Plants, toads, and mushrooms "can all produce psychedelic substances," writes ScienceAlert.

"And now their powers have been combined in one plant." [S]cientists have taken the genes these organisms use to make five natural psychedelics and introduced them into a tobacco plant ( Nicotiana benthamiana), which then produced all five compounds simultaneously. As interest grows in psychedelics as potential treatments for illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD, the newly developed system could offer scientists a new way to produce these compounds for research purposes...

[P]rogress in this field remains limited, in part due to regulatory restrictions, underscoring the need for more research. This creates practical challenges for scientists. "Traditionally, the supply of psychedelics relies on natural producers, mainly plants, fungi, and the Sonoran Desert toad," the researchers write. "Harvesting these organisms for their psychoactive compounds raises ecological and ethical concerns, being increasingly threatened by habitat loss and overexploitation..."

[T]he team carefully monitored the plant's production of five psychedelic tryptamines: DMT originally from plants; psilocin and psilocybin from mushrooms; and bufotenin and 5-MeO-DMT from toads. The modified tobacco plants were found to produce all five compounds simultaneously.
The article points out that the researchers "also took it a step further." By tweaking the enzymes they were able to "produce modified versions of the compounds that do not naturally occur in plants, and which may also have therapeutic value."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: When it comes to large language model-powered tools, there are generally two broad categories of users. On one side are those who treat AI as a powerful but sometimes faulty service that needs careful human oversight and review to detect reasoning or factual flaws in responses. On the other side are those who routinely outsource their critical thinking to what they see as an all-knowing machine. Recent research goes a long way to forming a new psychological framework for that second group, which regularly engages in "cognitive surrender" to AI's seemingly authoritative answers. That research also provides some experimental examination of when and why people are willing to outsource their critical thinking to AI, and how factors like time pressure and external incentives can affect that decision.

Overall, across 1,372 participants and over 9,500 individual trials, the researchers found subjects were willing to accept faulty AI reasoning a whopping 73.2 percent of the time, while only overruling it 19.7 percent of the time. The researchers say this "demonstrate[s] that people readily incorporate AI-generated outputs into their decision-making processes, often with minimal friction or skepticism." In general, "fluent, confident outputs [are treated] as epistemically authoritative, lowering the threshold for scrutiny and attenuating the meta-cognitive signals that would ordinarily route a response to deliberation," they write. These kinds of effects weren't uniform across all test subjects, though. Those who scored highly on separate measures of so-called fluid IQ were less likely to rely on the AI for help and were more likely to overrule a faulty AI when it was consulted. Those predisposed to see AI as authoritative in a survey, on the other hand, were much more likely to be led astray by faulty AI-provided answers.

Despite the results, though, the researchers point out that "cognitive surrender is not inherently irrational." While relying on an LLM that's wrong half the time (as in these experiments) has obvious downsides, a "statistically superior system" could plausibly give better-than-human results in domains such as "probabilistic settings, risk assessment, or extensive data," the researchers suggest. "As reliance increases, performance tracks AI quality," the researchers write, "rising when accurate and falling when faulty, illustrating the promises of superintelligence and exposing a structural vulnerability of cognitive surrender." In other words, letting an AI do your reasoning means your reasoning is only ever going to be as good as that AI system. As always, let the prompter beware.

The Artemis II crew has passed 100,000 miles from Earth and is now on a "free-return" path around the moon after a successful "translunar" injection burn. "Ladies and gentlemen, I am so, so excited to be able to tell you that for the first time since 1972 during Apollo 17, human beings have left Earth orbit," NASA's Dr Lori Glaze told a news conference. The Guardian reports: The astronauts -- the Americans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and a Canadian, Jeremy Hansen -- spent their first day in space performing checks on the spacecraft, which had never carried humans before. Later they had time to speak to US TV networks. "I've got to tell you, there is nothing normal about this," Wiseman told ABC News from the cramped interior of the capsule. "Sending four humans 250,000 miles away is a herculean effort, and we are now just realising the gravity of that."

Orion will travel about 4,000 miles (6,400km) beyond the moon before turning back, providing unprecedented and illuminated views of the lunar far side. If all proceeds smoothly, the astronauts will set a record by venturing farther from Earth than any human before -- more than 250,000 miles. The mission is part of a longer-term plan to repeatedly return to the moon, with the aim of establishing a permanent base that will offer a platform for further exploration. After the final engine burn, NASA said Wiseman took two "spectacular" images of Earth.

