Who hasn’t looked into the sky and wondered if there’s life out there, somewhere, looking back at us? Is it possible there’s alien life closer to home — within the bounds of our solar system? The short answer is yes, there are several places researchers are looking for signs of life within our solar system, … Read more
A small municipality in southern Finland recently installed the world’s largest “sand battery” to supply the town’s heating. The new sand battery, designed by Polar Night Energy, is effectively a giant sandpit encased in a roughly 43 foot tall by 49 foot wide (13 by 15 meter) steel container. The sand is heated using closed-loop … Read more
Researchers have modified a standard glue gun to 3D print a bone-like material directly onto fractures, paving the way for its use in operating rooms. The device, which has so far been tested in rabbits, would be particularly useful for fixing irregularly shaped fractures during surgery, the researchers say. “To my knowledge, there are virtually … Read more
Red onion dye could be the missing ingredient required to bolster ultraviolet (UV) protection for solar cells, scientists say. Solar cells are typically coated with a petroleum-based film to protect them from UV-induced degradation. These films include oil-based materials such as polyvinyl fluoride (PVF) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). In the quest to drive the adoption … Read more
At first glance, Nam-Joon Cho’s lab at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University looks like your typical research facility — scientists toiling away, crowded workbenches, a hum of machinery in the background. But the orange-yellow stains on the lab coats slung on hooks hint at a less-usual subject matter under study. The powdery stain is pollen: microscopic … Read more
Scientists have suggested that when artificial intelligence (AI) goes rogue and starts to act in ways counter to its intended purpose, it exhibits behaviors that resemble psychopathologies in humans. That’s why they have created a new taxonomy of 32 AI dysfunctions so people in a wide variety of fields can understand the risks of building … Read more
Early Earth was a barren wasteland incapable of supporting life until a big protoplanet crash carried in the necessary ingredients, a new study suggests. That collision of the proto-Earth and a Mars-size body — nicknamed Theia — has been theorized for decades, especially in discussions of how our moon may have formed from the resulting … Read more
Scientists have incorporated key computing components into a single, flexible fiber that you can run through your washing machine. The researchers hope to one day weave together many of these fibers into a cohesive “fiber computing” network — in other words, items of clothing with smart capabilities. Smart textiles, also known as smart fabrics or … Read more
Scientists have developed a new type of artificial intelligence (AI) model that can reason differently from most large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, resulting in much better performance in key benchmarks. The new reasoning AI, called a hierarchical reasoning model (HRM), is inspired by the hierarchical and multi-timescale processing in the human brain — the … Read more
The patient: A 52-year-old woman in The Hague, Netherlands The symptoms: The woman visited an outpatient psychiatric clinic and told the doctors that when she looked at people’s faces, she saw them transform into the faces of dragons. She also saw dragon-like faces appear in front of her spontaneously, even when no people were present. … Read more
