A bane of farmers' existence, it's estimated that plant-eating pests are responsible for the loss of up to 40% of pre-harvest yields globally. But a new generation of crop treatments that target only "bad" bugs could mean big gains for the Canadian agriculture sector, improving pest management tools in an industry that in 2024 generated over $142 billion.

Dr. Justin Pahara and his team at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's (AAFC) Lethbridge Research and Development Center are designing new screening methods to learn whether current crop treatments are effective. Their end goal, however, is to develop a method for using nanotechnology to deliver specific chemicals into pests based on their unique DNA—without harming helpful insects.

For example, through methods developed and tested at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan, the researchers found that lygus bugs contain regions of enriched minerals pointing to certain proteins that could one day be targeted with tailored agents to prevent them from eating crops. The lygus bug is a common agriculture pest that feeds on many crops, including canola. Pahara and his team's innovative methods are published in the Canadian Journal of Chemistry.

"We all need food, and if farmers cannot grow their products efficiently and make a living out of it, it's a problem," says Pahara. "We need new tools for pest management. Insects are becoming more tolerant to chemicals in the same way antibiotic resistance works in humans."
Developing targeted pest treatments would also make "carpet bombing" insects with harmful pesticides a thing of the past.

After multiple delays, the first crewed Artemis flight around the moon could be less than 20 weeks away, NASA officials said Tuesday, putting the space program one step closer to returning to the moon itself in its "second space race" with China.

The Artemis II mission, which would be the first crewed spaceflight to exit low-Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972, had already been pushed back several times after its original launch target of 2024, with the most recent delay aiming for "no later than" April 2026. But with pieces falling into place, it could launch as early as Feb. 5, NASA officials said during a mission update from Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"We want to emphasize that safety is our top priority, and so as we work through these operational preparations, as we finish stacking the rocket, we're continuing to assess to make sure that we do things in a safe way," said Lakiesha Hawkins, acting deputy associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate.

Monthly launch windows, which take into account the required proximity of the Earth and moon, would last four to eight days. Most of the February launch window attempts would be in the evening.

"As we get closer, we'll be able to more clearly communicate what those periods could be," Hawkins said.
Artemis II is planned to be a 10-day flight to take NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a trip out past the moon, but without landing.

"Let me emphasize that this is a test flight, and so the activities that we do together, we are going to learn from them," Hawkins said. "While Artemis I was a great success, there are new systems and new capabilities that we will be demonstrating on Artemis II, including the life support systems, the display capabilities, software, etc."

It's a test mission that would set up Artemis III, currently on NASA's schedule for summer 2027, to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo program.

Artemis I flew in late 2022, sending an uncrewed Orion spacecraft launching atop the first flight of the Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center.
But damage to Orion's heat shield was among the reasons mission managers pushed back the follow-up flight, resulting in no Artemis flights going on during the three years since the first launch.
NASA and Lockheed Martin worked to understand the damage, but decided to stick with the existing heat shield for Artemis II. They instead adjusted the planned reentry path to avoid what teams determined was the cause of the damage.

"I have the utmost in confidence in the engineering expertise that went into the testing and the flight rationale that we are going to be able to bring the Artemis II flight crew home safely at the end of the mission," said NASA's Rick Henfling, the lead Artemis II entry flight director.

The cultivation of rice—the staple grain for more than 3.5 billion people around the world—comes with extremely high environmental, climate and economic costs.

This may be about to change, thanks to new research led by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and China's Jiangnan University. They have shown that nanoscale applications of the element selenium can decrease the amount of fertilizer necessary for rice cultivation while sustaining yields, boosting nutrition, enhancing the soil's microbial diversity and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they demonstrate for the first time that such nanoscale applications work in real-world conditions.

"The Green Revolution massively boosted agriculture output during the middle of the last century," says Baoshan Xing, University Distinguished Professor of Environmental and Soil Chemistry, director of UMass's Stockbridge School of Agriculture, and co-senior author of the new research. "But that revolution is running out of steam. We need to figure out a way to fix it and make it work."

Part of what made the Green Revolution so revolutionary was the invention of synthetic, nitrogen-heavy fertilizers that could keep agricultural yields high. But they're expensive to make, they create an enormous amount of carbon dioxide, and much of the fertilizer washes away.

