EurekAlert! In the Spotlight

Welcome to In the Spotlight, where each month we shine a light on something exciting, timely, or simply fascinating from the world of science.

This month, we’re focusing on artificial intelligence (AI), a topic that continues to capture attention everywhere. Here, you’ll find the latest research news, insights, and discoveries shaping how AI is being developed and used across the world.

Latest News Releases

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 21-Nov-2025 18:11 ET (21-Nov-2025 23:11 GMT/UTC)

15-Sep-2025

NJIT student–faculty team wins best presentation award for ant swarm simulation

New Jersey Institute of Technology
Reports and Proceedings

NJIT's Matthew Loges ’25 and Assistant Professor Tomer Weiss explored how the collective behavior of ants — acting like both fluids and elastic materials — can inspire breakthroughs in engineering materials, robotics and traffic control. Their simulation work, recognized at the prestigious ACM SIGGRAPH conference, highlights how studying biological swarm dynamics may lead to innovations such as self-healing concrete and smarter multi-agent systems.

Meeting: ACM SIGGRAPH 2025

15-Sep-2025

Moffitt researchers develop machine learning model to predict urgent care visits for lung cancer patients

H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new study published in JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics demonstrates that machine learning models incorporating patient-reported outcomes and wearable sensor data can predict which patients with non–small cell lung cancer are most at risk of needing urgent care during treatment. The study was led by researchers and clinicians at Moffitt Cancer Center.

Journal: JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics
Funder: NIH/National Cancer Institute

15-Sep-2025

How NIL boosts college football’s competitive balance

Carnegie Mellon University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Tepper School Professor Tim Derdenger and Ivan Li from the University of Texas at Dallas challenge the "rich get richer" narrative about Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) in college football, revealing that it has increased competitive balance by distributing elite talent more widely and empowering a broader range of schools to attract top recruits.

Journal: Management Science

15-Sep-2025

AI TechX awards seed funding to find AI solutions to real-world problems

University of Tennessee at Knoxville
Grant and Award Announcement

Nine projects led by faculty at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will receive the first round of funding from AI TechX, a new initiative created by UT to empower Tennessee communities and industry partners to adopt AI technologies that enable high-quality job creation.

15-Sep-2025

Study: Reviewers increasingly divided on the use of generative AI in peer review

IOP Publishing
Reports and Proceedings

A new global reviewer survey from IOP Publishing (IOPP) reveals a growing divide in attitudes among reviewers in the physical sciences regarding the use of generative AI in peer review. The study follows a similar surveyconducted last year showing that while some researchers are beginning to embrace AI tools, others remain concerned about the potential negative impact, particularly when AI is used to assess their own work.

15-Sep-2025

New deep learning model sharpens accuracy in wheat spike counting

Nanjing Agricultural University The Academy of Science

A research team has now developed an advanced computer vision approach based on the YOLOX deep learning algorithm to automate spike detection.

Journal: Plant Phenomics

15-Sep-2025

Why AI is never going to run the world

Ohio State University
Book Announcement

The secret to human intelligence can’t be replicated or improved on by artificial intelligence, according to researcher Angus Fletcher. Fletcher, a professor of English at The Ohio State University’s Project Narrative, explains in a new book that AI is very good at one thing: logic. But many of life’s most fundamental problems require a different type of intelligence.