EverythingScience

Big Tech Says Generative AI Will Save the Planet. It Doesn't Offer Much Proof Joshi is the author of a new report, released Monday with support from several environmental organizations, that attempts to quantify some of the most high-profile claims made about how AI will save the planet. The report looks at more than claims made by tech companies, energy associations, and others about how "AI will serve as a net climate benefit.” Joshi’s analysis finds that just a quarter of those claims were backed up by academic research, while more than a third did not publicly cite any evidence at all. “People make assertions about the kind of societal impacts of AI and the effects on the energy system—those assertions often lack rigor,” says Jon Koomey, an energy and technology researcher who was not involved in Joshi’s report. “It's important not to take self-interested claims at face value. Some of those claims may be true, but you have to be very careful. I think there's a lot of people who make these statements without much support.” Another important topic the report explores is what kind of AI, exactly, tech companies are talking about when they talk about AI saving the planet. Many types of AI are less energy-intensive than the generative, consumer-focused models that have dominated headlines in recent years, which require massive amounts of compute—and power—to train and operate. Machine learning has been a staple of many scientific disciplines for decades. But it’s large-scale generative AI—especially tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google Gemini—that are the public focus of much of tech companies’ infrastructure buildout. Joshi’s analysis found that nearly all of the claims he examined conflated more traditional, less energy-intensive forms of AI with the consumer-focused generative AI that is driving much of the buildout of data centers. Source:Wired @EverythingScience

Man Survives 48 Hours Without Lungs in a Medical First People cannot survive without lungs. Yet one of Ankit Bharat’s patients did so for two full days. In a study published in the Cell Press journal Med, surgeons detailed how they extracted a patient’s severely infected lungs and relied on a custom-built “artificial lungs” setup to sustain him until donor organs became available. The team describes the strategy as a potential bridge to transplantation for patients who would otherwise die waiting. “He was critically ill. His heart stopped as soon as he arrived. We had to perform CPR,” recalls Bharat, the lead author and a thoracic surgeon at Northwestern University. “When the infection is so severe that the lungs are melting, they’re irrecoverably damaged. That’s when patients die.” Source:SciTechDaily @EverythingScience

Fungi on International Space Station Show Surprising Metal Extraction Skills In the BioAsteroid project, University of Edinburgh’s Professor Charles Cockell and his colleagues used the bacterial species Sphingomonas desiccabilis and the fungus species Penicillium simplicissimum to see which elements could potentially be extracted from L-chondrite asteroidal material. But understanding how the microbes interact with rocks in microgravity was equally important. “This is probably the first experiment of its kind on the International Space Station on meteorite,” said Dr. Rosa Santomartino, a researcher at Cornell University and the University of Edinburgh. “We wanted to keep the approach tailored in a way, but also general to increase its impact.” “These are two completely different species, and they will extract different things.” “So, we wanted to understand how and what, but keep the results relevant for a broader perspective, because not much is known about the mechanisms that influence microbial behavior in space.” Source:Sci.News @EverythingScience

Your Gut Bacteria Are Actively Searching for Food The gut microbiome, also called the gut flora, is essential to human health. This vast and constantly changing community of microorganisms depends on a web of chemical exchanges. Microbes communicate not only with one another but also with the human body that hosts them. To function properly, gut bacteria must detect nutrients and signaling molecules in their surroundings. However, scientists still do not fully understand the wide range of chemical signals that bacterial receptors are able to recognize. A key question remains: which of these signals are most important for beneficial gut bacteria? Moving Beyond Pathogens in Bacterial Research Most research on bacterial sensing has focused on model organisms, particularly disease-causing microbes. Far less attention has been given to commensals, the non-pathogenic and often beneficial bacteria that naturally live in humans. This has left an important gap in understanding what kinds of chemical signals these helpful microbes actually detect in the gut. An international team led by Victor Sourjik sought to answer that question. The researchers, from the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, the University of Ohio, and Philipps-University Marburg, investigated Clostridia. These motile bacteria are abundant in the intestinal flora and play a major role in maintaining gut health. Gut Bacteria Recognize a Wide Range of Nutrients The team found that receptors from bacteria in the human gut microbiome respond to a surprisingly broad range of metabolic compounds. These include breakdown products of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, DNA, and amines. Through systematic screening, the scientists observed that different types of bacterial sensors show clear preferences for specific classes of chemicals. This indicates that gut bacteria are selectively tuned to certain metabolic signals rather than reacting randomly to everything in their environment. Source:SciTechDaily @EverythingScience