The first photo, called Hello, World, "shows the vast expanse of blue that is the Atlantic Ocean, framed by a thin glow of the atmosphere as the Earth eclipses the Sun and green auroras at either pole," reports the BBC. Another photo shows the view of Earth from inside the Orion spacecraft.

Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot writes: CU Boulder researchers are reporting that they have discovered an appetite-suppressing compound in python blood that helps the snakes consume enormous meals and go months without eating yet remain metabolically healthy. The findings were published in the journal Natural Metabolism on March 19, 2026.

Pythons can grow as big as a telephone pole, swallow an antelope whole, and go months or even years without eating -- all while maintaining a healthy heart and plenty of muscle mass. In the hours after they eat, research has shown, their heart expands 25% and their metabolism speeds up 4,000-fold to help them digest their meal. The team measured blood samples from ball pythons and Burmese pythons, fed once every 28 days, immediately after they ate a meal. In all, they found 208 metabolites that increased significantly after the pythons ate. One molecule, called para-tyramine-O-sulfate (pTOS) soared 1,000-fold.

Further studies, done with Baylor University researchers, showed that when they gave high doses of pTOS to obese or lean mice, it acted on the hypothalamus, the appetite center of the brain, prompting weight loss without causing gastrointestinal problems, muscle loss or declines in energy. The study found that pTOS, which is produced by the snake's gut bacteria, is not present in mice naturally. It is present in human urine at low levels and does increase somewhat after a meal. But because most research is done in mice or rats, pTOS has been overlooked. "We've basically discovered an appetite suppressant that works in mice without some of the side-effects that GLP-1 drugs have," said senior author Leslie Leinwand, a distinguished professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology who has been studying pythons in her lab for two decades. Drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy act on the hormone glucagon-like petide-1 (GLP-1).

Even on NASA's Artemis II mission around the moon, astronauts apparently still have to deal with broken Microsoft Outlook. One of the crew members, Reid Wiseman, jokingly reported that he had "two Microsoft Outlooks" and neither worked. 404 Media reports: On April 1, four astronauts from the U.S. and Canada embarked on a 10-day flight to loop around the moon. Spotted by VGBees podcast host Niki Grayson on the NASA livestream of live views from the , around 2 a.m. ET, mission control acknowledges an issue with a process control system and offers to remote in -- yes, like how your office IT guy would pause his CoD campaign to log into Okta for you because you used the wrong password too many times.

One of the astronauts, Reid Wiseman, says that's chill, but while they're in there: "I also see that I have two Microsoft Outlooks, and neither one of those are working." Astronauts are trained for decades in some of the most physically and mentally grueling environments of any career. They're some of the smartest people on the planet, and they have to be, before we strap them to 3.2 million pounds of jet fuel and make them do complex experiments and high-stakes decisions for days on end. And yet, once they get up there, fucking Outlook is borked.

NASA's Artemis II mission has launched four astronauts around the moon and back, marking humanity's first crewed lunar voyage in 53 years and the first test flight of NASA's Orion capsule and Space Launch System (SLS) with people on board. Five minutes into the flight, Commander Reid Wiseman saw the team's target: "We have a beautiful moonrise, we're headed right at it," he said from the capsule. The Associated Press reports: Artemis II set sail from the same Florida launch site that sent Apollo's explorers to the moon so long ago. The handful still alive cheered this next generation's grand adventure as the Space Launch System rocket thundered into the early evening sky, a nearly full moon beckoning some 248,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away.

Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman led the charge into space with "Let's go to the moon!" accompanied by pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada's Jeremy Hansen. It was the most diverse lunar crew ever with the first woman, person of color and non-U.S. citizen riding in NASA's new Orion capsule.

Carrying three Americans and one Canadian, the 32-story rocket rose from NASA's Kennedy Space Center where tens of thousands gathered to witness the dawn of this new era. Crowds also jammed the surrounding roads and beaches, reminiscent of the Apollo moonshots in the 1960s and '70s. It is NASA's biggest step yet toward establishing a permanent lunar presence. Visit NASA's Artemis II Launch Day blog for the latest updates.

Developing...

