Mushrooms have become a popular health trend, making their way into coffee, supplements, and even beer. Dyson recently unveiled their potential use for taming frizzy hair by utilizing chitosan, a fungus found in oyster mushrooms often used in skincare products.
This innovative ingredient, chitosan, is the key component of Dyson’s new styling cream and serum, both priced at £50 for 100ml and claimed to reduce frizz by up to 50%. It provides a delicate yet strong hold, enabling natural movement while keeping the hair in place.
Dyson’s engineers conducted thorough testing to determine the ideal chitosan percentage for long-lasting flexible hold. The products are packed with the power of up to eight oyster mushrooms, offering a unique approach compared to traditional polymer-based hair products.
James Dyson, the company’s chief engineer, explained that their complex polymers create flexible bonds that enhance the hold, movement, and shine of the hair, setting them apart from competitors. Dyson has a history of successful innovations, including bagless vacuums and bladeless fans, and is now venturing into the beauty market with products like the “supersonic” hair dryer.
While Dyson leads the way in harnessing the benefits of fungi, other companies are also exploring the use of fungal ingredients in various products. The growing popularity of mushrooms has prompted consumer advocacy groups to investigate the true impact and benefits of this trend in the beauty and health industries.
Though mushroom products have potential benefits, consumer advocates warn that there is not enough evidence to support their effectiveness or health benefits, cautioning consumers against assuming their advantages without thorough research.
Do you remember the days when pneumatic tubes were used for fast delivery of packages, mail, and important documents? Despite being touted as the future of delivery technology in shows like Futurama and Star Trek, pneumatic tubes started to disappear with the rise of the Internet, online purchasing, and improved communication methods.
Surprisingly, pneumatic tubes are now making a high-tech comeback, primarily in hospitals where they are used for quick, hygienic, and safe transportation of samples and sensitive information within large buildings.
How did the pneumatic tube come about?
The idea of pneumatic tubes initially included plans for a mass transit system where people would travel through tubes at high speeds using jets of air. While this idea didn’t fully materialize, some unique uses of pneumatic tubes included sending messages across tables in a Berlin bar and transporting various items like money, parts, and even fish in different industries.
Why are they returning?
Even though pneumatic tubes fell out of use in many areas, hospitals have continued to utilize them for efficient internal transfers. The modern version of pneumatic tube systems is highly automated, allowing for quick deliveries of samples and medicines within hospital premises.
Aside from hospitals, pneumatic tubes have found applications in waste disposal systems, such as the one on Roosevelt Island in New York, where these tubes whisk away trash at high speeds, eliminating the need for trucks and crews for garbage collection.
Overall, the pneumatic tubing market is expected to grow in the coming years, with valuations increasing and projects being built worldwide in various industries like dairy farms, cannabis dispensaries, and more.
It’s fascinating to see how technology that originated in the 1850s is making a comeback in the modern world.
As we age, our cognitive abilities, such as memory, language, and attention, tend to decline, and scientists have yet to find a way to prevent this decline.
However, there are steps you can take to slow down this decline, and recent scientific studies suggest that owning a pet could be one of them.
For instance, in a 2022 study conducted by US researchers, they examined the cognitive abilities of 1,369 older individuals covered by Medicare health insurance over a six-year period.
About half of the participants owned pets, and the researchers observed that those who owned pets experienced a slower decline in cognitive abilities compared to non-pet owners.
Furthermore, within the pet-owning group, those who had pets for a longer period performed better on the cognitive tests.
The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) has been tracking the aging process in people over 50 for over 25 years, helping scientists explore the positive effects pets have on the brain.
According to survey results released last year, owning a pet has been linked to slowing down cognitive decline, particularly in individuals who live alone.
Living alone can contribute to a faster decline in cognitive function and a higher risk of dementia, but having a pet appears to help mitigate these risks.
While there is still much to learn about brain health and aging, owning a pet could be a practical approach to maintaining mental sharpness as we grow older.
This article addresses the question posed by George Grainger from Truro: “Can owning a pet really slow down cognitive decline?”
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A warning from Britain’s largest mobile phone operator advises parents against giving smartphones to primary school children. EE recommends supplying children under 11 with old-fashioned or “dumb” mobile phones that only have calling and texting capabilities.
EE suggests using non-smart devices for children under 11 to limit access to social media and inappropriate content, such as feature phones with basic features.
This advice from EE is believed to be the first of its kind from a UK mobile operator and comes as parents face pressure to buy mobile phones for their children as the new school year begins.
Statistics show that by the age of 11, nine out of ten children own a mobile phone, and 60% of 8 to 12-year-olds have social media profiles despite age restrictions on social media platforms. Ofcom reports.
Ofcom’s findings also reveal that three in five secondary school students have faced potentially upsetting online interactions.
Calls for a ban on smartphones for under-16s and restrictions on mobile phone use in schools have been made by education councillors due to the negative effects of excessive screen time on children’s health.
EE also recommends that smartphone users aged 11 to 13 enable parental controls, use family sharing apps, and restrict access to social media.
For children aged 13 to 16, EE’s guidelines state that smartphones are suitable but parental controls should be used to manage and limit access to inappropriate sites, content, and platforms.
Carolyn Bunting, the chief executive of child safety group Internet Matters, acknowledges that parents want to make decisions regarding their children’s technology use but also value guidance to assist them.
The saying goes, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” But that’s not true. Criticism and rejection It produces brain activity that is indistinguishable from actual pain. Essentially, insults cause pain.
Insult is a complex concept. Has been studied for a long timeIt turns out that the impact of an insult depends not only on who gives it but also on who receives it.
Thus, when it comes to simple insults (insults that have no social or historical significance), the “target” has a great deal of control over the outcome.
And there are plenty of scientifically-recognized ways to successfully defuse an insult or reverse its effects.
One is to attribute category membership to the insulter, making him or her appear as a lower-status, more vulnerable to ridicule.
Someone says, “Your hair is weird,” and you respond, “OK, grandma, calm down,” and you put them in the “old, unfashionable, out of date” category, making them look even worse, especially if they’re a guy in his 20s and there’s no way they could be your grandma.
Some people recommend finding something the insulter says about themselves and highlighting it.
They say, “I don’t know why. [your attractive partner] If they ask you, “Shall I explain it to you? In crayons?”, they mean to insult you, but their response comes across as an admission that they are easily confused.
And then there is co-constructed critique, which takes the insult and builds on it, which de-fans the insult.
“You’re fat!” they say. You say, “I hope so, I’ve spent enough money to get here.”
There are countless other counter-attacks, but they all revolve around a central theme of not empowering the insulter, not elevating the insulter’s status, and maintaining control of the narrative and the interaction.
This article is a response to a question emailed to me by Archie Fox: “What’s the best way to respond to an insult?”
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NASA announced on Saturday that SpaceX will bring home the two astronauts who have been stranded on the International Space Station since early June due to issues with Boeing’s spacecraft. Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will return to Earth aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft instead of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft. This decision follows months of uncertainty within the space agency regarding the safe return of the crew members on a mission initially planned to last eight days.
The problems with the Starliner spacecraft have posed a significant setback for Boeing’s space program, which has been struggling to keep up with SpaceX. The Starliner program was already over budget and behind schedule before the launch of Wilmore and Williams in June.
Top NASA officials, led by Administrator Bill Nelson, held a formal review in Houston and based their decision on the results of tests conducted in orbit and on the ground. The announcement to choose SpaceX for the astronauts’ return was made during a press conference at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
Although the return plans have been finalized, Wilmore and Williams will remain on the space station for approximately six more months before coming back in February. NASA revealed that two seats on SpaceX’s next launch, Crew 9, will be left empty to accommodate the astronauts on their return journey.
The Crew 9 mission is scheduled to launch on September 24 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Meanwhile, the troubled Starliner spacecraft will return to Earth without its crew.
circleWhen Donald Trump posted a series of AI-generated images that falsely portrayed Taylor Swift and her fans as supporters of his presidential campaign, he inadvertently endorsed the efforts of an opaque non-profit organization aiming to fund prominent right-wing media figures and with a track record of disseminating misinformation.
Among the modified images shared by Trump on Truth Social were digitally altered pictures of young women sporting “Swifties for Trump” shirts, created by the John Milton Freedom Foundation. This Texas-based non-profit, established last year, claims to advocate for press freedom while also seeking to “empower independent journalists” and “fortify the pillars of our democracy.”
President Trump posts AI imitation of Taylor Swift and her fans Photo: Nick Robbins Early/Truth Social
Screenshot of @amuse’s “Swifties for Trump” tweet. Photo: Nick Robbins Early/Truth Social/X
The foundation’s operations seem to involve sharing clickbait content on X and collecting substantial donations, with plans for a “fellowship program” chaired by a high school student that intends to grant $100,000 to prominent Twitter figures like Glenn Greenwald, Andy Ngo, and Lara Logan. Despite inquiries into the foundation’s activities and fellowship program through tax records, investor documents, and social media posts, the John Milton Freedom Foundation did not offer any comment.
Having spent months endorsing conservative media figures and echoing Elon Musk’s allegations of free speech suppression from the political left, one of the foundation’s messages eventually reached President Trump and his massive following.
Experts caution about the potential dangers of generative AI in creating deceptive content that could impact election integrity. The proliferation of AI-generated content, including portrayals of Trump, Kamala Harris, and other politicians, has increased since Musk’s xAI introduced the unregulated Grok image generator. The John Milton Freedom Foundation is just one among many groups flooding social media with AI-generated content.
Niche nonprofit’s AI junk reaches President Trump
Amid the spread of AI images on X, the conservative @amuse account shared an AI-generated tweet from Swift fans with its over 300,000 followers. The post was tagged as “Satire,” marked with “Sponsored by the John Milton Freedom Foundation.” Trump then reposted screenshots of these tweets on Truth Social.
The @amuse account, managed by Alexander Muse, enjoys a broad reach with approximately 390,000 followers and frequent daily postings. Muse, indicated as a consultant in the Milton Foundation’s investor prospectus and a writer of right-wing commentary on Substack, has numerous ties to the @amuse account. The AI content includes depictions like Trump vs. Darth Vader and sexualized images of Harris, with the prominent watermark “Sponsored by: John Milton Freedom Foundation.”
aArtificial intelligence (AI) will soon be coming to iPhones in a move that Apple says will completely change how people use the devices. The iPhone maker’s AI tools, branded “Apple Intelligence”, will include an enhanced voice assistant, Siri, in partnership with ChatGPT owner OpenAI.
Apple isn’t the first smartphone maker to adopt AI: the technology is already available in phones like Google’s latest Pixel and Samsung’s Galaxy series.
But the sheer volume of data required for AI raises concerns about data privacy. Apple has built its reputation on privacy. Its advertisements state: Privacy. That’s the iPhone. – so this is an area where the company claims to be different.
What is Apple Intelligence and when is it available?
Apple Intelligence is the iPhone maker’s collective name for its AI features, including the ChatGPT-4o integration that will arrive in the iOS 18 software upgrade.
The first version of iOS 18 will debut alongside Apple’s iPhone 16 models in September, while the AI features will arrive later in the iOS 18.1 update scheduled for mid-to-late October.
The first iOS 18.1 Apple Intelligence features available in the beta include new writing tools, suggested replies in the Messages app, email summaries, transcription of phone calls, and more.
Other features coming later this year or in early 2025 include Image Playground, which lets you create your own animated images within the app, and custom emojis called Genmoji. Meanwhile, long-awaited AI enhancements to Apple’s chatbot, Siri, include ChatGPT integration, richer language understanding, and more. Deeper integration Within individual apps, Siri will be able to look at your calendar, photos and messages and improve responses to texts — for example, if you ask when your mom’s flight is going to land, Siri will make an inference based on recent messages and emails, Apple said.
Apple Intelligence is set to roll out globally, but regulatory concerns are expected to mean significant delays in the EU and China.
Because AI requires powerful hardware, the feature won’t be compatible with older devices: Apple says that to access all the features, you’ll need an iPhone 15 or later, or an Apple device with an M1 or M2 chip.
How will it change the way you use your iPhone?
The feature is being rolled out gradually, so you won’t see any dramatic changes right away. But with Apple Intelligence enabled, you’ll notice your interactions become more personalized and your tasks get done faster. For example, using the summary tool to write emails on the go can help. Call recording and transcription “After you’ve asked for permission, of course.”It can make everyday tasks easier and more enjoyable to perform, says Adam Biddlecombe, co-founder of AI newsletter Mindstream.
Similar to ChatGPT, Apple’s intelligent assistant will develop the ability to provide contextual responses, i.e. remember the threads of previous Siri conversations. On the privacy front, a new visual indicator around the Siri icon will let you know if Siri is listening.
But it’s worth noting that, like any shiny new technology, Apple’s AI may have some hiccups at launch. AI models need data to work, and while the technology is improving, even Apple’s CEO Tim Cook admits he’s “not 100% sure” Apple’s minds don’t hallucinate“I’m confident it’s going to be very high quality,” he said in a recent interview, “but to be honest with you, I’m nowhere near 100 percent. I would never say I’m 100 percent.”
So unless you have full confidence in the chatbot’s accuracy, we recommend double-checking the airline’s website to see when your mom’s flight will land.
How is ChatGPT on iPhone different from using the ChatGTP app?
Apple uses ChatGPT as a backup to perform functions it can’t control itself: Users ask Siri questions, but when Apple’s chatbot can’t answer more complex requests, it hands the baton over to ChatGPT.
The same thing Creating text and creating imagesWhile Apple Intelligence offers these features, and ChatGPT can write text and create images from scratch, Apple still isn’t that good at them.
Camden Woolven, head of the AI group at consulting firm GRC International Group, said the main difference between the app and ChatGPT on the iPhone is how it handles data: “When you use ChatGPT directly, your queries go directly to OpenAI’s servers. There’s no middleman.”
