Tired of using bulky night vision goggles for your clandestine nocturnal activities? An interdisciplinary team of Chinese neuroscientists and materials scientists has developed near-infrared contact lenses that enabled both mice and humans to see in the dark, even with their eyes closed, according to a new paper published in the journal Cell.

Humans and other mammals can only perceive a limited range of the electromagnetic spectrum (light), usually in the 400–700 nm range. There are creatures that can see in infrared (snakes, mosquitoes, bullfrogs) or ultraviolet (bees, birds), and goldfish can perceive both. But humans must augment themselves with technology in order to expand our range of vision.

Night vision goggles and similar devices have been around since the 1930s, including infrared-visible converters, but these require external energy sources, and the converters have a multilayer structure that makes them opaque and hence challenging to integrate with a human eye. The authors previously were able to confer near-infrared vision to mice by injecting nanoparticles that bind to photoreceptors into their eyes—basically creating a near-infrared nanoantenna—but realized that most people would be averse to the prospect of sticking needles in their eyes. So they looked for a better alternative. Contact lenses seemed the obvious choice.

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Cheese connoisseurs are no doubt familiar with a particular kind of semi-hard Swiss cheese called "Tête de Moine." Rather than spreading or slicing the cheese, Tête de Moine is usually served by scraping the top of the cheese wheel in a circular motion using a specialized tool called a Girolle. This produces elegant thin shavings known as rosettes, since they resemble a frilly flower.

The method is both aesthetically pleasing and serves to enhance the aromas and mouth feel of the cheese, according to the authors of a new paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters (PRL). This group of physicists based in Paris noted a marked similarity between the frilly edges of those cheese flowers and certain leaves, fungi, corals, and even torn plastic sheets—all formed by different mechanisms. So naturally the physicists decided to conduct their own research to determine the underlying mechanism(s) for the delicate frills of Tête de Moine shavings.

Tête de Moine translates as "monk's head," and the name dates back to the 1790s, although the actual cheese originates back to a 12th-century Bellelay monastery in Switzerland. It's made from raw unpasteurized cow's milk and is matured for a minimum of 75 days on spruce boards and boasts a firm reddish-brown crust. The Girolle (named after the French word for chanterelles, which have a similar rosette shape) is a more recent innovation, invented in 1982 specifically for Tête de Moine by a man named Nicolas Crevoisier. It's just a round wooden plate with a pin stuck vertically in the middle—the better to skewer one's cheese wheel—and a crank handle to control the slicing blade.

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Pixar's Finding Nemo immortalized the colorful clownfish, with its distinctive orange body and white stripes, in the popular imagination. Clownfish, like many other species, are feeling the stress of rising temperatures and other environmental stressors. Fortunately, they have a superpower to cope: They can shrink their body size during dangerous heat waves to substantially boost their odds of survival, according to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances.

“This is not just about getting skinnier under stressful conditions; these fish are actually getting shorter," said co-author Melissa Versteeg, a graduate student at Newcastle University. "We don’t know yet exactly how they do it, but we do know that a few other animals can do this too."

Many vertebrates have shown growth decline in response to environmental stressors, especially higher temperatures. Marine iguanas, for example, reabsorb some of their bone material to shrink when their watery habitat gets warmer, while young salmon have been known to shrink at winter's onset. This can also happen when there is less food available. And social factors can also influence growth. When female meerkats, for example, are dominant, they have growth spurts, while a disruption in their social status can cause stunted growth in male cichlids

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Jurassic World Rebirth is coming to theaters for the Fourth of July weekend, and Universal Pictures has released one final trailer to whet audience appetites for the film.

As previously reported, this is the fourth installment in the Jurassic World series and seventh film overall in the franchise spawned by 1993's Jurassic Park. This time around, Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali step into the leading roles since the film is meant to be a fresh start for the franchise—although it does feature a return to the original research facility. Gareth Edwards—who directed 2014's Godzilla—signed on to direct a script penned by David Koepp, who wrote the scripts for Jurassic Park and The Lost World (1997).

