Determining the health of agricultural soil has traditionally been a slow, messy, and expensive process involving hazardous chemicals. But what if the answer was as simple as the shade of the dirt itself? A groundbreaking study published in Carbon Research reveals that analyzing soil color indices is not only a scientifically sound way to predict Soil Organic Matter (SOM) but also a massive financial win for farmers and laboratories. Led by Dr. Yassine Bouslihim from the National Institute of Agricultural Research (INRA) in Morocco, the study explores the potential of "colorimetric" soil testing in semi-arid agricultural regions. By shifting from traditional chemical-heavy ...

A new scientific review highlights how emerging biochar-based nanomaterials could play a powerful role in tackling global challenges ranging from climate change to healthcare innovation. Researchers report that nanobiochar and biochar nanocomposites, advanced forms of carbon-rich materials derived from biomass, are showing promise across fields including renewable energy storage, sustainable construction, agriculture, and even medicine. Biochar itself is produced by heating plant-based waste such as crop residues or forestry byproducts in low-oxygen conditions. When engineered at the nanoscale or combined ...

Researchers have developed a new method to transform two major waste streams, discarded mobile phone batteries and industrial lignin, into a promising material for next-generation sodium-ion batteries. The study demonstrates how waste recycling can simultaneously reduce environmental pollution and support the transition to sustainable energy storage technologies. Mobile phone batteries are replaced frequently, creating large quantities of electronic waste that contain valuable metals but also pose environmental risks if improperly discarded. At the same time, lignin, a natural polymer generated ...

A Northumbria University PhD student has led an international team of astronomers in creating the first-ever three-dimensional map of Uranus's upper atmosphere, revealing how the ice giant's unusual magnetic field shapes spectacular auroras high above the planet's clouds.   Using the James Webb Space Telescope, led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency), Paola Tiranti and her colleagues observed Uranus for nearly a full rotation, detecting the faint glow from molecules up to 5,000 kilometres ...

Prometheus Grand Challenge aims to deploy commercial-scale nuclear reactors in years, not decades. IDAHO FALLS, Idaho —The Idaho National Laboratory and NVIDIA have partnered to advance nuclear energy deployment through artificial intelligence. The collaboration aims to accelerate advanced nuclear reactor deployment and reduce costs. INL and NVIDIA’s collaboration is part of the Genesis Mission, a national initiative to build the world’s most powerful scientific platform to accelerate discovery science, strengthen national security, and drive ...

Can fragments of tumor DNA in the blood predict whether chemotherapy will be effective? Researchers at the Princess Máxima Center investigated this question together with experts from Italy and Slovakia. They focused specifically on young adults with germ cell tumors for whom standard chemotherapy doesn't work well.  Blood samples from young adults treated at hospitals in Italy and Slovakia were analyzed before and during chemotherapy. The researchers searched these samples for fragments of tumor DNA circulating in the blood. They identified specific ...

A new paper published in Science describes the discovery of Spinosaurus mirabilis, a new spinosaurid species found in Niger. A 20-person team led by Paul Sereno, PhD, Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago, unearthed the find at a remote locale in the central Sahara, adding important new fossil finds to the closing chapter of spinosaurid evolution. Eye-catching anatomy The scimitar-shaped crest of S. mirabilis was so large and unexpected that the paleontologists initially didn’t recognize it for what it was when they plucked it and some jaw fragments from the desert surface in November 2019. Returning with a larger team in 2022 and finding two ...

Qiang Li and colleagues have created “cyborg” pancreatic organoids that combine stretchy miniature electronics with stem cell-derived pancreatic islets, using the implanted electronics to monitor electrical activity related to glucose regulation in maturing α and β cells. Islet α and β cells secrete glucagon and insulin hormones, in response to electrical changes in the cell membrane. The researchers also used the electronics to stimulate the cells to enhance their glucose responsiveness and show how that responsiveness changes as the cells mature, how it is affected by different chemical compounds and circadian ...