But when using Siri’s ChatGPT integration, Apple acts as a “privacy-focused intermediary,” he says.
“Siri will attempt to fulfill your request directly on your device, but if it can’t, it will send some data to Apple servers in an encrypted and anonymized form,” he explains.
If both your device and Apple’s servers can’t process the request, Siri will contact ChatGPT, “but even in that case, the request still goes to Apple first, where it’s anonymized and encrypted before being sent to OpenAI,” Woollven says. “This means that when you use Siri, your data gets an extra layer of privacy protection that you don’t get when using ChatGPT directly.”
Users can access the GPT-4o-powered Siri for free without creating an account, and ChatGPT subscribers can connect their account to access paid features, including larger message limits and access to enhanced features like a new voice mode that lets you communicate with ChatGPT over real-time video.
Are my conversations tracked or stored anywhere? If so, by whom?
Apple says that there are built-in privacy protections for users who access ChatGPT, and most of the processing is done on-device, so your data never leaves your iPhone.
IP addresses are hidden, OpenAI does not store your requests, and users who choose to connect their accounts are subject to ChatGPT’s data usage policy.
For more complex queries that require the cloud, Apple says it anonymizes and encrypts the data end-to-end before sending it to its servers or to ChatGPT. “This means that neither Apple nor even OpenAI can see the contents of your request, only the encrypted and anonymized version,” Woollven said.
But even anonymized data can still be linked to you if it’s specific enough, Woolven warns: “So while Apple isn’t directly storing your conversations in a way that can be linked to you, there is still a small risk that very specific queries could potentially be linked to you.”
More broadly, all Apple Intelligence requests that need to be processed off-device are sent to the company’s private cloud. Private Cloud Computing claims to protect your data from external sources.
Apple says it will be transparent about when it uses your data, providing a detailed on-device report called the Apple Intelligence Report that shows how your Siri requests were processed, so you can see for yourself what data was used and where it was sent.
But AI needs a lot of information to function, and to perform these functions, Apple will need access to more of your data: “Apple will be able to read your messages, monitor your calendar, track your maps and location, record your calls, view your photos, and understand other personal information,” Moore said.
I’m not sure about this, can I opt out?
Yes, you must turn on Apple Intelligence in Settings, so even if you’re concerned about data privacy or have doubts about the accuracy or usefulness of these features, you’re under no obligation to use them.
Two rows of rundown, dirt-smothered caravan parks line either side of the road near the motorway that winds into Bristol’s city center. Rats dart between water-filled concrete sluices and piles of rubbish-strewn vegetation. Drug users stumble out of a nearby underpass as trucks roar overhead.
It’s a dreary camp where around 30 Brazilian delivery drivers for big companies like Deliveroo and Uber Eats are forced to scrape by to make ends meet.
Celia Campos, 45, has been living in a caravan next to the lock for a year. “We left Brazil to look for a better place,” she says in rapid Portuguese. “But most of us don’t achieve our dreams. We come back in a worse state than when we left.”
Delivery drivers claim their income is not keeping up with rising prices, making it extremely difficult to make a living from delivering food.
The national minimum wage is £11.44 an hour, but food delivery companies like Deliveroo and Uber Eats do not formally employ their drivers – they are gig economy workers who are paid per delivery, meaning they can earn much less than the minimum wage.
Campos says she works long hours for both companies, working 333 hours in July and earning the equivalent of £6.27 an hour. Her pay records show she was paid around £1.20 for some Uber Eats deliveries. “We spend as much time as we can on the streets. I work from 8am until I’m tired, usually until midnight,” she says. “Delivery work is not good anymore. You have to be a slave to make enough money.”
She cannot afford Bristol’s soaring rents, which have risen faster than anywhere else in the country and have resulted in an increase in the number of people living in their cars in the West Country city.
Harsh living conditions, long hours and low wages have led to mental health issues in the camps. “I had depression for a year. It was awful,” Campos said. “I don’t want anyone to go through that. If you just work, work, work, work and you have no life… that’s what causes depression.”
Deliveroo, which recently survived a seven-year legal battle over greater rights for gig economy delivery workers, posted its first profit this month and reported a net profit of £1.3m for the first half of 2024.
Uber, which provides taxi and food delivery services, said it expects its pre-tax profits in the UK to rise to £32 million in 2022 from £5 million in 2021, with the delivery arm of its UK business generating revenue of £700 million.
The Labour government promised a new employment rights bill that would ban zero-hours contracts and provide sick pay from day one, but plans to introduce a single status for all employees – which would give gig economy workers the same rights as employed staff – have been replaced with a promise to consult on a simpler employment framework.
Some Labour MPs have raised concerns about Deliveroo’s relationship with the party after the company sponsored a series of Labour events, and its chief executive Will Thew was invited to a drinks party hosted by Keir Starmer last month. Shu appears in the video It was recorded at the event and shared on the PM’s official X account.
Another of the three women living in the caravan is preparing to work for Uber Eats. Lorena, 28, has been living in the caravan for a year and a half. She says she works 12-hour days and earns £600 a week, which works out to £7.14 an hour. “When I got here it wasn’t so bad but now I feel like a dehumanised person,” she says.
Riders say they get little support from the platforms they log into every day, so they look out for one another. They protect their mopeds, fix each other’s punctures, raise money for injured or sick workers. One person likens the road community to a labor union or “syndicate,” while another says Favela – A working-class slum in Brazil.
Some still feel vulnerable to street violence: Lorena fears that anti-immigrant protesters will burn down their house. “We feel threatened,” she says.
Her neighbour, Lucas, 25, is staying in a rundown caravan, its window seams covered with black duct tape and undersides covered with a tarpaulin, his double bed taking up most of the living space, just five metres by two metres.
The wall above the small camping stove is covered in black mold, making it dangerous to use in an enclosed space. “There is no comfort here. [in the caravan]”I just have a bed to sleep in and that’s it. Sometimes I lose motivation,” he says.
On the other side of the road, another rider prepares to head out on his moped. Freitas, 32, is a qualified pharmacist in Brazil but delivers takeaways in the UK, earning an average of £3.43 per delivery, according to figures from his Uber Eats app. “I studied for five years. I don’t want to tell my family what’s going on here,” he says.
He desperately wants to move because his caravan has no electricity, no heating and no place to cook. When it rains, the windows leak into his bed. “It’s hard to live like this. At night you have to wrap yourself up in a blanket,” he explains. “Many of the people who stay here develop mental problems because they live in a small box.”
Heather Mack, deputy leader of Bristol city council, said: “Most of us strive to treat others how we would like to be treated but shamefully this is not the case for companies like Deliveroo and Uber Eats in our city. People who work for a living should be able to live a life that provides the essentials we all need – safety, hygiene and food.”
Mack also called on the government to end “cruel and hostile environment” policies to give immigrants a path to legal work.
The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB), which led an unsuccessful legal campaign to secure employment rights for delivery drivers, said the Bristol camp was “emblematic of the mass misery that the gig economy is producing”. Maritza Castillo Calle, vice-chairman of IWGB, accused delivery companies of slashing driver pay to boost profits. “We should not be mistaken in thinking that Deliveroo’s first-ever profit last week is a direct result of workers facing unprecedented hardship,” she said.
Deliveroo said it was “very concerned” that delivery drivers were living in unsuitable conditions and would contact Bristol City Council. A spokesman added: “Deliveroo offers protections to its delivery drivers, including the flexible working they want, attractive income opportunities, free insurance, sickness cover, financial support for delivery drivers who become new parents and a range of training opportunities.”
Uber said Uber Eats offers thousands of delivery workers flexible ways to earn money. “When delivery workers work with us, they have a range of protections, including insurance for their journey, and we regularly work with them to see how we can improve their experience.”
Back in Bristol, Campos gets on his scooter. He’s exhausted after a long night’s shift, but he says he has to go back to work. “If you’re only getting paid £1, £2 or £3 per delivery, you have to make a lot of deliveries. The owners of these companies don’t think about us, the couriers who make their money, they only think about themselves.”
IIf you’re considering trading up to an electric vehicle but think it’s too costly, think again. Used Tesla Model 3 or Kia e-Niros, capable of 250-300 miles on a single charge, can now be purchased for just £14,000.
Last year, prices for used electric vehicles dropped significantly, making previously unattainable models now accessible to many families.
In fact, Autotrader reported that EVs are now almost as affordable as petrol cars, with the average price of a three- to five-year-old EV in July being £18,964, compared to £18,076 for a petrol car of the same model year.
Ground-breaking ultra-efficient models from three to four years ago are now available on the second-hand market at much more affordable prices, despite initially costing between £40,000 and £50,000 new.
According to David Smith of Cleveleys Electric Vehicles, there are some incredible deals available, with cars offering nearly the same driving range as new models, proven reliability, and warranties still intact, all at a fraction of the price.
One EV specialist highly recommends the Kia e-Niro, especially with its 64kWh battery. Photo: Sue Thatcher/Alamy
Smith also recommended the Kia e-Niro with its 64kWh battery for families under £15,000, citing its efficiency, range, and reliability.
Another model to consider is the MG5, which has proven to be extremely reliable according to Cleveleys Electric Vehicles.
Smith mentioned that longer-range EVs are not as risky as perceived, with many cars maintaining their mileage even after extensive use.
Buying a used, fuel-efficient EV eliminates the issues that new electric vehicles may face, making them a practical choice for many buyers.
For those looking to purchase, there are several affordable options available, like the Kia e-Niro and Tesla Model 3, both offering long-distance capabilities at competitive prices.
Charging at home is much cheaper than using public charging points, making EVs even more cost-effective in the long run.
The Tesla Model 3 has proven to be capable of long distance driving. Photo: Taina Sohlman/Alamy
Consider the warranties, charging options, and overall cost before making a decision on purchasing a used EV.
Charging at home is much cheaper than using a public charging point. Photo: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
Consider the charging infrastructure, insurance costs, and warranty coverage when buying a used EV to ensure a wise investment.
The Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) is facing increasing challenges due to wildfires and their aftermaths, making sections of the trail hazardous and leading to sudden road closures. Long-distance hikers are experiencing significant environmental transformations as wildfires ravage the area, while rural communities near the trail are stepping up to assist hikers during wildfire emergencies.
According to Riley, wildfires are becoming more frequent and unpredictable, affecting a larger number of trails, users, and communities. The PCT, which traverses diverse terrains like the Mojave Desert, Sierra Nevada Mountains, and Cascade Mountains, attracts thousands of long-distance hikers and hundreds of thousands of day hikers annually.
However, the combination of global warming-induced extreme temperatures and decades of aggressive fire suppression has led to intense wildfire seasons altering the landscape along the PCT. Climate change effects are noticeable along the trail, with local weather scientist John O’Brien remarking, “This is an extended tour of climate history.”
Trail crews on the Pacific Crest Trail pass through burned areas of the Eagle Creek Fire in the Columbia River Gorge near Portland, Oregon, in 2018.Jamie Hale/The Oregonian via The Associated Press
Apart from fire risks, climate change is intensifying water scarcity along the trail and affecting wildlife populations. Glacial retreat in higher elevations is exposing more slippery rock, while river levels are peaking earlier in the season, leading to hazardous crossings.
Hikers like Karen Altergott have faced extreme weather conditions, from heavy late-season snowfall to intense heat waves, prompting concerns about the impact on health. Altergott emphasized the need for preparedness and flexibility when dealing with changing trail conditions.
Karen Altergott.Courtesy of Karen Altergott
The PCT community is coming together to tackle these challenges, with the Pacific Crest Trail Association releasing a smartphone app to help hikers navigate wildfire closures. Local “trail angels” are also stepping up to provide aid, transport, and support to stranded hikers during emergencies.
Becky Wade and her partner Jeff McCabe.Courtesy of Becky Wade
Becky Wade and Jeff McCabe, who have experienced evacuations due to wildfires, exemplify the importance of community support. Their efforts in assisting hikers around fire-affected areas highlight the crucial role of local residents in ensuring hiker safety along the PCT.
Although wildfires and their aftermath present challenges, hikers like Will Geolis attest to the enduring value of the PCT experience. While adapting to changing trail conditions is necessary, the trail’s community and scenic beauty remain priceless.
Joris aptly sums up the essence of the PCT experience, emphasizing that it’s the people and the journey that truly matter, rather than completing a continuous hike along the trail.
The Royal Society is facing pressure to remove technology mogul Elon Musk from its membership due to concerns about his behavior.
As reported by The Guardian, Musk, known for owning the social media platform X, was elected to the British Academy of Sciences in 2018. Some view him as a contemporary innovator comparable to Brunel for his contributions to the aerospace and electric vehicle sectors.
Musk, a co-founder of SpaceX and the CEO of Tesla, has been commended for advancing reusable rocket technology and promoting sustainable energy sources.
Nevertheless, concerns have been raised by several Royal Society fellows regarding Musk’s membership status, citing his provocative comments, particularly following recent riots in the UK.
Critics fear that Musk’s statements could tarnish the reputation of his companies. In response to inquiries, Musk’s companies, including X, provided comments.
Musk’s social media posts during the unrest were widely condemned, with Downing Street rebuking his remarks about civil war and false claims about UK authorities.
The concerns around potentially revoking Musk’s membership focus on his ability to promote his beliefs responsibly and not on his personal views.
The Royal Society’s Code of Conduct emphasizes that fellowship entails upholding certain standards of behavior, even in personal communications, to safeguard the organization’s reputation.
The Code stipulates that breaching conduct rules may result in disciplinary measures, such as temporary or permanent suspension. Specific procedures are outlined if misconduct allegations are raised against a Fellow or Foreign Member.
Expelling a member from the Royal Society is rare, with no records of such action in over a century. Previous controversies included a dean resigning over remarks about teaching creationism in schools.