MIT Technology Review discovered that startup R3 Bio has pitched an ethically and scientifically explosive long-term vision beyond its public work on non-sentient monkey "organ sacks": creating human "brainless clones" or replacement bodies for organs as part of an extreme life-extension agenda. From the report: Imagine it like this: a baby version of yourself with only enough of a brain structure to be alive in case you ever need a new kidney or liver. Or, alternatively, he has speculated, you might one day get your brain placed into a younger clone. That could be a way to gain a second lifespan through a still hypothetical procedure known as a body transplant.

The fuller context of R3's proposals, as well as activities of another stealth startup with related goals, have not previously been reported. They've been kept secret by a circle of extreme life-extension proponents who fear that their plans for immortality could be derailed by clickbait headlines and public backlash. And that's because the idea can sound like something straight from a creepy science fiction film. One person who heard R3's clone presentation, and spoke on the condition of anonymity, was left reeling by its implications and shaken by [R3 founder John Schloendorn's] enthusiastic delivery. The briefing, this person said, was like a "close encounter of the third kind" with "Dr. Strangelove." [...]

MIT Technology Review found no evidence that R3 has cloned anyone, or even any animal bigger than a rodent. What we did find were documents, additional meeting agendas, and other sources outlining a technical road map for what R3 called "body replacement cloning" in a 2023 letter to supporters. That road map involved improvements to the cloning process and genetic wiring diagrams for how to create animals without complete brains. A main purpose of the fundraising, investors say, was to support efforts to try these techniques in monkeys from a base in the Caribbean. That offered a path to a nearer-term business plan for more ethical medical experiments and toxicology testing -- if the company could develop what it now calls monkey "organ sacks." However, this work would clearly inform any possible human version.

Researchers at the University of Waterloo say a new "quadratic quantum gravity" framework could explain the universe's rapid early expansion without adding extra ingredients to Einstein's theory by hand. The idea is especially notable because it makes testable predictions, including a minimum level of primordial gravitational waves that future experiments may be able to detect. "Even though this model deals with incredibly high energies, it leads to clear predictions that today's experiments can actually look for," said Dr. Niayesh Afshordi, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Waterloo and Perimeter Institute (PI). "That direct link between quantum gravity and real data is rare and exciting." Phys.org reports: The research team found that the Big Bang's rapid early expansion can emerge naturally from this simple, consistent theory of quantum gravity, without adding any extra ingredients. This early burst of expansion, often called inflation, is a central idea in modern cosmology because it explains why the universe looks the way it does today.

Their model also predicts a minimum amount of primordial gravitational waves, which are tiny ripples in spacetime geometry created in the first moments after the Big Bang. These signals may be detectable in upcoming experiments, offering a rare chance to test ideas about the universe's quantum origins.

[...] The team plans to refine their predictions for upcoming experiments to explore how their framework connects to particle physics and other puzzles about the early universe. Their long-term goal is to strengthen the bridge between quantum gravity and observational cosmology. The research has been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Researchers found that common nitrile and latex lab gloves can shed stearate particles that closely resemble microplastics, potentially "increasing the risk of false positives when studying microplastic pollution," reports ScienceDaily.

"We may be overestimating microplastics, but there should be none," said Anne McNeil, senior author of the study and U-M professor of chemistry, macromolecular science and engineering. "There's still a lot out there, and that's the problem." From the report: Researchers found that these gloves can unintentionally transfer particles onto lab tools used to analyze air, water, and other environmental samples. The contamination comes from stearates, which are not plastics but can closely resemble them during testing. Because of this, scientists may be detecting particles that are not true microplastics. To reduce this issue, U-M researchers Madeline Clough and Anne McNeil recommend using cleanroom gloves, which release far fewer particles.

Stearates are salt-based, soap-like substances added to disposable gloves to help them separate easily from molds during manufacturing. However, their chemical similarity to certain plastics makes them difficult to distinguish in lab analyses, increasing the risk of false positives when studying microplastic pollution. "For microplastics researchers who have these impacted datasets, there's still hope to recover them and find a true quantity of microplastics," said researcher and recent doctoral graduate Madeline Clough. "This field is very challenging to work in because there's plastic everywhere," McNeil said. "But that's why we need chemists and people who understand chemical structure to be working in this field."

The findings have been published in the journal Analytical Methods.

Project Hail Mary has now grossed $300.8 million globally after earning another $54.1 million this weekend from 86 markets, reports Variety, noting that after just nine days it's now Amazon MGM's highest-grossing film ever.

