Planetary scientists examining oxygen isotopes in lunar soil from the Apollo missions have determined that 4 billion years of meteorite impacts may have contributed only a minimal amount of Earth’s water. This insight prompts a reevaluation of established theories regarding water’s origins on our planet.
Close-up of a relatively new crater to the southeast, captured during Apollo 15’s third lunar walk. Image credit: NASA.
Previous research suggested that meteorites significantly contributed to Earth’s water supply due to their impact during the solar system’s infancy.
In a groundbreaking study, Dr. Tony Gargano from NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the Lunar and Planetary Institute, along with colleagues, employed a novel technique to analyze the lunar surface debris known as regolith.
Findings indicated that even under optimistic conditions, meteorite collisions from approximately 4 billion years ago may have delivered only a small percentage of Earth’s water.
The Moon acts as a historical archive, documenting the tumultuous events that the Earth-Moon system has endured over eons.
While Earth’s dynamic geology and atmosphere erase these records, lunar samples have retained valuable information.
However, this preservation is not without its challenges.
Traditional regolith studies have focused on metal-preferring elements, which can be obscured by continuous impacts on the Moon, complicating efforts to reconstruct original meteorite compositions.
Oxygen triple isotopes offer highly precise “fingerprints” since oxygen, being the most abundant element in rocks, remains untouched by external forces.
These isotopes facilitate a deeper understanding of the meteorite compositions that impacted the Earth-Moon system.
Oxygen isotope analyses revealed that approximately 1% of the regolith’s mass consists of carbon-rich material from meteorites that partially vaporized upon impact.
With this knowledge, researchers calculated the potential water content carried by these meteorites.
“The lunar regolith uniquely allows us to interpret a time-integrated record of impacts in Earth’s vicinity over billions of years,” explained Dr. Gargano.
“By applying oxygen isotope fingerprints, we can extract impactor signals from materials that have undergone melting, evaporation, and reprocessing.”
This significant finding alters our understanding of water sources on both Earth and the Moon.
When adjusted to account for global impacts, the cumulative water indicated in the model equates to only a minor fraction of the Earth’s oceanic water volume.
This discrepancy challenges the theory that water-rich meteorites delivered the bulk of Earth’s water.
“Our results don’t rule out meteorites as a water source,” noted Dr. Justin Simon, a planetary scientist at NASA Johnson’s Celestial Materials Research and Exploration Sciences Division.
“However, the Moon’s long-term record indicates that the slow influx of meteorites cannot significantly account for Earth’s oceans.”
While the implied water contribution from around 4 billion years ago is minimal in the context of Earth’s oceans, it remains notable for the Moon.
The Moon’s available water is concentrated in small, permanently shadowed areas at the poles.
These regions, among the coldest in the solar system, present unique opportunities for scientific research and exploration resources as NASA prepares for crewed missions to the Moon with Artemis III and subsequent missions.
The samples analyzed in this study were collected from near the lunar equator, where all six Apollo missions landed.
Rocks and dust gathered over half a century ago continue to yield valuable insights, albeit from a limited lunar area.
Future samples collected through Artemis are expected to unlock a new wave of discoveries in the years ahead.
“I consider myself part of the next generation of Apollo scientists, trained in the questions and insights enabled by the Apollo missions,” said Dr. Gargano.
“The Moon provides tangible evidence that we can examine in the lab, serving as a benchmark for what we learn from orbital data and telescopes.”
“I eagerly anticipate the information that upcoming Artemis samples will reveal about our place in the solar system.”
The findings of this study will be published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Anthony M. Gargano et al. 2026. Constraints on impactor flux from lunar regolith oxygen isotopes to the Earth-Moon system. PNAS 123 (4): e2531796123; doi: 10.1073/pnas.2531796123
Amy Redford, daughter of Robert Redford, has expressed her discontent regarding the proliferation of artificial intelligence tributes to her late father, labeling them a “hoax.”
Redford shared a statement on social media. In her message, she expressed gratitude for the “overwhelming love and support” from fans, stating: “It’s evident he meant so much to so many, and my family is truly humbled by the countless stories and tributes pouring in from around the globe.”
She further commented, “There are numerous fabricated AI funerals, eulogies, family quotes, etc. Portraying a father who clearly has no voice, alongside a family misrepresented, is especially challenging during these trying times.”
Redford added that a public funeral has not yet occurred, and plans for a memorial celebrating her father’s life are still underway. “Every family deserves the opportunity to grieve, honor the deceased, and convey their sympathies in a manner that resonates with their values and familial culture,” she stated.
She concluded, “My wish is to maintain transparency around AI usage. While many aspects of AI are created with good intentions, I implore you to consider: What would you want if this situation involved you? Let that perspective guide your actions.”
MMany avid gamers have a knack for becoming deeply engaged. Countless weeks lost in titles like Civilization, World of Warcraft, or Football Manager is a shared experience among many. For some, the thrill comes from dopamine hits as their statistics rise. Engaging in games like Diablo or Destiny, where you enhance your character while snagging impressive loot, can turn into an obsession. Conversely, the repetitive charm of Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley captivates players through its peaceful challenges.
Yet, it is the challenge that truly ignites my obsession. Being told you can’t achieve something in a game often triggers an urge to prove otherwise, sometimes to my detriment. While the grind may feel mundane, the challenge ignites a fire in my brain.
My first real gaming addiction started as a teenager with a music game: “Amplitude.” In it, you become a cosmic DJ, mixing sounds from a spaceship. I also enjoyed Gitaroo Man, a whimsical narrative about a guitar hero, and of course, Guitar Hero, where I was determined to master every song on Expert difficulty. Although Guitar Hero is often seen as a social game, I spent many hours practicing alone in a cupboard under the stairs of a less-than-ideal house in Bournemouth, perfecting “More Than a Feeling” after 30 attempts.
Years later, while living in Japan, I stumbled upon From Software’s Demon’s Souls. The game’s brutal difficulty seemed designed to make players quit. A mere three steps in any level could lead to instant death at the hands of a skeleton or a venomous swamp creature. Yet, I sensed something captivating beneath all this hardship. Indeed, Demon’s Souls and its successor Dark Souls gained immense popularity, birthing a notoriously challenging genre. The charm of these games lies in the need for a commitment to mastering them. Your skills matter little unless you’re willing to share insights and cooperate with others.
My persistence has largely benefited me throughout my life. This tenacity translates to life and career challenges, providing the drive not to give up. I once made a ridiculous commitment to learn complex fingerpicking patterns for specific guitar songs. write a book. However, gaming often captivates me when I should be focusing on other responsibilities.
Relentlessly difficult and painfully funny…baby steps. Photo: Devolver Digital
A recent example for me was Baby Steps, an incredibly challenging and amusing game where you guide the world’s biggest loser up a mountain. In this game, one wrong move can result in losing hours of hard-earned progress. One night, I found myself stuck in a sandcastle for four hours, slipping down the same sandy slope repeatedly while my kids expressed their annoyance at being asked to come in and witness my plight. After what felt like an eternity, I finally emerged from the sand trap at 1 a.m., adrenaline surging, making sleep impossible for another hour.
The wise choice would have been to set the controller down. Baby Steps has a way of teasing players into pressing on. The brave thing to do is to give up. One of the most notorious challenges is a winding ascent up a steep rock face called Manbreaker, complete with a swirling staircase nearby.
Another game I’ve spent considerable time with this year is Hollow Knight: Silksong. This beautifully crafted exploration action game straddles the line between playful and brutally challenging. It features notoriously tough bosses that can’t be avoided, each likely requiring hours of practice. One such boss, the Last Judge, swings a flaming censer that releases plumes of lethal fire. To make matters worse, the route back to that room is rife with threats: flying drill-headed bugs, perilous drops, and relentless guards. By the time you face the Last Judge, your nerves are frayed. Nonetheless, this only fueled my determination to conquer it.
Developers face a delicate balancing act. Logically, the aim should be to engage players, not dishearten them. For a time, the trend shifted towards creating easy-to-navigate open-world games that never impede progress. However, Dark Souls demonstrated the enduring market for players like me who appreciate a good challenge. I am irresistibly drawn to mastering pursuits that are inherently trivial.
Perhaps mastery is the crux of the matter. While mastery in life is capricious, and uncertainties can strike at any moment, video games allow for the anticipation of challenges. Here, with perseverance, you can always triumph.
What to play
A game focused on combat… Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment. Photo: Nintendo/Koei Tecmo
I’m quite enjoying Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, a spinoff from the Zelda series. It explores what Princess Zelda was up to while time-traveling through Hyrule’s history, and it turns out, she was engaging with numerous suitors. This game centers on combat, whisking players through the battlefields of ancient Hyrule, filled with various monsters, unleashing spectacular attacks that light up the screen, from Zelda’s light magic to Minel’s mechanical creations. The aesthetic feels distinct from Zelda, leaning more towards a cinematic action experience while filling in the historical gaps concerning Hyrule, granting the princess a leading role.
Available: Nintendo Switch 2 Estimated play time: 15 hours
I’m late again… Grand Theft Auto VI. Photo: Chris Delmas/AFP/Getty Images
Grand Theft Auto VI has seen another delay, shifting from May to November next year. The last such adjustment caused quite a stir in the industry, hinting at potential game shortages by year’s end, along with possible rescheduling of other titles.
During a staff presentation (via) Game File, Ubisoft’s CEO, Yves Guillemot, discussed Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Despite cultural controversies surrounding a black samurai and female ninja, he argued, “We needed to stop catering to our adversaries and shift focus toward our supporters.”
The Game Awards, orchestrated annually by the prominent gaming figure Jeff Keighley, has wrapped up its Future Class program that annually curates a list of developers signifying the “bright, bold, and inclusive future” of the gaming landscape. Former honorees have recently expressed their grievances about how they feel the initiative has failed them. “Don’t assemble the industry’s best activists, treat us terribly, and expect us to remain passive.”
What to click
Share your favorite games of 2025
It’s that time of year again, as I reflect on the most enjoyable and enlightening games of 2025 while squeezing in time for those I may have missed. This December, we’ll host our annual gaming feature for Pushing Buttons readers. Please send a few lines about your Favorite games of 2025 by replying to this email. We aim to gather responses until early December.
As always, if you have any video game-related queries or feedback about our newsletter, feel free to reach out to us at pushbuttons@theguardian.com.
The timeless inquiry from the backseat remains relevant as we approach a new age of driverless vehicles. “Are we close?” For those in the UK, the promise of fully autonomous cars has been long-awaited, and the answer is “yes, almost”—but not quite there yet.