Per the official premise:

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In the mood for a jauntily charming sci-fi comedy dripping with wry wit and an intriguing mystery? Check out Apple TV+'s Murderbot, based on Martha Wells' bestselling series of novels The Murderbot Diaries. It stars Alexander Skarsgård as the titular Murderbot, a rogue cyborg security (SEC) unit that gains autonomy and must learn to interact with humans while hiding its new capabilities.

(Some minor spoilers below, but no major reveals.)

There are seven books in Wells' series thus far. All are narrated by Murderbot, who is technically owned by a megacorporation but manages to hack and override its governor module. Rather than rising up and killing its former masters, Murderbot just goes about performing its security work, relieving the boredom by watching a lot of entertainment media; its favorite is a soap opera called The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.

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You've probably heard of the infamous "marshmallow test," in which young children are asked to wait to eat a yummy marshmallow placed in front of them while left alone in a room for 10 to 15 minutes. If they successfully do so, they get a second marshmallow; if not, they don't. The test has become a useful paradigm for scientists interested in studying the various factors that might influence one's ability to delay gratification, thereby promoting social cooperation. According to a paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, one factor is trust: If children are paired in a marshmallow test and one promises not to eat their treat for the specified time, the other is much more likely to also refrain from eating it.

As previously reported, psychologist Walter Mischel's landmark behavioral study involved 600 kids between the ages of four and six, all culled from Stanford University's Bing Nursery School. He would give each child a marshmallow and give them the option of eating it immediately if they chose. But if they could wait 15 minutes, they would get a second marshmallow as a reward. Then Mischel would leave the room, and a hidden video camera would tape what happened next.

Some kids just ate the marshmallow right away. Others found a handy distraction: covering their eyes, kicking the desk, or poking at the marshmallow with their fingers. Some smelled it, licked it, or took tiny nibbles around the edges. Roughly one-third of the kids held out long enough to earn a second marshmallow. Several years later, Mischel noticed a strong correlation between the success of some of those kids later in life (better grades, higher self-confidence) and their ability to delay gratification in nursery school. Mischel's follow-up study confirmed the correlation.

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We're about to enter a new era for DC Studios with the July release of Superman, writer/director James Gunn's fresh take on one of the most iconic superheroes. And after months of tantalizing teases, we finally have the first official trailer, featuring a bickering Clark Kent and Lois Lane, plenty of action, villains being villains, kaiju, and of course, our favorite flying super-pup, Krypto.

As previously reported, Gunn has described his take as less of an origin story and more of a journey, with Superman struggling to reconcile his Kryptonian heritage and aristocratic origins with his small-town adoptive human family. Gunn tapped David Corenswet to play Clark Kent/Superman at 25, a bit more established than the young cub reporter of Smallville, for instance. Rachel Brosnahan plays Lois Lane, Skyler Gisondo plays Jimmy Olsen, and Nicholas Hoult is arch-nemesis Lex Luthor. Luthor's sidekicks are played by Sara Sampaio as Eve Teschmacher and Terence Rosemore as Otis.

The cast also includes Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner/Green Lantern (sporting a disastrous bowl haircut); Anthony Carrigan as Rex Mason/Metamorpho, who can transmute elements in his body to change forms; Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl; Edi Gathegi as Michael Holt/Mister Terrific, an inventor turned superhero; Maria Gabriela de Faria as Angela Spica/The Engineer, whose abilities stem from embedded nanotechnology; and Pruitt Taylor Vince and Neva Howell as Clark's parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent, respectively. We'll also see Frank Grillo reprise his role as Rick Flag Sr. from the animated series Creature Commandos; Sean Gunn as Maxwell Lord; and Milly Alcock as Superman's cousin, Kara Zor-El/Supergirl.

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Ryan Coogler is riding high as his new film Sinners lights up the box office, and he's got another major TV project waiting in the wings: the Marvel limited series Ironheart. And the studio has dropped a shiny new trailer ahead of the show's June release. The six-episode series stars Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams, aka the titular Ironheart, a teen tech genius who is a protégé of Tony Stark in the comics. It's the final TV series in Marvel Cinematic Universe's Phase Five.

