Science & Society
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Artificial Intelligence
As teens in crisis turn to AI chatbots, simulated chats highlight risks
From blaming the victim to replying "I have no interest in your life" to suicidal thoughts, AI chatbots can respond unethically when used for therapy.
- Artificial Intelligence
A conference just tested AI agents’ ability to do science
AI promises to speed up scientific analysis and writing. However, AI agents struggled with accuracy and judgment.
- Science & Society
Our relationship with alcohol is fraught. Ancient customs might inspire a reset
As evidence of alcohol's harms mounts, some people are testing out sobriety. Look to ancient civilizations' ways for a reset, scholars suggest.
- Climate
As wildfires worsen, science can help communities avoid destruction
Blazes sparked in wild lands are devastating communities worldwide. The only way to protect them, researchers say, is to re-engineer them.
- Environment
How a Yurok family played a key role in the world’s largest dam removal project
In The Water Remembers, Amy Bowers Cordalis shares her family’s account of the Indigenous-led fight to restore the Klamath River in the Pacific Northwest.
- Chemistry
Chemistry that works like Hermione’s magic handbag wins a 2025 chemistry Nobel
Richard Robson, Susumu Kitagawa and Omar Yaghi developed metal-organic frameworks, structures that can collect water from air, capture CO₂ and more.
- Artificial Intelligence
Biased online images train AI bots to see women as younger, less experienced
Age and gender bias in online images feeds into AI tools, revealing stereotypes shaping digital systems and hiring algorithms, researchers report.
- Quantum Physics
Discoveries that enabled quantum computers win the Nobel Prize in physics
In the 1980s, John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis demonstrated quantum effects in an electric circuit, an advance that underlies today’s quantum computers.
- Health & Medicine
Finding immune cells that stop a body from attacking itself wins medicine Nobel
Shimon Sakaguchi discovered T-reg immune cells. Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell identified the cells’ role in autoimmune disease.
- Science & Society
Nobel Prizes honor great discoveries — but leave much of science unseen
The Nobel Prize might be the most famous science prize but it celebrates just a narrow slice of science and very few scientists.
- Psychology
Striking moments make previous memories stronger
Emotional events help solidify memories. The findings may one day help students study or trauma survivors recover.
- Health & Medicine
Why are so many young people getting cancer?
Diagnoses for several cancers before age 50 have been increasing rapidly since the 1990s. Scientists don’t know why, but they have a few suspects.