Most crops only use about 40–60% of the nitrogen applied to them, a measurement known as nitrogen use efficiency, or NUE, and the NUE of rice can be as low as 30%—which means that 70% of what a farmer puts on their fields washes away into streams, lakes and the oceans, causing eutrophication, dead zones and a host of other environmental problems. It also means that 70% of the cost of the fertilizer is likewise wasted.

Furthermore, when nitrogen is applied to soils, it interacts with the soil's incredibly complex chemistry and microbes, and ultimately leads to vastly increased amounts of methane, ammonia and nitrous oxide—all of which contribute to global warming. Furthermore, synthesizing fertilizer itself is a greenhouse-gas-heavy enterprise.

Nat Geo photographer Babak Tafreshi (BabakTafreshi) and NASA astronaut Don Pettit (astro Pettit) are photographing the same places from radically different POVs—the ground and the International Space Station—creating a new way of seeing the world: on.natgeo.com/4pFm8zQ

The research published in Nature Plants by a global team of tropical forest scientists shows that the average size of trees in Amazon forests has increased over recent decades. The team of almost a hundred researchers monitored the size of trees in 188 permanent plots and discovered that the increase has continued for at least 30 years.

The study is the result of an international partnership of more than 60 universities in South America, the UK and beyond—including the Universities of Birmingham, Bristol, and Leeds.

Co-author of the study, Professor Beatriz Marimon, from Universidade do Mato Grosso, who coordinated much of the Brazilian data collection in southern Amazonia, commented, "This is a good news story. We regularly hear how climate change and fragmentation is threatening Amazonian forests. But meanwhile, the trees in intact forests have grown bigger; even the largest trees have continued to thrive despite these threats."

The study found that both large and smaller trees have increased in size, consistent with benefiting from fertilization by increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Microplastics are now so ubiquitous we're drinking, eating, and inhaling them. As a result, they're showing up in our poop, placentas, reproductive organs, and brains.

Now these fossil-fuel-derived particles, less than 5 mm in size, have been found deep within our bones.

A new review of 62 studies suggests microplastics and smaller nanoplastics are impacting our skeletal health in multiple ways.

"A significant body of research suggests that microplastics can reach deep into bone tissue, such as bone marrow, and potentially cause disturbances in its metabolism," says medical scientist Rodrigo Bueno de Oliveira at the State University of Campinas in Brazil.

Some of the studies in humans found these plastic leftovers accumulating in bone tissues via the blood, following ingestion. There, animal studies show they can reduce bone growth.

What's more, disruptions in osteoclasts – cells that support bone growth and repair – can lead to weakened bone structures, making these compromised bones more susceptible to deformities and fractures.

"In vitro studies with bone tissue cells have shown that microplastics impair cell viability, accelerate cell aging, and alter cell differentiation, in addition to promoting inflammation," explains Bueno de Oliveira.

"The adverse effects observed culminated, worryingly, in the interruption of the animals' skeletal growth."

Are we alone in the universe? Help us figure that out!

Join this citizen science effort and help UCLA SETI to train AI tools to separate Earth-based interference from possible technosignatures across the Milky Way. Learn more: zooniverse.org/projects/ucla-…

Advances in AI technology have ushered in a new era of digital romance, where people are forming intimate emotional connections with chatbots. For many, these AI companions are a crucial lifeline, helping to combat feelings of loneliness. Yet, despite a rapidly evolving social trend that has attracted widespread interest, it has been largely understudied by researchers.

A new analysis of the popular Reddit community, r/MyBoyfriendIsAI, is addressing the gap by providing the first in-depth insights into how intimate human–AI relationships begin, evolve and affect users.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) studied 1,506 of the most popular posts from this Reddit community, which has more than 27,000 members. First, they used AI tools to read all the conversations and sorted them into six main themes, such as coping with loss. Then they used custom-built AI classifiers to review the posts again and measure specific details within them.

This allowed the MIT team to put numbers on the experiences and count exactly how many users reported key outcomes (reduced loneliness, risk of emotional dependency) to show the overall impact of these digital relationships.