(Some spoilers for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever below.)

The series was first announced in December 2020 and originally slated for a 2023 release. But then Marvel began rethinking its long-term strategy and decided to scale back on content to counter suggestions of market saturation, and Ironheart was delayed until now. It has been described as "a crime show with an Iron Man twist at the center," based on footage revealed at 2024's D23 convention.

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We're about three weeks out from the theatrical release of From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, starring Ana de Armas. So naturally Lionsgate has released one final trailer to whet audience appetites for what promises to be a fiery, action-packed addition to the hugely successful franchise.

(Some spoilers for 2019's John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum.)

Chronologically, Ballerina takes place during the events of John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum. As previously reported, Parabellum found Wick declared excommunicado from the High Table for killing crime lord Santino D'Antonio on the grounds of the Continental. On the run with a bounty on his head, he makes his way to the headquarters of the Ruska Roma crime syndicate, led by the Director (Anjelica Huston). The Director also trains young girls to be ballerina-assassins, and one young ballerina (played by Unity Phelan) is shown rehearsing in the scene. That dancer, Eve Macarro, is the main character in Ballerina, now played by de Armas.

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What's a reformed villain gotta do to impress the Justice League? That's the dilemma faced by John Cena's titular antihero in the first teaser for S2 of Peacemaker, James Gunn's Emmy-nominated series spun off from his 2021 film, The Suicide Squad. We've got the same colorful cast of characters, but the new season will serve as something of a "soft reboot" as part of the new DC Universe (DCU) franchise.

(Spoilers for S1 and The Suicide Squad below.)

The eight-episode first season was set five months after the events of The Suicide Squad. Having survived a near-fatal shooting, Peacemaker—aka Christopher Smith—is recruited by the US government for a new mission: the mysterious Project Butterfly, led by a mercenary named Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji). The team also includes A.R.G.U.S. agent John Economos (Steve Agee) of the Belle Reve Penitentiary, National Security Agency agent and former Waller aide Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), and new team member Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks).

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The vast majority of people these days use some form of social media, but some develop what's known as problematic social media use (PSMU). It's not yet deemed a clinical addiction, but it does share some symptoms with addiction and substance abuse disorders. And according to a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE, someone who exhibits PSMU is also more likely to believe in—and share—fake news online, contributing to the rampant spread of misinformation that is the bane of the 21st-century Internet.

"If someone struggles with a substance dependency, it's the decision-making process in their brain where they have difficulties stopping," co-author Dar Meshi of Michigan State University told Ars. "They take their drug and have a negative outcome: get a DUI or crash their car. Most people learn from a bad outcome and don't do it again, but someone with a substance use disorder continues to do that action."

In the case of PSMU, someone might feel bad if they are unable to access social media for an extended period (withdrawal), or their use of social media might lead to losing a job, poor grades, or mental health issues.

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It's been nearly two years, but the third season of Foundation, Apple TV+'s epic adaptation (or remix) of the Isaac Asimov series, is almost here. The streaming platform released an action-packed teaser of what we can expect from the new ten-episode season: the onset of the Third Crisis, a galactic war, and a shirtless Lee Pace.

(Some spoilers for first two seasons below.)

Showrunner David S. Goyer took great pains in S1 to carefully set up his expansive fictional world, and the scope only broadened in the second season. As previously reported, Asimov's fundamental narrative arc remains intact, with the series taking place across multiple planets over 1,000 years and featuring a huge cast of characters.

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In 2022, we told you about a study reporting evidence that an ancient Peruvian people called the Wari laced the beer served at their feasts with hallucinogens—particularly a substance derived from the seeds of the vilca tree, which was common in the region during the Middle Horizon period (circa 850 CE) when the Wari empire thrived. This may have helped the Wari forge political alliances and expand their empire.

