Conference reports

NASA’s newest rover, Perseverance, landed on Mars last month equipped to hunt for signs of life—and to pave the way for human exploration in the future.

Walking into the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is a feast for the senses. Through the graceful curve of the cavernous ceilings, the gentle diffusion of light permeating the floor and the grandness of an echoing space, the nearly 800-year-old iconic house of worship serves as an example of how our built environment influences the human sensory experience.

It’s one thing to be able to talk; but it’s another to converse. And artificial intelligence (AI) has yet to check off the latter. Even with tremendous progress over the last years, the technology still hasn’t achieved the level of naturalness that would make you want to trade your best friend or favorite coworker for a smart virtual assistant.

More than 3 billion people depend on marine and coastal biodiversity for their livelihoods, according to the U.N. Coastal landscapes and communities, however, are increasingly threatened by environmental degradation, climate change and overexploitation. Some experts believe meeting this ecological and economic challenge is contingent on creating connections between modern science and Indigenous knowledge.

Researchers in the UK have built a prototype of a home-architecture system that capitalizes on microbial actions in urine and wastewater to generate electricity, scrub water and air of pollutants, produce plant fertilizers, and carry out other household chores.

It’s official. Less than a month into the new year, a year quietly anticipated to be full of plentiful vaccines and bustling restaurants, 2021 was dubbed “the year of COVID-19 variants” by major science publications and public health specialists.

In his dermatology clinic at UT Austin, Dr. Adewole Adamson had a disagreement with a colleague. To his trained eye, a patient’s mole had looked strange, showing early warning signs of melanoma, aggressive skin cancer. But his colleague saw it as a low risk.

There is more to the oral microbiome than meets the mouth. Established within a few minutes of birth, this diverse community of bacteria lives on every surface of our mouth throughout our lives. For decades, scientists have researched these bacteria and their role in dental diseases, especially caries and periodontitis.

At a time when black and brown Americans are dying of COVID-19 at much greater rates than whites, it is more important than ever for scientists to gain the trust of minority communities by doing a better job of listening to their concerns and involving them in scientific research, researchers at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting on February 10 said.

Nearly one in 50 children in the United States experience autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which may hurt their abilities to function socially. Scientists are now experimenting with an unusual treatment for these children—altering the makeup of bacteria in the gut with hopes of improving both digestive health and brain function.