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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 30, 2026 at 12:07pm

Researcher solves a nanoparticle mystery using an iPhone camera

We complain about lack of equipment.
Then we use our phones to take selfies and make reels.

But what do intelligent people do?
Read this story to know.

Instead of capturing a memory with an iPhone camera, Carnegie Mellon University's Nivedita Shyamsundar used hers to make a scientific discovery. A senior in the Department of Chemistry, Shyamsundar studies tiny particles that could help medicines and vaccines travel more effectively through the human body and reach their targets. Her work may one day lead to better cancer treatments and stronger vaccines.
She worked with researchers to create new metal nanoparticles. But the researchers could capture only the final stages of nanoparticle formation.

The formation was happening way too fast to capture with typical lab technologies.
The researchers noticed that the solution changed color as the nanoparticles formed. Shyamsundar recorded a reaction with her iPhone. By analyzing the video frame by frame, she tracked the timing of the color changes and compared those observations with the lab's data.

Building on this insight, Shyamsundar created a program that allows researchers to monitor nanoparticle formation using cameras they have on hand. Using the program, they discovered how the nanoparticles formed.
She found out the formation mechanism wasn't the classical one of metal atoms coming together one by one. It was actually clusters of metal atoms coalescing.

This innovation was possible not only because Nivedita is outstandingly smart and a hard worker, but because she is unusually talented in engaging available tools to solve longstanding problems in creative, robust ways that make real impact.
part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 30, 2026 at 12:00pm

Engineered coating lets mitochondria retain their ability to produce energy

Researchers have coated mitochondria with innovative materials without compromising their function, according to a new study.

Mitochondria are structures in cells that produce the energy cells need to function. When they do not work properly, they can be involved in several diseases, many of them rare. These include mitochondrial diseases, which affect tissues with high energy demands, such as the brain and muscle, and for which treatment options remain limited.

At the heart of the study are metal-organic frameworks (MOF), materials that can be modified for different uses. The materials were recognized in 2025 with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi. Applying them to mitochondria is complex, however, because mitochondria are delicate structures.

Researchers developed a process to coat the surface of mitochondria directly with these materials, using them in very small quantities. Even after coating, the mitochondria retain their ability to produce energy.

"The possibility of modifying the coating now opens up new research prospects: In the future, it will be possible to develop MOF with different characteristics depending on the objective, creating coatings capable of performing specific functions," say the researchers.

One possible application, still experimental, is mitochondrial transplantation, a strategy that aims to transfer healthy mitochondria into cells where the existing ones do not function properly. A specifically designed coating could, in the future, facilitate this transfer and the interaction between mitochondria and cells.

Marco D'Amato et al, Engineered Metal-Organic Frameworks Preserve Mitochondrial Bioenergetics at Micromolar Concentrations, Journal of the American Chemical Society (2026). DOI: 10.1021/jacs.6c11154

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 30, 2026 at 11:49am

How the moon and sun may trigger slow earthquakes on Earth

The gravitational pull of the moon and sun creates tiny stresses on Earth that can trigger events known as slow earthquakes. These are movements along fault lines (fault slips) that release their energy gradually over much longer periods than ordinary quakes. Although they have been observed, exactly how these celestial bodies trigger them has been a relatively tough nut to crack.
So a team of geoscientists created computer models of these fault lines to find out what is going on.
To simulate a simplified fault, the researchers created a digital spring-block model in which a block slides along a fault while being pulled by a spring. The idea was to make this virtual fault behave like the real Earth, so they programmed in well-established rules of friction that account for how rock strength changes when it moves or stays still.

Then, they applied brief stress nudges and repeating wave-like forces designed to represent the sorts of tiny stresses produced by the gravitational pull of the sun and moon on Earth.

The results revealed a fascinating pattern, as the research team details in their paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth. Timing, force and friction were all key.
In the simulations, small tidal pulls disrupted faults that would otherwise slide along steadily. The trigger occurred when the repeating pull of the sun and moon matched the rate at which the fault naturally responded to stress. The fault's internal friction helps set that response rate and influences how it responds to stress.

The fault could shift into a slow earthquake when timing, force and friction lined up. Stronger pulls produced faster events. However, even smooth, predictable tidal forces sometimes created messy, irregular movement patterns.
They showed that even very weak tidal stresses can induce faults to slip through a process called resonance, much like pushing a swing at the right rhythm makes it move higher," wrote the scientists.

Computer models simplify real-world conditions, so actual fault systems in nature might behave with far greater complexity.

Yishuo Zhou et al, Theoretical Constraints on Tidal Triggering of Slow Earthquakes, Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth (2026). DOI: 10.1029/2026jb033983

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 29, 2026 at 9:59am

The upshot is that for most people, handling receipts is a pretty low-risk activity. But if you're concerned, you can take a few straightforward precautions.

People who handle receipts at work could protect themselves by avoiding the use of hand sanitizer and other skin care products on their hands before work, wearing gloves or encouraging their employer to use bisphenol-free thermal paper.

People who might be sensitive to endocrine effects of bisphenols—pregnant people, infants, children and those with certain endocrine diseases—might want to avoid contact with thermal paper receipts.

