Curated Frontline Science & Technology
C.H. Waddington’s powerful image of embryonic stem cells specializing on a rolling landscape has captivated biologists since the 1950s. Experimental data is finally confirming, and complicating, his visionary ideas. The post How Does Life Unfold? A Landscape Metaphor Comes Into Its Own. f...
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed that a turbulent world 20 light-years away has a surprisingly orderly weather system, with three recurring atmospheric states driven by temperature changes and shifting clouds. The breakthrough gives scientists a powerful new tool for uncovering weather...
For many years, this postcard was taped to my office door: It’s funny because it’s true. The machines really do talk about us behind our backs. Machines talking to machines helped me pay for the delicious cardamom buns I bought from the new branch of Under bakery this morning: OK, techni...
For research security to be relevant it must connect to the everyday issues researchers face, rather than be another exercise in institutional compliance. The post If research security feels like bureaucracy, we are making the wrong case first appeared on LSE Impact....
Antarctic sea ice reached its third-lowest winter maximum in 2026, extending a remarkable decline that began after years of record-breaking growth. Scientists are investigating whether the dramatic reversal signals a long-term shift in Antarctica's frozen landscape....
The size of your follower count is never as important as the quality of the network you were joining and developing around your work. The post This is your reminder, for academic social media quality is better than quantity first appeared on LSE Impact....
Listen to the session or watch below Can AI design new life forms? In 2025, Stanford University PhD student Samuel King came up with a preliminary answer when he used a generative AI model to propose genetic blueprints for microscopic viruses. It isn’t yet an example of AI-generated life, but that c...
Scientists investigating Nazi Germany's secret nuclear program have uncovered evidence that its final experimental reactor was nowhere near as close to working as previously claimed. Analysis of surviving uranium cubes and wartime documents reveals that Germany lacked the enormous quantities of uran...
Nature, Published online: 15 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-11263-3Nearly half of reef-building corals face elevated relative risk of extinction...
The middle is a hard place to be. The middle of a thesis or a book can be excruciating. Things are underway, but not finished. The end is in sight, but not yet reached. In the middle, it’s easy to lose faith in the direction you’re travelling. One of my PhD mentors, Dr Diane Mulcahy, ...continue rea...
In my last post on permute, I looked at ordered set partitions and the new formula interface for plots and blocks. This time I want to show two helpers for the next part of writing a permutation test: taking those permutations and doing something... Continue reading: Creating a permutation test, ...
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered that a distant alien planet's atmosphere is surprisingly lopsided. Located 1,300 light-years away, the scorching gas giant WASP-17b experiences powerful winds that redistribute heat, causing one side of its atmosphere to bulge outward....
Nature, Published online: 16 October 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-03338-yCryptographers’ inboxes are being flooded with requests to validate cipher solutions....
DPhil, PhD by Publication, Professional Doctorate, are all doctorates. What makes them different? The post DPhil, PhD by Publication, Professional Doctorate, what’s the difference? first appeared on LSE Impact....
Moritz Hardt, author of a new book on benchmarks, believes these “standardized tests” for artificial intelligence are fundamentally broken — but not unfixable. The post He Wants AI Benchmarking To Be a Science, Not a Dark Art first appeared on Quanta Magazine...
I don’t remember much about Peppy, my first and only pet cat. I can conjure the sensation of stroking her while she purred, recall how she used to get stuck in trees (just like in cartoons!), and chuckle about the time she pooed in my baby sister’s cot. That’s about it. What I do vividly…...
Impact is largely communicated by text. Reflecting on two years of impact meetups, can talking about impact give a better account than yet another case study? The post What two years of impact meetups taught us about research, engagement, partnerships, and making a difference first appeared on LSE I...
As Hurricane Simon unleashed destructive winds and flooding along Mexico’s coast, NASA satellites captured an extraordinary sight: massive atmospheric waves rippling high above the storm. The rare images reveal how powerful hurricanes can disturb the upper atmosphere, creating patterns that are usua...
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is quietly becoming one of the most useful ideas in AI tooling. Here, we describe what MCP is, why it matters, and how to build an MCP server yourself. MCP is a standard way to link a Large Language Model (LLM) to the outside world. ... Continue reading: What is a...
