For scientists who study the Southern Ocean, a long-standing silver lining in the gloomy forecast of climate change has been the theory of iron fertilization. As temperatures rise and glaciers in Antarctica melt, ice-trapped iron would feed blooms of microscopic algae, pulling heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow.

There’s just one problem: The theory doesn’t hold water.

In what researchers describe as the most accurate measurement of iron inputs from a glacier in Antarctica, marine scientists from Rutgers University-New Brunswick have discovered that meltwater from an Antarctic ice shelf supplies far less iron to surrounding waters than once thought.

The findings, published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, raise questions about the sources of iron in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, and could significantly alter how climate change predictions are forecasted and modeled, the researchers said.

When removing cancerous tissue in the brain, neurosurgeons often use “awake brain mapping” to minimize the risk of causing unintended disruptions to a patient’s quality of life while removing as much tumor as possible. This practice, which has been used for decades, involves waking a patient up mid-surgery to test their neurocognitive functions in real time by stimulating the brain surface and assessing for functional changes. Now, a study published in the journal Science Advances details a promising, new avenue toward improving awake brain mapping results by investigating the tiny, nearly imperceptible variabilities in patient behavior that occur during the procedure. This work points to a future where brain surgeries are not just safer, but more precisely tailored to protect each patient’s speech, movement and quality of life.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Assistant Professor Benjamin Cowley and colleagues have developed an AI version of the visual cortex that’s about 500 times smaller than state-of-the-art computer vision models. Their research brings us closer to understanding how the brain processes sight and may set the stage for AI models of mental health conditions.

New Study shows: What crop advisors really want from AI tech and how precision ag producers will decide on AI adoption.

Research Highlights:

Discrete choice experiments quantify trade-offs in crop advisors’ preferred AI-DSS features.

Advisors favor simplicity and satellite inputs over ultra-accurate or precision-heavy AI-DSS.

AI attitudes moderate acceptance: techno-optimists are more open to data-intensive AI-DSS.

Implications: built trust, ensure cost transparency, and align AI-DSS with user autonomy to boost adoption.

Depending on others for something you need may feel like a risky proposition—and perhaps a human one. It is actually a survival strategy found in the microbial world, and far more frequently than one might expect. Discovering why is key to understanding how microbes form stable communities across medical, industrial, and ecological settings. A new study by bioengineering professor Sergei Maslov, computational scientist Ashish George, and biology professor Tong Wang explores why interdependence can be such a winning move for microbial communities.

The peer review process in scientific publishing has reached a critical point where there are too many manuscript submissions and not enough peer reviewers. UW News asked Carl Bergstrom, University of Washington professor of biology, and Kevin Gross, North Carolina State University professor of statistics, to describe this self-perpetuating cycle and potential interventions.