Science

By SHARON LURYE and JOCELYN GECKER, Associated Press Education Writers After decades of partnership with the U.S. government, colleges are facing new doubts about the future of their federal funding. President Donald Trump’s administration has been using the funding spigot to seek compliance with his agenda, cutting off money to schools including Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania . All the while, universities across the country are navigating cuts to grants for research institutions . The squeeze on higher education underscores how much American colleges depend on the federal government — a provider of grants and contracts that have amounted to close to half the total revenue of some research universities, according to an Associated Press analysis. It adds up to a crisis for universities, and a problem for the country as a whole, say school administrators and advocates for academic freedom. America’s scientific and medical research capabilities are tightly ent...

Officials are investigating several fire stations between Livermore and Pleasanton for water contamination as Pleasanton continues looking for new well sites . In 2023, The San Francisco Bay Regional Water Board started to examine facilities for evidence of possible PFAS, or polyfluoroalkyl substances, in groundwater and runoff storm water in the two cities. The board chose to investigate the fire stations after Pleasanton in 2019 began shutting down its three wells due to significant PFAS contamination . The board now wants to figure out if fire-fighting foams, which contain the forever chemical, were a significant source of a massive subsurface plume of those substances. The crew from Nor-Cal Pump & Well Drilling, Inc. collects samples of underground soil and rocks from hundreds of feet down at Hansen Park in Pleasanton, Calif., on Thursday, March 20, 2025. The crew is collecting soil and rock samples to identify potential water sources below. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)...

NASA websites have dropped references to landing the first woman on the moon as part of the goals for its Artemis program. Updated pages as of Friday for the program no longer feature the statement: “NASA will land the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner astronaut on the moon using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before.” The change comes as the Trump administration has used executive orders to remove diversity, equity and inclusion pages from all federal websites. The announcement NASA would send the first woman to the moon came under Trump’s first presidency. The Orlando Sentinel reached out to NASA for comment but has not heard back. The Artemis pages now simply read, “Artemis III will build on the crewed Artemis II flight test, adding new capabilities with the human landing system and advanced spacesuits to send the first humans to explore the lunar South Pole region.” The Artemis program successfully laun...

We Finally Know the Mass of Brand New Neutron Stars

We see the Universe through a glass darkly, or more accurately, through a dusty window. Interstellar dust is scattered throughout the Milky Way, which limits our view depending on where we look. In some directions, the effects of dust are small, but in other regions the view is so dusty it's called the Zone of Avoidance. Dust biases our view of the heavens, but fortunately a new study has created a detailed map of cosmic dust so we can better account for it.

When water is sprayed or splashed, different size microdroplets develop opposite charges. This "microlightning" could've provided the energy needed to synthesize prebiotic molecules necessary for life.

The search for life has become one of the holy grails of science. With the increasing number of exoplanet discoveries, astronomers are hunting for a chemical that can only be present in the atmosphere of a planet with life! A new paper suggests that methyl halides, which contain one carbon and three hydrogen atoms, may just do the trick. Here on Earth they are produced by bacteria, algae, fungi and some plants but not by any abiotic processes (non biological.) There is a hitch, detecting these chemicals is beyond the reach of current telescopes.

We are so familiar with our solar system that we often presume it is generally how star systems are built. Four little planets close to the star, four large gas planets farther away, and all with roughly circular orbits. But as we have found ever more exoplanets, we've come to understand just how unusual the solar system is. Large planets often orbit close to their star, small planets are much more common than larger ones, and as a new study shows, orbits aren't always circular.

Scripps Research computational biologist Julia Moore Vogel recently moved back to upstate New York to get help from family members with her severe fatigue caused by long COVID , a condition she has coped with since July 2020. The former distance runner estimates the disease has reduced her stamina by 90%, forcing her to use an electric wheelchair to do physical activities that used to be effortless. But  Vogel has found ways to keep participating in science, helping to push the quest for potential treatments forward. One trial now underway uses wrist-worn motion-tracking devices to help people with long COVID better pace themselves to reduce  the debilitating exhaustion that long COVID often causes. RELATED:  Bay Area long COVID sufferers battle mysterious symptoms and medical skepticism “What we’ve learned is that there seems to be this sort of cliff you can fall off of that we call post exertional malaise,” Vogel said. “If you do too much all at once, you can really...

