Skills from being a birder may change—and benefit—your brain
Peer-Reviewed Publication
This month, we’re focusing on artificial intelligence (AI), a topic that continues to capture attention everywhere. Here, you’ll find the latest research news, insights, and discoveries shaping how AI is being developed and used across the world.
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 13-May-2026 23:15 ET (14-May-2026 03:15 GMT/UTC)
The deep, murky pigment known as Prussian blue put the “blue” in traditional blueprints, colored Hokusai’s “Great Wave off Kanagawa” and today is used for industrial purposes from laundry to battery components to poison control. Now, research from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) has found new uses for the important and inexpensive chemical and new understanding of the mechanisms that make Prussian blue analogs (PBAs) unique. Using insights gleaned from synchrotron anomalous X-ray diffractions through NSF’s ChemMatCARS beamline at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), Argonne National Laboratory, the UChicago PME team used the ion transport properties of the PBA copper hexacyanoferrate to achieve 99.9% lithium purity.
As members of the public increasingly turn to AI with health concerns, University of Birmingham researchers are leading a global programme to build the first definitive guide for safely navigating health information on AI powered chatbots, published in Nature Health.
In a student-centered teaching project, undergraduates analyzed botanical elements in Taylor Swift music videos to activate prior knowledge and reinforce complex plant science concepts. The experience reports improved comprehension, high student satisfaction, and potential to counter “plant blindness” through popular culture.