High-Tech Solution Developed To Address Food Crisis

Global temperatures are expected to slowly rise, and extreme weather events are intensifying. As NASA pointed out, extreme heat events are becoming more frequent and severe. This is a threat to all living things. And for humans, it is also a significant threat to our farmland and food supply.

At the 2025 meeting of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, researchers from South Dakota State University presented ways to help farmers optimize crop yields while lowering costs. Per a school release, the system they created uses biosensors and employs the Internet of Things and AI to track and analyze crop development.

For the data to be completely analyzed, it must be stored in the cloud. This means it is vulnerable to infiltration. However, the innovative methods developed by Professor Lin Wei and his Ph.D. student Manish Shrestha used advanced security protocols, encryption, and cryptography to ensure the massive amount of data was safe while being stored and analyzed in the cloud.

Incredibly, this could all be run on small devices, eliminating the need for large servers to protect the data.

The analyzed data can be a tremendous asset in protecting our food supply. It enables farmers to make more informed decisions about their practices, including irrigation, fertilization, disease, and pest control, without compromising the safety of their operations. By keeping the data safe and secure, farmers can innovate and hopefully safeguard their harvests.

And this is just the latest good news regarding technological advances that are bolstering our food supplies. A team of scientists from China and Australia has announced a new way to produce ammonia for fertilizer that reduces its environmental impact. Meanwhile, Sweden has discovered an innovative use for steam to protect seeds from pests.

Any advancements in food technology and innovations in crop monitoring and data collection are extremely important. The researchers behind the study proudly touted their accomplishments.

"Our research received considerable attention, with many experts emphasizing how cybersecurity must be a core component when developing smart farming technologies," Shrestha said.

South Dakota State University researchers now plan to build on their innovative breakthrough by speeding up their processing time and powering it all with solar batteries.

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"Battery In A Rock" Discovered Below The Sea Level

Lying between Hawaii and the western coast of Mexico lies the Pacific Ocean’s Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a 4.5 million-kilometer-square area of abyssal plain bordered by the Clarion and Clipperton Fracture Zones. Although this stretch of sea is a vibrant ecosystem filled with marine life, the CCZ is known best for its immense collection of potato-sized rocks known as polymetallic nodules.

These rocks, of which there are potentially trillions, are filled with rich deposits of nickel, manganese, copper, zinc, cobalt. Those particular metals are vital for the batteries needed to power a green energy future, leading some mining companies to refer to nodules as a "battery in a rock."

However, a study reports that these nodules might be much more than simply a collection of valuable materials for electric cars—they also produce oxygen 4,000 meters below the surface where sunlight can’t reach.

This unexpected source of "dark oxygen," as it’s called, redefines the role these nodules play in the CZZ. The rocks could also rewrite the script on not only how life began on this planet, but also its potential to take hold on other worlds within our Solar System, such as Enceladus or Europa. The results of this study were published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

"For aerobic life to begin on the planet," Andrew Sweetman, deep-sea ecologist with the Scottish Association for Marine Science and lead author of the study said in a press statement, "there had to be oxygen and our understanding has been that Earth’s oxygen supply began with photosynthetic organisms. But we now know that there is oxygen produced in the deep sea, where there is no light. I think we therefore need to revisit questions like: where could aerobic life have begun?"

The journey toward this discovery began more than a decade ago when Sweetman began analyzing how oxygen levels decreased further into the depths of the ocean. So it came as a surprise in 2013 when sensors returned increased levels of oxygen in the CCZ.

At the time, Sweetman dismissed the data as the result of faulty sensors, but future studies showed that this abyssal plain somehow produced oxygen. Taking note of the nodule’s "battery in a rock" tagline, Sweetman wondered if the minerals found in these nodules were somehow acting as a kind of "geobattery" by separating hydrogen and oxygen via seawater electrolysis.

A 2023 study showed that various bacteria and archaea can create "dark oxygen," so Sweetman and his team recreated the conditions of the CCZ in a laboratory and killed off any microorganisms with mercury chloride—surprisingly, oxygen levels continued rising.

According to Scientific American, Sweetman found a voltage of roughly 0.95 volts on the surface of these nodules, likely charging up as they grow with different deposits growing irregularly throughout, and this natural charge is enough to split the seawater.

This discovery adds more fuel to the already-fiery debate over what to do with these nodules. Mining outfits like the Metals Company, the CEO of which coined the phrase "battery in a rock," sees these nodules as the answer to our energy problems. However, 25 countries want the governing body—the International Seabed Authority (ISA) Council—to implement a moratorium, or at the very least a precautionary pause, so more research can be conducted to see how mining these nodules could affect the ocean. This is especially vital considering that the world's seas are already facing a litany of climate challenges, including acidification, deoxygenation, and pollution.

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Ancient Dolphin-Like Skeleton Unveiled In Peru

Paleontologists in Peru revealed last 17 September the fossilized skeleton of what looks like an ancient, dolphin-like creature estimated to be between 8 and 12 million years old.

The remains were discovered in July in Peru's Ocucaje Desert, an area south of capital Lima that was once part of the Pacific Ocean.

Paleontologist Mario Urbina, who was part of the discovery, referred to the ancient site as a "great hotel," explaining that coastal mountains created a barrier from strong currents, making it an ideal, calm place for marine animals to reproduce. The region was a sea for approximately 45 million years.

Researchers from Peru's state Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Institute (INGEMET) noted that the discovery helps them understand the geography of the past and how the coastline has changed over millennia.

Peru's deserts are considered a rich cemetery for ancient marine species, with a 9-million-year-old fossil of a great white shark relative found earlier this year.

Prehistoric remains have also been found elsewhere in Peru in regions away from the coast. In April 2024, experts presented the fossilized skull of the largest known river dolphin, which inhabited what is now the Amazon about 16 million years ago.