Benefits and risks
In their paper posted on the preprint server arXiv, the researchers reveal that these intimate relationships often start by accident. Most users did not join a chatbot app in search of love. Instead, it grew unintentionally out of simply using the technology for practical reasons. A little more than one-quarter of users (25.4%) reported clear benefits, including reduced loneliness and improvements in their mental health. Meanwhile, only 3% felt that their AI relationship had caused them more harm than good.

The study also identified some risks. Almost 10% of users reported being emotionally dependent on their digital partner, and 4.6% struggled to distinguish between AI and real life. Some users also treat their chatbot companions as significant others by engaging in real-world rituals, such as purchasing wedding rings. Avoidance of real relationships was a concern for 4.3% of users.

Ultimately, the researchers hope that their work will lead to a change in how society views these new relationships. As they write in their paper:

"Our findings demand nuanced, nonjudgmental frameworks that move beyond assumptions that benefits and harms of human-AI interaction depend primarily on the technology alone, protecting vulnerable users while respecting their autonomy to form meaningful connections in ways that align with their individual needs and circumstances."

The MIT team argues that protecting vulnerable users and respecting their right to find meaning must be the guiding principles for the next era of digital relationships.

Until recently, it was thought that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals split off from their last common ancestor around 600,000 years ago, but a prehistoric skull from China has just shattered that narrative. Dated to a million years ago, the cranium belongs to an extinct human clade which encompasses the Denisovans, indicating that we had already branched off from our sister lineage prior to this point.

Discovered in Hubei Province in 1990, the so-called Yunxian 2 skull has been at the center of a taxonomic confusion for the past 35 years, largely because the specimen is badly crushed and therefore difficult to study. Due to its age and the shape of its braincase, though, some scholars had assumed that the cranium belonged to Homo erectus.

However, using CT scanning and digital reconstruction techniques, the authors of a new study have managed to correct the skull’s distortions and build a complete model of the specimen. In doing so, they revealed that Yunxian 2 possesses a mosaic of features, some of which are typical of more primitive hominins like H. erectus while others are more aligned with Homo sapiens.

Cross-referencing more than 500 of these morphological traits against 104 other human fossils, the researchers determined that Yunxian 2 belongs to the Homo longi clade, which includes a 145,000-year-old skull that was recently identified as a Denisovan. However, Yunxian 2 itself is not a Denisovan, but probably sits near the base of the lineage that gave rise to this enigmatic species. 

What’s more, while Denisovans and Neanderthals were previously thought to be sister lineages, the team’s analysis indicates that the Homo longi clade is in fact the sister group to the Homo sapiens clade.

“We really have to say we don't know where the common ancestor lived.”
— Professor Chris Stringer

“Because [Yunxian 2] is about a million years old, by definition, the Homo longi clade must be about a million years old at minimum,” said study author Professor Chris Stringer to IFLScience. “And that, in turn, implies that if sapiens and Neanderthals had already branched off, then their groups must be equally or even older in their origin.”

In other words, the Homo sapiens group must have emerged more than a million years ago, which is around 400,000 years earlier than certain genomic models suggest. Overall, the researchers estimate that our clade originated about 1.02 million years ago, while the Homo longi group dates back to 1.2 million years ago.

Ketogenic diets, usually shortened to keto, are promoted as a way of losing weight and improving your general health, but the long-term impacts of following such a diet are still being unraveled. A new study throws some concerning findings into the mix, suggesting that while the diet may be effective for weight loss, it could lead to complications like fatty liver disease. 

Keto diets are designed to get the body into a state of ketosis, where fat stores are used as an energy source rather than carbohydrates. To achieve this, these diet plans recommend strict limits on carbohydrate-rich foods, things like starchy vegetables, grains, and sugars. Instead, there’s a focus on protein- and fat-rich foods like meat, fish, unsweetened dairy, nuts, and seeds. 

For some people, a keto diet is an essential part of medical treatment for a chronic illness. For example, ketogenic diet therapy can help children with drug-resistant epilepsy experience fewer seizures. But as the British Dietetic Association points out, following such a strict diet plan comes with its own risks and should be closely monitored. So, what about people without a medical indication who simply choose to follow this diet for themselves?

Lots of people claim the diet has helped them lose weight and feel better, but the internet also abounds with anecdotes from people who claim it ruined their health. The “long-term effects [of ketogenic diets] on metabolic health remain understudied,” write the authors of a new study.

