Modern life depends on fast and reliable wireless connections. Video calls, streaming services, virtual reality, and smart devices all place growing demands on networks that already serve billions of users. Most wireless data today travels through radio-based technologies such as Wi-Fi and cellular systems.

While these approaches have been highly successful, they face mounting challenges, including crowded radio spectrum, interference in dense indoor spaces, and rising energy consumption as more devices come online.

A promising complementary approach is optic...

A new study suggests that aging stars may be wiping out the giant planets that orbit closest to them. The research, led by astronomers at UCL (University College London) and the University of Warwick, provides fresh evidence that these planets can be pulled inward and destroyed as their host stars evolve.

Stars like our Sun eventually run out of hydrogen fuel...

Researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center—Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC—James) are advancing the understanding of a promising blood test that could personalize treatment and surveillance for patients with human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated throat cancer. The research, published in JAMA Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery, explores how a blood-based test, circulating tumor HPV DNA (ctDNA), changes before and after surgery. The study explores how tumor biology and patient factors influence ctDNA levels. The findings provide important new insight into how this ctDNA test can be used along with pathology reports to improve risk assessment and personalize treatment plans.

“We know that more than 90% ...

While technology has made the world “smaller,” it has also pulled individuals apart, thanks to mobile phones and other devices that command our attention. Cornell University researchers are using technology, in the form of a mirror-equipped robot, to help bring people together. Members of the Architectural Robotics Lab, led by Keith Evan Green, have built a four-foot-tall robot—dubbed MirrorBot—with dual mirrors that, when placed in front of a pair of strangers, let each participant see themself in one mirror and the other person in the other.

In a study involving participants in a waiting-room setting, MirrorBot spurred conversations, playful excha...