Curated Frontline Science & Technology
arXiv:2606.02589v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Integrating over model uncertainty in factorial designs via Bayesian model averaging is hindered by the combinatorial explosion of interpretable interaction effects, often yielding a multimodal posterior, where standard Markov chain Monte Carlo algori...
At the heart of AI applications to scholarly communication are processes of summarisation and the ranking of “too much” information. Considering how unequal dynamics of attention, such as the Matthew … Continued The post The Matthew effect in AI summary first appeared on LSE Impact....
Probabilistic forecasts for the 2026 FIFA World Cup are obtained by using a hybrid model that combines data, expert insights, and advanced statistical models. The favorite is Spain, closely followed by England, France, and Germany. ... Continue reading: Football meets machine learning: Foreca...
arXiv:2606.03018v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Modeling interactions among multimodal, high-dimensional data is intrinsically challenging due to ultra-high dimensionality and complex dependence structure with high level noise. Screening methods are effective for reducing dimensionality, but most e...
arXiv:2606.02676v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Visual and quantitative goodness-of-fit diagnostics are an important tool in the practitioner's toolbox. The need for convincing and reliable diagnostics is particularly clear when fitting extreme value regression models, which are used for extrapolat...
arXiv:2606.02592v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Urban nitrogen dioxide ($NO_2$) is a key indicator of combustion-related air pollution and exhibits strong spatial and temporal variability in cities. This study presents a satellite-based framework for tracking urban $NO_2$ pollution using tropospher...
Astronomers have finally cracked the mystery behind a strange class of repeating cosmic signals that has baffled scientists for years. Using Australia’s ASKAP radio telescope, researchers traced the bursts to a rare stellar duo in which a dense white dwarf is relentlessly siphoning material from a n...
Techtonique dot net is back, but more like a passion project, with an API for machine learning tasks (classification, regression, survival analysis, reserving, forecasting etc.). Examples in R, Python are provided in the blog post. Continue reading: Techtonique dot net, the Machine Learning web API,...
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 ...
TL;DR, don’t let your friends use LLMs for finding useless code in a project! Using Jarl instead is cheaper, more reliable, and won’t kill any kitten. We (Hannah and Maëlle) share an appreciation for the unglamorous maintenance work we c... Continue reading: Refactoring with Jarl: a coffee chat...
arXiv:2606.02645v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Periodic target updates in Q-learning and soft target updates in actor-critic methods are empirically well established stabilization mechanisms, but their precise theoretical explanation is still incomplete. This paper gives a rigorous and exact analy...
Three hundred seventy-six of the new packages submitted to CRAN in April were still there in mid-May. Here are my Top 40 picks in twenty-three categories: Actuarial Analysis, Archaeology, Biology, Causal Inference, Computational Methods, Ecology... Continue reading: April 2026 Top 40 New CRAN Pac...
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. China has approved the world’s first invasive brain-computer chip—here’s what’s next Sitting in the courtyard of his house in China’s Henan province l...
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. 5 key points in Trump’s new AI order Less than two weeks after scrapping an executive order on AI, President Donald Trump signed a new one on Tu...
arXiv:2606.03007v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The Galton--Watson process (GWP) is a discrete-time branching process model that provides a powerful tool for analyzing epidemic data and estimating key epidemiological parameters such as the basic reproduction number. When used with surveillance-base...
Do we need quantum computers to fully understand complex chemical reactions? A new result, decades in the making, shows the surprising power of ordinary “classical” machines. The post Key Chemistry Question Answered, No Quantum Computer Required first appeared on Quanta Magazine...
Learn to recognize problems in R test code that cause your test suite to pass while hiding real bugs. Detect those issues and start writing more trustworthy tests. Continue reading: 11 Test Smells That Make Your Tests Lie to You...
I’ve been using Unix and Linux systems for nearly 20 years. When I found myself with a Windows laptop for a while I felt lost and quickly installed Windows Subsystem for Linux. And yet the number of commands I know and use regularly is surprisingly short: cd, ls, rm, pwd, ... Continue reading: Gh...
Nature, Published online: 03 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10575-8Teosinte alleles enhance nitrogen assimilation and seed protein without lowering crop yield when expressed in modern maize, providing a powerful strategy for crop improvement to meet future population demands....
The global health care sector is under increasing strain. Decades of chronic underinvestment and constraints in recruitment have coincided with a surge in demand for services for aging populations. Gaps in provision are already taking a toll, with fragmented access to care and high rates of st...
Nature, Published online: 03 June 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01793-1Passive heart-rate monitoring during regular phone use could provide early warning of health issues — plus, testing Richard Feynman’s solution to the ‘restaurant dilemma’ problem....
Nature, Published online: 03 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10610-8Chloroplast plastoglobules act as nitrogen-assimilation hubs in maize, with key enzymes enhancing nitrogen-use efficiency and offering new strategies for developing high-yield, sustainable crops....
