Science

Credit: David Shankbone On June 24, the date of the New York City Democratic mayoral primary and one of the hottest days of 2025, I squeeze voting into my morning before cramming into a busy and poorly ventilated train car. I cast my ballot for frontrunner Zohran Mamdani who, throughout his campaign, advocated for accessible transportation and free public buses. (His victory will be announced later that evening.) The train’s chimes sound, warning commuters of the closing doors. But passengers, desperate to escape the torturous heat on the platform, try to pry the doors open again to enter the chilly interior. The next train comes, and I feel a breeze. It’s unpleasantly warm. It’s not yet 8 a.m. and somehow already in the mid-80s—at least at street level. In the tunnels, it feels m...

On 27 March 2020, Science published the Research Article “Flux-induced topological superconductivity in full-shell nanowires” by S. Vaitiekėnas et al. (1). After readers expressed concerns about whether the authors selected data for publication that were not representative of the entirety of the data collected in association with the project (2), Science published an Editorial Expression of Concern (3) and contacted the authors’ institution (University of Copenhagen), which convened an external expert panel to conduct an investigation. In February 2024, the panel released a detailed report, to which Science directed readers in an Editor’s Note (4). The report concluded in part that “[t]he presented data do, for the most part, represent the outcome of the experiments: the authors have exerc...

The jacket is thicker when dry (left) and thinner when moist (right)Xiaofeng Jiang/Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics 2023 If you find yourself endlessly taking your jacket on and off when the sun disappears behind clouds, a material that becomes thinner when you sweat could provide a solution. Researchers have previously developed self-adapting materials that can cool you down in hot climates by increasing the amount of heat, in the form of infrared radiation, that the material lets through. But these materials tend to work in only one direction and are poor at keeping people warm in cooler climates. Xiuqiang Li at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in China and his colleagues have developed a jacket that contains a layer that curv...

Is that gravitational wave signal coming from a black hole, or something even stranger?titoOnz / Alamy Exotic viscous stars could reflect ripples of space-time, mimicking the signals we observe from black holes. Since 2015, researchers have been learning how to see the contents of the universe by tracking not just light waves but also gravitational waves: ripples in the fabric of the universe. Jaime Redondo–Yuste at the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark and his colleagues have now shown that, like waves of light, gravitational waves can be reflected – but only off odd stars with an unusually viscous texture. The researchers started by questioning whether a mirror for gravitational waves could even exist. Although some past studies suggested it could, they struggled ...

Early this year, Canada pledged CA$15 million toward climate adaptation projects in Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. It has teamed up with the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), a Nepal-based NGO. This contribution is a clear instance of climate adaptation finance—that is, funding toward projects that will help reduce vulnerability to climate change. The project, which will run over five years, is composed of three parts that will address separate but related issues: (1) water scarcity, (2) the resiliency of women and Indigenous communities and (3) the upscaling and spread of similar adaptation projects globally. The Himalayas in Nepal, part of the region where ICIMOD operates. Credit: “Nepal Himalayan Adventure 2012” by Frontierofficial, CC BY 2.0 The Hi...