Fats provide clues to life at its limits in the deep sea
Peer-Reviewed Publication
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.
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 18-Nov-2025 19:11 ET (19-Nov-2025 00:11 GMT/UTC)
Diverse life forms exist on and within the ocean floor. These primarily consist of microbes, tiny organisms that can cope with extreme environmental conditions. These include high pressures and salinities, as well as extreme pH values and a limited supply of nutrients. A team of researchers has now been able to detect microbial life in two newly discovered mud volcanoes with very high pH values. Their findings have been published in the professional journal Communications Earth & Environment.
AMHERST, Mass. — An app that turns consumer Apple Watches into tools for highly sophisticated sleep stage monitoring was developed by team of researchers led by professor Joyita Dutta at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The researchers say the app and corresponding AI code are convenient and effective alternatives to existing costly and complex sleep study equipment and protocols.
As ecosystem engineers, beavers build resilience into the landscape.
Above ground, we can see changes wrought by beaver ponds such as increases in biodiversity and water retention. But UConn Department of Earth Sciences researcher Lijing Wang says we have a limited understanding of how they impact what happens beneath the ground. In research published in Water Resource Research, Wang and co-authors study how water moves through the soils and subsurface environment and detail new insights into how beaver ponds impact groundwater.
As cities grow denser and hotter, creating space for greenery becomes increasingly difficult. To address this challenge, researchers from Chiba University developed a data-driven framework that integrates artificial intelligence and spatial analysis to map vertical greenery across Tokyo’s 23 wards. By analyzing over 80,000 street-view images, the team identified uneven distribution patterns and proposed a vertical greening demand index to guide future urban greening initiatives and climate-resilient urban planning.
As AI—and the ethical debate surrounding it—accelerates, scientists argue that understanding consciousness is now more urgent than ever. Researchers writing in Frontiers in Science warn that advances in AI and neurotechnology are outpacing our understanding of consciousness—with potentially serious ethical consequences.