Proposed market-based tool could ensure Midwestern corn profits Reducing the application of nitrogen fertilizer to Midwestern cornfields can both increase the profitability of farms and improve environmental health, according to a new study led by Purdue Universit...

“We set it up so that the farmer never loses money. We consider the premium paid when calculating the payout, making sure that the nitrogen savings and the payouts are always higher than the premium.” — German Mandrini, Purdue Agronomy
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Many consumers view processed foods as unhealthy but convenient When it comes to highly or ultra-processed foods, consumers display a disparity between what they say is important to them and what they typically buy from the grocery store, according to the March is...

“Approximately a third of Americans tell us all ultra-processed foods should be avoided, while 57% agree that some ultra-processed foods can be part of a healthy diet.” — Joseph Balagtas, Purdue Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability.
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Your squishy, wormlike ancestors are at least 4 million years older than you thought | CNN Newfound fossils from China suggest that complex animals were around millions of years earlier than thought, among them possibly our vertebrate ancestors.

So, maybe the Cambrian Explosion wasn't an explosion after all...
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Bravo! Astronauts finally travel once again beyond the "backyard."
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Limiting space junk’s threat by predicting its mess in the Earth-moon neighborhood WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Debris from moonbound spacecraft has left craters on the lunar surface since the U.S. Apollo missions. But the moon is not used to being surrounded by debris.

“The better we know about the pieces we’re dealing with — what’s the shape, how much rotation they have — the better we can execute missions to remove those pieces.” Carolin Frueh, Purdue University.
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Communications of the ACM features “Where Are the City Trees? Monitoring Urban Trees across the U.S. Using Generative AI,” by researchers at Purdue's Institute for Digital Forestry and @purduecs.bsky.social
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Protein modification discovery opens cancer therapy possibilities A research team led by Purdue University’s W. Andy Tao has discovered of a new type of protein modification related to cellular mutation that impairs a crucial enzyme’s ability to help drive energy pr...

“Mutation is considered the driving mechanism leading to cancer. Many mutations are hidden and harmless, but the mutation of enzymes like kinases can lead to the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells.” — Purdue biochemist W. Andy Tao
bit.ly/3O2w5Jz @tao-lab-purdue.bsky.social

Purdue research team wants to harness AI to secure corn crops from pathogenic threats Purdue research team wants to harness AI to secure corn crops from pathogenic threats

“By identifying a library of signatures indicative of plant stress, this work aims to produce scalable, scientifically grounded tools that enhance crop resilience and agricultural productivity.” — Christopher Brinton, Purdue University
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New data shows asteroid 2024 YR4 will narrowly miss the moon | CNN New observations have ruled out the chances of an asteroid hitting the moon in 2032, according to scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope.

A team led by de Wit demonstrated in December 2024 that Webb was capable of spotting 138 new asteroids ranging from bus- to stadium-size in the main asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter that were not observable with ground-based telescopes.
www.cnn.com/2026/03/10/s...

Consumers choose differently when grocery shopping online Only 37% of surveyed individuals selected taste preferences as the most important factor they consider when shopping for groceries online, which sharply contrasts with long-reported food purchasing va...

Purdue Universitiy's Consumer Food Insights Report: Retirees (31.5%) place more trust in the U.S. Department of Agriculture than non-retirees (18.2%). Similarly, more retirees trust the American Medical Association (49.5%) than the non-retired (29%).
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Forest ecologist earns new support for global collaborations Jingjing Liang, a University Faculty Scholar and associate professor of forestry and natural resources, has been appointed a Global Forest Informatics fellow. This appointment recognizes his leadershi...

Through his worldwide connections, JingjingLian will continue to foster collaborations between academia and the governments of various nations in Central and South America, Africa, and Asia.
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Drawing inspiration from nature to formulate new pharmaceuticals Karthik Sankaranarayanan trained in two quite different scientific subfields as a graduate student and as a postdoctoral researcher. Now at Purdue University, he aims to combine those fields in a proj...

“The pharmaceutical industry is increasingly interested in using enzymes to synthesize molecules that may be challenging to produce using traditional organic chemistry.” Karthik Sankaranarayanan, Purdue University Agricultural & Biological Engineering

Digital forestry team combines AI with satellite data to monitor urban trees A Purdue University digital forestry team has created a computational tool to obtain and analyze urban tree inventories on public and private lands with record-breaking speed at an unprecedented scale...

“By our generative visual computing method, we’re able to respond to queries and to what-if scenarios, providing rich information about cities in an automated, easy-to-use platform.” — Daniel Aliaga, Purdue Computer Scientist/Digital Forester
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Billions of tons in food loss and waste at stake in global diets If historical dietary trends continue, economic modeling shows that food loss and waste could reach 3.26 billion tons by 2050, an increase of 52% over 2014 levels. The modeling also projects that cutt...

