Research roundup: Six cool science stories we almost missed

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Smart underclothing determines farts, brain cells play Doomand AI finds guidelines of an ancient video game.

Illustration of a star that collapsed, forming a great void.

Credit: Keith Miller, Caltech/IPAC – SELab

It’s a regrettable truth that there is never ever sufficient time to cover all the intriguing clinical stories we discover monthly. Every month, we highlight a handful of the finest stories that almost slipped through the fractures. February’s list consists of the revival of a forgotten battery style by Thomas Edison that might be perfect for renewable resource storage; a snap-on gadget to turn those fighters into “wise underclothing” to determine how typically we fart; and a meal of nerve cells playing Doomto name a few highlights.

Table of Contents

Restoring Edison’s battery style

Credit: Maher El-Kady/UCLA

At the beginning of the 20th century, electrical vehicles powered by lead-acid batteries surpassed gas-powered cars and trucks. The internal combustion engine eventually triumphed, in part since those batteries had a series of simply 30 miles. Thomas Edison thought a nickel-iron battery might extend that variety to as much as 100 miles, while likewise having a long life and charging times of 7 hours. A worldwide group of researchers has actually restored Edison’s principle of a nickel-iron battery and produced their own variation, according to a paper released in the journal Small.

The group took their motivation from nature, particularly how shellfish form their tough external shells and animals form bones: Proteins develop a scaffolding onto which calcium substances cluster. For the battery scaffolding, the authors utilized beef by-product proteins, integrated with graphene oxide, and after that grew clusters of nickel for favorable electrons and iron for unfavorable ones. The group superheated all the components in water followed by baking them at really heats. The proteins charred into carbon, removing away the oxygen atoms in the graphene oxide and embedding the nickel and iron clusters in the scaffolding. Basically, it ended up being an aerogel.

The folded structure restricted the clusters to less than 5 nanometers, equating into considerably more area for the chain reactions sustaining the battery to happen. The resulting model charged in simple seconds and sustained for more than 12,000 cycles, comparable to about 30 years of everyday charging. Their battery’s storage capability is still well listed below that of existing lithium-ion batteries, so powering EVs may not be the most appealing application. The authors recommend it may be perfect for saving excess electrical power created by solar farms or other renewable resource sources.

Little, 2026. DOI: 10.1002/ smll.202507934 (About DOIs).

Vanishing star ended up being a great void

In 2014, NASA’s NEOWISE task got a steady lightening up of infrared light originating from a huge star in the Andromeda galaxy, an observation that was validated by a number of other ground- and space-based telescopes. Astronomers kept keeping track of the star, so they likewise observed when it rapidly dimmed in 2016. As soon as among the brightest stars because galaxy, it efficiently “disappeared” from sight; it would resemble Betelgeuse all of a sudden vanishing. It’s now just noticeable in the mid-infrared variety.

The apparent description was that the star was passing away and had actually collapsed into a great void, however if so, it didn’t go through the supernova stage that typically accompanies stars of this size. That makes it an appealing things for more research study. After examining archival information from NEOWISE, a group of astronomers concluded that this was undoubtedly a case for direct collapse, according to a paper released in the journal Science.

Theoretical work from the 1970s offered a possible description. As gravity starts to collapse the star, and the core very first kinds a thick neutron star, the accompanying burst of neutrinos normally produces an effective shock wave strong enough to rip apart the core and external layers, resulting in a supernova. Some theorists recommended that the shock wave may not constantly be effective sufficient to expel all that excellent product, which rather falls inward, and the child neutron star straight collapses into a black hole without ever going supernova.

Convection, it appears, is essential. It happens due to the fact that the matter near the star’s center is hotter than the external areas, so the gases move from hotter to cooler areas. The authors of this most current paper recommend that as the core collapses, gas in the external layers is moving quickly, which avoids them from falling under the core. The inner layers orbit outside the brand-new great void and eject the external layers, which cool and form dust to conceal the hot gas still orbiting the great void. The dust warms in reaction into mid-infrared wavelengths, providing the item a minor radiance that ought to last for years.

This work has actually currently led the group to re-evaluate a comparable star very first observed a years earlier, so this might make up a brand-new class of things– ones that are more difficult to discover due to the fact that they do not go supernova and due to the fact that of the faintness of the afterglow. A minimum of now astronomers understand to search for that unique signature.

Science, 2026. DOI: 10.1126/ science.adt4853 (About DOIs).

Smart undies determine the gas you pass

Credit: University of Maryland.

Let’s face it, everyone farts, and those struggling with conditions that produce excess gas fart more than many. Doctors do not have a dependable methods of measuring simply how much gas individuals produce each day. Simply put, they do not have a standard of what is regular– like we have for blood sugar or cholesterol– that makes it tough to figure out whether the farting in any provided case is extreme. To resolve this, researchers at the University of Maryland have actually designed”clever underclothing “to determine the user’s flatulence, according to a paper released in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.

Brantley Hall and his associates established a little gadget with electrochemical sensing units that snaps onto one’s underclothing; those sensing units track any discharged farts all the time, consisting of as the user sleeps. In the past, fart frequency depended on little research studies utilizing intrusive approaches or undependable self-reports. Maybe it’s not unexpected that Hall et al. taped much greater farting price quotes in their research study: healthy grownups pass gas on typical 32 times per day, compared to simply 14 times per day reported in previous research studies.

