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Today:
Science Quiz: The Olympics are here
NEWS | 14 February 2026
Science Quiz: The Olympics are hereTest your science knowledge with this weekly news quiz! We’d love to hear from you! E-mail us at games@sciam.com to share your experience.

Top Stories:
Axolotls can regenerate their thymus, a complex immune system organ
NEWS | 14 February 2026
By providing your email address, you also consent to having the email address shared with third parties for those purposes. But according to recent research, these frilly-headed salamanders, which are native to lakes and wetlands around Mexico City, can perform an even more extraordinary biological feat: they can completely regrow their thymus, a complex organ instrumental to the immune system in most vertebrates. Previous work suggested that some animals can partially regrow thymuses, but the co-authors of the new paper, published in Science Immunology, were surprised to see axolotls completely rebuild the intricately structured organ from nothing. “A full, functional regeneration of a complex immune organ wasn’t something I expected.”The team next tested the function of the regenerated thymuses by transplanting them into other axolotls. “Axolotls are essentially nature’s ‘master key’ for regeneration research,” Demircan says.

World:
How roses evolved to become the flower of Valentine’s Day
NEWS | 14 February 2026
It’s estimated that more than 250 million roses are produced for Valentine’s Day every year, and florists sell more on that day than on any other holiday. Roses first emerged some 35 million years ago during the Eocene epoch, which was when early horses and canids first appeared. Modern roses, as we know them, date to 1867, when enthusiasts in Europe bred a “hybrid perpetual” rose with a “tea rose.” The product, a “hybrid tea” rose, had the classic rose shape—a pointed bud centered high on a single stem. Indeed, if you’re lucky enough to receive a bouquet of roses for Valentines Day this year, chances are that it’s a hybrid rose, although hybrid tea roses are just one of more than 40 classes of the flower. “People were producing roses at such a fever for this flower form that, genetically, things got lost,” he says.

Current Events:
8 romance novels for readers who love science, too
NEWS | 14 February 2026
Scientific American ’s staff recommends eight books that are as full of science as they are of loveValentine’s Day is here. Atmosphere: A Love Storyby Taylor Jenkins ReidBallantine Books, 2025(Tags: Historical Fiction, LGBTQ+)On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. Atmosphere was ranked among Scientific American’s best fiction books of 2025, and it’s easy to understand why. I loved the world that Older has created by combining real science and more fantastical science fiction. If you’re looking for a story that’s infused with, but not driven by, romance, this is the book for you.

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SPONSORED | 14 February 2026
SmartSync is a mobile application, compatible with any Android smartphone, that syncs your important data to your email. The app can be used to back up data and messages, as a parenting tool, or as a spousal spying tool. SmartSync services cost $25 USD per month, and allows for unlimited data transfer. The app can be found Here

News Flash:
Your guide to 29 wildly different theories of consciousness
NEWS | 14 February 2026
By providing your email address, you also consent to having the email address shared with third parties for those purposes. Some of these theories have many publications to their name, such as global workspace theories, higher-order theories and integrated information theory, three of the field’s leading models. This may explain why quantum theories of consciousness, which are fascinating but not yet grounded in much evidence, have been proposed so many times. Predictive processing theories, which are also influential in the field, are notably absent, perhaps because they originated as theories of perception rather than consciousness. 11; April 2021 (data)THEORY CHARACTERISTICSAll of these proposals are wildly different, and only some are supported by evidence.

Latest:
JWST could finally spot the very first stars in the universe
NEWS | 14 February 2026
Known as dinosaur stars for both their primeval nature and their immense size, Population III stars existed only when the universe was very young. By far the most abundant form of matter in the universe, dark matter has evaded detection by the most advanced laboratories on Earth. If these structures are dominated by dark matter, they will rule out certain theories of dark matter under which it couldn’t form such small structures. Future observations of these and other lensed stars can tell us more about what dark matter can and can’t be. These studies also suggest that dark matter may have bizarre quantum properties that scientists call “fuzzy,” giving dark matter weird wavelike characteristics.

Breaking:
Life’s evil twins—mirror cells—could doom Earth if scientists don’t stop them
NEWS | 14 February 2026
Already biochemists can create increasingly complex mirror molecules, including enzymes that build mirror RNA. Groups of chiral molecules are usually referred to as “left-handed” or “right-handed,” depending on which orientation they have in common. Your immune system also has an adaptive system of specialized immune cells and antibodies that attack and destroy invading microbes. As the danger of mirror cells became more apparent, a team of scientists began working on what to do. Cyanobacteria are simple organisms that derive nutrition directly from sunlight and carbon dioxide, and they often don’t require any chiral nutrients.