And last weekend it had the best opening for a "non-franchise" movie in three years, adds the Associated Press — the best since 2023's Oppenheimer: Project Hail Mary, which cost nearly $200 million to produce... is on an enviable trajectory. Its second weekend hold was even better than that of Oppenheimer, which collected $46.7 million in its follow-up frame.
But the movie is based on a book by The Martian author Andy Weir, described by one news outlet as "a former software engineer and self-proclaimed 'lifelong space nerd'... known for his realistic and clear-eyed approach to scientifically technical stories." Project Hail Mary has plenty of real science in it, whether it be space mathematics, physics, or astrobiology... The film's namesake project is even comprised of the space programs of other nations, such as Roscosmos from Russia, the Chinese space program, and the European Space Agency...

The story relies on work NASA has done regarding exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system... [This includes a nearby star named Tau Ceti approximately 12 light years from Earth which is orbited by four planets — two once thought to be in "the habitable zone" where liquid water can exist.] Tau Ceti has long been the setting used by sci-fi authors and storytellers. Isaac Asimov used it for his Robot series. Arthur C. Clarke's "Rama" spacecraft came across a mysterious tetrahedron in the Tau Ceti system. Authors Ursula K. Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson also set stories in Tau Ceti, and it also serves as the extrasolar setting of the 1968 Jane Fonda film Barbarella. Most recently, the Bungie video game Marathon is set in the far-off system, serving as part of the background story for the extraction shooter, about a large-scale plan to colonize the Tau Ceti system.
The movie also mentions 40 Eridani A, according to the article, a real star about 16 light-years away that was said to be orbited by the fictional planet Vulcan, home to Star Trek's Mr. Spock. It's also mentioned in Frank Herbert's Dune as the star system of the planets Ix and Richese ("noted for their machine culture and miniaturisation," according to the Stellar Australis site's "Project Dune" page).

And in a video on IMAX's YouTube channel, the film's directors explain how for a crucial scene they used non-visible-light photography, which is also an important part of modern astronomy. "Even the credits incorporate real astrophotography into the final moments," the article points out, using the work of award-winning Australian astrophotographer Rod Prazeres. "The only difference between his work of capturing space data in images and what ended up on the big screen was that he gave them 'starless versions' of his photographs to make it easier to place credit text over them."

Prazeres wrote on his web site that he was touched the producers "wanted the real thing... In a world where CGI and AI are everywhere, it meant a lot..."

How powerful is Jupiter's lightning? Thick clouds cover the view, notes Science magazine. But using an instrument on NASA's Juno spacecraft (orbiting Jupiter for the past decade), researchers determined Jupiter's lightning bolts are 100 to 10,000 times more energetic than earth's: A single bolt of lightning on Earth releases about 1 billion joules of energy. That means the most extreme bolts of jovian lightning carry 10 trillion joules of energy, equivalent to 2400 tons of TNT, or one-sixth the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Based on the rates of flashes seen by Juno, storms on this tempestuous world can unleash the force of multiple nuclear weapons every minute...

The four storms Juno studied were monstrous, says Michael Wong, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Berkeley and one of the study's authors. There were three flashes per second on average, often emerging from the hearts of storms that are 3000 kilometers across, longer than the distance from New York City to Denver.
The researchers used the Hubble Space Telescope (and photographs from Juno's camera) to track Jupiter's storms with such precision that their radiometer could then pick out individual lightning flashes, according to the article. "It's just a massive ball of gas. It makes sense that there's very energetic lightning happening," says Daniel Mitchard, a lightning physicist at Cardiff University who wasn't involved with the new study. But confirming such suspicions "is exciting," he says, because lightning plays an important role in forging complex chemistry — including the sort that primordial life is built on.
Thanks to Slashdot reader sciencehabit for sharing the article.

In a new 4,000-word article, CNN tells the story of a retired appellate paralegal and grandmother in her early 70s who was treated for depression with psilocybin. CNN notes there's now retreats featuring psilocybin in a few countries — and while psilocybin is illegal under United States federal law, "In Oregon, 5,935 clients received psilocybin services through Oregon's state-regulated program in 2025." High doses of psilocybin are effective in treating depression, a growing body of research suggests, with promise for other conditions, like PTSD and addiction, said Dr. Albert Garcia-Romeu, associate director of the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University... Some researchers suggest it disrupts entrenched traffic patterns in the brain or grows new neuron connections to change thinking. Others say the results from psilocybin could have to do with its anti-inflammatory effect, Garcia-Romeu said...