For people outside of these sensitive groups, handling a receipt is probably a very low-risk activity.

original article.

Part 3

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 29, 2026 at 9:59am

Toxicologists classify bisphenols as toxins called endocrine disruptors. This means that they interfere with the body's endocrine system, which controls vital body functions like growth, reproduction and metabolism.

The endocrine system includes multiple organs, including the thyroid, pancreas and pituitary gland, which is a tiny structure at the base of the brain. These organs send messages throughout the body to control many vital functions, and the molecules that carry those messages are called hormones.

Most research on bisphenol toxicity has focused on BPA. Research shows that BPA interrupts the messaging sent through multiple hormones, but most notably through estrogen.

Many people think of estrogen as the "female" hormone, but all people make estrogen, no matter what sex chromosomes they have. Estrogen helps control the growth and development of organs as they first form during fetal development, among other important roles in the body.

That's why exposure to endocrine disruptors is potentially more serious for a developing fetus than it is for adults. BPA exposure has been linked to preterm birth and abnormal fetal brain development.

Exposure to high amounts of BPA could also increase a person's chances of developing heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and other health problems. Research also shows that BPA can cause oxidative stress—chemical damage to the molecules that make up cells. Exposure to BPA might also cause changes to how genes are turned on or off, and some of these changes can be passed on to future generations.

These findings have led to a ban on BPA.
Many manufacturers have voluntarily replaced BPA with alternative chemicals—you have probably seen plastic products advertised as "BPA-free."

Unfortunately, companies often simply switch out BPA for another bisphenol, such as BPS, and it turns out that BPS shares much of its cousin molecule's toxic traits. Recently, though, concern about all bisphenols has led many companies to move away from them entirely.

Research has also shown that bisphenols can be absorbed through the skin—for example, when handling a receipt printed on thermal paper. Touching bisphenols with greasy hands, perhaps because you've just applied moisturizer or hand sanitizer, can increase absorption through the skin.
In 2023, researchers estimated the daily "dose" of exposure to BPA from thermal paper receipts and found levels between about 5,000 and 50 million times lower than European Food Safety Authority standards. That's less than one drop in an 8-ounce glass of water (about 240 milliliters).

That said, this estimate is for the average person. Retail, food service and other workers who handle many receipts every day would be exposed to doses about 100 times higher than that, the researchers estimated. This is potentially more concerning, but still probably well below safety standard levels.

Bisphenols are found in many products and have the potential to harm our health, but most human exposure to these chemicals comes from food or beverages packaged in containers made with bisphenols. Exposure from handling receipts is a small piece of the pie.

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 29, 2026 at 9:56am

Toxic chemicals in your grocery store receipt?
Thermal receipts can contain BPA or BPS, endocrine-disrupting chemicals that can transfer to skin. Estimated exposure from occasional handling is low; workers who handle many receipts may have higher exposure. Food and drink packaging accounts for most bisphenol exposure.
Receipts are printed on a special type of paper—thermal paper—which often contains chemicals called bisphenols. These chemicals are potentially—but not necessarily—toxic. So, like many questions in toxicology, the answer to whether receipts are dangerous to handle is: It depends.
Bisphenols are human-made chemicals that have been widely used in industrial manufacturing since the 1950s.

Several different types exist, each with a letter standing for the chemical it is made from. The bisphenol produced using a molecule called acetone is called bisphenol A, or BPA. Bisphenol S (BPS) is made using a sulfur atom, and bisphenol F (BPF) is made using formaldehyde.

These chemicals are used to create a type of transparent and shatter-resistant plastic called polycarbonate, found in products including hard plastic water bottles, food storage containers and eyeglass lenses. Bisphenols are also ingredients in epoxy resins, which are used to coat the inside of bottle caps and metal food and drink containers. Some products still use these chemicals, though many manufacturers have phased them out.

Thermal receipt paper uses bisphenol—usually BPA or BPS—as a developer. The bisphenol is combined with a colorless ink and applied as a microscopic, heat-sensitive film to the paper. Instead of using ink, a receipt printer applies heat to this thermal paper, causing the bisphenol and the dye to react and changing the dye from colorless to black. Fax machines, back in the day, also relied on this technology.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 29, 2026 at 9:22am

Without water, forests lose their ability to absorb CO₂
During drought, trees close their stomata to conserve water, reducing CO₂ uptake and photosynthesis. Severe water stress can damage their water-transport systems and kill trees; continued respiration and decomposition can then turn forests from carbon sinks into carbon sources. Reduced transpiration may also diminish rainfall recycling.
To survive periods of drought, trees halt photosynthesis, a highly water-intensive process. For every molecule of CO₂ absorbed by a tree leaf, an average of around 400 water molecules are released. Entire forests may then end up emitting more CO₂ than they capture.

original article.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 29, 2026 at 8:42am

AI chatbots give us a narrow slice of knowledge: Researchers warn of 'knowledge collapse'

"Let me just ask the chatbot" has become an everyday phrase. Where we used to turn to Google to find information, AI chatbots have become a common way to get answers to everything.
The large language models underpinning AI chatbots give us a significantly narrower range of information than a conventional web search. That's the finding of a new study by researchers.
Every language model they tested provides users with more uniform information than a simple Google search across all the topics we looked at. In other words, people are to a large extent exposed to the same information over and over again. So AI chatbots are not just changing how we find knowledge, but also which knowledge we have access to.
Across 155 topics, 27 language models produced less varied information than Google search; even the most diverse model was at least 18.7% less varied. Newer models were slightly more diverse than older ones, so the proposed “knowledge collapse” has not been observed. Training on AI-generated text could further narrow the range of information in future models.
The researchers tested 27 different large language models on 155 topics.

