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Category: Science/mathematics

How the Trump administration ended independent science at the EPA

How the Trump administration ended independent science at the EPA

The New York Times reports: For more than a half-century, a prestigious scientific arm of the federal government did groundbreaking research aimed at saving American lives. It studied fertility, asthma, wildfires, drinking water, climate change and myriad other health threats. In just one year, it has been almost completely dismantled. One scientist, a doctor and expert in lung health, has recently been reassigned to a finance office. Another, an epidemiologist, has been told she has a new job issuing permits…

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Trump fired the entire National Science Board. Here’s why that matters

Trump fired the entire National Science Board. Here’s why that matters

John Drake writes: On Friday, April 24, 2026, the White House fired all 24 members of the National Science Board. According to the National Science Foundation website, the board’s next scheduled meeting is May 5. Most people outside the research enterprise have never heard of the NSB, so it’s worth saying what it is. The National Science Foundation Act of 1950 created NSF with two heads: a director and a board. Jointly they set the strategic direction of an agency…

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Why your brain already understands complex music theory

Why your brain already understands complex music theory

ZME Science reports: The human brain operates as a tireless prediction machine. It watches a dropped glass and anticipates the shatter. It listens to a conversation and guesses the final word of a sentence. And, as it turns out, it listens to a melody and inherently knows exactly what chord should fall next. If there’s something in the world most people tend to agree is that they love music. But to feel the music, our minds must decode a hidden…

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NASA is throttling the scientific pipeline and diminishing our ability to see and understand our planet

NASA is throttling the scientific pipeline and diminishing our ability to see and understand our planet

Kate Marvel writes: Artemis II’s journey around the moon, scheduled to conclude on Friday, has delivered stunning new images of our home world taken from space. Those pictures remind us that Earth has changed immensely since the last time astronauts went near the moon in 1972. So has NASA. Budget cuts, chaos and political interference now threaten the very science that motivates and enables space exploration. President Trump’s 2027 budget request calls for a nearly 50 percent cut to NASA’s…

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The rapid rise of China as a scientific superpower

The rapid rise of China as a scientific superpower

Ross Andersen writes: If China finally eclipses the United States as the world’s preeminent scientific superpower, there won’t be an official announcement. Neither will there necessarily be a dramatic Promethean demonstration, a bomb flash in the desert, a satellite beeping overhead, a moon landing. It will be a quiet moment, observed by a small, specialized subset of scientists who have forsaken the study of the stars, animals, and plants in favor of a more navel-gazing subject: the practice of science…

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China could be the world’s biggest public funder of science within two years

China could be the world’s biggest public funder of science within two years

Nature reports: China is on the cusp of becoming the world’s biggest public funder of research, according to a forecast by US academics, as stalled growth in government investment in the United States coincides with consistent rises in spending by the Chinese authorities. The analysis — produced exclusively for Nature Index — was the work of researchers from Frontiers in Science and Innovation Policy (FSIP), a programme at the University of California, San Diego, that studies the US research and…

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Who cares about going to the moon when the world is in chaos?

Who cares about going to the moon when the world is in chaos?

Lisa Grossman writes: Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been gearing up to cover the launch of NASA’s Artemis II mission. This launch aims to bring humans back to the vicinity of the moon for the first time in more than 50 years, with an eventual eye toward landing humans on the moon and learning how to live there long-term. I expected to feel unalloyed excitement for this moment. I’ve been enraptured with space since I was 8 years…

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Climate physicists face the ghosts in their machines: clouds

Climate physicists face the ghosts in their machines: clouds

Charlie Wood writes: In October 2008, Chris Bretherton lifted off from the coast of northern Chile in a C-130 turboprop plane. It was too dark to see the sandy hills of the Atacama Desert below, but the darkness suited Bretherton just fine. The researcher wasn’t going sightseeing. Seated directly behind the pilots, he kept his focus entirely on the sky. The plane was stuffed with instruments, and its wings bristled with sensors and other devices. Bretherton’s immediate mission was to…

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In unprecedented move, giant monkey research center may become a primate sanctuary

In unprecedented move, giant monkey research center may become a primate sanctuary

