1+ week, 1+ day ago   (690+ words) In 1959, engineers at a U.S. Army laboratory built a device that amplified and routed signals using nothing but jets of air. More than six decades later, that half-forgotten technology is driving a quiet revolution in robotics. A team at King’s College…...

1+ mon, 5+ day ago   (1002+ words) Brains rot within days. The bony case that held them can last 33 million years, which is why primate brain evolution has been so hard to read from fossils. A new study led by scientists at Duke University filled those empty…...

1+ mon, 1+ week ago   (965+ words) Tool use gives some animals access to foods that teeth, fingers, or claws cannot easily open. Yet using a tool is only part of the challenge because the animal must also choose an object with the right qualities for the…...

1+ mon, 1+ week ago   (1232+ words) A handful of short stories were put in front of readers with one simple question: Which ones were best? The top-rated stories were generated by ChatGPT, beating fiction written by human authors published in a literary journal. People are increasingly…...

1+ mon, 2+ week ago   (974+ words) Humanoid robots and AI tutors are edging into classrooms and offices. The pitch usually sounds the same, a machine that adapts to every learner and never loses patience. Behind that promise sits a harder question. When a learner stumbles, does…...

2+ mon, 5+ day ago   (763+ words) The search for life beyond Earth has always been full of surprises. Strange radio signals have sparked excitement. Odd gases on distant worlds have raised questions. Even ordinary objects have been mistaken for UFOs. Time and again, scientists have had…...

3+ mon, 1+ week ago   (768+ words) Sharp, rational learners win. For decades, models in economics and evolutionary biology have assumed that the faster you identify a winning strategy and commit to it, the better you perform against everyone else. A new study suggests that assumption does…...

3+ mon, 2+ week ago   (897+ words) Four terabytes of data per hour. That number comes not from a supercomputer or a satellite, but from a pair of microscopes running around the clock in a windowless room at Berkeley, filming the inner lives of living cells. The…...

3+ mon, 3+ week ago   (858+ words) In 1950, the British mathematician Alan Turing proposed a deceptively simple challenge: could a machine ever hold a conversation so convincingly human that people couldn’t reliably tell the difference? For decades, the answer was no. A new study from the University…...

3+ mon, 3+ week ago   (394+ words) AI-powered handheld microscope called PrecisionView can spot cancer cells and blood vessel changes instantly using non-invasive imaging....