Science Research Weekly

Welcome to Science Research Weekly, Season 5, Episode 6. Get ready for quorum sensing for bacterial engineering, an antibiotic-resistant microbe on ice, a new scimitar-crested spinosaurid, planetesimal snowmen, sheepox viral evolution, the fate of horizontally acquired genes, the R Journal Volume 17/4, and a grant for Feed the Future innovation labs. Science On.

References:
Revision of the trematosaurid Erythrobatrachus noonkanbahensis confirms a cryptic marine temnospondyl community from the Lower Triassic of Western Australia
Construction and Functional Characterization of a Heterologous Quorum Sensing Circuit in Clostridium sporogenes
First genome sequence and functional profiling of Psychrobacter SC65A.3 preserved in 5,000-year-old cave ice: insights into ancient resistome, antimicrobial potential, and enzymatic activities
Scimitar-crested Spinosaurus species from the Sahara caps stepwise spinosaurid radiation
Direct contact binary planetesimal formation from gravitational collapse
Oxygen metabolism in descendants of the archaeal-eukaryotic ancestor
Exocometary physics: material release and tails
Searches for new physics beyond the Standard Model in hyperon sector
3,500 years of sheeppox virus evolution inferred from archaeological and codicological genomes
The fate of horizontally acquired genes: rapid initial turnover followed by long-term persistence
The R Journal: Volume 17/4
Comparing flavor characteristics of Scotch whiskies: A principal component analysis
Little useless-useful R functions – Typing speed benchmark
Pathways to Enable Secure Open-Source Ecosystems
Feed the Future Innovation Labs

R Packages:
bigMICE: Multiple Imputation of Big Data
bracketeer: Tournament Generator
phymapnet: Phylogeny-Guided Bayesian Microbial Network Inference
tReeTraits: Calculate Tree Traits from Terrestrial Lidar
ort: Create a Data Frame Representation of an Image
tinyimg: Optimize and Compress Images

Hello and welcome to Science Research Weekly, Season 5, Episode 5, Oops, All Singularities! Get ready for tiny nanopores, a supernova-skipping black hole, kidney disease ultrasounds by robot, and keeping files organized for publication. Science On.

References:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-68800-x
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adt4853
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.16673
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.16641
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.16.706223v2
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.24.629435v2
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.11.693795v2
https://www.r-bloggers.com/2026/02/keeping-files-organised-for-publication/

R Packages:
Framework: Structured Data ScienceProject Scaffolding
gsDesignNB: Sample Size andSimulation for Negative Binomial Outcomes
SimtablR: Easy Publication-ReadyTables and Regression Analysis
Scholid: Tools for Scholarly andAcademic Identifiers

R Packages:
Framework: Structured Data Science Project Scaffolding
gsDesignNB: Sample Size and Simulation for Negative Binomial Outcomes
SimtablR: Easy Publication-Ready Tables and Regression Analysis
Scholid: Tools for Scholarly and Academic Identifiers

References:
Chemistry-drivenautonomous nanopore membranes
Disappearanceof a massive star in the Andromeda Galaxy due to formation of a black hole
NeighborhoodStability as a Measure of Nearest Neighbor Searchability
TowardsAutonomous Robotic Kidney Ultrasound: Spatial-Efficient Volumetric Imaging viaTemplate Guided Optimal Pivoting
Differentialanalysis of genomics count data with edge*
Virus-freecontinuous directed evolution in human cells using somatic hypermutation
TranscriptionalActivation of Estrogen Receptor-alpha and Estrogen Receptor-beta from ElephantShark (Callorhynchus milii)
Keeping files organised forpublication
 
R Packages:
Framework: Structured Data ScienceProject Scaffolding
gsDesignNB: Sample Size andSimulation for Negative Binomial Outcomes
SimtablR: Easy Publication-ReadyTables and Regression Analysis
Scholid: Tools for Scholarly and AcademicIdentifiers

Welcome to Science Research Weekly, Season 5, Episode 4, And the Crowd Goes Wild for Chitons. Get ready for genes before the last common ancestor, a new Cold Earth, herbivorous microsaurs, lava tubes on Venus, a publicly-named chiton species, paleontology R packages, and the Protean grant from DARPA. Science On.