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Oldest Form of Mummification Found In Asia

Hunter-gatherers in parts of ancient Asia prepared their dead for burial with smoke-drying up to 14,000 years ago, resulting in the oldest known evidence of human mummification, according to a new analysis of dozens of burials.

People around the world have long practiced mummifying, or preserving organic remains, using various techniques — including heat, smoke, salts, freeze-drying and embalming — to remove moisture from the body’s soft tissues and prevent decay.

The remains from China, Vietnam and Indonesia that scientists investigated weren’t visibly mummified. However, examination of charring on the skeletons — which were buried after being tightly folded into squatting positions — showed signs that they had been exposed to low heat over long periods of time, which would have dried out and preserved the bodies.

Smoke-drying the deceased is a technique known historically from some indigenous Australian groups and still used by people within Papua New Guinea, researchers reported last 15 September in the journal PNAS. The similarities between the crouching poses of the skeletons studied in the latest analysis and those of modern smoke-dried mummies is what led the scientists to wonder whether the ancient crouching burials may have been smoke-dried, too.

Previously, the earliest examples of mummification came from the Chinchorro culture in northern Chile dating back around 7,000 years and ancient Egypt about 4,500 years. The findings from Southeast Asia push back the timeline of humans using mummification to preserve their dead by thousands of years, said lead study author Dr. Hsiao-chun Hung, a senior research fellow at Australian National University.

"We believe that the tradition reflects a timeless human impulse — the enduring hope, from ancient times to the present, that families and loved ones might remain 'together' forever, in whatever form that togetherness may take," Hung told CNN in an email.

The findings also hint that hunter-gatherers had complex systems for dealing with the deceased "that may imply sophisticated beliefs about what should happen to the human body after death," said Dr. Emma L. Baysal, an associate professor in the department of archaeology at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.

"The authors have come up with a way of measuring the possible treatment of a dead body and identifying practices that are almost invisible to us today," Baysal, who was not involved in the new research, told CNN in an email. "To make such a convincing argument from such difficult-to-spot evidence is impressive."

The study team investigated 54 crouching burials that had previously been found at 11 archaeological sites. Working between 2017 and 2025, researchers described results from bones found in southern China, northern Vietnam, and Sumatra, an island of Indonesia. Similar burials have also come to light over the years in Sarawak in eastern Malaysia, southern Java in Indonesia, and northern Palawan in the Philippines, but those were not included in the new analysis.

From their own previous work and from other studies, the scientists knew that this extreme squatting posture — with the legs folded up tightly against the body — "was the most typical feature of pre-Neolithic burials, particularly in southern China and Southeast Asia," Hung said. "Such burials are found usually in caves, beneath rock shelters, or within shell middens." (The Neolithic Period, or Stone Age, in these regions lasted from approximately 7000 to 1700 BC.)

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To Cure Gout, Scientists Are Bringing Back A 20-M Year-Old Gene

Gout is considered as one of the most well-represented (and oldest) diseases in human history, primarily because this "disease of kings" impacted the most affluent of any given society. Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, and King Henry VIII all suffered from this pernicious form of arthritis. Benjamin Franklin even wrote letters to "Madame Gout," pleading as to why he must withstand these "cruel sufferings."

With the dawn of modern medicine in the 19th century, scientists found an answer to Franklin’s painful inquiries. Put simply, rich diets of meats, alcohol, and sugar (common on the tables of the rich and powerful throughout history) are all high in chemical compounds known as purines, which produce uric acid when metabolized. When these uric levels climb too high, crystals can form in the liver and kidneys, leading to joint pain and kidney disease.

Today, a variety of treatments exist, including Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs). But a new study revived a very old strategy for treating gout—like, 20 to 29 million years old.

In this study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, scientists used the gene-editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 (also sometimes referred to as 'molecular scissors') to bring back the uricase gene, which evolved out of primates during the Neogene period. It’s likely that our distant ancestors used uric acid to turn fruit sugars into fats, which is a pretty effective survival strategy during periods of food shortage. However, without the uricase gene, what once kept early primates alive became a primary vector for gout.

"Without uricase, humans are left vulnerable," Eric Gaucher, the co-author of the study from Georgia State University, said in a press statement. "By reactivating uricase in human liver cells, we lowered uric acid and stopped the cells from turning excess fructose into triglycerides—the fats that build up in the liver."

To test this idea, Gaucher and his team first tested the restored gene function in human liver cells and found that uric acid dropped dramatically, and fructose-driven fat buildup in those cells was prevented entirely. To up the ante a bit, they tested this same method on 3D liver spheroids—essentially collections of tissues that mimic miniature organs. Uric acid levels were lowered within these systems as well.

While uric acid is the key driver behind Franklin’s "cruel sufferings," hyperuricemia (excess uric acid in the blood) can cause a variety of different diseases, including hypertension and cardiovascular disease. According to the authors, a quarter of patients with high blood pressure also have elevated uric levels, and when it comes to hypertension, that overlap jumps to a staggering 90 percent.

However, the scientists aren’t celebrating yet. Gene-editing therapies still have safety hurdles to overcome, and this particular approach will need rigorous human trials. But if the results hold, the "disease of kings" will have finally met its match.

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These Queen Ants Can Clone Ants From Other Species

Queen ants in southern Europe can produce male clones of an entirely different species — tearing up the playbook of reproductive biology and suggesting we need to rethink our understanding of species barriers.

The workers in Iberian harvester ant (Messor ibericus) colonies are all hybrids, with queens needing to mate with males from a distantly related species, Messor structor, to keep the colony functioning. But researchers found that some Iberian harvester ant populations have no M. structor colonies nearby.

