Lipids, or fats, are essential to life. They form the membranes around cells, protecting them from the outside. In nature, there is an enormous diversity of lipids, with each organism having its own unique combination. But what are the minimum lipid requirements for a cell to survive?

With the rapid development of antibiotics in the 1930s, phage therapy—using viruses known as bacteriophages or phages to tackle bacterial infections—fell into oblivion. But as the current rise in antibiotic resistance is making it increasingly difficult to treat bacterial infections, phage therapy is once again sparking interest among physicians and scientists—although it remains complex in practice because of the great diversity and specificity of phages.

The universe just got a whole lot bigger—or at least in the world of computer simulations, that is. In early November, researchers at the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory used the fastest supercomputer on the planet to run the largest astrophysical simulation of the universe ever conducted.

Plant reproduction is a cornerstone of our food system and ecological balance; however, it is a complex process. Plants have fascinating reproductive strategies, some being either male or female, some being hermaphroditic, and still some changing sex over their lifetime. Understanding the mechanisms that determine plant sex is crucial for modern agriculture.

The Japan-led XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) observatory has captured the most detailed portrait yet of gases flowing within Cygnus X-3, one of the most studied sources in the X-ray sky.

Visualizing the potential impacts of a hurricane on people's homes before it hits can help residents prepare and decide whether to evacuate. MIT scientists have developed a method that generates satellite imagery from the future to depict how a region would look after a potential flooding event. The method combines a generative artificial intelligence model with a physics-based flood model to create realistic, birds-eye-view images of a region, showing where flooding is likely to occur given the strength of an oncoming storm.

A new mid-infrared image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features the Sombrero galaxy, also known as Messier 104 (M104). The signature, glowing core seen in visible-light images does not shine, and instead a smooth inner disk is revealed.

A team led by the University of Oxford has solved a mystery that has intrigued scientists for centuries: how does the squirting cucumber squirt?

Researchers Samuel Poincloux (currently at Aoyama Gakuin University) and Kazumasa A. Takeuchi of the University of Tokyo have clarified the conditions under which large numbers of "squishy" grains, which can change their shape in response to external forces, transition from acting like a solid to acting like a liquid.

Diamond rain? Super-ionic water? These are just two proposals that planetary scientists have come up with for what lies beneath the thick, bluish, hydrogen-and-helium atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune, our solar system's unique, but superficially bland, ice giants.