Feature Stories
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 10-Dec-2025 17:11 ET (10-Dec-2025 22:11 GMT/UTC)
8-Dec-2025
Astrophysicist helps decode one of the universe’s strangest explosions
Rutgers University
A Rutgers astrophysicist is helping to solve a cosmic puzzle that has astronomers scratching their heads. The mystery centers on a powerful explosion in space that lasted far longer than anything they have seen before. NASA announced today that scientists using its James Webb Space Telescope studied GRB 250702B, a long gamma-ray burst, one of the brightest and most energetic events in the Universe. Normally, long gamma-ray bursts happen when a huge star collapses into a black hole, creating a quick, intense flash of high-energy gamma-ray light. This one didn’t follow the rules.
8-Dec-2025
Startup develops new nanosensors to track chemical reactions in ‘the age of enzymes’
Iowa State University
A startup company called Zymosense is developing and marketing nanosensors invented in Nigel Reuel's Iowa State lab. The new tools will help industries track and improve the enzymes used in biotechnology, medicine, drug development, food production and other industrial and everyday applications.
8-Dec-2025
SwRI researchers use PUNCH to track interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS
Southwest Research Institute
SAN ANTONIO — December 8, 2025 — A Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) research project is using data from NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) spacecraft to track the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. It tracked the comet for many weeks when it was behind the Sun as seen from Earth. The comet’s position made impossible to observe from Earth except by telescopes designed to look at the Sun. PUNCH, which launched in March 2025, is a constellation of four small spacecraft that act as a single virtual instrument 8,000 miles across to image the solar corona, the Sun’s outer atmosphere, as it transitions into the solar wind that fills and defines our solar system. The PUNCH mission is led by SwRI’s Dr. Craig DeForest.
8-Dec-2025
A look into Kula: Library Futures Academy—the world's first library-based institute of advanced studies
University of Victoria
Academic libraries have long stood as temples of truth—sanctuaries where scholars seek to expand human understanding. Yet knowledge is rarely born in isolation. The most transformative discoveries have emerged through collaboration.
8-Dec-2025
ICARDA - 50 years of science for resilient drylands
CGIARFive decades of breakthroughs and lasting impact.
Half a century of research in some of the world’s most challenging environments.
Fifty years of resilient seeds, smarter land and water use, stronger capacities, and integrated innovations across crops, livestock, and agri-tech systems.
8-Dec-2025
SFU research plants seeds for new dementia care model in Canada
Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University researchers are laying the groundwork for an innovative long-term care model that combines nature-based therapy with village-setting care to enhance the quality of life for people living with dementia. First developed on traditional farms in the Netherlands, the Green Care Farm (GCF) model integrates long-term care with farm-related activities in a therapeutic setting to foster autonomy, cognitive stimulation, and emotional well-being for people living with dementia. Now, a first-of-its-kind research project is bringing this model to Canada.
4-Dec-2025
Atmospheric instrument hitches ride on Antarctic planes
National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
This November through February, a specialized laser instrument that measures atmospheric gases is hitching a ride on regularly scheduled flights to and from McMurdo Station in Antarctica. The instrument will collect information about how much carbon dioxide is going in and out of the Southern Ocean for a project called the Southern Ocean Carbon Gas Observatory (SCARGO).
- Funder
- Office of Polar Programs
4-Dec-2025
Protein that unties tangled DNA linked to hotspots of cancer mutations
Ontario Institute for Cancer Research
New research published in Nature Communications has linked a normal cellular process to an accumulation of DNA mutations in cancer and identified cancer-driving mutations in an underexplored part of the genome.
- Journal
- Nature Communications
4-Dec-2025
The future of precision oncology Is through multi-omics
BGI Genomics
Multi-omics is pushing oncology into a new era of clarity. Researchers are moving beyond single markers and now map cancer through DNA, RNA, proteins, and epigenetic signals at the same time. They can now see the shape of a tumor with greater precision, making treatment decisions faster and with greater confidence.