Flow cytometry researchers have a growing collection of R and Bioconductor tools available to them. But for someone who is comfortable working with cytometry data and has little programming experience, knowing where to begin can be difficult. T... Continue reading: Cytometry in R and opportunitie...
Research leadership is often measured through proxies, could narrative approaches create a clearer picture of what good academic leadership is like in practice? The post Universities measure almost everything – except leadership first appeared on LSE Impact....
Social media bans are stacking up. In July, France joined Australia in restricting minors from accessing social media—barring children under 15 from major platforms, before the ban was blocked by the country’s top court on human rights grounds. The UK aims to forbid kids under 16 from accessing Face...
Nature, Published online: 15 October 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-03194-wMajor preprint platform tightens its rules to curb a surge of submissions, including those generated by artificial-intelligence tools....
In this age of rising electricity demand, people are trying to squeeze every last bit of power out of every power plant possible. Over the past few weeks, there’s been big news about nuclear power plants trying to do just that. Constellation, the largest nuclear operator in the US, announced plans t...
Nature, Published online: 16 October 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-03341-3Nature staff discuss a new ink that could be useful for medical tattooing — plus, an insight into why small dogs live longer than big ones....
What difference can a sponsored place on a bioinformatics course make? For some researchers, it means access to training they would otherwise struggle to afford. For others, it is an opportunity to explore a new field, work through unfamili... Continue reading: Beyond the course: Reflections from...
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Kids are outsmarting social media bans. That’s not a problem we need to solve. —Michal Luria, Aliya Bhatia, and Danah Boyd Social media bans are sta...
One of the fundamental aims of field experiments is to explorare the relationships between several experimental traits, which have been recorded/measured altogheter for all the experimental units. For example, think about a genotype experiment w... Continue reading: Can we trust the correlation c...
Design research is inherently a relational approach to creating innovative products. What does it tell us about the processes underpinning research impact? The post How research can orchestrate innovation in circular and sustainable design first appeared on LSE Impact....
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has exceeded expectations after engineers made incredibly tiny adjustments to sharpen its view of the universe. By moving a mirror just one-sixteenth the width of a human hair, the team helped bring its powerful instruments into near-perfect alignment. Roman’...
Arctic sea ice is shrinking in both winter and summer, with satellite records revealing that the region's remaining ice is becoming thinner, younger, and more vulnerable to melting. Despite a recent slowdown in summer losses, scientists warn that the Arctic could experience a nearly ice-free summer ...
In my post at the end of last year, I opened the door to more guest posts. Prof Tania Crotti stepped through that door, offering this interesting and insightful post on an aspect of thesis examination you may not have thought about before. Here’s a bit about Tania before we start: Associate Pr...
Nature, Published online: 15 October 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-03233-6Programmer whose forward-thinking and reliable code helped to save the Apollo 11 mission....
Scientists have discovered how to turn a protein that normally fuels cancer growth into a weapon against it. By activating PPARD in immune cells, researchers made them better at burning fat and attacking tumors, slowing or stopping cancer growth in laboratory experiments. The approach showed promise...
If you plan to learn R or Python in the new year, book before the end of November. Our spring 2027 data science training courses run from January to June, and early bird pricing on the first one ends on 29 November. There are 22 courses on the sc... Continue reading: Spring 2027 data science trai...
A collision may have left these galaxies without dark matter. That spells trouble for alternative gravity theories. The post Triplet of ‘Ghostly’ Galaxies Hints at What Dark Matter Is — and Isn’t first appeared on Quanta Magazine...
You can read the original post in its original format on Rtask website by ThinkR here: {brochure}: multipage {shiny} apps, now on CRAN A {shiny} app is a single page: one url, one UI, one server function. That is comfortable while the app stays small. As soon as you want ... Continue reading: {broch...
Nature, Published online: 16 October 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-03303-9Data from mouse brains and 13 human brains show a link between levels of a lipid-degrading enzyme and cognitive resilience....
Nature, Published online: 15 October 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-03329-zGovernments have voted to abolish the leap second immediately and replace it with a leap hour....
In 1960, scientists predicted that runaway population growth would bring humanity to the brink of destruction on November 13, 2026, and their mathematical forecasts remained surprisingly accurate for decades. But as birth rates declined and population growth slowed, the terrifying prediction unravel...
