The manufacturing technique known as 3D printing, now being used everywhere, from aircraft manufacturers to public libraries, has never been more affordable or accessible. Biomedical engineering has particularly benefited from 3D printing as prosthetic devices can be produced and tested more rapidly than ever before. However, 3D printing still faces challenges when printing living tissues, partly due to their complexity and fragility. Now, with support from the U.S. National Science Foundation, a research team at Boston University (BU) and the Wyss Institute at Harvard University has pioneered the use of gallium, a metal that can be molded at room temperature, to create tissue structures in various shapes and sizes. This innovative approach to fabrication, engineered sacrificial capillary pumps for evacuation (ESCAPE), was highlighted in a recent study published in Nature, where the team used gallium casts to mold biomaterials. The scaffolds left behind by these casts are then filled with cells cultured to form tissue structures. Vascular structures were some of the first produced using ESCAPE, particularly because of the challenges faced due to blood vessel complexity. Few techniques exist to build large (millimeter-scale) and small (micrometer-scale) structures in scaffolds made of natural materials, making this multiscale fabrication capability a novel approach. "ESCAPE can be used on several tissue architectures, but we started with vascular forms because blood vessel networks feature many different length scales," said Christopher Chen, director of BU's Biological Design Center and senior author on the study. Chen is also the deputy director of CELL-MET, an NSF Engineering Research Center at BU funded by a $34 million award from NSF, and co-principal investigator on the award for the NSF Science and Technology Center for Engineering MechanoBiology at the University of Pennsylvania. "Our blood vessel demonstrations include trees with many branches, including dead ends and portions that experience fluid flow. This allows us to model a range of healthy structures as well as diseased abnormalities." Following the success of reproducing capillary structures, researchers are hopeful these methods can be used to generate distinct tissue structures found in organs. The reliability of these ESCAPE designs will also be tested using computational modeling, further expanding the types of material reproduced using the process. Credit: Subramanian Sundaram, Boston University and Wyss Institute, Harvard University A metallic (gallium) cast used to model networks of blood vessels and lymphatic vessels that come in close proximity but not in direct contact. The gallium structure is used as a sacrificial cast to mold soft materials into complex structures in the ESCAPE process. "CELL-MET allows engineers, student trainees and medical professionals and their patients to collaborate across a broad innovation ecosystem," said Randy Duran, the lead NSF program director for the CELL-MET award. "Using systems engineering, the team has developed a novel method of fabricating structures such as blood vessels that must be produced at scales ranging from microscopic capillaries to much larger blood vessels, all within centimeter-scale heart patches that will have a broad impact on human health."

U.S. National Science Foundation-supported researchers published new findings suggesting a location where the Yellowstone Caldera could erupt, hundreds of thousands of years from now. The Yellowstone Caldera is one of the largest volcanic systems on Earth. It lurks beneath Yellowstone National Park and touches three states: Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. Over the past two million years, the volcano significantly erupted three times, leaving behind calderas, or massive craters. To better understand future eruptions, Ninfa Bennington, a volcanic seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, used magnetotelluric methods to identify four pots of magma stored underneath the Yellowstone Caldera. Magnetotelluric instruments help scientists identify materials that can conduct electricity beneath Earth's crust. The team used those instruments at over 100 measuring stations across the caldera to identify magma, which has a much higher conductivity than solid rocks. Of the four magma-rich regions the team discovered, only the northeastern one will remain hot enough to keep magma liquid on a long-term scale and eventually erupt. Previous major eruptions took place in different locations across the caldera.

NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, will soon begin scanning the Southern Hemisphere sky every night for 10 years. Among the trillions of cosmic events and objects it will capture will be millions of exploding stars called Type Ia supernovas. These supernovas are produced by exploding white dwarf stars and are some of the brightest cosmic spectacles. They are particularly useful to researchers because they provide a sort of reliable cosmic yardstick that can be used to accurately measure vast distances in the universe. With enough observations of Type Ia supernovas, scientists can measure the universe’s expansion rate and whether it changes over time. Every time NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory detects a change in brightness or position of an object, it will send an alert to the science community. With such rapid detection, Rubin will be the most powerful tool yet for spotting Type Ia supernovas before they fade away. Observations of Type Ia supernovas were used to discover the mysterious phenomenon known as dark energy, thought to be causing the universe to expand faster than expected. In just its first few months of operation, Rubin Observatory will discover many more Type Ia supernovas than were used in the initial discovery of dark energy in the 1990s. The observatory will reveal a much larger set of the supernovas across the universe, allowing scientists to refine our existing map of space and time and create a fuller picture of dark energy’s influence. Current measurements suggest that dark energy might change over time. Understanding the nature of dark energy will in turn refine understanding of the universe's age and evolution, including when stars and galaxies first formed.

NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan spent the week reinforcing the agency's mission to inspire and harness talent everywhere to catalyze the progress of innovation. On Monday, Jan. 13, Panchanathan welcomed the Government of Canada's Chief Science Advisor Mona Nemer to agency headquarters, where they explored opportunities to sync global talent to advance cutting-edge research and underscored the importance of supporting societally relevant and use-inspired research to promote global prosperity. NSF has supported U.S. researchers working with Canadian counterparts in areas such as artificial intelligence, quantum information science, the bioeconomy and energy and resilience. Credit: Charlotte Geary/NSF On January 13, 2025, NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan met with Dr. Mona Nemer, Chief Science Advisor of Canada at NSF Headquarters. On Tuesday, Jan. 14, the director met with Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX-36), Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, where he expressed his excitement for future collaborative efforts between NSF, the committee and the 119th Congress to ensure the U.S. remains at the vanguard of discovery and innovation. Later that day, he met with Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-CA-23), who chaired the House Bipartisan Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and thanked Obernolte for his task force leadership and expressed his great appreciation for the task force's recognition of NSF's longstanding AI investments and the important advancements those sustained investments have enabled. Credit: Chris Hillesheim/NSF On January 14, 2025, NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan met with Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-CA-23). This week, NSF is honoring STEM educators, mentors and early-career researchers advancing the frontiers of science and engineering with prestigious awards. These awards include the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. "These honorees embody the excellence and innovation that drive STEM education and research forward," said the Director. "We are proud to support these educators and scientists whose transformative work inspires students, cultivates a passion for learning and advances the frontiers of discovery." This week, Texascale Magazine also highlighted the upcoming NSF Leadership-Class Computing Facility (NSF LCCF) Horizon, led by the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin. "NSF LCCF represents a pivotal step forward in our mission to support transformative research across all fields of science and engineering," said the Director. "This facility will provide the computational resources necessary to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time, enabling researchers to push the boundaries of what is possible."

The U.S. National Science Foundation honors individuals recognized by the president of the United States with prestigious White House awards. These include the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (PAEMST), the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Together, these awards highlight exceptional K-12 STEM educators, mentors and early-career researchers advancing the frontiers of science and engineering. "These honorees embody the excellence and innovation that drive STEM education and research forward," said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. "We are proud to support these educators and scientists whose transformative work inspires students, cultivates a passion for learning and advances the frontiers of discovery." The PAEMST and PAESMEM programs, supported by NSF, highlight excellence in STEM education and mentorship. PAEMST recognizes K-12 educators who excel at engaging students in STEM learning and inspiring them to pursue careers in these fields. PAESMEM honors mentors who have enhanced participation among individuals, including those with disabilities, who may not have previously considered or had access to opportunities in STEM fields and careers. Among the nearly 400 recipients of the prestigious PECASE award, which recognizes outstanding early-career scientists and engineers, 111 have received support through the NSF CAREER program. Notably, two of this year's PECASE honorees, William Anderegg and Melanie Matchett-Wood, are former winners of the NSF Alan T. Waterman Award, underscoring their exceptional contributions to science and engineering. For more information about these awards, visit PAEMST, PAESMEM and PECASE.

A U.S. National Science Foundation-supported team recently solved an enduring physics enigma, revealing new information about how X-rays form during thunderstorms. Starting in the 1960s, scientists noticed a strange occurrence. When they performed laboratory experiments to replicate lightning and similar phenomena, they noticed that electrons accelerating between two electrodes were sometimes more energetic than expected. When researchers ran tests, they noted that the excess energy was released as sparks, which they recorded as bursts of X-rays. To solve this mystery, Victor Pasko, a professor at Penn State University, and his team used mathematical modeling to discover that during the lightning experiments, electrons interacted with the first electrode material, emitting X-rays made of photons. Some of these photons moved backward, releasing more electrons from the second electrode. This caused a repeating chain reaction; it became a feedback loop capable of producing more energetic electrons. "Our findings help explain the processes that can produce X-rays right before lighting strikes," Pasko said. "These processes had mysteriously remained radio silent and optically dark." New knowledge on X-rays also informs fields like pollution control and plasma-assisted combustion. "Our work could stimulate new research on the production of energetic electrons from solid materials, which would help researchers design innovative medical imaging devices that use X-rays," Pasko said.

U.S. National Science Foundation-supported research shows that caribou will optimize their migration path based on their collective memories. Caribou are the largest species on land in the Arctic. They are not only an important part of the ecology but are also a primary source of food for hundreds of communities. The antlered deer migrate more miles than any other land-based animal but don't always take the same path each year. To figure out how and why caribou migrate during the winter, Eliezer Gurarie, a professor at the State University of New York, and fellow researchers teamed up with the National Park Service, which had put trackable collars on over 300 female caribou in the Western Arctic Caribou Herd. The team tracked the herd's movements and deaths as it traveled across a region spanning over 360,000 square kilometers in northwest Alaska for 11 years, from 2009 to 2020. The researchers discovered that when the animals wintered south of the Kobuk River, they were more likely to survive a warm, windier winter. When they wintered north of the same river, they were more likely to survive when there was more snow and less wind. The caribou decided whether to cross the river each year as an adaptive measure to maximize their chances of survival. "A dead animal doesn't remember anything (or move again) by definition," Gurarie said. "But the general conditions that led to poor survival are certainly remembered by the other caribou." The long-term study revealed that caribou can not only understand risk but also use their knowledge to collectively make decisions that minimize risks for the herd. "This is a pretty clear and dramatic example of the concrete importance of social memory in predicting animal movements," Gurarie said. This adaptive behavior could be especially important for the species as the Arctic undergoes some of the most rapid warming on Earth.

