The educational excavation campaign that the University of Vienna has been conducting since mid-July in the municipality of Hannersdorf, in the Oberwart district southeast of Vienna, has brought to light the remains of two pottery kilns from the Roman era in the first fifteen days of work. The work, led by archaeologist Basema Hamarneh, focuses […]

An international team of researchers has documented through airborne laser scanning the existence of an extensive multicultural civilization that thrived in the Southwestern Amazon between 600 B.C. and 850 A.D., and that housed millions of people at its peak. The findings, published after meticulous fieldwork covering approximately 4,500 square kilometers, transform the current understanding of […]

A team from the University of Granada has confirmed that a room in the Roman villa of Fuente Álamo, in the municipality of Puente Genil, functioned as a library, making it the oldest documented in the Iberian Peninsula and one of the best-preserved in the entire Empire. The study, published in the Journal of Mediterranean […]

Excavations carried out during 2025 in the Hohle Fels cave, located in the UNESCO World Heritage area of the Swabian Jura in southwest Germany, have yielded two new discoveries of extraordinary importance for understanding Paleolithic art. These are two representations of birds carved in mammoth ivory that are 40,000 years old and, due to their […]

The systematic excavations that have been underway since 2020 in the plain of Manzikert (in Turkish Malazgirt), in eastern Anatolia, have provided a new set of material evidence that makes it possible to better understand the military operations carried out around the fortress during the second half of the 11th century. Turkey’s Minister of Culture […]

A discovery at the Minferri site, in the town of Juneda in Lleida, has completely upended the established chronology for lead metallurgy in the Iberian Peninsula. The research carried out at this Bronze Age site, whose results have just been published in the scientific journal Antiquity, places the production of lead objects between 1900 and […]

The publication in the journal PNAS Nexus of new evidence from Malta has shaken the foundations of what was believed about the maritime capabilities of the last hunter-gatherers in Europe. The discovery that the central Mediterranean islands were colonized before the invention of agriculture directly contradicts decades of established conceptions, which placed the development of […]

La campaña de excavación docente que la Universidad de Viena desarrolla desde mediados de julio en el término municipal de Hannersdorf, en el distrito de Oberwart al sureste de Viena, ha sacado a la luz los restos de dos hornos de alfarero de época romana en los primeros quince días de trabajo. Los trabajos, dirigidos […]

Un equipo internacional de investigadores ha documentado mediante escaneo láser aerotransportado la existencia de una extensa civilización multicultural que prosperó en la Amazonia suroccidental entre el 600 a.C. y el 850 d.C., y que albergó a millones de personas en su momento de máximo esplendor. Los hallazgos, publicados tras un minucioso trabajo de campo que […]

Un equipo de la Universidad de Granada ha confirmado que una estancia de la villa romana de Fuente Álamo, en el término municipal de Puente Genil, funcionaba como biblioteca, lo que la sitúa como la más antigua documentada en la Península Ibérica y una de las mejor preservadas de todo el Imperio. El estudio, publicado […]

Las excavaciones realizadas durante 2025 en la cueva de Hohle Fels, enclavada en el área declarada Patrimonio de la Humanidad por la UNESCO del Jura Suabo, al suroeste de Alemania, han proporcionado dos nuevos hallazgos de extraordinaria relevancia para la comprensión del arte paleolítico. Se trata de dos representaciones de aves talladas en marfil de […]

Ray Williams’ progression at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, has uniquely prepared him for his new role.

As part of NASA’s plan to restore core competencies by converting contractors to civil service, the New Orleans native and Grambling State University graduate now works as a supervisor for test operations support at the agency’s E-Complex.

This propulsion testing facility provides mission-critical engineering capabilities to NASA. Through the use of high- and low-pressure propellant systems, engineers are able to focus on development testing of propulsion system components before integration into complete engine systems. Thanks to the versatility of its infrastructure and test team, the complex is uniquely equipped to support projects for the growing commercial aerospace industry and is capable of supporting a wide range of component, engine, and stage test activities.

