Scientific American.com

This AI system can analyze up to one million DNA letters at once, predicting how tiny changes in noncoding regions trigger everything from cancer to rare genetic disorders—and potentially revolutionizing personalized medicine

Super Agers author Eric Topol unpacks the rise of biological age tests—from organ clocks to immune system clocks—and how they might revolutionize early diagnosis of disease

While bariatric surgery can result in significant weight loss, weight stigma can persist years after the surgery.

Elon Musk has launched xAI’s Grok 4—calling it the “world’s smartest AI” and claiming it can ace Ph.D.-level exams and outpace rivals such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s o3 on tough benchmarks

Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has said she will hold a hearing on geoengineering as conspiracy theories have swirled around cloud seeding after the recent floods in Texas

Alexander Clapp, author of new nonfiction book Waste Wars, tracks the worldwide black market trade of our garbage

Words frequently used by ChatGPT, including “delve” and “meticulous,” are getting more common in spoken language, according to an analysis of more than 700,000 hours of videos and podcasts

Today’s large language models are hardly related to the kinds of machine intelligence we see in science fiction, according to Martha Wells, author of the Murderbot Diaries series

A new global overview of Mars suggests dust, rather than water, is the source of mysterious streaks there

Musicologists and neuroscientists have been trying to understand what turns speech into music.

The selection of Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy to temporarily lead NASA adds to the deep political uncertainties already facing the space agency

Nanoplastics—particles smaller than a human hair—can pass through cell walls and enter the food web. New research suggests 27 million metric tons of nanoplastics are spread across just the top layer of the North Atlantic

A new analysis warns that AI facilities could be forced to stop operating because of water shortages and blackouts

Molecules from the 20-million-year-old teeth of a rhino relative are among the oldest ever sequenced, opening tantalizing possibilities to scientists

Tests in London and Singapore could reveal whether AI can improve the safety of air travel

If Americans don’t fight back against efforts to dismantle higher education, the U.S. will lose lifesaving medical research, innovation that spurs our economy and the ability to freely study science and society

Autism has at least four subtypes, an analysis of more than 5,000 children’s genes, traits and developmental trajectories has shown

A protest at a congressional office building highlighted future research findings that vast cuts to science will erase

Texas has identified more than $50 billion in flood control needs, but lawmakers have devoted just $1.4 billion to address them

Japan’s new earthquake-detection network lengthens warning times, and researchers in Wales have harnessed nuclear blast detectors to gauge tsunami risks. But the U.S. lags in monitoring the massive Cascadia megathrust fault