"That was very, very abnormal. I mean, it was kind of a paradox," study co-author Jonathan Romiguier, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Montpellier, told Live Science. The team initially believed there was a sampling issue, but they went on to find 69 regions where this was the case.

"We had to face the facts and try to see if there is something special within Messor ibericus colonies," Romiguier said.

In setting out to resolve this paradox, Romiguier and his team found that queen Iberian harvester ants also lay eggs containing male M. structor ants, with these males ultimately fathering the workers. This discovery, published Sept. 3 in the journal Nature, is the first time any animal has been recorded producing offspring from another species as part of their normal life cycle.

"In the early stages, it was kind of a joke in the team," Romiguier said. "But the more we got results, the more it became a hypothesis and not a joke anymore."

Ants are eusocial insects, meaning their colonies form cooperative super-organisms predominantly made up of infertile females, called workers, and a small number of reproductive females, called queens. Males solely exist to fertilize queens during their mating flight and die soon after.

Queens only mate once in their lives and store the sperm from this meeting in a special organ. She then draws from this sperm stash to lay new eggs containing one of three types of offspring: queens, workers or males.

However, Iberian harvester ants mating with males of their own species can only produce new queens. This is thought to be a result of selfish queen genes, where the DNA from male M. ibericus guarantees its survival across generations by biasing larvae to produce fertile queens rather than infertile workers — known as "royal cheaters."

To avoid this, queens must use sperm from male M. structor ants to produce their workers.

This was why the presence of thriving isolated M. ibericus colonies was such a conundrum.

To find answers, the researchers first sampled 132 males from 26 Iberian harvester ant colonies to figure out whether there were M. structor males present. They found that 58 were covered in hair and 74 were hairless. A closer inspection of the nuclear genomes of a subset of these ants revealed that all hairy ones were M. ibericus and all bald ones were M. structor.

But this was not proof that the queens were laying male eggs of two different species — there could have been some hidden M. structor queens producing the odd male. So the team sequenced the mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down by the mother, of 24 of the M. structor males, and found it came from the same mother as the M. ibericus male nestmates.

"This was the detail that made me realize that 'maybe we are on to something very, very, very big,'" Romiguier said.

The team then separated 16 queens from laboratory colonies and looked at the genetic sequences of their freshly laid eggs. They found that 9 percent of their eggs contained M. structor ants. They then directly observed a single queen producing males of both species by monitoring its broods weekly over an 18-month period.

Together, all these findings show that Iberian harvester ant queens are cloning M. structor males and not passing on any of their own nuclear DNA. Researchers now need to pinpoint the exact mechanism underlying this cloning, Romiguier said, and find out at what point the maternal DNA is removed.

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Stone Age Women Buried With Tools And Weapons

Researchers discovered that some 6,000 years ago in the northern reaches of modern Latvia, a young woman died. Afterwards, a group of early humans buried her in an ancient, sacred place along a lakeshore. They carefully lowered her small teenage frame into the ground, gently placing a stone ax, 28 flint flakes, 15 blades, and a stone scraper beside her.

Stained with ochre, the stone implements were part of her last rites. This young woman remained there thousands of years, until, when archaeologists discovered her along with more than 300 others in the 20th century. The site, known as Zvejnieki cemetery, is one of Europe’s largest Stone Age cemeteries.

Research conducted at Zvejnieki has often challenged longheld assumptions about gender roles in prehistoric Europe. For instance, the young woman interred in burial 211 described above is one of several women and children buried with stone axes at the site, upending the notion that axes only belonged to Stone Age men.

Now, a new study published September 10 in the journal PLOS One again upends gender stereotypes, demonstrating that women and children were just as likely to be buried with stone tools as men. The woman in burial 211 alone was laid to rest with a staggering 45 different stone objects.

Nestled along the northern shore of Lake Burtnieks in northern Latvia, Stone Age communities used the Zvejnieki burial site for more than 5,000 years. Archeologists estimate that it was first used around 7,500 BCE, and was abandoned sometime around 2,500 BCE.

Zvejnieki remained untouched for more than 4,000 years, a veritable treasure trove of the Stone Age waiting to be discovered. Then in the 1960s, Lake Burtnieks’s northern shore was used as a gravel quarry. Latvian workers harvested rock from the small hill along the lake, eventually discovering a human skull amongst the rubble in 1964.

Archaeologists soon swooped in, and immediately noticed Stone Age graves exposed along the quarry’s walls. The quarry was closed and a team of archaeologists carried out an extensive dig between 1964 and 1978. In 2005, another large dig was conducted and lasted four years. So far, a total of 330 individuals have been found at the Zvejnieki cemetery, making it one of the largest sites of its kind in Europe.

Led by Dr. Aimée Little from the University of York’s archaeology department, the new study takes a closer look at the stone tools found at Zvejnieki. As part of the Stone Dead project, the new research demonstrates how tools played an important role in Stone Age funerary rites. While some tools seemed specifically made for gravesites, others were broken into pieces as part of intricate rituals.

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Lasker Prize Goes To Scientists Who Discovered Treatment To Cystic Fibrosis

Cystic fibrosis was once a dire, likely deadly diagnosis, destroying a patient's ability to breathe and digest food -- but a revolutionary new treatment offers reason for hope.

Last 10 September, the three scientists who developed the clinical advance were awarded America's most prestigious scientific award, taking home the Lasker prize. The top honorees are pulmonologist Michael Welsh along with researchers Jesus Gonzalez and Paul Negulescu from the US laboratory Vertex.

Their research has shed light on the causes of the disease and given rise to a new class of innovative drugs, including the flagship treatment Kaftrio -- known as Trikafta in the United States -- which are capable of stabilizing the otherwise debilitating condition.

"It's unbelievable. It's better than I ever hoped," Welsh told AFP. "You see these kids and they look healthy and they're not coughing. They're running around and playing."

