Science and Technolgy blog
Hemsworth, a colossal funnel-web spider recently donated to the Australian Reptile Park, could make significant contributions to the park’s life-saving venom-milking program, keepers say.
This high-quality and affordable entry-level monocular provides an opportunity to explore and experience night vision technology without breaking the bank.
An analysis of data from the Health and Retirement Study found that individuals adhering to the Mediterranean diet and the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet experience slower cognitive decline. A dietary pattern combining these two diets, designed to…
A new tally finds dozens of species giving food a second go-round, from babies boosting their microbiomes to adults seeking easier-to-access nutrition.
Trichuris incognita is a newfound intestinal roundworm closely related to the whipworm parasite. However, it is significantly more resistant to treatment.
New research published in Cognition and Emotion provides evidence that subtle changes in eye appearance can shape how people perceive others and influence their generosity. Across two experimental studies, researchers found that portraits of non-human primates with larger pupils elicited…
Grocery store shelves are full of foods in eye-catching colors. A bright blue sports drink or a rainbow cereal might look fun. But some scientists think that the synthetic dyes used to impart these colors could affect how some kids’…
When watching YouTube, Katy Tam noticed that she would switch between videos a lot. If a video didn’t get to the point in the first 30 seconds, she’d scroll away to something else. Or if a movie’s plot felt too…
A woman with a known nut allergy had a severe allergic reaction after sex, even though her partner bathed and brushed his teeth first. Here’s why.
What happens in the brain when we drink alcohol? Scientists have taken a significant step toward answering this question by identifying a protein called TMEM132B as a key regulator of alcohol’s effects. This protein not only amplifies alcohol’s action on…
For several years, an innovative, California-based launch company named Relativity Space has been the darling of investors and media. Relativity promised to disrupt launch by taking a somewhat niche technology in the space industry at the time, 3D printing, and…
The H5N1 bird flu situation in the US seems more fraught than ever this week as the virus continues to spread swiftly in dairy cattle and birds while sporadically jumping to humans. On Monday, officials in Louisiana announced that the…
Archaeologists working at the site of Saqqara have discovered a 4,100-year-old tomb that held the burial of a doctor.
Four bags of money hidden around 1640 and worth “much more than a craftsman could earn in a year” have been found inside a statue at a Gothic church in Germany.
The United States presents a paradox: Though the media and public opinion suggest it is a nation deeply divided along partisan lines, surveys reveal that Americans share significant common ground on many core values and political issues. As a political…
The US Justice Department today announced it filed an antitrust lawsuit against “six of the nation’s largest landlords for participating in algorithmic pricing schemes that harmed renters.” One of the landlords, Cortland Management, agreed to a settlement “that requires it…
A new U.S. Surgeon General’s report describes the link between drinking alcohol and developing cancer. Many Americans aren’t aware of the risk.
When suspicion began to mount that the young prosecutor, Yujin Choi, might have faked her sexual misconduct allegations against a Denver District Attorney’s Office colleague, investigators asked to examine Choi’s laptop and cell phone. But just before Choi was to…
Almost exactly a year ago, we were publicly yearning for the day when more portable gaming PC makers could ditch Windows in favor of SteamOS (without having to resort to touchy unofficial workarounds). Now, that day has finally come, with…
H5N1 has infected 66 people in the United States since early 2024, mostly causing mild illness. A Louisiana man was the first to get severely sick.
A canine baculum (penis bone) covered in red ochre may be from a long-lost Romano-British ritual.
Sexual humor appears to positively influence sexual satisfaction in romantic relationships, as reported in The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality. Christine D. Lomore and colleagues examined the role of sexual humor in romantic relationships, an area often overshadowed by general…
Who is better at maneuvering a large load through a maze, ants or humans? The piano-mover puzzle involves trying to transport an oddly shaped load across a constricted environment with various obstructions. It’s one of several variations on classic computational…
Most scientific literature is published in for-profit journals that rely on subscriptions and paywalls to turn a profit. But that trend has been shifting as various governments and funding agencies are requiring that the science they fund be published in…
Nvidia has good news and bad news for people building or buying gaming PCs. The good news is that three of its four new RTX 50-series GPUs are the same price as or slightly cheaper than the RTX 40-series GPUs…
Lenovo announced a laptop today that experiments with a new way to offer laptop users more screen space than the typical clamshell design. The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable has a screen that can roll up vertically to expand…
New research published in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging sheds light on how psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, affect the brain’s ability to perceive and process visual information. The study found that individuals with psychotic psychopathology struggle with a…
Meta announced today that it’s ending the third-party fact-checking program it introduced in 2016, and will rely instead on a Community Notes approach similar to what’s used on Elon Musk’s X platform. The end of third-party fact-checking and related changes…
Shark sex is a bitey business, with males grasping females with their teeth during the act. The resulting wounds are helping scientists to figure out when and where sharks are doing the deed.
