Nature
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Could crabs be conscious, can you beat hypochondria and more: top reads for summer
Marginlands Arati Kumar-Rao Pan Macmillan (2023) Climate change will hit hardest the people living in the world’s most fragile landscapes. In Marginlands, photographer and environmentalist Arati Kumar-Rao takes readers on an unforgettable tour through breathtakingly beautiful regions in India, where the harmful effects of ill-planned infrastructure — designed only to accelerate economic growth — are being compounded by the climate…
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Your reagent is past its use-by date. Should you bin it?
Even if their best-before dates have passed, some materials can still be used — and doing so is often a cost-conscious choice.Credit: Getty Everyone has at one time or another grabbed something out of the fridge or store cupboard, only to find that its use-by date is long past. It still looks good, and it smells OK. Should you throw…
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how endangered-species researchers find hope in the dark
Luis Coloma grew up in Guaranda, Ecuador, a small city in the Andes nestled in a high valley near the Chimborazo volcano. “It was a paradise,” he says. “When I was a kid, the frogs were so abundant it was impossible to ignore them.” Beyond seeing various species living together along the riverbanks, he was elated by their boisterous calls.…
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Bionic leg moves like a natural limb — without conscious thought
Trial participants with the robotic system could walk faster than those with standard robotic legs.Credit: H. Song et al./Nature Medicine A robotic leg that can be fully controlled by the brain and spinal cord has enabled seven people who had lost a lower leg to walk roughly as fast as people without amputations. The bionic limb uses a computer interface…
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extreme wildfires are now more common
The frequency at which extreme fires occur around the world has more than doubled during the past two decades, according to an analysis of satellite data1. The trend is driven by the exponential growth of extreme fires across vast portions of Canada, the western United States and Russia, researchers say. The results provide the first solid evidence to support a…
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How researchers and their managers can build an actionable career-development plan
A career-development plan can be a useful tool for researchers in both academia and industry.Credit: Getty Some scientists think of a career path as being set in stone, following a predictable trajectory. Typically, it starts with pursuing a PhD, followed by a postdoctoral position and — if the scientist is fortunate — obtaining a tenured position or perhaps moving away…
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Two decades of deep ice cores from Antarctica
Nature, Published online: 10 June 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-01507-5 In June 2004, the results of an ambitious Antarctic ice-drilling project brought insight into hundreds of thousands of years of climatic changes. The extraordinary sample still has much to offer climate research — even as its successor is being drilled. Source link
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Physicists coax molecules into exotic quantum state — ending decades-long quest
Velocity-distribution data for a gas of rubidium atoms before, during and after the appearance of a Bose–Einstein condensate. The peak forms as all the atoms occupy the lowest possible quantum energy state.Credit: National Institute of Standards and Technology/Science Photo Library A bizarre state of matter just got weirder — and more useful. Physicists have succeeded in cooling down molecules so…
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Tackling ‘wicked’ problems calls for engineers with social responsibility
In the nineteenth century, steamboat explosions were common — until they weren’t.Credit: Universal History Archive/UIG/Getty Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World Guru Madhavan W. W. Norton & Company (2024) Society relies on engineers to deliver almost everything it uses, from food and water to buildings, transport and telecommunications. But new technologies are often rushed into service, for market…
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AI now beats humans at basic tasks — new benchmarks are needed, says major report
Artificial intelligence (AI) systems, such as the chatbot ChatGPT, have become so advanced that they now very nearly match or exceed human performance in tasks including reading comprehension, image classification and competition-level mathematics, according to a new report (see ‘Speedy advances’). Rapid progress in the development of these systems also means that many common benchmarks and tests for assessing them…
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