Researchers led by Noah Cowan at Johns Hopkins University have secured NIH funding to probe how animals alternate between "explore" (sensing) and "exploit" (task-oriented) behaviors in uncertain environments, using the weakly electric glass knifefish as  a model. The team includes researchers from four universities who will integrate their expertise in neuroscience, math, engineering, and machine learning to build on 2023 findings in  Nature Machine Intelligence that revealed the explore/exploit pattern across species from amoebas to humans. The project aims to decode decision triggers, with implications for robotics and medicine.

Do you think that Spotify's suggestions for new music becomes stranger all the time? It may be because of you. In a unique study with researchers from University of Gothenburg, 15 years of listening data shows that musical taste becomes more refined with age.

Quantum computing is widely believed to be a revolutionary new technology. In fact, it is a double-edged sword. If efficient quantum computers can be manufactured in near future, many of the current cryptosystems will be in danger and post-quantum cryptography will be crucial to the security of our communications.