Science and Technolgy blog
Running massive AI models locally on smartphones or laptops may be possible after a new compression algorithm trims down their size — meaning your data never leaves your device. The catch is that it might drain your battery in an…
A meta-analysis of 30 research studies examining children with traumatic experiences found that securely attached children tended to exhibit less severe posttraumatic stress symptoms after experiencing a traumatic event. In contrast, insecure attachment was associated with more severe posttraumatic stress…
Historically, games based on popular film or TV franchises have generally been seen as cheap cash-ins, slapping familiar characters and settings on a shovelware clone of a popular genre and counting on the license to sell enough copies to devoted…
One of the biggest superstars in human history lies in the National Museum of Ethiopia. Here, in Addis Ababa, sit the fragile remains of the world’s most celebrated human ancestor: Lucy. Once, she was a hardy survivor in a harsh…
An extremely rare gold coin featuring Brutus, who helped spearhead Julius Caesar’s assassination, is up for auction in December.
ESA’s Proba-3 mission will use one satellite to block out the sun for another satellite, bringing the sun’s middle corona into new focus.
Patients with acromegaly make too much growth hormone, which causes them to grow disproportionately large bones, organs and tissues.
A new study published in Current Biology sheds light on how the brain divides the continuous flow of information in our daily lives into discrete, meaningful events. The findings reveal that these divisions—similar to starting a new chapter in a…
A tethered mosquito approaches the web in the path of release of the cone, and triggers web release response. Credit: S.I. Han and T.A. Blackledge, 2024. A tethered mosquito approaches the web in the path of release of the cone,…
The Geminid meteor shower is upon us. Up to 120 “shooting stars” per hour will rain down on Earth during the shower’s peak on Dec. 13 and 14, but a near-full moon may hamper viewing.
Between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago, people in Alaska kept reinventing dogs with mixed results. The dogs that share our homes today are the descendants of a single group of wolves that lived in Siberia about 23,000 years ago. But…
On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced a “12 days of OpenAI” period starting December 5, which will unveil new AI features and products for 12 consecutive weekdays. Altman did not specify the exact features or products OpenAI plans to…
President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday he has selected Jared Isaacman, a billionaire businessman and space enthusiast who twice flew to orbit with SpaceX, to become the next NASA administrator. “I am delighted to nominate Jared Isaacman, an accomplished business leader,…
A US government security official urged Americans to use encrypted messaging as major telecom companies struggle to evict Chinese hackers from their networks. The attack has been attributed to a Chinese hacking group called Salt Typhoon. There have been reports…
Mammoths made up as much as 40 percent of the ancient North Americans’ diet, a chemical analysis of human remains reveals.
Geology news, features and articles
Radioisotopes in the bones of an 18-month-old boy who lived almost 13,000 years ago indicate that his mother ate mostly mammoths.
To fill a car with gas, you generally just need a credit card or cash. To charge an EV at a DC fast charging station, you need any number of things to work—a credit card reader, an app for that…
Amazon has been accused of secretly slowing down Prime deliveries in low-income parts of the District of Columbia and then lying to customers who complained. In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb alleged that Amazon violated…
Between 67 and 143 people in the DRC have died of an unknown, flu-like disease, officials have said.
Asteroid C0WEPC5 entered Earth’s atmosphere at 1:15 a.m. local time on Dec. 4 over northeastern Siberia.
For most people, Windows 10 security updates are slated to stop on October 14, 2025, just over 10 months from today. That could end up being a serious security problem, given that Windows 10 is still the version used by…
By some measures, AI systems are now competitive with traditional computing methods for generating weather forecasts. Because their training penalizes errors, however, the forecasts tend to get “blurry”—as you move further ahead in time, the models make fewer specific predictions…
Space weather experts warn that solar activity will persist or even increase after solar maximum has ended and we enter a phase of the solar cycle dubbed the “battle zone.”
At least 15 human skulls at a Neolithic site in Italy may represent the group’s collective ancestors, although archaeologists aren’t certain.
Psychopathic traits were not significantly associated with recall or recognition of emotional or neutral stimuli, according to a recent study published in the journal Memory. Psychopathy is characterized by interpersonal, affective, and lifestyle traits, such as a lack of empathy…
In late September, seagrass ecologist Alyssa Novak pulled on her neoprene wetsuit, pressed her snorkel mask against her face, and jumped off an oyster farming boat into the shallow waters of Pleasant Bay, an estuary in the Cape Cod National…
A “bizarre” E-shaped aurora was recently photographed dancing in the sky above Alaska. The unusual light show was caused by rare black auroras, a.k.a. anti-auroras, which catapult charged particles from the sun back out of Earth’s atmosphere and into space.
New brain scans have shown that neurons in several regions of the brain become significantly more active across birth.
A system of non-competition clauses enforced by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) workforce suppliers is allegedly trapping aerospace professionals who work at ESA’s facilities across Europe in a professional dead-end street. Their contracts prevent job mobility and the possibility to…
Without a fungal support network, trees can lose their ability to adapt to changing climatic conditions, increasing their extinction risk.
A new study published in Communication Research has uncovered striking differences in how people from different countries interact with political news. In the United States, individuals overwhelmingly choose news that aligns with their partisan views, reinforcing political divides. However, this…
The week before Thanksgiving, Marshall Brain sent a final email to his colleagues at North Carolina State University. “I have just been through one of the most demoralizing, depressing, humiliating, unjust processes possible with the university,” wrote the founder of…
A polar bear stands on floating sea ice in the Arctic. The bears rely on sea ice to move throughout their hunting grounds.
The footage give clues to the range of plants the bears eat and how they mate, information important for conservation.
An analysis of data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study found that negative emotionality—the tendency to experience frequent and intense negative emotions—in infancy was associated with maltreatment at ages 5 and 9. Children with higher negative emotionality as…
A Russian court has issued a life sentence to a man found guilty of being the kingpin of a dark web drug marketplace that supplied more than a metric ton of narcotics and psychotropic substances to customers around the world.…
To Sally Warring, protists are an absolutely underrated type of wildlife. “Protists are very charismatic and interesting,” says Warring, who studies these creatures at the Earlham Institute in Norwich, England. Among this richly diverse group of mostly single-celled eukaryotes (creatures…
A chance discovery by researchers could drastically lower the energy needed for next-generation memory technologies.
If this colossal solar storm hit our technologically advanced world the effects would have been devastating.
The secretary bird photograph was among the winners of the 2024 Royal Society Publishing Photography Prize.
A bacterial infection that rarely occurs in the United States hit a woman in Maryland after she cleaned her home aquarium.
A new study published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia provides evidence that the MIND diet—a hybrid of the Mediterranean and DASH diets—may help slow cognitive decline in older adults, though its effects vary by race. While both Black and White participants…
An experiment reveals that a bio-solution to humans’ microplastics mess is likely to fall short, but could inspire other ways to attack the problem.
Newly analyzed 5,000-year-old clay bowls unearthed in Iraq may be evidence of early government-like rule, a new study finds.
An app outage that locked numerous rental car customers out of their vehicles is a reminder of the perils of completely relying on apps for basic functionality—especially when those apps have seemingly limited support resources. Zipcar is a car-sharing service…
There’s nothing quite like a deep dive into the shallow, vomitous puddles of children’s splash pads. Even toeing the edge is enough to have one longing for the unsettling warmth of a kiddie pool. But the brave souls at the…
Turnover at the top of the company isn’t stopping Intel from launching new products: Today the company is announcing the first of its next-generation B-series Intel Arc GPUs, the Arc B580 and Arc B570. Both are decidedly midrange graphics cards…
It might sound far-fetched, but recent research suggests that dogs’ and humans’ brains synchronise when they look at each other. This research, conducted by researchers in China, is the first time that “neural coupling” between different species has been witnessed.…
“A clean desk is a sign of a sick mind” is a phrase sometimes attributed to Oscar Levant, but I give it to Egon Spengler. I also live that phrase. My desk is not clean, but I know why everything…