Introduction In my previous job my work computer was a Windows desktop – yes, those were the days before laptops and hotdesking! My PhD student was interested in Bayesian methods and we put together an R package which included some Stan models. ... Continue reading: Speeding up Stan model builds for...
Three new papers in Nature from the SCORE project find that around half of social science studies hold up under replication, reproducibility, and robustness tests. Many commentators have read this … Continued The post Is it really bad that only 50% of social science papers are reproducible? fi...
arXiv:2606.02874v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Neural posterior estimation (NPE) is a simulation-based approach to Bayesian inference that trains a neural network to approximate the posterior distribution from simulated parameter - data pairs, bypassing likelihood evaluation. We apply NPE -- to ou...
Nature, Published online: 03 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10562-zThe size of tropical vegetation gross primary production...
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...
1. Introduction & Theoretical Framework In modern electronic trading markets, algorithmic execution engines drive the vast majority of institutional order flows. Evaluating whether these independent, learning-driven trading algorithms behave competitively or tacitly coordinate has become a cri...
Widespread use of generative AI by students poses serious challenges to universities and their credentials. If AI widens the gap between what is assessed and what students learn, Marvin Starominski-Uehara … Continued The post AI is degrading the value of a university degree first appeared on L...
arXiv:2606.02772v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The ASCCR (Attitude-Structure-Content-Communication-Relationship) framework was recently developed to teach collaboration skills to statisticians and data scientists. However, its effectiveness in real-world settings has not yet been systematically ev...
For many higher education institutions the default way to accommodate neurodiverse students in assessment is to provide extra time. Drawing on the principles of Universal Design for Learning, Malak Benslama-Dabdoub … Continued The post Extra time is not inclusion – Why redesigning assessments ...
Nature, Published online: 03 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10561-0Reply to: The size of tropical vegetation gross primary production...
Kitchen sponges release microplastics as they wear down during everyday use, with some sponge types shedding far more than others. Researchers estimated that millions of households could collectively release hundreds of tons of microplastics annually....
Deer keds rely on flight and vision to find a host, but everything changes once they land. After shedding their wings forever, these parasites reduce the activity of key vision-related genes by about half. Scientists believe they are effectively trading sharp eyesight for extra energy that can be us...
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...
Lifelike biochemistry continued to unfold in sterilized soil for six years, pointing to a metabolic theory for how biology began. The post The Dirt That Refused To Die first appeared on Quanta Magazine...
Nature, Published online: 03 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10603-7A small-peptide signalling axis involving RGF family members controls resilience to cold stress in tomatoes and rice; modulating this pathway prevents cold-induced yield losses....
Join us in Turku The Tidyomics community is organising a hackathon during the pre-conference programme of EuroBioC2026 in Turku, Finland. The hackathon will take place on June 1-2, 2026, ahead of the main EuroBioC2026 conference on June 3-5, 20... Continue reading: EuroBioC2026 Tidyomics Hackatho...
Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory recreated part of the intense chaos inside a nuclear fireball to better understand how radioactive fallout forms. Their experiments revealed that the way vaporized materials cool can dramatically change the particles that eventually form, especial...
Earth’s largest volcanic system, hidden in mountain chains under the sea, has long been assumed to erupt only quietly. The shallow seafloor off Iceland tells another story. The post When Quiet Undersea Volcanoes Turn Disruptive first appeared on Quanta Magazine...
arXiv:2606.02740v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Gradient boosted decision trees require a stopping rule to avoid overfitting. The standard rule monitors a validation loss and stops if the loss fails to improve for a fixed patience period. However, the patience parameter has no interpretable scale a...
A long-overlooked organ may hold surprising clues to healthy aging and cancer survival. Researchers at Mass General Brigham used AI to analyze CT scans from tens of thousands of adults and found that people with healthier thymuses—a small immune-system organ once thought to become largely irrelevant...
Nature, Published online: 03 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10612-6Longitudinal transcriptomic, chromatin and genomic analyses of the two types of IDH-mutant glioma reveal in detail how disease progression is influenced by interdependent genetic, epigenetic and microenvironmental factors....
Higher education institutions find themselves in a contradictory position of being squeezed financially and relied on to contribute to economic development. Considering the growing interest in institutional mergers in higher … Continued The post If universities are integral to industrial strat...
After a couple of big seasons survivoR v2.3.12 has been updated with US50 and AU12. Get it on: As of […] The post survivoR now includes US50 and AU12 appeared first on Dan Oehm | Gradient Descending. Continue reading: survivoR now includes US50 and AU12...
Scientists have confirmed that a mysterious Utah earthquake first detected in 1979 really did occur nearly 90 kilometers underground—far deeper than anyone thought earthquakes could happen beneath a continent. By reanalyzing decades of seismic data, researchers identified a rare class of "continenta...