The results show that even the language model producing the most diverse answers—OpenAI's GPT-5—provides at least 18.7% less varied information than Google. The topics tested by the researchers ranged from nuclear weapons, marriage, pornography, racism and genocide to more country-specific topics such as Marine Le Pen, the Falklands War and K-pop.

According to the researchers, the fact that people are increasingly using AI models as their primary gateway to information could have significant consequences.

We risk exposing people to fewer perspectives and a narrower range of knowledge. This could create a vicious cycle in which the most popular content becomes even more dominant, while other content is increasingly overlooked.
It's similar to globalization. Today, you can buy the same products and find the same coffee chains almost everywhere in the world. That has many advantages, but it has also reduced diversity.
According to the researchers, the low level of diversity in language models is partly a result of how the models work. They compress the vast amount of text they are trained on and learn the patterns that occur most frequently. In the process, information that deviates from the most common patterns is filtered out.

The effect could be amplified if language models are increasingly trained on text produced by other AI models—something the researchers expect to happen.
If this process is repeated over several generations of models, the range of information could gradually become narrower. This is what the researchers refer to as "knowledge collapse."
AI chatbot summaries can, of course, be useful—that is why so many people use them. But it is still important to seek out different sources in order to understand the nuances and get a broader picture—especially for the younger generation growing up with AI. We must not become so dependent on the technology that we stop understanding and thinking for ourselves.
AI developers should build language models in a way that preserves the breadth of knowledge available to us. Researchers have developed a method that they can use to measure diversity in models, which could help ensure that future language models do not become less diverse.

Dustin Wright et al, What and Whose Knowledge? Measuring Epistemic Diversity in Large Language Models, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2510.04226

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 29, 2026 at 8:32am

Could soil process information without a brain? New engineering perspective makes the case

Researchers are exploring how soil behaves as an intelligent system. By studying its structure, chemistry and biological network of microbes and fungi, they aim to inspire new technologies in bio-inspired computing, precision agriculture and environmental sensing.
Recognizing soil as an active, embodied information processor—constantly sensing, filtering and transforming flows of matter (e.g., rainwater) and energy (e.g., sunlight) into plant growth and nutrients—reframes it not as "just dirt" but as a living system that senses, remembers and adapts. Viewed this way, soil challenges the traditional idea that intelligence requires a brain.

Inspired by electrical impedance tomography (EIT), a real-time imaging and monitoring technology that measures the electrical conductivity and impedance of materials, these researchers set out to use the technique to observe the inner workings of soil.
In this context, soil is particularly interesting as a computational medium because of its inherently rich, nonlinear and dynamic electrical properties. These properties allow soil to respond to external stimuli (such as electrical signals, moisture variation or biological activity) in ways that can encode and process information. This means soil could act not only as a sensing medium but also as a form of natural analog processor, enabling low-energy, distributed computation directly within the environment.

"Such an approach could open up new possibilities for adaptive sensing, environmental monitoring and precision agriculture, where computation is embedded directly in the physical system being observed."

The embodied intelligence of soil

Contemporary "smart" farming technologies, such as advanced sensors, Internet of Things (IoT) systems and robotics, are examples of precision agriculture in action. They enable real-time monitoring of soil moisture, pH and nutrient dynamics, helping farmers make decisions that respond to the soil's specific needs.

In this way, soil can be viewed as the "active intelligence partner in farming," the researchers say, becoming "both co-processor and collaborator, enabling a form of agriculture where technology and ecology are integrated into a single system of care."
Treating soil as an embodied sensor that continuously registers environmental change could help sensing technologies measure variables like moisture and temperature, providing an early warning before surface indicators appear.

Xiaoxian Xu et al, In-Situ Classification of Soil Types Exploiting Electrical Impedance Tomography with a Robotic Actuating Probe, 2025 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (2025). DOI: 10.1109/iros60139.2025.11246829

Catherine Merchant et al, Embodied Intelligence of Soil, IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (2026). DOI: 10.1088/1757-899x/1343/1/012026

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 29, 2026 at 6:58am

Where do nanoparticles go once they enter the body? Scientist helps shape new guidance
Poorly soluble nanoparticles can accumulate in the liver, spleen, lungs and lymph nodes and persist for months or longer, even when little of an ingested dose is absorbed. New guidance describes how to measure their distribution and clearance after ingestion or inhalation, including methods to distinguish administered particles from background material.

Guidance Document on Toxicokinetics to accommodate Testing of (Nano)particles, OECD Series on Testing and Assessment (2026). DOI: 10.1787/629332c6-en

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