Science Illuminates the Past: How Accelerators Are Powering Cultural Heritage Preservation in Asia-Pacific and Beyond - International Atomic Energy Agency

KINGSTON, R. I. – Sept. 2, 2026 – Art League RI and the University of Rhode Island are featuring the collaborative works of artists and scientists in a new exhibition titled “Environmental Currents: Art and Science Explore our Changing World” from Sept. 10 through Nov. 18 at Studio Blue on the URI Narragansett Bay Campus. With its goal to communicate oceanographic research to wider audiences through art exhibits and events, The Synergy Project has paired artists across many mediums with scientists since 2020. This fourth Synergy Project group exhibition features new artwork interpreting scientific research conducted at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography and College of the Environment and Life Sciences, as well as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

NASA MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) mission scientists have uncovered a key puzzle piece in understanding certain types of auroras on Mars, finding that they form in a similar way to Earth-based auroras. Results published Thursday in Nature Communications show the same mechanism that circulates and catapults charged particles into Earth’s atmosphere is happening at Mars on much smaller scales because of differences in the two planets’ magnetic fields. The MAVEN spacecraft, in orbit around Mars, experienced a loss of signal with ground stations on Earth on Dec. 6, 2025. On June 3, NASA declared the mission had concluded after finding the spacecraft to be unrecoverable. However, data from the mission is still being used to inform NASA science and future missions to Mars. When the Sun’s magnetic field lines get close to Earth’s magnetosphere, the large magnetic bubble protecting the planet, they can reconnect and inject energy and mass throughout Earth's magnetosphere and magnetotail, ultimately firing electrons back into the atmosphere to generate Earth’s auroras.

This microfluidic device squeezes mouse skin cells as they pass through, loosening their tightly packed DNA so CRISPR tools can reach and switch on genes to make cell reprogramming more efficient. Credit: Song Li Lab/UCLA Human cells hold about two meters (6.6 feet) of DNA, folded and compacted to fit inside a nucleus. That packing is essential for life, but it creates a problem for scientists. Some of the genes that control a cell's identity are buried so deep in tightly packed DNA that gene-targeting tools such as CRISPR activation, or CRISPRa, struggle to reach them.

Progressive transition from reversible to irreversible decoherence. Credit: Physical Review Letters (2026). DOI: 10.1103/t2yx-9bqh Quantum systems can occupy superpositions, quantum states that combine different possibilities. For instance, a microwave field can be prepared in a superposition of an empty state and a state that contains microwave light.