== yjc, I try to use powershell whenever I can
PowerShell Architect Retires After Decades At the Prompt

Snover joined Microsoft as the 20th century drew to a close. The company was all about its Windows operating system and user interface in those days – great for end users, but not so good for administrators managing fleets of servers. Snover correctly predicted a shift to server datacenters, which would require automated management. A powerful shell… a PowerShell, if you will.

Seismometer networks could track space junk as it falls to Earth

Re-entries are happening more frequently. Last year, we had multiple satellites entering our atmosphere each day, and we don’t have independent verification of where they entered, whether they broke up into pieces, if they burned up in the atmosphere, or if they made it to the ground,

The face scars less than the body: Study explains why

Surgeons have known for decades that facial wounds heal with less scarring than injuries on other parts of the body. This phenomenon makes evolutionary sense.

Scientists may have solved 66 million-year-old mystery of how Earth’s greenhouse age ended

A 66 million-year-old mystery behind how our planet transformed from a tropical greenhouse to the ice-capped world of today has been unraveled by scientists.

Scientists may have discovered a new extinct form of life

Prototaxites are something of a prehistoric mystery. They were the first giant organisms on land, towering over ancient landscapes at heights of up to 8 meters. They had smooth trunk-like pillars and no branches, leaves or flowers.

AI Boosts Research Careers but Flattens Scientific Discovery

AI is turning scientists into publishing machines—and quietly funneling them into the same crowded corners of research.

== Only in Canada?
How grocery giants control who can sell food in your neighbourhood

Canada’s biggest grocery giants — including Loblaws, Sobeys and Metro — are using property law to control how other grocery stores, dollar stores, pharmacies and gas stations can compete with them.

== seen something on this before
As the Gulf of St. Lawrence warms, whales are switching up the menu and may be sharing lunch

Canadian research suggests some whale species are adjusting their diets to adapt to climate change.

== a bit lengthy
Experts warn of threat to democracy from ‘AI bot swarms’ infesting social media

Misinformation technology could be deployed at scale to disrupt 2028 US presidential election, AI researchers say.

== British perspective toward the end
Half the world’s 100 largest cities are in high water stress areas, analysis finds

Water stress means that water withdrawals for public water supply and industry are close to exceeding available supplies, often caused by poor management of water resources exacerbated by climate breakdown.

== yjc
Schools, airports, high-rise towers: architects urged to get ‘bamboo-ready’

Manual for building design aims to encourage low-carbon construction as alternative to steel and concrete.

Calendar of space events 2026

The upcoming year will offer a blood-red moon, spectacular meteor showers and the first glimpse of the sun’s corona since April 2024.

== yjc, sorry if it offends anyone, but not exactly a new idea to most of s
From ancient Rome to today, war-makers have talked constantly about peace

In the year 98 CE, the Roman historian Tacitus wrote, “With lying names they call theft, slaughter, and plunder ‘control,’ and when they make a wasteland, they call it ‘peace.’”

Polymer cables for MRI applications: No place for metal

Anyone who has ever had to get a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan knows that magnetic and highly conductive materials are a no-go in the tube-shaped scanners. However, for complex diagnoses and medical research, this imaging technique often needs to be combined with other methods that require conductive cables.

Bird retinas function without oxygen—solving a centuries-old biological mystery

Neural tissue normally dies quickly without oxygen. Yet bird retinas—among the most energy-demanding tissues in the animal kingdom—function permanently without it.

Alaska’s beluga whales swap mates for long-term survival

In the icy waters of Alaska’s Bristol Bay, a new study reveals how a small population of beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) survive the long haul through a surprising strategy.

== yjc, couldn’t resist sending it
Elon Musk’s latest feud is a mudslinging match with a budget airline

When billionaire Elon Musk hurled insults at the CEO of Europe’s largest airline, he may not have been expecting the company to lean into the feud by launching a “big ‘idiot’ seat sale” with Musk’s face all over it.