A Royal Society spokesperson assured that any concerns regarding individual Fellows would be handled confidentially.
Water is a key component of exoplanets, and its distribution – on the surface or deep inside – has a fundamental impact on the planet’s properties. A new study suggests that for Earth-sized planets and planets with more than six times Earth’s mass, the majority of water resides deep within the planet’s core.
Most of the water isn’t stored on the surface of exoplanets, but deep within their cores and mantles. Image courtesy of Sci.News.
“Most of the exoplanets known to date are located close to their stars,” said Professor Caroline Dohn of ETH Zurich.
“That means they consist mainly of hot worlds with oceans of molten magma that haven’t yet cooled enough to form a solid mantle of silicate rock like Earth’s.”
“Water is very soluble in these magma oceans, unlike, say, carbon dioxide, which quickly outgasssssssssssss and rises into the atmosphere.”
“The iron core is beneath a molten silicate mantle. So how does water partition between the silicates and the iron?”
“It takes time for the iron core to form. Most of the iron is initially contained in the hot magma soup in the form of droplets.”
“The water trapped in this soup binds to these iron droplets and together they sink to the center. The iron droplets act like a lift force, being carried downward by the water.”
Until now, such phenomena were known to occur only under moderate pressures, which also exist on Earth.
It was not known what would happen on larger planets with higher internal pressures.
“This is one of the key findings of our study,” Professor Dorn said.
“The larger and more massive the planet, the more likely the water is to be integrated into the core, together with the iron droplets.”
“Under certain circumstances, iron can absorb up to 70 times more water than silicates.”
“But because of the enormous pressure at the core, the water no longer exists in the form of water molecules, but in the form of hydrogen and oxygen.”
The research was sparked by an investigation into the Earth’s water content, which four years ago led to a startling result: the Earth’s surface oceans contain only a tiny fraction of the planet’s total water.
More than 80 of Earth’s oceans may be hidden within it.
This is shown by simulations that calculate how water would have behaved under conditions when the Earth was young, so experiments and seismological measurements are compatible.
New discoveries about the distribution of water within planets will have a dramatic impact on the interpretation of astronomical observational data.
Astronomers can use telescopes in space and on Earth to measure the weight and size of exoplanets under certain conditions.
They use these calculations to create mass-radius diagrams that allow them to draw conclusions about the planet’s composition.
“Ignoring water solubility and distribution, as has been done in the past, can lead to a massive underestimation of the water volume, by up to a factor of ten,” Prof Doern said.
“There’s a lot more water on the planet than we previously thought.”
The distribution of water is also important if we want to understand how planets form and develop: any water that sinks to the core will remain trapped there forever.
However, dissolved water in the mantle’s magma ocean can degas and rise to the surface as the mantle cools.
“So if we find water in a planet’s atmosphere, there’s probably even more water in its interior,” Prof Dorn said.
Water is one of the prerequisites for life to develop, and there has long been speculation as to whether water-rich super-Earths could support life.
Calculations have since suggested that too much water could be detrimental to life, arguing that on such a watery world, an alien layer of high-pressure ice would prevent vital exchange of materials at the interface between the ocean and the planet’s mantle.
Current research has come to a different conclusion: Most of the water on super-Earths is locked away in their cores, rather than on their surfaces as previously assumed, so planets with deep aqueous layers are probably rare.
This has led astronomers to speculate that planets with relatively high water content could potentially form habitable environments like Earth.
“Their study sheds new light on the possibility that worlds rich enough in water to support life may exist,” the authors said.
of study Published in the journal Natural Astronomy.
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H. Luo othersThe interior as the main water reservoir of Super-Earths and Sub-Neptunes. Nat AstronPublished online August 20, 2024; doi: 10.1038/s41550-024-02347-z
Tardigrades are a diverse group of microinvertebrates widely known for their remarkable ability to survive. Molecular clocks suggest that tardigrades diverged from other panarthropods (arthropods, tardigrades, velvet worms, and lobopods) before the Cambrian, but the fossil record is extremely poor. Now, paleontologists have described a new species of tardigrade and redescribed previously known species. readBoth are from Canadian Cretaceous amber.
Artistic Restoration read (Top) and Aerobius dactylus (Bottom) A hypothetical fossilization environment. Image courtesy of Franz Anthony.
First discovered in 1773, tardigrades are a diverse group of microscopic invertebrates best known for their ability to survive in extreme environments.
Also known as tardigrades or moss pigs, these creatures can live up to 60 years and grow to a size of up to 0.5mm. They are best seen under a microscope.
They can survive up to 30 years without food or water, and can survive temperatures as low as -272°C and as high as 150°C for a few minutes, and as low as -20°C for decades.
Tardigrades can withstand pressures ranging from nearly zero atmospheres in outer space to 1,200 atmospheres at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and can also tolerate radiation levels of up to 5,000-6,200 Gy.
They survive by entering a state of suspended animation called biostasis, using proteins that form a gel inside the cells and slow down vital processes.
“Tardigrades are microscopic invertebrates characterized by a compact body shape with lobopod legs with four pairs of claws, and are closely related to the clawed pterygota and euarthropods. Panarthropods“Harvard doctoral student Mark Mapalo and his colleagues said:
“Tardigrades are widely known for having several species with cryptobiotic capabilities that allow them to survive extreme conditions such as the vacuum of space, ionizing radiation and freezing temperatures. Tardigrades are also found in marine, freshwater and terrestrial habitats around the world.”
“Despite their ubiquity in the modern biosphere, tardigrades have a notoriously poor fossil record, and research into their macroevolution, such as the origin of their body shape, the timing of their terrestrialization, and the acquisition of their cryptic abilities, is limited.”
“Currently, only four fossil crown-group tardigrades are known, all preserved as amber inclusions, but only two of these have an established taxonomic position relative to extant tardigrades.”
For the study, the authors looked at a piece of amber containing a tardigrade fossil that was discovered in Canada in the 1960s. read and what was presumed to be another tardigrade, which was virtually unexplained at the time.
Using confocal laser scanning microscopy, a technique commonly used to study cell biology, the researchers were able to examine the microscopic structure of the tardigrade fossils in astonishing detail.
This study read It has been identified as a new species in the Tardigrade family tree, Aerobius dactylus.
“Both were found in the same Cretaceous amber, which means that these tardigrades coexisted with dinosaurs,” said Dr Javier Ortega-Hernández of Harvard University.
” read The seven claws are well preserved, and those that curve towards the body are smaller than those that curve away from it, a pattern seen in modern tardigrades.”
“The second, previously unidentified specimen had claws of equal length on each of the first three pairs of legs, but the outer claws on the fourth leg were longer.”
Both species serve as important calibration points for an analysis called a molecular clock analysis, which helps scientists estimate important evolutionary timing.
For example, new research suggests that modern tardigrades likely branched off during the Cambrian period, more than 500 million years ago.
The study also sheds light on the origins of tardigrades' remarkable ability to survive extreme environments by entering a state of torpor.
“This study estimates that this survival mechanism likely evolved during the middle to late Palaeozoic and may have played a key role in helping tardigrades survive the end-Permian mass extinction, one of the most severe extinction events in Earth's history,” Dr Ortega-Hernández said.
of result Published in a journal Communication Biology.
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MA Mapalo others2024. Inclusions in Cretaceous amber shed light on evolutionary origins of tardigrades. Communication Violet 7, 953; doi: 10.1038/s42003-024-06643-2
Despite warm ocean temperatures, hurricane season is on a lull.
This season is expected to be much more active than usual and is off to a record-breaking start.
Still, the unofficial peak of hurricane season is on September 10, so scientists wouldn’t be surprised if cyclonic activity picks up again soon.
The Gulf of Mexico is scorching hot, but hurricane season is on a lull (at least temporarily) — a surprise to researchers who say there’s a lot brewing in the Atlantic, but no storms are showing up on radar.
“Nothing is happening, which is extremely quiet and odd given the warm temperatures in the Atlantic and the La Niña climate pattern,” said Philip Klotzbach, a meteorologist at Colorado State University who specializes in seasonal hurricane forecasting in the Atlantic basin. “It’s a head-scratching situation right now.”
The La Niña weather phenomenon that scientists are predicting will develop this fall is closely linked to hurricanes, as is warming water in the Atlantic Ocean, with ocean heat content in the Gulf of Mexico at its highest since 2013, according to data from the University of Miami.
Warmer oceans increase hurricane energy through heat, increasing the risk of storms intensifying rapidly.
“We have plenty of fuel. It’s not going to hinder our season,” Klotzbach said.
Hurricane season begins on June 1 and ends on November 30. Hurricane scientists had predicted this year’s hurricane season would be record-breaking, but it got off to a record-breaking start in June with Hurricane Beryl being the first Category 4 storm to form in the Atlantic. Then, the slow-moving Hurricane Debbie dumped incredible rain on several southeastern states in early August. But since then, it’s been relatively quiet.
Steve Bowen, chief scientific officer at global reinsurance broker Gallagher Re, said weather trends off the coast of West Africa, including a strengthening monsoon, may have prevented tropical storms from developing in the Atlantic basin.
But that may not last long: The unofficial peak of hurricane season is September 10.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we get what’s called a backloading season with pretty good activity through September, October, and possibly November,” Bowen said.
Although things have calmed down recently, scientists believe this season has been quite active so far.
“We’ve already had two landfalls in the United States,” Bowen said. “Typically, the first major hurricane doesn’t form until August 31st. … Just looking at the statistics, we’re well ahead of normal.”
Neolithic people appear to have understood advanced concepts from sciences such as physics and geology, and used this knowledge to build megalithic monuments in southern Spain.
The dolmen, called Menga Dolmen, was built between 3600 and 3800 BC and is one of the oldest megalithic structures in Europe. The covered enclosure is made of 32 large stones, some of which are the largest ever used for such a structure. The heaviest stone weighs over 130 tonnes, more than three times the heaviest stone at Stonehenge in England, which was built more than 1000 years later.
“[In the Neolithic Period]”It must have been an impressive experience to experience these huge stone structures,” he said. Leonardo Garcia San Juan He studied at the University of Seville in Spain. “It still moves me. It still makes an impression on me.”
García Sanjuan and his colleagues are now conducting a detailed geological and archaeological analysis of the stones to deduce what knowledge Menga's builders needed to construct the monument in the city of Antequera.
Paradoxically, they found that the rock was a type of relatively brittle sandstone, meaning that it was at high risk of breaking, but the team found that they could compensate for that risk by shaping the rock, locking it into a very stable overall structure.
Neolithic people would have needed some way to make the stones fit together very snugly, Garcia-Sanjuan says. “It's like Tetris,” he says. “The precision, and how tightly each stone is fastened to each other, forces you to think they had some concept of angles, even if it was just rudimentary.”
The researchers also discovered that the 130-ton stone, laid horizontally on top to form part of the roof, has a raised surface in the middle and slopes down at the edges, which helps distribute forces in the same way an arch does and strengthens the roof, Garcia-Sanjuan says. “To our knowledge, this is the first time the principle of the arch has been documented in human history.”
The purpose of the mengas is unknown, but they were positioned to create unique light patterns inside them during the summer solstice, and the stones are protected from water damage by layers of carefully pounded clay, supporting evidence of their builders' knowledge of architecture and engineering.
“They knew about geology and the properties of the rocks they were working with,” Garcia San Juan says. “When you put all of this together — engineering, physics, geology, geometry, astronomy — you get what you call science.”
There are other Neolithic structures in France of a similar size to Menga, but less is known about how it was built, Garcia San Juan said. “To date, Menga is unique both in the Iberian peninsula and in Western Europe.”
“What's surprising is how sophisticated it is.” Susan Greaney “This architectural understanding of how weight is distributed is something I've never seen anywhere before,” says Professor David Schneider of the University of Exeter in the UK. But, she adds, this may be a testament to an understanding of architecture and engineering rather than an understanding of science.
Health workers assess a suspected case of MPOX in North Kivu province, Democratic Republic of Congo.
Arlette Basij/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, is currently in the midst of an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and neighboring countries, with the surge in cases being blamed in part on a new variant that is thought to be more deadly than the variant of the Mpox virus that caused a global outbreak in 2022. But there are treatments that may help.
How deadly is MPOX?
Studies have shown that the mortality rate among people infected with the currently circulating lineage I variant of MPOX is approximately 1-2%. 11 percentThe variation in reported mortality rates is probably due to differences in affected populations and problems with disease surveillance, Lilith Whittles At Imperial College London.
For example, infants and children with underdeveloped immune systems may be more likely than adults to develop serious, even fatal, infections, and people with suppressed immune systems, such as those with HIV, may also be more susceptible, she says.
Additionally, some areas have little access to health care and limited surveillance for MPOX. As a result, health care providers only catch the most severe cases and miss milder cases, making the death rate appear higher than it actually is. If MPOX symptoms are increasingly misdiagnosed as other illnesses, like measles or chickenpox, more cases will go undetected, Whittles says.
In fact, most deaths from MPOX occur due to complications such as sepsis, where infection enters the bloodstream and causes organ failure, and inflammation caused by the MPOX virus that damages the lungs, he said. Piero Oriaro At Oxford University.
What are the MPOX treatment options?
In the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring countries where the current outbreak is occurring, there are few treatments specific to MPOX. Instead, doctors focus on treating symptoms, which usually last two to four weeks, such as reducing fever and headaches with paracetamol (acetaminophen) and cleaning skin lesions to prevent bacterial infections, he said. Jean-Claude Udahemka At the University of Rwanda.
In the UK and US, doctors can use the antiviral drug Tecovirimat to treat people with severe smallpox. Originally developed to treat smallpox, its use against the disease was based on animal studies in which it improved survival rates compared to a placebo. Tecovirimat works by binding to a protein on the surface of both variola and smallpox that the virus uses to attack. Freeing itself from infected cells spreads to other cells.
