Generative AI tools are rapidly transforming how software is built—and raising new risks in the process, according to a new TechBrief from the Association for Computing Machinery’s Technology Policy Council (TPC) on the rise of “vibe coding.”

A research team has developed a camera-only visual odometry (VO) system that uses prebuilt colored point cloud maps to deliver more accurate and robust localization with reduced drift in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-challenged environments. 

As the global pollution crisis caused by manufacturing and disposing of single-use plastics continues to grow, researchers have developed a non-toxic plastic alternative derived from the hemp plant—a non-psychoactive type of cannabis. 

In a study publishing April 30 in the Cell Press journal Chem Circularity, a team of scientists and engineers demonstrates a stretchy, hemp-derived thermoplastic that can extend up to 1,600% of its size. The material has a high “glass transition temperature,” a quality that allows plastics to stay dry and durable when they come into contact with boiling hot water. 

Years before he conducted the research that would earn him a Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, was a postdoctoral scientist at Gladstone Institutes, studying genes. There, he helped discover a gene (now called eIF4G2) that’s essential for early embryonic development. Then, the story pauses. Without the technology needed to develop an animal model to further investigate the gene, Yamanaka moved on to develop induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells—adult cells that have been reprogrammed into an embryonic state. That work earned him the Nobel Prize, but he never forgot his first gene. Now, 30 years since his postdoc, Yamanaka has circled back to eIF4G2. In a study published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, he and his colleagues finally created a sophisticated animal model to study the gene. With that tool, they’ve now shown that eIF4G2 is indispensable for adult intestinal health.

A major new report published today warns that nature loss is not just an environmental issue, it is already disrupting our food system, threatening catastrophic impacts on our economy and society. The report has been produced by the UK’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and Anglia Ruskin University.

30 April 2026 / Kiel / Mindelo. Tomorrow, fourteen Master’s students in the West African Master’s programme ‘Climate Change and Marine Sciences’ will begin their two-week training and research voyage aboard the research vessel POLARSTERN. Travelling from Mindelo in Cabo Verde to Bremerhaven, Germany, they will carry out physical, biogeochemical and biological measurements together with ten experienced scientists. This is the fourth time that the Floating University is taking place under the leadership of GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. This initiative significantly contributes to the goals of the UN Decade of Ocean Science and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) as part of the WASCAL programme (West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use).