Ashes have always been a powerful and evocative metaphor representing a vanished and irretrievable past. However, we live in prodigious times, in which nothing can be taken for granted anymore, and the feat of reading the contents of some of the charred papyri of Herculaneum is a good example of this. The credit goes to […]
If you speak more than one language, you are probably familiar with not being able to sound like a native speaker. At least, you know you’re trying your best to speak a foreign language! And, you know, in the end, your accent is also part of your identity. But wouldn’t it feel quite discouraging if […]
Driving at night might be a scary challenge for a new driver, but with hours of practice it soon becomes second nature. For self-driving cars, however, practice may not be enough because the lidar sensors that often act as these vehicles’ “eyes” have difficulty detecting dark-coloured objects. New research describes a highly reflective black paint […]
High level of invisible auroras on Mars due to solar cycle The sun’s solar maximum, which happens once in its approximately 11-year cycle, has caused unprecedented global auroras on Mars, according to data from NASA. The proton auroras on Mars aren’t visible to the naked eye, but NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft have […]
Numerous physical systems—from classical electromagnetic fields to quantum particle fields—exhibit oscillating wave behavior. Specific settings exist, both in nature and in artificial systems, where these waves form patterns with holes, loops, and other distinct topological characteristics, often referred to as topological wave structures. Now, a team of researchers describes how these structures, which have previously […]
The rise of commercially viable generative artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform a vast range of sectors. This transformation will be particularly profound in contemporary military education. Generative AI will fundamentally reshape war gaming — analytical games that simulate aspects of warfare at tactical, operational or strategic levels — by allowing senior military […]
A new imaging technique can give scientists a much closer look at fibril assemblies, stacks of peptides like amyloid beta, most notably associated with Alzheimer’s disease. These cross-β fibril assemblies are also useful building blocks within designer biomaterials for medical applications, but their resemblance to their amyloid beta cousins, whose tangles are a symptom of […]
One of the things I mostly hated in school was having to practise my calligraphy skills, I found it monotonous and uninspiring. However, despite not having served to improve my handwriting, it may have helped me fixate new information during my studies, as new research points towards handwriting being better than typing for learning and […]
Corals may have illuminated seas 540M years ago Deep-sea corals may have emitted the first bioluminescence 540 million years ago, about 270 million years before prehistoric shrimp that were previously thought to be the first light-producing animals. Researchers built an evolutionary tree based on 185 coral species to find one common ancestor of all living […]
The emergence of detector technologies with sensitivity to lower energies and improved resolution invites a shift of emphasis in particle-decay searches for massive neutral bosons: the kinematic limit of these reactions remains an unexplored realm where cosmologically-relevant particles may be waiting to be discovered. A case that illustrate this is the charged lepton flavour violating […]