Researchers at University of Tennessee, Knoxville are collaborating on PegasusAI, an NSF-funded project to enhance scientific workflows using AI. By integrating tools like large language models and neural networks, PegasusAI aims to simplify complex data processing, improve accessibility, and empower researchers nationwide with intelligent, user-centered workflow management systems.

Roads, buildings and farms are preventing Michigan’s only rattlesnake from finding mates outside of their population. A 15-year study shows that fragmentation into smaller, more isolated patches is likely reducing the threatened snake’s chances of survival. Michigan State University conservation biologists traced the family histories of more than 1,000 Eastern Massasauga rattlesnakes caught and released in a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-funded project. The new findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, surprised even the researchers – the most inbred snakes were 13% less likely to have surviving offspring and had a nearly 12% lower annual survival rate. 

Researchers have developed a self-powered microneedle patch to monitor a range of health biomarkers without drawing blood or relying on batteries or external devices. In proof-of-concept testing with synthetic skin, the researchers demonstrated that the patches could collect biomarker samples over periods ranging from 15 minutes to 24 hours.

Ultrahigh frequency bandwidths are easily blocked by objects, so users can lose transmissions walking between rooms or even passing a bookcase. Now, researchers at Princeton engineering have developed a machine-learning system that could allow ultrahigh frequency transmissions to dodge those obstacles.

An international group of chemists led by Johns Hopkins University details a photobiocatalytic approach to carbon-nitrogen bond formation that bypasses the need for fossil fuels, using a copper-substituted nonheme enzyme.

University of Utah geoscientist Gabriel Bowen’s analyzed of carbon and oxygen isotopes of sediments recovered from the bed Utah’s Great Salt Lake. His findings document profound human-driven environmental changes arising from agriculture and rail causeway.

In southwestern Kenya more than 2.6 million years ago, ancient humans wielded an array of stone tools—known collectively as the Oldowan toolkit—to pound plant material and carve up large prey such as hippopotamuses. These durable and versatile tools were crafted from special stone materials collected up to eight miles away, according to new research led by scientists at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Queens College. Their findings, published Aug. 15 in the journal Science Advances, push back the earliest known evidence of ancient humans transporting resources over long distances by some 600,000 years.

Researchers at Rice University and collaborating institutions have discovered direct evidence of active flat electronic bands in a kagome superconductor. This breakthrough could pave the way for new methods to design quantum materials — including superconductors, topological insulators and spin-based electronics — that could power future electronics and computing technologies. The study, published in Nature Communications Aug. 14, centers on the chromium-based kagome metal CsCr₃Sb₅, which becomes superconducting under pressure.