Scientists have captured a rare view of one of the ocean’s least understood whales—without ever seeing it. By listening to the sounds beaked whales naturally produce, researchers have reconstructed a three-dimensional picture of their deep-diving behavior in the Gulf of Mexico.

Scientists at the University of Sharjah report that they have developed a new machine-learning system designed to overcome challenges encountered in the diacritization of Arabic texts. The system mainly targets problems that existing programs face when encountering undiacritized Arabic script, writing that lacks the vowel marks necessary to pronounce words correctly, a process linguists refer to as diacritization. The presence of diacritics in Arabic is vital not only for how a word is pronounced, but also for semantics. A single word can have multiple, entirely different meanings, depending on how it is articulated.

For the first time, a science team directly documented and extensively sampled a freshened water system beneath the ocean floor. This major discovery comes from the initial analyses of sediment cores recovered during an international scientific expedition led by Co-Chief Scientists Professor Brandon Dugan (Colorado School of Mines, Golden, USA) and Professor Rebecca Robinson (Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, USA). The cores, retrieved from deep below the sea floor, are now being opened, analysed and sampled by the science team, during almost a month of intensive collaborative work at the University of Bremen. During January and February 2026 the expedition’s scientists are working side by side to uncover new insights into the formation, evolution, and significance of this newly documented subseafloor freshwater system.