Science

The birds are particularly vulnerable to high temperatures, and France’s torrid June took a heavy toll.

The mystery of how the sun's corona, which is its outer atmosphere, reaches millions of degrees could have a surprising explanation: cosmic dust riding the magnetic waves carrying plasma on the solar wind."For decades, researchers have focused mainly on how electrons, ions, magnetic fields and plasma waves transport and dissipate energy in the solar atmosphere," said lead researcher Syed Ayaz of the University of Alabama in Huntsville in a statement. "Our work adds a new ingredient to this pictu

The Big Apple’s biannual sunset display is as iconic as it is captivating. Here’s everything you need to know about why the phenomenon happens and how best to view it

The native plant movement says that we can combat environmental disaster from our own backyards. Is it really so simple?

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Popular communication methods for nonspeaking autistic people have ignited a fierce debate over what counts as evidence of hidden cognitive abilities.

Bill Frist, a surgeon who also served as Senate majority leader, has emerged as an outspoken advocate for environmental health. “A healthier planet means healthier people,” he said.

Study of more than 2,000 men identifies epigenetic changes linked to exposure to common outdoor pollutantsAir pollution appears to alter how sperm genes function, one of the largest fertility studies of its kind has found.Men exposed to common air pollutants while sperm were developing showed subtle DNA changes that affected whether genes were switched on or off, raising fresh concerns air pollution may harm male fertility. Continue reading...

Scottish government to consider SNP national council motion for moratorium on all new datacentresThe Scottish government is about to consider a sweeping moratorium on building new datacentres, putting a key plank of the UK’s AI strategy at risk.Last Sunday the Scottish National party (SNP)’s national council passed a motion to freeze all new datacentres in Scotland. That motion has been sent to the Scottish government to consider. Continue reading...

Scientists say they have built a "synthetic cell" that can eat, grow and divide in a way that's remarkably similar to living cells. The research, released to the preprint database bioRxiv July 2, has not been peer-reviewed yet. It introduces SpudCell, a new type of artificial cell, and marks a striking step toward creating living cells from scratch. But for study co-author Kate Adamala, a synthetic biologist at the University of Minnesota, that's far from the most interesting part of the work. "

Revelers celebrating US independence day in San Francisco over the weekend were stopped in their tracks as an untold number of Waymo robotaxis stalled, exacerbating the city’s horrible holiday gridlock. According to NBC News, several Waymos had to be towed out of busy roadways after their batteries died on one of the city’s worst traffic days of the year so far. On top of intense fog and significant public transit slowdowns, travelers had to bob and weave past the bricked electric

Deep in a limestone cave on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, archaeologists have uncovered evidence that Neanderthals and the modern humans who moved in later left behind surprisingly similar traces of their daily lives — evidence that they hunted the same animals, crafted the same stone tools and collected the same type of seashells. The findings, published Monday (July 6) in the journal PNAS, feed into some of the biggest questions in human evolution: How similar were the cultures of Neanderthals

The U.S. just celebrated its 250th birthday, and Americans living off the planet had a great view of some of the parties down below."The International Space Station orbited over Los Angeles on July 4th as America marked 250 years of independence with a burst of fireworks lighting up the city below — a celebration so bright it reached all the way to space!" NASA officials said on Monday (July 6) via the agency's ISS X account.That post featured a 15-second video captured from the orbiting lab, wh

Scientists uncovered a link between mild heart trouble and microscopic signs of brain damage that may raise the risk of memory problems down the line.The new study, published Monday (July 6) in The Journal of Neuroscience, did not prove that the heart issues directly caused memory problems. But it "adds to the overall picture that preserving healthy brain-heart communication is key for healthy aging," said Dr. Jan Scheitz, a consultant stroke neurologist and head of the Brain-Heart Lab at the Ch

Earlier this year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella proudly touted his company’s $7.3 billion Fairwater data center in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, as the “world’s most powerful AI data center,” connecting “hundreds of thousands” of power-hungry chips “into a single seamless cluster.” However, local residents aren’t even remotely as enthusiastic about the facility cropping up in their neighborhood. Last week, three residents of the village of Stu

SpaceX launched a passel of satellites to orbit early Tuesday morning (July 7).A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 81 payloads lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base on Tuesday at 3:12 a.m. EDT (0712 GMT; 12:12 a.m. local California time), kicking off a mission SpaceX called Transporter-17.As that name suggests, Transporter-17 was the 17th flight of SpaceX's Transporter rideshare program. The company operates another rideshare series as well, called Bandwagon, which has launched four mi

Getting as little as 90 minutes less sleep than usual may lead to gaining weight and becoming more sedentary, a new study finds

Despite having all the resources in the world to offer their offspring a high-quality education, a cohort of wealthy entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are choosing to educate them using AI instead. As the Wall Street Journal reports, a private school network called Alpha School is luring in rich parents across the country, offering them an eyebrow-raising education that includes hours of AI-based tutoring — for a searing $75,000 a year. It also has a decidedly political tilt. The Trum

More evidence that the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is much older than our solar system has come to light, along with clues that it formed on the outskirts of the protoplanetary disk belonging to its parent star long ago.Earlier this year, researchers led by Martin Cordiner of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center revealed that data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) suggested that 3I/ATLAS is between 10 and 12 billion years old, based on the ratios of its carbon and deuterium isotopes. This

Throughout his second stint in the Oval Office, Donald Trump has raked in over a billion dollars on the backs of his most loyal acolytes. Some of his grifts harken back to the Trump cons of yesteryear, like the spectacularly cringeworthy Trump Mobile smartphone, a “made in America” device that was, predictably, produced entirely in China. Most of the president’s most successful pulls, however, are predicated on either the cryptocurrency market, where winner-take-all scams ar