The World"s Largest Plant Is a Self-Cloning Sea Grass in Australia
In Shark Bay, off the westernmost tip of Australia, meadows of sea grass carpet the ocean floor, undulating in the current and being nibbled on by dugongs, cousins of Florida manatees. A new study revealed something unexpected about those sea grasses.....»»
Calcite: The versatile mineral shaping the future of carbon removal
Found all over the world, calcite is the most stable form of calcium carbonate and is the main mineral found in limestone......»»
Australians who think inequality is high have less faith in democratic institutions, according to study
Central to Australia's cultural and political identity is the notion of a "fair go." But recent elections, including in the United States, have highlighted the challenge of maintaining shared norms and support for institutions when many voters don't.....»»
I tried to beat UFO 50’s hardest game. It turned into a fight for my soul
A quest to defeat UFO 50's hardest game became an existential battle to keep fighting in the face of real world hopelessness......»»
Evolutionary anthropologist presents hypothesis about why humans are dominating the world over other animals
Why is human culture—the shared body of knowledge passed down across generations—so much more powerful than animal cultures?.....»»
Earliest evidence of Ephedra use found in 15,000-year-old Moroccan burial
An international group of researchers led by the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria have uncovered the earliest evidence of Ephedra use from the charred remains of the plant in a 15,000-year-old human burial site in northeastern Morocco......»»
Novel AI framework incorporates experimental data and text-based narratives to accelerate search for new proteins
Harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and the world's fastest supercomputers, a research team led by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has developed an innovative computing framework to speed up the desi.....»»
Biologists discover how plants evolved multiple ways to override genetic instructions
Biologists at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered the origin of a curious duplication that gives plants multiple ways to override instructions that are coded into their DNA. This research could help scientists exploit a plant's existin.....»»
New report details what happened to the Arecibo Observatory
In 1963, the Arecibo Observatory became operational on the island of Puerto Rico. Measuring 305 meters (~1000 ft) in diameter, Arecibo's spherical reflector dish was the largest radio telescope in the world at the time—a record it maintained until.....»»
Lab-cultured plant yogurt rivals dairy creaminess
Food engineers have harnessed the power of lupins (legumes) to create a yogurt that rivals dairy in taste and texture while delivering more nutrition than typical plant-based yogurts......»»
The extreme floods that devastated Spain are hitting more often. Is Australia ready for the next one?
Spain is still reeling from recent floods in the Valencia region. In some areas, a year's worth of rain fell in a single day. Sudden torrents raced through towns and cities. More than 200 people are dead. Rapid analysis suggests daily rainfall extrem.....»»
Multi-country study finds significant differences in how poverty is passed from parents to children
Researchers from Stockholm University, Bocconi University, and the Rockwool Foundation have studied poverty's lasting impact across generations in wealthy countries. By examining the United States, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Germany,.....»»
Are these tiny insects the world"s laziest bugs?
At less than 3mm long, you may not think Dunatothrips aneurae seem like much. And—as I have shown in a new study published in the Journal of Animal Ecology—you'd be absolutely right. That's because these may be the world's laziest insects......»»
Controlling skyrmions at room-temperature in 2D topological spin structure technology
The Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) has, for the first time in the world, generated and controlled skyrmions at room temperature in two-dimensional (2D) materials. This achievement reduces power consumption compared to tradi.....»»
EU opens antitrust investigation into key Apple supplier Corning
The European Commission has announced its latest antitrust investigation, and it could once again have an impact on Apple. The EC says it is investigating whether Corning, a key Apple supplier, “may have abused its dominant position on the world.....»»
World’s first wooden satellite launched to space
The tiny wooden cubesat arrived at the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX Dragon ship and will be deployed to orbit before the end of this year......»»
Anthropic’s Haiku 3.5 surprises experts with an “intelligence” price increase
Anthropic’s smallest AI model now beats its older largest LLM, Opus, at some tasks. On Monday, Anthropic launched the latest version of its smallest AI model, Claude 3.5 Haiku,.....»»
OpenAI’s robotics plans aim to ‘bring AI into the physical world’
OpenAI has made no secret of its hardware ambitions. Those plans came a step closer to fruition on Tuesday with the hiring of Caitlin Kalinowski, the now-former head of hardware at Oculus VR......»»
Decades after global regulations, the Arctic Ocean"s legacy persistent organic pollutants haven"t dropped
The presence of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in all the world's oceans but one has been in steady decline since 2001, when 152 countries agreed on a comprehensive global ban. The exception has been the Arctic Ocean, which has seen a sharp ris.....»»
Researchers call for nuanced understanding of "tribe" in Arab world
The study of Arab tribes should not be abandoned because Middle East and North African citizens continue to insist on the relevance of the term in their daily lives, says a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Political Science......»»
Testing thousands of RNA enzymes helps find first "twister ribozyme" in mammals
The "RNA world" hypothesis proposes that the earliest life on Earth may have been based on RNA—a single-stranded molecule similar in many ways to DNA—like some modern viruses. This is because, like DNA, RNA can carry genetic information, but, lik.....»»