A pivotal advancement in the journey toward autonomous driving is on the cusp of realization. Waymo, known for its successful robotaxi operations in San Francisco and several other U.S. cities, announced recently that it plans to introduce its vehicles to London.
Specifics are limited, yet the potential is intriguing. The groundbreaking California-based firm stated that its self-driving service “will be providing driverless vehicles on this side of the Atlantic in 2026… We’re excited to cater to Londoners and the millions visiting London next year.”
These visitors may want to grab a London Underground Oyster card just in case. This past summer, the UK government announced initiatives aimed at enticing major tech companies, aiming to hasten the rollout of self-driving vehicles, with robotaxis potentially entering regulated public trials as early as spring 2026. However, regulations are still being finalized, which may mean that safety drivers remain in the mix for a while longer.
The British company Wave, in collaboration with Uber, has unveiled plans to develop a more modest Level 4 fully autonomous vehicle and to commence public road tests in London.
While Americans are leisurely experiencing self-driving vehicles, the UK’s winding road to this technology has been met with commitments that vanish like pedestrians in the rain. Back in 2018, Addison Lee, in conjunction with researchers from the University of Oxford, promised robotaxis by 2021.
Waymo has indicated plans to bring its successful robotaxis from San Francisco and four other U.S. locations to London. Photo: ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy
A year ago, Nissan nearly achieved having one of its Leaf models drive itself without incident near Becton, east London. The then-transport secretary, Chris Grayling, forecasted self-driving cars arriving within four years, with small pods autonomously navigating around the O2 in Greenwich. The offspring of a British innovation, the Union Jack-patterned Sinclair C5 Tardis, was showcased in a Milton Keynes car park back in 2015. Vince Cable, the business secretary at the time, confidently stated that 100 of these would soon ferry passengers across town for just £2 each.
Meanwhile, in regions like the U.S. and parts of China, self-driving taxi services are nearing routine functionality, rendering Waymo’s impending arrival more significant compared to earlier aspirations and predictions.
In San Francisco, Waymo’s home base, self-driving cars have integrated seamlessly into daily life, traversing the city’s challenging hilly streets at a deliberate pace.
Since its full implementation in June 2024, it has established its place alongside electric scooters and city buses within the urban landscape. Riding a Waymo has become a must-try attraction for visitors, akin to experiencing the city’s historic trolley cars.
Democratic Mayor Daniel Lurie has advocated for expansion to rejuvenate the downtown district, but the streets still host many people experiencing homelessness, creating a stark contrast as high-tech AI-driven vehicles pass by individuals living in extreme poverty.
The modified white Jaguar iPace resembles surveillance equipment, featuring rapidly rotating cameras on each side and roof akin to a police siren. Advertised similarly to Uber or Lyft rides via an app, the absence of a human driver and the steering wheel twirling under its digital command serve as a poignant reminder of the economic upheaval these vehicles may precipitate.
Uber, which debuted in San Francisco in 2010, disrupted traditional taxi practices and created precarious gig jobs for drivers. Now, they are facing another wave of technological change.
Since Uber’s launch in 2010, the job landscape for taxi drivers has significantly changed, leading to precarious working conditions. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
In 2024, data referenced by The Economist indicated that the number of people employed by taxi firms in San Francisco increased by 7%, alongside a 14% rise in salaries. The newspaper noted that Lyft’s CEO David Risher predicted that self-driving taxis “will actually grow the market.”
Yet, those on the front lines may not share this optimism. An Uber driver from Venezuela expressed doubts when asked about Waymo while in San Francisco’s Mission District: “I think I have about a year left in this job.”
For passengers, riding a Waymo evokes a sense of entrusting their journey to artificial intelligence. Upon hailing the vehicle via the app, a warm welcome greets them, initially displaying their initials on the digital screen atop the car. Tapping the app unlocks the doors, while a friendly voice reminds riders to buckle their seatbelts. A broad selection of music is readily available, creating a truly intimate atmosphere behind the tinted rear windows.
Pressing the ‘Start Ride’ button on the touchscreen allows the car to smoothly merge into traffic. The gear shift, adorned with a message that reads “Keep your hands out of it,” spins like a ghostly fairground attraction.
Soon enough, riders cultivate a sense of comfort while remaining cautious enough to avert dangers. A scrolling map on the screen displays their route and updates the estimated time of arrival. The ‘Stop Now’ button will only engage once it’s safe to do so, but the option to change the original destination is appreciated.
Passengers in a Waymo find themselves surrendering to the capabilities of artificial intelligence during their ride. Photo: Tamamario/Getty Images
Waymo has sparked diverse social reactions. Recently, three individuals stalled at a busy intersection in the Marina District, visibly disoriented with blinking lights, attracting cheers from onlookers, while one man executed multiple backflips off a nearby vehicle.
In July, a prankster gathered a crowd at a dead-end street, leading everyone to summon a Waymo simultaneously, creating a spectacle featuring 50 robocars. Earlier in 2024, one such vehicle was vandalized, covered in graffiti, and set ablaze during the Lunar New Year celebrations in Chinatown.
If the black taxi driver does not react directly, it’s possible a similar reception will greet the driverless taxis. Steve McNamara, executive director of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association, remarked: “We observe kids hacking Lime bikes, but how long until surfing atop a Waymo becomes the latest TikTok sensation?”
McNamara maintains a calm demeanor: “This proposes a solution to a problem we don’t currently have. These vehicles may be performing excellently in San Francisco and Los Angeles, but London is unlike anywhere else. I’d like someone to elucidate how this self-driving car intends to navigate streets like Charing Cross Road at 11 p.m., where pedestrians are continually crossing.” [sensor] “When you’re on top of a Waymo, you know it will stop, so you just get out or disembark.”
Christian Wolmer, author of *Driverless Cars: On a Road to Nowhere*, echoes this skepticism, stating: “There are no pedestrian crossing rules in this environment. If Google expects adherence to pedestrian crossing norms for cars…”
Despite the experiences in the U.S., he staunchly doubts that fully autonomous taxis will hit the streets here next year, asserting: “Unless a human operator is present, the likelihood of that happening is zero.”
‘London is like nowhere else’: Can driverless cars adapt to transportation systems outside the US by 2026? Photo: Paolo Paradiso/Alamy
Waymo revealed its London plans partly to mitigate any surprise over test vehicles on the roads, initiating a lengthier mapping initiative. They feel emboldened after a self-driving trial spanning approximately 100 meters in San Francisco, which is a far from orderly or flat city, in addition to over a dozen other trials.
Carriers have long argued that regulation trumps technological hurdles. Even swift progress has limitations. The consultation’s outcome, which wrapped up last month, should pave the way for the pilot program, though confirmation is still pending.
While this may have spurred Waymo’s plans, transforming the testing program to operational vehicles still involves numerous challenges with the Department for Transport and Transport for London, indicating that broader legislation may take at least another two years to enact. Insurers have particularly raised concerns regarding liability in these scenarios.
Previous pre-legislative testing frameworks stalling other innovative transport modalities, such as electric scooters, are currently set to persist for eight years. Tony Travers, a professor at the London School of Economics, posits that self-driving cars may be more favorably received: “They will have to abide by regulations. Sure, they might contribute to congestion, but they’re not likely to induce chaos like electric scooters have.”
However, even with the arrival of driverless taxis, one might wonder, “So what?” suggests Walmer.
According to Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana, the answer lies in the fact that their vehicles are “reliable, safe, and magical,” with an emphasis on safety. Up to now, Waymo cars have been involved in a fewer number of accidents compared to human-driven vehicles over equivalent distances.
They also aim to provide a new form of autonomy to those previously lacking it. The Royal Institute for Blind People praised the Waymo announcement as the inception of “technology that allows for safe, spontaneous, autonomous movement.”
Waymo stated that its entrance into the UK market would entail investments in warehouses, infrastructure for charging, cleaning services, support teams, and would temporarily employ “human experts” in the driver’s position.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has mentioned that the upcoming self-driving car revolution could generate 38,000 job opportunities within the UK.
However, it is professional drivers who face the greatest threat. Approximately 300,000 individuals hold private hire licenses, with an additional million expected to be in roles related to HGV and delivery services moving forward. Many of the UK’s 82,000 bus drivers have recently secured significant pay rises, while its 27,000 train operators are well-regarded for their labor efforts.
Consequently, surveys indicate that public sentiment in Britain is cautiously optimistic regarding self-driving vehicles, primarily stemming from fears surrounding job displacement due to artificial intelligence, even if human jobs haven’t been entirely eradicated yet.
Licensing and legal clarifications are still pending. McNamara expressed hope: “Who will grant approval? If I aimed to become a successful politician, I wouldn’t add my signature to that document.”
Certain problems remain insurmountable for quantum computers.
Jaroslav Kushta/Getty Images
Researchers have uncovered a “nightmare scenario” computation tied to a rare form of quantum material that remains unsolvable, even with the most advanced quantum computers.
In contrast to the simpler task of determining the phase of standard matter, such as identifying whether water is in a solid or liquid state, the quantum equivalent can prove exceedingly challenging. Thomas Schuster and his team at the California Institute of Technology have demonstrated that identifying the quantum phase of matter can be notably difficult, even for quantum machines.
They mathematically examined a scenario in which a quantum computer receives a set of measurements regarding the quantum state of an object and must determine its phase. Schuster mentioned that this is not necessarily an impossible task, but his team has shown that a considerable number of quantum phases of matter—such as the complex interactions between liquid water and ice, including unusual “topological” phases that exhibit strange electrical currents—might necessitate quantum computers to perform computations over extremely protracted periods. This situation mirrors a worst-case scenario in laboratory settings, where instruments may need to operate for billions or even trillions of years to discern the characteristics of a sample.
This doesn’t imply that quantum computers are rendered obsolete for this analysis. As Schuster noted, these phases are unlikely to manifest in actual experiments involving materials or quantum systems, serving more as an indicator of our current limitations in understanding quantum computers than posing an immediate practical concern. “They’re like nightmare scenarios. It would be quite unfortunate if such a case arose. It probably won’t happen, but we need to improve our comprehension,” he stated.
Bill Fefferman from the University of Chicago raised intriguing questions regarding the overall capabilities of computers. “This might illuminate the broader limits of computation: while substantial speed improvements have been realized for specific tasks, there will inevitably be challenges that remain too daunting, even for efficient quantum computers,” he asserted.
Mathematically, he explained, this new research merges concepts from quantum information science employed in quantum cryptography with foundational principles from materials physics, potentially aiding progress in both domains.
