A newsletter for science lovers, wandering minds, inspiration seekers ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
October 13, 2025—A pig liver part transplanted into a human, a tussle over a space shuttle's retirement home and an AI app that can put movie stars or you in your favorite TV episode. —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | In another procedure, a team performs a surgery to transplant a genetically modified pig kidney into a brain-dead recipient at the hospital in Xi'an, China. Xijing Hospital of the Air Force Medical University/Handout via Xinhua/Alamy | | - Surgeons transplanted part of a pig liver into a human patient suffering from an incurable cancer. The segment functioned for more than a month, advancing "xenotransplantation." | 3 min read
- Scientists have mapped microbe communities living in the trunks of 16 tree species. A single mature tree hosts about one trillion bacteria in its trunk "microbiome," the team estimates. | 2 min read.
- How the math that powers Google foretold the new pope. The decades-old technique from network science saw something in the papal conclave that AI missed. | 5 min read.
- Nobel laureate Shimon Sakaguchi reflects on how regulatory T cells could transform treatment for cancer, autoimmune disease and organ transplant rejection. | 6 min read.
| | The space shuttle Discovery, a showpiece of the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy annex of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, could be moved to Houston's Space Center museum, the visitor center for NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC). Advocates in Texas want the retired shuttle to reside in the region that is home to JSC, its training, research and flight control facility for human spaceflight. Detractors say the Houston museum lacks the Smithsonian's expertise in conserving artifacts, reports Scientific American editor Dan Vergano. The transfer to Houston could "inevitably and irreparably" damage the shuttle that Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, a former astronaut, flew onboard twice, he and others wrote in a letter. What the experts say: Check out a graphic by Scientific American graphics editor Amanda Montañez, halfway into the story, illustrating a NASA team's 2011 evaluation and ranking of potential locations for retired space shuttles. Why this matters: Discovery, referred to as the "Champion of the Fleet," completed more flights than any of the other shuttles that traveled to space. It carried the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit. Atlantis, Endeavour and Enterprise, a test vehicle, reside respectively at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, California Science Center in Los Angeles and the Intrepid Museum in New York. | | The space shuttle Discovery loaded for transportation in 2012. Dane Penland/Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum | | | Marilyn in AI-Generated Videos
| People can create and share AI-generated videos with Sora2, an updated platform released September 30 by OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT. Unlike Sora's first version, the new release allows users to share clips of their videos in a TikTok-style social media feed. Users also can share a likeness of themselves so friends can drop videos of you into their skits. The app foreshadows the arrival of AI-generated TV and movies on demand, writes Scientific American tech reporter Deni Béchard. The image above comes from Béchard's prompt for Sora2 to make a video of Marilyn Monroe as a dragon-riding Targaryen reading Scientific American. Why this matters: The app currently could be a copyright "infringement engine," as was the case with early YouTube, TikTok and Twitch.tv. The platforms that survive typically add regulations to prevent those violations and reward original work. Sora2 could evolve in this direction too. What can be done: "If history is a guide, the social media platforms that thrive are those that support and protect human creativity—in this case, the creativity to make the TV and movies you always wished existed," writes Béchard.
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Tanja Ivanova/Getty Images | | - You and I are sitting at a table with a pile of 50 quarters and an empty piggy bank. We will take turns placing anywhere from one to 10 quarters in the bank at a time. Whoever places the last quarter in the piggy bank gets to keep it. You go first: What's your starting move to guarantee a win? Click here for the solution.
| | The tree-trunk microbiome piece above reminded me that during a recent visit to the New York Botanical Garden, I was amazed to see tiny, enchanting flowers growing directly from the trunk of a cacao tree, the source of chocolate. Later, I read that this "cauliflory" attracts flies that pollinate the flowers, enabling them to produce a nearly football-sized fruit containing 30-60 seeds. The seeds are processed to make chocolate. "Cacao pollination is problematic in many regions" and is not fully understood by researchers, threatening the chocolate industry, writes entomologist Dewayne Shoemaker. We always like to hear from you. Please send feedback, comments and chocolate-science insights to: newsletters@sciam.com. —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor
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