"I almost can't believe it. Then they go, and they're getting married and they're having kids, and they're getting on with their lives."

That reality stands in sharp contrast to Welsh's memories from the early days of his career, when a cystic fibrosis diagnosis was a likely death sentence in childhood or adolescence.

The new award-winning treatment has been hailed as "revolutionary" by patient advocacy organizations.

It works by addressing the underlying causes of the inherited disease -- which wreaks havoc on the lungs and digestive system -- rather than its symptoms.

Some 100,000 people worldwide are estimated to suffer from cystic fibrosis, in which sticky mucus builds up in the lungs, digestive tract and other parts of the body.

After the 1989 discovery of the CFTR gene -- whose mutation was identified as the cause of the disease -- Welsh began dissecting the problem with fellow researchers.

"We thought, if we understand how CFTR works, we have a chance of fixing it," he said.

Gaining a better understanding of how the protein that the gene codes for led the pulmonologist down a path seeking how genetic mutations impaired its function.

Welsh identified two major anomalies caused by the most common mutation: a trapping of sorts of the protein within the cell, and its reduced performance.

The medical breakthrough resulted from experiments, notably some that showed how lowering temperature could help release the trapped protein.

"That meant it was not totally broken," Welsh remembered enthusiastically.

Armed with these discoveries, the American Cystic Fibrosis Foundation then approached researchers Gonzalez and Negulescu, who began studying the possibility of chemically reversing the identified malfunctions.

The notion of gene therapy -- which would aim to directly reverse the gene mutations -- had seemed on paper to be the simplest route.

But when it didn't work as hoped, patient organizations began to explore other options.

Gonzalez developed an innovative research technique using dyes that allowed for testing thousands of chemical compounds in record times.

"Without the screening, we would never have found these molecules," he said.

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Toxic Barrels At The Bottom Of LA Coast Leaks Waste

Barrels of toxic waste dumped into the Pacific Ocean decades ago are still affecting the deep seafloor off the Los Angeles coast, a new study has found.

The discarded industrial-grade barrels, which have for years been encircled by mysterious white halos, have likely been leaking a caustic alkaline waste product into the marine environment, according to the study, published last 9 September in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nexus.

Scientists had initially linked the halos, observed in images captured in 2020, to the toxic pesticide DDT, whose manufacturing processes unleashed copious amounts of acidic waste into the ocean from the 1930s through the 1970s.

Although DDT manufacturing did produce alkaline byproducts in addition to the acidic waste, other major industries such as oil refining generated significant alkaline residuals as well, the study authors noted.

"One of the main waste streams from DDT production was acid and they didn’t put that into barrels," lead author Johanna Gutleben, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said in a statement.

"It makes you wonder: What was worse than DDT acid waste to deserve being put into barrels?" Gutleben asked.

The researchers found that the caustic, alkaline waste emanating from these barrels was so powerful that it transformed parts of the seafloor into extreme environments reminiscent of natural hydrothermal vents. These vents contain specialized bacteria that thrive in conditions where most life cannot survive, the authors noted.

The severity and extent of this mystery waste’s impacts, however, depend on just how many of the barrels are planted on the seafloor and the specific chemicals they contain, the researchers explained.

Yet senior author Paul Jensen, an emeritus marine microbiologist at Scripps, said in a statement that he would have expected the alkaline waste to dissipate quickly in seawater.

Instead, he observed, the contaminants have persisted for more than half a century — indicating that this waste "can now join the ranks of DDT as a persistent pollutant with long-term environmental impacts."

While the number of barrels remains unknown, the researchers deployed a remotely operated vehicle to collect sediment cores adjacent to five of the containers. They then analyzed the sediment samples and hardened pieces of halo barrel crust, to assess DDT levels, mineral content and microbial DNA.

As for DDT, the scientists found that concentrations of the chemical and its byproducts were highly elevated relative to control sites but did not change with distance from the barrels — leading the researchers to conclude that the DDT was not linked to this contamination.

On the other hand, they discovered that the pH levels of the microbial DNA were remarkably high, indicating that the halos contained waste that was very alkaline, also known as a base.

These sediments, the researchers observed, had low bacterial diversity compared to other surrounding sediments, and the bacteria came from families habituated to alkaline environments, such as deep-sea hydrothermal vents or alkaline hot springs.

Although the researchers were not able to identify the specific chemicals present inside the barrels, they stressed the importance in now using white halos to help track alkaline waste — and thereby determine the extent of the contamination in this region.

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Oldest Pipe Organ Played Again After 800 Years

After 800 years of silence, a pipe organ that researchers say is the oldest in the Christian world roared back to life last 9 September, its ancient sound echoing through a monastery in Jerusalem's Old City.

Composed of original pipes from the 11th century, the instrument emitted a full, hearty sound as musician David Catalunya played a liturgical chant called Benedicamus Domino Flos Filius. The swell of music inside Saint Saviour's Monastery mingled with church bells tolling in the distance.

Before unveiling the instrument last 8 September, Catalunya told a news conference that attendees were witnessing a grand development in the history of music.

"This organ was buried with the hope that one day it would play again," he said. "And the day has arrived, nearly eight centuries later."

From now on, the organ will be housed at the Terra Sancta museum in Jerusalem's Old City — just kilometers (miles) from the Bethlehem church where it originally sounded.

Researchers believe that the Crusaders brought the organ to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, in the 11th century during their period of rule over Jerusalem. After a century of use, the Crusaders buried it to protect it from invading Muslim armies.

There it stayed until 1906, when workers building a new Franciscan hospice for pilgrims in Bethlehem discovered it in an ancient cemetery.

Once full excavations were conducted, archaeologists had uncovered 222 bronze pipes, a set of bells and other objects hidden by the Crusaders.

