At the forefront of discovery, where cutting-edge scientific questions are tackled, we often don’t have much data. Conversely, successful machine learning (ML) tends to rely on large, high quality data sets for training. So how can researchers harness AI effectively to support their investigations? Published in Physical Review Research, scientists describe an approach for working with ML to tackle complex questions in condensed matter physics. Their method tackles hard problems which were previously unsolvable by physicist simulations or by ML algorithms alone.

Kyoto, Japan -- Many people tend to trust dogs' instincts regarding humans. If dogs gravitate towards you, dog lovers will likely see you as safe and trustworthy, but if dogs are apprehensive around you, some may begin to question your character. Yet how and even if dogs socially evaluate people remains a mystery.

Studies have demonstrated that cognitively complex and social animal species -- such as chimpanzees -- can form reputations of humans either through direct interaction or by observing third-party interactions. The historically intimate relationship dogs have with humans has also made them the focus of considerable research, but findings have proven inconsistent.

Previous research conducted at the Wolf Science Center in Austria found that pack-living dogs and wolves did not form reputations of individual humans after both direct and indirect experience with them. This nonjudgmental attitude may be due to the animals' limited experience interacting with humans, so further study required the participation of more experienced dogs.

Experiment shows freshwater fish like complicated shoreline environments, just as saltwater species do

Every time Fred Below and Connor Sible (CPSC) meet with Illinois farmers, they get the same question. “What’s the story with these biologicals? Do they work?” The confusion of new products and unclear terminology prompted the team to embark on a deep dive into the world of biologicals and biostimulants, publishing their commentary in Agricultural and Environmental Letters.

Probiotics are emerging tools used by neonatal intensive care units to promote healthy outcomes and prevent intestinal diseases such as necrotizing enterocolitis. Probiotic treatment often includes the administration of bacterial strains that belong to the Bifidobacterium genus. Bifidobacterium strains are especially abundant in the guts of children — particularly children who are breastfed — and are considered beneficial to human health.

Scientists have sought to use probiotics to deliver the benefits of Bifidobacterium to infants suffering from malnutrition. Researchers at Sanford Burnham Prebys and and colleagues at Washington University School of Medicine, Sabanci University and the University of California San Diego published findings July 16, 2025, in Nature Microbiology demonstrating the ability to predict the nutritional adaptations of Bifidobacterium strains by analyzing the distribution of hundreds of metabolic genes in thousands of Bifidobacterium genomes.