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A conversation with author Anne Morriss on why the slow and steady approach can leave issues unresolved. When it comes to solving complex, layered problems, the default for many organizational leaders ...

Artificial intelligence is mastering the kinds of projects that have long helped to build the careers of young mathematicians. What does that mean for their future? Credit...Illustrations by Yoshi ...

Think about placing dots on a flat surface. You want as many pairs as possible to be separated by the same distance. For any amount of dots, what is the greatest possible number of pairs that can be ...

For new discoveries, everyday mysteries, and the science behind the headlines, follow NPR's ShortWave podcast . Over a century ago, the German psychologist Wolfgang Köhler conducted what became a ...

German psychologist Wolfgang Köhler set up a famous experiment more than 100 years ago that changed how scientists understand animal intelligence and the power of insight — or spontaneous ...

In a new study, bumble bees solve a completely novel object-manipulation task. What makes this behavior especially remarkable is that the bees had never been trained. The findings challenge the ...

Bumblebees faced with a challenge know how to play ball. Buff-tailed bumblebees can figure out on their own how to use a ball as a ladder to nab sugar from an out-of-reach fake flower, researchers ...

Despite having tiny brains, bumblebees have demonstrated a remarkable ability to socially learn how to use tools, solve simple puzzles, and cooperate to achieve a goal. It seems they can also solve ...

In mid-May, OpenAI announced that an internal AI model had disproved the Erdős unit distance conjecture, a famous problem in discrete geometry that had stumped human mathematicians for the last 80 ...

Artificial intelligence can now solve open research-level mathematics problems — not just competition questions — and the May 2026 issue of Science News documents the moment the field registered that ...

“If you are a mathematician,” one of the world’s leading mathematicians recently wrote, “you may want to make sure you are sitting down before reading further.” And you’ll definitely need to sit down ...