== yjc, Barbara and I have pretty much been living this way all along
My analogue month: would ditching my smartphone make me healthier, happier – or more stressed?

When I swapped my iPhone for a Nokia, Walkman, film camera and physical map, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But my life soon started to change.

== yjc, lengthy
Your First Humanoid Robot Coworker Will Probably Be Chinese

Explosive acceleration, limited dexterity, eyes in the back of its head. What could possibly go wrong?

== yjc, I have not yet made the transition, but will be doing so this year
This OS quietly powers all AI - and most future IT jobs, too

Without Linux, there is no ChatGPT. No AI at all. None.

== yjc
Ozempic is Reshaping the Fast Food Industry

Food companies are racing to overhaul their brands, ditching artificial dyes and packing protein into products. Earnings calls across the sector blame “inflation” and “subdued consumer confidence.” Nobody mentions the elephant in the room: GLP-1 medications.

Oldest cave painting of red claw hand could rewrite human creativity timeline

The painting has been dated to at least 67,800 years ago – around 1,100 years before the previous record, a controversial hand stencil in Spain.

== yjc, do listen to opera on occasion, had season tickets to Vancouver Opera for a number of years
(https://phys.org/news/2026-01-opera-dying-streaming-era.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter)

Opera is not dying, but it needs a second act for the streaming era.

Being cold doesn’t make you sick, so why are illnesses more common in winter?

Many people across cultures grow up hearing that cold weather makes you sick. This belief feels true to many people because illness often follows cold exposure. However, modern research shows that the connection between cold weather and illness is more nuanced.

Seismic ‘snapshot’ reveals new insight into how the Rocky Mountains formed

No one ever thought the birth of the Rocky Mountains was a simple process, but we now know it was far more complex than even geophysicists had assumed.

Surprisingly in sync: Sunlight and sediments reveal climate history of Antarctica

Ice forms wherever there is water and it gets cold enough. It can float freely in the sea as drift ice or can form pack ice when the wind and ocean currents connect ice floes together. For “fast ice,” however, freedom is a thing of the past: It is no longer able to move, as it is firmly attached to the coast or the shallows.

== yjc
It started with a cat: How 100 years of quantum weirdness powers today’s tech

A hundred years ago, quantum mechanics was a radical theory that baffled even the brightest minds. When Erwin Schrödinger introduced his famous cat paradox in 1935—suggesting a cat could be both alive and dead, until observed—it was meant to illustrate the strangeness of quantum theory.

Howler monkey roars exaggerate body size but are truthful to other howlers

Howler monkeys are relatively small primates known for their incredibly loud, low-frequency roars that sound as if they come from a much larger creature. This is useful in the animal kingdom because sounding big can deter predators and may discourage rivals before they get a glimpse of the caller’s true size.

== repeat?
Vast cluster of ancient galaxies could rewrite the history of star formation

Astronomers have discovered a vast, dense cluster of massive galaxies just 1 billion years after the Big Bang, each forming stars at an intense rate from collapsing clouds of dust.

CEOs say AI is making work more efficient. Employees tell a different story.

Business leaders’ faith in the productivity-boosting powers of AI is getting a reality check—from their own workforces. Employees said AI isn’t saving them much time in their daily work so far, and many report feeling overwhelmed by how to incorporate it into their jobs.

== lengthy
The Quest to Build a Radio Telescope That Can Hear the Cosmic Dark Ages

A moon-based radio telescope could help unravel some of the greatest mysteries in space science. Dark matter, dark energy, neutron stars, and gravitational waves could all come into better focus if observed from the moon.

== in case anyone interested, paywall?
21 most consequential ideas in science and technology of the 21st century so far

Science this century has already dramatically reshaped our understanding of ourselves, the universe and our place within it – and we’re only a quarter of the way through. 

