Public debate about artificial intelligence in higher education has largely orbited a familiar worry: cheating. Will students use chatbots to write essays? Can instructors tell? Should universities ban the tech? Embrace it? [...]
It's an age-old debate in space circles: Should humanity's first city on another world be built on the moon, or on Mars? As recently as last year, SpaceX founder Elon Musk saw missions to the moon as a "distraction." In a post to his X social-media platform, he declared that "we're going straight to Mars." [...]
The financial industry is entering a new era, with AI and new regulations on accessing data transforming how finance works. These changes are giving people more options to manage their money in new ways—taking us closer to totally cashless transactions. [...]
Picture this: A group of girls are sitting at a table in the lunchroom when a boy walks by. One girl turns to another girl and laughingly says, "Oh, isn't that your boyfriend? You should go kiss him!" [...]
Archaeologists have discovered a tomb more than a thousand years old in Panama containing human remains alongside gold and ceramic artifacts, the lead researcher told AFP on Friday. [...]
When most people think about natural selection, they imagine individuals competing with one another: The fastest animal escapes predators, the strongest plant produces more seeds, and the most resistant bacteria better survive antibiotics. Natural selection is often described as acting primarily at the level of the individual organism, the classic "survival of the fittest." This picture is not wrong, but it is incomplete. [...]
Scientists at McGill University and the Rosalind and Morris Goodman Cancer Institute have developed a new way to deliver cancer immunotherapy that caused fewer side effects compared to standard treatment in a preclinical study. The work is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [...]
The laser you see in the photo above may one day enhance images taken by the most powerful microscopes in biology. This advancement, detailed in a paper published in eLife from scientists at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute with the Maxson lab at Cornell University, could revolutionize research into the molecules that allow the brain to function properly and underlie diseases. [...]
Smartphone cameras are becoming smaller, yet photos are becoming sharper. Korean researchers have elevated the limits of next-generation smartphone cameras by developing a new image sensor technology that can accurately represent colors regardless of the angle at which light enters. The team achieved this by utilizing a "metamaterial" that designs the movement of light through structures too small to be seen with the naked eye. [...]
Scientists say they have drilled deeper than ever beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, peering back millions of years to reveal signs it was once, at least in part, open ocean. [...]
Humans tend to fear bed bugs, and rightly so. The bloodsuckers are tough to get rid of once they've entered a home. But new research has, for the first time, identified one thing the bugs seem to fear—water and wet surfaces. [...]
A study from an international team of experts in veterinary medicine, human medicine and genomics provides the first large-scale genetic map of feline cancer, revealing that cats may hold the key to understanding several human cancers. [...]
An international team of astronomers has discovered a distant planetary system that challenges long-standing theories of how planets form. Across our galaxy, astronomers routinely observe a characteristic pattern in planetary systems: rocky planets orbiting close to their host star with gas giants farther away. Our own solar system follows this rule, with the inner planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, composed of rock and iron, and the outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune being predominantly gaseous. [...]
As the Atlantic warms, many fish along the east coast of North America have moved northward to keep within their preferred temperature range. Black sea bass, for instance, have shifted hundreds of miles up the coast. [...]
More than 150 giant tortoises have been reintroduced to Floreana Island in Ecuador's famed Galapagos archipelago where they disappeared more than a century ago, the environment ministry said Friday. [...]
There is a long and storied history of nonhuman actors, from Luke, the dog of silent star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, to the collies cast in the role of Lassie in film and on television. Bart the Bear racked up over 20 film and TV credits in the 1980s and 1990s, while countless horses have supported period dramas that now saturate streaming services. [...]
NASA's new moon rocket suffered another setback Saturday, putting next month's planned launch with astronauts in jeopardy. [...]
Many fish appear to hang effortlessly in the water while they wait for prey, defend a nest or pause between bursts of activity. But our research shows that this quiet stillness is anything but effortless. Hovering, the behavior that allows a fish to remain suspended in one place, is far more energetically demanding than scientists once believed. [...]
Research from Adelaide University and the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) has shown for the first time that Australian sea lion pups can learn foraging behavior from their mothers. Social information transition exists in some mammals, such as sea otters, bottlenose dolphins and chimpanzees—the latter of which teaches their young to fish for termites using a stick. However, this type of behavior was not previously known in otariids, or "eared seals," the family of pinnipeds that comprises fur seals and sea lions. [...]
A new study suggests that babies are able to distinguish between the different objects they see around them at 2 months old, which is earlier than scientists previously thought. [...]
They are hunted for their unique scales, and the demand makes them the most trafficked mammal in the world. Wildlife conservationists are again raising the plight of pangolins, the shy, scaly anteaters found in parts of Africa and Asia, on World Pangolin Day on Saturday. [...]
As universities increasingly adopt digital tools and automated analytics systems, attention often centers on these tools' gains in accuracy and efficiency. Far less visible, however, is another critical dimension: the additional work students must do to produce, organize, and interpret their own data within these systems. [...]
A study led by the University of Barcelona and published in the journal Nature Communications shows that climate change has profoundly altered extreme episodes of melting in the Greenland ice sheet by making them more frequent, more extensive and more intense. Since 1990, the area affected by extreme melting episodes has increased at a rate of 2.8 million km² per decade. Additionally, the production of water from ice melt has increased more than sixfold, rising from 12.7 gigatons per decade to 82.4 gigatons per decade. [...]
Drawing together leading experts from across the field, an international collaboration of cosmologists has created a unified approach for measuring the value of the Hubble constant. Published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, the milestone could bring us a step closer to understanding why the universe appears to be expanding faster than our standard cosmological model predicts. [...]
In present day Kazakhstan, both local folklore and genetic evidence found buried in royal tombs have shone a light on the region's ties to Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire. New DNA analysis of ruling elites from the Golden Horde—the northwestern extension of the Mongol Empire—reveals implications for the genetic ancestry of the broader Mongolian Empire. The findings were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [...]
The moon crossed the sun's path on February 17, causing what is known as an annular solar eclipse. The sun was not covered completely, but the moon blocked enough of its light to leave a fiery ring. Unless you're deep in the southern hemisphere, you won't have noticed. [...]
There are many ways to communicate with prospective romantic partners. If you are a Japanese scarab beetle, it's a matter of distinguishing left from right. New work from U.S. and Chinese scientists, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows how these beetles use mirror-image pheromones to find a mate. The work could lead to better monitoring and control of significant agricultural pests. [...]
A research team led by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Çiğdem Maner from Koç University's Department of Archaeology and History of Art has uncovered remarkable textile fragments at Beycesultan Höyük that rewrite our understanding of Bronze Age craftsmanship in Anatolia. Published in the journal Antiquity, the study presents the earliest evidence of indigo-dyed textiles and a sophisticated single-needle knitting technique previously unknown in the region. [...]
This week in the scientific process: researchers reported the first-ever shark sighted in Antarctic waters. Penguins beware! Biologists report that honey bees navigate more precisely than previously thought. And not all humans scare wildlife, it turns out. [...]
Central goals of the circular economy include closing material cycles, reducing waste, and permanently keeping raw materials in the economic system. Achieving this requires innovative technologies that open up new avenues for recycling. Gas fermentation is a promising technology; however, some aspects are still in the research phase. The biotechnological process uses exhaust gases such as carbon dioxide as feedstocks to produce valuable products and enable a new approach to industrial emissions. [...]