Doctors in the United States and the United Kingdom can also treat MPOX with other antiviral drugs, such as brincidofovir and cidofovir. Protecting mice from lethal doses of the mpox virus. Both brincidofivir and cidofovir Interfering with enzymes Used by viruses to replicate their genome.
Another treatment, known as VIGIV, involves injecting people with smallpox with antibodies against smallpox taken from people who have had the smallpox vaccine, thus strengthening their immune response to the virus.
How effective is mpox treatment in humans?
Animal studies suggest that these treatments may be effective against MPOX, but their effectiveness in humans is unknown. Early results from a recent randomized controlled trial (best medical evidence) in the Democratic Republic of Congo suggest that tecovirimat does not accelerate the progression of MPOX. Healing of painful lesions in children and adults infected with lineage I variants of MPOX.
Nonetheless, the researchers found that the MPOX mortality rate for participants who received the antiviral drug was 1.7 percent, an improvement over the 3.6 percent mortality rate typically seen in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But this can be partly explained by the fact that participants in the trial received close care in hospital, Oriaro says.
Ultimately, better treatments and a better understanding of MPOX's lethality will be essential to protect people, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo, from the ongoing epidemic. Lucille Blumberg She is a researcher at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. “There's a lot of work to be done,” she says.
Chinese scientists have made a groundbreaking discovery in producing large amounts of water using lunar soil collected from the 2020 mission, as reported by state-run CCTV on Thursday.
The Chang’e-5 mission in 2020 marked a significant milestone in collecting lunar samples after a 44-year hiatus. Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences found high amounts of hydrogen in minerals present in the lunar soil. When heated to extreme temperatures, this hydrogen reacts with other elements to generate water vapor, according to China Central Television.
CCTV reported, “After extensive research and verification over three years, a new method has been identified for producing significant quantities of water from lunar soil. This discovery is anticipated to play a crucial role in designing future lunar research and space stations.”
This finding could have significant implications for China’s long-standing ambition to establish a permanent lunar base, amid the race between the United States and China to explore and exploit lunar resources.
On August 26, 2021, a small vial containing lunar soil brought back from the moon by China’s lunar probe Chang’e-5 was placed in Beijing.Ren Hui/VCG via Getty Images file
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has expressed concerns about China’s rapid progress in space exploration and the potential risk of Beijing controlling valuable lunar resources.
According to state media, the new technique can yield approximately 51-76 kilograms of water from one ton of lunar soil, enough to fill over 100 500ml bottles or sustain the daily water needs of 50 individuals.
China aims for its recent and upcoming lunar missions to establish a basis for constructing the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), a collaborative project with Russia.
The Chinese space agency’s plan includes establishing a lunar “base station” at the moon’s south pole by 2035, followed by a lunar orbiting space station by 2045.
This discovery coincides with ongoing experiments by Chinese scientists on lunar samples obtained from the Chang’e-6 probe in June.
While the Chang’e-5 mission collected samples from the moon’s near side, Chang’e-6 gathered lunar soil from the far side, perpetually hidden from Earth.
The significance of lunar water surpasses sustaining human settlement; NASA’s Nelson mentioned to NPR in May that moon water could be utilized to produce hydrogen fuel for rockets, potentially fueling missions to Mars and beyond.
IIt’s no exaggeration to say that the video game industry is currently undergoing a period of alarming turmoil: studios are closing, development budgets are exploding, and lucrative genres are becoming saturated with a host of entirely interchangeable big-budget contenders.
Into this uneasy market comes Sony’s new 5v5 “hero” shooter, Concord, a subgenre of multiplayer online blasters in which players control characters with elaborate special abilities rather than generic special forces soldiers or space marines. Set in a war-torn galaxy ruled by a dictatorial government called the Guild, the game puts players in control of a variety of freelance gunners, mercenaries who roam the space lanes in search of work and throw one-liners at each other in the game’s highly polished cutscenes. In-game, though, they do fight.
Heroism…Concord. Photo: Sony Interactive Entertainment
All the standard characters from hero shooters are there: regular soldiers, floating witches, teleporting weirdos, sassy tanks, etc., but they don’t have the instant appeal of Overwatch’s denizens D.Va and Mei. But they bring a lot of variety to the combat zone. Lark is a weird mushroom alien who plants spores to slow enemies and heal allies. Kipps is a stealthy assassin who can reveal enemy locations to his team. A chunky robotic one-off throws exploding trash cans. I like the innate flexibility of these skills and how they can be combined between characters. The submachine gun-toting Duchess can throw up a defensive barrier, which is useful as cover, but can also be used to block objective points for the enemy team or lure enemy soldiers into an ambush. Davers can bombard an area with a napalm-like substance called Burnite, which can be ignited by other players’ incendiary bombs, doubling its effect.
The 12 launch maps are mostly super-colourful takes on the sci-fi industrial spaces we’ve come to expect from Quake: Spine Works and Sorting Hub are labyrinthine complexes, all interconnected steel corridors, shipping containers and box-like warehouse choke points; Water Hazard is an abandoned oil rig with the remains of a giant sea monster lying on top like a nightmarish, Lovecraftian sushi plate; and my favourite is Train Trouble, a post-apocalyptic railroad graveyard where Mad Max meets Tatooine.
Lovecraft Sushi… Concord. Photo: Sony Interactive Entertainment
The crux of the matter is the excitement and tension of every moment of team-based combat, and Concord really does fly at times. There’s a bit of Destiny floatiness to movement that works brilliantly on this very vertical map, with players making full use of their double jump to make combat truly three-dimensional. The guns feel great; from shotguns to laser pistols, every weapon is solid and easy to read, and the audio and visual feedback perfectly communicates each weapon’s unique capabilities. There are sublime moments when the whole team comes together and all their abilities combine in unexpected ways to create an explosive, euphoric shooter experience that rivals the best moments in Overwatch.
But the big question at this point is whether the game is enough to draw players away from Activision’s games, or Valorant, or Apex Legends, or any of the others. It’s beautifully made, but most of it is painfully familiar, not just in character types and anime-esque visual aesthetics, but in structure as well. The game modes are all the standard types: team deathmatch, one where you have to capture three objective zones, one where there’s only one zone but it’s always moving, one where you have to pick up tokens from fallen enemies to score a kill, etc. This is what we’ve been playing since Doom. Meanwhile, the dialogue and humor are the same post-Whedon, cynical aloof approach that Marvel and Netflix YA dramas have been forcing on us for a decade. Oh, I miss the dark, anarchic satire and anarchic teammate-slaughtering mayhem of Helldiver 2.
The most interesting thing about Concord is the “meta” of the game, that is, the strategic part outside the main action. The game introduces some deck-building elements, where players must organize their own crew of characters. Each character has slight differences in their normal abilities. These characters all have their own buffs, called crew bonuses, which slightly boost the health, armor, or firepower of your team every time you play in a match. These buffs accumulate throughout the battle. So, if you’re playing in an organized team, you can work together to build a strong statistical advantage, just like having a good hand in Hearthstone. It’s an interesting idea, but in the chaos of a public server, where only a small percentage of participants play as part of an organized team, it’s unclear whether it will work.
Perhaps the bravest thing about Concorde is that it’s a premium-priced product rather than a “live service” free-to-play — meaning all subsequent content will be free rather than the run-of-the-mill season pass model — and it’s also unashamedly and vociferously pro-diversity, which will likely anger players who are increasingly jaded by modern online games. Should Frankly, it pisses me off because this small group of misanthropic, gatekeeping blabbermouths are ruining the fun for everyone else.
Ultimately, Concord needs time, space, and a healthy community to gain an advantage over its older, wiser competitors. Right now, players are getting a feel for the place, but the game is choppy and unfocused, yet at times surprisingly fun. Its attitude, detail, and elaborate backstory (explorable in a visual encyclopedia undoubtedly inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) give it the feeling of being something the development team really cares about, and if it’s not taken off life support by publisher funding anytime soon, it has a chance of finding an audience that feels the same way.
Ray Kurzweil is a prominent figure in the field of artificial intelligence, with over 60 years of experience. He has achieved many milestones in AI development, such as inventing the first commercially available large vocabulary speech recognition software. Kurzweil’s expertise in AI was recognized with the National Medal of Technology by President Bill Clinton in 1999 and his induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002.
In addition to his practical accomplishments, Kurzweil is known for his accurate predictions about future technologies. His book “The Singularity is Near,” published in 2005, explored the rapid advances in computing and AI, predicting the future impact of AI on society. In his follow-up book, “The Singularity is Approaching,” Kurzweil delves into how AI will reshape our lives.
Kurzweil forecasts significant changes ahead, particularly in the realm of artificial general intelligence (AGI). He believes AGI will surpass human abilities in various cognitive tasks, potentially becoming available by 2029. The pace of technological advances in AI is accelerating exponentially, with Kurzweil emphasizing the need to prepare for the evolution of AI.
Another groundbreaking prediction by Kurzweil is the potential end of aging through advancements in healthcare and technology. He envisions a future where aging can be slowed down or prevented entirely, with life expectancy increasing significantly. Kurzweil’s optimistic outlook extends to the integration of AI with human intelligence by 2050, creating a new form of intelligence through the merging of human brains with computers.
As a futurist, author, and inventor, Ray Kurzweil continues to shape the conversation around AI and its impact on society. His visionary insights invite us to consider the possibilities and challenges that lie ahead in the ever-evolving landscape of artificial intelligence.
Reports suggest that Americans are set to witness a peculiar and somewhat alarming occurrence as swarms of tarantulas are poised to invade certain regions of the country.
Despite the ominous connotations associated with this event, it is actually a normal annual happening where thousands of spiders are on the lookout for mates, particularly in Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.
Naturally, one might feel inclined to take action upon witnessing such a spectacle, but how challenging is it to manage these swarms? And what level of threat do they truly pose?
What’s prompting the spider swarms?
The appearance of swarms of animals and insects typically indicates two main reasons: migration or mating. In the case of American tarantulas, it is primarily due to the latter. It is an intriguing scenario distinct from what we might typically envision.
“Every year, male tarantulas come out in search of a mate, while females remain in their burrows releasing pheromones to attract males,” stated Lauren Davidson, an entomologist at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. “It’s a fascinating phenomenon that occurs based on weather conditions and geographical location.”
Male tarantulas usually have a short lifespan solely for the duration of the mating season, with only mature males actively seeking a mate. Upon detecting a female’s pheromones, the male tarantula initiates a mating ritual by drumming near the entrance of her burrow. If the female is receptive, she will come out to meet him.
Wondering where you might encounter these males? Tarantula mating season varies across different regions; for instance, mating in Texas typically occurs in early summer, while in Colorado and New Mexico, it can extend until October.
Davidson notes, “The timing is consistent each year, and these events are often unnoticed by urban residents. It’s a cyclical process that occurs at night due to tarantulas being nocturnal.”
Though it may appear to be migration, the spiders are primarily in search of mates within close proximity to their usual habitats, generally traveling no more than a kilometer from home.
Encountering a tarantula: What to do?
While encounters with tarantulas may be rare, it is not impossible. If you do come across one, remain calm as these spiders are harmless. Despite their intimidating size, their venom is similar to that of a bee sting and bites are infrequent. Tarantulas typically avoid human contact and resort to kicking out irritating hairs if threatened.
Direct contact with these hairs can cause itchiness and irritation, but one would need to be in close proximity to the spider for that to occur. Davidson reassures, “Many people travel to witness these tarantulas as they are docile creatures and safe to handle.”
About our expert
Lauren Davidson: Associate Curator of Entomology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science and Manager of the Cockrell Butterfly Center. Davidson has authored several children’s books focusing on entomology education.
Life on Earth has faced various threats over millions of years, from asteroids to pandemics to climate change. According to the IPCC, nearly one in five terrestrial species is at risk of extinction by 2100 due to rising global temperatures.
Marine life is also in peril, with coral reefs disappearing rapidly. Dr. Mary Hagedorn, a coral reef expert, has been working on cryopreserving coral to ensure its survival and potential reintroduction into ecosystems.
Her innovative idea involves creating a lunar biorepository to store frozen cell samples of key species for ecosystem reconstruction. The moon’s cold temperatures and protection from radiation make it an ideal location for such a vault.
The focus is on preserving fibroblasts, which can be reprogrammed into different cell types, including stem cells for cloning. This initiative aims to safeguard Earth’s ecosystems and potentially support future human space exploration, such as Mars missions.
While the concept may seem futuristic, the team has already begun freezing cell samples from species like the starry goby for testing. The ultimate goal is to send diverse genetic samples to the lunar vault to ensure the preservation of essential species.
Creating a biorepository on the moon presents logistical challenges but could be achievable with NASA’s support and funding. Future generations might benefit from this innovative approach to conservation and space exploration.
Dr. Mary Hagedorn and Professor Ian Crawford are leading experts in this field, with a focus on conservation, lunar science, and astrobiology. Their research and work contribute to the understanding of ecosystems and the future of space exploration.
Physicists from the STAR Collaboration have observed an antimatter hypernucleus, antihyperhydrogen-4, consisting of an antihypernucleus, an antiproton, and two antineutrons, in nuclear collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Artistic representation of antihyperhydrogen-4 produced in the collision of two gold nuclei. Image courtesy of the Institute of Modern Physics.
“What we know in physics about matter and antimatter is that, apart from the opposite charge, antimatter has the same properties as matter – the same mass, the same lifetime before decaying, and the same interactions,” said Junlin Wu, a graduate student at Lanzhou University and the China Institute of Modern Physics.
“But in reality, our universe is made up of antimatter rather than matter, even though equal amounts of matter and antimatter are thought to have been created during the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago.”
“Why our universe is populated with matter remains a question, and we don't yet have a complete answer.”
