Science

Why happiness is not the best indicator of well-being

Achieving values and pursuing growth is the real secret to a fulfilled life.

Jason Crawford

How Arc Institute is bringing science into the century of biology

Stephen Johnson

A vibrant graphic illustration featuring a large leafy plant with integrated plant sensors, comic-style speech bubbles containing exclamation marks, and a round bubble depicting ants, set against a blue textured background.

Agriculture

Plant sensors could act as an early warning system for farmers

Using sensors made from carbon nanotubes, researchers discovered signals that help plants respond to stresses like heat, light, or attack.

Anne Trafton | MIT News Office

Planet Earth

These cartographers screwed up — but their error preserved Minnesota's oldest forest

A 19th-century surveying mistake kept lumberjacks away from what is now Minnesota's largest patch of old-growth trees.

Frank Jacobs

Agriculture

CRISPR could save billions of baby chicks before they hatch

Male chicks are killed as soon as they hatch, in a gruesome process called chick culling. Gene editing could save them.

Teresa Carey

Fertility

Sperm may play a bigger role in pregnancy than we thought

Sperm appear to play a bigger role in pregnancy than previously believed, not only fertilizing the egg, but also “persuading” the female body to accept it.

Kristin Houser

temperature inversion track wildfire smoke

Climate Crisis

How wonky cell phone signals help track wildfire smoke

An atmospheric oddity called a temperature inversion helped researchers discover how mobile phone signals could show the amount of bushfire smoke suffocating towns and cities.

Teresa Carey

Inventions

A “Lite-Brite” for DNA data storage

A new method for DNA data storage uses light-emitting strands of DNA to encode digital messages, eliminating the need for sequencing.

Kristin Houser

Food

Startup aims to put lab-grown lobster on the menu

Wisconsin startup Cultured Decadence is developing lab-grown lobster meat in the hopes of meeting a demand currently threatened by climate change.

Kristin Houser

Neuroscience

Neuroscientists are making "bug brain soup"

A novel method for counting neurons that involves mashing insects’ brains into a “soup” has led to several new discoveries about bugs.

Kristin Houser

Agriculture

Is death by pee our next pesticide?

It may not be your number one idea, but having beetles pee themselves to death could be the next pesticide.

B. David Zarley

CRISPR

Meet Dr. Jennifer Doudna: She’s leading the biotech revolution

Jennifer Doudna on the future of CRISPR.

Amanda Winkler

Volunteers

Volunteers in isolation experiment leave cave after 40 days

Volunteers spent more than a month living in a cave without any way to tell time as part of an isolation experiment called “Deep Time.”

Kristin Houser

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