Pig kidneys that were cooled to -150 °C and stored in a freezer for months have been successfully rewarmed and shown to work again for the first time, say scientists. They hope to replicate the findings with human organs. The kidneys—which are similar in size to human ones—were left in a glass-like ...
Do funding priorities restrict academic freedom? Or can setting clear boundaries between funder problems & the answers academia can provide be productive? The post Academic freedom does not require funder neutrality first appeared on LSE Impact....
Evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers explains how fungal networks in soil trade nutrients with plants, help keep carbon underground, and strike bargains without having a brain. The post How Do Fungi Keep the Planet Healthy? first appeared on Quanta Magazine...
There’s been a lot of … stuff going on at my university lately (just Google “Australian National University” on the news setting and you’ll see what I mean). People are, to put it mildly, upset. So upset that they’ve taken to writing articles for and against said ...
I’ve been giving permute a bit of attention recently. Two additions should make it easier to set up permutation tests: an option for ordered set partitions, and formulas for specifying plots and blocks. That’s a rather grand name for the first ad... Continue reading: Ordered set partitions and fo...
Longtime readers will know I have been working on a better understanding of neurodivergence (ND) and PhD study. I’ve just started my third year of this research work and feel more comfortable saying stuff about the topic. At the end of this post I will give you a research update, including the...
Nature, Published online: 15 October 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-03152-6Drugs that can reverse multiple sclerosis in mice and a new species of penguin are just the beginning....
Zhenguo Zhang's Blog https://fortune9.netlify.app/2026/10/16/statistics-collinearity-in-regression/ - library(knitr) library(ggplot2) library(dplyr) library(tidyr) library(broom) Problem When performing regression analysis, you may encounter two or ... Continue reading: [Statistics] Collinearity ...
More than 5 million people around the world have an advanced form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) called geographic atrophy, in which cells in the retinas die off. And until now, no treatment could restore their vision. The PRIMA system, which was approved in Europe in July and is awaiting...
Nature, Published online: 16 October 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-03308-4Building the Nobel-prizewinning neutrino experiment was a big risk. To continue its success, scientists — and funders — need to stay bold....
SpaceX just delivered some surprisingly strange cargo to the International Space Station, including tiny brain models, 3D heart tissue, and technology for making artificial retinas in space. Scientists hope these experiments could unlock new ways to treat devastating brain diseases, restore eyesight...
Scientists have discovered a surprising two-way relationship between sleep and growth hormone, revealing how the brain carefully balances physical recovery with wakefulness. The findings could help explain why poor sleep harms metabolism and brain health, potentially opening the door to new treatmen...
Have you ever thought about what makes you you? Science assures us it has everything to do with the three-pound organ between our ears, with its billions of neurons and trillions of delicate connections. But it’s a lot trickier to explain why we have a sense of self-awareness or to pin down precisel...
I. Meet cute Barnabas and Mainspring grew up near at hand, about an hour apart with good traffic, but for a long time they weren’t close. They traded glimpses and occasional hellos and then went about their business. Both of them carried on livelier conversations with farther-flung neighbors, who we...
A mathematical mechanism enables AI models to process language at scale, undergirding the current AI revolution. Our columnist asks: Why is attention the key? The post Is ‘Attention’ the Essence of Intelligence? first appeared on Quanta Magazine...
Nature, Published online: 15 October 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-03238-1Solitary primates spend energy and time travelling to patches of forest for get-togethers....
As investment in research capacity building for those who work in social care and social work increases, Hannah Kendrick, Sharon Paul and Juliette Malley discuss areas of potential, whilst setting out challenges in navigating a complex landscape, differential access to training, and organisational c...
Data centers required to fuel the ambitions of Artificial Intelligence companies have sparked a nationwide conversation. AI companies are moving quickly to build out infrastructure and local communities are pushing back to resist what they see a... Continue reading: A Bayesian Network to Explore ...
I recently updated nycdogs, a data package for R that I originally made for teaching purposes. It bundles up New York City’s dog licensing and dog bite datasets into an R package. The data is already provided by the city in a directly usable way ... Continue reading: Dogs of New York...
Nature, Published online: 15 October 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-03336-0Ghostly white corals are fully restored in eight weeks by contact with a healthy counterpart. Plus, arXiv is capping submissions per researcher and four good news stories to brighten your day....
USC scientists have discovered a way to create a potentially renewable supply of genetically engineered immune cells that can attack cancer and strengthen the body's natural defenses. By growing and modifying immature immune cells rather than mature ones, researchers developed a system that can cont...
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Pig kidneys that were “frozen” for a year have been brought back to life Pig kidneys that were cooled to -150 °C and stored in a freezer for months ha...
If open research is judged only by who can read the final article, it overlooks who has the networks, feedback and institutional support to shape research. The post From open access to open participation, why research impact starts before publication first appeared on LSE Impact....
A close examination of three medical controversies shows how evidence, rather than resolving them, only takes effect when placed within instrumental narratives. The post Public controversies cannot be settled by “following the evidence” first appeared on LSE Impact....
When we have a multi-trait table of data, we might be interested in investigating variability structure and the reciprocal relationships (whether causal or non-causal) among variables. For example, let’s consider the ‘mtcars’ dataset, shown belo... Continue reading: A Trip from Covariance to Corr...
Waking up in 2025 is weird. Take this morning as just one example. I open my eyes and immediately fumble for the phone, opening BlueSky and Threads to see what craziness has come out from the USA while I slept here in Australia. Reassuring myself that we are all still alive (well, some of us ...cont...
Nature, Published online: 16 October 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-03253-2US PhD graduates who used artificial intelligence were more likely to work in industry....
Because it’s 2026, the best place to hang out and chat online these days is Linkedin (yes I know, everything is terrible). A week or so ago, I posted a little mini rant there about the humble em dash, complaining that it has become an AI ‘tell’ and that I was self censoring to avoi...
Recently, some colleagues and I released a paper about the experiences of neurodivergent PhD students. It’s a systematic review of the literature to date, which is currently under review, but available via pre-print here. Doing this paper was an exercise in mixed feelings. It was an absolute j...
Nature, Published online: 16 October 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-03195-9The mitoproteomes of five parasites and a plant hold medical potential — and reignite the question of just when the mitochondrion evolved....
In statistics, dependence or association is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. It is often measured by the Pearson’s correlation coefficient: Other measures of correlation can be... Continue reading: Going back to the basics: the c...
A new chapter for the Matrix Profile in R For a while, tsmp looked quiet. The project was not standing still, though: the Matrix Profile tools for R have been reorganized around a much clearer split between the computational engine and the everyday data-mining interface. In tsmp 0.5.1, the package t...
Lately I’ve been hearing from pissed off PhD students – both people enrolled at my university and others. The cost of living is high, higher education in Australia is in crisis and people, understandably, want Out. Heaps of later stage students are landing nearly finished manuscripts on ...
Scientists have uncovered an unexpected trade-off in the wings of the European nightjar, a bird that migrates thousands of kilometers but sacrifices high-speed flight efficiency to hunt insects with remarkable agility. Even more surprisingly, it generates thrust on the upward wingbeat, a technique t...
A nationwide search for giant crayfish uncovered a record-breaking Tennessee specimen and a surprising mystery about how big these freshwater creatures can grow. Scientists found that North American crayfish seem to hit a biological size limit, possibly because of their muscles or protective shells....
Scientists have uncovered a surprising cause of age-related cognitive decline involving brain cells previously thought to be entirely beneficial. As these cells become dysfunctional, they can produce abnormal amounts of myelin, disrupting nerve fibers and potentially contributing to worsening memory...
The 1.4.0 release of maestro is out, and with it comes the ability to record custom metrics from your pipelines. Execution time and success/failure were already tracked, but there was no good way to answer questions like “how many rows did ... Continue reading: maestro 1.4.0 adds custom pipeline ...
Nature, Published online: 16 October 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-03112-0A note to self....
Nature, Published online: 15 October 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-03178-wAn expert panel debates the impact of artificial intelligence on doctoral programmes....
Before I start this post – a quick announcement. My business partner and pod cohost, Dr Jason Downs, is visiting the UK in late April. If you’d like to meet and chat with him about the products we have planned for On The Reg Team in 2026, shoot us an email to [email protected] w...