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: 22-Dec-2025 19:11 ET (23-Dec-2025 00:11 GMT/UTC)

16-Jul-2025

Why some elephants take more risks around people than others

The Graduate Center, CUNY
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Elephants that live near farms are more daring than their deep-forest counterparts, and that behavior could be the key to helping people and elephants get along.

Journal: Royal Society Open Science

16-Jul-2025

New tech for imaging brain waves could advance disease research, AI

Stanford University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The development, which enables researchers to see how neuron-specific waves travel through the brains of mice in real time, led to the discovery of three types of brain waves that move in directions never previously seen. The work holds promise for understanding diseases such as epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s, as well as developing artificial intelligence.

Journal: Cell
Funder: NIH/National Institutes of Health

16-Jul-2025

Faster, smarter, more open: a new way to accelerate AI models

Weizmann Institute of Science
Reports and Proceedings

Until recently, there was no way for models developed by different companies to communicate directly, collaborate or combine their strengths to improve performance. This week, at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) in Vancouver, Canada, scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science and Intel Labs are presenting a new set of algorithms that overcome this barrier, enabling users to benefit from combined computational power of AI models working together. The new algorithms, already available to millions of AI developers around the world, speed up the performance of large language models (LLMs) – today’s leading models of generative AI – by 1.5 times, on average.

16-Jul-2025

Scientists develop deep-blue LEDs expected to greatly enhance general lighting

Rutgers University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A Rutgers-led team of scientists has developed an eco-friendly, very stable, ultra-bright material and used it to generate deep-blue light (emission at ~450 nm) in a light-emitting diode (LED), an energy-efficient device at the heart of all major lighting systems.

The new copper-iodide hybrid emitter materials are expected to contribute to the advancement of blue LED technologies because of their excellent qualities, according to the scientists who pioneered the discovery. The process that produces the material is described in the science journal Nature.

Journal: Nature
Funder: U.S. Department of Energy

16-Jul-2025

Lunar soil could support life on the Moon

Cell Press
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists have developed a technology that may help humans survive on the Moon. In a study publishing July 16 in the Cell Press journal Joule, researchers extracted water from lunar soil and used it to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and chemicals for fuel—potentially opening new doors for future deep space exploration by mitigating the need to transport essential resources like water and fuel all the way from Earth.

Journal: Joule
Funder: National Key R&D Program of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, The Program for Guangdong Introducing Innovative and Entrepreneurial Teams, Special Fund for the Sci-tech Innovation Strategy of Guangdong Province, Guangdong Basic Research Center of Excellence for Aggregate Science, The Shenzhen Natural Science Foundation, Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Eco-materials and Renewable Energy, NSF of Jiangsu Province, University Development Fund

16-Jul-2025

How to more efficiently study complex treatment interactions

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Reports and Proceedings

A new experimental design framework could enable scientists to efficiently estimate how combinations of interventions will affect a group of cells, reducing the cost of experiments and providing less biased data that could be used to understand disease mechanisms or develop new treatments.

Funder: Advanced Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program at MIT, Apple, National Institutes of Health, Office of Naval Research, DOE/US Department of Energy, Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center at the Broad Institute, Simons Investigator Award

16-Jul-2025

Idaho National Laboratory collaborates with Microsoft to streamline nuclear licensing

DOE/Idaho National Laboratory
Business Announcement

(IDAHO FALLS, Idaho) — The Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) have announced a collaboration to use Microsoft’s Azure cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to streamline the nuclear permitting and licensing application process.