Science

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Astronomers have found that supermassive black holes can launch delayed jets of matter when their rate of matter accretion falls to about 2% of the Eddington limit. The same relative threshold was previously associated with jet formation in much smaller black holes in the Milky Way, ScienceDaily reports. The study’s results were published in Nature Astronomy. The work was led by astrophysicist Adele Goodwin of the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, together with Andrew Mummery of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. The scientists studied why, after a star is destroyed by a supermassive black hole, a radio jet sometimes appears almost immediately and sometimes only months or years later. Data on stellar disruptionsThe researchers analyzed 20 tidal disruption events — phenomena in which a star passes too close to a supermassive black hole and is torn apart by its gravity. Part of the stellar debris falls into the black hole, temporarily increasing its feeding rate. More current news is available on the UA. News Telegram channel Telegram.

“[It] was such a special thing to witness” 💖Published on Oct 16, 2026 at 5:38 PMBree and Eric Inglis were celebrating their wedding in Queensland, Australia, last week, when an uninvited guest suddenly crashed the party. To their surprise, a wild kookaburra swooped in just as the wedding was getting started and watched over the event for hours, refusing to leave until the very end. Instagram/glasshousecountryweddingsIt all started moments after the couple exchanged vows in front of their family and friends. Everyone in attendance had been formally invited, except for the kookaburra, who saw the event while flying by and decided he couldn’t miss it. “[The kookaburra] came down and landed on the festoon lighting just as cocktail hour commenced,” Alicia Evans, of Glass House Country Weddings, told The Dodo. “He stayed for the duration of the whole wedding.”Instagram/glasshousecountryweddingsThe couple and their guests were delighted by the kookaburra’s presence, admiring him as much as they could before he inevitably flew away. But they were shocked when he stayed for the entire cocktail hour and showed no signs of leaving as the reception started.

Concept of JAXA’s MMX spacecraft during its Mars orbit insertion, with the moon Phobos in the background. A pioneering mission to study a pair of Martian moons and return a 10-gram soil sample to Earth is being prepared for launch Oct. 19 from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center. If successful, the Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) mission will add the first samples of Martian real estate to the world’s...

A tiny piece of amber from Myanmar has captured a defensive maneuver that lizards still use today: shedding part of their tail to escape a predator. The fossil provides direct evidence that this defensive mechanism was already in operation in mid-Cretaceous forest ecosystems. General view of the amber piece from Myanmar, arrows highlighting the debris stuck to the initial resin flow at the level of the ventral surface of the tail. Image credit: Fabrikant et al., doi: 10.26879/1706.

Atoms confined to a single line can bind into clusters called Bethe strings. A new experiment points to a mix of many such clusters, though the evidence is indirect.

NASA released photos of a glowing, jellyfish-shaped formation created when exhaust plumes from the SpaceX CRS-35 cargo mission caught the sun's rays.

A Ph.D. student at the University of Sydney has produced the first comprehensive classification system and map of Martian soils, creating a new framework that could help scientists compare landscapes across the Red Planet and identify promising locations for future exploration, habitation and food production.

HOUSTON—As the International Space Station (ISS) prepares to mark 26 years of continuous occupancy by astronauts and cosmonauts on Nov. 2, its latest returnees offered perspective about life onboard the orbital lab. The facility is counting down to a planned safe deorbit by the end of 2030 after... Mark CarreauMark is based in Houston, where he has written on aerospace for more than 25 years. While at the Houston Chronicle, he was recognized by the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Foundation in 2006 for his professional contributions to the public understanding of America's space program through news reporting.

A probe by the University of Maryland, Baltimore has led to the retraction of four studies that explored the effect of maternal diabetes on neural tube formation. The university’s internal investigation identified image duplications and other data integrity issues in the studies, according to the retraction notices. The studies are among a group of 25 papers that data sleuths flagged as having potentially duplicated or manipulated images, The Transmitter reported in June 2025. Since then, sleuths have flagged a total of 44 studies on PubPeer.