"It was extremely moving to hear how some of these pipes came to life again after about 700 years under the earth and 800 years of silence," said Koos van de Linde, organ expert who participated in the restoration. "The hope of the Crusaders who buried them -- that the moment would come when they would sound again — was not in vain."

A team of four researchers, directed by Catalunya, set out in 2019 to create a replica of the organ. But along the way, said Catalunya, they discovered that some of the pipes still function as they did hundreds of years ago.

Organ builder Winold van der Putten placed those original pipes alongside replicas he created based on ancient organ-making methods, some of which were illuminated by close study of the original pipes. The originals, making up about half of the organ, still bear guiding lines made by the original Ottoman craftsmen and engraved scrawls indicating musical notes.

Alvaro Torrente, director of the Instituto Complutense De Ciencias Musicales in Madrid — where Catalunya undertook the project — compared the discovery to "finding a living dinosaur, something that we never imagined we could encounter, suddenly made real before our eyes and ears."

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Do Chimps And Humans Really Share 98.8 % DNA?

Chimpanzees, along with bonobos, are humans' closest living relatives. In fact, most have heard that humans and chimps share 98.8 percent of their DNA. This has been repeated always, but is this really true?

The truth is that the frequently cited 98.8 percent similarity between chimp (Pan troglodytes) and human (Homo sapiens) DNA overlooks key differences in the species' genomes, experts told Live Science.

Human and chimp DNA is made of four basic building blocks, or nucleotides: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C) and thymine (T). The genomes of both species can be thought of as a "string of the letters A, C, G and T ... about 3 billion letters long," David Haussler, scientific director at the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute, told Live Science in an email.

When scientists compare human and chimp DNA, they identify the letter (nucleotide) sequence in both genomes and look for stretches of DNA where there is a lot of overlap between the two genomes. Then, they count the number of matching letters in these regions.

"It is like comparing one version of a very long novel to another, very slightly edited version," Haussler said.

Early research suggested that human and chimp genomes are more than 98 percent identical. "What it means is that for each part of the human genome where the chimp has a corresponding DNA sequence, on average 1 out of 100 nucleotides (single A, C, T or G bases) is different," explained Katie Pollard, director of the Gladstone Institute of Data Science and Biotechnology at the University of California, San Francisco.

For context, humans share about 99.9 percent of their DNA with each other, Haussler said.

But the 99 percent figure is misleading because it focuses on stretches of DNA where the human and chimp genomes can be directly aligned and ignores sections of the genomes that are difficult to compare, Tomas Marques-Bonet, head of the Comparative Genomics group at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC/UPF) in Barcelona, Spain, told Live Science in an email.

Sections of human DNA without a clear counterpart in chimp DNA make up approximately 15 percent to 20 percent of the genome, Marques-Bonet said. For example, some bits of DNA are present in one species but missing in the other; these are known as "insertions and deletions." In the course of evolution from a common ancestor, some pieces of DNA in one species broke off and reattached elsewhere along the chromosome.

So, while earlier studies suggested a 98 percent to 99 percent similarity, comparisons that include harder-to-align regions push that difference closer to 5 percent to 10 percent, Marques-Bonet said. "And if we account for the regions still too complex to align properly with current technology, the true overall difference is likely to exceed 10 percent," he said.

In fact, a 2025 study found that human and chimpanzee genomes are approximately 15 percent different when compared directly and completely. But if this direct method is used, then there is even a lot of variability within species themselves — up to 9 percent among chimpanzees, the 2025 study found.

"Against this backdrop, the close genetic relationship between humans and chimpanzees has not changed," Martin Neukamm, a chemist at the Technical University of Munich who was not involved in the 2025 study, wrote in a translated article.

The differences between human and chimp genomes lie mostly in noncoding DNA, the segments that do not code for a specific protein and that make up about 98 percent of the genome, according to Pollard.

Differences in noncoding DNA have a big impact. While coding DNA contains the instructions for protein building, "regulatory regions" found in noncoding DNA control how, when and where these proteins are made, Marques-Bonet explained. They act like switches, controlling whether a gene is turned on or off.

That's why a small tweak in the genome, especially in these regulatory regions, can ripple out into large differences in traits. "A small change in the DNA can have big consequences for how that DNA is expressed," Haussler said, "and, in turn, changes in expression can lead to even bigger changes in phenotype — the scientific term for traits like hairy or not, large or small, etc."

So, while chimps and humans share the same genetic tool kit, how those tools are used makes a big difference. "Humans and chimps are made up of essentially the same building blocks (proteins), but these are used in somewhat different ways to make a human versus a chimp," Pollard said.

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Space Makes Human Cells Age Faster

While scientists are still working to understand the effects an extended trip to space can have on the human body, research in recent years has suggested that astronauts may experience some pretty dramatic changes on both the physiological and psychological levels.

In the latest study led by a team at University of California San Diego, researchers found signs of accelerated aging in human stem cells that spent roughly a month in space.

The research focused on hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs), which are crucial in the formation of blood and immune cells. Stem cells were sent to the International Space Station for stays of 32-45 days using specially developed nanobioreactors to monitor them. Another set remained on Earth at the Kennedy Space Center.

The cells that went to the ISS showed a host of changes, including reduced self-renewal abilities, greater susceptibility to DNA damage and inflammation in the mitochondria. However, the damage didn't appear to be permanent. The team notes that the changes were at least partially reversed when the cells were removed from the space environment.

"Space is the ultimate stress test for the human body," Catriona Jamieson, director of the UC San Diego Sanford Stem Cell Institute, said in a statement.

"These findings are critically important because they show that the stressors of space — like microgravity and cosmic galactic radiation — can accelerate the molecular aging of blood stem cells. Understanding these changes not only informs how we protect astronauts during long-duration missions but also helps us model human aging and diseases like cancer here on Earth."

