Excessive mobile gaming is raising concerns about health and sleep, but research from Kyushu University suggests that small changes can help. In a global study involving over 80,000 players, the team found that grayscale visuals and loading delays encourage users to reduce playtime naturally. When combined with a 10-second delay, grayscale reduced daily playtime by 30.8% and retention by 40.4%. The team calls on developers to adopt these insights to create healthier digital spaces.

A new digital reconstruction of the face of the 3.67‑million‑year‑old Australopithecus fossil, Little Foot, provides new insight into the evolution of the human face. 

The new findings, published in Comptes Rendus Palevol, offer fresh insight into the diversity of the fossil hominin (i.e., extant human and their ancestors and relatives) face across Africa 4-3 million years ago.

The University of Portsmouth, as part of Space South Central (SSC), one of the UK’s largest regional space clusters, is leading a new international partnership with Saudi space-tech company SARsatX. Together, they are developing the concept for an Earth observation satellite mission aimed at supporting a range of sectors, including climate science and environmental resilience.

Severe parameter coupling between electrical and thermal transport limits the performance of GeTe-based thermoelectrics. A research team led by Prof. Lei Miao and Prof. Jie Gao successfully mitigated this trade-off through a synergistic Sb/Ni co-doping strategy. By leveraging Ni-induced shallow impurity levels to enhance carrier effective mass and forming in situ NiGe nanophases to suppress lattice thermal conductivity, the study optimized the interdependent transport properties. This approach yielded a peak figure of merit (ZT) of 2.15 and a single-leg device conversion efficiency of ~10%, demonstrating significant potential for mid-temperature waste heat recovery.

While the Amazon River is world-renowned for its massive flow, a significant portion of its water evaporates before it can reach calm water reservoirs or the ocean. Anshul Yadav, a doctoral student in the civil and environmental engineering department at Texas A&M University, has received a prestigious Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) fellowship to measure this invisible loss.

Dogs come in all shapes and sizes: from giant fluffy Newfoundlands to tiny short-haired Chihuahuas. And many furry companions like to spend their days inside near their humans. An initial study published in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology reports that dogs — both big and small — impact indoor air quality. The researchers found that small active dogs produced more airborne particles, but larger animals released more microbes into the air than people did.