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June 5, 2025—A low-cost fertility test powered by sperm, videos of a "tower of worms" and Hank Green on humanity's capacity to solve the climate crisis. —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | Roundworms tagged with glowing proteins create a tower in the lab. Perez et al. (2025) Current Biology (CC-BY-4.0) | | | | |
Fog shrouds the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida in this photograph from February 25, 2025. Gregg Newton/AFP via Getty | | Fierce congressional battles lay ahead, but the Trump Administration's proposed fiscal-year 2026 budget includes cuts to NASA and the National Science Foundation that would prove ruinous to U.S. space science, reports freelance science journalist Nadia Drake. Corrected for inflation, NASA's budget would be reduced to 1961 levels, and NSF's budget, which supports ground-based astronomy, would be slashed by 57 percent. Programs in artificial intelligence, quantum information science, and human missions to the moon and Mars would be conserved.Why this matters: If this budget were adopted, the following projects are among those that likely would be canceled or put on life support: the Mars Sample Return program, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, two future Venus missions, Juno mission at Jupiter, the New Horizons mission that flew by Pluto and two Mars orbiters. The following might survive: the Hubble and Webb space telescopes (but not the Chandra and Fermi space telescopes), Dragonfly mission to Titan, Europa Clipper Spacecraft, Vera C. Rubin Observatory, Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array radio telescope, Giant Magellan Telescope, Next Generation Very Large Array, and IceCube Neutrino Observatory. What the experts say: "It's an end-game scenario for science at NASA. It's not just the facilities. You're punching a generation-size hole, maybe a multigenerational hole, in the scientific and technical workforce. You don't just Cryovac these people and pull them out when the money comes back. People are going to move on," says Joel Parriott, of the American Astronomical Society. | | A new, low-cost fertility test, proven on bull semen, relies on basic physics to measure sperm activity. If shown to work on human samples with varying pH levels, white blood cell counts and fructose concentrations, such a test could "help people tackle some conception issues from home," reports science writer Joanna Thompson. Access to accurate fertility test results can spur lifestyle choices linked to better sperm performance, such as quitting smoking or laying off booze. How it works: The new technique relies on an indicator of the strength of semen's hydrogen bonds, a stand-in for numerous and lively sperm. A flexible plastic strip bearing a drop of bull semen was suspended so it just made contact with a water-resistant surface. Then the strip was quickly pulled away. A sample with weaker hydrogen bonds between the surface and the semen, and thus many highly active sperm in the fluid, broke away from the surface more quickly than one with fewer and less active sperm.
Why this matters: Lab tests for sperm activity are costly and time-consuming. Current at-home tests are not as accurate. A new, more accurate and low-cost, at-home test could give more people information while also helping them dodge the stigma of male infertility. | | On the uninhabited Isla Esp├нritu Santo, seabird ecologist Cecilia Soldatini (above right) and her team work with an unusual field technician: a century-old cactus. A device attached to the cactus collects data from tagged magnificent frigatebirds (Fregata magnificens). "The GPS tracking revealed that frigatebirds cross the Baja California Peninsula up to three times per day, an unusual behavior for a seabird," Soldatini says. "Tracking the frigatebirds' movements helps to identify feeding hotspots that might be crucial for other top predators, such as marine mammals and sharks, as well as their prey." Nature | 3 min | | Read every article that interests you with a subscription to Scientific American. We offer special discounts for Today in Science readers! | | - Humanity is neither too evil nor too stupid to solve the climate crisis, writes science communicator, author and YouTuber Hank Green. Coal-burning was invented by "extremely smart" people to solve urgent problems facing humanity. "We are problem-solving machines, and we will solve this problem too," Green states in this hopeful essay. | 5 min read
| | I was excited to read Hank Green's essay, mentioned above, on human nature and climate change. A family member's recent throw-away line on Strava tipped me off to "Dear Hank & John," a clever (and "dubious") advice podcast hosted by brothers John and Hank Green, familiar to early YouTube watchers as the Vlogbrothers. They were a sensation at the time and fortunately remain so today across many formats.
| | Thank you for reading. Send your comments, questions or favorite science pod or video channel to: newsletters@sciam.com. —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | | | |
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