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Tech News
Researchers at Seoul National University, publishing in Nature Medicine, analyzed health data from over 4.5 million Korean adults divided into smokers and short- or long-term quitters. Former smokers who switched to daily vaping developed lung cancer at a rate 56 percent higher than those who quit all nicotine products, and had a 91 percent higher lung cancer death rate.
A HEPCA survey led by marine biologist Mahmoud Hanafy found coral bleaching across Egypt's Red Sea following summer heat waves in 2023 and 2024. Less than 10 percent of surveyed colonies were affected in northern reef areas, but bleaching struck roughly half the corals further south.
Aviation experts say any version of Tesla's Roadster 2 capable of flight would need FAA certification, a process that could take at least a year, plus clearance to operate in national airspace. Pilots would likely need a recreational aviation license rather than a standard driver's license, and most states restrict takeoffs and landings to airports or designated helipads rather than public roads.
A southern ground hornbill at Artis Zoo in Amsterdam, whose beak had broken into two stumps, has received 3D-printed titanium prostheses replacing both the upper and lower beak. The devices were designed using CT scans and the bird's remaining beak fragments, manufactured by Amnovis, and surgically fitted by veterinary surgeons from Utrecht University. The bird began using the new beak the same day, picked up a mouse the next morning, and started preening within days.
Penn State scientists have reconstructed what the Liberty Bell likely sounded like before it cracked, using acoustic data gathered from one of its replicas. The research was presented at an Acoustical Society of America meeting in Philadelphia and later detailed in Physics Today, timed to the nation's upcoming 250th anniversary. The bell itself has not been rung since 1846, when a prior crack worsened during a February 23 ringing.
A Nature study led by Columbia chemist Wei Min found that polystyrene microplastics are not chemically inert when placed in water, instead generating reactive oxygen species (ROS) at their water-contact surface. In lab tests, polystyrene powder stirred into a water-based dye solution broke down nearly 90 percent of the dye over 10 days, an effect that did not occur in non-water solvents like ethanol.
The IEEE Computer Society and the Association for Computing Machinery named Daniel Reed, PhD, as the recipient of the 2026 Ken Kennedy Award. Reed is a Presidential Professor in Computational Science (emeritus) at the University of Utah and previously served as Corporate Vice President of Technology Policy at Microsoft.
Researchers led by transplant surgeon Erik Finger successfully transplanted pig kidneys that had been frozen for a year, restoring their function in recipient animals. The findings, posted on preprint server bioRxiv, have not yet been peer-reviewed, and the team has not yet shown the organs can sustain life over an extended period.
Denver startup Intero Biosystems, spun out of the University of Michigan, has launched GastroScreen, a human intestinal organoid model made of multiple cell and tissue types found in the gut. The company ships roughly 100 of the millimeter-sized organoids at a time to pharmaceutical, biotech, food, and chemical companies, which use them to test drugs and compounds in either healthy or disease-induced states. Intero also sells supporting supplies like nutrient mixes and reagents, and runs custom experiments and lab studies for clients.
CedarDB, a Munich-based database startup spun out of Technical University of Munich research project Umbra, builds a database engine designed to handle both transactional and analytical workloads in one system. The company, led by cofounder and CEO Moritz Sichert, built CedarDB to be compatible with PostgreSQL to minimize switching costs for enterprise customers.
A new BioScience paper led by Oregon State University's Bill Ripple finds seven of 16 planetary vital signs monitored by researchers are at their most extreme levels ever recorded, including atmospheric CO2, which is 50% above preindustrial levels, and record-low Greenland and Antarctic ice combined with record-high ocean heat. The study also reports warming has accelerated from roughly 0.05°C per decade between 1880-1970 to 0.36°C per decade since 2010.
Engineers at Delft University of Technology developed a lightweight tactile sensor modeled on animal whiskers, allowing small drones to detect obstacles by touch rather than vision. The design targets ultra-compact rescue drones, which often operate in smoke-filled or dark environments where cameras and lidar fail. Professor Salwa Hamaza said the sensor must be lightweight, low-latency and low-power to work on such drones.