The latest stories in science, brought to you by the @ScienceMagazine news team.
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Ecologists are mobilizing to save threatened species and track ecosystems’ responses to record heat. scim.ag/4BbKhDJ
There are glimmers of hope amid the relentless bad news about the explosive epidemic of the Ebola Bundibugyo virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. scim.ag/4siIecX
After a deadly blowout on the Deepwater Horizon rig in 2010 sent oil gushing, an emergency response team gambled on an unprecedented tactic. It sent robotic submersibles to the wellhead, 1500 meters below the surface, to inject chemical dispersants to break up the oil into tiny droplets and dissolve it.
The hope was that by diluting the oil, the approach would minimize harm to wildlife. The move likely spared many seabirds, turtles, and shallow-water fish from oil that would otherwise have pooled at the surface. But it may have taken an unexpected toll in the deep sea.
A 13-year survey, begun the year after the spill, has discovered a steep, sustained decline in fish, crustaceans, and cephalopods in the deep waters of the gulf. The most likely cause is the oil spill, researchers report in a new study, although they don’t directly blame the dispersants.
Learn more: scim.ag/3W2yfMW
ALT The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill devastated deep-sea life—and it hasn’t recovered A 13-year study shows how sensitive deep-sea animals are to disturbance, scientists say
When you type an unpublished idea into a chatbot or coding agent, could it end up being used by the company that built the model—or a rival who asks the right question a year later? And what can you do to reduce the risk?
No setting makes a chatbot fully private, but experts suggest steps that can make leaks much less likely: scim.ag/4sihqtz
ALT Could your chatbot tip off a scientific rival? It’s possible, researchers say
Ninety-nine million years ago, this lizard tail parted ways from its owner—the first direct evidence of tail shedding in the fossil record.
Learn more: scim.ag/4dKPR6e
Amid a U.S. push for “deprescribing,” researchers are finding new ways to match patients to their optimal treatment. scim.ag/3VLzsIu
On 6 October, James Maynard was nervously checking his phone under the table throughout dinner. He’d heard rumors of a tsunami heading for the shores of math. When he checked in one last time from bed, the swell struck: OpenAI had released more than 700 math papers, generated with an advanced version of its AI model. They appeared to topple hundreds of long-standing problems, forcing researchers to face the reality that no problem in math is off-limits for machines.
At first, Maynard, a mathematician at the University of Oxford and recipient of the Fields Medal, math’s most prestigious prize, feared for colleagues whose work would be upended. But then he spotted a paper that offered progress on one of his favorite pastimes: the Riemann hypothesis, a puzzle about prime numbers and one of seven famed Millennium Prize Problems, often considered the most formidable in all of math. “I was like a kid at Christmas,” Maynard says. “Even if it was some scary monster giving me a gift, I was just so excited.”
The release comes less than 1 month after OpenAI announced a solution to the Navier-Stokes equations, another Millennium Prize Problem. OpenAI’s latest proof solves only a weaker version of the Riemann hypothesis. But Maynard, who made the most recent notable Riemann advance in 2024, says it is “groundbreaking” and likely to have payoffs for other problems across math. “Within analytic number theory, it’s obviously the best headline result for the past 100 years in the field.”
Learn more: scim.ag/4s9F8Ip
ALT A ScienceInsider headline reads, "AI edges closer to solving the Riemann hypothesis, one of math’s hardest problems."
Atop the bleached dunes of White Sands National Park in New Mexico lie the 40-centimeter footprints of a now-extinct giant ground sloth that roamed more than 11,500 years ago.
Within those tracks, researchers noticed little human footprints—remnants of an ancient playground.
Learn more on #InternationalSlothDay: scim.ag/3WfmsI1
ALT Ancient human playground found inside sloth footprints Fossilized tracks of a giant ground sloth are stamped with tiny human feet
In 2025, researchers for the first time used CRISPR to repair a faulty gene in humans.
Learn more on #WorldCRISPRDay: scim.ag/4bRpnNZ
ALT Gene editing fixes DNA—and treats incurable lung and liver disease A promising clinical trial marks another milestone for the CRISPR gene editor
A Massachusetts jury has awarded biologist David Sabatini $6 million—plus interest—in damages in his defamation case against Kristin Knouse, a former colleague at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.
The physician-scientist’s claims led one research institution to fire Sabatini and precipitated his resignations from Whitehead and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a tenured faculty member.
Read more: scim.ag/4jxig3b
ALT Biologist David Sabatini wins $6 million in defamation lawsuit A jury ruled in favor of the former Whitehead Institute scientist, dismissing accuser’s claims of sexual harassment and retaliation
Do you have what it takes to win Science’s #DanceYour PhD competition? We want you to top last year’s winning entry from a scientist who translated physics’ piezoelectric effect into dance.
Submit your entry by 29 January 2027: scim.ag/4i5WelJ
The traditional Inca chronology has collapsed. New radiocarbon dates show the empire lasted longer than was previously thought—and met more resistance. scim.ag/4zDt4le #LongReads
From a perch high in Chile’s Atacama Desert, a cluster of telescopes is taking aim at the oldest light in the universe. scim.ag/4803Txb
When coral bleaches during a heat wave and ejects its symbiotic algae, it usually means either a death sentence or a slow recovery over months or years. But scientists working separately at two labs an ocean apart have found a faster acting shortcut, one that has scientists hoping it could eventually help coral recover from bleaching and endure future heat waves.
The approach is deceptively simple. By touching a piece of bleached coral to a healthy piece, a kind of algal transfusion can occur. Symbionts flow through a bridge of tissue and then rapidly reproduce, repopulating the bleached piece in as little as 4 weeks.
Learn more: scim.ag/4s7hY5h
ALT This image features a news headline that reads, "Coral can heal rapidly from bleaching—if it touches a clone."
A dump of 722 AI-generated papers has mathematicians wondering: Has their field been decimated or invigorated?
Read more: scim.ag/4jXnLbu
ALT Title: "OpenAI just changed math forever. Exactly how, no one yet knows."
Japan’s MMX mission aims to retrieve samples from Mars’s mysterious moon. They could reveal how it formed—and hold pieces of Mars itself. scim.ag/4ybLS9Z
A lavish 1919 dinner party that ended up killing five people. An attempt to save the canning industry in the 1920s. A World War II biological weapons program and a CIA plot against Fidel Castro. A cosmetic product, best known as Botox, that erases facial wrinkles and exploded into a multibillion-dollar business.
A new analysis of more than 1000 bacterial genomes connects these disparate episodes in U.S. history in a piece of microbiological detective work. Detailed in a new paper, the study shows how scientists unwittingly triggered the evolution of a dangerous bacterium into one with major medical and commercial advantages.
Learn more: scim.ag/4yuuayu
ALT Botox was born by domesticating a killer bacterium Genome analysis shows how decades of lab cultivation turned C. botulinum, the canned food killer, into a potent tool for medicine and the beauty industry
Exclusive: The National Institute of Justice has announced it plans to fund research into a possible link between gender dysphoria and violent crime, raising concern among scientists and activists that the initiative is driven by political bias and proposes work that can’t be done rigorously with available data. scim.ag/4k3z1mK
ALT The image shows a headline: "Department of Justice to fund studies of gender dysphoria and violent behavior." Below, it notes experts' concerns about potential bias in the research results. An image of the Department of Justice building is included with its name engraved on the wall.
Ecologists are mobilizing to save threatened species and track ecosystems’ responses to record heat. scim.ag/4BbKhDJ
The U.S. Department of Agriculture will spend $180 million over the next 2 to 3 years for gene sequencing of samples held in its repositories. scim.ag/4rWYPmo