Looking ahead, the researchers aspire to broaden their analysis to encompass more energetic or excited quantum phases of matter, which are recognized as challenging for wider calculations.
New Scientist Book Club just read Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed
Gollancz; Benjamin Brink/Oregonian/AP/Alamy
Alex Foster’s reading experience, after shifting our perspectives in a circular motion, led the New Scientist Book Club into two contrasting worlds in Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed. This authentic sci-fi classic from 1974 oscillates between two timelines. One follows physicist Chebek as he departs from the barren moon Anar to study at the university on Uras, a more prosperous planet, while he simultaneously grows within the anarchist society of Anar.
I first encountered The Dispossessed during my second year of university. At that time, I was captivated by the novel’s structure and the anarchist principles shaping Chebek’s hometown. After all, what better time to dive into radical fiction than as a budding student? On this subsequent reading, however, I found myself more attuned to the human aspects of the narrative. I now have a deeper understanding of Chebek’s character, albeit one I didn’t always sympathize with.
Many club members expressed excitement when we announced The Dispossessed as our next reading. “This is my favorite Le Guin book, though it’s truly hard to choose,” remarked Kelly Jensen. In Rachel Hand’s corners of reading on our Facebook Group, it had been a long-awaited selection for some. For others, it marked their first encounter with Le Guin’s work. New Scientist describes it as a “dive into the deep end.”
Despite its daunting reputation, some readers relished how The Dispossessed brims with concepts surrounding politics, physics, and language. “It’s absolutely spectacular that Le Guin tackles physics on the ‘time’ side of the space-time continuum,” said Laura Akers. Elizabeth Drummond Young appreciated the exploration of “sudden engagement,” examining linguistic and behavioral references, such as how individuals name themselves, paralleling notions introduced by Einstein in the novel.
However, a consensus emerged: few would wish to inhabit Anar, despite its egalitarian ideals. As Laura noted, “They can’t genuinely evaluate life as we do on Earth.” They hold a profound awareness of their ecosystems, yet remain focused on their operational realities.
Gosia Furmanik expressed ambivalence: “On one hand, it’s tremendous that there’s no exploitation, and they can, in principle, do as they please.
This notion came up during a conversation with Marcus Gipps, editor at Le Guin’s publisher, Gollancz. “Everything really comes down to perspective,” he told me. “I’m fascinated to learn about East Germany’s depiction prior to its fall in relation to this book, and I will continue to explore this!”
Perhaps the most contentious aspect of the novel is its portrayal of women. Some readers found the book’s gender ratios frustratingly outdated, feeling that our views of Anar and Uras are filtered through a biased human lens. “I perceived the book’s viewpoint as an internalized bias from the author, which is perhaps expected given its time of writing,” Gothia remarked. “The portrayal of relationships, such as Chebek’s interactions in the planting camp, presents a significant distortion of cis-heteromonogamy—despite the absence of marriage!”
Conversely, others interpreted the novel’s gender politics as more deliberate. “Le Guin aimed to provoke thought about the status of women within Anar’s framework,” Neil Leighton stated. “I don’t agree that we should assume she’s advocating a particular vision of utopia based on the characteristics of Anar’s society.”
With so many intricate ideas woven throughout, it’s no surprise not everyone found the book easy to digest. Phil Gurski had to stop reading around 160 pages in due to confusion, while Steve Swan remarked on needing patience during the initial chapters. Judith Lazelle echoed this sentiment.
I resonate with Phil, Steve, and Judith’s experiences. There are indeed peculiar moments where the book overwhelms with ideas. However, “Ursula Le Guin is an absolute literary master, and I’m a tremendous admirer. I understand why this work has garnered so many accolades.” Yet, I question whether the extensive philosophical deliberations detract from the narrative itself—though as usual, the maestro concludes in a deeply satisfying fashion.”
Fortunately, many members of the book club genuinely enjoyed The Dispossessed. “I adored this book,” exclaimed Neal. “I read it as a teenager and believe it to be one of the most influential texts in my thinking.” Rachel shared, “The ending was my favorite part,” while Terry James found the final 50 pages to be a “fantastic imaginative ride.”
We are now transitioning from a fantastical science fiction realm to the intricate world of neuroscience with our next book club selection: an award-winning nonfiction work. We are thrilled to explore the winners of this year’s Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Award, Our Brains, Ourselves by neuroscientist and clinician Mazood Hussain. Through seven captivating case studies, Hussain illustrates how various neurological conditions impact identity and belonging. This book is sure to engage fans of Oliver Sacks, as Grace Wade termed it “engaging and informative” earlier this February for those eager to delve into neuroscience.
You can find excerpts from this book as well. Additionally, Sandra Knapp, a plant taxonomist at the Museum of Natural History in London and head of the Jury Committee, offers unique insights into the award selection process. She shares what makes Our Brains, Ourselves stand out among other exceptional entries and highlights learnings from this “incredibly compassionate” work. Share your thoughts with us in our Facebook Group, and let us know if you’re excited for our next read.
Dyson’s profits have been nearly halfway through a challenging year, during which the home appliance company, established by billionaire Sir James Dyson, reduced over a quarter of its UK workforce.
Since relocating to Singapore in 2019, Dyson has reported selling over 20 million products, emphasizing its shift towards being “proof of the future.”
Nonetheless, filings in Singapore reveal a revenue drop of more than £500 million, bringing it down to £6.5 billion.
The slowing economic growth and reduced consumer confidence have been intensified by one-off challenges, including the pound’s strength against the Asian currencies where many of its products are sold.
The bagless vacuum cleaner and hand dryer segments also faced one-off expenses related to global restructuring, leading to about 1,000 job cuts in the UK.
Consequently, pre-tax profits dipped 47% to £561 million in 2024.
Hanno Kirner, the company’s CEO, described 2024 as a “tough but essential year” for Dyson. The annual dividends paid to the family holding entity have seen significant reductions.
Distributions to Weybourne Holdings, which includes the Dyson family’s rapidly expanding investment in farmland and agriculture, fell from £700 million to £200 million in 2024.
A memo attached to the accounts indicated that Dyson finalized payments with a dividend of £225 million in January and February this year.
Founded in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, in 1991, most Dyson products are manufactured abroad; however, the majority of research, development, and design occur at the UK facility.
Despite criticism over moving the company to Singapore, particularly given his support for Brexit, Dyson stated that the UK would remain the primary hub for research and development.
The 78-year-old entrepreneur is among the largest landowners in the UK, having heavily invested in agriculture and advanced food production; two of his children, Jacob and Sam, are executives at Dyson Holdings. All three are categorized as “permanent residents” of Singapore in corporate filings.
The entrepreneur and his family ranked fourth on the 2025 Sunday Times Rich List, with a wealth estimated at £20.8 billion.
In the results statement, Dyson highlighted a new product launched in 2024, featuring a “complete reinvention of hair dryers” along with hair care products using chitosan, a plant-derived polymer from oyster mushrooms.
He remarked: “We are incredibly excited for the launch after 2025. This will introduce significant innovation into homes, including a total redesign of hair dryers and vacuum cleaner models, with new wet and dry cleaning technologies, robotics, and purification systems.”
This year saw the release of the “world’s slimmest vacuum,” boasting a diameter of 38mm.
In 2019, the company abandoned its plans to create an electric vehicle.
WASHINGTON – On Thursday, the Supreme Court extended the Trump administration’s substantial reductions to the National Health Grants, part of the federal government’s initiative on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.
However, in this intricate ruling, the court upheld another aspect of a lower court’s decision that discarded the administration’s guidance documents related to the policy, raising doubts about its viability going forward.
An emergency request by an administrator aiming to pause the Massachusetts federal judge’s ruling was partially granted, resulting in a 5-4 vote.
While the court did not extensively elaborate on its reasoning, the majority suggested that groups contesting the funding cuts would need to initiate a new lawsuit in a different federal court, specifically the Federal Court of Claims.
The decisive vote came from conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett. All four conservative justices supported the Trump administration’s application, indicating that the other four justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts and three liberal justices, would have completely denied it.
Barrett stated in a concurring opinion, “As today’s order indicates, district courts likely lack jurisdiction to address the funding challenges that pertain to the federal claims court.” She added, “The government is not entitled to a stay of judgment as long as it possesses valid guidance documents.”
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is a collection of agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services, receiving billions of dollars from Congress for medical research funding at universities, hospitals, and various institutions.
When President Donald Trump assumed office in January, he asserted that what is termed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) constituted discrimination mainly against white individuals, rather than fostering equality as intended. He also championed policies recognizing transgender rights, including access to gender transition care.
Subsequently, the NIH conducted a review of grants and concluded that over 1,700 were inconsistent with Trump’s directives, resulting in their termination, which included programs related to teenage HIV prevention and gender identity studies.
Massachusetts, along with 16 states represented by the American Public Health Association, has contested this action.
After the trial, District Judge William Young of Massachusetts ruled that the government had not adhered to the proper legal protocols while enacting the policy, violating the Administrative Procedure Act.
In haste to execute Trump’s agenda, the NIH “failed to comply with legal requirements,” Young noted.
He characterized DEI as an “undefined enemy,” stating that government attorneys could not adequately clarify its meaning.
Young found evidence of “prevailing racism” and “widespread discrimination” against gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals in how grants were awarded. Furthermore, he identified “a distinct pattern of discrimination against women’s health issues.”
He declined to stay his ruling, a decision mirrored by the Boston-based First Circuit Court of Appeals.
Attorney General John Sauer requested the Supreme Court to intervene on behalf of the Trump administration, likening the situation to another incident in Massachusetts where the Trump administration obstructed plans to eliminate teacher training grants based on anti-DEI grounds.
The Supreme Court had blocked this earlier ruling in April with a 5-4 vote.
Sauer asserted, “This application presents a particularly clear case where this court must intervene to prevent the district court from disregarding this court’s previous decision.”
The state’s attorney countered Sauer’s assertion, stating it “bears little resemblance to reality.”
The judge deliberated Thursday on whether the April ruling impacted the latest case’s outcome.
In a brief opinion, Roberts, who had contested the previous case, asserted that Young’s findings fell within the permissible scope of district court jurisdiction.
However, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch criticized Young in a separate opinion for failing to comply with the April ruling.
“While lower court judges may oppose this court’s ruling, they are never free to disregard it,” he wrote.
The Trump administration frequently relied on the Supreme Court when facing judicial challenges to its enforcement actions, generally securing favorable outcomes. Trump and his supporters have also aggressively criticized judges who opposed him.
Annapolis, Maryland – Two species are in jeopardy within the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.
