self-regulatory guardrails on AI being introduced.

An optimal combination of energy-efficient 5G network features—including AI systems that let mobile mast and antenna base stations go into sleep mode when usage is low, and phones that avoid unnecessary background network checks—could help cut indirect carbon emissions across the U.K. economy by around 25 million metric tons of CO2, according to new research from the University of Surrey.