We’re sharing this article early to provide faster access to peer-reviewed, accepted research. It is citable and carries a permanent DOI. This version is subject to further edits and will be replaced automatically by the final Version of Record. All legal disclaimers apply. AbstractParents remain closely involved in caring for children hospitalized with cancer, yet nursing quality extends beyond clinical task performance. Although previous studies have identified important aspects of pediatric oncology nursing care, less is known about how parents integrate these dimensions when evaluating overall care quality. To describe parents’ perceptions of high-quality nursing care for children hospitalized with cancer and explore how these dimensions shape parental confidence in care reliability. A qualitative descriptive study was conducted in a pediatric oncology ward in Sanandaj, Iran. Sixteen parents (14 mothers and two fathers) participated in semi-structured interviews, and seven completed follow-up interviews, resulting in 23 interview encounters. Data were analyzed using inductive qualitative content analysis.

We’re sharing this article early to provide faster access to peer-reviewed, accepted research. It is citable and carries a permanent DOI. This version is subject to further edits and will be replaced automatically by the final Version of Record. All legal disclaimers apply. AbstractDroplets would move following the designed wettability gradient on the surface, toward the position with high surface energy, which is vital for various applications like ink printing, biological detection, and water collection. Anomalously, here we have found that the core of the overlaid droplet shows anti-wettability-gradient movement on the wettability boundary. The core droplet would perform different directional motions after the impact on the same established surface, depending on the impact dynamics and the composition ratio of the overlaid droplet. The macroscopic motion preference of the overlaid droplet is related to the wetting preference of the overlayer on the heterogeneous surface. Competitive wetting/dewetting of different components of the overlayer droplet induces a special shuttle motion of the core droplet.

We’re sharing this article early to provide faster access to peer-reviewed, accepted research. It is citable and carries a permanent DOI. This version is subject to further edits and will be replaced automatically by the final Version of Record. All legal disclaimers apply. AbstractLightweight aerogel absorbers, especially with polymer, carbon and mineral structures, are considered to be the most efficient materials for microwave absorption. Here, montmorillonite (MMT) nanosheets were decorated by MoSe2 and activated carbon (AC) nanoparticles to form MoSe₂/AC/MMT composite. Then, MoSe₂/AC/MMT was loaded into the chitosan matrix as filler, with different weight percentage of 35, 50, and 75 to produce MoSe₂/AC/MMT–Chitosan aerogels named as Ch2-Ch4, and a sample without AC, named as Ch1. The results showed that, Ch3 was the optimal sample with the highest minimum reflection loss (-88 dB) at a thickness of 2.6 mm. All samples had broad absorption bands covering the entire X and Ku bands.

A plant's roots do much of their work out of sight, pulling in water and nutrients and holding the plant in place. That makes it hard to see how plants respond when conditions underground change, and how a warming climate affects them. New Dartmouth-led studies look at the strategies plants use below the surface to adapt and survive.

Tumors possess myriad mechanisms to ensure their survival even at the peril of the host. Now scientists are delving deeper into how cancer cells alter the metabolism of specific amino acids to support the malignancy's growth while simultaneously evading the antitumor activity of the host's immune system.

Sustainable packaging is only the beginning. What a medicine is made from—and how its ingredients are produced—matters just as much. Yet the synthesis of compounds for pharmaceutical research can still depend on fossil feedstocks, high temperatures, strong oxidants and metals that raise costs and complicate purification. Two recently published studies from Colmenares' group at IPC PAS demonstrate that cleaner chemistry can begin at the level of a single chemical bond. The studies are published in the journal Ultrasonics Sonochemistry and Chemistry—A European Journal.

A lung affected by deadly forms of COVID-19 not only loses essential cells for breathing but also undergoes profound changes in its internal organization and the way its cells communicate with each other. A study involving the Sant Pau Research Institute (IR Sant Pau), published in Nature Communications, has created a spatial map of this transformation and identified some of the molecular mechanisms that accompany the progression of lung damage and fibrosis.