What is the earliest spark that ignites the memory-robbing march of Alzheimer’s disease? Why do some people with Alzheimer’s-like changes in the brain never go on to develop dementia? These questions have bedeviled neuroscientists for decades.

Now, a team of researchers at Harvard Medical School may have found an answer: lithium deficiency in the brain.

The work, published in Nature, shows for the first time that lithium occurs naturally in the brain, shields it from ...

The imaging team of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has taken advantage of clear skies on the red planet to capture one of the sharpest panoramas of its mission so far. Visible in the mosaic, which was stitched together from 96 images taken at a location the science team calls “Falbreen,” are a rock that appears to lie on top of a sand ripple, a boundary line between two geologic units, and hills as distant as 40 miles (65 kilometers) away...

Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems far beyond the reach of today’s fastest supercomputers. But today’s machines are notoriously fragile. The quantum bits, or “qubits,” that store and process information are easily disrupted by their environment, leading to errors that quickly accumulate.

One of the most promising approaches to overcoming this challenge is topological quantum computing, which aims to protect quantum information by encoding it in the geometric properties of exotic particles called anyons...

A recent study led by Dilda Berdikhan, a Ph.D. student from the Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory (XAO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has uncovered compelling evidence that a cloud–cloud collision has triggered active star formation in the molecular cloud G013.313+0.193 (hereafter G013.313) in the Milky Way. The findings are published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Using observational data from the NanShan 26-m Radio Telescope and the Delingha 13...