Trending:
How extremophile molds are destroying museum artifacts
NEWS | 14 February 2026
Most frustrating for curators, these xerophilic molds are undetectable by conventional means. Hats from Denmark’s Roskilde Museum that have been stored in a climate-controlled warehouse outside Copenhagen exhibit shimmery, whitish patches from xerophilic molds. Genetic analysis revealed they were four related species of xerophilic molds in a group known as Aspergillus section restricti. To that end, Sterflinger and her team in Vienna are busy trying to determine just how little water xerophilic molds can survive on. Letting go of the shame is the only way we can learn about these molds, Pinzari says.

This Just In:
Can a buried time capsule beat Earth’s geology and deep time?
NEWS | 14 February 2026
The same is true for anyone aspiring today to send such an envoy into the geological deep future. If we aspire to send a time capsule deep into the future, then Holland’s work is sobering. Some of this rock is from pieces of deep ocean crust that occasionally got smudged onto the sides of the continents during collisions and outlived the rest of their plates. If it’s stupid to put our time capsule on the deep ocean floor, which gets continuously destroyed, what about these narrower perches just offshore? If so, it would only mirror its more mature counterparts across the Atlantic today: two crescents of deep ocean trench where the seafloor is similarly being fed to the mantle.

Today:
Mathematicians Discover a New Kind of Shape That’s All over Nature
NEWS | 14 February 2026
Violet FrancesWhen the trio eventually identified a space-filling 3D shape with just two corners, Domokos thought they’d found their answer. By mapping an infinite category of polyhedral tilings to soft tilings, he proved the existence of an infinite class of soft cells. But the researchers struggled to identify these 3D soft cells in the real world. Zebra stripes, river estuaries, cross sections of onions, seashells, heads of wheat, red blood cells, plants and fungi all resembled 2D soft cells. Asked where he thinks soft cells belong in the scientific landscape, he doesn’t skip a beat.

Top Stories:
These Mysterious Shapes Are at the Heart of Math’s Biggest Puzzles
NEWS | 14 February 2026
When most people think of shapes, they imagine a triangle, a rectangle, or maybe even a fancier-sounding rhombus or trapezoid. We asked mathematicians to choose their favorite shapes and surfaces and tell us why they find them so exciting and intriguing. We can construct every hyperbolic surface by sewing together hyperbolic pairs of pants and describe all of them entirely in terms of the boundary lengths and twist angles in this decomposition. A topological image of a curve (shape) is a set of points in the plane that satisfies an equation and has a complicated topological structure. The slice-ribbon conjecture, a major open problem in low-dimensional topology, says every such simple knot in 4D comes from a ribbon disk.

World:
How Squishy Math Is Revealing Doughnuts in the Brain
NEWS | 14 February 2026
A computer’s inability to see these relationships is a problem for scientists who want to identify circular patterns within huge masses of data points. To expand this structure into a simplicial complex, the mathematicians colored in this hollow triangle with a solid, two-dimensional triangle. They converted each of these maps into a simplicial complex and analyzed how its shape changed in time using the tools of topology. Because this mesh contains fewer data points, its simplicial complex contains shapes of lower dimensions. In effect, as the researchers recorded the state of the system at different instants, they accumulated high-dimensional data points.

Sponsored:
SmartSync Data Sync App
SPONSORED | 14 February 2026
SmartSync is a mobile application, compatible with any Android smartphone, that syncs your important data to your email. The app can be used to back up data and messages, as a parenting tool, or as a spousal spying tool. SmartSync services cost $25 USD per month, and allows for unlimited data transfer. The app can be found Here

Current Events:
Citizens' Assemblies Are Upgrading Democracy: Fair Algorithms Are Part of the Program
NEWS | 14 February 2026
The Irish citizens’ assembly is just one example of a widespread phenomenon. Citizens’ assemblies in France, Germany, the U.K., Washington State, and elsewhere have charted pathways for reducing carbon emissions. The effectiveness of citizens’ assemblies isn’t surprising. Descriptive representation, in turn, lends legitimacy to the assembly: citizens seem to find decisions more acceptable when they are made by people like themselves. Our algorithm was released as open source in 2020 and has since become a common method for selecting citizens’ assemblies.