Science

Gene drives are among the most ambitious tools in genetic engineering: self-perpetuating DNA constructs that bias their own inheritance, capable of spreading a modified trait through an entire wild population. A well-designed gene drive could render malaria-carrying mosquitoes incapable of transmitting the parasite, or suppress invasive rodents that devastate island ecosystems. But even the most […]

For decades, the central debate in nutrition science has revolved around one question: how much should we eat? Calories in, calories out. Macronutrient ratios. Portion control. The assumption, rarely challenged, is that the content and quantity of food are the primary levers for health outcomes. A new pilot study presented July 26 at NUTRITION 2026, […]

Nothing about the phantom midge fly larva Chaoborus edulis looks like a deep-sea explorer. The insect is translucent, barely a centimeter long, and spends its larval stage bobbing in the sunlit shallows of Lake Malawi. But twice every day, this fragile-looking creature does something that scientists spent decades insisting was impossible: it dives to depths […]

Millions of people open a calorie tracking app every day, snap a photo of their lunch, and trust the number that appears on screen to guide their weight management decisions. It feels scientific: a photograph, an algorithm, a precise calorie count. But new research presented at the NUTRITION 2026 conference suggests that confidence may be […]

When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced in late July that the developing El Niño had an 80 percent chance of becoming a very strong event by the end of 2026, the number was a model of scientific precision. It was also, in the eyes of many who heard it, a guarantee. That gap […]

On the hottest days of the year, a split-system air conditioner performs a cruel trick: it pumps heat from inside a room directly into the street outside. The machine works harder, the city gets hotter, the cycle accelerates. This feedback loop is one reason cooling buildings already consumes nearly 10 percent of global electricity, a […]

When Dr. Nicola Fox returned to the University of Surrey for recent graduation ceremonies, she saw something she could not have imagined three decades earlier. Rows of women in caps and gowns, collecting degrees in physics and engineering. The sight stopped her. She remarked afterward that it was amazing to see how many girls were […]

The fruit fly brain is the size of a poppy seed. It contains roughly 100,000 neurons, fewer than the number of people in a small stadium. With that meager allotment of biological hardware, a fly must find food, evade predators, navigate turbulent air, and remember where it is going after losing a scent. The prevailing […]

Agricultural biotechnology has a well-worn playbook for finding herbicide resistance genes. You cast a wide net, you mutagenize or screen thousands of soil microbes, plant metagenomes, or existing enzyme libraries, and you test each candidate against a panel of chemicals until something sticks. It is brute force, and it has worked well enough. But it […]

The headlines are predictable by now. On July 24, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 2,318 confirmed measles cases in the United States so far in 2026, eclipsing the 2,289 cases recorded in all of 2025. That was itself the highest total in more than three decades. A casual reader would see a […]