Looming water supply ‘bankruptcy’ puts billions at risk, UN report warns

The world is facing irreversible water “bankruptcy”, with billions of people struggling to cope with the consequences of decades of overuse as well as shrinking supplies from lakes, rivers, glaciers and wetlands.

== yjc
Sri Lanka unveils a rare purple star sapphire claimed to be the biggest of its kind

The round shaped gem named “Star of Pure Land” is the world’s largest documented natural purple star sapphire.

Not all sitting is the same when it comes to brain health

The study, one of the largest and most detailed reviews to date, examined the impact of passive and active sedentary activities on cognitive function in more than one million middle-aged and older adults from 30 countries.

These gravitationally lensed supernovae could resolve the Hubble tension

One of the most stubborn issues in cosmology today concerns the universe’s rate of expansion. Scientists know it’s expanding, but defining the rate of that expansion is challenging. The rate of expansion is called the Hubble Constant, after American astronomer Edwin Hubble, who discovered in the 1920s that the universe is expanding.

What deep sea mud is revealing about giant earthquakes along the Pacific Coast

Marine turbidites are layers of mud and sand deposited on the deep ocean floor by massive underwater landslides and are often used as a historical record for reconstructing earthquake histories.

New class of strong magnets uses earth-abundant elements, avoids rare-earth metals

A key figure of merit for a magnet is the ability of its magnetization to strongly prefer a specific direction, known as magnetic anisotropy, which is a cornerstone property for modern magnetic technologies.

Horses can smell human fear when we sweat

Horses can smell your fear. If you are experiencing this emotion while standing near a horse, they will be able to detect it through your scent alone, which changes their behavior and physiology.

Penguins break records by moving breeding season in warming climate

Penguin breeding colonies are being established 10 to 13 days earlier on average for 3 key species.

The fastest human spaceflight mission in history crawls closer to liftoff

Preparations for the first human spaceflight to the Moon in more than 50 years took a big step forward this weekend with the rollout of the Artemis II rocket to its launch pad.

== yjc
The World’s Longest-Running Lab Experiment Is Almost 100 Years Old

The world’s longest-running lab experiment is an ongoing work in sheer scientific patience. It has been running continuously for nearly a century, under the close supervision of several custodians and many spectators.

Cow astonishes scientists with rare use of tools

Scientists are rethinking what cattle are capable of after an Austrian cow named Veronika was found to use tools with impressive skill.

Meat may play an unexpected role in helping people reach 100

Longevity diets often focus on going plant-based, but a study in China has linked eating meat to a long lifespan, particularly among older people who are underweight.

== yjc, lengthy read
The Mythology Of Conscious AI

Why consciousness is more likely a property of life than of computation and why creating conscious, or even conscious-seeming AI, is a bad idea.

EHT Astronomers Will Film Swirling of a Supermassive Black Hole for the First Time

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) will track the colossal black hole at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy throughout March and April with the aim of capturing footage of the swirling disc that traces out the edge of the event horizon, the point beyond which no light or matter can escape.

China Builds ‘Hypergravity’ Machine 2,000X Stronger Than Earth

It’s so powerful, it can compress space and time.

Astronomers Finally Explain How Molecules From Earth’s Atmosphere Keep Winding Up On the Moon

The familiar gray face in our night sky is not as passive as it looks. New research suggests the moon has been quietly collecting particles from Earth’s upper atmosphere for billions of years.

Atmospheric physicists find error in widely cited Arctic snow cover observations

For decades, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has offered a snapshot of the planet’s changing climate—but University of Toronto researchers have found that some of the underlying data underrepresents a key driver of Arctic warming.

Fluid gears rotate without teeth, offering new mechanical flexibility

Gears are among the oldest machine parts, dating back to 3,000 BCE in China, where they were used in two-wheeled chariots to cross the Gobi Desert. Over time, they’ve been deployed in the famous Antikythera mechanism, which predicted astronomical positions in ancient Greece, as well as in windmills, clocks, and, now, robotics.

