Tag: Quantum Stuff

For computer scientists, solving problems is a bit like mountaineering. First they must choose a problem to solve — akin to identifying a peak to climb — and then they must develop a strategy to solve it. Classical and quantum researchers compete using different strategies, with a healthy rivalry between the two. Quantum researchers report… Continue reading Quantum Speedup Found for Huge Class of Hard Problems

Back to your cubicles, you impudent pups. The boss wants you in traffic and swilling stale office coffee again. It’s good for business. Except that isn’t true, which poses a puzzle over the “return-to-office” preoccupations of some corporate chieftains. In January President Donald Trump joined the Fortune 500 fad for demanding workers resume commuting. Trump… Continue reading Return-to-Office Demands Don’t Benefit Employees or Businesses

February 12, 2025 5 min read The Most Energetic Neutrino Ever Seen Makes a Mediterranean Splash A “ghost particle” discovered by a detector in the Mediterranean carried 30 times more energy than any neutrino observed to date By Meghan Bartels edited by Lee Billings The highest-energy cosmic neutrino detected to date was observed by KM3NeT,… Continue reading The Most Energetic Neutrino Ever Seen Makes a Mediterranean Splash

February 12, 2025 4 min read The Surprising Importance of This Adorable Sea Turtle Dance Sea turtles are capable of creating GPS-like magnetic maps to guide them back to foraging grounds, and they do a little dance when they recognize those spots By Jack Tamisiea edited by Andrea Thompson Loggerhead turtle hatchling. To juvenile loggerhead… Continue reading This Sea Turtle Dance Isn’t Just Adorable—It’s Useful

Last spring, a team of nearly 1,000 cosmologists announced that dark energy — the enigmatic agent propelling the universe to swell in size at an ever-increasing rate — might be slackening. The bombshell result, based on the team’s observations of the motions of millions of galaxies combined with other data, was tentative and preliminary. Today,… Continue reading Is Dark Energy Getting Weaker? New Evidence Strengthens the Case.

February 12, 2025 3 min read The Latest on Bird Flu Strains and Sick Cats Scientists have reported a new strain of bird flu in Nevada dairy cattle. And viral spread in pet cats has fueled worries over increased risk of exposure to humans By Tanya Lewis edited by Lauren J. Young Editor’s Note (2/20/25):… Continue reading The Latest on Bird Flu Strains and Sick Cats

At first, life on Earth was simple. Cells existed, functioned and reproduced as free-living individuals. But then, something remarkable happened. Some cells joined forces, working together instead of being alone. This transition, known as multicellularity, was a pivotal event in the history of life on Earth. Multicellularity enabled greater biological complexity, which sparked an extraordinary… Continue reading How Did Multicellular Life Evolve?

“Those chemical modifications that decorate [histones] and modify gene expression — they’re metabolites, full stop,” said Finley, the cancer biologist. “Chemical modifications themselves are metabolites, and their removal is dependent on metabolites.” Fifteen years ago, when Kathryn Wellen was a postdoc studying cancer cells, she discovered that the epigenetic marks on histones change in response… Continue reading How Metabolism Can Shape Cells’ Destinies

CLIMATEWIRE | EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has one week to tell President Donald Trump whether the agency could abandon its authority to regulate climate pollution under the Clean Air Act. His decision stands to cast EPA into a monumental fight over its ability to reduce carbon emissions, potentially reverberating beyond Trump’s presidency. If Zeldin attempts… Continue reading Trump Gives EPA One Week to Decide on Abandoning Climate Pollution Regulation

February 13, 2025 2 min read ‘Hot Potato’ Plants Engineered to Flourish in Heat Waves A genetic tweak keeps potatoes efficient in the heat By Julian Nowogrodzki edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier When a scorching heat wave struck Illinois in June 2022, crop physiologist Katherine Meacham-Hensold hoped her team’s new bioengineered potato variety would survive… Continue reading ‘Hot Potato’ Plants Engineered to Flourish in Heat Waves