School districts across the United States were woefully unprepared for ChatGPT's impact on education, according to thousands of pages of public records obtained by 404 Media. Documents from early 2023, the publication reports, show a "total crapshoot" in responses, with some state education departme...

Researchers at Nagoya University in Japan have discovered that Cepheid variable stars in our neighboring galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), are moving in opposing directions along two distinct axes. They found that stars closer to Earth move towards the northeast, while more distant stars move southwest.

AI has successfully been applied in many areas of science, advancing technologies like weather prediction and protein folding. However, there have been limitations for the world of scientific discovery involving more curiosity-driven research. But that may soon change, thanks to Kolmogorov-Arnold networks (KANs).

Unpredictable rains pose a serious threat to groundnut farmers, with pre-harvest sprouting causing significant losses. Spanish groundnut varieties, representing nearly 60% of global production, are particularly vulnerable. Premature germination triggered by early rains can reduce yields by 10–20%, and up to 50% in severe cases. This makes understanding the genetics behind varieties that resist sprouting under high-moisture conditions especially critical.

BrianFagioli writes: Visa says it has completed hundreds of secure, AI-initiated transactions with partners, arguing this proves agent driven shopping is ready to move beyond experiments. The company believes 2025 will be the last full year most consumers manually check out, with AI agents handling ...

Black holes are notorious for gobbling up everything that comes their way, but astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered that even supermassive black holes can be picky eaters, and this can have a significant impact on their growth.

Instacart has ended its AI-powered pricing tests after a study from Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports and More Perfect Union revealed that the grocery delivery platform was showing different customers different prices for identical items at the same store. The company said Monday that retai...

Aviation's climate impact is partly due to contrails—condensation that a plane streaks across the sky when it flies through icy and humid layers of the atmosphere. Contrails trap heat that radiates from the planet's surface, and while the magnitude of this impact is uncertain, several studies suggest contrails may be responsible for about half of aviation's climate impact.

In the past year, two separate experiments in two different materials captured the same confounding scenario: the coexistence of superconductivity and magnetism. Scientists had assumed that these two quantum states are mutually exclusive; the presence of one should inherently destroy the other.

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have already leveraged the vast troves of geolocation data from vessel-tracking systems to pinpoint where whales and other large marine species are endangered by ship traffic and industrial fishing.

A research team affiliated with UNIST has made a advancement in controlling spin-based signals within a new magnetic material, paving the way for next-generation electronic devices. Their work demonstrates a method to reversibly switch the direction of spin-to-charge conversion, a key step toward ultra-fast, energy-efficient spintronic semiconductors that do not require complex setups or strong magnetic fields.

If you watched Avatar: Fire and Ash in James Cameron's preferred high frame rate 3D format and noticed certain sequences appearing unusually smooth while others had the traditional cinematic look, that visual inconsistency is entirely intentional. The third Avatar film continues Cameron's frame rate...

Quantum computers, which operate leveraging effects rooted in quantum mechanics, have the potential of tackling some computational and optimization tasks that cannot be solved by classical computers. Instead of bits (i.e., binary digits), which are the basic units of information in classical computers, quantum computers rely on so-called qubits.

When you take a drug, where in your body does it actually go? For most medications, scientists can make only educated guesses about the answer to this question. Traditional methods can measure the concentration of a drug in an organ like the liver, but they can't pinpoint exactly which cells to which the drug binds—or reveal unexpected places where the drug takes action.

In recent years, organic semiconductor materials have attracted considerable attention as key components for next-generation photoenergy conversion devices and organic solar cells due to their light weight and mechanical flexibility. A crucial factor determining their performance is how photoexcited excitons migrate between molecules, that is, the process of exciton diffusion. However, previous studies have provided only ensemble-averaged information, making it difficult to directly observe the diffusion behavior within individual crystals or nanostructures.

Apple said Wednesday that European Union developers pocketed the savings from mandated commission reductions rather than lowering prices for consumers. The iPhone maker commissioned Analysis Group to study pricing behavior [PDF] after the Digital Markets Act forced Apple to cut its App Store fees fr...

Making electric vehicles and their batteries is a dirty process that uses a lot of energy. But a new study says that EVs quickly make up for that with less overall emissions through two years of use than a gas-powered vehicle.

How do plants breathe? When do they open and close the tiny pores on their leaves, and what does this mean for their water balance? A research team led by Marburg physicist Professor Martin Koch has developed a method to visualize this process: With the help of terahertz spectroscopy, the scientists can observe when plants open or close their leaf openings (stomata). Their findings have been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

QUT researchers have advanced the understanding of how to create tiny seawater droplets to form mist plumes that reflect sunlight to protect coral reefs.

Scientists pursuing magnetically-confined nuclear fusion as a clean energy source grapple with the "core-edge challenge," the need to integrate the core of the reactor, where plasma must be 10 times hotter than the sun, with the reactor's edge. The edge must sustain a lower temperature to avoid melting of the material containing the plasma and extracting its energy to produce power.

A team of researchers from the University of Utah and Sethera Therapeutics has uncovered a powerful new way to build more stable and drug-like peptides, opening the door to medicines that could target diseases long considered "undruggable." Their findings are published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

All the critical minerals the U.S. needs annually for energy, defense and technology applications are already being mined at existing U.S. facilities, according to a new analysis published in the journal Science.

Dried fruit is a tasty snack or sweet addition to recipes, but the water removal process often requires heat and energy. In a step toward more sustainable food preservation, researchers reporting in ACS Food Science & Technology have developed a method for drying food at room temperature by adjusting air pressure conditions and using food-safe calcium chloride.

A research team has successfully developed a technology that efficiently converts carbon dioxide (CO2) into carbon monoxide (CO), an industrial raw material, by precisely controlling the interaction between the rhodium (Rh) catalyst and the carrier. The study is published in the journal ACS Catalysis.

Chinese astronomers have employed NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to observe an eclipsing binary of the Algol-type, designated V455 Car. Results of the observational campaign are published in the journal New Astronomy.