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine applauds the Oregon Health & Science University Board of Directors’ approval of a resolution authorizing negotiations with the National Institutes of Health to transition the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) toward closure and potential conversion into a primate sanctuary. With passage of the resolution, OHSU is now positioned to work with the NIH to explore a pathway away from invasive primate experimentation and toward humane, human-relevant science. During a 180-day negotiation period authorized…

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George Orwell called for a new way of thinking about science

George Orwell called for a new way of thinking about science

By Robert Colls, De Montfort University In October 1945, George Orwell responded to a letter from Mr J. Stewart Cook in the leftwing weekly newspaper Tribune calling for more science education. The call can hardly have come as a surprise. War had brought science and engineering to the fore – from the Spitfire fighter plane and radar to Bletchley Park’s codebreakers – and now that war was over, many thought it was time to build a brave new world. Science…

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Science is drowning in AI slop

Science is drowning in AI slop

Ross Andersen writes: On a frigid Norwegian afternoon earlier this month, Dan Quintana, a psychology professor at the University of Oslo, decided to stay in and complete a tedious task that he had been putting off for weeks. An editor from a well-known journal in his field had asked him to review a paper that they were considering for publication. It seemed like a straightforward piece of science. Nothing set off any alarm bells, until Quintana looked at the references…

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Fusion breakthrough: Energy researchers report tokamak experiments that exceed mysterious ‘plasma density limit’

Fusion breakthrough: Energy researchers report tokamak experiments that exceed mysterious ‘plasma density limit’

The Debrief reports: In a potential new milestone for fusion energy research, researchers in China report achieving a state once only theorized for fusion plasmas, enabling stable operation under conditions that significantly exceed normal limits. The achievement was made during experiments with China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), which reportedly produced fusion plasmas in a “density-free regime,” overcoming a longstanding hurdle to nuclear fusion ignition. The team’s findings were featured in a new study in Science Advances, offering a fresh…

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‘This year nearly broke me as a scientist’ – U.S. researchers reflect on how 2025’s science cuts have changed their lives

‘This year nearly broke me as a scientist’ – U.S. researchers reflect on how 2025’s science cuts have changed their lives

U.S. researchers are seeking the light at the end of a rough year for science. Westend61/Getty Images By Carrie McDonough, Carnegie Mellon University; Brian G. Henning, Gonzaga University; Cara Poland, Michigan State University; Nathaniel M. Tran, University of Illinois Chicago; Rachael Sirianni, UMass Chan Medical School, and Stephanie J. Nawyn, Michigan State University From beginning to end, 2025 was a year of devastation for scientists in the United States. January saw the abrupt suspension of key operations across the National…

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Flat Earth, spirits and conspiracy theories – experience can shape even extraordinary beliefs

Flat Earth, spirits and conspiracy theories – experience can shape even extraordinary beliefs

A belief in ghosts could be a way to explain a strange experience while asleep. ‘The Nightmare’ by Johann Heinrich Füssli/Wikimedia Commons By Eli Elster, University of California, Davis On Feb. 22, 2020, “Mad” Mike Hughes towed a homemade rocket to the Mojave Desert and launched himself into the sky. His goal? To view the flatness of the Earth from space. This was his third attempt, and tragically it was fatal. Hughes crashed shortly after takeoff and died. Hughes’ nickname…

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The next scientific revolution won’t come from scientists

The next scientific revolution won’t come from scientists

Steve Fuller writes: The most influential work on the nature of science for at least the past fifty years has been The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, first published in 1962 by a young physicist-turned-historian, Thomas Kuhn. Although influential, the book has also been widely misunderstood. It is quite common to think—certainly based on the title—that Kuhn was providing a formula for producing scientific revolutions. On the contrary, he was arguing that revolutions only happen once scientists confront insurmountable obstacles in…

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The universe may be lopsided – new research

The universe may be lopsided – new research

By Subir Sarkar, University of Oxford The shape of the universe is not something we often think about. But my colleagues and I have published a new study suggests it could be asymmetric or lopsided, meaning not the same in every direction. Should we care about this? Well, today’s “standard cosmological model” – which describes the dynamics and structure of the entire cosmos – rests squarely on the assumption that it is isotropic (looks the same in all directions), and…

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