Image: Society for Science/Chris Ayers Photography At just 18, Jaeho Lee has already taken on a mathematical problem that reaches far beyond the classroom. A student at Spring Branch Academic Institute in Houston, Texas, Lee was named one of the 40 finalists in the 2026 Regeneron Science Talent Search, after studying the structure of affine…
PC: Long overdue: a new, widespread, species of Pristimantis (Anura, Strabomantidae) from the Chocó region and the synonymy of Pristimantis subsigillatus For more than a century, a frog living across the forests of western Ecuador and southern Colombia carried the wrong scientific name. It was not hidden in some unexplored corner of the rainforest, either….
There are moments when a simple disagreement quietly turns into something larger. A conversation stops, assumptions take over and a distance begins to grow between people who may once have understood each other well. Sometimes the separation is deliberate, created to protect a boundary or avoid conflict. At other times, it happens almost without anyone…
For centuries, lake sturgeon have moved quietly through the rivers and lakes of the Great Lakes region, growing slowly and aging in a way that has been difficult to measure. Their lives can stretch far beyond those of most freshwater fish, but just how far has remained uncertain. New research now suggests that some may…
Snow-covered mountain ranges of the Montagne Noire. Image Credit: Von Christian Ferrer/Wikipedia Nearly 400 fossils discovered in southern France are giving scientists a detailed view of marine life that lived close to the South Pole about 470 million years ago. The fossils belong to the newly described Cabrières Biota, an Early Ordovician fossil site in…
A $12 million research project at Penn State is trying to give drones a new way of making decisions, drawing inspiration from the small brains of insects and other animals. Funded by the US Army’s Army Research Laboratory, the project aims to develop an onboard sensing system that can pick out useful information without sending…
In a vineyard in Italy’s Puglia region, rows of grapevines grew beneath something more usually associated with power stations than agriculture: photovoltaic panels. The arrangement changed the amount of sunlight reaching the vines, but it also altered what was happening much closer to the ground. Soil stayed wetter, temperatures were less extreme and the air…
Representative Image of an apple orchard with solar panels providing shade while generating electricity (AI-generated image) In 2022, researchers running a field experiment in southern France found that moving solar panels installed above an apple orchard sharply reduced sunburn damage on the fruit. The system, known as a dynamic agrivoltaic setup, tilts photovoltaic panels through…
What happened to the reindeer on St. Matthew Island is a classic story of wildlife boom and bust. In 1944, the US Coast Guard corralled 29 Nunivak Island reindeer on a barge and floated the animals north to the island, more than 200 miles away to one of the most remote places in Alaska. While…
PC: 3M Young Scientist Lab Dry air is not completely without water. There is moisture suspended in the atmosphere even when rainfall is scarce, and 13-year-old Aniket Sarkar wanted to find out whether some of it could be recovered for agriculture. His idea led to a low-cost atmospheric water capture system built with ordinary materials,…