This season, the surveys for legendary crustaceans reached one of the lowest levels ever recorded. This has driven up prices at restaurants as disposable income tightened and inflation increased costs for food and other consumer items.
Luke McFadden, 29, who has been crabbing since he was 18, mentioned that the season got off to a tough start.
“We’re doing our best to serve our customers at the lowest price possible to cover our expenses,” he remarked. “But I get it; it’s not easy.”
Krabal Luke McFadden. Cesar Gonzalez / NBC News
At a family-owned crab house, Pit Boys, Seafood Manager Charlie George indicated that customer prices range from $75 to $140 based on size. This is “much higher” than previous years due to the shortage of crabs in the bay.
According to the 2025 Blue Crab Advisory Report, the overall blue crab population has declined to approximately 238 million, down from 317 million last year. This marks the second lowest level since the annual winter dredge survey commenced in 1990.
Alison Colden, Executive Director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, attributes the decline to pollution, climate change, and the encroachment of invasive blue catfish throughout the Chesapeake Bay. These catfish were introduced in the 1970s and 1980s to enhance recreational fishing.
“Since then, they’ve proliferated across nearly every river and stream in the Chesapeake Bay region,” Colden remarked. “They are voracious predators.”
By manipulating fundamental physics, researchers can enhance energy-harvesting devices like solar cells
M2020/Shutterstock
Researchers have challenged long-standing principles of physics, paving the way for more efficient energy harvesting technologies, such as solar cells.
Linxiao Zhu from Penn State University has aimed to break Kirchov’s law of thermal radiation for nearly ten years. Established in the 1800s, this law states that the amount of thermal radiation emitted by an object is proportional to the heat it absorbs, linking to the fundamental principles of thermodynamics. Historically, it was believed that these constraints were absolute.
“In standard physics literature, it’s indicated that Kirchov’s law is a fundamental requirement of the second law of thermodynamics. However, this is not entirely accurate,” explains Zhu.
Previous breaches of this law were seen, but only concerning specific wavelengths of radiation. Zhu and his team have achieved a more significant departure from the norm.
This breakthrough required two significant elements: precisely structured materials and magnetic fields. Both the arrangement of the material and the magnetic environment play crucial roles in the behavior of the particles making up the radiation, like photons, and the energy they carry.
The researchers developed thin-layered semiconductors from indium, gallium, and arsenides, meticulously organizing the atoms. They positioned this setup near a strong electromagnet, illuminating it with lights of various colors at distinct temperatures, angles, and magnetic field strengths.
This combination of material structure and ongoing magnetic influence led to a significant disparity between the radiation absorbed and emitted—up to 43% more radiation was released than was originally absorbed. Zhu attributes this phenomenon to the presence of multiple colors of light. This characteristic is particularly beneficial since sunlight comprises a mixture of colors when hitting solar cell devices.
Aaswath Raman from UCLA indicates that this trial is a major advancement toward turning previously theoretical concepts into reality. He remarks that the stark difference between absorbed and emitted radiation is “a significant breakthrough.”
While novel materials can enhance the efficiency of light and heat-absorbing devices, the requirement for magnetic fields presents challenges. However, Raman remains optimistic about the emergence of new materials that display magnetic properties without requiring proximity to magnets, which could resolve these issues through innovative electromagnetic techniques.
the indie video game landscape is currently shaped by two standout genres: rogue-like games and deck builders. The former invites players into action-adventure gameplay, exploring procedurally generated terrains teeming with enemies, leveling up, and meeting their demise. The latter lets players construct decks of collectible cards (think Pokémon or Magic: The Gathering, but in digital form) and engage in battles. Titles that ingeniously merge these two elements, like Balatro or Slay the Spire, often achieve significant crossover success. In a saturated market, developers are now seeking fresh genres that blend into this dynamic gaming concoction.
Enter Drop Duchy—a game that daringly combines rogue deck builders with… Tetris. Yes, the action unfolds on a playfield where different-shaped objects descend from the top of the screen. Here, each falling piece represents a type of landscape or building, and players endeavor not only to complete unbroken lines but also to generate resources for these structures. For instance, placing a farm next to grassy plain blocks will yield wheat, while situating a wooden fortress near a forest will provide farmland and swordsmen. Upon completing a line, instead of disappearing, the resources you’re collecting multiply. Why accumulate soldiers, you ask? Alongside constructing your military base, you must also make room for randomly generated enemy bases. At the end of each round, when all blocks are positioned, a battle sequence commences where your troops engage the enemy.
Drop the Tetris… Duke in a whole new way. Photo: Arcade Crew
The deck-building aspect is perhaps the most innovative. Each random block that falls into the play area corresponds to the cards you have in your deck. As you advance, you can add new cards to enhance your tactical options. You might start with farms, lumber (transforming forests into farmland), and watchtowers (producing archers), but as you progress through the acts, you’ll unlock additional cards and enhancements through battles culminating in boss encounters. Each boss battle presents unique challenges and themes; for example, the boss in Act 1 is a wall that restricts the play area, constraining construction into a tight spot, while the final challenge of Act 2 involves a keep.
It may sound complex, and it is somewhat. However, credit where it’s due: developer Sleepy Mill Studio has designed the game with intuitive learning, enhanced by effective tutorial levels and numerous on-screen tips. Like many rogue-lite games, a progression tree exists, allowing you to unlock more powerful card types and mechanics that persist through future playthroughs. This way, you can steadily refine your strategy, learning from the inevitable mistakes along the way.
What’s particularly fascinating about this game is the way it forces you to think of Tetris in an entirely new light. You aren’t merely placing blocks to clear lines; you must also consider how each piece interacts with nearby units and devise strategies to hinder your opponents’ resource collection. It’s effectively a multidimensional challenge, cleverly disguised as a simple puzzle game.
Yet, this constant strain on your cognitive abilities can sometimes feel overwhelming. The initial hours can be seemingly pointless due to boss encounters, especially if you find yourself unlucky with the random card draws at the start of each battle.
Nevertheless, the charming pastel visuals, calming music, and ever-expanding resources keep players engaged. Much like Balatro, it often feels as if you understand only about 20% of the game at first, resulting in you throwing down pieces and hoping for a fortunate outcome. However, as you persist, a deeper strategy unfolds to bolster your army while limiting your opponents.
Drop Duchy is a fascinating experiment in game design, and with every new feature, I find myself curious about how the team manages all the moving parts. The appeal of the deck builder genre is evident; they’re addictive, challenging, and systematically engaging, each contributing their unique twist to the overarching dynamics of gameplay. For Drop Duchy, the quirks indeed justify the entry price.
On Wednesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressed a federal judge, stating that the government’s plan to dissolve the company would significantly obstruct its operations as it seeks to implement changes to remedy alleged illegal monopolies in online search.
Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled last year that Google had violated laws to sustain its search monopoly. This month, he held a hearing to establish a remedy for addressing these unlawful practices.
As the company’s second witness, Pichai argued against aggressive governmental solutions, including the sale of Google’s widely-used Chrome web browser and mandates to share data with competitors. He expressed concern that such proposals would force the company to scale back on investments in new technologies in order to redistribute profits to rivals with minimal fees.
“No combination of bailouts can replace what we have invested in R&D over the past three decades and our ongoing innovation to enhance Google search,” he stated, referring to research and development.
Pichai is expected to testify throughout a landmark three-week hearing. The tech industry is currently racing to develop internet products powered by artificial intelligence, and new restrictions on Google’s business could energize its competitors and hinder its own progress.
This case against Google marks the first substantial examination of the U.S. government’s efforts to rein in the extensive power held by commercial entities in the online information landscape. Recently, a federal judge in Virginia concluded that Google also holds a monopoly over various online advertising technologies.
The Federal Trade Commission is engaged in a legal battle with Meta, scrutinizing whether the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp unlawfully diminished competition. Additional federal antitrust actions against Apple and Amazon are anticipated in the coming years.
The Justice Department initiated a lawsuit against Google regarding search practices during President Trump’s first term in 2020.
At the 2023 trial, government attorneys contended that Google has effectively highjacked other search engines by compensating companies like Apple, Samsung, and Mozilla to ensure that its search engine appears as the default on browsers and smartphones. Evidence submitted indicated that this amounted to $26.3 billion in payments in 2021.
In August, Judge Mehta expressed opposition towards the company. Last week, he conducted a three-week hearing aimed at determining an appropriate relief strategy.
The Department of Justice’s suggestions are extensive. The government has asserted that Google must divest Chrome since user queries are automatically directed to its search engine.
During approximately 90 minutes of testimony, Pichai emphasized the company’s significant investments in Chrome, citing its effectiveness in safeguarding users against cyber threats. When government attorneys probed whether future browser owners would manage cybersecurity, Pichai responded assertively, drawing on his deep knowledge of the field.
“Based on my extensive expertise and the understanding of other companies’ capabilities regarding web security, I can confidently discuss this,” he noted.
The government also desires that Google provide search result data to its rivals, a move that would grant other search engines access to information about user searches and clicked websites.
Pichai criticized the proposal for mandatory data sharing, suggesting it effectively threatens the company’s intellectual property, enabling others to reverse-engineer its comprehensive technology stack.
In contrast, Google’s proposal is more limited. He stated that the company should be permitted to continue compensating other businesses for search engine placements, with some arrangements open for annual renegotiation. He also emphasized that smartphone manufacturers should have greater autonomy in selecting which Google applications to install on their devices.
Judge Mehta inquired how other search engines might compete with Google.
“We can hardly rely on the notion that ‘the best product wins,'” Pichai later remarked.
It was a quarter of a century ago when the court seriously considered the wisdom of disbanding a giant technology company after it was discovered that Microsoft had illegally curtailed competition for personal computer software.
A U.S. District Judge said Microsoft forced it to split into two, and forced its exclusive window operating system to separate its office productivity products and other software. However, the Court of Appeals abandoned the order, calling it a “relief imposed with great care because it is rarely certain of its long-term effectiveness.”
This month’s pair of landmark lawsuits in two courtrooms in Washington, the issue of possibly potentially disbanding a large tech company is once again on the judicial table.
In an antitrust trial that began Monday, the Federal Trade Commission alleged that Meta maintained an illegal monopoly on social media through its acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. The agency is trying to force Meta to sell both. Next week, in another proceeding, federal judges will hear debate from the Department of Justice about why the courts are disbanding Google to improve the company’s monopoly in internet searches.
“We’re a great leader in our efforts to help people understand how we’re doing,” said William Kovacic, a law professor at George Washington University and a former chairman of the FTC.