Shortly before his death in August 2025, A. James Hudspeth and his colleagues at The Rockefeller University’s Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience accomplished a milestone that had never been reached before. They succeeded in keeping a small section of the cochlea alive and working outside the body, making it possible to study the organ’s function directly for the first time. Using a specially designed device, the team was able to track the cochlea’s extraordinary abilities in real time, including its fine-tuned sensitivity, precise frequency detection, and capacity to process a wide range of sound levels.

“We can now observe the first steps of the hearing process in a controlled way that was previously impossible,” says co-first author Francesco Gianoli, a postdoctoral fellow in the Hudspeth lab.

The achievement, detailed in two recent publications (in PNAS and Hearing Research, respectively), represents the culmination of Hudspeth’s fifty years of pioneering research into the cellular and neural basis of hearing. His work has continually pointed toward new possibilities for preventing and treating hearing loss.

Beyond its immediate applications, the advance also delivers long-sought experimental confirmation of a fundamental biophysical principle that underlies hearing across diverse species, a concept Hudspeth had pursued for more than twenty-five years.

“This study is a masterpiece,” says biophysicist Marcelo Magnasco, head of the Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience at Rockefeller, who collaborated with Hudspeth on some of his seminal findings. “In the field of biophysics, it’s one of the most impressive experiments of the last five years.”

The mechanics of hearing
Though the cochlea is a marvel of evolutionary engineering, some of its fundamental mechanisms have long remained hidden. The organ’s fragility and inaccessibility—embedded as it is in the densest bone in the body—have made it difficult to study in action.

These challenges have long frustrated hearing researchers, because most hearing loss results from damage to sensory receptors called hair cells that line the cochlea. The organ has some 16,000 of these hair cells, so-called because each one is topped by a few hundred fine “feelers,” or stereocilia, that early microscopists likened to hair. Each bundle is a tuned machine that amplifies and converts sound vibrations into electrical responses that the brain can then interpret.

Sitting in the audience at a stand-up show; watching a comedy at the movies; at the office party when your boss breaks out their best knock-knock joke: these are all places where laughter is both encouraged and expected. During a quiet moment in church? Not so much. But wherever you are, if you hear someone else laughing, it’s likely you’ll get the urge to giggle too – however inappropriate that may be! Should we all just be able to control ourselves better, or is laughter really contagious?
The answer, in short, is yes.

“All emotions are contagious”
“Is laughter contagious? Well, actually, all emotions are contagious,” Dr Sandi Mann, chartered member of the British Psychological Society, told IFLScience. “We are designed to pick up other people’s emotions.”

It’s part of our evolution, and it’s something we share with other mammals. It’s been well established that apes – our closest relatives – laugh in a remarkably humanlike way. If you’re ever close enough to a bonobo to try tickling it (not something we’d necessarily recommend), you’ll find out.

Recent research even found that apes may have a sense of humor and love to tease each other. A 2021 review concluded that 65 different animal species show evidence of “play vocalizations” that mimic humans laughing when we’re having fun, mostly mammals but a few birds as well. 

In fact, laughter is such a fundamental part of what it means to be human that it transcends language and culture – there’s not a single community of people on Earth that we know of who don’t laugh. 

Why laughter is good for us
Part of the reason why a fit of the giggles spreads so easily, Dr Mann told us, is that shared emotions are integral to social bonding. A 2022 paper from University of Oxford Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Psychology Robin Dunbar explored this further. 

“I suggest that, when hominins needed to increase the size of their groups beyond the limit that could be bonded by grooming, they co-opted laughter […] as a form of chorusing to fill the gap,” Dunbar wrote. 

Grooming – a social behavior we particularly associate with monkeys and apes, but which is seen throughout the animal world – boosts the production of endorphins in the brain. These chemical messengers relieve pain and generally make us feel good. Dunbar detailed some evidence that laughter has a similar effect, with the added benefit of being less intimate and time-consuming than grooming. Hence, humans laugh together all the time, but we’re rarely seen picking lice out of each other’s hair these days. 

A hit of endorphins also helps us de-stress. When a group of people are sharing a tense situation, Dr Mann told IFLScience, humor can help to alleviate that as well as strengthen the bond between them: “Sometimes we just need to smile, laugh, have fun to relieve the stress.”