AI models have their own internal representations of knowledge or concepts that are often difficult to discern, even as they are critical to the models’ output. For instance, knowing more about a model’s representation of a concept would help explain why an AI model might “hallucinate” information, or why certain prompts can trick it into responses that dodge its built-in safeguards. Daniel Beaglehole and colleagues now introduce a robust method to extract these representations of concepts, which works across several large-scale language, reasoning, and vision AI models. Their technique uses ...

Although cancer is a common cause of death in domestic cats, little is known about the range of cancer genes in cat tumors, and how this range might compare with the oncogenome in people. Now, Bailey Francis and colleagues have sequenced cancer genes in 493 samples from 13 different types of feline cancer and matched healthy control tissue,  gaining a clearer picture of the cat oncogenome and comparing the genes to known cancer-causing mutations in humans. Under the “One Medicine” approach, ...

A new Spinosaurus species uncovered in northern Niger by Paul Sereno and colleagues appears to have been a wading predator of fish like its close relatives, but it lived as many as 1,000 kilometers inland from the Tethys Sea. The fossil find may represent a third phase of evolution for this group of massive, fish-eating dinosaurs, according to Sereno et al. The new species Spinosaurus mirabilis, uncovered in the central Sahara near Sirig Taghat (“no water, no goat” in Tamasheq, the local Berber language), lived with long-necked dinosaurs in a riparian habitat 100-95 million years ago. Sereno et al. suggest there were ...

The search space for protein engineering grows exponentially with complexity. A protein of just 100 amino acids has 20^100 possible variants—more combinations than atoms in the observable universe. Traditional engineering methods might test hundreds of variants but limit exploration to narrow regions of the sequence space. Recent machine learning approaches enable broader searches through computational screening; however, these approaches still require tens of thousands of measurements or 5-10 iterative rounds.  With the advent of these foundational protein models, the bottleneck for protein engineering swings back ...

A team of researchers has found a way to steer the output of large language models by manipulating specific concepts inside these models. The new method could lead to more reliable, more efficient, and less computationally expensive training of LLMs. But it also exposes potential vulnerabilities.  The researchers, led by Mikhail Belkin at the University of California San Diego and Adit Radhakrishnan at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, present their findings in the Feb. 19, 2026, issue of the journal Science.  In the study, researchers went under the hood of several LLMs to locate specific concepts. They then mathematically increased or decreased the ...

Astronomers have long debated why so many icy objects in the outer solar system look like snowmen. Michigan State University researchers now have evidence of the surprisingly simple process that could be responsible for their creation. Far beyond the violent, chaotic asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter lies what’s known as the Kuiper Belt. There, past Neptune, you’ll find icy, untouched building blocks from the dawn of the solar system, known as planetesimals. About one in 10 of these objects are contact binaries, planetesimals that are shaped like two connected spheres, much like ...

Researchers have identified a ‘tipping point’ about 2.7 million years ago when global climate conditions switched from being relatively warm and stable to cold and chaotic, as continental ice sheets expanded in the northern hemisphere. Following this transition, Earth’s climate began swinging back and forth between warm interglacial periods and frigid ice ages, linked to slow, cyclic changes in Earth’s orbit. However, glacial periods after this tipping point became far more variable, with ...

Guideline Highlights: The first clinical practice guideline on acute pulmonary embolism (PE) from the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology introduces a new Acute Pulmonary Embolism Clinical Category system to define the severity of an acute pulmonary embolism and assist in developing a treatment strategy for adults with this condition. The guideline details risk factors for acute PE, such as recent surgery or hospitalization, trauma, prolonged immobility, pregnancy, obesity, cancer and blood clotting ...

PHILADELPHIA— A new electronic implant system can help lab‑grown pancreatic cells mature and function properly, potentially providing a basis for novel, cell-based therapies for diabetes. The approach, developed by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, incorporates an ultrathin mesh of conductive wires into growing pancreatic tissue, according to a study published today in Science.   “The words ‘bionic’, ‘cybernetic’, ...

