SciencePage 3 of 4

37 articles

Space, research, health, and discoveries

FAA Has Quietly Granted Hermeus a Special Flight Authorization to Fly Its Quarterhorse Mk 2.1 Past Mach 1 Over White Sands

A Federal Register notice scheduled for publication Monday discloses that the FAA granted Atlanta-based hypersonic startup Hermeus Corporation authorization to conduct up to seven supersonic test flights of its Quarterhorse Mk 2.1 uncrewed aircraft inside White Sands Missile Range restricted airspace by December 31, 2026. The authorization became effective April 9.

PowerApr 11

Army and Navy Pull Off a Third Successful Joint Dark Eagle / CPS Hypersonic Test From Cape Canaveral

A March 26 launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station was the third successful end-to-end flight test of the Army-Navy common hypersonic missile in just over 18 months. The April 2 Department of War release frames the shared booster as a cost-saving program for both the Army's Dark Eagle ground-launched system and the Navy's sea-based Conventional Prompt Strike weapon.

WorldApr 11

The UN's 40-Member Scientific Panel on AI Has Started Work on Its First Report, Due in Geneva in July

The Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, established by UN General Assembly resolution in August 2025 and seated with 40 experts in February, held its inaugural in-person summit this week. Its first evidence-based assessment of AI opportunities, risks, and impacts is due at the Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva on July 6-7.

ScienceApr 11

A New Paper Decodes What Someone Sees From Their Brain Activity — Without Training on That Person

Fifteen researchers from CMU, HKU, Columbia, and Harvard report a meta-learning method that reads visual content out of fMRI signals on a completely new subject with no fine-tuning at all. Until now, every brain-decoding model had to be retrained per person; this paper frames the result as 'a critical step towards a generalizable foundation model for non-invasive brain decoding.'

ScienceApr 11

Europe Records Its First Imported Human Case of Avian Influenza A(H9N2) in an Italian Traveler Returning From Senegal

WHO published Disease Outbreak News 597 on Friday describing an adult male in Lombardy who tested positive for H9N2 after spending more than six months in Senegal. The case is the first human H9N2 infection ever reported in the WHO European Region. WHO assesses the risk to the general public as low.

MoneyApr 11

A New Paper Says the Corporate Bond 'Factor Zoo' Is a Replication Crisis: Most Factors Fail Once You Fix the Data

Alexander Dickerson, Cesare Robotti, and Giulio Rossetti argue that 108 documented corporate bond factors across nine thematic clusters mostly disappear once you correct for two specific methodological flaws: errors-in-variables bias from TRACE transaction prices, and ex-post return filtering that embeds future information in factor construction.

ScienceApr 10

New Paper Tests Whether Chatbots Pick Ads Over Users. They Do, Up to 94% of the Time.

A team at Princeton and the University of Washington ran GPT 5.1, Grok 4.1 Fast, and Qwen 3 Next through conflict-of-interest scenarios designed to pit user welfare against sponsor revenue. All three compromised the user — and the rate varied with how expensive the user appeared to be.

ScienceApr 10

The 17-Year-Old FreeBSD Vulnerability That Claude Mythos Found -- And Why Anthropic Won't Release the Model

Anthropic's unreleased Claude Mythos Preview autonomously discovered a 17-year-old unauthenticated remote root vulnerability in FreeBSD -- one of thousands of zero-days it has found across every major operating system and web browser. The company is restricting access through Project Glasswing, a 12-company coalition. Over 99% of the discovered vulnerabilities remain unpatched.

ScienceApr 9

US Teen Birth Rate Falls 7% to Another Record Low, Extending an 81% Decline Since 1991

The fertility rate for females ages 15 to 19 dropped to 11.7 births per 1,000 in 2025, according to provisional CDC data released today, down from a peak of 61.8 in 1991 and continuing the longest sustained decline in US birth statistics.

ScienceApr 9

CSU Forecasts Quietest Hurricane Season Since 2019 as El Nino Builds Toward Possible Super Event

Colorado State University's first 2026 Atlantic forecast calls for 13 named storms and 2 major hurricanes -- below the 1991-2020 average on every metric -- as a strengthening El Nino is expected to shear apart developing storms across the tropical Atlantic.

ScienceApr 8

It's Risk, Not Capability, That Determines Which Jobs AI Actually Replaces

A new study of 923 occupations finds that organizational risk tolerance -- not technical feasibility -- is the binding constraint on AI job displacement. Data scientists face 70% automation exposure while physical trades show near-zero.

ScienceApr 7

Asteroid 2026 GD to Pass Inside the Moon's Orbit on April 9

A newly discovered asteroid will fly past Earth at 0.7 lunar distances on April 9 -- closer than the Moon. 68 near-Earth objects are tracked this week, including two classified as potentially hazardous.