“The first step in studying the asymmetry between matter and antimatter is to discover new antimatter particles. This is the basic idea of this research,” added Dr Hao Qiu, a researcher at the Institute of Modern Physics.
STAR physicists had previously observed atomic nuclei made of antimatter produced in RHIC collisions.
In 2010, they detected an antihypertriton, the first example of an antimatter nucleus containing a hyperon, a particle that contains at least one strange quark rather than just the light up and down quarks that make up ordinary protons and neutrons.
Just a year later, STAR physicists broke that massive antimatter record by detecting antihelium-4, the antimatter equivalent of a helium nucleus.
Recent analysis suggests that antihyperhydrogen 4 may also be feasible.
But detecting this unstable antihypernucleus is a rare event: all four components (one antiproton, two antineutrons and one antilambda) need to be ejected from the quark-gluon soup produced in the RHIC collision in just the right place, in the same direction and at just the right time, briefly becoming bound together.
“It's just a coincidence that these four component particles appear close enough together in the RHIC collision that they can combine to form an antihypernucleus,” said Brookhaven National Laboratory physicist Lijuan Luan, one of the STAR collaboration's co-spokespeople.
To find antihyperhydrogen-4, STAR physicists studied the trajectories of particles produced when this unstable antihypernucleus decays.
One of these decay products is the previously detected antihelium-4 nucleus, and the other is a simple positively charged particle called a pion (pi+).
“Antihelium-4 had already been discovered with STAR, so we used the same methods as before to pick up those events and reconstruct them with the π+ track to find these particles,” Wu said.
“It is simply by chance that these four component particles emerge from the RHIC collision close enough together to combine to form an antihypernucleus,” said Dr. Lijuan Luan, a research scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
RHIC's collisions produce huge amounts of pions, and physicists have been sifting through billions of collision events to find the rare antihypernuclei.
The antihelium-4 produced by the collision can pair up with hundreds or even a thousand pi+ particles.
“The key was to find an intersection point where the trajectories of the two particles had a particular characteristic – a collapse vertex,” Dr. Luan said.
“That is, the collapse apex must be far enough away from the collision point that the two particles could have originated from the decay of an antihypernucleus that formed shortly after the collision of the particle originally produced in the fireball.”
STAR researchers worked hard to eliminate the background of all other potential collapse pair partners.
Ultimately, their analysis found 22 candidate events with an estimated background count of 6.4.
“That means that about six of what appear to be antihyperhydrogen-4 decays could just be random noise,” said Emily Duckworth, a doctoral student at Kent State University.
Subtracting that background count from the 22, physicists can be confident that they have detected about 16 actual antihyperhydrogen-4 nuclei.
The results were significant enough to allow scientists to make a direct comparison between matter and antimatter.
They compared the lifespan of antihyperhydrogen 4 to that of hyperhydrogen 4, which is made from normal matter variants of the same building blocks.
They also compared the lifetimes of another matter-antimatter pair, antihypertritons and hypertritons.
Neither difference was significant, but the authors were not surprised.
“This experiment tested a particularly strong form of symmetry,” the researchers said.
“Physicists generally agree that this symmetry breaking is extremely rare and is not an answer to the imbalance of matter and antimatter in the universe.”
“If we saw this particular breaking of symmetry, we would basically have to throw a lot of what we know about physics out the window,” Duckworth said.
“So in a way it was reassuring that symmetry still worked in this case.”
“We agree that this result provides further confirmation that our model is correct and marks a major step forward in the experimental study of antimatter.”
STAR Collaboration. Observation of the antimatter hypernucleus antihyperhydrogen 4. NaturePublished online August 21, 2024, doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07823-0
This article is based on an original release from Brookhaven National Laboratory.
New genus and species of large theropod dinosaur named Alpkaraqsh Kyrgyzics. It was discovered in the Middle Jurassic Barabansai Formation in the northern Fergana Basin of Kyrgyzstan.
Reconstructing your life Alpkaraqsh Kyrgyzics.Image credit: Joschua Knüppe.
Alpkaraqsh Kyrgyzics roamed the Earth during the Callovian Period of the Jurassic Period, between 165 and 161 million years ago.
This ancient predator was 7 to 8 metres (23 to 26 feet) long and had highly prominent “eyebrows” on a part of the skull behind the eye sockets, called the postorbital bone, which indicates the presence of horns in this area.
Alpkaraqsh Kyrgyzics belongs to Metriacanthosauridae, a group of medium- to large-sized allosauroid theropod dinosaurs characterized by high, arched skulls, elongated, dish-like neural spines, and slender hind limbs.
“Theropod dinosaurs are well-known predators, similar to modern birds,” said Professor Oliver Rauhut from the SNSB – Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geology and his colleagues.
“A wide variety of theropods are known from the Mesozoic Era, the age of dinosaurs.”
“Just as lions today live mainly in Africa and tigers only in Asia, for example, Allosaurus was widespread throughout North America and southwestern Europe during the Jurassic, but a similarly sized Allosaurus lived in China.”
However, the region between Central Europe and East Asia was previously unknown, and no large carnivorous dinosaurs from the Jurassic period were previously known to have been found in this vast area.”
Two specimens of Alpkaraqsh Kyrgyzics were recovered from the top Barabansai Formation in Kyrgyzstan, Jalal-Abad, near the city of Tashkumil.
“While the type specimen represents a subadult individual, the smaller specimen is a juvenile, indicating that it probably lived in groups,” the paleontologists said.
Alpkaraqsh Kyrgyzics is the first diagnosable theropod species from the Jurassic of Central Asia in western China.
We suggest that metriocanthosaurid dinosaurs originated in Southeast Asia during the Late Early or Early Middle Jurassic and rapidly became the dominant group of apex theropod predators in many ecosystems on the continent during the Jurassic.
Alpkaraqsh Kyrgyzics “The discovery of a metriacanthosaurid dinosaur fossil isn’t necessarily a surprise, but it fills a major gap in our knowledge of Jurassic theropods,” Prof Rauhut said.
“This discovery provides important new insights into the evolution and biogeography of these animals.
This discovery paper issued this month in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
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Oliver W. M. Rauhut others A new theropod dinosaur from the Callovian-Balabansai Formation of Kyrgyzstan. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 201(4):zlae090;doi:10.1093/zoolinnean/zlae090
Fragments of mitochondrial DNA can be added to the cell's main genome
wir0man/Getty Images
Mutations in which DNA from energy-producing mitochondria is mistakenly added to a cell's main genome were thought to be extremely rare. Now, studies of brain tissue show that such mutations occur in all of us, and their numbers may be a factor in ageing.
“Not only are they present, but they are abundant in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with cognitive abilities.” Ryan Mills At the University of Michigan.
In human cells, almost all of the DNA (about 6 billion letters) resides in the nucleus, but the energy-producing organelles called mitochondria have their own tiny genome of about 16,600 letters.
That's because mitochondria were once free-living bacteria with their own large genome. In the roughly 2 billion years since those bacteria formed a symbiotic relationship with our distant ancestors, most of the original bacterial genome has been lost or transferred to the main genome in the nucleus.
This evidence of transfer has led biologists to know for a long time that fragments of mitochondrial DNA could somehow find their way into the nucleus and then be added to the main genome. But this kind of mutation was thought to be very rare, Mills says. Over the past few years, work by his team and others has shown that this isn't as uncommon as we thought. At least in cancer cells.
Mills and his colleagues showed that these types of mutations also occur in non-cancerous cells by sequencing the DNA of brain tissue samples taken from 1,200 people during post-mortem examinations.
Although another team took the samples and sequenced them, Mills and his colleagues looked for mutations that add mitochondrial DNA to the nuclear genome. “We were just curious,” Mills says.
Not only did they find such mutations, but they also found that they were more prevalent in people who, on average, died younger.
It's not clear whether these mutations are just a symptom of aging or a cause of it, Mills says. “The jury is still out,” he says. “But if you take the entire mitochondrial sequence and put it somewhere in the genome, it's hard for me to believe that it wouldn't have an effect.”
Most political efforts to tackle climate change have had little effect
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Most climate policies fail to significantly reduce emissions and have little effect on halting climate change, meaning governments must work harder to find ways to actually make a difference.
Nicholas Koch Researchers from the Mercator Institute for the Global Commons and Climate Change in Berlin found this by assessing the impact of 1,500 climate policies implemented in 41 countries across six continents between 1998 and 2022.
The researchers began by using machine learning to identify moments when a country's emissions fell significantly compared to a control group of other countries not included in the analysis. They found 69 such emissions “breaks” and compared them to a database compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that tracks what climate policies were enacted and when.
Matching policy shifts with changes in emissions is not an exact science, but the team was able to identify 63 of these changes as being due to one or more policy interventions that took place within a two-year period before or after the change, to account for lagged or anticipated effects.
Each of the 63 breaks reduced carbon dioxide emissions by between 600 million and 1.8 billion tonnes, but the researchers found that overall, most climate policies have fallen far short of this level of success. “There are many policies that have not led to significant reductions in emissions, and more policies do not necessarily lead to better outcomes,” Koch said.
Many policies fail because they are too specific, he says. For example, governments might subsidize the purchase of new electric cars, but most cars on the road are not electric, so the impact is minimal. One measure that seems to be very effective is a total ban, for example stopping the use of coal for electricity generation, but these are always used in conjunction with others, making it hard for the team to identify whether they work in isolation.
Politicians are looking for a one-size-fits-all policy mix, but they're out of luck: there's nothing that works for all sectors. Pricing seems to be the most effective tool, especially in reducing emissions in commercial industries, but it's not the only solution, Koch says. “We've found that the most frequently used policy tools – subsidies and regulations – are not enough,” he says. “Only in combination with price-based tools like carbon prices, energy taxes, can we achieve significant emissions reductions.” In other words, people will only reduce their emissions if it hurts their wallets.
“A key value of this paper is that it identifies clear changes in emissions in specific sectors and countries.” Matthew Patterson The researcher, from the University of Manchester in the UK, points out that the OECD's database of policy change has some limitations because the government documents it draws from are not reported consistently around the world, but he says it is the best available for the purposes of this study.
“We've known for some time that climate policies work best in combination, but this study gives us more specific information about which combinations work and in what circumstances,” Patterson says. This will allow us to more aggressively pursue these “breaks” to address the emissions gap and create the policy combinations that most effectively address emissions.
Marion Dumas Researchers at the London School of Economics and Political Science say that while the study should be useful to policymakers, looking first at emissions trends – or the results – and then working backwards to understand the causes may not capture the full reality of policy interventions.
“This is a very interesting approach, but there is a lot of uncertainty as to how to simulate the likely outcomes. [emissions] “You need to map out the trajectory and then identify the tipping points,” Dumas said, adding that a two-year gap around the tipping point may be too short and underestimates the real impact of more gradual, longer-term policy changes.
“It's important not to overinterpret the headline results, which suggest that very few policies will reduce emissions.” Robin Rambo The researchers, from Imperial College London, say small emissions reductions that their team's methods didn't detect could add up to big differences.
Of course, a larger issue in identifying the most effective measures is that policymaking doesn't take place in a vacuum, and specific policies must be acceptable to the general public. “The political dynamics will determine whether that combination can be implemented in any given country or sector,” Patterson says.
“We know this is going to be very difficult politically,” Koch said, “but the good news is that in general it's possible to put policies in place to achieve these very ambitious goals.”
On July 23, 1999, just a few months before I enrolled in college, NASA’s Space Shuttle Columbia launched with a precious cargo. Not only was it carrying a crew led by the first woman, Eileen Collins, its primary purpose was to launch the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a new flagship space telescope. Chandra This was the heaviest payload ever carried by a NASA space shuttle and turned out to be one of the last two missions completed by Columbia before it tragically exploded after launch on February 1, 2003.
Chandra is the first, and so far only, NASA mission named after a person of color. The late theoretical astrophysicist and Nobel Prize winner Subramanian Chandrasekhar was called Chandra by his friends and family. Chandrasekhar, whose last name means “crown of the moon,” made many important contributions to astrophysics. His most important work was discovering the Chandrasekhar limit, the maximum mass a white dwarf remnant can have before it collapses into a black hole.
It's fitting that an X-ray telescope mission should be named after a scientist who has spent his life thinking about the physics of black holes, as X-ray telescopes play a key role in black hole research. X-rays are high-energy light waves, which means they are produced in extremely energetic environments, such as those around black holes, where extreme distortions of space-time cause strong gravitational forces to accelerate particles to extremely high speeds. In other words, when we look at the universe through the lens of X-ray astronomy, rather than the visible wavelengths of traditional telescopes, we see an entirely different universe.
Importantly, X-ray astronomy can't be done from the Earth's surface, because it's blocked by the Earth's atmosphere. That's good for human health, but not so good for astronomers. Chandra is therefore a reminder of just how important it is to keep low Earth orbit debris-free, so we can safely launch space telescopes that perform tasks that are simply beyond the control of the Earth.
I feel like I have grown up with Chandra. And not just because I attended college at Chandra headquarters, now known as the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Massachusetts, and was often mistakenly called “Chandra”. One of my lab projects as an undergraduate was to adjust the light-gathering part of Chandra's backup camera. The following year, I wrote my undergraduate thesis under the guidance of Martin Elvis, an expert in X-ray astronomy. My research focused on the particle winds that fly out of galaxies that contain supermassive black holes. I used Chandra data to analyze what structures these galaxies take. It is true that Martin's letter helped me secure admission to at least one PhD program. In other words, without Chandra, my career may never have begun.