Deep-Sea Microbes Reveal [Major Clue on] How Complex Life Began For years, scientists have agreed on a broad explanation for how complex life first appeared on Earth, yet one critical question remained unanswered. Plants, animals, and fungi, collectively known as eukaryotes, are thought to have emerged when two very different microbes joined forces. One depended on oxygen to survive, while the other was believed to live only in oxygen-free environments. What puzzled researchers was how these two organisms could have encountered each other in the first place. A new study from The University of Texas at Austin, published today (February 18) in the journal Nature, offers a compelling answer. Researchers focused on a group of microbes called Asgard archaea, widely considered close relatives of the ancestors of complex life. Although most known Asgard archaea inhabit deep-sea, oxygen-free settings, the team discovered that some members of this group can tolerate or even use oxygen. This finding strengthens the theory that complex life evolved in oxygen-rich conditions. “Most Asgards alive today have been found in environments without oxygen,” explained Brett Baker an associate professor of marine science and integrative biology at UT. “But it turns out that the ones most closely related to eukaryotes live in places with oxygen, such as shallow coastal sediments and floating in the water column, and they have a lot of metabolic pathways that use oxygen. That suggests that our eukaryotic ancestor likely had these processes, too.” Source:SciTechDaily @EverythingScience

Beating 'Heart-on-a-Chip' Could Help Fight The World's Leading Cause of Death Scientists have created a three-dimensional "heart-on-a-chip" (HOC) that could provide a breakthrough in the fight against the world's leading cause of death, cardiovascular disease. One major challenge is that we cannot easily test how a human heart will react to a drug or disease without putting someone at risk. This engineered heart tissue beats on its own, it mobilizes calcium to initiate muscular activity, and it responds predictably to common drugs. It's the first to incorporate a dual-sensing platform that provides real-time tracking of activity throughout the heart tissue down to the cellular level. In a recent paper, scientists from multiple Canadian institutions describe how they achieved this "significant advance in cardiac tissue engineering and pharmacological testing." The key advance here is the integration of sensors that can detect both macro-scale and micro-scale cardiac activity. Both current HOC platforms and the research team's previous iteration, described in a 2024 paper, lack high-resolution cellular-level sensing. Source:ScienceAlert @EverythingScience

New 'Mars GPS' lets Perseverance pinpoint its location within 25 centimeters A new technology developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California enables Perseverance to figure out its whereabouts without calling humans for help. Dubbed Mars Global Localization, the technology features an algorithm that rapidly compares panoramic images from the rover’s navigation cameras with onboard orbital terrain maps. Running on a powerful processor that Perseverance originally used to communicate with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, the algorithm takes about two minutes to pinpoint the rover’s location within some 10 inches (25 centimeters). Mars Global Localization was first used successfully in regular mission operations on Feb. 2, then again Feb. 16. “This is kind of like giving the rover GPS. Now it can determine its own location on Mars,” said JPL’s Vandi Verma, chief engineer of robotics operations for the mission. “It means the rover will be able to drive for much longer distances autonomously, so we’ll explore more of the planet and get more science. And it could be used by almost any other rover traveling fast and far.” The upgrade is especially valuable given how well Perseverance’s auto-navigation self-driving system has been working. Enabling the rover to re-plan its path around obstacles en route to a preestablished destination, AutoNav has proved so capable that the distance Perseverance can drive without instructions from Earth is largely limited by the rover’s uncertainty about its whereabouts. Now that it can stop and determine its exact location, Perseverance can be commanded to drive to potentially unlimited distances without calling home. Implementation of Mars Global Localization comes on the heels of another innovation from the Perseverance team: the first use of generative artificial intelligence to help plan a drive route by selecting waypoints for the rover, which are normally chosen by human rover operators. Both technologies enable Perseverance to travel farther and faster while minimizing team workload. Beyond visual odometry Unlike on Earth, there is no network of GPS satellites in deep space to locate spacecraft on planetary surfaces. So missions — whether robotic or crewed — must come up with other ways to determine their location. As with NASA’s previous Mars rovers, Perseverance tracks its position using what’s called visual odometry, analyzing geologic features in camera images taken every few feet while accounting for wheel slippage. But as tiny errors in the process add up over the course of each drive, the rover becomes increasingly unsure about its exact location. On long drives, the rover’s sense of its position can be off by more than 100 feet (up to 35 meters). Believing it may be too close to hazardous terrain, Perseverance may prematurely end its drive and wait for instructions from Earth. “Humans have to tell it, ‘You’re not lost, you’re safe. Keep going,’” Verma said. “We knew if we addressed this problem, the rover could travel much farther every day.” After each drive comes to a halt, the rover sends a 360-degree panorama to Earth, where mapping experts match the imagery with shots from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The team then sends the rover its location and instructions for its next drive. That process can take a day or more, but with Mars Global Localization, the rover is able to compare the images itself, determine its location, and roll ahead on its preplanned route. How Ingenuity helped Key to Mars Global Localization is the rover’s Helicopter Base Station (HBS), which Perseverance used to communicate with the now-retired Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. Equipped with a commercial processor that powered many consumer smartphones in the mid-2010s, the HBS runs more than 100 times faster than the rover’s two main computers, which, built to survive the radiation-heavy Martian environment, are based on hardware introduced in 1997... Source:Phys.org @EverythingScience