For generations, courts have faced the challenges of what to do in major antitrust laws after it was discovered that the dominant company was engaged in anticompetitive behavior. In a Supreme Court decision in 1947, Judge Robert H. Jackson wrote that if the court’s solution did not open the market for competition, the government would remember that “we won the lawsuit and lost the cause.”
However, while the court’s decision is based on examining past facts, its remedies look to the future. The goal is not to thwart the market, but to free it and create a competitive environment that brings new ideas, new companies, more innovations, lower prices.
The challenge is to take on new importance as regulators have a huge drive to curb the tech giant in a series of antitrust laws that oppose power beyond communication, commerce and information.
In another lawsuit against Google, the Department of Justice awaits a judge’s decision regarding the company’s superiority in advertising technology. The department also sued Apple for its tactics to protect the favorable iPhone franchise. The FTC sued Amazon, saying it illegally protected its monopoly in its online retail business from competition.
This wave of antitrust lawsuits, including appeals, could last for years. And if the government wins any of the cases, the judge could order a breakup – the worst outcome for the business.
History shows that these orders could be effective, antitrust experts said. However, the outcomes of improved competition are mixed.
Standard Oil, an energy giant founded by John D. Rockefeller in 1870, was the decisive case of a progressive and unreliable era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That’s what the company was like Disbanded by the Supreme Court In 1911 it was divided into 34 entities that made up the original standard oil trust that controlled the production, refining, distribution and pricing of the oil industry. It initially helped the competition, but over time the trust’s descendants became their own oil giants, including Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips.
The AT&T split in the 1982 settlement followed a lengthy antitrust lawsuit by the Department of Justice, which accused the United States of illegally monopolying the US telecom market. The local telephone business was split into seven regional “babybell” companies, with the order opening a long-distance telephone and telephone equipment market, increasing competition and lowering prices.
In antitrust terminology, such “structural” solutions generally refer to division. But there is Steps other than forced sale It could form a market and stimulate competition, anti-trust experts said.
In 1969, IBM unlocked hardware from software after pressure from the government’s antitrust laws, which accused it of monopolizing the computer market at the time. The software will no longer be “free” included in the computer price. It helped Microsoft as the biggest winner to ignite the rise of the commercial software industry.
Microsoft avoided breaking up, but the final settlement in 2001 included a ban on contracts that essentially used Windows monopoly as a club by restricting computer manufacturers from distributing software from emerging rivals. That suppression has kept the door open to new competition in browser software and search. Google was a major beneficiary.
“These were strong, break-up-free relief packages that created more competition,” said Fiona Scott Morton, professor of economics at Yale School of Business Administration.
The next powerful tech company facing court scrutiny is Meta and Google.
On Monday, the FTC and Meta (formerly Facebook) issued their opening statement in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, then stood up. The essence of the government case is that Facebook has been extremely overpaid for Instagram and WhatsApp over a decade ago, killing them to protect the lucrative monopoly of social networking.
Meta replied that Instagram and WhatsApp have grown and flourished under their ownership. And the company argued that there was a lot of competition in the social networking market, including the rise of the Tiktok meteor.
If the government wins the meta case, antitrust experts said there is a high possibility of a relief measure.
In the same Washington court next week, Google is facing a relief phase in a lawsuit by the Department of Justice and a group of states over its internet search monopoly. In August, Judge Amit P. Mehta discovered that Google was keeping its search monopoly illegal.
To restore competition, the government has asked the court to order Google to sell popular web browsers and is prohibited from spin-off the smartphone operating system Android or make the service mandatory on Android phones. Chrome and Android are powerful distribution channels for Google search.
Google describes the government’s list as “a violently outboard proposal” that “goes beyond court decisions” and harms consumers by providing products that are inferior to consumers. The company also said it would appeal.
Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia University, was a White House advisor on technology and competition policy for the Biden administration, helping to break up Google and META cases.
“If you want to stir the pot, the structural solution is clean and essentially self-executive. You break up and leave,” he said. (Mr. Wu writes about the New York Times opinion section.)
However, every split order has been appealed, and today’s High Court appears to reflect skepticism in the Microsoft era.
In a rare unanimous decision in 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that the National Association of College Athletics cannot use its market power to stop paying student-athletes. It was essentially a fixed wage price case and was decided entirely for the plaintiff.
However, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, who wrote for the court, derailed to create a broader point about antitrust judicial binding.
“In short, judges should never aim for that role to create poor “central planners,” he wrote.
Last week, President Trump issued an executive order designed to revive the use of coal at power plants. This is a practice that has been steadily decreasing over more than a decade.
But as fossil fuels face several important hurdles, energy experts said. The power produced by coal plants cannot usually compete with cheaper and cleaner alternatives. And many coal-burning plants are simply too old and require extensive and expensive upgrades to continue running.
“It’s extremely difficult to reverse this trend,” said Dan Reicher, deputy energy secretary for the Clinton administration and Google’s Ease of Life and Energy Director. “There are a variety of forces at work that don’t portray a very bright future for coal.”
Why has coal used decreased?
Coal plants, the US’s leading source of electricity, currently produce just 17% of the country’s electricity. The main reason is that another fossil fuel, natural gas, has become abundant and inexpensive due to the shale fracking boom that began in the early 2000s. The use of renewable energy sources like the wind and the sun is also growing significantly.
Natural gas currently provides around 38% of the US electricity, according to the Energy Information Agency. Renewable energy technologies such as solar, wind, and hydroelectric power generation produce about 25%, while nuclear energy produces about 20%.
Some areas, like New England, will soon close their last coal power plants. California, the country’s most populous state, effectively uses no coal to generate electricity.
Coal is also under pressure because burning it will release greenhouse gases that can cause climate change and pollutants that harm people and nature. To avoid those concerns, Trump said, He waives certain air pollution restrictions For many coal plants.
Where is coal still used?
In the Southeast and Midwest, many utilities continue to generate electricity from coal plants. Companies such as Alabama Power, Georgia Power, Duke Energy and the Tennessee Valley Department (the country’s largest government-run power provider) are one of the largest users of coal.
The state, which has a long history of coal mines, is still highly dependent on fuel. It includes West Virginia and Kentucky, which earned 85% of electricity from coal last year, according to the Energy Information Agency.
Trump oversaw the energy division Use emergency situations To operate unprofitable coal plants. The president said this is necessary to prevent blackouts. He tried a similar strategy in his first semester.
He also issued an order that eliminates regulations that “discriminate” coal production, opens new federal land for coal mining, and investigates whether coal combustion power plants can provide services to data centers used for artificial intelligence services such as chatbots.
Peabody, the largest coal producer in the United States, said in 2024 that the world used more coal than any other year in history.
“We believe that in order to support our country’s growing need for affordable and reliable energy, the US should stop resigning coal plants, use existing plants with higher utilization and reopen shuttered coal plants.”
Can the Trump administration revive coal?
Federal policies can play a role, but utilities, state legislators and regulators ultimately determine how much coal will burn at the power plant.
The Utility Trade Association’s Edison Electrical Institute, or EEI, said in a statement that the US needs more power sources but refused to support or oppose the use of coal.
“Electric demand is growing at the fastest pace in decades, and EEI member electric companies are using a diverse, domestic and balanced energy mix to meet this demand while keeping customer invoices as low as possible,” the Institute said.
Several large utilities, like Xcel Energy, are converting coal plants into solar farms to take advantage of the federal incentives created during the Biden administration. In Becker, Minnesota, for example, Xcel is building a large solar and battery installation to replace the Shelco coal power plant. The company is converting something else Coal plants in Colorado For natural gas.
Xcel spokesman Theo Keith said the utility is considering “understanding whether Trump’s orders could affect our business,” but in the meantime it will work to provide consumers with clean energy at a low cost.
Conservative lawmakers in some states, like Texas, have proposed legislation that requires more use of fossil fuels to ensure adequate power and meet the increased demand from data centers, electric vehicles and heat pumps. However, energy analysts expect that such measures will benefit natural gas, not coal, if they pass.
Environmental activists said efforts to revive coal were misguided. They point out that using more coal means that the use of more coal will result in higher electricity bills due to aging devices, increasing health problems and higher risk of power plant breakdowns.
“We’re turning decades of work here,” says Holly Bender, the Sierra Club’s Chief Program Officer, running a campaign called beyond coal to end its use of its fuel. “It’s clear that Trump is trying to put his fingers on the scale to keep coal open, but these are fragments of the infrastructure that are at the end of its useful life.”
I Do not play the game. Points are not displayed. I haven’t reread the book either and rarely re-watch movies or TV shows. There are so many new, bigger, better things that come out every day, and there’s too little time to consume them. However, I made an exception with the teenage mutant ninja turtles. Because the original was very special.
I’ve come towards the end of the ZX Spectrum play day. I was in college and was only interested in it if the teenage mutant ninja turtle was in tall glass and was in the Mandelabar for happy hour prices. However, the game went home in the summer to get me crazy and became the most difficult video game I’ve ever completed. And when I started re-releasing the PS4, which will be offered as part of the TMNT Cowabunga collection, it worries me. (PlayStation Plus Essentials March)
I’m worried that my gaming brain has played a lazy modern game. There, you are spoiled to vomit in the place and spitting collision detection, so it can become a priest, which will result in a discoloration of memory in this golden game.
I was right!
Collision detection is at the relentless Meinik Minor/Megaman level, but through trial and error, we have rediscovered what makes the game easier. The level structure is soft so you can kill enemies from platforms or walls above or below. I also remember that I can “hot swap” the turtle. This means using Donatello on long poles. The rhino is a small metal dagger, similar to the cutlery Elon Musk had balanced with Mar Lago’s fingers. It’s even less useful. To kill enemies with Raphael in this game, you need to get close enough to smell the toppings you had on pizza.
I played this for 2 hours after death. It was the first time I’d throw a controller at the wall since I stopped FIFA.
The night reminds us of an A-level exam as many of us have finished as it was back then, and at that bloody underwater level, we need to soften the bombs under the dam within time limits. You cannot overcome that level without hitting multiple radioactive weeds. I can’t believe I completed it that day and I’m worried that it was one of the things I imagined in the 90s.
Such a terrifying, clunky gameplay will not serve your purpose in 2025.
Or is that possible?
I endured on the second day. I thought the way to get through the bad dam levels was to crash all the enemies and exchange turtles hot when the energy was low. (And in the sense that it is “remembered,” it means “searched Reddit.”)
