Senescent cells play important roles in various biological processes that promote fitness and health; however, their timely elimination by immune cells is critical to maintain tissue homeostasis and prevent disease. Despite this, senescent cells accumulate systemically with age, suggesting that certain immune cells also become senescent and dysfunctional during aging. In support of this, we previously demonstrated that CD8 T cells, immune cells capable of targeting senescent cells, increasingly develop characteristics of senescence with advancing age in humans. Here, we characterized the senescence state of human SA-βGal-expressing (SA-βGalhigh) CD8 T effector memory (EM) cells, their functional capabilities, and their enrichment in aging and disease.
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The Moon may have squeezed Earth’s first continents into existence
As our young planet spun down, its bulging shape gave way to a sphere, driving the formation of continental crust
Did scientists just find 115-million-year-old dinosaur blood?
Blood cells don’t fossilize very easily. Most break down shortly after death, and certain minerals can mimic the blobby shape of cells under a microscope, making the prospect of finding convincing traces of very ancient blood—say, as old as dinosaurs—far-fetched. Yet that’s what scientists say they’ve uncovered in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. With multiple lines of evidence, the international team behind the new study claims the remains from a 115-million-year-old dinosaur from Brazil contain the oldest fossilized red blood cells ever discovered. But some experts remain skeptical.
“It’s probably the most comprehensive effort that’s been done so far,” says Maria McNamara, a paleobiologist at University College Cork who was not involved in the new work. But, she adds, “I would be very cautious about interpreting those necessarily as red blood cells.”
For decades, researchers have tried to find irrefutable evidence of dinosaur blood in fossils. Finding and characterizing blood cells from dinosaurs could help paleontologists learn more about how they adapted to their environments, says Mary Schweitzer, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University who in 2005 claimed to have found blood vessels and red blood cell–like structures in a Tyrannosaurus rex bone, but who wasn’t involved in the new study. At least 14 studies have attempted to describe red blood cells found in dinosaur and other very old fossils before. But such claims must rule out contamination and look-alikes, and none of these previous studies has broadly convinced other experts in the field.
Low-voltage capacitor combines rapid switching with a trillion cycles without breakdown
A breakthrough has been made toward overcoming both the speed and endurance limitations of low-power memory. A research team led by professor Min Hyuk Park of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Seoul National University College of Engineering has developed a ferroelectric capacitor that operates rapidly at a voltage as low as 0.6 V and can still distinguish between information states without electrical breakdown after 1 trillion switching cycles.
The achievement is significant because it offers a solution to a longstanding challenge in ferroelectric memory: the difficulty of achieving both fast operation and long device lifetime. By precisely engineering the interface between the electrode and the ferroelectric material, the researchers simultaneously achieved a low operating voltage, rapid polarization switching and high cycling stability. Based on these results, they also demonstrated the potential for the technology to be used in next-generation low-power memory with a structure similar to DRAM.
The research was conducted jointly with researchers from Hanyang University, Pohang Accelerator Laboratory and Samsung Electronics, and the findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.
This breakthrough stem-cell therapy could reverse genetic blindness
Scientists have developed a new stem cell therapy that could treat certain forms of genetic blindness that have long evaded even cutting-edge methods. But this breakthrough will likely require immunosuppressive drugs to be effective.
NASA telescope nears end of era, re-entering earth’s atmosphere on Friday
Pieces of the telescope are expected to hit the earth as well as burn up in the atmosphere.
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Scientists use extracellular vesicles to track source of chronic inflammation
A new technique to diagnose chronic inflammation developed at Nagoya University can read information from the surface and within individual extracellular vesicles in blood and urine. This technique could be used to develop non-invasive tests that can not only detect chronic inflammation but also provide information about the tissues where it occurs.
Whenever our body faces damage from injury, illness, or toxins, it launches an inflammatory response that involves dilating blood vessels to rush fluid and nutrients to the affected site and sending inflammatory cells to destroy pathogens and repair tissue.
But sometimes, the body’s immune system can keep sending inflammatory cells to attack tissues or organs over months or years, even in the absence of any threat. Known as chronic inflammation, it underlies cancers, brain disorders, autoimmune diseases and heart disease, and it gradually causes irreversible tissue damage.
All-optical signal-processing project begun by Raytheon and DARPA
ARLINGTON, Va. Raytheon reports that it won a Phase One contract with the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop an all-optical processing system for the Photonic Integrated Circuit Architectures for Scalable System Objectives, or PICASSO, program.
Tesla Cybercab Dallas Launch: Nevada OKs 5,000
The same logic applies to Tesla. A permit for 5,000 vehicles means little if Tesla builds a few hundred Cybercabs a month and sends them all to its own fleet. That is where the manufacturing story comes in.
BaseNor reports that volume manufacturing began in April 2026. Tesla’s Q3 materials, as summarized in search coverage, say Cybercabs come off a line in Texas and all of them currently go to Tesla’s internal robotaxi fleet. Customers cannot buy one yet.
Our breakdown of the Cybercab line’s 25 stations and 78% automation covers the factory design. The key point for this story is simple. A cheap-to-build vehicle supports the $0.30 per mile cost target, and the factory claims are the first hardware evidence for it.
Sheila L. Macrine and Jennifer M.B. Fugate
Embodied Intelligence: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Natural, Artificial, and Hybrid Systems (MIT Press, 2026) explores a radical transformation taking place in intelligence research. Rather than focusing exclusively on brains and computer code, the book examines the important role that embodiment plays in producing intelligent, goal-directed behavior.
The book brings together experts from a range of disciplines to create conversations across fields that are often studied separately. Through these diverse perspectives, the contributors investigate how intelligence may develop and operate across different scales, physical forms and systems.
The book moves beyond the traditional divide between biological and artificial intelligence. It considers how intelligent behavior can emerge in humans, other living organisms, technological systems and unexpected forms that may not fit conventional definitions of intelligence.