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Electron Beams Used To Create Diamonds

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a new method for creating synthetic diamonds using electron radiation. This technique, they suggest, could pave the way for powerful new forms of imaging and analytical techniques.

Currently, diamonds are typically formed under extreme conditions of heat and pressure, such as those deep inside the Earth, or through a controlled growth process called chemical vapor deposition.

However, the Japanese team, led by Professor Eiichi Nakamura, discovered a way to create tiny diamonds (nanodiamonds) at relatively low pressures using an electron beam.

Their starting material was adamantane, a cage-shaped hydrocarbon molecule with the same basic tetrahedral carbon skeleton as diamond.

In adamantane, the carbon atoms are in the right diamond-like arrangement, but each carbon is capped with hydrogen atoms. As the team explains, to turn adamantane into diamond, you need to remove the hydrogens (break carbon–hydrogen bonds).

You also need to link the carbons together (form new carbon–carbon bonds). To achieve this, the team used electron beams inside a transmission electron microscope (TEM), and they carefully "zapped" adamantane crystals.

"Computational data gives you 'virtual' reaction paths, but I wanted to see it with my eyes," Nakamura said.

"However, the common wisdom among TEM specialists was that organic molecules decompose quickly as you shine an electron beam on them. My research since 2004 has been a constant battle to show otherwise," he added.

Instead of destroying the molecules (which is what most people thought would happen), the beam caused the hydrogens to detach and the carbons to link up, thereby slowly building up a diamond lattice.

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Chinese Transparent Coating Turns Windows To Solar Panels

Scientists and researchers in China have created a transparent, colorless, and unidirectional solar concentrator that can be directly coated onto standard window glass and used to harvest sunlight without changing the window’s appearance.

The innovation, which was designed by a research team at Nanjing University in the Chinese province of Jiangsu, uses cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) multilayers with submicron lateral periodicities.

According to the scientists, this unique diffractive-type solar concentrator (CUSC) selectively guides sunlight toward the edge of the window where photovoltaic (PV) cells are installed.

"By engineering the structure of cholesteric liquid crystal films, we create a system that selectively diffracts circularly polarized light, guiding it into the glass waveguide at steep angles," Dewei Zhang, PhD, a researcher at Nanjing University and first author of the study, disclosed.

Unlike conventional luminescent or scattering-based concentrators, which often suffer from visual distortion, low efficiency, and poor scalability, the new CUSC delivers broadband, polarization-selective diffraction and efficient waveguiding while preserving complete visual clarity.

Zhang revealed that the device achieves a high average visible transmittance of around 64.2 percent and a color rendering index of 91.3 percent. "This allows up to 38.1 percent of incident green light energy to be collected at the edge," the scientist explained.

These optical qualities mean the coating can generate clean energy while keeping the glass clear and natural-looking, and ensure that windows remain visually indistinguishable from ordinary glass.

The team also highlighted the system’s impressive scalability. Simulations showed that a standard 6.5-foot-wide (two-meter-wide) CUSC window could concentrate sunlight up to 50 times its normal intensity and thus significantly enhance its energy-gathering potential.

This level of performance would allow for a reduction of up to 75 percent in the photovoltaic cell area required, slash material costs, and open the door to new design possibilities for energy-efficient buildings.

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Students Build A 3D Printer That Makes Rocket Parts

A team of bachelor students in Switzerland were reported to have designed a 3D high-speed multi-material metal printer that could change the future of aerospace, propulsion, and e-mobility manufacturing.

In only nine months, the young researchers reportedly built the prototype machine, which utilizes a rotating laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) system to print cylindrical metal parts significantly faster than conventional systems.

Moreover, the breakthrough enables simultaneous processing of multiple metals in a single operation. This meansscientists can print parts such as rocket nozzles with a copper core and a nickel-alloy exterior in one seamless step.

"This process is ideally suited to rocket nozzles, rotating engines, and many other components in the aerospace industry," Michael Robert Tucker, PhD, a lecturer at the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, said. "They typically have a large diameter but very thin walls."

The new metal printer, which the six bachelor students in their fifth and sixth semesters created, addresses two major challenges in current metal additive manufacturing, speed and multi-material capabilities.

Traditional LPBF printers operate in a stop-start fashion by sequentially applying and fusing each layer. In contrast, the team’s innovative solution rotates the printing platform, allowing powder to be deposited and fused continuously.

"For small players like our student rocket team, this sort of multi-material technology has up to now been too complex and too expensive, putting it out of reach," Tucker explained.

This high-speed rotation slashes production time for cylindrical components by more than two-thirds. It can also print with two different metals simultaneously, which current 3D printers can’t achieve without multiple printing stages or complex post-processing.

The student-led project, named RAPTURE, was initially designed to help ARIS (the Swiss Academic Space Initiative) build bi-liquid-fueled rocket nozzles capable of surviving spaceflight conditions.

ARIS aims to reach the Kármán Line, the international boundary for space set at 62 miles (100 kilometers above) Earth’s surface in the coming years.

According to Tucker, what sets the machine apart is its rotating powder delivery and gas flow system, which proved critical to the quality of the printed parts. The mechanism blows inert gas across the fusion zone, preventing oxidation during the printing process.

At the same time, soot, spatter, and other by-products are continuously extracted through a dedicated outlet, ensuring a cleaner build environment and higher part integrity. "At first we underestimated the extent to which the gas flow mechanism affects product quality," Tucker explained. "Now we know it’s crucial."

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Newly Found Holy Box Has Yet To Reveal What It Used To Hold

Archaeologists recently dug up an ancient reliquary in Austria, and they are hopeful that it will eventually reveal what holy treasures it once held.