There was likewise substantial variation amongst people, with a least expensive fart rate of simply 4 times daily and a greatest rate of 59 daily. This is an initial step to identifying a healthy standard, which the group intends to do by means of their Human Flatus Atlas program. Individuals can offer to put on the wise underclothing 24/7 in hopes of associating the flatulence patterns with diet plan and microbiome structure throughout a much bigger sample size. You can enlist in the Human Flatus Atlas here; you should reside in the United States and be 18 years or older to take part. (Fun benefit truth: kept in mind gastroenterologist Michael Levitt was obviously called the “King of Farts” due to the fact that of his substantial body of research study on the topic.)

Biosensors and Bioelectronics, 2026. DOI: 10.1016/ j.biosx.2025.100699 (About DOIs).

Do you wan na construct a snowman?

Credit: NASA/Public domain

Simply previous Neptune lies the Kuiper Belt, a band cluttered with residues from the early developmental duration of our Milky Way, consisting of dwarf worlds and smaller sized bodies called planetesimals. Approximately 10 percent of those planetesimals include 2 linked spheres looking like a primary snowman, called contact binaries. In a paper released in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Michigan State University scientists reported proof for a procedure by which these contact binaries might have formed.

Planetesimals are the outcome of dust and pebbles slowly compacting into aggregate items in reaction to gravity, just like forming a snowball. Every so often, these nascent items get ripped in 2 by the turning cloud and form 2 different planetesimals that orbit each other. Many theories of how the uncommon snowman-shaped contact binaries formed depend on unusual occasions or unique phenomena, which would not represent the a great deal of contact binaries that we observe.

Prior computational simulations designed clashing things in the Kuiper Belt as fluid-like blobs that combined into spheres, however this did not lead to conditions favorable to forming the snowman setup. These brand-new simulations maintained the clashing items’ strength and enabled them to rest versus each other. This exposed that after 2 clashing planetesimals start to orbit one another, gravity triggers them to spiral inward up until they ultimately make contact and fuse. Since the Kuiper Belt is reasonably empty, it is unusual for the contact binaries to crash into another item, so they are less most likely to disintegrate.

Regular monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2026. DOI: 10.1073/ pnas.1802831115 (About DOIs).

Is this sculpted rock a Roman parlor game?

Credit: Het Romeins Museum

There is historical proof for different type of parlor game from all over the world going back centuries: Senet and Mehen in ancient Egypt, for instance; a method video game called ludus latrunculorum( “video game of mercenaries”)preferred by Roman legions; a 4,000-year-old stone board found in 2022 that simply may be a precursor to an ancient Middle Eastern video game called the Royal Game of Ur; or a Bronze Age parlor game that may be the earliest kind of Hounds and Jackalscoming from Asia, which challenges the longstanding presumption that the video game came from Egypt.

There might be other ancient video games that archaeologists still do not understand about, nor is it constantly possible for them to tease out what the guidelines of play may be. AI is becoming a beneficial tool for figuring out the latter. Most just recently, scientists have actually utilized AI tools to exercise the guidelines of what they think may be another ancient Roman video game board, according to a paper released in the journal Antiquity. The things in concern is a flat stone housed in the Roman Museum in Heerlen, the Netherlands, with an unique geometric pattern sculpted on one side. Walter Crist of Leiden University observed some noticeably irregular wear constant with pressing stone video game pieces throughout the surface area, with the most use along one specific diagonal line.

Crist believed this may be a Roman video game board and chose to pit 2 AI representatives versus each other in countless “video games” to evaluate various variations in possible guidelines, obtained from understood ancient parlor game from all over the world. Crist and his co-authors recognized 9 possibilities, all so-called obstructing video games, in which a gamer with more pieces attempts to stop their challenger from moving. They have actually called this possibly brand-new video game Ludos CoriovalliThere is not yet any ways of understanding for sure, because no other sculpted pieces with that specific pattern have actually been discovered, however it may be a model video game, per Crist.

Antiquity, 2026. DOI: 10.15184/ aqy.2025.10264 (About DOIs).

Brain cells in a meal play Doom

In 2022, a business called Cortical Labs handled to get brain cells grown in a meal– called DishBrain– electrically promoted in such a method regarding develop helpful feedback loops, allowing them to “discover” to play Pongalbeit severely. This offered appealing proof that neural networks formed from real nerve cells spontaneously establish the capability to find out. Now the business is back with a video (see above) revealing DishBrain playing Doom— technically the open-sourced Freedoom, which does not have a few of the copyrighted satanic force and weapon aspects.

Like 4 years back, we’re discussing a meal with a set of electrodes on the flooring. When nerve cells are grown in the meal, these electrodes can do 2 things: sense the activity of the nerve cells above them or promote those electrodes. The group has actually included a brand-new user interface that makes the system much easier to configure, utilizing Python. Teaching DishBrain to play Pong took years of painstaking effort; getting it to play Freedoom took simply one week– a considerable enhancement.

DishBrain still can’t come close to matching the efficiency of the very best Doom gamers, however it discovered faster than traditional silicon-based artificial intelligence. It’s likewise not equivalent to a human brain. “Yes, it’s alive, and yes, it’s biological, however actually what it is being utilized as is a product that can process details in really unique manner ins which we can’t re-create in silicon,” Brett Kagan of Cortical Labs informed New Scientist. In 2024, researchers taught hydrogels– soft, versatile biphasic products that swell however do not liquify in water– to play Pongmotivated by the business’s earlier research study. (Hydrogels can likewise “discover” to beat in rhythm with an external pacemaker, much like living cells.)

Jennifer is a senior author at Ars Technica with a specific concentrate on where science satisfies culture, covering whatever from physics and associated interdisciplinary subjects to her preferred movies and television series. Jennifer resides in Baltimore with her partner, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their 2 felines, Ariel and Caliban.

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