Now archaeologists have discovered direct evidence that the use of vilca was a common practice some 1,000 years earlier than the Wari, thanks to analysis of artifacts unearthed at Chavín de Huántar, located about 250 kilometers north of Lima, Peru. And the Chavín people may have used it for a different purpose: to reinforce social hierarchies by limiting consumption of those substances to an elite few, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

There is ample evidence that humans in many cultures throughout history used various hallucinogenic substances in religious ceremonies or shamanic rituals. That includes ancient Egypt, as well as ancient Greek, Vedic, Maya, Inca, and Aztec cultures. The Urarina people who live in the Peruvian Amazon Basin still use a psychoactive brew called ayahuasca in their rituals, and Westerners seeking their own brand of enlightenment have been known to participate. The Wari empire lasted from around 500 CE to 1100 CE in the central highlands of Peru.

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It looks like Marvel has another critical and box office hit on its hands—and deservedly so—with Thunderbolts*, a follow-up of sorts to 2021's Black Widow and the final film in the MCU's Phase Five.

Yes, the asterisk is part of the title. Yes, I found that choice inexplicable when it was first announced. And yes, having seen the film, the asterisk makes perfect sense now as a well-timed joke. I won't spill the beans because that would spoil the fun. Instead, I'll simply say that Thunderbolts* is a refreshing return to peak Marvel form: well-paced, witty, and action-packed with enough heart to ensure you care about the characters.

(Some spoilers below.)

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The distinctive chirps of singing cicadas are a highlight of summer in regions where they proliferate; those chirps even featured prominently on Lorde's 2021 album Solar Power. Now, Japanese scientists at the University of Tsukuba have figured out how to transform cicadas into cyborg insects capable of "playing" Pachelbel's Canon. They described their work in a preprint published on the physics arXiv. You can listen to the sounds here.

Scientists have been intrigued by the potential of cyborg insects since the 1990s, when researchers began implanting tiny electrodes into cockroach antennae and shocking them to direct their movements. The idea was to use them as hybrid robots for search-and-rescue applications.

For instance, in 2015, Texas A&M scientists found that implanting electrodes into a cockroach's ganglion (the neuron cluster that controls its front legs) was remarkably effective at successfully steering the roaches 60 percent of the time. They outfitted the roaches with tiny backpacks synced with a remote controller and administered shocks to disrupt the insect's balance, forcing it to move in the desired direction

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It's time again to honor the winners of the annual Dance Your PhD contest, where eager young scientists attempt to convey the concepts of their doctoral theses through dance. This year's overall winner is the University of Helsinki's Sulo Roukka, who researches chemesthesis, specifically how people experience different sensory food compounds like capsaicin (hot) or menthol (cool).

As we've reported previously, the Dance Your PhD contest was established in 2008 by science journalist John Bohannon, who is now a data scientist at South Park Commons. Bohannon told Slate in 2011 that he came up with the idea while trying to figure out how to get a group of stressed-out PhD students, who were in the middle of defending their theses, to let off a little steam. So he put together a dance party at Austria's Institute of Molecular Biotechnology, including a contest for whichever candidate could best explain their thesis topics through interpretive dance.

The contest was such a hit that Bohannon started getting emails asking when the next one would be—and Dance Your PhD has continued ever since. It's now in its 17th year. There are four broad categories: physics, chemistry, biology, and social science, with a fairly liberal interpretation of what topics fall under each. All category winners receive $750. Roukka won the chemistry category and, as the overall champion, will receive an additional $2,750.

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It's a regrettable reality that there is never time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we've featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we're experimenting with a monthly collection. April's list includes new research on tattooed tardigrades, the first live image of a colossal baby squid, the digital unfolding of a recently discovered Merlin manuscript, and an ancient Roman gladiator whose skeleton shows signs of being gnawed by a lion.

Gladiator vs. lion?

Popular depictions of Roman gladiators in combat invariably include battling not just human adversaries but wild animals. We know from surviving texts, imagery, and artifacts that such battles likely took place. But hard physical evidence is much more limited. Archaeologists have now found the first direct osteological evidence: the skeleton of a Roman gladiator who encountered a wild animal in the arena, most likely a lion, based on bite marks evident on the pelvic bone, according to a paper published in the journal PLoS ONE.