Most importantly, we discovered that this re-release has an inverted rewind button! You can go back 30 seconds for every failed pixel jump! I’d like to read the game manual, but I’m a guy in his 50s. I don’t read any more instructions than asking for directions when I get lost.
I completed the level and was treated with the sweetest sentence ever written in the history of video games. April said: “The dam is safe. Let’s go home.”
Supported by this, I broke the next few levels over the next few days. It’s difficult to have a rewind button, but it recalibrates the overall attitude of the game. You can’t charge it to the level you can do in today’s games. This was a time when we literally had to move forward, wait, and enemies appeared, learn patterns, and move. You need to slow down your full play method. And that’s not a bad thing. In 2025, life will move at 10 billion miles per hour. I wake up three times on the night to check who is trying to break into who.
My heart and mind are resumed and I reaffirm the greatness of this game. The scrolls and boomerang weapons are immeasurable. I put them there in pure fun with Doom’s BFG, Golden Eye’s Golden Gun, and Worm’s Holy Handren bullet.
I even learn to love the indecipherable nature of block-like graphics. The mutant toad looked recognizable, as did the shredder and his foot soldiers. So did the cheeky space monkeys, but they turned out to be in fact a giant flea. Most enemies are like an 8-bit Rorschach test, and their identity is the result of projections from my subconscious. So it could be the wild butterfly I’m trying to kill, but it could also be my feelings of inadequacy in men.
I’m so glad that I didn’t give up on this game. Because we’ve never done anything like children. You had one game a month. You played it. You continued doing that. We are now diletantes of games, jumping from one subscription service to another, but we may not even actually go through the list of games.
I’m only in the middle. But I will become a soldier through all my hard-earned inches. And it becomes completely Kawabunga.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, is planning to reduce its global workforce by around 5%, with underperforming employees being the most likely to be let go.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined in a memo to employees that due to what he referred to as a challenging year ahead, he has decided to prioritize performance management by letting go of poor performers quicker than usual and accelerating the company’s performance evaluation process.
As of September, Meta had 72,000 employees globally, and the planned job cuts could impact up to 3,600 employees. The company aims to fill the vacant positions later in the year.
The announcement comes shortly after Meta’s decision to end third-party fact-checking and emphasize free speech, coinciding with President Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House. The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) program is also being terminated.
Employees in the US affected by the layoffs will be notified by February 10, with notifications for employees in other countries to follow later.
In the memo, Zuckerberg stated that he is raising the standards for performance management within the company: “We usually manage underperforming talent over a year, but this time we plan to make broader performance-based cuts during this cycle.”
The 40-year-old billionaire emphasized, “This will be an intense year. I want to ensure we have the best talent on the team.”
Employees being let go will be those who have been with Meta long enough to qualify for performance reviews.
Zuckerberg assured that the company will provide generous severance packages to those losing their jobs, similar to previous layoffs.
Meta’s stock dropped 2.3% on Tuesday, continuing a decline that began the day before.
The company faced criticism for removing its fact checker, potentially allowing misinformation and harmful content to circulate on its platform.
Similar to other tech companies, Meta is investing in artificial intelligence projects, with a focus on crucial technologies like AI, as mentioned by Zuckerberg.
The breeding season for emperor penguins is fraught with danger.
Stefan Christmann/naturepl.com
A rover silently explores a forbidding icy landscape. Suddenly it buzzed to life and spotted an emperor penguin. A 90-centimeter-long robot with a scanning antenna saunters toward the bird, searching for signals from the RFID chip under the penguin's skin to finally understand this enigmatic species. Record important information that may be useful.
Emperor penguins are quickly becoming the stars of countless nature documentaries. 2005 movie march of penguins. This media exposure may give the impression that we have a solid understanding of their ecology. it's not. Almost all of that footage was collected from just two breeding colonies on opposite sides of Antarctica, which make up perhaps 10 percent of the emperor penguin population. For decades, the hundreds of thousands of emperors who lived elsewhere along the continent's coasts were virtually unstudied.
That situation is now changing. Over the past 15 years, researchers have learned more about these birds using new technology, including satellites that can spot colonies from space and AI-powered robots that scan them on the ground. . “I hope we're starting to enter a golden age of research,” he says. Daniel Zitterbart At Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts.
The research has already revealed subtle differences in the genetics and behavior of penguins at different points along the Antarctic coast, showing that penguins are surprisingly adaptable to changing conditions. But these discoveries were made amid rapid warming in the region, leading the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to declare him “Emperor.” Endangered species in 2022.…
Astronomers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) to take high-resolution images of eight protoplanetary disks. sigma orionisa star cluster that is irradiated with strong ultraviolet light from a massive star. Surprisingly, they found evidence of gaps and rings in most of the disks. These are the substructures commonly associated with the formation of giant exoplanets.
These ALMA images show the rich disk structure around the star Sigma Orioni. Image credits: ALMA / ESO / JAO / National Astronomical Observatory of Japan / NRAO / Huang others.
“We expected that high levels of radiation within this cluster would inhibit planet formation in the outer regions of these disks,” the Columbia University astronomers said. jane fan.
“But instead, we are seeing signs that planets may be forming at distances of tens of astronomical units from their stars, similar to what we have observed in less harsh environments.”
Previous research has focused on regions of the disk with little ultraviolet (UV) radiation.
This study used ALMA's highest resolution to observe a disk in a much harsher environment.
“These observations suggest that the processes driving planet formation are very robust and can function even under difficult conditions,” said Dr. Huang.
“This gives us even more confidence that planets may be forming in many more places across the galaxy, even in areas previously thought to be too harsh.”
The discovery has important implications for understanding the formation of our own solar system, which likely evolved in a similar high-radiation environment.
These also motivate future studies of disks in more extreme stellar neighborhoods.
Astronomers used ALMA's most extended antenna configuration to obtain unprecedented detail in disk images, achieving a resolution of about 8 AU (astronomical units).
This allowed us to resolve several different gaps and rings on several disks.
The exact nature of these disk structures is still under debate, but it is thought that they either contribute to planet formation or are the result of interactions between the forming planet and the disk's material.
“Our observations suggest that the substructure is common not only in disks near mildly illuminated star-forming regions, but also in disks exposed to intermediate levels of external ultraviolet radiation.” the researchers said.
“If these substructures track planet-disk interactions, ice and gas giant planets may still be forming on Solar System scales in Sigma Orioni, but with very large semi-major axes (50 Giant planet formation in the ~100 AU) region may be rare compared to star formation in nearby regions. ”
“These observations motivate high-resolution imaging of the disk in more extreme ultraviolet environments to investigate the universality of the disk's substructure.”
of findings Coming up this week are: astrophysical journal.
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jane fan others. 2024. High-resolution ALMA observations of the highly structured protoplanetary disk of σ Orionis. APJ 976,132;doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad84df
There's a lot to keep in mind when working in space
NASA (from Getty Images)
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have shown declines in memory, attention, and processing speed after six months, raising concerns about the impact of cognitive impairment on future space missions to Mars.
The extreme environment of space, including reduced gravity, harsh radiation, and lack of regular sunrises and sunsets, can have dramatic effects on astronauts' health, from muscle loss to increased risk of heart disease. There is a gender. However, the cognitive effects of long-term space travel are less well documented.
now, Sheena Dev Researchers from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, examined the cognitive abilities of 25 astronauts while on the ISS.
The team conducted 10 tests on the astronauts, some on Earth once before and after the mission, and others on the ISS early and late in the mission. These tests measure specific cognitive abilities, such as finding patterns on a grid to test abstract reasoning, or choosing when to stop an inflated balloon before it bursts to test risk-taking. I did.
The researchers found that on the ISS, astronauts took longer to complete tests measuring processing speed, working memory, and attention than on Earth, but the accuracy was the same. Although there were no overall cognitive impairments or lasting effects on the astronauts' abilities, some measures, such as processing speed, took longer to return to normal after returning to Earth.
Having clear data on the cognitive effects of space travel is critical for future human spaceflight. Elisa Raffaella Ferre But before we know the full story, it's important to collect more data both on Earth and in space.
“Mission to Mars is not only long in terms of time, but also in terms of autonomy,” Ferre says. “Human performance is key as people on the ground will have a completely different interaction with ground control due to distance and communication delays and will need to be fully autonomous in making decisions. You wouldn't want an astronaut on Mars who has slow reaction times in terms of attention, memory, and processing speed. ”
Given the unusual environment of space, it's not surprising that there was a certain decline in cognitive performance, he said. Joe Bower at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. “It's not necessarily a huge cause for alarm, but it's useful to know, especially to know your limits when you're in such an extreme environment,” she says.
That awareness could be especially helpful for astronauts on long-duration missions, Bower added. “It’s not just about how well you do on a test, it’s also about how you perceive your abilities,” she says. “For example, when you're sleep deprived, your performance often suffers, but you don't even realize it's happening.”
Human cognitive abilities can be greatly influenced by the presence of an audience. Although often associated with reputation management, which is thought to be unique to humans, it is unclear to what extent this phenomenon is common to non-human animals. To investigate such audience effects in chimpanzees, researchers Kyoto University Contains performances by 6 people Chimpanzee (pan-troglodytes) Over a period of 6 years, we conducted experiments on three different numerical touch screen tasks of varying difficulty and cognitive demands, in a variety of audience compositions. The results showed that chimpanzee performance was influenced by the number and type of audience present.
To investigate whether chimpanzees' task performance is influenced by the presence of an audience, Lin others. analyzed multiple chimpanzee cognitive task data across different types of tasks. Image provided by: Akiho Muramatsu
“It was very surprising to discover that chimpanzees were influenced by the audience, and even by the human audience, in their task performance,” said Kyoto University researcher Dr. Kristen Lin.
“Although we might not expect chimpanzees to particularly care whether other species are watching them perform a task, chimpanzees are influenced by human spectators even depending on the difficulty of the task. The fact that it looks like this suggests that this relationship is more complex than we thought and initially expected. ”
Lin and his colleagues wanted to find out whether the audience effect often attributed to reputation management in humans also existed in non-human primates.
People knew that paying attention to who was looking at them, sometimes unconsciously, would affect their performance.
Chimpanzees live in hierarchical societies, but it was not clear to what extent they were also influenced by the people observing them.
“Our research site is special in that the chimpanzees frequently interact with and even enjoy human company, participating in various touchscreen experiments almost daily for food rewards. '' said Dr. Akiho Muramatsu of Kyoto University.
“So we thought there was an opportunity to not only explore potential similarities in effects that are relevant to viewers, but also do it in the context of chimpanzees, which share a unique bond with humans.”