References:
Universal paralogs provide a window into evolution before the last universal common ancestor
A Cool Earth-sized Planet Candidate Transiting a Tenth Magnitude K-dwarf From K2
Does the Measured Abundance Suggest a Biological Origin for the Ancient Alkanes Preserved in a Martian Mudstone?
Carboniferous recumbirostran elucidates the origins of terrestrial herbivory
Ocean Species Discoveries 28–30 — new species of chitons (Mollusca, Polyplacophora) and a public naming competition
Radar-based observation of a lava tube on Venus
Formalization and inevitability of the Pareto principle
Light to Heavy, Brief to Eternal: An Axion for Every Occasion (in the Early Universe)
Reading TEA leaves for de novo protein design
A toolkit for programmable transcriptional engineering across eukaryotic kingdoms
Temporal dynamics of microbiome communities within urban compost piles undergoing the heat process
Introducing geoboundaries
Paleontology R Packages to Benefit from Software Sustainability Institute Grant
Advancing Bioinformatics, Translational Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Research (R01 Clinical Trial Optional)
Protean

R Packages:
mixpower: Simulation-Based Power Analysis for Mixed-Effects Models
aesopR: Tools for Text Analysis of Aesop's Fables
ohvbd: One Health VBD Hub
statuser: Statistical Tools Designed for End Users

Welcome to Science Research Weekly, Season 5, Episode 3, Cave Robots in Space. Get ready for endoplasmic reticulum remodeling, marine bacteria streamlining shortcomings, robotic run-throughs of space-cave explorations, non-exponential growth for AI, viral protein immune escape constraints, the Top 40 new CRAN packages of December 2025, and pilot projects from the NIH on using common fund data sets. Science On.

References:
ER remodelling is a feature of ageing and depends on ER-phagy
Cell cycle dysregulation of globally important SAR11 bacteria resulting from environmental perturbation
Cooperative robotic exploration of a planetary skylight surface and lava cave
Protein Autoregressive Modeling via Multiscale Structure Generation
Primordial black holes as cosmic accelerators of light dark matter: Novel direct detection constraints
Are AI Capabilities Increasing Exponentially? A Competing Hypothesis
Habitat fragmentation controls bacterial community composition outcomes
Constrained Evolutionary Funnels Shape Viral Immune Escape
A deep-learning-based score to evaluate multiple sequence alignments
December 2025 Top 40 New CRAN Packages
caugi (Causal Inference), phylospatia (Genetics), distionary (Statistics), svgedit (Utilities)
Pilot Projects Enhancing Utility and Usage of Common Fund Data Sets (R03 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

R Packages:
regextable: Pattern-Based Text Extraction and Standardization with Lookup Tables
fru: A Blazing Fast Implementation of Random Forest
marinepredator: Marine Predators Algorithm

Get ready for supermassive dark stars, human creativity versus AI, unsinkable metal tubes, robot-assisted microscopy, the Collaborative Microbial Metabolite Center knowledgebase, and a grant to strengthen agricultural systems. Science On.

References:
https://www.mdpi.com/2218-1997/12/1/1
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-25157-3
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ae2b6f/pdf
https://advanced-onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ezproxy.library.und.edu/doi/epdf/10.1002/adfm.202526033
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20849
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20808
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20776
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.24.701521v1
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.27.698081v1
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.27.701945v1
https://simpler.grants.gov/opportunity/c026db8a-157d-42de-bac7-4baf5602cd0a

R Packages:
glmSTARMA: (Double) Generalized Linear Models for Spatio-Temporal Data
repfun: Create Tables, Listings and Figures using Functions Styled after SAS™ Macros
GimmeMyStats: Statistics Utilities