STEM Like Me – STEMsational Missourians (August 2025) - Saint Louis Science Center

Scientists at the University of Warwick have uncovered a surprising secret inside a superconductor that researchers have studied for 40 years. Long believed to have a uniform crystal structure, the material actually contains a complex patchwork of different atomic arrangements. Using an advanced 3D imaging technique, the team was able to see deep inside the crystal for the first time, revealing hidden features that challenge decades of scientific assumptions. High-temperature superconductivity ranks among the most important scientific breakthroughs of the past four decades. Superconductors can carry electrical current without any resistance, eliminating the energy losses that normally occur as electricity travels through conventional materials. They also have the potential to support extraordinarily powerful magnets, making them promising for future power grids, medical scanners, and quantum computers.

Scientists have discovered a distinct subtype of cell in the prostate, and it could help solve the mystery of why the gland enlarges with age. This natural phenomenon is called benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), and it tends to occur in just one region of the prostate. But scientists still don't understand why. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have found a possible culprit hiding around the urethra. Using single-cell RNA sequencing, the team has identified a population of prostate cells that are particularly abundant in this region, especially in cases of BPH. The findings are published in The Journal of Pathology. "Although BPH affects millions of men worldwide, scientists still do not fully understand why it develops primarily in a region of the prostate known as the transition zone, while other regions of the gland remain relatively unaffected," explains senior author Vasan Yegnasubramanian. The transition zone is the part of the prostate that surrounds the urethra. If this area enlarges with age, it can constrict the passage, making urination slower and more sporadic.

The night sky over AlUla in northwest Saudi Arabia is now under continuous automated watch by instruments designed to catch very brief flashes of light. The SETI Institute and the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) have installed and commissioned two LaserSETI stations at AlUla Manara, a milestone that makes AlUla the network’s first and only observing site in Asia and its fifth site worldwide. The new stations join existing installations in California, Hawai’i, Arizona and Puerto Rico, extending a distributed optical observatory that watches large portions of the sky continuously rather than focusing on single targets. According to the announcement, the instruments are fully operational and actively collecting astronomical data, marking the transition from a two-year-old plan to working hardware on the ground. LaserSETI was conceived by the SETI Institute to keep a constant watch on large parts of the sky, searching for very brief flashes of light.

Julia Margaret Cameron, photographic portrait of Charles Darwin, 1868. From the D. Hall Darwin-Wallace Collection. Rare books, documents, letters and images from famous evolutionary biologists are on display this fall at the U of C’s Nickle Galleries.

For more than 150 years, a reported 16-minute train delay in Exeter, England, was cited as a possible early example of a solar storm disrupting human technology. But a railway timetable revealed a problem with the story: the railway line in question did not exist in 1841. According to a report published by ScienceDaily on October 21, 2026, researchers have now traced the incident to October 18, 1848, using historical railway records, newspaper accounts and measurements of Earth’s magnetic field. The findings were published in the journal Space Weather. The train delay that could not have happened in 1841The mystery originated in an account published anonymously in the scientific journal Nature on October 5, 1871. It described a “very intense magnetic disturbance” on October 18, 1841, which allegedly interfered with railway telegraph equipment in Exeter, a city in southwest England. According to the account, the disturbance prevented railway staff from establishing whether the track ahead, near the village of Starcross, was clear. As a result, the scheduled 10.05 pm express train from Exeter towards Newton Abbot was held up for 16 minutes.

MEGATRON simulations offer a possible explanation for the similar iron content of many of the smallest galaxies. Radiation delayed early star formation until galaxies could retain elements from powerful stellar explosions. The results connect ancient stars with early-universe observations, but depend on uncertain assumptions about the first stars. Some of the universe’s smallest galaxies contain a surprisingly similar proportion of iron, despite holding different amounts of stars. Computer simulations now offer an explanation: a single explosion from a very massive first-generation star could have supplied much of that iron. The finding gives astronomers a testable way to investigate stars that disappeared billions of years ago. One paper follows the chemical legacy of the first stars into hundreds of simulated dwarf galaxies. Its central finding concerns an iron pattern already measured in nearby galaxies, rather than a direct observation of the earliest stellar explosions. Other MEGATRON studies investigate galaxy spectra and the gas within and around galaxies.