Photos from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed more than 40 stars within the gravitationally lensed “Dragon Arc” galaxy, 6.5 billion light-years from Earth. It is the largest group of individually imaged stars ever seen at such a distance.
The second season of The Last of Us will hit HBO and Max in April. HBO released a new one-minute teaser for the second season of its post-apocalyptic drama The Last of Us during CES last night, along with a release…
On Monday, Nvidia announced Project DIGITS, a small desktop computer aimed at researchers, data scientists, and students who want to experiment with AI models—such as chatbots like ChatGPT and image generators—at home. The $3,000 device, which contains Nvidia’s new GB10…
The Pixel 4a, a well-regarded release in Google’s line of budget-minded phones with nice cameras and decent stock software, was not supposed to get any more updates. This week, it will receive a rather uncommon one—one that intends to lower…
Here at Ars, we’re judicious about which of the many, many Switch 2 rumors we decide to highlight on this page. For every report on hardware power or magnetic Joy-Cons that we share, there are probably five others we see…
A new study published in Acta Psychologica has found that handwriting provides significant advantages over visual learning when it comes to helping elementary school students acquire new English words, particularly their shapes, sounds, and meanings. Scientists have long argued that…
Tesla is the target of yet another federal safety probe, the fourth currently open by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of Defects Investigation. Today’s trouble concerns the automaker’s “Smart Summon” and “Actually Smart Summon” features, which allow Tesla…
A huge magnitude 7.1 earthquake has hit the holy city of Shigatse, or Xigazê, in the autonomous region of Tibet in China.
The annual Consumer Electronics Show got underway in Las Vegas this week, but Winter Storm Blair unraveled my plan to be on the ground to check things out in person. That means I still haven’t had an in-person look at…
The Python Rangemaster boasts Alpha glass quality with anti-reflective coatings on its lenses. Its BAK4 barium-coated roof prisms produce high-quality images for various viewing activities.
Researchers have found that people systematically underestimate how far their wrists can move. This finding suggests that the brain’s internal representation of the body’s movement range is not as accurate as one might assume. The study, published in Communications Psychology,…
In 2012, an industry-wide coalition of hardware and software makers adopted Secure Boot to protect Windows devices against the threat of malware that could infect the BIOS and, later, its predecessor the UEFI, the firmware that loaded the operating system…
Deformed scales in hatchlings and biomarkers indicative of disease progression are two health impacts on turtles at PFAS-polluted sites in Australia.
A study comparing impulsively violent female convicts with age-matched non-impulsive female convicts identified four groups of bacterial species with differing abundances between the two groups. Genera Bacteroides, Barnesiella, and the order Rhodospirillales were more abundant in impulsive women, while bacteria…
Once again, we’re back with our annual power ranking of US launch companies. 2024 was the third year Ars compiled a list of the most accomplished rocket companies in the United States with the goal of sparking debate, discussion, and…
The International Space Station, or ISS, is one of humanity’s most remote outposts. Space agencies around the world teamed up in the 1980s and 1990s to construct this distant laboratory. Pieces of the station were built in different countries and…
Sophia Zhang is on a mission to solve an environmental crisis in her home state of Utah. The Great Salt Lake has been shrinking for decades, largely due to excess water use and climate change. Since learning about this problem…
This 2014 satellite photo shows Pakistan’s Khor Kalmat tidal lagoon brimming with water at the heart of an arid desert. This fluctuating body of water, which looks like “ink bleeding onto parchment,” helps support life in this harsh environment.
New research published in BMJ Mental Health sheds light on the relationship between lifetime cannabis use and brain health in mid- to late-life adults. The study found that individuals with a history of cannabis use exhibited differences in brain structure…
AI is as good as clinicians at interpreting mammograms, a real-world study with nearly 500,000 participants in Germany suggests.
Nvidia’s Cosmos platform lets researchers simulate multiple different realities and simulate real-world physics to generate footage that can train future robots.
