View OriginalFevered Planet: How a Shifting Climate Is Catalysing Infectious DiseaseAs temperatures shift, animals move to different regions and pathogens have more opportunities to jump between hosts. Could the next pandemic be fuelled by an unstable climate?
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: Texas Goes Green: How Oil Country Became the Renewable Energy LeaderOne of the big announcements at the UN climate conference this weekend in Dubai was a pledge by more than 110 countries to triple the amount of renewable energy they are generating by 2030. That work is already underway in a rather unlikely place.
View OriginalHow Earthquakes Helped Us Map the Interior of the SunThe Sun is a giant sphere of plasma. Temperatures at its core exceed 10 million° C, and they drop to about 5,500° C at the surface. Densities at the solar core are also extreme, reaching more than 20 times the density of solid iron. But they too drop dramatically as you rise from core to surface.
View OriginalMining is necessary for the green transition. Here’s why experts say we need to do it betterBefore a solar panel can be installed on a roof or an electric bus can hit the streets, manufacturers first have to get their hands on key metals and minerals.
View OriginalThe Dark Side of Climate FinanceAs the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (or COP28) gets underway in Dubai, the call for rich countries to provide more money to poor countries to fight climate change has taken center stage.
View OriginalThe Universe in a lab: Testing alternate cosmology using a cloud of atomsIn the basement of Kirchhoff-Institut für Physik in Germany, researchers have been simulating the Universe as it might have existed shortly after the Big Bang.
View OriginalSimple Formula Makes Prime Numbers Easy, but a Million-Dollar Mystery RemainsWould you like to be a millionaire? There are several ways to fulfill this dream. For two decades the U.S. edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? promised a million dollars if you could answer 15 challenging questions correctly.
View OriginalHow 'ESG' came to mean everything and nothingIn 2015, Paris was buzzing with anticipation as world leaders gathered for the UN's annual Climate Change Conference (COP21). After weeks of intense debate, on 12 December, they emerged with a promise: 196 nations pledged to take on climate change with the goal of net zero emissions by 2050.
View OriginalThe Evolutionary Origins of PsychedelicsHumans rely on a bevy of strange natural chemicals to liven up our food and drink, to endure pain, and to change our perspective.
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 Pilots Delivering Your Amazon Packages Are Ready to StrikeAmazon deliveries could be headed for some turbulence in the new year. Pilots for US-based Air Transport International, a cargo airline that ferries Amazon packages from its fulfillment centers to airports nearer to its customers, voted to authorize a strike last month.
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 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.