AI systems such as Google’s Gemini Storybook now let parents or teachers conjure illustrated, personalized kids stories. UW researchers found that when six leading AI models made stories about talking animals, 57% of characters were either gender neutral or ungendered, 41% were male, and just 2% were female.

A multidisciplinary team of researchers from Texas A&M University, Virginia Tech and the California Institute of Technology has developed a new approach to transform one of the world’s most challenging plastic waste streams into high-performance lubricants with exceptional energy-saving potential, creating a pathway toward more efficient industrial technologies.

The analytical results reveal a clear transition between a regime governed by the snow slab that detaches and another governed by the weak layer, or its interface, along which the fracture propagates. In the presence of a stiffer weak layer or interface, the crack may 'feel' a local stiffness greater than the global one, and therefore appear to propagate at a globally supersonic speed while remaining locally subsonic. This finding at least partially reconciles the different interpretations reported in the avalanche literature and is based on a characteristic energy length previously introduced to explain the two propagation regimes that had already emerged from numerical studies.

SUMMARY: The U.S. National Science Foundation National Solar Observatory (NSF NSO) announced today a major breakthrough in solar physics. Using the world's most powerful solar telescope, the NSF Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope near the summit of Maui’s Haleakalā, combined with computer simulations, an international team of scientists from the NSO, NSF NCAR High Altitude Observatory (HAO), and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) found the signature of Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI), tiny swirling patterns like small whirlpools, on the Sun's surface. Researchers suggest that KHI might be a key reason why the Sun's outer atmosphere gets so hot, and why magnetic energy builds up and moves around on the Sun. Magnetic energy fuels solar flares and eruptions—the kind of solar activity that can send bursts of energy toward Earth and affect satellites, power grids, and other technology. The discovery opens a new window into the fundamental physics of the Sun and other stars while underscoring the unmatched capabilities of the Inouye Solar Telescope.