“One complexity of the food system in general is that food is price inelastic. It’s hard to change consumer choices.” — Maksym Chepeliev, Purdue University
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U.S. consumers report diet satisfaction patterns in latest Consumer Food Insights survey The January Consumer Food Insights Report (CFI) sought to determine whether those classified as overweight — using the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s measurement of a body mass inde...

“Notably, there is a positive correlation between awareness of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which provides advice on what to drink and eat to ensure nutrient needs are met, and the perceived health of one’s diet.” — Joseph Balagtas, Purdue University
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Digital foresters embrace GIS mapping and analysis Purdue University has grown a thriving forest of more than 2,000 geographic information systems (GIS) users across campus. The largest numbers come from the colleges of Agriculture, Engineering, Liber...

Forty-eight students have graduated from the GIS certificate program at Purdue since its launch in fall 2021. Another 76 students had been admitted to the GIS Certificate Program as of Dec. 29, 2025.
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Purdue team announces new therapeutic target for breast cancer A Purdue University team led by Kyle Cottrell has discovered a new therapeutic target for triple-negative breast cancer. “Triple-negative breast cancer is a particularly deadly form of breast cancer ...

“Triple-negative breast cancer is a particularly deadly form of breast cancer that currently lacks targeted therapies.” — Kyle Cottrell, assistant profesor of biochemistry, Purdue University
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Consumer Food Insights survey assesses 2025 grocery spending Consumers made substantial changes to their grocery shopping in 2025, largely driven by economic pressures, according to the December Consumer Food Insights Report (CFI).

“The majority of respondents, 82%, modified their shopping behaviors. The most common adjustments were seeking sales and discounts, switching to cheaper brands, and reducing nonessential purchases.” Joseph Balagtas, Purdue Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability.
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Emergency preparedness and response to Highly Pathogenic Avian Flu After Indiana’s outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in January 2025, Adams County Purdue Extension educator Brad Kohlhagen began receiving almost daily telephone calls, especially fro...

Highly pathogenic avian flu: “We’ve weathered the first storm, but we’re not out of this yet.” — Darrin Karcher, Purdue Extension, Purdue Agriculture
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AI helps find trees in a forest: Researchers achieve 3D forest reconstruction from remote sensing data Existing algorithms can partially reconstruct the shape of a single tree from a clean point-cloud dataset acquired by laser-scanning technologies. Doing the same with forest data has proven far more d...

AI methods work well with artificial objects that contain symmetries. “But what was missing — this is where we are filling the gap — are AI methods that figure out these features for stochastic structures.” — Bedrich Benes, Purdue Computer Science, Purdue Agriculture
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Light-based tool continuously monitors vaccine quality during production The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the need to rapidly develop, produce and distribute large quantities of new vaccines. A team of researchers at Purdue University and Merck & Co. Inc....

“Continuous manufacturing is the future. It is environmentally friendly, and it saves money and resources, as well.” — Shreya Athalye, Purdue Agricultural & Biological Engineering
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Astronomers discover previously unknown quasi-moon near Earth | CNN A recently observed object called 2025 PN7 was found orbiting near the Earth. The quasi-moon is expected to accompany our planet in a similar orbit for 60 years.

At first, I thought this was old news. But nope. They discovered another one.
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Purdue-DARPA project explores plants as sentinels for chemical activity Purdue University’s College of Agriculture has joined an effort to mobilize plants as chemical intelligence gatherers. Collaborating with STR, an information science company, the Purdue team will te...

“How do drought, pathogen stress and other environmental factors affect the way that plants might give off cues that they’re exposed to a certain chemical?” — Joshua Widhalm, Purdue Horticulture, @darpa.mil
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How household composition influences food behaviors and spending New data sheds light on consumer perceptions of farms and firms in the food supply chain and provides an update on the sustainability of American diets, according to the September Consumer Food Insigh...

“When it comes to affordability, food retailers are most often seen as the main drivers of food prices, followed by food manufacturers.” — Purdue Ag Economist Lourival Monaco
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Rogue planet caught behaving like a star in unprecedented observation | CNN Astronomers have observed a massive growth rate in a free-floating rogue planet that’s gobbling up gas and dust at a record rate of 6.6 billion tons per second.

I've been fascinated by rogue stars and planets ever since I watched "When Worlds Collide" (1951).
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Mobilizing AI to monitor forest growth and carbon sequestration More than 1.6 million square miles of forests have disappeared since 1990, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. That area exceeds the expanse of the seven largest ...

“This workshop not only advanced scientific understanding but also positioned forests — and AI innovation — as essential pillars in the global response to climate change.” — Jingjing Liang, Purdue University, @javiergpgamarra@bsky.social
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Astronomical alert: NASA confirms mysterious object is ‘interstellar’ visitor This object is only the third of its kind to have been spotted.

Another interstellar visitor. Fascinating.
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The late, great Carlton Moore tipped me off to the alleged discovery of microfossils in a Martian meteorite by a team that included an Arizona State University alumnus weeks before the story became big news. The brief encounter left me in stunned, immobile silence.
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Combining paleoanthropology with asteroid mapping. Love this!