Daily life in the Bay Area changed dramatically five years ago. Schools went online. Offices went remote. People followed a 6-foot rule as they searched mostly empty grocery shelves for toilet paper and hand sanitizer. In response to the growing coronavirus pandemic, the region’s public health officials announced an expansive and unprecedented shelter-in-place order on March 16, 2020. Life changed in an instant and in unexpected ways. Related Articles Health | On 5th anniversary of COVID shutdown, Bay Area public health officers reflect on fray between life, liberty Health | Dr. ​Sara Cody, public health official who led Santa Clara County’s COVID response, to retire Health | Bay Area tech workers see post-COVID hiring boom morph into jobs bust Health | California orders nearly 100,000 workers to return to offices Health | The COVID ‘contrarians’ are in power. We still haven’t hashed out whether they were right Five years later, much has returned to pre-pandemic ...

Earlier this week, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) announced the science objectives for the fourth cycle of the James Webb Space Telescope's (JWST) General Observations program - aka. Cycle 4 GO. In keeping with Webb's major science objectives, many of these programs will focus on the study of the earliest galaxies in the Universe.

Ingenuity proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that a helicopter can operate on another planet. Over 72 flights, the little quadcopter that could captivated the imagination of space exploration fans everywhere. But, several factors limited it, and researchers at NASA think they can do better. Two papers presented at the recent Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, held March 10-14 in The Woodlands, Texas, and led by Pascal Lee of NASA Ames and Derric Loya of the SETI Institute and Colorado Mesa University, describe a use case for that still-under-development helicopter, which they call Nighthawk.

If Mars Samples Contain Life, Can We Detect It?

Dark matter - that mysterious, unknown stuff that's detectable only by its effect on other matter - seems to be sparking strong emissions at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy.

By Corey Williams | Associated Press Four people have been charged in the death of a 5-year-old boy who was “incinerated” inside a pressurized oxygen chamber that exploded at a suburban Detroit medical facility, Michigan’s attorney general said Tuesday. Thomas Cooper from Royal Oak, Michigan, was pronounced dead at the scene on Jan. 31 at the Oxford Center in Troy . His mother suffered burn wounds as she tried to save her boy. “A single spark it appears ignited into a fully involved fire that claimed Thomas’s life within seconds,” Attorney General Dana Nessel said. “Fires inside a hyperbaric chamber are considered a terminal event. Every such fire is almost certainly fatal and this is why many procedures and essential safety practices have been developed to keep a fire from ever occurring,” she said. The center’s founder and chief executive, Tamela Peterson, 58, is charged with second-degree murder. Facility manager Gary Marken, 65, and safety manager Gary Mosteller, 64, are charg...

Young stars grow by gobbling up nearby gas and dust. Over time, they can become extremely massive. The most massive stars we know of have up to 200 solar masses. But the flow of matter isn't a one-way street. Instead, young protostars eject some of the matter back into space with powerful jets.

The U.S. Space Force's X-37B spaceplane (which looks remarkably like a Space Shuttle that someone forgot to put the windows in!) completed its seventh mission this week, touching down at Vandenberg Space Force Base after 434 days in orbit. Although the mission is classified, Space Force officials, said that it followed a highly elliptical orbital path while conducting various tests and experiments. They also described the mission as operating "across orbital regimes,” whatever that means…is classified!

Astronomers know the Flame Nebula well—a stellar nursery around 1,400 light years away. It’s less than a million years old and is teeming with brown dwarfs, objects that never quite accumulated enough mass to begin fusing elements in their core. When comparing the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) infrared observations with Hubble's visible light images of the Flame Nebula, the difference is, ahem - astronomical! The infrared wavelengths penetrate the obscuring gas and dust, revealing clusters where young stars and brown dwarfs are taking shape.

In a recent paper, Adam Hibberd and Marshall Eubanks explore the feasibility of sending a mission to rendezvous with YR4, the asteroid that may pose a hazard to Earth someday.

Despite having recently officially ended its science operations in January, Gaia, one of the most prolific star explorers ever, is still providing new scientific insights. A recent paper pre-published on arXiv (which has not been peer-reviewed but was submitted to the Astrophysical Journal) took another look at some Gaia data to try to find a unique type of astronomical entity - white dwarf stars that are paired up in a binary with a main sequence one. By applying a machine learning technique called a "self-organizing map," they found 801 new white dwarf-main sequence (WDMS) binaries, increasing the total number ever found by over 20%.