Colorado became the second state to make psilocybin legal with a 2023 law and issued its first healing center" last year. A law adopted in New Mexico last year established that state's Medical Psilocybin Program, now in development... Psilocybin seems to be "knocking on the door of FDA approval," said Dr. Lynn Marie Morski, president of the Psychedelic Medicine Association, which educates health care providers on the therapeutic use of psychedelics so they can answer patients' questions through the lenses of clinical evidence and harm reduction. Psilocybin therapy first received a "breakthrough therapy" designation for treatment-resistant depression from the US Food and Drug Administration in 2018, and now psilocybin drug products are on track to be submitted to the FDA for possible approval in the not-too-distant future.

While psilocybin is illegal under United States federal law, more states are creating their own paths for legal use under state laws.

After decades of studying, this week NASA announced "a major step forward in bringing nuclear power and propulsion from the lab to space." NASA will launch the Space Reactor-1 Freedom, the first nuclear powered interplanetary spacecraft, to Mars before the end of 2028, demonstrating advanced nuclear electric propulsion in deep space. Nuclear electric propulsion provides an extraordinary capability for efficient mass transport in deep space and enables high power missions beyond Jupiter where solar arrays are not effective.
Steven Sinacore, NASA's program executive for Fission Surface Power who will also oversee the SR-1 Freedom mission, emphasized to CNN that "On the ground the reactor is off. There's no radiation coming from it. It doesn't actually turn on until you're up in space, and that's where the radiation comes from." NASA says they aim to develop the capabilities required "for sustained exploration beyond the Moon and eventual journeys to Mars and the outer solar system."

And Space Reactor-1 Freedom will carry a fleet of tiny helicopters (much like Ingenuity) to explore Mars, reports Space.com: Whereas Ingenuity was a technology demonstrator, however, the Skyfall fleet will have concrete tasks. Chief among them is scout: If all goes to plan, the little choppers will help NASA assess the potential of their target area (wherever that happens to be) to support human exploration. The Skyfall helicopters will carry cameras and ground-penetrating radar to scout a future landing site, to understand the slopes and hazards for human-scale landers," Steve Sinacore, the program executive for NASA's Space Reactors Office, said during the briefing. "They will also map and characterize the subsurface water ice to find out where the water ice deposits are, along with the size, depth and other important characteristics," he added...

And that might not be the end of the line for SR-1 Freedom; NASA may decide to keep flying the spacecraft out into the solar system after it deploys the Skyfall choppers, according to Sinacore. The mission architecture, like much of NASA's exploration portfolio, is not yet finalized.

Long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino writes: ... but the CERN Project "Antimatter in motion" just did it. For the first time in history researchers at CERN have transported 92 antiprotons on a truck in a specially designed magnetic enclosure. The test-drive went so well that the researchers spontaneously decided to go another round... The purpose of the experiment was to test the feasibility of transporting antimatter to other facilities in Europe to conduct further antimatter research. German news Tagesschau has a nice report.
CNN reports that the antiproton enclosure was nearly six feet tall and weighed about 1,760 pounds. And Smithsonian magazine explains that it trapped the antiprotons in a vacuum chamber that had to be cooled to around -450 degrees Fahrenheit: Experts used a crane to carefully move the box of precious cargo from a lab onto a truck, which took about three hours, per the Associated Press' Jamey Keaten. Then, they drove the vehicle for roughly 30 minutes around CERN's campus, and subsequently returned the antiprotons to the lab. They worked with so little antimatter that even if it did touch ordinary matter and annihilate, it would release a small amount of energy detectable only by a special instrument, reports the AP.

UK startup Pulsar Fusion says it has achieved the first plasma ignition inside a nuclear fusion rocket engine prototype -- a huge step for space travel that could cut missions to Mars "from months-long journeys to just a few weeks," reports Euronews. From the report: Pulsar Fusion revealed the milestone during a live stream at Amazon's MARS Conference, hosted by Jeff Bezos in California this week, with CEO Richard Dinan calling it an "exceptional moment" for the company. The team successfully created plasma - an intensely hot, electrically charged state of matter, often described as the fourth state of matter - using electric and magnetic fields inside its experimental and early prototype "Sunbird fusion exhaust system." [...] The company now plans further testing of its Sunbird system to improve performance. Upcoming upgrades include more powerful superconducting magnets designed to better contain and control plasma.