More than half of all crypto tokens have failed — and most died in 2025

Over 13.4 million tokens have been erased between mid-2021 and 2025, according to a new analysis by CoinGecko.

Predator Spyware Turns Failed Attacks Into Intelligence for Future Exploits

It shows how Predator is not merely spyware, but a self-diagnostic tool, returning information to the developers on why an individual attack may have failed – it can learn from its own failures so that future versions may be improved and hardened against detection and analysis.

Nuclear fusion seems hot right now — but how close is fusion power?

Nuclear fusion milestones from Canada’s General Fusion and China’s EAST reactor have caused a buzz over this potentially limitless, clean energy source becoming a reality amid rising power demand from AI and electrification. Meanwhile, new fusion startups have been popping up around the world and have drawn billions in private investment.

Doctors can now perform robotic procedures from afar

Surgeons at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto have performed 10 brain angiograms remotely using a robot.

== yjc
Mandiant releases rainbow table that cracks weak admin password in 12 hours

Security firm Mandiant has released a database that allows any administrative password protected by Microsoft’s NTLM.v1 hash algorithm to be hacked in an attempt to nudge users who continue using the deprecated function despite known weaknesses.

== yjc
How this Indigenous mask from B.C. inspired the Seattle Seahawks logo

Researcher says NFL team’s logo was inspired by a Kwakwaka’wakw transformation mask.

== yjc, not really sure when mango season is, certainly not here any time of year. Cut up mango was one of the most common “desserts” while I was in hospital, now I see why
5 things to make with mangoes that aren’t smoothies

Mangoes are not only a delicious summer treat, they are packed full of essential vitamins and minerals.

Is feeding birds and other wildlife a good thing or a bad thing?

Is that bird feeder in your backyard really helping nature? How about feeding the chipmunks that come to your patio? Or handouts to wildlife in their natural environment, far from human habitation?

New thawing method could deliver ‘dock-fresh’ fish anywhere

A small revolution is happening in the fishing industry. Freshly frozen fish can now be thawed in a new way, and that means you will have access to super-fresh food from the sea—even if you live thousands of miles away.

Neutralizing extracellular electron transport disarms antibiotic-resistant bacteria, restores healing in chronic wounds

Worldwide, chronic wounds represent a major health challenge, with an estimated 18.6 million people developing diabetic foot ulcers each year. Up to one in three people with diabetes are at risk of developing a foot ulcer during their lifetime.

Exposing how humidity can escalate a heat wave

“Heat waves actually kill more people in the U.S. than hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, or any other form of extreme weather.”

== repeat?
Super agers tend to have at least two key genetic advantages, study finds

The gene variant posing the greatest genetic risk of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is called APOE-e4. A different variant of the same gene, APOE-e2, is thought to confer protection against AD.

Tiger sharks gather to mate during Maui’s whale season

This challenges the conventional understanding of tiger sharks as purely solitary animals, revealing a predictable seasonal convergence of mature males and females that coincides with the humpback whale calving season in Hawai?i.

Scientists discover natural ‘brake’ that could stop harmful inflammation

Inflammation is the body’s frontline defense against infection and injury, but when it doesn’t switch off properly, it can drive serious health conditions such as arthritis, heart disease, and diabetes.

Tougher solid electrolyte advances long-sought lithium metal batteries

A solid—rather than liquid—electrolyte between the opposite electrodes of a battery should, in theory, enable a rechargeable lithium metal battery that is safer, packs much more energy, and charges considerably faster than the lithium-ion batteries commercially available today.

Pesticides may drastically shorten fish lifespans, study finds

Even low levels of widely used agricultural chemicals were linked to accelerated ageing, research suggests.

NASA rolls out giant rocket ahead of astronauts’ moon mission

The rollout of 100-metre rocket is scheduled for 7 a.m. ET, January 17, and is expected to take eight to 12 hours

‘Super-agers’ reveal how to stay sharp as you get older

Research is revealing 3 key factors to help people live independently and for longer.