As cities grow, artificial water bodies are slowly replacing natural ones. Among the most numerous but least studied are the garden ponds, which can be found by the millions in private gardens. A new study from researchers at the HUN-REN Centre for Ecological Research provides the first systematic look at zooplankton communities living in these garden ponds and finds that even the smallest of them contribute to urban freshwater biodiversity, adding to what the larger public urban ponds already provide.

Zooplankton (rotifers, cladocerans, and copepods that drift in the water column) are “ecological workhorses” and play a key link in the aquatic food web. Zooplankton transfer energy from primary producers to fish and invertebrate predators, and their grazing can regulate algal blooms. Yet while public urban ponds have drawn growing scientific attention, the life inside privately managed garden ponds has remained poorly studied.

To close that gap, the team sampled 90 ponds in and around Budapest, including 38 private garden ponds and 52 public urban ponds during spring 2022, through the MyPond citizen science project. They identified and documented every zooplankton species present, compared the density and species richness between the two pond types, and tested how communities responded to urban cover and fish presence.

Can a robot help people learn from failure, or can too much help get in the way? In a new study with 90 adults, a humanoid robot guided learners through a task involving unfamiliar Swahili instructions and responded to their mistakes. The results showed that robot-delivered feedback helped learners recover from errors, but personalized guidance was not always more effective on the very next attempt. The study highlights that effective AI tutoring depends not only on personalization, but also on when and how feedback is delivered.

Seven students from across Iowa spent six weeks of their summer learning to design, build and test their own microelectronic devices. Iowa State's semiconductor workshop is part of a year-long effort to help students understand semiconductors and AI hardware.

A developmental cognitive neuroscientist, Rachel Wu at UC Riverside studies how people learn and pay attention across their lifespan. Her research explores how lessons from child development can help older adults continue learning, improving cognitive health and independence as they age.