When things vibrate, they make sounds. Molecules do too, but at frequencies far beyond human hearing. Chemical bonds stretch, bend and twist at characteristic rates that fall in the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Infrared spectroscopy, which measures how light excites these vibrations, is often likened to listening to a molecule's voice. Each molecule has its own unmistakable tone – a vibrational “fingerprint” that reflects not only its chemical structure but also the nanoscale environment around it. But the voices of individual molecules are so faint that traditional infrared spectroscopy ...

Images of the researchers   Bureaucratic hurdles and racial disparities restrict access to victim compensation for adult survivors of sexual assault, deepen justice system inequities and compound trauma.   The absence of police verification of a crime is the primary reason for rejection, representing 34.4% of disapproved requests—which account for roughly 8 out of every 100 applicants, according to a new University of Michigan study published in the American Journal of Public Health.   "Our ...

NEW YORK, NY--A team of researchers led by Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons has been awarded an up to two-year $8.7 million contract from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to create genetic tests to speed the diagnosis of patients born with defects in the lymphatic system. “Discovering genes that cause lymphatic anomalies and using this information to create new clinical tests will not only accelerate the diagnosis of patients, but will also lead to improved treatments and, most importantly, save lives,” says Carrie Shawber, PhD, associate professor of reproductive sciences at VP&S and principal investigator ...

MEMPHIS, Tenn., Feb. 19, 2026 – After leading an unprecedented growth of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital over the past 12 years, James R. Downing, MD, will step down as president and CEO in late 2026 as part of a planned leadership transition. He will move into a faculty role in the Department of Global Pediatric Medicine, which he helped establish in 2018 to advance the mission of St. Jude around the world. “When I joined St. Jude 40 years ago, I came for the opportunity to do great science, but I stayed because of the mission and culture,” Downing said. “I’ve watched St. Jude ...

FEBRUARY 19, 2026, NEW YORK – Among the most promising tools of cancer therapy, engineered immune cells known as chimeric antigen-receptor (CAR) T cells have already transformed the treatment of blood cancers. Yet, despite their promise, CAR-T cells do have their limitations. For one thing, they’ve so far largely failed against solid tumors, which is to say, most types of cancer. For another, they can inadvertently kill healthy cells along with cancerous ones—or, separately, provoke a systemic immune overreaction—causing ...

The American Academy of Microbiology has elected Paul Plummer, dean of the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine, to its 2026 Class of Fellows. Plummer joins an international cohort of 63 distinguished scientists to the honorific leadership group within the American Society for Microbiology. The Fellows are elected annually through a highly selective, peer-review process, based on their records of scientific achievement and original contributions that have advanced microbiology. The Academy received 145 international nominations for the 2026 Fellowship Class. “Academy ...

WASHINGTON, February 19, 2026—The American Educational Research Association (AERA) has announced the selection of 34 exemplary scholars as the 2026 class of AERA Fellows. The AERA Fellows Program honors scholars for their exceptional contributions to, and excellence in, education research. Nominated by their peers, the 2026 Fellows were selected by the Fellows Committee and approved by the AERA Council, the association’s elected governing body. They will be inducted during a ceremony at the 2026 Annual Meeting in Los Angeles on April 9. With this cohort, the total number of AERA Fellows will reach 820. “We are thrilled to honor the 2026 AERA Fellows as they join ...

Researchers at the Max Delbrück Center show that two related enzymes, MNK1 and MNK2, act on the brain to regulate different behaviors. Their findings, published in “Molecular Psychiatry,” could help guide development of more precise therapies for neurological disorders. Structurally, they look similar: MNK1 and MNK2 belong to the same enzyme family and are best known for regulating how cells make proteins. Their starring role in such a crucial cellular function has cast them into the spotlight as potential drug targets to treat nervous system disorders and chronic pain. But would it matter whether a drug targets only one of them? In a study published ...