Ask almost any physicist what the most frustrating problem is in modern-day physics, and they will likely say the discrepancy between general relativity and quantum mechanics. That discrepancy has been a thorn in the side of the physics community for decades. While there has been some progress on potential theories that could rectify the two, there has been scant experimental evidence to support those theories. That is where a new NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts grantee comes in - Selim Shahriar from Northwestern University, Evanston, was recently funded to work on a concept called the Space-borne Ultra-Precise Measurement of the Equivalent Principle Signature of Quantum Gravity (SUPREME-GQ), which he hopes will help collect some accurate experimental data on the subject once and for all.

Let’s face it: Space is a hostile environment for humans. Even on Mars, settlers might have a hard time coping with potentially lethal levels of radiation, scarce resources and reduced gravity. In “Mickey 17” — a new sci-fi movie from Bong Joon Ho, the South Korean filmmaker who made his mark with “Parasite” — an expendable space traveler named Mickey (Robert Pattinson) is exposed over and over again to deadly risks. And every time he’s killed, the lab’s 3D printer just churns out another copy of Mickey.

By LAURAN NEERGAARD and KASTURI PANANJADY, Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Rural cancer patients may miss out on cutting-edge treatments in Utah. Therapies for intellectual disorders could stall in Maryland. Red states and blue states alike are poised to lose jobs in research labs and the local businesses serving them. Ripple effects of the Trump administration’s crackdown on U.S. biomedical research promise to reach every corner of America. It’s not just about scientists losing their jobs or damaging the local economy their work indirectly supports — scientists around the country say it’s about patient health. “Discoveries are going to be delayed, if they ever happen,” said Dr. Kimryn Rathmell, former director of the National Cancer Institute. It’s hard for patients to comprehend how they could lose an undiscovered cure. Yet “all the people out there who have, you know, sick parents, sick children, this is going to impact,” said neuroscientist Richard Huganir of Johns Hopkins ...

Dark Matter Doesn't Decay, Whatever It Is

By LAURA UNGAR, AP Science Writer When Tristen Boyer recently had a couple of cavities filled, her dentist suggested she get fluoride treatment afterward. She has Crohn’s disease, which puts her at increased risk for tooth decay . “It’s something I felt like I should get done,” the 22-year-old University of Kentucky student said. “It’s something I’m going to keep doing.” Dentists and hygienists often propose fluoride treatments to patients in the dental chair to prevent cavities and strengthen teeth. But the relatively simple procedure – which involves applying a varnish, gel or foam directly to the teeth – isn’t always covered by insurance , especially for adults. So when is it worth getting? Here are some ways to figure that out. Who needs in-office fluoride treatment? If there’s a high risk of tooth decay, then professional fluoride treatments can help. Alexander Daniel, DDS, left, demonstrates fluoride treatment on resident Cameron Onken, right, at the Johns Hopkins Outpat...

Parts of some bayside communities in Marin are sinking at an accelerated pace, making them more vulnerable to threats from the rising sea, according to a federal study. Areas of eastern San Rafael and Corte Madera are subsiding at a rate of more than 0.4 inches per year, largely because of sediment compaction, according to the report by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. RELATED: That sinking feeling: SFO is subsiding in the mud In the lowest areas, sea levels could rise more than 17 inches by 2050, more than double the estimated average of 7.4 inches for the region. “In many parts of the world, like the r eclaimed ground beneath San Francisco , the land is moving down faster than the sea itself is going up,” said Marin Govorcin, the lead author of the study and a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The study used satellite imagery and models based on tide gauge measurements. Areas of other Bay Area communities, including Foster C...

There are several well-documented health risks that come from spending extended periods in microgravity, including muscle atrophy, bone density loss, and changes to organ function and health. In addition, astronauts have reported symptoms of immune dysfunction, including skin rashes and other inflammatory conditions. According to a new study , these issues could be due to the extremely sterile environment inside spacecraft and the International Space Station (ISS). Their results suggest that more microbes could help improve human health in space. The study was led by Rodolfo A. Salido and Haoqi Nina Zhao , a bioengineer and an environmental analytical chemist at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), respectively. They were joined by researchers from multiple UCSD programs and centers, the University of Denver, the Chiba University-UC San Diego Center for Mucosal Immunology Allergy and Vaccines (cMAV), Space Research Within Reach , the Baylor College Center for Space Medic...