I am one of thousands of scientists in the fields of physics and astronomy who can tell similar stories of how Chandra data was the foundation of the early stages of their careers, or how they have dedicated their lives to using Chandra to explore the mysteries of the universe. Laura Lopez Ohio State University has used Chandra for many years to study supernovae. Daniel Castronow a staff scientist at CfA, is doing the same thing. The three of us were postdoctoral fellows at MIT and are from a generation that grew up on the power of the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Now, after 25 years in orbit, Chandra is under threat – not the reality of space debris and aging equipment, but the political climate. US President Joe Biden's appointees to head NASA recently tried to scale back the project, but the scientific community worked with Congress to save the mission. But things will never be the same. A compromise proposal, which has not yet been signed into law, would drastically cut Chandra's funding and limit its scientific scope. Notably, there is no scientific basis for opposing the plan. Recommendations They have an army of expert advisers, but NASA has cut funding it had already promised to scientists, leaving PhD students and postdocs without enough money to cover living expenses.
Chandra deserves better. And so does its global audience. Thanks to Chandra, we have discovered new neutron stars and learned about their interiors. Our knowledge of black holes has blossomed. We have gained a deeper understanding of stellar life cycles and the history of our galaxy. We have been able to study galaxy clusters and learn how dark matter is distributed within them, putting the Milky Way in context. There is still time to save Chandra, a monument to human ingenuity. The fact that it is still going strong after 25 years should be celebrated and it should be honoured by the continuation of the mission.
Chanda's Week
What I'm Reading
My friend is Andrea Kindried. From Slavery to the Stars: A Personal Journey And it's beautiful.
What I'm seeing
I've seen some classic episodes Star Trek: The Next Generation Like “Remember Me”.
What I'm working on
I am developing a new course that prepares students to understand science in a social context..
Chanda Prescod Weinstein is an associate professor of physics and astronomy and a faculty member of women's studies at the University of New Hampshire. Her latest book is A Disordered Universe: A Journey into Dark Matter, Space-Time, and Dreams Deferred.
People with a craving for pathological romance could, if they so wished, write algorithms to select attractive, pathological prospective spouses or recreational dating partners.
Driven by curiosity, Coltan Scribner, inventor of the Morbid Curiosity Scale (Feedback, November 19, 2022), has explored new uses for the tool. He and two colleagues have study explains that “behavioral attraction predicts mating interest among morbidly curious women” toward men with risky personalities.
They cite previous research that shows those “women are aware of the potential costs associated with such men.” The new study aims to help those women, stating: “Despite the potential costs of men high on the dark triad, it may be beneficial for women with pathological curiosity to develop a preference for such men to fulfill short-term mating goals.
The study doesn’t delve into the obvious business potential here. Feedback envisions a new era dedicated to the making and use of morbid gadgets. Perhaps brighter days lie ahead for this industry, originally called “computer dating.”
(For those interested, Scribner has also created a simple way to measure where you stand on the scale: a free online Morbid curiosity test Before we begin, we’re told that “‘morbid’ doesn’t mean curiosity is bad, it simply refers to the fact that the topic is related to death in some way.”
The limits of curiosity
What are the limits of your curiosity? Is there a foolproof, easy way to find out? Here’s a test.
The feedback includes a copy of a paper published by Subhash Chandra Shaw and his colleagues. Indian Army Medical Journal The title of the study and your response may tell you something about yourself.
Some politicians seek success through extremely eloquent speeches, which give them a momentary sense of persuasion.
Feedback noticed a similarity between the flashy but empty speeches of these politicians and the flashy but empty texts generated by ChatGPT and similar artificial intelligence computer programs.
Michael Townsen-Hicks, James Humphreys and Joe Slater of the University of Glasgow in the UK said: ChatGPT is bullshit“”teeth, Ethics and Information Technology They argue that “describing AI misinformation as bullshit is a more useful and accurate way to predict and discuss the behavior of these systems.” As a classic example of bullshit, the team cites a political candidate saying certain things simply because those words “might create a positive impression on potential voters.”
The feedback at least celebrates the skill of politicians who, like ChatGPT, can deliver endless streams of easy-to-swallow but indigestible chatter. In some countries, some of the most successful ChatGPT-esque politicians also display a visual counterpart to their words, a momentarily plausible physical aspect: they adorn their heads with ChatGPT-esque hair, or what might be mistaken for hair for a moment. There is little published research on why and how this happens.
It’s not such a small thing
Feedback continues its quest to create a list of trivial psychic powers, with Aline Berry confessing and professing that she has a trivial psychic power, which may not be trivial at all.
She writes, “I believe I have a superpower that I’ve taken for granted my whole life: when someone complains that they’re looking around for something, I usually find it within five minutes. Somehow, like Sherlock Holmes, I filter out the obvious things they no doubt see and focus on the lost item that’s camouflaged in such a way that it can easily be overlooked if not seen.”
“Recently, a friend of mine asked me for help after frantically searching for her car keys all morning. I stopped, looked around, realized there was no point in looking everywhere, and asked her if she’d looked in the fridge. Her eyes lit up – she’d placed her keys on something cold to remind herself to take them with her, but promptly forgot.”
Another skill emerged during her childhood: “I started a new school a few weeks late and was given a geometry problem. I had never studied geometry before and didn’t know any of the rules. So I looked at a graph and wrote the answer down. I was right. The teacher accused me of cheating and gave me a problem that I had drawn myself, that no one had seen. I wrote the right answer again. As punishment, the teacher gave me ten problems that had to be solved the right way. I didn’t know the correct rules, so I was happy when I got the news that I was going to a different school.”
A whirlwind of interest
An exercise in dimensional scaling. Which is more powerful: a) a storm in a teacup, or b) a storm in a teapot? An experiment is the real way to answer this question. Survey your colleagues (at least 50 people) and submit the three survey results (number of respondents, storm, and tempest) to Swirl of interest, c/o Feedback.
Marc Abrahams is the founder of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and co-founder of the journal Annals of Improbable Research. He previously worked on unusual uses of computers. His website is Impossible.
Do you have a story for feedback?
You can submit articles for Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedback can be found on our website.
Inanimate blobs of ion-laden jelly can play computer games Pong And it will continue to improve over time: The researchers are planning further experiments to see if it can handle more complex calculations, and hope that it could eventually be used to control robots.
Inspired by past research into playing with brain cells in a dish Pong, Vincent Strong So he and his colleagues at the University of Reading in the UK decided to try a tennis-like game with simpler materials. They mixed ions into a water-filled polymer material so that it responded to electrical stimuli. When an electric current was passed through the material, those ions migrated to the current source, dragging water with them and causing the gel to swell.
In their experiments, the researchers used a standard computer to Pong They then used a 3 x 3 electrode grid to send electric currents to different points in the hydrogel to simulate ball movement, while a second electrode grid measured the concentration of ions in the hydrogel, which a computer interpreted as instructions for where to move the paddle.
The researchers found that not only was the hydrogel playable, but that with practice, accuracy improved by up to 10 percent and rallies also lasted longer.
The hydrogel expands faster than it contracts, and expands more slowly even when a constant electric current is applied.These properties allow the gel to record signals of expansion, creating a sort of rudimentary memory, the researchers say.
“Instead of just knowing what happened moment by moment, it's remembering the movement of the ball throughout the entire game,” Strong said, “so it's not just experiencing where the ball is right now, but the entire movement of the ball. It's like a black-box neural network that remembers how the ball behaves, how it moves, what it's doing.”
A polymer gel sandwiched between electrodes that deliver electrical current and measure ion levels
Vincent Strong et al. 2024
Strong said that while the hydrogel is much simpler than neurons in the brain, experiments have shown it can perform similar tasks. He believes the hydrogel could be used to develop new algorithms that would allow regular computers to perform tasks with minimal resources, making problem solving more efficient. But the hydrogel could also become an analog computer itself.
“I wouldn't rule out putting something like a hydrogel inside a robot brain,” Strong says. “That sounds interesting, and I'd like to see it. But the practicality of that is… I don't know yet.”
ohBut out in the desert, the skies begin to darken. You are here to hunt Dosha-gama – fearsome, scaly, lion-like, squashed-faced beasts that roam the dunes in small herds. But a looming storm suggests something much bigger is approaching. Soon, a giant shadow descends from the heavens: Lei Dau, a horned, gold-trimmed dragon who wields lightning. Are you strong enough to face it? Or is it time to flee to the hills?
Monster Hunter is one of Capcom’s most successful game series, but it wasn’t always that way. When I started playing it on the PlayStation Portable in 2006, very few people were interested. It was notoriously cumbersome, demanding, and difficult, and online play didn’t work well. On the other hand, when I moved to Japan in 2008, it was hard not to see someone playing Monster Hunter on the train or in a cafe. It was 2018’s Monster Hunter: World that really made the game a global hit. Technology finally allowed for vast natural settings worthy of gigantic, intimidating, and highly realistic monsters, and smooth online play became a reality.
Watch the trailer for Monster Hunter Wild
“It was a challenge to bring the series to a global level that hadn’t been there before,” recalls Ryozo Tsujimoto, who worked as a designer on the original Monster Hunter, which was released in Japan and North America in 2004, and has led the series ever since.
“In order to make it a global hit, there are some things we haven’t done before… It may not be so visible to players, but compared to the past, we are in much closer communication with our Western offices and staff around the world, so we’re in a much better position than before to listen to player feedback and reactions to the game and decide how to approach the next title.”
Today marks the first day of Gamescom, the Cologne trade show that is currently the biggest event on the video game calendar. This year, I wasn't among the 300,000 or so spectators that flocked to Germany, but I did watch the two-hour livestreamed Opening Night broadcast yesterday. But don't worry if you didn't: here we bring you all the most interesting news, organized by theme, because we're tired of writing simple lists of games and trailers.
Frustrating news Xbox The biggest fanboy A new trailer for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a new first-person adventure from Bethesda and MachineGames, has been released. In it, long-time video game actor Troy Baker looks charmingly excited about playing Indiana Jones. The game will be released on Xbox and PC on December 9th, but it was also announced that it will be released on PlayStation 5 in spring 2025. Earlier this year, Xbox head Phil Spencer said that Indiana Jones will be do not have It's planned to be a multi-platform game, so I'm interested to see how it unfolds.
An unexpected comeback Borderlands 4 is due to be released in 2025, and the trailer revealed very little – perhaps developer Gearbox was trying to capitalize on the anticipation of this month's film, but unfortunately, it wasn't very good.
Master of Albion. Photo: IGN
Peter Molyneux has released a new game, ” Master of Albionhas been kept very quiet (probably unsurprising as some of its recent games have been high-profile flops and the latest, Legacy, is Web3/blockchain and has gone very quiet after making £40m in NFTs in 2021). It's a mash-up of Molyneux's biggest god-game hits: Fable, Black & White, and Dungeon Keeper. By day, you build a town, design food, weapons, and armor to feed and equip your townsfolk, and generally play the role of a god. By night, you possess your warrior subjects and wield clubs to defend your town from fantasy creatures.
Ten years on from the first game, Monument Valley 3 is coming from Ustwo and Netflix, featuring the usual Escher-esque puzzles and mesmerizing colors. It'll be released on December 10th, and the previous two games will also be re-released on Netflix.
And the long-running Mafia series will see a new installment from Brighton-based Hangar 13, Mafia: The Old Country.
A debut game from a nervous developer Glowmade's multiplayer Rick and Morty-style cartoonish gameshow coliseum game, King of Meat, lets players create fearsome gauntlets that other players can challenge, much like a cartoonish Takeshi's Castle, and there was also Lynked: Banner of the Spark, a new cooperative action-adventure game that reminds me a bit of Hi-Fi Rush, from the new studio FuzzyBot, in which you kill evil robots and rescue cute ones to fuse with your arm for fighting powers.
Zombies and men with guns
Dying Light: The Beast. Photo: Techland
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has been shown off again ahead of its October launch, revealing one entire level of its single-player campaign, an overwhelmingly silly Cold War action-adventure. (Your character's analog camera is treated with the dignity of a gun, right down to the elaborate reload animations.) Techland is adding a new zombie game to its Dying Light series, The Beast, promising another 20 hours of open-world undead parkour action. There'll be even more zombies to shoot in the upcoming eight-player co-op survival game No More Room in Hell 2. And co-op survival shooter Arc Raiders, previously announced as a free game, will be released in 2025, and do not have You can play freely.
Most delayed TV shows Netflix's 100-player Squid Game was the show's most obvious video game tie-in, and I'm surprised it took this long. It's a selection of Fall Guys-esque cartoonish, sadistic challenges that look like a lot of fun.
Meanwhile, Deadpool director Tim Miller breathlessly teased his company Blur's new Amazon Prime TV series, The Secret Level, an anthology similar to Love, Death + Robots (also a Blur production) and described as a love letter to video games, due for release in December.
game I don't understand it, but it'll probably sell millions of copies.
Dune Awakening has received a tremendous response. Photo: Funcom
Billed as “the coziest open-world game ever,” Infinity Nikki seems like a completely baffling game, featuring pink-haired anime girls and a bunch of weird, cute singing creatures that look like adorable Noah's Ark. I'm not sure what to make of it.
And the upcoming Dune MMO, Dune: Awakening, in which hundreds of players explore the desert planet Arrakis and compete for abandoned technology and spice resources, drew a big response at the event.
For tasteful horror fans The trailer for Tarsier's upcoming Little Nightmares game looks very promising: a complex, intimate side-scrolling horror game. It's called ReanimalMeanwhile, Little Nightmares itself has been handed over to new developer Supermassive, a company with a long history in horror, and a trailer for it has now been released, maintaining the Tim Burton-esque toy-like atmosphere of the first two games.
game It looked especially cool
Majestic…Monster Hunter Wild. Photo: Capcom
With its menacingly majestic creatures, harsh weather, and expensive-looking production, Monster Hunter Wilds is a fantastic piece of work. I'm a long-time fan of the series and can't wait for this new game. Keep an eye out for an interview with the developer on the site soon.
