EurekAlert! In the Spotlight - Artificial Intelligence

Welcome to In the Spotlight, where each month we shine a light on something exciting, timely, or simply fascinating from the world of science.

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.

Latest News Releases

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 13-May-2026 23:15 ET (14-May-2026 03:15 GMT/UTC)

23-Feb-2026

Skills from being a birder may change—and benefit—your brain

Society for Neuroscience
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Training to become a birder requires a degree of perception, attention, and memory that reorganizes the structure and activity of distinct brain areas. As experts age, these brain areas continue to show structural changes that may be beneficial to cognition.

Journal: JNeurosci

23-Feb-2026

New medical imaging technology to aid bone removal in cochlear implant surgery

SPIE--International Society for Optics and Photonics
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists have developed a new AI‑based medical imaging method that predicts the bone removal shape needed for cochlear implant surgery using only pre‑operative CT scans. The technique combines two advanced machine‑learning approaches—self‑supervised learning and weakly supervised learning—to learn from “before and after” scans without requiring manual labels. It then refines its predictions using a specialized 3D loss function designed to handle noisy medical data. In tests on 751 scan pairs, the system produced mastoidectomy shape predictions that outperformed several leading medical imaging models, achieving a mean Dice score of 0.72. This advance could improve surgical planning, support future navigation and robotic tools, and reduce the need for labor‑intensive image annotation in complex ear anatomy.

Journal: Journal of Medical Imaging

23-Feb-2026

Prussian blue goes from pigment to purification

University of Chicago
Peer-Reviewed Publication

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.

Journal: Matter

23-Feb-2026

Lehigh and Rice universities partner with global industry leaders to revolutionize catastrophe modeling

Lehigh University
Meeting Announcement

The Consortium for Enhancing Resilience and Catastrophe Modeling (CERCat)—a landmark partnership between Lehigh University and Rice University—convened at Rice University between Feb. 5-6, 2026, for its semi-annual meeting. This meeting featured comprehensive mid-year updates on six projects launched at the inaugural meeting of CERCat held at Lehigh University in August 2025 and served as a critical touchpoint to ensure CERCat’s research remains aligned with the evolving catastrophe modeling and resilience assessment needs of its industry partners.

23-Feb-2026

AI-boosted electronic nose detects ovarian cancer

Linköping University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Using machine learning, an electronic nose can “smell” early signs of ovarian cancer in the blood. The method is precise and, according to the LiU researchers behind the study, it could eventually be used to find many different cancers. The study is published in the scientific journal Advanced Intelligent Systems.

Journal: Advanced Intelligent Systems
Funder: Vinnova, Svenska Forskningsrådet Formas, Energimyndigheten, Vetenskapsrådet

23-Feb-2026

World-first safety guide for public use of AI health chatbots

University of Birmingham
Peer-Reviewed Publication

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.

23-Feb-2026

Can Taylor Swift teach botany? Music videos boost meaningful learning and help combat “plant blindness”

Universidad Miguel Hernandez de Elche

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.