Talking in your sleep is more common in children than adults. Cavan Images via Getty Images Everyone sleeps, but not everyone understands much about sleep. One of my favorite parts of being a sleep psychologist is that when people hear what my job is, they always have tons of […]

Learning is often thought to require a brain. But learning is a broad concept that does not necessarily depend on neurons. If an organism uses information from past experiences to shape its future decisions, it is also learning. Research from my lab, published in the journal PRX Life, shows that

Two hurdles mRNA drugs face are a short half-life and impurities that trigger immune responses. Christoph Burgstedt/Science Photo Library via Getty Images Li Li, UMass Chan Medical School Vaccines have been reliably and affordably protecting people from diseases worldwide for centuries. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, however, vaccine development was still

Sargassum littered beaches in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in spring 2023, making a mess during spring break. Joe Raedle/Getty Images You’ve been planning your dream beach vacation for months, only to arrive and find the shoreline covered in large piles of smelly, brown seaweed, with even more floating offshore. It’s disappointing,

Keeping your food from floating away in space is only half the battle. NASA via Getty Images Imagine trying to swallow a sip of water while your face feels stuffed with congestion, your sense of taste is dulled and your body is floating 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth. That

Expressive humanoid robots are intended to make people feel at ease when interacting with them. Pau Barrena/AFP via Getty Images People become more suspicious of a humanoid robot that makes errors, especially when the robot is an expressive conversation partner. In our new study published in the journal Science Robotics,

Evaporating water is essential to helping your body cool down. Imgorthand/E+ via Getty Images Spring is often a rainy season. If you get caught in a downpour without an umbrella, you will quickly learn what it means to be wet. But what is it about water that makes it wet?

Robotic cloud laboratories powered by AI can carry out experiments remotely and cut costs. J Studios/DigitalVision via Getty Images Artificial intelligence is rapidly learning to autonomously design and run biological experiments, but the systems intended to govern those capabilities are struggling to keep pace. AI company OpenAI and biotech company

While rarely aggressive, the brown recluse is known for the damage its venom can inflict on people. Lisa Zins/Flickr, CC BY-SA Spiders are among Earth’s most resourceful predators, nabbing prey by any means necessary. Orb weavers spin webs for capture. Wolf spiders ambush on the ground at night. Almost all

NASA’s Space Launch System rocket that will take an astronaut crew around the Moon rolls out to the launchpad. Joel Kowsky/NASA via Getty Images The next U.S. trip to the Moon isn’t about planting a flag. It’s about learning how to live and work there. NASA has just reset its

Mahseer swim in the Ramganga River, a major tributary of the Ganges River in South Asia.  Hidden beneath the surface of the world’s rivers, some of Earth’s great animal movements unfold – migrations that rival, in sheer biomass, the famous mass movements of zebra and wildebeest across the Serengeti. For

Cancer-causing viruses like HPV can cause cells to divide indefinitely and, in the case of Henrietta Lacks, become immortal. Tom Deerinck/NIH via Flickr, CC BY-NC In an amazing twist of fate, the aggressive cervical cancer tumor that killed Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year old African American mother, became an essential tool