Wild gray bats adjust their echolocation calls based on the other bats in their flying group and the obstacles in their way, per analysis of a colony in Virginia. 

Researchers at University of Toronto’s Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry have made a key discovery about how certain bacterial strains produce a set of economically valuable chemicals — opening the door to new, more sustainable production methods. The finding, published in Nature Microbiology, shows how a family of molecules used in everything from cleaning products to cosmetics to nutritional supplements could be made via bacterial fermentation instead of from palm oil, as they are today.

An international team of physicists has achieved a significant advance in laser science, demonstrating for the first time a practical route to dramatically boosting the intensity of high-power laser light. The results, published today in Nature (22 April) could unlock the route towards creating the most intense light ever produced in a laboratory, opening the door to experiments that probe the fundamental laws of physics by directly interacting light with the quantum vacuum.

An international team of physicists has achieved a breakthrough in understanding something that has puzzled scientists for decades: the discrepancy between experimental measurements and theoretical predictions of magnetic properties of the muon, a heavier cousin of the electron.