“Ultimately, my goal is to continue to grow within my own abilities as an engineer and as a supervisor, and to help grow those that I have the opportunity to lead,” said Williams. “I want to align myself with the agency’s goals as a whole to continue to utilize our unique skillset to grow, build, evolve, and innovate.”

Williams began his career at the E-Complex in 1998 as an electrical technician contractor during the facility’s design and build phase. He quickly became familiar with the facility layout, the various systems under development, and the requirements involved in designing, building, and integrating those systems. He later advanced to the role of instrumentation and electrical engineer, gaining extensive institutional knowledge while developing expertise in the principles and importance of data validation.

In total, he brings 28 years of experience to NASA, along with an intimate understanding of the daily challenges his team of technicians faces.

Williams’ primary work location is the E-1 test stand, which is able to handle extremely high pressures and massive flow rates of super cold cryogenics.

Unlike the A and B test complexes at NASA Stennis, where a fully built engine or stage can be installed, fueled, and fired, the E-Complex is highly adaptable.

When commercial partners need to validate large, complex components, they provide specific requirements. The team then customizes the test facility to replicate the exact extreme conditions the hardware is expected to encounter during operation. NASA collects and analyzes data from these precisely controlled test conditions to validate design predictions and determine whether design modifications are needed throughout the development process, from subscale testing through full-scale testing.

Whether validating valve timings, ensuring facility instrumentation is properly calibrated, supporting ultra-high pressure pumping and cryogenic transferring operations, or troubleshooting electrical and mechanical support systems, Williams and his team must execute each task with precision. By retaining Williams’ facility specific expertise in-house as a civil servant, NASA reduces long term operational risk.

Williams describes the opportunity to perform this mission critical work in public service as a dream come true, a dream that began decades ago during an elementary school field trip to NASA Stennis. Today, he finds himself working at NASA just as the agency returns to the Moon to stay through Artemis missions and builds a Moon Base, humanity’s first lunar outpost.

“Having the opportunity to play a role at NASA means a lot,” said Williams. “To this day, I am still a kid at heart looking out at the sky and the galaxy. Being a part of the mission and doing things I know we are capable of doing is an amazing, but also humbling, opportunity.”

A world-first scabies control program has drastically reduced cases of the highly contagious parasitic skin disease in Solomon Islands and Fiji, according to a new study.

A new analysis suggests that psychological research is rapidly moving from journals into the machinery of U.S. governance, with findings increasingly cited in policy documents addressing education, health, and social justice. The trend highlights how behavioral science is becoming a preferred source for guidance that aims to be evidence-based, testable, and actionable across institutions.

Researchers reviewed how a broad set of psychological studies is referenced in government policy materials and found that citations are not uniformly distributed. Instead, the most frequent appearances cluster around topics where human behavior, motivation, and learning processes can be translated into measurable outcomes, such as classroom achievement, public health adherence, and interventions aimed at reducing inequities.

The study emphasizes that psychology’s influence often comes through research that offers clear mechanisms—how thoughts, beliefs, and social contexts shape behavior over time. In policy language, these mechanisms become frameworks for designing programs, evaluating impact, and justifying resource allocation, even when the original work is not a “policy trial” per se.

A key technical takeaway is the role of systematic constructs from psychology—such as expectancy, self-efficacy, stigma dynamics, and behavioral choice architectures—being mapped onto policy levers. By linking experimental or observational findings to specific policy implementations, document authors can argue that interventions should work for defined populations under defined conditions.

The authors also note that citation patterns can reflect more than scientific quality. They may signal changing editorial norms within policy agencies, increased availability of review literature, and the growing use of structured evidence standards that encourage referencing peer-reviewed work.