The skeleton in question was that of a young man, age 26 to 35, buried between 200–300 CE near what is now York, England, formerly the Roman city of Eboracum. It's one of several such skeletons, mostly young men whose remains showed signs of trauma—hence the suggestion that it could be a gladiator burial site. "We used a method called structured light scanning [to study the skeleton]," co-author Tim Thompson of Maynooth University told Ars. "It's a method of creating a 3D model using grids of light. It's not like X-ray or CT, in that it only records the surface (not internal) features, but since it uses light and not X-rays etc, it is much safer, cheaper, and more portable. We have published a fair bit on this and shown its use in both archaeological and forensic contexts."

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Nobody does pasta quite like the Italians, as anyone who has tasted an authentic "pasta alla cacio e pepe" can attest. It's a simple dish: just tonnarelli pasta, pecorino cheese, and pepper. But its simplicity is deceptive. Cacio e pepe ("cheese and pepper") is notoriously challenging to make because it's so easy for the sauce to form unappetizing clumps with a texture more akin to stringy mozzarella rather than being smooth and creamy.

A team of Italian physicists has come to the rescue with a foolproof recipe based on their many scientific experiments, according to a new paper published in the journal Physics of Fluids. The trick: using corn starch for the cheese and pepper sauce instead of relying on however much starch leaches into the boiling water as the pasta is cooked.

"A true Italian grandmother or a skilled home chef from Rome would never need a scientific recipe for cacio e pepe, relying instead on instinct and years of experience," the authors wrote. "For everyone else, this guide offers a practical way to master the dish. Preparing cacio e pepe successfully depends on getting the balance just right, particularly the ratio of starch to cheese. The concentration of starch plays a crucial role in keeping the sauce creamy and smooth, without clumps or separation."

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Monty Python and the Holy Grail is widely considered to be among the best comedy films of all time, and it's certainly one of the most quotable. This absurdist masterpiece sending up Arthurian legend turns 50 (!) this year.

It was partly Python member Terry Jones' passion for the Middle Ages and Arthurian legend that inspired Holy Grail and its approach to comedy. (Jones even went on to direct a 2004 documentary, Medieval Lives.) The troupe members wrote several drafts beginning in 1973, and Jones and Terry Gilliam were co-directors—the first full-length feature for each, so filming was one long learning process. Reviews were mixed when Holy Grail was first released—much like they were for Young Frankenstein (1974), another comedic masterpiece—but audiences begged to differ. It was the top-grossing British film screened in the US in 1975. And its reputation has only grown over the ensuing decades.

The film's broad cultural influence extends beyond the entertainment industry. Holy Grail has been the subject of multiple scholarly papers examining such topics as its effectiveness at teaching Arthurian literature or geometric thought and logic, the comedic techniques employed, and why the depiction of a killer rabbit is so fitting (killer rabbits frequently appear drawn in the margins of Gothic manuscripts). My personal favorite was a 2018 tongue-in-cheek paper on whether the Black Knight could have survived long enough to make good on his threat to bite King Arthur's legs off (tl;dr: no).

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Zombies never really go out of style, but they were an especially hot commodity on television in the 2010s, spawning the blockbuster series The Walking Dead (2010-2022) as well as quirkier fare like Netflix's comedy horror, The Santa Clarita Diet (2017-2018). iZombie, a supernatural procedural dramedy that ran for five seasons on the CW, falls into the latter category. It never achieved mega-hit status but nonetheless earned a hugely loyal following drawn to the show's wicked humor, well-drawn characters, and winning mix of cases-of-the-week and longer narrative arcs.

(Spoilers for all five seasons below.)

The original Vertigo comic series was created by writer Chris Roberson and artist Michael Allred. It featured a zombie in Eugene, Oregon, named Gwen Dylan, who worked as a gravedigger because she needed to consume brains every 30 days to keep her memories and cognitive faculties in working order. Her best friends were a ghost who died in the 1960s and a were-terrier named Scott, nicknamed "Spot," and together they took on challenges both personal and supernatural (vampires, mummies, etc.).

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