91
Scientists reverse brain aging, with a nasal spray
New therapy is turning back the clock in aging brains, healing inflammation, restoring memory and reshaping the future of brain age-related therapies.
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 197 posts.
92
Food processing influences metabolism and brain activity
In healthy adults, meals matched for calories and nutrients, but otherwise prepared differently, led to unexpectedly different metabolic responses and activity in the brain’s reward system.
93
Emotion concepts and their function in a large language model
All modern language models sometimes act like they have emotions. What’s behind these behaviors? Our interpretability team investigates.
94
World-first gigabit laser link between aircraft and geostationary satellite
Faster, more secure connections from space could one day make broadband on planes, ships and even remote roads as easy as turning on a light. The European Space Agency (ESA), Airbus Defence and Space, the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) and German payload manufacturer TESAT (as…
95
Jellyfish can heal wounds in minutes. Scientists want their secrets
A decade ago this summer, at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Jocelyn Malamy watched jellyfish cells “walk” toward each other to close a wound for the first time. An associate professor in Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology at the University of Chicago, Malamy had received transparent, dime-sized medusae of the…
96
“Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
A new European Southern Observatory (ESO) study has found that current proposals to launch over 1.7 million satellites into orbit, including extremely bright ones, would have “devastating consequences for astronomy.” According to the study, no more than 100 000 faint satellites, below naked eye visibility, should…
97
FDA clears blood test to aid evaluation for Alzheimer's disease
The blood-based biomarker test is based on technology developed at WashU Medicine by Randall Bateman, MD, and David Holtzman, MD.
98
An all-sky map of half a million supermassive black holes
The Black Hole Mapper reaches a milestone with its first southern hemisphere optical observations, coordinated eROSITA X-ray identification, and multi-epoch tracking of accreting black holes across the universe.
99
From brain waves to words: a new path to communication without surgery
Last year, we introduced Brain2Qwerty v1, research that uses AI to decode brain activity into text without any surgical implant. Now we're sharing the next step: Brain2Qwerty v2, the highest-performing end-to-end pipeline capable of real-time sentence decoding from non-invasive brain recordings, approaching levels of…
100
GLP-1 may slow biological aging
A new study provides the first clinical evidence that popular semaglutide drugs, like Ozempic or Wegovy, could slow down processes associated with biological aging.
101
Airbus is preparing two uncrewed combat aircraft
Airbus is working at full throttle to offer the German Air Force an operational Uncrewed Collaborative Combat Aircraft (UCCA) system by 2029.
102
The Computer at the Bottom of a Canal
Somewhere at the bottom of the Forth and Clyde Canal, buried in the silt, there is a box of custom silicon that was right about almost everything. Back in 1988 a Scottish hi-fi company shipped a processor that checked the type and bounds of every memory access in hardware, garbage-collected its own heap in silicon, […]
103
Alien World Chemistry Found Inside Meteorite That Struck New Jersey Home
Fragment of the Hillsborough meteorite, broken on impact, with fusion crust from passing at high speed through the Earth’s atmosphere.
104
105
The first early human eggs from stem cells
A look inside the biology, engineering, and validation behind a major scientific milestone.
106
Cannabinoids remove plaque-forming Alzheimer's proteins from brain cells (2016)
Founded by polio vaccine developer Jonas Salk, the Salk Institute is an independent, nonprofit organization. We drive foundational, risk-taking research that addresses society’s most pressing challenges, including cancer, Alzheimer’s, and agricultural resilience.
107
Clinical trial of a prion disease drug candidate begins enrolling participants
It’s the first time the potential treatment, a small interfering RNA targeting the prion protein, is being tested in humans.
108
Actinide is first startup to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)
Actinide becomes the first startup to enrich natural uranium into HALEU, advancing a secure, scalable fuel supply for next-generation nuclear reactors.
109
Designing more efficient quantum circuits with Claude
Working largely on its own, Claude designed quantum circuits that improve on the best published versions, in some cases by an order of magnitude or more.
110
Underwater oxygen loss threatens earth's stability, researchers warn
A new review paper led by scientists at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography warns that the rapid loss of oxygen from the ocean and other aquatic ecosystems is pushing Earth toward an “unsafe space,” with consequences that could be irreversible on human timescales.
111
5,300-year-old 'bow drill' rewrites story of ancient Egyptian tools
A new study reveals that Egyptians were using a mechanically sophisticated drilling tool far earlier than previously suggested.
112
Penguin 'Toxicologists' Find PFAS Chemicals in Remote Patagonia
Penguins can serve as living monitors of their environment by using small, chemical-detecting leg bands, according to a study from UC Davis and SUNY-Buffalo.
113
The Dunning-Kruger effect may just be a data artefact (2020)
I want the Dunning-Kruger effect to be real. First described in a seminal 1999 paper by David Dunning and Justin Kruger, this effect has been the darling of journalists who want to explain why dumb people don’t know they’re dumb. There’s even video of a fantastic pastiche of Turandot’s famous aria, Nessun dorma…
114
How to grow a cacao tree at home (2024)
Growing chocolate at home might sound like a wild idea, right? Chocolate originates from cacao trees, which demand a tropical climate, specific growing conditions, and several years to reach maturity in order to flower and fruit to produce cacao pods. However, our CocoTerra founder, Nate Saal, took on the challenge…
115
ER visits for gambling disorders doubled after expanded online gambling market
ER visits for gambling disorders doubled after single-event sports betting was legalized and Ontario's online gambling market expanded.
116
A jacket that harvests drinking water from the air
The advance in fabric technology comes alongside a new benchmark for atmospheric water harvesting.
117
Memory decline after menopause linked to loss of estrogen production in brain
A largely overlooked space between cells in women’s brains may hold the key to understanding memory loss tied to estrogen decline after menopause, reports a new preclinical Northwestern Medicine study.
118
Using thousands of AI agents to uncover new leads in biological data
See how OpenAI, PerturbAI, and Scripps Research used distributed AI agents to uncover promising research leads in data from millions of brain cells.
119
Emperor penguin and Antarctic fur seal now endangered
Gland, Switzerland, 9 April 2026 (IUCN) – The emperor penguin and Antarctic fur seal are now both Endangered, according to The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™. Climate change in Antarctica is leading to changes in sea-ice that are projected to cause the emperor penguin population to halve by the 2080s, while…
120
2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Deisseroth, Hegemann, Nagel
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2026 was awarded jointly to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel "for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics"