Science and Technolgy blog
On Thursday, the United Nations’ Environmental Programme (UNEP) released a report on what it terms the “emissions gap”—the difference between where we’re heading and where we’d need to be to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Agreement. It…
The third and final season of Good Omens, Prime Video’s fantasy series adapted from the classic 1990 novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, will not be a full season after all, Deadline Hollywood reports. In the wake of allegations…
As H5N1 bird flu continues to spread wildly among California dairy herds and farmworkers, federal health officials on Thursday offered some relatively good news about Missouri: The wily avian influenza virus does not appear to have spread from the state’s…
A recent meta-analysis published in the Journal of Affective Disorders revealed that individuals with a higher triglyceride glucose (TyG) index face an increased risk of cognitive decline. Cognitive decline, a precursor to conditions such as dementia, affects millions worldwide, with…
“Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements. They can come back in the future if sufficient documentation is provided.” That two-line comment, submitted by major Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman, accompanied a patch that removed about a dozen names…
Apple has released new iPhones, new Apple Watches, a new iPad mini, and a flotilla of software updates this fall, but Mac hardware has gone unmentioned so far. That’s set to change next week, according to an uncharacteristically un-cryptic post…
New research finds that marmots who experience adversity early in life have a lesser chance of survival.
Early experiments suggest a patch that delivers harmless electric currents into the skin can thwart certain bacterial infections. However, it has not yet been tested in humans.
Fall for me as a teenager meant football games, homecoming dresses – and haunted houses. My friends organized group trips to the local fairground, where barn sheds were turned into halls of horror, and masked men nipped at our ankles…
Cable companies, advertising firms, and newspapers are asking courts to block a federal “click-to-cancel” rule that would force businesses to make it easier for consumers to cancel services. Lawsuits were filed yesterday, about a week after the Federal Trade Commission…
Rediscovery of giant salmon carp in Cambodia sparks hope for the rare fish’s survival and efforts to conserve one of the greatest diversity hot spots.
A large new analysis suggests that some people carry genetic variants that make them more likely to have female than male offspring.
A new animated map sheds light on the superhot “zombie star” at the heart of a nebula leftover from a distant supernova witnessed by astronomers in 1181. The remains of the stellar explosion are unusually wonky and are still exploding…
Trust in the federal government plays a key role in shaping Republicans’ attitudes toward gun control, according to a new study published in Political Behavior. The findings indicate that Republicans who trust the government are much more likely to back…
Back in May, Google augmented its Gemini AI model with SynthID, a toolkit that embeds AI-generated content with watermarks it says are “imperceptible to humans” but can be easily and reliably detected via an algorithm. Today, Google took that SynthID…
A new study looks at which insects can be used as biological clocks to determine when a rhino was killed.
“Zebrahub” is an atlas of cells in developing zebrafish embryos, and scientists say it will help us learn about our own biology, too.
In the 1940s, scientists at the recently established National Cancer Institute were trying to breed mice that could inform our understanding of cancer, either because they predictably developed certain cancers or were surprisingly resistant. The team spotted a peculiar litter…
Female Burmese python measuring 14.8’ (4.5m) and weighing 115.2 lbs (52.3 kg) consuming a white-tailed deer weighing 76.9 lbs (34.9 kg) in southwestern Florida.
A recent study published in The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine has found that patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have significantly smaller pineal glands compared to healthy individuals. This finding suggests a possible link between the pineal gland and…
Data from the OSIRIS-REx mission to Bennu place a ceiling on the strength of a hypothetical fifth force that could explain dark matter’s origins.
A recent study conducted in Japan on individuals with mood disorders found that a 4-week exposure to bright light resulted in an increased volume of the left hippocampal dentate gyrus, a region of the brain associated with memory and mood…
Think about a time when you were happy. What comes to mind? Was it a family game or movie night? Maybe you were hanging out with friends volunteering in your community. Or perhaps you were enjoying something beautiful — an…
“Killer electrons” stashed in radiation belts around Earth could be dislodged by lightning to create a game of “cosmic pinball” that influences space weather around our planet.
A recent study from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience published in Science provides new insights into how individual brain cells in the hippocampus react to pronouns during reading. The researchers discovered that certain neurons in this part of the brain,…
SAN FRANCISCO—On Tuesday, TED AI 2024 kicked off its first day at San Francisco’s Herbst Theater with a lineup of speakers that tackled AI’s impact on science, art, and society. The two-day event brought a mix of researchers, entrepreneurs, lawyers,…
You likely have never heard of Babel Street or Location X, but chances are good that they know a lot about you and anyone else you know who keeps a phone nearby around the clock. Reston, Virginia-located Babel Street is…
Fourteen-year-old Sewell Setzer III loved interacting with Character.AI’s hyper-realistic chatbots—with a limited version available for free or a “supercharged” version for a $9.99 monthly fee—most frequently chatting with bots named after his favorite Game of Thrones characters. Within a month—his…
After a rocky first half of the year, Tesla enjoyed a much healthier third quarter in 2024. As we learned earlier this month, it arrested a slide in sales, delivering 6 percent more electric vehicles year over year. But the…
The Endurance shipwreck spent 107 years submerged in Antarctic waters before being rediscovered and later scanned in 3D.
A recent study published in American Politics Research sheds light on the connection between geography, identity, and political trust in the United States. The findings reveal that both living in rural areas and identifying with rural regions are linked to…
When Zachary Lindsey, a physicist at Berry College in Georgia, decided to run an experiment on how to get the best speed and torque while playing disc golf (aka Frisbee golf), he had no trouble recruiting 24 eager participants keen…
Researchers from several prominent universities in China have developed a new neural stimulation chip designed to make neural modulation safer and more effective for treating neurological conditions. The team, led by Professor Biao Sun and Associate Professor Xu Liu, created…
Trying to watch your favorite NFL team’s games throughout a season is a fiendish logistics puzzle, one that doesn’t even have a “just pay for it” shortcut. You can buy a Sunday Ticket package from YouTube, but that only covers…
Today, Apple released the first developer beta of iOS 18.2 for supported devices. This beta release marks the first time several key AI features that Apple teased at its developer conference this June are available. Apple is marketing a wide…
It’s been just a week since US telecom regulators announced a formal inquiry into broadband data caps, and the docket is filling up with comments from users who say they shouldn’t have to pay overage charges for using their Internet…
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) board has agreed to spend $212 million to get its Muni Metro light rail off floppy disks. The Muni Metro’s Automatic Train Control System (ATCS) has required 5¼-inch floppy disks since 1998, when…
Any company that makes Arm chips must license technology from Arm Holdings plc, the British company that develops the instruction set. Companies can license the instruction set and create their own CPU designs or license one of Arm’s ready-made Cortex…
In pigs, the device detected overdoses and administered naloxone. It could also alert emergency services to respond.
Social media platforms have struggled to accurately detect hate speech, especially given the different definitions and contexts of harmful content. A new study in Computer Speech & Language introduces a machine learning model that improves detection by training on multiple…
Geoenvironmental scientist Hiroto Nagai used publicly available climate data from the North and South poles to compose an ominous-sounding chamber music piece.
Four “potentially hazardous” space rocks, which are between 100 and 580 feet across, will all make their closest approaches to Earth within less than 12 hours of one another on Thursday (Oct. 24). Two of them were only discovered earlier…
U.S. health officials are investigating a multi-state outbreak of bacterial infections that has been linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounders.
One person is dead and 48 others across 10 states have been sickened in an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak that appears to be linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounders and the slivered onions used on the burgers, according to the Centers…
A study conducted in Austria found that individuals who were exposed to blue spaces (such as coasts, rivers, and lakes) during childhood tend to feel more connected to nature as adults. This stronger connection to nature, in turn, is linked…
Drones with lasers revealed hidden urban centers that may have aided trade and travel through mountainous regions during medieval times.
Polar bears have been exposed to more viruses, bacteria and parasites in recent decades, a new study shows, possibly acquiring the germs in their diet.
A fiery meteor shot across the sky above the Great Lakes on Monday (Oct. 21) just after sunset, stunning witnesses from Michigan to New York, Kentucky and North Carolina.
Intelsat 39 being launched from French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 rocket in 2019.
A study out recently has prompted much media attention about the role of plastics in developing autism. In particular, the study focused on exposure to a component of hard plastics – bisphenol A, or BPA – in the womb and…
