New results from OSIRIS-REx, NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission, reveals why some gray asteroids reflect light at different wavelengths, like red or blue, more strongly. How these asteroids reflect light at red and blue wavelengths can give deeper insights into the evolution of rocky bodies in the solar system.

Despite advancements in hardware, AI, and machine learning, deploying robots in dynamic, real-world settings—and getting them to do what we want—remains difficult. Cristian-Ioan Vasile, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics at Lehigh University, has received funding through the NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program to develop structured methods for assessing the capabilities of learning-enabled agents and use that information to improve planning and coordination of robots working in teams.

Certain types of biochemical processes can impair the immune system’s ability to recognize and kill cancer cells. Purdue University’s W. Andy Tao and his associates have developed a new way to study these processes. They demonstrated the validity of their method in experiments involving leukemia and rare liver cancer cell lines.

Tao and 10 co-authors published the details of their new method Aug. 1 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Their work provides a system for tracking and identifying the various types of proteins and an unheralded but widely secreted class of bioparticles called extracellular vesicles (EVs) that can compromise immunotherapy.

While quantum computers are already being used for research in chemistry, material science, and data security, most are still too small to be useful for large-scale applications. A study led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside, now shows how “scalable” quantum architectures — systems made up of many small chips working together as one powerful unit — can be made.

Kennesaw State University’s Lei Shi, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering in the Southern Polytechnic College of Engineering and Engineering Technology, is working to change how doctors diagnose and treat gastrointestinal disorders with virtual replicas of human stomachs.

On August 8, 2024, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope captured the sharpest-ever images of a solar flare at the H-alpha wavelength (656.28 nm), revealing dark coronal loop strands in unprecedented detail. The observations, made during the decay phase of an X1.3-class flare, measured loop widths averaging 48.2 km, with some even half as narrow. By using the Inouye Solar Telescope to isolate light at the H-alpha wavelength, emitted by hydrogen atoms, solar physicists can identify fine structures in the lower solar atmosphere too small to observe in the past—offering a potential breakthrough in determining the fundamental scale of coronal loops and advancing solar flare modeling. By improving researchers’ ability to model solar flares, these observations will also improve forecasting for space weather events that are hazardous to satellites, power grids, and communications on Earth.

In the U.S., one in five of the 37 million adults who has diabetes doesn’t know it. Current methods of diagnosing diabetes and prediabetes usually require a visit to a doctor’s office or lab work, both of which can be expensive and time-consuming. Now, diagnosing diabetes and prediabetes may be as simple as breathing.  

Plants have a sophisticated internal communication system to help them optimize energy production. Now, a new study by an international team of scientists led by Penn State researchers reveals for the first time the molecular messengers that control how and when plants “breathe” and “eat,” which could have implications for agriculture.