News from Science

Along the eastern front of the Appalachian Mountains, buried just below the surface, lies a fragment of a lost continent. Running from Maine to Georgia, the 200-kilometer-thick slab of crust was probably created by volcanic eruptions during the breakup of the Pangaea supercontinent some 200 million years ago and later buried by silt from eroding mountains. Known as the Piedmont Resistor, this piece of Pangaea is one of the signature discoveries of the Magnetotelluric (MT) Array, 1800 temporary stations scattered across the contiguous United States that measured the conductivity of deep rocks. Now, 20 years after it started, the MT Array has released its final map and model. It shows how the assembly of the continent left hidden structures such as the Piedmont Resistor—and mineral riches. Learn more: scim.ag/3PgPC9M

Pushed by Trump policies, this top U.S. battery scientist is moving to Singapore. @YingShirleyMeng explains why her passion for decarbonizing the global economy required her to relocate. @ScienceCareers scim.ag/42cO0ko

Europe’s top research funder has dropped a controversial new policy designed to stem a flood in applications, following an outcry from the bloc’s scientists. scim.ag/4tKEaSY

Coffee snobs have a new rival: chemistry. Passing an electric current through a cup of black coffee could give a fast, reliable read on its strength and roast level, according to a new study. Learn more: scim.ag/4cVyeiM

The overall winner of Science’s #DanceYourPhD contest was Sofia Papa. She and five other dancers—in red and blue outfits representing positive and negative charges, respectively—re-create the piezoelectric effect, the ability of some crystalline materials to generate electricity when subjected to stress. Learn more about this year’s competition: scim.ag/4t5IISD

Females are still commonly left out of animal studies—and studies that include them often fail to analyze results by sex, according to a new study. scim.ag/4ucDLZ0

Of the hundreds of types of amino acids found on Earth, it’s a mystery why life settled on 20 as the building blocks for all its proteins. Although certain species can use more—some microbes employ up to 22—no one’s ever found one using fewer. But now scientists are closer to creating such an organism, after partially eliminating one of the 20 amino acids from the bacterium Escherichia coli. The research used #AI to propose alternatives to the amino acid isoleucine in dozens of proteins making up bacterial ribosomes—the protein factories of the cell. The findings offer a glimpse into how earlier, simpler life forms might have lived and suggest new ways to synthesize proteins with bespoke functions in medicine and biotechnology. Learn more: scim.ag/49f1U9h

Space-based solar power is getting serious—can it solve Earth’s energy woes? Learn more on #SunDay: scim.ag/4tbkCpA

Researchers show that a type of #AI known as a large language model often outperformed physicians at diagnosing complex and potentially life-threatening conditions, including decreased blood flow to the heart, even in the fast-moving stages of real ER care when information is limited. In early ER cases, the model identified the correct or a very close diagnosis in about 67% of cases, compared with roughly 50% to 55% for physicians. And the technology is only getting better. Learn more: scim.ag/4eTVGPO

Bluefin tuna can stretch 3 meters, weigh a metric ton, and reach speeds of 60 kilometers per hour. Yet they still turn on a dime when hunting, thanks in part to their lymphatic systems. Unlike humans, who use their lymphatic systems to produce and transport white blood cells, tuna use theirs to move two of their fins, research finds. Learn more on #WorldTunaDay: scim.ag/4f9eKan

In 1991, a museum in Stuttgart, Germany, purchased a 113-million-year-old fossil from a private dealer in Germany. The specimen—the skull of a massive carnivorous dinosaur named Irritator challengeri—is one of thousands of fossils taken out of Brazil over the past century. For years, Brazilian researchers have called for the repatriation of Irritator. Now, it may finally be heading home. Last week, during Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s visit to Hannover, Germany, the governments of both countries issued a statement proclaiming the “willingness” of the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart to return the cherished fossil to Brazil. Learn more: scim.ag/4dcengu

In continued fallout from the highly politicized debate over COVID-19’s origins, the U.S. Department of Justice has indicted a former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases official, David Morens, for allegedly concealing related federal records. scim.ag/42Bv12T

Bursts of electrical activity in the brains of people with epilepsy follow consistent and predictable patterns, a new study finds. The work opens the door to a new generation of brain stimulation technologies that might anticipate and abort these interictal spikes before they can cause harm. scim.ag/3PdKN0X

Bangladesh is in the grip of an explosive measles epidemic, stemming from a catastrophic breakdown in vaccine procurement following the country’s 2024 revolution. The result was nationwide vaccine shortages and plummeting immunization rates. scim.ag/48wu7Z3

A gene-therapy approach to thwart the AIDS virus that has long struggled to gain traction may have new momentum after a study found it could “functionally cure” at least some monkeys. scim.ag/4t7ukcI

AI-generated images have left us questioning what is real. But the godfather of digital forensics, Hany Farid, is not giving up. #LongReads scim.ag/4ui5uHT

On 6 April, the crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission reached 406,771 kilometers from Earth, the farthest humans have ever ventured from our home planet. Flying with experiments tracking the health effects of deep space radiation, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Vincent Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen also became the first humans to see certain parts of the Moon in full with the naked eye and photograph them directly. As their spacecraft Integrity whisked around the Moon, coming within 6545 kilometers of the lunar surface, the crew witnessed the flashes of several meteoroid impacts on the Moon’s dark side, an “Earthset” foregrounded by the Moon, and a solar eclipse. Learn more on #NationalSpaceDay: scim.ag/3QD3gEC

It’s a longstanding pain point for physicists: Their theory of gravity, general relativity, predicts that a black hole must contain a singularity, a point where space and time are infinitely warped and the laws of physics break down. Many researchers hope that a theory combining gravity and quantum mechanics—if it can ever be discovered—will someday remove the thorn. However, a full-fledged theory of quantum gravity may not be necessary, two theorists argue independently. A pinch of quantum mechanics—in the form of an effect called Hawking radiation—may suffice, enabling a black hole to form, age, and evaporate without creating a singularity. Learn more: scim.ag/4tDKj3j

Before the arrival of powerful anti-HIV drugs, AIDS took such a heavy toll in one region of South Africa that, in just over a decade, it left a mark on the human genome, changing the frequency of immune-system genes, a new study shows. scim.ag/48NfKzR

As SpaceX readies its latest megarocket, an engineer explains why atmospheric reentry pushes materials to their limits. scim.ag/3OvuQD7