5+ hour, 52+ min 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…...

4+ week, 4+ hour 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…...

4+ week, 2+ day 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, 13+ hour 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, 1+ 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…...

1+ mon, 3+ week ago   (945+ words) Living cells can already sense their surroundings, but turning that information into complex decisions has remained a major challenge. Researchers can program human cells to perform the same binary calculations as a simple digital circuit. By building compact genetic logic…...

1+ mon, 4+ week 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…...

1+ mon, 4+ week ago   (957+ words) Animals cannot explain what they are doing, or why. For decades, scientists studying mouse behavior have watched long stretches of video and labeled each action by hand, one frame at a time. The work is slow, and it leans heavily…...

2+ mon, 3+ week ago   (842+ words) Counting tells you how much. For years, that one reading guided the study of extracellular vesicles, the tiny packets cells shed into the blood. Each protein’s amount stood in for whatever the cell was doing. A new study says the…...

3+ mon, 2+ day 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…...