View OriginalA Day in the Life of a Fossil PreparatorAlthough it leaves few written traces, the work of preparing specimens is a crucial component of scientific research. A preparator removes matrix from a “beautiful” fish skeleton covered in tiny fossilized scales. On a Thursday at 9:30 a.m.
Powers of Hearing: The Military Science of Sound LocationDuring WWI the act of hearing was recast as a tactical activity — one that could determine human and even national survival.
View OriginalVIDEO: The scientific and cultural impact of the International Space Station after 25 yearsThis week marks the 25th anniversary of when astronauts first entered the beginnings of the International Space Station. A quarter of a century later, the station is manned by seven international crew members and has become an iconic and important part of space history.
View Original‘It’s Game on’: The World’s Largest Iceberg Is on the Move. Scientists Explain Why It MattersScientists say the juggernaut’s breakaway from Antarctica is a stark reminder of the potentially disastrous implications as global sea levels rise.
View OriginalHuman Intelligence: It’s How Your Brain Is Wired Rather Than Size That MattersOur brains don't look that special when looking at their relative size compared to our closest animal relatives. To understand human intelligence, scientists are now looking deeper.
View OriginalA City on Mars: Reality kills space settlement dreams Let me start with the TLDR for A City on Mars. It is, essentially, 400 pages of "well, actually…," but without the condescension, quite a bit of humor, and many, oh so many, details. Kelly and Zach Weinersmith started from the position of being space settlement enthusiasts.
View OriginalNature’s Invisibility CloakExplore The lure of invisibility has captivated humans for millennia: the Egyptian god Amun-Ra manifested as the transparent wind which could be felt but not seen; the Greek philosopher Plato’s magic ring granted invisibility to a shepherd who then usurped the throne by murdering a king and marryi
View OriginalThe controversial phrase “from the river to sea,” explainedOn US college campuses, on social media, and even in the halls of Congress, the 10-word slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is either a joyous call for Palestinian dignity and future statehood — or a threat to many Jewish people in Israel and around the world.
View OriginalWhat’s coming next for fusion researchThis article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. But making a fusion power plant a reality will require a huge amount of science and technology progress.
View OriginalThrowback sportscar maker Morgan hasn’t forgotten about EVs—meet XP-1The UK's Morgan Motor Company is best known for making new cars that look like old cars. Not only that, but barring a false start with an electric take on the Three Wheeler, the EV3, it's all gas, all the time.
View OriginalWhy the Human Brain Perceives Small Numbers BetterThe discovery that the brain has different systems for representing small and large numbers provokes new questions about memory, attention and mathematics. Introduction More than 150 years ago, the economist and philosopher William Stanley Jevons discovered something curious about the number 4.
View OriginalIt’s just a tipYou can say no to the tipping tablet. That doesn’t mean you should. If you haven’t heard it or felt it yourself, people are angry about the state of tipping. Consumers have noticed that they’re being asked to tip more often and for higher amounts than before.
View OriginalThe Curse of County Mayo: The story of the 72-year-old Gaelic football hexSign up for notifications to the latest Insight features via the BBC Sport app and find the most recent in the series. The mourners, dressed in black, cloaked in silence, hear it before they see it.
View Original1960s chatbot ELIZA beat OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 in a recent Turing test studyIn a preprint research paper titled "Does GPT-4 Pass the Turing Test?", two researchers from UC San Diego pitted OpenAI's GPT-4 AI language model against human participants, GPT-3.5, and ELIZA to see which could trick participants into thinking it was human with the greatest success.
View OriginalThe Virtues of Not KnowingI am going to show you some pictures. Tell me whether each is more like a dog or a cat.