According to research supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, gene duplications being selected over evolutionary time — not the specialization of certain enzymes — allows wood rats to feed on creosote bush, a highly toxic desert shrub. The findings could aid in understanding genetic adaptations to poisonous foods in other mammals and even why individual humans metabolize drugs differently. Around the end of the ice age, two species of wood rats in certain locations were forced to change their diet from juniper to creosote bush when the former died out in their native habitat and creosote invaded. The team of researchers, led by Denise Dearing, a distinguished professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Utah, set out to understand just how these wood rats were able to switch to eating the toxic plant when so many other animals in the area couldn't. They found that natural selection favored genetic changes leading to the duplication of genes that increased levels of existing detoxification enzymes to clear creosote toxins rather than modifying these enzymes to break down the toxic creosote faster. "Rather than new tools specially designed for metabolizing this toxin, evolution made use of existing machinery — just by making more of it," said Dearing. "That's not to say it wasn't a massive change. There wasn't just an increase in the numbers of a single gene; many genes were duplicated across multiple categories known to have a role in detoxification." Humans also vary in the number of detoxification-related genes, potentially related to certain groups having toxic plants in their diet. "It's possible that the variation we see in human detoxification gene number was driven by a similar necessity to eat toxic plants," Dearing added. "These genes also help break down drugs and medicine, so the variation could drive differences in how quickly people break down drugs." The changes in wood rats also involved enhancing the expression of at least one protein associated with one of the genes. Additionally, the researchers found that the change, which occurred independently in two different species of wood rat, took place over a short time relative to the evolutionary history of the species. The work was published in the journal Science.

This week, NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan began the new year by strengthening strategic global partnerships and commemorating the groundbreaking achievements of the nation's brightest scientists and engineers. On Monday, Jan. 6, Panchanathan virtually welcomed delegates from Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, including Minister ABE Toshiko. The group discussed opportunities to deepen U.S.-Japan collaborations in STEM, emphasizing the importance of working together to develop a robust workforce and tackle global challenges in critical technologies. Later in the week, NSF reflected on the National Medal of Science (NMS) ceremony, held at the White House on Jan. 3, honoring the 2024 NMS and National Medal of Technology and Innovation recipients. "Congratulations to the 2024 recipients of the National Medal of Science and National Medal of Technology and Innovation. The distinguished laureates include many exceptionally talented and inspiring scientists and engineers, whose groundbreaking work has been supported by NSF at various stages of their careers," said Panchanathan. "These individuals exemplify NSF's commitment to investing in talent, advancing education and promoting mentorship across the nation. Their achievements will continue to drive progress, strengthen our nation's competitiveness and inspire future generations of innovators."

According to research supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, gene duplications being selected over evolutionary time — not the specialization of certain enzymes — allows wood rats to feed on creosote bush, a highly toxic desert shrub. The findings could aid in understanding genetic adaptations to poisonous foods in other mammals and even why individual humans metabolize drugs differently. Around the end of the ice age, two species of wood rats in certain locations were forced to change their diet from juniper to creosote bush when the former died out in their native habitat and creosote invaded. The team of researchers, led by Denise Dearing, a distinguished professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Utah, set out to understand just how these wood rats were able to switch to eating the toxic plant when so many other animals in the area couldn't. They found that natural selection favored genetic changes leading to the duplication of genes that increased levels of existing detoxification enzymes to clear creosote toxins rather than modifying these enzymes to break down the toxic creosote faster. "Rather than new tools specially designed for metabolizing this toxin, evolution made use of existing machinery — just by making more of it," said Dearing. "That's not to say it wasn't a massive change. There wasn't just an increase in the numbers of a single gene; many genes were duplicated across multiple categories known to have a role in detoxification." Humans also vary in the number of detoxification-related genes, potentially related to certain groups having toxic plants in their diet. "It's possible that the variation we see in human detoxification gene number was driven by a similar necessity to eat toxic plants," Dearing added. "These genes also help break down drugs and medicine, so the variation could drive differences in how quickly people break down drugs." The changes in wood rats also involved enhancing the expression of at least one protein associated with one of the genes. Additionally, the researchers found that the change, which occurred independently in two different species of wood rat, took place over a short time relative to the evolutionary history of the species. The work was published in the journal Science.