Since 2016, the archaeologists have been excavating a hilltop site in the municipality of Irschen, according to a Universität Innsbruck press release. Three years ago, they made a startling discovery: a marble shrine, "measuring around 20 by 30 centimetres," buried beneath the altar of a long-abandoned church.

Within that shrine were fragments of a very specific kind of ivory box called a pyx, which was typically adorned with Christian imagery and used to hold a relic connected to some prominent place or figure within the faith.

The clergy or congregation would often take the pyxes when a church was abandoned, so the archaeologists were surprised that this particular pyx remained within the ruins.

"We know of around 40 ivory boxes of this kind worldwide," archaeological team leader Gerald Grabherr said in the press release, "and, as far as I know, the last time one of these was found during excavations was around 100 years ago—the few pyxes that exist are either preserved in cathedral treasures or exhibited in museums."

"Ivory, especially ivory stored on the ground like in the marble shrine, absorbs moisture from its surroundings and is very soft and easily damaged in this state," Ulrike Töchterle, who heads the restoration workshop in Innsbruck, said in the press release. The larger pieces, over the centuries, have become deformed, making it impossible for the team to physically reconstruct the pyx in its entirety. However, they’re working on a 3D reconstruction.

After a prolonged drying process, the archaeologists revealed what they discovered about the pyx — and what they hope to find in the future.

The pyx’s decoration, the team determined, draws a connection from the biblical figures of the Old Testament through to what they believe is a depiction of the Ascension of Christ. Its imagery begins on one end with a depiction of a figure at the foot of a mountain, "turning his gaze away and a hand rising out of the sky above him, placing something between the person’s arms." Grabherr notes that such imagery is "the typical depiction of the handing over of the laws to Moses on Mount Sinai, the beginning of the covenant between God and man from the Old Testament."

The pyx then depicts a series of more biblical figures before concluding with an image that might be unrecognizable to those only familiar with the more contemporary visual depictions of the New Testament. It shows a man riding in a two-horse chariot as a hand emerges from the clouds to pull the chariot to heaven. This, the team believes, is meant to portray Jesus Christ’s ascension into heaven, albeit in a manner not typically depicted.

"The depiction of scenes from the Old Testament and their connection with scenes from the New Testament is typical of late antiquity and thus fits in with our pyx," Grabherr said of the imagery. "However, the depiction of the Ascension of Christ with a so-called biga, a two-horse chariot, is very special and previously unknown."

But there’s so much left to learn about the pyx. For example, where did the ivory that made the pyx, or the marble of the shrine that held it, come from?

"On the one hand, we still need to determine the exact origin of the marble," Töchterle said regarding the goal of the analysis currently underway, "and we also want to specify the origin of the ivory and the elephant using stable isotope analyses. Metallic components — the hinges of the pyx were made of metal—are also still being examined, as is the glue that was used for the ivory."

In addition to the metal found with the pyx — the reliquary’s hinges — the archaeologists also uncovered fragments of wood. "We are particularly interested in the type of wood and its origin, and the age is also of interest to us," Töchterle said. That’s because, while the team says the wood was likely part of the pyx’s original clasp, it "cannot be completely ruled out" that the wood is actually the relic the pyx was intended to protect, she said.

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Scientists Confirmed Existence Of "Second Sound"

In the world of average, everyday materials, heat tends to spread out from a localized source. Drop a burning coal into a pot of water, and that liquid will slowly rise in temperature before its heat eventually dissipates. But the world is full of rare, exotic materials that don’t exactly play by these thermal rules.

Instead of spreading out as one would expect, these superfluid quantum gasses "slosh" heat side to side — it essentially propagates as a wave. Scientists call this behavior a material’s "second sound" (the first being ordinary sound via a density wave).

Although this phenomenon has been observed before, it’s never been imaged. But recently, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were finally able to capture this movement of pure heat by developing a new method of thermography (a.k.a. heat-mapping).

The results of this study were published in the journal Science, and in an university press release highlighting the achievement, MIT assistant professor and co-author Richard Fletcher continued the boiling pot analogy to describe the inherent strangeness of "second sound" in these exotic superfluids.

"It’s as if you had a tank of water and made one half nearly boiling," Fletcher said. "If you then watched, the water itself might look totally calm, but suddenly the other side is hot, and then the other side is hot, and the heat goes back and forth, while the water looks totally still."

These superfluids are created when a cloud of atoms is subjected to ultra-cold temperatures approaching absolute zero (−459.67 °F). In this rare state, atoms behave differently, as they create an essentially friction-free fluid. It’s in this frictionless state that heat has been theorized to propagate like a wave.

"Second sound is the hallmark of superfluidity, but in ultracold gases so far you could only see it in this faint reflection of the density ripples that go along with it," lead author Martin Zwierlein said in a press statement. "The character of the heat wave could not be proven before."

To finally capture this second sound in action, Zweierlein and his team had to think outside the usual thermal box, as there’s a big problem trying to track heat of an ultracold object—it doesn’t emit the usual infrared radiation. So, MIT scientists designed a way to leverage radio frequencies to track certain subatomic particles known as "lithium-6 fermions," which can be captured via different frequencies in relation to their temperature (i.e. warmer temperatures mean higher frequencies, and vice versa). This novel technique allowed the researchers to essentially zero in on the “hotter” frequencies (which were still very much cold) and track the resulting second wave over time.

This might feel like a big "so what?"pl After all, when’s the last time you had a close encounter with a superfluid quantum gas? But ask a materials scientist or astronomer, and you’ll get an entirely different answer.

While exotic superfluids may not fill up our lives (yet), understanding the properties of second wave movement could help questions regarding high-temperature superconductors (again, still at very low temperatures) or the messy physics that lie at the heart of neutron stars.

