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Unraveling life's origin: Five key breakthroughs from the past five years
4 May 2024 @ 11:40 pm
There is still so much we don't understand about the origin of life on Earth.
Opinion: Why women would prefer to be alone in the woods with a bear than a man
4 May 2024 @ 10:50 pm
Would you rather find yourself alone in the woods with a bear or a man? This is the question currently dividing social media. Based on the responses online, it looks like most women answering the question say they would choose the bear, a decision that is shocking many men.
Nanotech opens door to future of insulin medication
4 May 2024 @ 5:20 pm
An international team, led by researchers from Australia, have developed a system using nanotechnology that could allow people with diabetes to take oral insulin in the future. The researchers say the new insulin could be eaten by taking a tablet or even embedded within a piece of chocolate.
Researcher: Climate models can run for months on supercomputers—but my new algorithm can make them ten times faster
4 May 2024 @ 4:30 pm
Climate models are some of the most complex pieces of software ever written, able to simulate a vast number of different parts of the overall system, such as the atmosphere or ocean. Many have been developed by hundreds of scientists over decades and are constantly being added to and refined. They can run to over a million lines of computer code—tens of thousands of printed pages.
How to spot fake online reviews (with a little help from AI)
4 May 2024 @ 3:30 pm
Before you buy something, or visit a new restaurant, or see a new film, you may be tempted to check out the online reviews. Researching what strangers think of the things we might like has become a familiar part of the modern consumer experience.
The benefits of crown-of-thorns starfish control on the Great Barrier Reef
4 May 2024 @ 2:20 pm
New research has revealed that years of targeted crown-of-thorns starfish control on the Great Barrier Reef has protected coral and supported reef health and resilience.
How evolving landscapes impacted First Peoples' early migration patterns into Australia
4 May 2024 @ 1:50 pm
New research led by the University of Sydney offers fresh understanding of the migration patterns of Australia and New Guinea's First Peoples, and where they lived in the 40,000 years following humanity's arrival on the then combined continent. The work is published in the journal Nature Communications.
Saturday Citations: Parrots on the internet; a map of human wakefulness; the most useless rare-earth element
4 May 2024 @ 1:00 pm
We field a torrent of science news updates every week and on Saturday morning, we highlight three or four of them based on the observed preferences of a panel of dogs as shown by the Paired-Stimulus Preference Assessment, a standardized evaluation of preferred stimuli. This week, the dogs selected stories about parrot-to-parrot video calling, loud human noises, and a new neural map of human wakefulness.
Beautifully crafted Roman dodecahedron discovered in Lincoln—but what were they for?
4 May 2024 @ 11:40 am
Roman dodecahedra are something of an enigma: there is no known mention of these 12-sided, hollow objects in ancient Roman texts or images. First discovered in the 18th century, around 130 dodecahedra have been found across the Roman Empire, although it is interesting that the majority have been found in northern Europe and Britain, and none have been found in Italy.
When injecting pure spin into chiral materials, direction matters
4 May 2024 @ 8:31 am
Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Pittsburgh studied how the spin information of an electron, called a pure spin current, moves through chiral materials. They found that the direction in which the spins are injected into chiral materials affects their ability to pass through them. These chiral "gateways" could be used to design energy-efficient spintronic devices for data storage, communication and computing.