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...
The alert was raised on May 5. Four health-care workers in the Ituri Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo had died from an unknown illness within four days. Rapid response teams were sent to investigate, and tests at a research center in Kinshasa revealed the culprit: the Bundibugyo viru...
Nature, Published online: 03 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10551-2Extensive mining activity leads to large-scale deforestation of dense tropical forests across sub-Saharan Africa, driven particularly by key energy transition minerals such as cobalt....
Nature, Published online: 03 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10473-zNASA’s Juno observations show relativistic electron acceleration at the bow shock of Jupiter and establish a universal scaling law linking shock size to maximum cosmic ray energy....
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 ...
Recently I bought a new car. It’s very fast and very yellow. Here’s a picture of me and Mr ThesisWhisperer with it: I bought my first new car at 50 – a Tesla. Now, four years later, I’ve bought a second electric vehicle, a ridiculously yellow EX30 Volvo with a dual motor. Som...
Nature, Published online: 03 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10624-2Analysis of a 25-year satellite record shows that Earth has a persistent east–west albedo symmetry split at 27° E, with clear-sky albedo, cloud radiative effect and open-ocean fraction exhibiting a triple symmetry around this meri...
Making your first contribution to open source can be both empowering and yet very intimidating. – rOpenSci FTC Guide Last year we were grateful to receive funding from NumFOCUS1 to organize a series of events designed to reduce barriers restri... Continue reading: A New Guide: Organizing Events for ...
Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci! rOpenSci HQ 15 Years of rOpenSci, and we’re just getting started 🎉 This y... Continue reading: rOpenSci News Digest, May 2026...
An ancient mountain cave in the Pyrenees may have served as one of the earliest high-altitude mining camps ever discovered, with evidence of repeated visits spanning thousands of years. The find becomes even more intriguing with the discovery of a child’s remains and clues that deeper excavations co...
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...
June's night sky delivers several must-see events, starting with a close encounter between Venus and Jupiter after sunset. Mercury joins the pair to form a rare three-planet lineup, while the Moon puts on a special show by passing in front of Venus for viewers in parts of the Americas. The month als...
arXiv:2606.02909v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Gradient observations can substantially improve Gaussian process (GP) surrogates, particularly in high-dimensional settings where function evaluations are expensive. However, exact inference with $n$ function values and $n$ full gradients in $d$ dimen...
arXiv:2606.02664v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Latent state-space models are widely used to study partially observed dynamical systems, yet most formulations assume that process variability is independent of latent-state position. In many biological, behavioral, and physiological systems, however,...
arXiv:2606.02777v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Computer experiments with both quantitative and qualitative inputs have become common across various areas. However, constructing accurate and computationally efficient emulators for such experiments at large scales remains a significant challenge. We...
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. How small businesses can leverage AI From accounting to design to market research and product development, there’s a staggering breadth of skills need...
A newly identified protein may be one of the biggest obstacles holding CAR T-cell therapy back. Researchers found that NFIL3 causes these engineered immune cells to become exhausted and lose their cancer-fighting power over time. When NFIL3 was disabled, the cells remained stronger for longer and co...
Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical on artificial intelligence includes a statement that warrants serious attention from technologists and policymakers: “Technology is never neutral.” Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”) is a clarion call to all people to act with courage and solidarity as we ente...
Nature, Published online: 03 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10627-zSingle-cell mapping of cis-expression quantitative trait loci in inflammatory bowel disease revealed distal, enhancer-enriched variants detected at the cell-type level more frequently co-localize with genome-wide association study...
Nature, Published online: 03 June 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01774-4Discover the strengths, limitations and risks associated with using artificial intelligence in your science job applications....
Learn how to write Then steps that assert outcomes without coupling to implementation. Build custom testthat expectations and keep your BDD assertions at the right level. Continue reading: Behavior-Driven Development in R Shiny: Asserting Outcomes with Then Steps...
arXiv:2606.02632v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Modern Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) models, especially large language models (LLMs), are increasingly used to generate scientific hypotheses and mechanistic explanations from observational data. This position paper argues tha...
This article is from Making AI Work, MIT Technology Review’s limited-run newsletter examining how to apply LLMs across industries. To receive it in your inbox,sign up here. From accounting to design to market research and product development, there’s a staggering breadth of skills needed to run a bu...
Over hundreds of years, increasingly sophisticated instruments have revealed — and continue to reveal — the secrets of our star. The post How We See the Beautiful, Violent Sun first appeared on Quanta Magazine...
In holographic theories, physicists may have traced the pliability of space-time to its quantum roots: a measure of quantumness known as “magic.” The post Entanglement Builds Space-Time. Now “Magic” Gives It Gravity. first appeared on Quanta Magazine...