The researchers made this discovery after analyzing thousands of sessions in which chimpanzees completed touchscreen tasks over a six-year period.
The researchers found that across three different number-based tasks, the chimpanzees performed better on the most difficult task as the number of experimenters observing them increased.
In contrast, they also found that on the simplest tasks, chimpanzees performed worse when they were observed by more experimenters and other familiar people.
Scientists note that the specific mechanisms underlying these audience-related effects remain unclear, even in humans.
They suggest that further studies in non-human apes may provide more insight into how this trait evolved and why it developed.
“Our findings suggest that how much humans care about witnesses and audiences may not be so unique to our species,” said Shinya Yamamoto of Kyoto University. said the doctor.
“These characteristics are a core part of how our society is primarily based on reputation, and if chimpanzees also pay special attention to their audience when performing their tasks, then these It stands to reason that audience-based traits may have evolved before reputation-based traits.''Society arose in our great ape lineage. ”
of the team findings Published in a magazine iscience.
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Kristen Lin others. The presence of an audience influences chimpanzees' performance on cognitive tasks. isciencepublished online on November 8, 2024. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.111191
Apple has lost its high-profile 13 billion euro (11 billion pounds) Irish tax battle with the EU, but the ruling will bolster efforts by the European Commission to crack down on “preferential” tax regimes favoring multinational companies.
The long-awaited ruling from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) came after a years-long legal battle over whether the European Commission was right in 2016 to demand the return of 13 billion euros of “illegal” tax breaks given to Apple for giving the iPhone maker an unfair advantage.
ECJ (European Court of Justice) The verdict was given The Commission argued that a lower court ruling in favor of Apple should be overturned, upholding a 2016 European Commission decision that found Ireland had provided unlawful assistance to Apple in the tax treatment of profits from Apple’s activities outside the United States and that Ireland was required to recoup the money.
In 2020, a lower court, the General Court, annulled the 2016 European Commission decision, finding that it had not been sufficiently established that Apple’s subsidiaries enjoyed a selective advantage. That ruling has now been set aside by the European Court of Justice, which has confirmed the European Commission’s 2016 decision.
The ruling was a victory for EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who concluded: 2016 The iPhone maker benefited from billions of dollars worth of unfair tax breaks from the Irish government.
Vestager, who is due to step down this year, has been seen as a tough enforcer who has boldly taken on powerful multinationals such as Fiat, Amazon and Starbucks over their tax claims. But some of the cases have not stood the test of time, with a 2022 ruling against Fiat that was later overturned.
The case brings to an end a years-long legal battle that began in 2016 when the European Commission ordered Apple to pay billions of euros for significant underpayment of tax on profits from 2003 to 2014. Apple, which has had its European headquarters in Cork since 1980, was found by the EU’s competition watchdog to have benefited from a tax ruling by Irish authorities and to have paid an effective tax rate of 0.005 percent in 2014.
Apple has denied the accusations, saying the government aid money had not been paid, and CEO Tim Cook said: It is called The claim is “political nonsense.”
Apple challenged the Commission at the General Court, the EU’s second-highest court, and won. Conclusion In July 2020, Brussels ruled that Apple had failed to prove that it had obtained an illegal economic benefit in terms of tax in Ireland.
The Commission appealed, and last year the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice, Giovanni Pitruzzella, recommended that the Commission overturn the General Court’s earlier ruling. Advocate General Pitruzzella said the General Court had made an error of law and needed to carry out a new assessment. He recommended that the European Court of Justice remit the case back to the General Court for a new ruling on the substance of the case.
Pitruzella’s recommendation was not legally binding and did not have to be followed by the ECJ, but the attorney general’s opinion carries great weight and usually influences the court’s final decision.
Following the ECJ ruling, Apple said: “This case is not about how much tax we pay, but which government we owe tax to. We have always paid all taxes wherever we do business and have never had any special arrangements. Apple is a driver of growth and innovation in Europe and around the world, and we are proud to have consistently been one of the world’s largest taxpayers.”
“The European Commission is seeking to change the rules retroactively, ignoring the fact that our income is already subject to tax in the United States under international tax law. We are disappointed by today’s decision because the European Court of Justice previously reviewed the facts and invalidated this case in its entirety.”
Meanwhile, the ECJ It also ruled He upheld the 2.4 billion euro fine imposed by the European Commission against Google in an antitrust case. Whether Google falsely favored its online shopping service. In this case, the Attorney General said In January, the ECJ ruled that Google’s appeal should be dismissed.
Google said: “We are disappointed with the court’s decision, which concerns very specific facts. We made changes in 2017 to comply with the European Commission’s decision. Our approach has been successful for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks across over 800 comparison shopping services.”
Astronomers have discovered six new worlds that look like planets but formed like stars. These so-called “rogue worlds” are between five and 15 times the mass of Jupiter, and one of them may even host the beginnings of a miniature solar system.
Ray Jayawardene Using the James Webb Space Telescope, a researcher from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland and his colleagues discovered these strange worlds in the NGC 1333 star cluster. Despite being planet-sized, none of these worlds orbit a star. This indicates that they likely formed by the collapse of a cloud of dust and gas, similar to how stars like our Sun are born. These objects that form like stars but are not massive enough to sustain the fusion of hydrogen are called brown dwarfs, or failed stars.
“In some ways, the most shocking thing is what we didn't find,” Jayawardene says. “Even though we had the sensitivity to do so, we couldn't find anything with a mass less than five times that of Jupiter.” This may indicate that brown dwarfs can't form at lower masses — that is, they are the smallest objects that can form like stars.
From their observations, the researchers found that about 10 percent of the objects in NGC 1333 are made up of brown dwarfs — a much higher number than expected based on star formation models — and that additional processes, such as turbulence, may be driving the formation of these nomadic planets.
One of the brown dwarfs is particularly unusual, with a ring of dust around it similar to the ones that formed the planets in our solar system. At about five times the mass of Jupiter, it's the smallest planet with such a ring ever found and may mark the beginning of a strange, shrunken planetary system around a dysfunctional star.
“From the miniature world around these objects, [brown dwarf] “It will glow mostly in the infrared, with a very reddish glow, and over hundreds of millions of years it will gradually fade away and become invisible,” Jayawardene says. As the brown dwarf fades, any planets that form around it will freeze out completely, darkening the entire system and making it a less than promising world for searching for life.
Is it in the way we live, laugh, love? Or is it our aversion to clichés? Deep inside each of us, there must be something that makes us human. The problem is, after centuries of searching, we haven’t found it yet. Maybe it’s because we’ve been looking in the wrong places.
Ever since researchers began unearthing ancient hominin bones and stone tools, their work has held the tantalizing promise of pinpointing the long-ago moment when our ancestors transformed into humans. Two of the most important fossil discoveries in this quest reach an important milestone this year: 100 years since the first “near-human” was found. Australopithecus Fossils have been discovered in South Africa that have upended previous ideas about human origins, and it’s been 50 years since the most famous fossil was found. Australopithecus Lucy, also known as humanity’s grandmother, emerged from the dusty hills of Ethiopia, and the two fossils have led researchers to believe they can pinpoint humanity’s Big Bang, the period when a dramatic evolutionary wave led to the emergence of humans. Homo.
But today, the story of human origins is much more complicated. A series of discoveries over the past two decades has shown that the beginning of humanity is harder to pinpoint than we thought. So why did it once seem like we could define humanity and pinpoint its emergence, thanks to Lucy and her peers? Why are we now further away than ever from pinpointing exactly what it means to be human?
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Climbers cling to dizzying rock faces, toes digging in, knuckles white, limbs trembling with extreme tension. In this perilous moment, they have a few options: move quickly to regain their balance, rest for a few seconds, or simply let go and hope the belay can support their weight as they succumb to the massif.
Cairn, the new “survival climbing game” from French studio The Game Bakers, is full of dangerous, panic-inducing moments like this. There’s no visible stamina bar, meaning players must derive all their information from the state of their controllable climber, Aava. When under extreme stress, Aava’s breathing becomes intense and rapid and shallow, and her body begins to tremble. “We want you to focus on her posture and the railing in front of her,” says creative director Emeric Thoa.
Beneath this naturalistic presentation lies a huge amount of mathematical calculation. Using only the left analog stick, you control all of Aava’s body and limbs, and lock in handholds and footholds with the press of a button. The system calculates the stress on Aava’s limbs and core in real time, which determines the most physically realistic next movement for Aava. “Limbs are chosen automatically by the system; it predicts which arms and legs will move smoothly and easily,” Thoa explains. “The challenge for the player is to keep Aava balanced.”
This kind of dynamic scrambling is a far cry from Assassin’s Creed’s automated parkour, which has you clinging to stone walls with the pull of a trigger, or the navigation puzzles of recent climbing hit Jusant, which have you clinging to mineral outcrops on a predetermined path up a mountain. Cairn makes even the most dizzying activities even more complex by combining a freeform control system with a meticulously designed mountain, whose intersecting routes even Thoa and his colleagues don’t fully understand.
“It’s 2024, and there are words like ‘procedural’ and ‘AI,’ but we designed this mountain and built it completely by hand, placing every rock and crevice and handhold,” Thoa says. “It’s really hard work, and very iterative. I’m really grateful to our level design team.”
What sights and emotions await the player and Arva on their journey? Tore remains tight-lipped, saying only that he and the studio consulted with renowned mountaineer Elizabeth Revol, who spoke of “the intense freedom you feel when you push yourself past your limits at the top of the Earth.” Another detail that stayed in the game’s creator’s mind was that upon reaching the highest, thinnest mountain air, Revol experienced an almost delirious euphoria, “crying, screaming, going into a kind of strange trance.”
Cairn arrives with multiple game modes: the story sees Aava take on a gruelling, multi-day climb of a single mountain, and there’s an Expedition mode with additional mountains and challenges. Those willing to forgo the safety of the rope can also climb “free solo.” “This is where the real fun begins,” declares Toa, with a devilish glower, who, unlike Joussant, “will definitely die” in Cairn.
So what’s the Dark Souls of climbing games? Probably. But as Thoa stresses, “this isn’t a rage game.” Rather, he says, Cairn aims to convey “what climbing and alpinism is really about.” “You try, you fall, you try again, you fall, and then when you manage to get up, it’s very satisfying.”
Chimpanzee mother and child in Kibale National Park, Uganda
Dr. Chris Sabbi, Tufts University
When they have less to eat, most chimpanzees stop playing altogether to conserve energy, but mothers continue to spend a lot of time playing with their children. Because play is essential to the physical and psychological development of young chimpanzees, mothers may channel their energy into this behavior to nurture their young, even during difficult times.
