Why has the SARS-CoV-2 virus ravaged the global human population, but many other animal viruses haven't? Using nematode worms as a model, researchers at Penn State conducted a set of experiments to investigate the factors influencing the disease outcomes of virus spillover events. They found that the species of the host influences whether a virus will take off in a new population.

Scientists estimate that methane, as a greenhouse gas, may be responsible for approximately 20 to 25 percent of all global warming since the Industrial Revolution. Even more troublingly, as man-made sources have been reduced, the amount of the gas in the atmosphere has continued to grow, fed by natural sources.

Since their discovery over 100 years ago, neurons in the brain’s olfactory bulb, called tufted cells, have been difficult to study. By leveraging new technology, CSHL neuroscientists were able to precisely dissect the neural activity of these tufted cells for the first time. They discovered the tufted cells were better at recognizing smells than mitral cells, their neighboring neurons in the olfactory bulb. Their findings offer new explanations for how the brain processes sensory information.

Fake it until you make is true for children, too, it turns out: Young girls playing the role of a successful female scientist, like Marie Curie, persist longer at a challenging science game. The new study suggests that gender-matched science role-playing may help tighten the gender gap in science and related careers for women by improving their identity as scientists.

In a study published online this week, robotics researchers, engineers and materials scientists from Rice University and Harvard University showed it is possible to make programmable, nonelectronic circuits that control the actions of soft robots by processing information encoded in bursts of compressed air.

As AI systems get smarter, training them requires more and more energy. Shantanu Chakrabartty at the McKelvey School of Engineering is working on making AI not only smart, but efficient.

A team of physicists has created a new way to self-assemble particles—an advance that offers new promise for building complex and innovative materials at the microscopic level.

With a new NSF grant, a paleontologist at the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum will see if a 3-million-year-old fossil record can predict the fate of mollusks in the Western Atlantic as climate change intensifies.

Biomedical Engineering researchers at Columbia Engineering recently announced they have created a compostable bioleather with superior flame-retardance and low environmental impact. Their microbial nanocellulose bioleather has a 1,000-times lower carcinogenic impact than cow leather and a significantly smaller carbon footprint than synthetic leather or cotton. Textile production is responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions, with leather being especially harmful. This challenge has motivated a search for more sustainable textiles, especially leather alternatives.

Columbia engineers invent a flat lens that exclusively focuses light of a selected color—it appears entirely transparent until they shine a beam of light with the correct wavelength onto it, when the glass turns into a lens.