Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, a popular Hawai’i snorkeling destination that attracts nearly a million annual visitors, underwent a remarkable and rapid recovery when tourism ceased during the 2020 pandemic.

In the world’s cold and snowy regions, shorter and warmer winters are one of the most conspicuous consequences of climate change.

Rice University biosciences professor Matthew Bennett has received a $1.99 million grant from the National Science Foundation to lead research on engineered bacterial consortia that could form the basis of biological computing systems. The four-year project will also involve co-principal investigators Kirstin Matthews, Caroline Ajo-Franklin and Anastasios Kyrillidis from Rice along with Krešimir Josić from the University of Houston. The research team aims to develop platforms that integrate microbial sensing and communication with electronic networks, paving the way for computing systems constructed from living cells instead of traditional silicon-based hardware.

A new MIT study in Cell of 3.5 million cells from more than 100 human brains finds that Alzheimer’s progression—but also resilience to disease—depends on preserving epigenomic stability.

The Kavli Foundation and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) have announced the latest recipients of funding under their joint initiative to explore how nervous systems function and evolve in dynamic natural environments. These projects will study how brains adapt to a changing world—linking genes, cells, behavior & ecosystems. This marks a continued commitment to supporting bold, interdisciplinary research at the intersection of neuroscience, biology, and ecology.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have developed aerial robots equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) to detect, track and analyze wildfire smoke plumes. This innovation could lead to more accurate computer models that will improve air quality predictions for a wide range of pollutants.

Glaciers across High Mountain Asia are losing more than 22 gigatons of ice per year. The impact of a warming climate on glacial loss is undisputed—this new study provides the first evidence that seasonal shifts in rainfall and snowfall patterns, particularly of the South Asian monsoons, are also exacerbating glacier melting across the region.

A team of computer scientists at UC Riverside has developed a method to erase private and copyrighted data from artificial intelligence models—without needing access to the original training data. The innovation compels AI models to “forget” selected information while maintaining the models’ functionality with the remaining data. It’s a significant advancement that can amend models without having to re-make them with the voluminous original training data, which is costly and energy-intensive.