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Tech News
A new Nature study by Angrist and colleagues examined how remote phone-based tutoring affected children's learning during periods when schools were shut, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research found strong evidence that this low-tech approach helped students keep learning despite the disruption, offering a rare data-backed solution to an otherwise poorly understood problem.
A new Nature paper by Sticher et al. argues that combining satellite imagery with traditional news-coded reports could reveal aspects of armed conflict that text-based monitoring misses. For over 20 years, conflict researchers have relied on coders converting news reports into structured event data, a method with inherent blind spots where reporting is scarce or biased.
Researchers report in Nature that an abandoned quarry in southwestern China contains fossils and artefacts showing Denisovans occupied the site for at least 30,000 years, possibly up to 120,000 years. The finds include bone tools resembling those made by Neanderthals and evidence that Denisovans hunted deer and other animals skillfully.
An Oxford University researcher who studies AI's effect on decision-making argues that generative AI tools should be treated as intellectual sparring partners rather than sources of ready-made answers. The piece cites data showing 94% of UK undergraduates use AI for assessed coursework and that over half of 2025 scientific papers show signs of LLM-generated text, up from roughly one in ten in 2023. The author contends fears about AI eroding critical thinking are misplaced, and that the real risk lies in passive use rather than active engagement with the technology.
Researchers found that achieving a more uniform film-formation process during the fabrication of perovskite-based tandem solar cells improves both their performance and durability. The finding points to film uniformity as a key factor in reducing defects that typically degrade these cells over time.
Two independent research teams, led by Bower and colleagues and by Jerabek and colleagues, applied base editing—a precise form of genome editing—directly to human embryos to study how a specific gene shapes the earliest stages of development. Their experiments, published in Nature, show how embryos respond when particular DNA letters are altered, offering a clearer picture of this critical developmental window.
Researchers cultured dozens of cancer cell lines alongside normal primary epithelial cells to profile surface proteins near known tumor markers. They applied a graph-learning computational method to identify 'proximity antigens'—proteins located near established cancer targets on the cell membrane—that could serve as new markers for tumor-specific therapies. The work combined wet-lab cell culture across breast, lung, colon, pancreatic, gastric and other cancer types with a novel AI-driven proximity mapping approach.
A research team mined all 214.5 million structure predictions in Google DeepMind's AlphaFold database to search for undiscovered 7TM (seven-transmembrane) folds resembling G-protein-coupled receptors. Using the rhodopsin structure as a reference and the TM-align algorithm, they identified TM184C as a previously unrecognized GPCR-like protein involved in regulating cell-to-cell exchange and autophagy. The analysis required processing 24 tebibytes of compressed structural data on university supercomputing clusters.
Researchers analyzed whole-genome sequencing data from 1,001 prostate cancer patients (1,172 tumour samples) collected through the PPCG consortium, applying computational tools to classify structural variants, including simple, complex, and chromothripsis-related genomic rearrangements. The team combined breakpoint detection, copy number segmentation, and statistical tests to build a detailed picture of mutational processes driving the disease.
Researchers developed a palladium-based membrane that functions as the anode in a molten-hydroxide electrochemical cell paired with a hydrogen-evolving cathode, enabling hydrogen removal from dehydrogenation reactions without relying on a pressure gradient. Using anode potentials below 0.3 V versus the reversible hydrogen electrode, the system achieved a fourfold increase in hydrogen separation rate at 300°C and converted dilute hydrogen into a pure 1.0 atm stream. When paired with catalysts, the setup drove ammonia and methylcyclohexane conversion to 91% and 94% at 250°C, respectively.
Preclinical data show TRI-611 forms a ternary complex with ALK kinase and CRBN/DDB1, promoting degradation of ALK protein including the EML4-ALK fusion. Combined with TKIs like alectinib and lorlatinib, TRI-611 enhanced tumor suppression in NCI-H3122 xenograft mice without significant body weight loss, indicating a tolerable combination therapy approach.
Researchers developed a light-sheet microscopy method capable of recording cellular-level activity simultaneously across all organs in larval zebrafish and the small, transparent adult fish species Danionella cerebrum. Using carefully controlled husbandry and automated analysis pipelines, the team was able to track physiological signals body-wide rather than in a single organ, revealing coordinated circuits linking the brain to peripheral tissues.