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These American Soldiers Are Revered In China

During World War II, some American engineers were given a one-year contract to live and work in China, flying, repairing and making airplanes. Pay is as much as US$ 16,725 a month with 30 days off a year. Housing is included, and you’ll get an extra $700 a month for food. And there’s an extra $11,000 for every Japanese airplane you destroy – no limit.

That’s the deal – in inflation-adjusted 2025 dollars – that a few hundred Americans took in 1941 to become the heroes, and some would even say the saviors, of China.

Those American pilots, mechanics and support personnel became members of the American Volunteer Group (AVG), later known as the Flying Tigers.

The group’s warplanes featured the gaping, tooth-filled mouth of a shark on their nose, a fearsome symbol still used by some US military aircraft to this day.

The symbolic fierceness was backed up by AVG pilots in combat. The Flying Tigers are credited with destroying as many as 497 Japanese planes while losing only 73.

Today, despite US-China tensions, those American mercenaries are still revered in China.

"China always remembers the contribution and sacrifice made to it by the United States and the American people during the World War II," says an entry on the Flying Tigers memorial page of China’s state-run newspaper People’s Daily Online.

The bond is such that the daughter and granddaughter of the Flying Tigers’ founder are among the few Americans invited to Wednesday’s military parade in Beijing commemorating the end of World War II.

In the late 1930s, China had been invaded by the armies of Imperial Japan and was struggling to withstand its better equipped and unified foe. Japan was virtually unopposed in the air, able to bomb Chinese cities at will.

Leader Chiang Kai-shek, who had been able to loosely unite China’s warlords under a central government, later hired American Claire Chennault, a retired US Army captain, to form an air force.

Chennault first spent a few years putting together an air raid warning network and building airbases across China, according to the Flying Tigers’ official website. In 1940, he was dispatched to the United States – still a neutral party – to find pilots and planes that could defend China against Japan.

With good contacts in the administration of US President Franklin Roosevelt and a budget that could pay Americans as much as three times what they could earn in the US military, Chennault was able to get the fliers he needed.

A deal was secured to get 100 Curtiss P-40B fighters built for Britain sent to China instead.

In his memoirs, Chennault wrote that the P-40s he got lacked a modern gun sight.

His pilots were "aiming their guns through a crude, homemade, ring-and-post gun sight instead of the more accurate optical sights used by the Air Corps and the Royal Air Force," he wrote.

What the P-40 lacked in ability, Chennault made up for in tactics, having the AVG pilots dive from a high position and unleash their heavy machine guns on the structurally weaker but more maneuverable Japanese planes.

In a low, twisting, turning dogfight, the P-40 would lose.

The pilots Chennault enrolled were far from the cream of the crop.

Ninety-nine fliers, along with support personnel, made the trip to China in the fall of 1941, according to the US Defense Department history.

Some were fresh out of flight school, others flew lumbering flying boats or were ferry pilots for large bombers. They signed up for the Far East adventure to make a lot of money or because they were simply bored.

Perhaps the best known of the Flying Tigers, US Marine Greg Boyington – around whom the 1970’s TV show "Black Sheep Squadron" was based – was in it for the money.

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A New Synthetic Lifeform That Could Spell Doom For Humankind

It's a technology that doesn't even exist yet, but its effects could be so drastically destructive that scientists in the field are calling for it to be banned now, before it's too late.

We're talking, of course, about "mirror life" — synthetic organisms that quite literally turn natural biology on its head.

"We should choose not to build mirror life and pass laws to ensure nobody can," John Glass, a synthetic biologist who helped create the first living cell with a synthetic genome, wrote in a speculative yet terrifying piece for the Financial Times. "The question is not whether we are able to prevent this threat — it is whether we will act while we still can."

Mirror lifeforms contain DNA structures that are the mirror image to all known organisms. In all life on Earth, the DNA double helix is right-handed, meaning its strands, a sugar-phosphate backbone, twist to the right. (If you make a thumbs-up with your right hand, the vertical axis would be aligned with your thumb, while your fingers represent the curl of the spiral.) The opposite is the case for proteins, the building blocks of cells, which are left-handed.

This so-called homochirality is true for all known lifeforms. So what happens when humans engineer a synthetic organism where its DNA twists to the left, while its proteins twist to the right?

The scary thing is that we can't say for sure — but many biologists fear the worst. In December, a group of leading figures in the field, including two Nobel laureates, published a massive technical report warning that the consequences of mirror life "could be globally disastrous," possibly even wiping out all life if the new organisms prove pathogenic to existing life, like us humans.

In June of this year, more than 150 scientists and ethicists echoed these concerns in a conference at the Institut Pasteur in Paris to weigh the risks of developing the tech. "It was something I never expected to see in my scientific career," Glass wrote. He noted that the Alfred P Sloan Foundation, an influential nonprofit organization that funds scientific research, has been unequivocal that it will not support efforts to create mirror organisms.

Most scientists agree that the technology is at least a decade away, perhaps three. But their sense of urgency in preventing it is palpable.

"Once it is possible to build a mirror cell, it would be comparatively easy to engineer many more kinds of mirror bacteria — the simplest form of mirror life," Glass wrote. "If this is achieved and Pandora's box opens it could pose extraordinary risks."

"To the best of our knowledge, our immune systems produce very weak antibody responses against mirror molecules, if any," he explained. "Having even one immune deficiency can cause a patient to die of overwhelming bacterial infections; a mirror bacterial infection might be like having many immune deficiencies at once."

Moreover, mirror bacteria could resist predation by organisms that normally keep their population in check, allowing them to run rampant across ecosystems.

"Contaminated areas could become irreversibly uninhabitable, compromising our agriculture and natural world," Glass said. "Huge numbers of people, animals and plants could be wiped out, with some driven to extinction."

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