Great apes such as gorillas, bonobos, and chimpanzees all tend to engage in play, such as tickling, pecking, and chasing each other. “Play helps develop both motor and social skills,” he says. Zarin Machanda At Tufts University, Massachusetts. “That's really what the baby needs to develop properly.”
For more than a decade, Machanda and colleagues have been observing a community of about 60 Eastern chimpanzees.Pan Troglodytes Schweinfurti) lives in Kibale National Park, Uganda. The team played a total of 3,891 games between 2010 and 2019.
“We had a great summer in 2016 or 2017 when there was nothing but food everywhere on site,” says Manchanda. “And one of the things we noticed was a lot of adult chimpanzees playing with each other.”
When food was abundant, teams recorded at least one play on 97% of observation days, but when food was scarce, this decreased to only 38%.
However, mother chimpanzees continued to play with their children at even higher rates during times of low food availability.
“We were really surprised,” team members say. Chris Sabbi Food is generally more important to female chimpanzees because the energetic cost of reproduction is much higher, according to a Harvard University study.
During periods of food stress, chimpanzees tend to spend more time alone to avoid competing for resources, so mothers are often the only social partners for their babies. As a result, the mother spends even more time playing with her children to compensate for the lack of interaction with her peers and other adults.
“The fact that mothers continue to play with their babies, even at personal sacrifices, shows how important this is to the child's development,” Machanda said. “It's like the hidden cost of being a mother.”
People with type 2 diabetes who lose weight while participating in clinical trials appear to be significantly more likely to have their symptoms reversed than those who lose weight outside of such studies.
Treatments such as insulin injections can help people with type 2 diabetes maintain healthy blood sugar levels. However, if you are overweight or obese, your symptoms may improve when you lose weight.
In fact, less than 10 percent of people with type 2 diabetes who lose weight outside of these trials actually lose weight, even when followed for several years. Wu Hongjian At the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In exams, this number can be closer to 90%.
These discrepancies may be due to sometimes different definitions of what it means to reverse type 2 diabetes, as well as the support and different interventions that often accompany participation in clinical trials. he says.
To better understand this, Dr. Wu and colleagues looked at more than 37,000 people in Hong Kong aged 18 to 75 who were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes between 2000 and 2017, about half of whom were women. ) was studied.
Each participant was followed for an average of just under eight years, and the researchers looked at how their weight changed in the year after diagnosis and whether their symptoms improved during the study period.
The researchers measured glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels, which reflect the participants’ blood sugar status over several months. To reverse type 2 diabetes, also called remission, Generally defined as an HbA1c of less than 6.5 percent. When measured at least 3 months after stopping treatment. The researchers were investigating whether these levels occurred during her two consecutive tests conducted six months apart.
The research team only measured the participants’ weight one year after diagnosis, at which point 2% were in remission and half had gained weight, Wu said.
By the end of the study, 6% were in remission at some point, Wu said. About two-thirds of these people needed diabetes medication to get their symptoms back under control within three years.
However, by simply recording participants’ weight one year after diagnosis, the researchers were not able to determine whether the participants continued to gain weight or whether other factors, such as gaining weight at a particular time, could account for some of the weight. We do not know whether it brought participants out of remission. Fat that accumulates around the waist and certain internal organs.
In contrast, one small clinical trial found that up to 86% of type 2 diabetics who lost at least 15 kg went into remission within 1 year. People participating in such studies often benefit from professional dietary management, physical exercise programs, moral support, regular monitoring, feedback, reminders and encouragement, Wu says.
But even people who participate in the control groups of some clinical trials and don’t undergo intensive weight loss programs have higher remission rates than what was seen in Wu’s team’s study.
That may be because, outside of clinical trials, doctors are often reluctant to advise patients with type 2 diabetes to stop treatment, he says. This likely also has to do with differences in how remission is defined, Wu said, since trials often require only one HbA1c measurement in a healthy patient.
Geometric problems involve proving facts about angles and lines in complex shapes
Google Deep Mind
Google DeepMind's AI can solve some International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO) problems in geometry almost as well as the best human contestants.
“AlphaGeometry's results are surprising and breathtaking,” says IMO Chairman Gregor Driner. “It looks like AI will be winning his IMO gold medal much sooner than was thought a few months ago.”
IMO is one of the most difficult math competitions in the world for middle school students. Answering questions correctly requires mathematical creativity, something AI systems have long struggled with. For example, GPT-4, who has shown remarkable reasoning ability in other areas, gets his 0% score on IMO geometry problems, and even a specialized AI can answer them just as well as an average contestant. I'm having a hard time.
This is partly due to the difficulty of the problem, but also due to the lack of training data. This contest has been held annually since 1959, and each round consists of only six questions. However, some of the most successful AI systems require millions or even billions of data points. In particular, geometry problems, which account for one or two out of six questions and require proving facts about angles or lines in complex shapes, are particularly difficult to convert into a computer-friendly format.
Thanh Luong Google's DeepMind and his colleagues got around this problem by creating a tool that can generate hundreds of millions of machine-readable geometric proofs. Using this data he trained an AI called AlphaGeometry and when he tested it on 30 of his IMO geometry questions, the IMO gold medalist's estimated score based on his score in the contest was 25.9, whereas the AI answered 25 of them correctly.
“our [current] AI systems still struggle with capabilities such as deep reasoning. There you have to plan many steps in advance and understand the big picture. That's why mathematics is such an important benchmark and test set in our explorations. to artificial general intelligence,” Luong said at a press conference.
AlphaGeometry is made up of two parts, which Luong likens to different thinking systems in the brain. One system is fast and intuitive, the other is slower and more analytical. The first intuitive part is a language model called GPT-f, similar to the technology behind ChatGPT. It is trained on millions of generated proofs and suggests which theorems and arguments to try next for your problem. Once the next step is proposed, a slower but more careful “symbolic reasoning” engine uses logical and mathematical rules to fully construct the argument proposed by GPT-f. The two systems then work together and switch between each other until the problem is resolved.
While this method has been very successful in solving IMO geometry problems, Luong says the answers it constructs tend to be longer and less “pretty” than human proofs. However, it can also find things that humans overlook. For example, a better and more general solution was discovered for the question from his IMO in 2004 than the one listed in the official answer.
I think it's great that you can solve IMO geometry problems in this way. Yang Hui He However, IMO problems must be solvable using theorems taught at undergraduate level and below, so this system inherently limits the mathematics that can be used. Expanding the amount of mathematical knowledge that AlphaGeometry can access could improve the system and even help make new mathematical discoveries, he says.
It's also interesting to see how AlphaGeometry deals with situations where you don't know what you need to prove, since mathematical insight often comes from exploring theorems that have no fixed proof. Yes, he says. “If I don't know what an endpoint is, can I find it in all sets?” [mathematical] Are there any new and interesting theorems? ”
Last year, algorithmic trading firm XTX Markets Total prize money: $10 million For AI math models, the first publicly shared AI model to earn an IMO gold medal will receive a $5 million grand prize, with small progress awards for major milestones.
“Solving the IMO geometry problem is one of the planned advancement awards supported by the $10 million AIMO Challenge Fund,” said Alex Gerko of XTX Markets. “Even before we announce all the details of this Progress Award, we are excited to see the progress we are making towards this goal, including making our models and data openly available and , which involves solving real geometry problems during a live IMO contest.”
DeepMind declined to say whether it plans to use AlphaGeometry in live IMO contests or extend the system to solve other IMO problems that are not based on geometry. However, DeepMind previously entered a public protein folding prediction competition to test the AlphaFold system.
Using the nematode C. elegans, scientists have made significant headway in understanding brain function. New insights into neural communication are provided by research that uses optogenetics and connectomics to challenge traditional models and deepen the understanding of complex neural networks. The transmission of information between neurons is currently being investigated, raising the question of whether we truly understand how the brain works.
There have been great strides in understanding the complex workings of the brain in recent decades, providing extensive knowledge about cellular neurobiology and neural networks. However, many important questions are still unanswered, leaving the brain as a profound and intriguing mystery. A team of neuroscientists and physicists at Princeton University has made groundbreaking strides in this field of research, particularly through their work with the C. elegans nematode. The study, recently published in Nature, is aimed at understanding how ensembles of neurons process information and generate behavior.
The C. elegans nematode is especially suitable for laboratory experimentation due to its simplicity and the fact that its brain wiring has been completely “mapped.” Furthermore, the worm’s transparency and light-sensitive tissues present the opportunity to use innovative techniques such as optogenetics. Through these techniques, the researchers were able to carefully observe and measure the flow of signals through the worm’s brain, gaining new insights that challenge established models of neural behavior.
The study provides a comprehensive explanation of how signals flow through the C. elegans brain and challenges established mathematical models derived from connectome maps. The researchers found that many of their empirical observations contradicted the predictions based on these models, leading them to identify “invisible molecular details” and “radio signals” as important components of neural behavior. Ultimately, this work aims to develop better models for understanding the complexity of the brain as a system.
The research was supported primarily by a National Institutes of Health Newcomer Award, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and the Simons Foundation. These findings have broad implications, particularly for understanding biological processes and developing new technologies.
Schoolchildren across the country will put their puzzle-solving skills to the test after Britain’s spy agency launches its annual Christmas challenge.
GCHQ sent out Christmas cards to more than 1,000 secondary schools with the challenge featuring a rare image of Bletchley Park covered in snow on the front.
It includes seven increasingly complex puzzles that test skills such as code-breaking, math and analysis, encouraging students to work together as a team to uncover the final congratulatory message.
It also includes a math-based bonus puzzle that is said to be the most difficult ever.
Anne Keast-Butler, Director of GCHQ, said: “Puzzle has been at the heart of GCHQ since the beginning.
“These skills represent our historical roots in cryptography and cryptography and remain critical to our modern mission to keep our nation safe.
“GCHQ’s history at Bletchley Park is represented in this year’s Christmas card as a reminder of the role this historic site played in the wartime effort and as the home of this year’s AI Safety Summit.
“Our puzzle enthusiasts have created challenges designed to combine different types of thinking to solve them. Whether you’re an analyst, engineer, or creative, there’s a puzzle for everyone. This is something that classmates, family, and friends will try to solve. Together.”
Bletchley Park was the wartime home of GCHQ and the remarkable image, taken in January 1940, was discovered in the personal family album of Joan Wingfield, who worked to decipher the Italian Naval Code.
Now in its third year, the challenge aims to provide insight into GCHQ’s work and encourage young people to study Stem subjects.
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