There was an extended preview of Civilization VII, the latest attempt to capture the entire chaos of human history on a computer monitor.
meanwhile, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage The film depicts four kids in the summer of 1995, playing music in their garage and discussing their hopes for the future. But things don't always go as they hoped.
Finally, I note Shepherding the FlockDue for release in 2025, the game has a gentle Last Guardian vibe to it, as a young boy herds giant horned beasts through mountainous terrain.
A turn-based military tactics game…Tactical Breach Wizards. Photo: Suspicious developments
I was looking forward to Tactical Breakthrough Wizard For years, this game has been the third in the Defenestration Trilogy, a series of indie games about fun ways to throw enemies out of windows. It's made by the unfairly fun and talented developer Tom Francis. (Disclosure: I've known Tom since he was a games journalist.) In this turn-based, destructive military tactics game, you play a group of misfit wizards who make up for their uselessness as humans with some very useful abilities, like seeing a second into the future and raising the dead.
Our reviewer, Rick Lane, was totally enthralled by the game, writing, “Its blend of inventive, flexible puzzles and wickedly entertaining writing should be enough to warrant active play on anyone's console. But what qualifies it for the Bureau of Special Arcane Arts is how boldly it critiques the murky morality of military-themed games.”
Based on satellite analysis, it has been found that the construction of Tesla’s megafactory near Berlin resulted in the cutting down of approximately 500,000 trees.
The establishment of the German plant has sparked significant controversy, leading to widespread protests and discussions regarding the trade-offs associated with developing a green economy.
Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla, criticized local police for allowing “left-wing protesters” to escape.
Satellite imagery reveals that 329 hectares (813 acres) of forest were cleared at the site between March 2020 and May 2023, as reported by environmental information company Queiroz. This amounts to around 500,000 trees.
Since May, environmental activists have been protesting the expansion plans of the Gigafactory, occupying treehouses at a nearby campsite and attempting to storm the plant. In March, one group set fire to a utility pole, resulting in the halting of production at the plant for several days.
Germany: Police clash with hundreds of climate protesters trying to storm Tesla factory – VIDEO
Karolina Dujewo from the campaign alliance “Turn off the tap at Tesla” emphasized that the analysis points to the detrimental impact of the company’s electric car production on the local and global environment. She stressed the urgency to prevent increased deforestation and further environmental destruction in one of the driest regions in Germany, which also puts protected drinking water areas at risk.
Tesla did not provide a response to the request for comment.
Antoine Haruf, chief analyst at Queiroz, stated, “The Tesla factory in Germany has resulted in the loss of a substantial number of trees, which must be balanced against the advantages of transitioning from internal combustion vehicles to electric vehicles.” He highlighted that the felled trees equate to about 13,000 tonnes of CO2, equivalent to annual emissions from 2,800 people driving average internal combustion engine vehicles. Haruf emphasized the importance of acknowledging and mitigating these trade-offs.
In July, Tesla announced plans to double annual production to 1 million units at the Gigafactory in Germany, following approval from the Brandenburg Ministry of the Environment.
Numerous environmental accidents have occurred at the facility, which also manufactures millions of battery cells and has experienced incidents like leaks and spills of diesel fuel, paint, and aluminum.
While Tesla initially did not respond, they later stated that several accidents occurred on the factory premises during construction and operation, but no environmental harm was caused, and corrective measures were swiftly implemented when necessary.
Deforestation monitoring is conducted by Kayrros using publicly available optical imagery from the Sentinel-2 satellite with a resolution of 10 meters. This data is automatically processed and reviewed by remote sensing experts to ensure quality.
Queiroz mentioned the development of deforestation detection tools to assist companies in compliance with the upcoming EU Deforestation Regulation, which aims to prohibit the import of deforestation-linked goods by early 2025. The tool can also be utilized to independently oversee forests utilized as carbon offsets in voluntary carbon markets.
A groundbreaking space mission known as Polaris Dawn is set to take off next week with four private citizens on board. The mission is expected to feature the first ever spacewalk conducted entirely by a civilian crew.
The commander of the mission is billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who is also the founder and CEO of Shift4, a payment processing company. Polaris Dawn is the first of three spaceflights funded and organized by Isaacman in collaboration with SpaceX, collectively known as the Polaris Program. This will be the first private SpaceX mission to reach orbit in 2021.
The crew of three includes pilot Scott Kidd-Poteet, a retired Air Force Lt. Col., and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon. They will be venturing into space aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule on a Falcon 9 rocket for a planned five-day mission.
One of the highlights of the mission will be a spacewalk on the third day, where two crew members will exit the capsule via cables and spend up to 20 minutes in space. This is a historic moment as until now, spacewalks have been carried out exclusively by astronauts from government space agencies.
During the spacewalk, the Crew Dragon capsule will be fully exposed to the vacuum of space at an altitude of 435 miles above Earth. To prepare for this event, all four astronauts will don SpaceX-designed spacesuits for testing and future long-duration missions.
The mission aims to inspire people to dream big and push the boundaries of human exploration beyond Earth. The crew, including Isaacman, have undergone extensive training over the past two years in preparation for this momentous journey.
In addition to conducting science experiments and testing technology during the mission, the crew will also raise funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, continuing Isaacman’s philanthropic efforts in space.
Details regarding the cost, objectives, and timeline of future Polaris flights have not been disclosed by Isaacman at this time.
IIf there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I’m really into drugs. I read Empire of Pain by Patrick Raddon Keefe earlier this year, which has long been on my “to-read” pile, and found its story of the rise and growth of the Sackler drug dynasty to be truly horrifying (although isn’t artist turned oxycodone campaigner Nan Goldin a total hero?).
Naturally, I script This week, I’m writing about the new Atlantic miniseries, Brain Drugs and the Stories to Tell Them. It’s sensitively done, but all of this stuff is scary. The story of two brothers who are treated for the same heroin addiction but end up living very different lives will stay with me for a while. As with Dan Taberski’s recent series, Hystericalis about a group of girls who simultaneously develop a Tourette’s syndrome-like condition, but while it features real people battling an incredibly difficult illness, we’re also never far from bigger questions about how we think about mental health and the self.
Read on for this week’s picks, from con man dads to gritty Paralympic shows, plus five podcasts we recommend for fans of classic film, from old Hollywood hits to the history of Hammer horror.
Hannah J. Davis Newsletter Deputy Editor
This week’s picks
Michael Jordan and Gary Binder. Photo: Public Relations
#1 Dad Widely available, all episodes available now Comedian Gary Vidor hasn’t spoken to his con man father in 24 years. As a child, his dad made him pose as a young journalist to sneak into Michael Jordan’s locker room (above) and help him photocopy dollar bills to earn money for his school lunches. In this wild journey, Gary tries to track down his dad, find out if he’s still the same fake accent, court-waging man he always was, and hope it doesn’t tear his family apart.Alexi Duggins
Fraud Clinic Widely available, with weekly episodes Nick Stapleton, presenter of BBC One’s Bafta award-winning show Scam Interceptors, tries his hand at helping members of the public in this investigative show. The opening double feature features a startling interview with the man alleged to be the mastermind behind a £100,000 theft, and he’s just so keen to have a fun conversation about podcasting equipment that it’s mind-blowing to listen to. advertisement
Head Number 7 Widely available, with weekly episodes You’d think that if you were to donate your body for scientific research, Harvard Medical School would manage it. So when families found out that parts of their loved ones’ bodies had been sold and misplaced, it became a horrific scandal. Now, DNA expert Dr. Tuli King is asking where the bodies went, starting with the NYPD officer’s noticeably large head. Hannah Verdier
Don’t drink milk Widely available, with weekly episodes Sex, drugs and turf are promised in the second series of this series which explores the unexpected backstories of familiar things. Reality TV and the missionary position will make an appearance, but first Rachel Stewart heads to Scotland to put an entertaining spin on witch hunting and investigate the history of misogynistic medieval conspiracies. HV
Rising Phoenix: What does it take? Widely available, with weekly episodes It’s a cliché to say anything Paralympic-related is inspiring, but this podcast, full of courage and humour, is just that: armless archer Matt Stutzman and fellow medallist Michael Johnson interview athletes including Kadeena Cox, who talks about her determination to return to sport after suffering a stroke and being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at age 23. HV
There is a podcast
Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot, explored in detail on the Unspooled podcast. Photo: United Artists/All Star
this week, Graham Virtue Pick the top 5 A podcast for classic film fansFrom highlights of the Hammer Horror catalogue to series re-evaluating films like Some Like It Hot.
Keep this in mind Meticulously written and narrated by film historian Karina Longworth, recent seasons of this riveting show charted the rise and fall of the erotic thriller of the 1980s and 1990s. But YMRT became an early big hit with Longworth’s immersive dive into Hollywood’s Golden Age, unravelling rumors surrounding doomed starlets and spotlighting the sins of amoral moguls. To mark its 10th anniversary earlier this year, the “lost” first episode, long in limbo due to music licensing issues, was remastered and re-released. An insightful profile of Vertigo star Kim Novak will have you revisiting her lavish 200-plus-movie back catalogue. Hammer House Most profiles of the British film studio Hammer focus on its golden age of illuminating, badly received horror films from the mid-1950s through the 1970s. But the biweekly podcast The House of Hammer has been patiently working its way through the studio’s filmography chronologically since 1934, applying detailed context and affectionate irony to forgotten films like the nylon-smuggling crime drama River Patrol (1948). Between hosts Sev Moore, Ben Taylorson, Adam Roche, and a first-person voice, Smokey, the overall atmosphere is laid-back and welcoming. But things have certainly heated up over the past year, as the show has tackled such foundational Hammer texts as The Quatermass Experiment (1955), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), and Christopher Lee’s immortal Dracula (1958).
Rewound Are there any so-called classic films that should be left out? When the slickly produced Unspooled first launched in 2018, film critic Amy Nicholson and actor/writer/comedian Paul Scheer aimed to take a fresh look at the prestigious Motion Picture Association of America’s 2007 Top 100 Movies list. Two years later, the affable but studious hosts have removed 60 titles from the original ranking and added new ones in an attempt to formulate a more representative selection of films (intended to be launched into space to educate and entertain passing aliens). But it’s worth scrolling through Unspooled’s extensive list of episodes, all the way back to the early days when the pair debated the value of hallowed titles like Ben-Hur, The African Queen, and Some Like It Hot.
movie theatre Consciously or not, many podcasts about classic movies try to evoke the decadent cocktail-and-cigarette spirit of Old Hollywood, often using seductive sound mixes to help you forget the decades that have passed. The Movie Palace is more down to earth, but what it lacks in sonic flourishes it more than makes up for in thoughtful discussion. In each episode, Dr. Carl Sweeney invites a knowledgeable guest to discuss a notable film, from influential noir to fraught westerns. The result is a concise, accessible primer on classic cinema. Hitchcock appears repeatedly throughout the show’s 130-plus episodes, particularly in a comprehensive eight-part miniseries analyzing Psycho.
The conspiracy deepens Not all film podcasts have a direct connection to Hollywood’s Golden Age, but US network Turner Classic Movies’ The Plot Six is hosted by Ben Mankiewicz, the grandson of Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, the subject of David Fincher’s 2020 biopic Mank. Previous seasons of The Plot Six have delved into the careers of Peter Bogdanovich (a director obsessed with Hollywood’s past) and righteous blaxploitation powerhouse Pam Grier. But the current episode, Unlocking the Mystery of John Ford, seeks to assess the notoriously difficult but Oscar-winning king of 20th-century filmmaking, with the help of previously unreleased interviews with co-stars such as John Wayne, Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart.
Give it a try…
after schoolOur newsletter for the general public, Decoding Gen Z, “ ,” will be delivered in podcast form.
Frank Skinner and Faye Ripley star in Radio 4 workplace comedy Good People.
Google’s latest flagship phone is a significant advancement, focusing on battery life, camera quality, and intelligent features. It represents a new era of Android devices that can run Google’s Gemini AI system along with a next-generation conversational voice assistant.
Priced starting at £1,099 ($1,099/AU$1,849), the Pixel 9 Pro XL is Google’s largest phone offering. This year, a smaller 9 Pro model with identical specifications and cameras is also available for £999 ($999/AU$1,699). The XL variant caters to users who prefer a large screen and extended battery life.
Featuring a bold design with a noticeable camera bar reminiscent of Google’s Nest Doorbell, the Pixel 9 Pro XL stands out visually. Its aluminum body with flat edges bears similarities to Apple’s iPhone 14 Pro Max.
The Pixel 9 Pro XL boasts a large, vibrant 6.8-inch screen, ideal for multimedia consumption and outdoor use. Photo: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
Equipped with Google’s Tensor G4 chip, the Pixel offers faster browsing and app launching compared to its predecessor. The phone efficiently handles games and apps, leveraging AI enhancements to boost performance.
Notably, the Pixel 9 Pro XL delivers extended battery life, lasting up to 52 hours under mixed usage conditions, setting it apart from competitors in the market.
The ultrasonic fingerprint scanner on the Pixel 9 Pro XL offers enhanced speed and accuracy, providing a seamless user experience. Photo: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
circleWhen Aleksandar Matkovic initially received a life-threatening message, he believed it was a prank. The message, sent to his Telegram account just after midnight on August 14, stated, “We’re going to chase you until you disappear, you bastard,”.
“Initially, I brushed it off as a joke, but then the next morning I received another message: ‘How’s the fight against Rio Tinto going?’ It came from an unfamiliar profile, and the app indicated the sender was only 500 meters away,” recounted Matkovic, a prominent activist involved in protests against proposed lithium mines in Serbia. “Keep away,” he added.
While in Split visiting a friend, Matkovic, who resides in Belgrade, felt as though he was being followed, especially given the recent mass protests against Rio Tinto’s plan to construct a $2.4 billion lithium mine in Serbia’s Jadar Valley.