The second wet dress rehearsal for the Artemis II mission continues as teams power up the rocket’s core stage — which contains propellant tanks — and charge the Orion spacecraft’s flight batteries. Tomorrow, teams will practice fueling the rocket. go.nasa.gov/4qIwL40 Source: @NASA @EverythingScience

Out of the way please! Did you know baby elephants are covered in fine hair that fades as they grow. Those tiny hairs help them stay cool! 📸 Nishant Singh Source: @AnimalPlanet @EverythingScience

In early February 2026, the Sun unleashed a torrent of back-to-back solar flares. One specific active region on the Sun was responsible for over 50 of them! Here’s a close up from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. 🤩 Source: @NASASolarSystem @EverythingScience

A Breakthrough Discovery Could Help Lungs Repair Themselves Scientists at Mayo Clinic have uncovered a molecular “switch” inside lung cells that determines whether those cells focus on healing damaged tissue or defending against infection. The discovery offers new insight that could shape future regenerative treatments for chronic lung diseases. “We were surprised to find that these specialized cells cannot do both jobs at once,” says Douglas Brownfield, Ph.D., senior author of the study published in Nature Communications. “Some commit to rebuilding, while others focus on defense. That division of labor is essential. And by uncovering the switch that controls it, we can start thinking about how to restore balance when it breaks down in disease.” The Dual Role of Alveolar Type 2 (AT2) Cells The research centers on alveolar type 2 (AT2) cells, which play a critical role in lung health. These cells help maintain the air sacs by producing proteins that keep them open during breathing. At the same time, they serve as reserve stem cells capable of replacing alveolar type 1 (AT1) cells, the thin cells that form the surface where oxygen passes into the bloodstream. For years, researchers have observed that AT2 cells often fail to regenerate effectively in conditions such as pulmonary fibrosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and severe viral infections including COVID-19. However, the biological reason these cells lose their regenerative ability had not been fully understood. Source:SciTechDaily @EverythingScience

Dirty Air Linked to Higher Alzheimer’s Risk in Massive US Study Older adults who are exposed to higher levels of air pollution appear more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, according to new research led by Yanling Deng of Emory University. Alzheimer’s disease is the leading cause of dementia, affecting an estimated 57 million people worldwide. Air pollution has already been identified as a risk factor not only for Alzheimer’s, but also for several chronic conditions, including hypertension, stroke, and depression. These same health problems are also associated with dementia. Until now, however, scientists were unsure whether polluted air increases dementia risk by first contributing to these chronic illnesses, or whether those illnesses simply make the brain more vulnerable to pollution’s effects. Massive Medicare Study Examines 27.8 Million Older Adults To investigate, researchers analyzed data from more than 27.8 million U.S. Medicare beneficiaries age 65 and older between 2000 and 2018. They compared long term exposure to air pollution with new diagnoses of Alzheimer’s disease, while also examining whether conditions such as stroke, hypertension, and depression influenced the relationship. The results showed a clear pattern. Higher exposure to air pollution was linked to a greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. The association was somewhat stronger among individuals who had previously experienced a stroke. In contrast, hypertension and depression did not appear to significantly intensify the pollution-related risk. Source:SciTechDaily @EverythingScience