For the past several years, Vitaly Podzorov, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences, voluntarily has worked as part of a research integrity community to detect signs of potential scientific misconduct in peer-reviewed research papers. Podzorov discusses how and why he became involved in the effort to discern errors in published research. 

The 1,000 Scientist AI Jam brought together DOE researchers at Argonne and eight other labs to explore models from OpenAI and Anthropic and understand AI’s potential to accelerate discoveries in energy, materials science, medicine and more.

Not only are the plants from ancient Egypt an entirely different species from those sold online, according to UC Berkeley student researcher Liam McEvoy, but Egyptologists for decades may have misunderstood how the psychoactive blue lotus that grew on the Nile River banks was consumed thousands of years ago. 

Kathleen Stebe, Richer & Elizabeth Goodwin Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE), is tackling this challenge head-on with a collaborative group of researchers across five institutions under the support of a grant from the Department of Energy. Stebe is leading a groundbreaking research initiative that aims to create an eco-friendly, bioinspired process for separating REEs that would also avoid shipping semi-processed REEs to other countries for purification.

The Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Technology, Tel Aviv University, and nine municipalities across Israel have announced an unprecedented milestone in space research and scientific education: a constellation of nine research nanosatellites—the largest Israeli satellite constellation ever—has been launched into space from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The nanosatellites, each measuring 10×10×11.3 cm, were designed and built by high school students from across the country. They were launched into low Earth orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Under the nighttime California sky, NASA’s EZIE (Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer) mission launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 11:43 p.m. PDT on March 14. Taking off from Vandenberg Space Force Base near Santa Barbara, the EZIE mission’s trio of small satellites will fly in a pearls-on-a-string configuration approximately 260 to 370 miles above Earth’s surface to map the auroral electrojets, powerful electric currents that flow through our upper atmosphere in the polar regions where auroras glow in the sky.

 

The H.E.R.M.E.S. Constellation of the Italian Space Agency (ASI).  The High Energy Rapid Modular Ensemble of Satellites - Pathfinder Mission was successfully launched into orbit aboard the Space X Transporter 13. The launch took place this morning at 7:43 Italian time from Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) in California, USA. The six CubeSats in the constellation were grouped on an ION release platform made by the Italian company D-Orbit, positioned on a Falcon 9 vector. The six nanosatellites are clustered in a Sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of about 500-520 km, with an inclination of 97.44 degrees, and will be deployed about a week after launch with the release of one per day.

UofL Assistant Professor of Anthropology Kathryn Marklein co-authored a study that contradicts past literature about the stress markers and lifespans of female and male-presenting individuals, with new indications of resource disparities between the two. Marklein sheds light on how social and cultural factors — such as the preferential treatment of individuals presenting as males — have influenced health outcomes throughout history.  

Associate Professor SHIMOJO Hisashi of the Graduate School of Intercultural Studies conducts research on spaces where state intervention is difficult from the perspectives of anthropology and Southeast Asian studies. His main research focus is on the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam, but he aims to understand the backgrounds of how such spaces are formed regardless of the country, and the social order that people weave in these spaces. His efforts illuminate the image of the state as seen by ordinary people and challenge the understanding of society. We spoke with Shimojo about the results of his research and future prospects. In his words, “If the front side of a coin represents the state, then I study its reverse side.”