“I scanned the area and thought, ‘What is happening?’ It was unsettling, contemplating the possibility of someone tailing me, so I reached out to my lawyer. Soon thereafter, I received a third, more menacing message,” he shared.
The third message, written in German, stated: “We are aware of your ties to the leaders of the uprising. It all commenced with you. Even if you commit a heinous act and vanish, we will hunt you down. However, you won’t be able to turn to the authorities for help, because you know it’s futile. Rest assured, if you value your life and freedom, stay out of the public eye for some time. Conduct yourself impeccably on social media. Understand that you must fear for your safety and that of your sibling.”
Following this, Matkovic reported the threat to Belgrade police, who are presently investigating the matter based on the threat and related documents seen by the Guardian.
This rapidly evolving situation is intricate and carries repercussions beyond the Belgrade prosecutor’s office.
The opposition to the lithium mine in Serbia has evolved into a focal point for societal discontent, uniting ultranationalists, environmentalists, leftists, and individuals concerned about economic ties with the West and the domestic environment. Groundwater contamination is a pressing issue.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic recently issued a warning, accentuating the reported plotting of a “color revolution” by the opposition in the Balkans.
Serbia, a former Yugoslav republic, boasts substantial lithium reserves crucial for electric vehicle batteries. The EU has committed to banning a minimum of 10% of critical minerals, including lithium, from European mining operations by 2030.
Julia Poliscanova, director of vehicles and supply chains at the think tank Transport and Environment, emphasized the necessity of lithium for European transport electrification. She stressed the importance of sourcing lithium sustainably and responsibly to support Europe’s transition towards electric mobility.
In response to the threats against Matkovic, Rio Tinto denounced violence, affirming, “Rio Tinto vehemently condemns any direct or implicit threats of violence, whether online or in person, against individuals engaged in discussions regarding the Jadar project.”
Rio Tinto employees have faced online threats and intimidation during local protests, highlighted a company spokesperson.
To safeguard himself and his family following multiple distressing emails, Matkovic has taken precautions, including seeking refuge at various European embassies in Belgrade. Additionally, he intends to request intervention from the UN Special Rapporteur on environmental activists.
“Since August 14th, my life has been a precarious blend of normalcy and turmoil,” Matkovic reflected. “How does this fit into our strategy for combating climate change? What does the green transition we aspire to entail if it necessitates violence?”
Humpback whale (Megaptera novaegangliae) Whales build so-called “bubble nets” as tools to hunt, but researchers from the University of Hawaii and the Alaska Whale Foundation have found that these marine animals not only build bubble nets, but also manipulate these unique tools in a variety of ways to maximize food intake in their Alaskan feeding grounds. This novel study sheds light on a behavior critical to whale survival and makes a compelling case for including humpback whales among the rare animals that manufacture and use unique tools.
Although some animal species use tools to forage, only a few manufacture or modify tools. Humpback whales are one of these rare species, as they manufacture bubble net tools while foraging. Using animal tags and unmanned aerial system technology, Sabo others. Investigating the bubble nets made by solitary humpback whales (Megaptera novaegangliae) while feeding on krill in the Pacific Ocean, whale nets in southeast Alaska. They demonstrate that the nets are composed of internal tangential loops, suggesting that the whales actively control the number of loops, the size and depth of the net, and the horizontal spacing of adjacent bubbles. They argue that the whales adjust structural elements of the net to increase the amount of prey they catch in a single lunge by an average of seven-fold. Image credit: Szabo others., doi: 10.1098/rsos.240328.
“Many animals use tools to find food, but few actually make or modify their own tools,” says Lars Bader, a professor at the University of Hawaii.
“We discovered that solitary humpback whales in southeast Alaska build complex bubble webs to capture krill.”
“These whales expertly blow bubbles in patterns that form nets with internal loops, actively controlling details such as the number of loops, the size and depth of the net, and the spacing of the bubbles.”
“This method allows them to catch up to seven times as many prey in one feeding dive without expending any extra energy.”
“This impressive behaviour puts humpback whales in a rare group of animals that make and use their own tools to hunt.”
The marine mammals known as cetaceans include whales, dolphins and porpoises and are notoriously difficult to study.
Advances in research tools are making it easier to track and understand whale behaviour, and in this case, Professor Bader and his colleagues used specialised tags and drones to study the whale's movements from above and below the water.
“We attached non-invasive suction cup tags to whales in southeast Alaska and flew drones over humpback whales as they hunted alone in bubble nets to collect data on their underwater movements,” said Dr William Goff, also from the University of Hawaii.
“The tools are great, but it takes practice to hone them.”
“Whales are a difficult group to study and successful tracking with tags and drones requires skill and precision.”
“This little-studied foraging behavior is unique to humpback whales.”
“It's really amazing to see these animals in their natural habitat, doing things that only a handful of people get to see.”
“And then it's rewarding to be able to go back to the lab and look at the data and find out what they're doing underwater after they're out of sight.”
a paper The study was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
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A. Sabo others2024. Solitary humpback whales manufacture bubble nets as a tool to enhance prey intake. R. Soc. Open Science 11(8):240328;doi: 10.1098/rsos.240328
This article is based on a press release provided by the University of Hawaii.
TRAPPIST-1 is an ultracool dwarf star located 38.8 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius that hosts seven planets. The period ratios of the neighboring planets are closer as they move away from the star: 8:5, 5:3, 3:2, 3:2, 4:3, 3:2. This compact resonant configuration is a clear indication of disk-driven migration, but the desired outcome of such an evolution would be the establishment of a first-order resonance, rather than the higher-order resonances observed in the inner system. Astronomer Gabriele Pichierri of the California Institute of Technology and his colleagues explain the orbital configuration of the TRAPPIST-1 system with a model that is largely independent of the specific disk migration and orbital circularization efficiency. Two key elements of the team's model are that, along with the migration, the inner boundary of the protoplanetary disk retreated over time, and that the TRAPPIST-1 system initially separated into two subsystems.
This artist's rendering shows TRAPPIST-1 and its planets as seen on the surface. Image courtesy of NASA / R. Hurt / T. Pyle.
“When all we had to analyse was the solar system, we could simply assume that planets formed where we see them today,” Dr Pichieri said.
“But when the first exoplanet was discovered in 1995, we had to rethink this assumption.”
“We're developing better models of how planets form and how they come to be oriented in the way that we found them.”
Most exoplanets are thought to form from a disk of gas and dust around a newly formed star, and then migrate inwards, approaching the inner boundary of this disk.
This results in a planetary system assembled much closer to the host star than is the case in our solar system.
In the absence of other factors, planets tend to move away from each other at characteristic distances based on their mass and the gravitational force between them and their host star.
“This is the standard transition process,” Dr. Pichieri said.
“The positions of the planets form resonances between their respective orbital periods. If you divide the orbital period of one planet by the orbital period of its neighbor, you get a simple integer ratio like 3:2.”
For example, if one planet takes two days to orbit a star, the next planet further away takes three days.
If the second planet and a more distant third planet were also in 3:2 resonance, the third planet's orbital period would be 4.5 days.
“The exoplanets behave nicely in simpler predicted resonances, so to speak,” Dr Pichieri said.
“But the inner ones have slightly more exciting resonances. For example, the orbital ratio of planets b and c is 8:5, and the ratio of c and d is 5:3.”
“This subtle difference in the outcome of TRAPPIST-1 assembly is puzzling and represents a unique opportunity to tease out in detail what other processes were at work in its assembly.”
“Moreover, most planetary systems are thought to have begun in such resonances, but have experienced significant instabilities during their lifetimes before we observe them today.”
“Most planets would become unstable or collide with each other, and everything would be in chaos. For example, our solar system was affected by such instability.”
“But we know there are some systems that are more or less pristine specimens that have remained stable.”
“They effectively represent a record of its entire dynamical history, and we can try to reconstruct it. TRAPPIST-1 is one of them.”
The challenge then was to develop a model that could explain the orbits of the TRAPPIST-1 planets and how they got to their current configuration.
The resulting model suggests that the inner four planets evolved alone within the originally predicted 3:2 resonant chain.
As the disk's inner boundary expanded outward, the orbits loosened from the tighter 3:2 linkage into the configuration observed today.
The fourth planet was originally located on the inner boundary of the disk and moved outward with the disk, but was pushed back inward at a later stage when three more outer planets joined the planetary system.
“By observing TRAPPIST-1, we were able to test an exciting new hypothesis about the evolution of planetary systems,” said Dr Pichieri.
“TRAPPIST-1 is very interesting because it's a very complex, long chain of planets, and it's a great example for testing alternative theories about the formation of planetary systems.”
of Survey results Published in a journal Natural Astronomy.
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G. Pichieri othersDuring the recession of the inner edge of the disc, the TRAPPIST-1 system forms in two steps. Nat AstronPublished online August 20, 2024, doi: 10.1038/s41550-024-02342-4
Historical and ethnographic sources document that portable pole-hafted weapons, or spears, were used for hunting and defense against large game in North and South America, Africa, Eurasia, and Southeast Asia for several millennia during the Late Holocene. Given the dominance of large game in North America during the Late Pleistocene, centuries when Clovis points emerged and spread across much of the continent between 13,050 and 12,650 years ago, pole-hafted weapons may have been used for hunting large herbivores or for defense against large carnivores.
A Clovis point with distinctive grooved flake scars. Image courtesy of S. Byram.
“This ancient Native American design was a remarkable innovation in hunting strategy,” said Dr Scott Byrum, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.
“This unique indigenous technology provides a window into hunting and survival techniques that have been used for thousands of years in many parts of the world.”
The team's discovery may help solve a mystery that has plagued archaeological communities for decades: how North American communities actually used Clovis stone tools, the most commonly unearthed remains from the Ice Age.
Clovis Points are named after the town of Clovis, New Mexico, where they were first discovered about a century ago. Clovis Points are formed from rocks such as chert, flint, and jasper.
They range in size from the size of a person's thumb to the size of a medium-sized iPhone, and have a clearly defined, sharp edge and grooved indentations on either side of their base.
Thousands of fossils have been discovered across the United States, some of which have been unearthed within preserved mammoth skeletons.
“Clovis points are often the only part recovered from a spear,” said Dr. June Sunseri of the University of California, Berkeley.
“The elaborately engineered bone hafts at the ends of the weapons are sometimes found, but the wood at the bases of the spears, and the rosin and string that made them work as a complete system, have been lost over time.”
“Furthermore, research silos limit such systems thinking about prehistoric weaponry, and if stone experts are not bone experts they may not get the full picture.”
“We need to think beyond simple artifacts. The key here is looking at this as an engineered system that requires multiple types of expertise in our field and in other fields.”
Building tools into powerful and effective systems would have been a priority for communities 13,000 years ago.
Tools had to be durable; there were only a limited number of suitable rocks that people could use to cross the land.
They might travel hundreds of miles without obtaining a long, straight stick suitable for making a spear.
“So obviously you don't want to risk throwing or breaking your gear when you're not sure if you're going to catch the animal,” Dr Byrum said.
“People who analyse metal military artefacts know about it because it was used to halt horses in war.”
“But before that, it wasn't really known for other situations, like wild boar hunting or bear hunting.”
“It's a common theme in literature, but for some reason it hasn't been talked about much in anthropology.”
To evaluate their spear hypothesis, the researchers built a test platform to measure the force that the spear system could withstand before the tip broke off or the shaft stretched.
A low-tech, static version of an animal attack using reinforced replica Clovis point spears allowed us to test how different spears reach their breaking point and how their extension systems respond.
This builds on previous experiments in which researchers fired stone-tipped spears into clay and ballistic gel, which may have been as painful as a needle prick to a nine-tonne mammoth.
“The energy that a human arm can generate is completely different from the energy that a charging animal can generate. It's an order of magnitude different,” Dr Jun said.
“These spears were designed to protect the wielder.”
“The sophisticated Clovis technology, developed uniquely in North America, is a testament to the ingenuity and skill used by indigenous peoples to coexist with ancient lands and now-extinct megafauna,” said Kent Lightfoot, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
RS Byram others2024. Clovis projectile points and foresharps subjected to reinforced weapon compression: modelling the encounter between Stone Age spears and Pleistocene megafauna. PLoS One 19 (8): e0307996; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0307996
This article is a version of a press release provided by the University of California, Berkeley.
As a COP26 During climate change negotiations in Glasgow, UK, in November 2021, a new slogan entered the vocabulary: “Stay at 1.5°C.” The phrase, on everyone’s lips from politicians to climate scientists, was aimed at maintaining the goals set as part of the Paris Agreement at the COP six years ago.twenty oneIn hindsight, this ambition was probably already fizzling out, destined to remain merely an empty slogan.
New Scientist The argument began in 2022, when expert opinion did not reflect their personal views or the data we were seeing. Scientists felt trapped and unable to speak out because limiting warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels is still possible according to the laws of physics, but not realistic given the political, social and economic upheaval.
Since then, there has been a growing recognition that 1.5°C is unattainable, but there was no frank discussion of what that meant. Now, for the first time, researchers have explicitly rejected that, saying that 1.6°C is the best we can hope for, and that higher temperatures are more likely (see “Best-case scenario for climate change now is 1.6°C warming”).
Will policymakers finally realize that platitudes and slogans are not enough to combat climate change? Promises to “maintain” these targets are meaningless if we do not achieve the only means of preventing rising temperatures — reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other global-warming greenhouse gases to net zero.
Unfortunately, the phrase “net zero” is losing its original meaning as a description of atmospheric physics, and instead being used by many to mean “environmental policy I don’t like.” This is dangerous, because extreme temperature changes have locked us in a vicious cycle of emissions that only a net-zero energy system can break (see “Efforts to combat extreme temperatures are making the situation worse”). If we are to have any hope of limiting warming, we need to learn from the failure of “stay 1.5°C” and not let “net zero” become meaningless.
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