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Science News

Latest science news, discoveries and scientific developments.

AI model predicts peptide bitterness and enables novel flavor design
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AI model predicts peptide bitterness and enables novel flavor design

During the production of fermented products such as kefir, Parmesan, or mountain cheese, as well as in the production of protein powders, bitter-tasting peptides can form, which impair the taste and thus the acceptability of the products. A research team led by the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich has now developed and successfully tested an AI-based method that can predict the bitterness of peptides. It also makes it possible to design new, bitter-tasting peptides from scratch. This is another important step forward in taste and food research.

📅 2026-09-22 18:20:03    •    Phys.org
Rice bran—source for antimicrobial, biodegradable food packaging film
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Rice bran—source for antimicrobial, biodegradable food packaging film

Rice bran is a plentiful agricultural byproduct that is often underused, but research from the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station shows it could be a source of biodegradable food packaging with built-in antibacterial properties.

📅 2026-09-22 18:20:01    •    Phys.org
Largest dataset of its kind could clarify how massive stars shaped early galaxies
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Largest dataset of its kind could clarify how massive stars shaped early galaxies

The more astronomers learn about the universe's earliest galaxies, the stranger they seem. Many of their surprising properties may be explained by differences between their massive stars and those in galaxies like our own Milky Way. A new University of Utah-led survey with the Hubble Space Telescope is shedding light on the stellar astrophysics operating in early galaxies.

📅 2026-09-22 18:00:05    •    Phys.org
How amateur naturalists are helping scientists track what everything eats
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How amateur naturalists are helping scientists track what everything eats

An interdisciplinary team of researchers has created an open-source website for learning what different organisms eat and what eats them. The site—called Who Eats Whom—draws on data from a worldwide citizen science platform and serves as both a valuable resource for ecological research and an educational tool to advance public understanding of the global food web.

📅 2026-09-22 18:00:02    •    Phys.org
Electrical control method tunes magnetic properties for next-generation spintronic memory
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Electrical control method tunes magnetic properties for next-generation spintronic memory

A research team led by Professor Jung-Il Hong of the Department of Physics and Chemistry at DGIST has successfully used current pulses to alter the spin configuration within a ferrimagnetic material, lowering its "compensation temperature"—the temperature at which opposing magnetizations cancel each other out—by up to approximately 110 K.

📅 2026-09-22 17:40:04    •    Phys.org
Microcrystal electron diffractometer brings hidden hydrogen into focus
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Microcrystal electron diffractometer brings hidden hydrogen into focus

Hydrogen—the lightest atom—does the heavy lifting when it comes to important chemical reactions. It can be stored and released as clean fuel, and its movements help catalysts build medicines, fertilizers and materials. One way hydrogen is available for use is through a hydride—a hydrogen (H) atom bound to a metal. Yet with standard tools, this metal-bound atom can be hard to find in the structure.

📅 2026-09-22 17:20:05    •    Phys.org
VR boosts English vocabulary scores for students with dyslexia, pilot study finds
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VR boosts English vocabulary scores for students with dyslexia, pilot study finds

Virtual reality (VR) could be a new tool to help students with dyslexia learn English vocabulary more effectively than conventional instruction alone, according to a pilot study involving 30 learners published in the International Journal of Innovation and Learning. Dyslexia is a learning disability that primarily affects reading and related language skills.

📅 2026-09-22 17:20:04    •    Phys.org
Vera C. Rubin Observatory detects one of the smallest and faintest satellite galaxies ever seen
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Vera C. Rubin Observatory detects one of the smallest and faintest satellite galaxies ever seen

In one of the first major discoveries from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, scientists have revealed a previously unknown galaxy orbiting the Milky Way. Described in a study that hasn’t been peer-reviewed, the galaxy, named Aquarius IV, is one of the lightest, faintest and farthest satellite galaxies ever seen. This dim cluster of ancient stars was discovered on the extreme periphery of the Milky Way in early test data from the Rubin Observatory, offering a glimpse of the telescope's impressive abilities and shedding new light on our cosmic neighborhood. Ultrafaint dwarf galaxies (UFDGs) are among the tiniest and faintest galaxies in the universe. These dim little clusters contain at ...

📅 2026-09-22 17:12:25    •    Live Science
Antibiotic resistance research calls for tests that reflect bacteria's changing environments
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Antibiotic resistance research calls for tests that reflect bacteria's changing environments

The World Health Organization (WHO) regards antimicrobial resistance, including antibiotic resistance, as one of the world's major health challenges. A new fundamental understanding of antibiotic resistance could therefore potentially have a far-reaching impact on global public health, animal health and the environment.

📅 2026-09-22 17:00:07    •    Phys.org
Briny 'death pools' hold clues to early life
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Briny 'death pools' hold clues to early life

The origins of the earliest life on Earth, prior to the rise of oxygen and photosynthesis, remain a mystery. Graveyards in brine pools at the bottom of the Red Sea may hold some answers.

📅 2026-09-22 17:00:01    •    Phys.org
Astronomers detect radio signals coming from an exoplanet for the first time
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Astronomers detect radio signals coming from an exoplanet for the first time

Exoplanets are exotic worlds orbiting distant stars far beyond our solar system. Ever since the first ones were discovered in the 1990s, astronomers have turned their attention to these distant worlds to understand more about them. Now, for the first time, scientists have detected radio signals coming directly from one of these planets, a massive gas giant named β Pictoris b.

📅 2026-09-22 16:40:07    •    Phys.org
New statistical methods could lead to more reliable research findings
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New statistical methods could lead to more reliable research findings

How much can we really trust a measurement? And how much data do researchers need to collect to draw reliable conclusions? Mohammad Reza Seydi at Umeå University has developed and tested new statistical methods to provide better answers to those questions.

📅 2026-09-22 16:20:04    •    Phys.org
US heading for unprecedented El Niño winter: Here's what to expect
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US heading for unprecedented El Niño winter: Here's what to expect

The ongoing El Niño is breaching the "super" threshold as Earth crosses into unprecedented climate territory. El Niño, officially underway as of June 11, is a climate pattern that's injecting extra heat into our already-warming world, threatening disruptive weather across the globe and a humanitarian crisis in some regions.While El Niño is part of a natural multiyear climate cycle, scientists have noticed that it has been rapidly strengthening like never before, intensified by human-driven climate change, and putting stressed natural systems under extra strain.In a new update this week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center continues to foreca...

📅 2026-09-22 16:08:06    •    Live Science
Gold nanoplasmonic chip tracks L-DOPA response in Parkinson's 'mini-brains'
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Gold nanoplasmonic chip tracks L-DOPA response in Parkinson's 'mini-brains'

Researchers have developed an organoid-on-a-chip technology that verifies the efficacy of Parkinson's disease treatments in real time. The technology combines a stem cell–derived "mini-brain" with a nanoplasmonic sensor engineered to maximize light–matter interaction.

📅 2026-09-22 16:00:04    •    Phys.org
3I/ATLAS has an extreme taste for heavy water
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3I/ATLAS has an extreme taste for heavy water

More and more details about 3I/ATLAS are filtering through the scientific process as time goes on. Our third known interstellar visitor attracted the attention of some of the world's most powerful observatories when it was discovered in July 2025, and some of those telescopes found something peculiar—the isotopes it contained appeared different. A new paper submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters (and available as a preprint on arXiv) by Kenji Furuya of the RIKEN Pioneering Research Institute in Japan and his co-authors shows that the isotopic discrepancy is likely due to the "low metallicity" of the stellar nursery in which 3I/ATLAS was born.

📅 2026-09-22 16:00:01    •    Phys.org