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...
A competent paper used to prove a competent mind. It no longer does. The research integrity tools we have were built for fraud and for selective reporting. As Timothy Cook … Continued The post Eager to please AI assistants smooth over the gaps in our thinking first appeared on LSE Impact....
In many areas of social science co-authorship is the default. Drawing on a meta-analysis of academics in fields related to management, Lorenz Graf-Vlachy outlines a pervasive culture of questionable authorship … Continued The post Without guidelines academic authorship defaults to power politi...
Calls for evidence-based scrutiny of online platforms have intensified globally. But the capacity to produce evidence is unevenly distributed. Alexandra Boutopoulou argues legal uncertainty surrounding data access is creating a … Continued The post Legal jeopardy shouldn’t determine who can re...
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. How a new extraction process could unlock the world’s lithium A new method for extracting lithium could cut costs and emissions from one of the world’...
arXiv:2606.03012v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Switchback experiments -- in which treatment is assigned at the level of a cluster crossed with a time period -- are widely used in marketplace and platform settings, yet no closed-form power formula exists for them. We fill this gap by deriving a clo...
Nature, Published online: 03 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10727-wEditorial Expression of Concern: Functional proteomic identification of DNA replication proteins by induced proteolysis in vivo...
Qualitative social scientists have lagged behind their quantitative colleagues in adopting open social science approaches to research. Discussing their new book, Patrick Dunleavy and Timothy Monteath outline numerous different strategies … Continued The post Qualitative research can and should...
Zhenguo Zhang's Blog https://fortune9.netlify.app/2026/05/30/r-position-legend-inside-plot/ - By default, ggplot2 places the legend outside the plot area (usually on the right). However, sometimes you may want to move the legend inside the plot to sa... Continue reading: [R] How to Position the L...
Would you take a payment to ramp down your electricity use? Would it change anything if you were doing so to help power a local data center? Google just signed a new deal to help pay for a virtual power plant (VPP) in the largest power grid in the US. The agreement is with Voltus,…...
Researchers discovered a way to reverse the direction of energy flow in turbulence, challenging a theory that has stood for more than 80 years. The finding could open new possibilities for controlling ocean currents, improving medical technologies, and enhancing climate forecasting....
Researchers found that social behavior begins in the brain before it becomes visible as movement. In zebrafish, a coordinated pattern of activity spread across the brain several seconds before the animals approached another fish. A higher brain region called the pallium played a key role, and fish w...
Nature, Published online: 03 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10589-2Improved fractionation strategies can identify antibiotics with previously unseen scaffolds and mechanisms, exemplified by manikomycin from Streptomyces rimosus, which acts by targeting the E-site of the bacterial large ribosomal ...
Scientists have developed an experimental diabetes and obesity pill that works in a completely different way from drugs like Ozempic. Rather than reducing hunger, it activates metabolism in skeletal muscle, helping lower blood sugar and increase fat burning while preserving muscle mass. Early clinic...
arXiv:2606.02833v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Mediation analysis plays an essential role in uncovering the mechanisms by which an exposure influences an outcome through intermediate pathways. While methodological advances for single-mediator settings are well established, rigorous tools for handl...
French fries may be the real potato problem. A large study tracking more than 205,000 people for nearly 40 years found that eating three servings of fries per week was linked to a 20% higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, while baked, boiled, or mashed potatoes showed no significant increase in...
Scientists have uncovered evidence that autism may include at least two biologically distinct subtypes, each marked by a different pattern of brain communication. By combining brain scans from nearly 1,000 people with autism with insights from 20 genetically engineered mouse models, researchers iden...
Nature, Published online: 03 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10606-4An analysis of post-sorting plastic packaging shows that target polymer purity is similar across source-separation and post-sorting pathways, but post-sorted plastics contain more contaminants that need to be removed before recycl...
Cybersecurity research in the social sciences emerged out of international relations (IR) and security studies departments. Cristian Tracci argues cybersecurity research needs to refocus and draw on established concepts from … Continued The post International relations’ capture of cybersecurit...
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...
The goodpractice package has been recommended by rOpenSci since it was first started just over 10 years ago by Gábor Csárdi. We used to ask our editors to manually run goodpractice on all packages submitted to software peer-review, and then to ask aut... Continue reading: Our goodpractice Package Ha...
A newly identified group of amygdala neurons appears to play a central role in anxiety and social behavior. Restoring normal activity in this tiny brain circuit reversed anxiety and social deficits in mice, revealing a promising new target for future treatments....
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...
One day last October, sitting in the courtyard of his house in China’s Henan province, Dong Hui decided to see if he could hold a pen to write. Dong, 39, had sustained spinal cord injuries in a car accident six years earlier that left him paralyzed from the neck down. Slowly but determinedly, ...