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A study has shown that a dangerous game of “brinkmanship” between rival genes in mammals could help explain why many fertilized eggs don’t result in a new life.

Within the genome, genes can be in conflict, where opposing chromosomes act in their own evolutionary interest. Although this tussle between male and female genes is commonly understood, what determines the winner—or if there even is one—has long proven elusive.

Biologists from the University of Bristol and University of Exeter have demonstrated that a dangerous game of “brinkmanship” could provide the answer, where the stakes are increasingly raised resulting in either the boldest being triumphant or mutual self-destruction. The paper is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

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Quantum computers promise to speed calculations dramatically in some key areas such as computational chemistry and high-speed networking. But they’re so different from today’s computers that scientists need to figure out the best ways to feed them information to take full advantage. The data must be packed in new ways, customized for quantum treatment.

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Essential for many industries ranging from Hollywood computer-generated imagery to product design, 3D modeling tools often use text or image prompts to dictate different aspects of visual appearance, like color and form. As much as this makes sense as a first point of contact, these systems are still limited in their realism due to their neglect of something central to the human experience: touch.

Fundamental to the uniqueness of physical objects are their tactile properties, such as roughness, bumpiness, or the feel of materials like wood or stone. Existing modeling methods often require advanced computer-aided design expertise and rarely support tactile feedback that can be crucial for how we perceive and interact with the physical world.

With that in mind, researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have created a new system for stylizing 3D models using image prompts, effectively replicating both visual appearance and tactile properties. Their research is published on the arXiv preprint server.

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Ali, A., Zhang, Z.D., Gao, T. et al. Identification of functional rare coding variants in IGF-1 gene in humans with exceptional longevity. Sci Rep 15, 10,199 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-94094-y.

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A new study in Science shows that the incorporation of a synthetic molecule into the design enhances the energy efficiency and longevity of perovskite solar cells. The benefits of the molecule, known as CPMAC, were found through an international collaboration that included King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

CPMAC is an abbreviation for an ionic salt synthesized from buckminsterfullerene, a black solid made of known as C₆₀. Perovskite are typically made with C₆₀, which has contributed to record energy efficiency. While preferred, C₆₀ also limits the performance and stability of the solar cells, leading scientists to explore alternative materials.

“For over a decade, C₆₀ has been an integral component in the development of perovskite solar cells. However, at the perovskite/C₆₀ interface lead to mechanical degradation that compromises long-term solar cell stability. To address this limitation, we designed a C₆₀-derived ionic salt, CPMAC, to significantly enhance the stability of the perovskite solar cells,” explained Professor Osman Bakr, Executive Faculty of the KAUST Center of Excellence for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technologies (CREST), who led the KAUST contributions to the research.

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Using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers have detected a new sub-Neptune exoplanet orbiting a bright G-type star. The newfound alien world, designated TOI-3493 b is more than three times larger and about nine times more massive than Earth. The finding was reported in a research paper published April 17 on the preprint server arXiv.

To date, TESS has identified more than 7,500 candidate exoplanets (TESS Objects of Interest, or TOI), of which 620 have been confirmed so far. Since its launch in April 2018, the satellite has been conducting a survey of about 200,000 of the brightest stars near the sun with the aim of searching for transiting exoplanets—ranging from small, rocky worlds to gaseous giants.

TOI-3493, also known as HD 119,355, is a star of spectral type G1/2 V at a distance of some 315 away. Recently, a group of astronomers led by Priyanka Chaturvedi of the Thuringia State Observatory Tautenburg in Germany, identified a transit signal in the light curve of TOI-3493 with TESS. The planetary nature of this signal was confirmed by follow-up observations using ground-based facilities.

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McGill researchers have demonstrated something long assumed: that glances can transmit information about one’s mental state to others without a single word being exchanged. They speculate that this primal ability may have played a role in assuring the survival of human society at times when making a sound could have attracted predators.

The research is published in the journal Communications Psychology.

“Humans have a long history of living in complex groups and . It has been theorized that this has led our brains to develop a heightened ability to focus on social cues from faces, and especially from eyes,” said Jelena Ristic, a professor in McGill’s psychology department. She has been working in the field for over 20 years. “It’s a system that has evolved to support very quick exchanges of complex social information.”

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Researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) achieved the first direct laboratory observation of ion acceleration through reflection off laser-generated magnetized collisionless shocks. This observation demonstrates how ions gain energy by bouncing off supercritical shocks, central to the Fermi acceleration mechanism. The research is published in Science Advances.

Collisionless shocks are cosmic powerhouses responsible for accelerating charged particles to extreme energies. This acceleration involves particles repeatedly crossing fronts, gaining energy incrementally. However, how do particles initially gain enough energy to enter this cycle? Two competing theories, shock drift acceleration (SDA) and shock surfing acceleration (SSA), have emerged, but observational limitations in space and previous lab experiments have left the question unresolved.

This new experiment, conducted at China’s Shenguang-II laser facility, recreated a controlled astrophysical shock scenario. Researchers used high-energy lasers to generate a magnetized ambient plasma and a supersonic “piston” plasma. When the piston collided with the ambient plasma at speeds exceeding 400 km/s, it produced a supercritical quasi-perpendicular shock, similar to those observed near Earth.

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