Health tech, space, energy, research and science breakthroughs.
For decades, solar cell engineers have treated imperfections in silicon as a flaw to be engineered away. Now a research team at the University of Paderborn in Germany has found that one class of those imperfections may be doing useful work instead. Running first-principles quantum simulations on the Hawk supercomputer at the HLRS computing centre … Read more
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on 7 October that Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai have won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis. The award crowns a body of work that finally answers a question chemists have wrestled with for more … Read more
A cross-sector coalition led by Biohub, Google DeepMind, Meta and Isomorphic Labs — with backing from two US federal agencies — has committed roughly $1.8 billion to build the first predictive “virtual cell”: an AI model engineered to simulate how living cells behave, sicken and respond to treatment. Announced on October 7, 2026 under the … Read more
The Sahel holds more water beneath its soil than it did decades ago, and satellites confirm it. What they do not confirm is the explanation powering a viral video: that the crescent-shaped pits farmers dig across the region — the so-called half-moons — are responsible, or that those pits “create rain.” None of the sources … Read more