Beyond what is cited, the analysis points to how psychological research can travel: through policy briefs, synthesis reports, and cross-disciplinary writing that converts statistical results into guidance. This translation step matters, because policy documents prioritize clarity and generalizability, while academic papers emphasize boundaries and uncertainty.

In a viral science-news moment for researchers, the findings suggest psychology is not merely being used—it is being “operationalized.” That means researchers’ results are increasingly treated as building blocks for frameworks that guide interventions, performance metrics, and stakeholder communication.

Importantly, the researchers call attention to the potential risks of citation without careful fit. If a policy references a study whose populations, settings, or effect sizes differ from the target context, implementation may underperform or misestimate benefits. The work therefore implicitly argues for tighter alignment between evidence and local decision-making.

Overall, the analysis positions psychological science as an expanding influence in U.S. policy, especially where behavior is central and where policymakers want interventions grounded in empirically tested models. As the citation footprint grows, so does the need for rigorous evidence translation and scrutiny.

Subject of Research: Psychological research citations in U.S. policy documents, especially for education, health, and social justice.

Article Title: Psychological research is increasingly cited in U.S. policy documents especially for education, health and social justice issues.

Article References: Yu, CW., Hu, HY., Furnas, A.C. et al. (2026). Commun Psychol. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-026-00516-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s44271-026-00516-6

Keywords: Psychological research, U.S. policy, education policy, health policy, social justice, citations, evidence-based interventions

Senator Rand Paul said the committee he leads would vote next week on whether to hold Dr. Fauci in contempt of Congress.

A newly published study reports that tropical cyclones were far more common during the Late Paleozoic Ice Age than many climate reconstructions have suggested. Led by Yan, Macarewich, Jiang, and colleagues, the work appears in Nature Communications (2026) and reframes how Earth’s cold interval coexisted with warm-water storm systems.

The researchers investigated geological signatures linked to extreme marine events, combining stratigraphic evidence with climate-model constraints. Their goal was to distinguish ordinary seasonal variability from the kind of widespread, repeated disturbances that characterize tropical cyclone belts.

A key technical advance in the study is the integration of paleoclimate boundary conditions with storm-resolving dynamical reasoning. Instead of treating cyclone activity as a simple function of temperature alone, the team considered large-scale patterns that govern where warm oceans can persist long enough to power rotating storms.

The results point to an expanded region of conditions favorable for cyclogenesis. Even though the planet was globally in an ice-age mode, ocean–atmosphere coupling—driven by uneven heat storage, changing circulation, and shifting storm tracks—likely enabled tropical systems to form across parts of the tropics more frequently than expected.

The authors describe “widespread” activity, implying that cyclone impacts were not limited to rare episodes. This interpretation aligns with the idea that cooling did not fully suppress tropical cyclone energetics; rather, it altered the geography and intensity distribution of storm-prone environments.

Using the preserved sedimentary record, the study connects storm activity to repeated depositional pulses. Those pulses, they argue, reflect basin-scale disturbance rather than local weather anomalies, strengthening the case for frequent tropical cyclone events during this interval.

From a broader perspective, the findings have implications for how we understand resilience and feedbacks in past climates. If cyclones continued to thrive under ice-age background states, then tropical extremes may persist through major global reorganizations.

The study’s viral potential is clear: it challenges an intuitive narrative that “ice ages mean calm tropics,” and replaces it with a more nuanced picture in which warm-water dynamics and circulation shifts can sustain storminess despite global cooling.

Below are the details available from the provided text:

Subject of Research: Tropical cyclone activity during the Late Paleozoic Ice Age.

Article Title: Widespread tropical cyclone activity during the Late Paleozoic Ice Age.

Article References: Yan, Q., Macarewich, S., Jiang, N. et al. Widespread tropical cyclone activity during the Late Paleozoic Ice Age. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-75609-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-75609-1

An overactive immune response in the brain may play a role in Dravet Syndrome, a rare and severe genetic epilepsy that typically begins in infancy, according to Weill Cornell Medicine researchers.