Pythons’ feast-and-famine life hints at new weight loss pathway

Within hours after eating, the pythons’ organs, including their hearts, begin to expand in size by 50% or more; their energy demands increase—digestion takes calories!—by more than 40%; and cells that don’t normally divide, like the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas, explode in number.

Old-growth forests store a lot more carbon than managed forests, study finds

Swedish old-growth forests store 83% more carbon than managed forests, according to a new study from Lund University. The difference is substantially larger than previous estimates and is mainly due to large carbon stocks in the soil.

Online Bot Traffic Will Exceed Human Traffic By 2027, Cloudflare CEO Says

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince explained that bots’ web usage has been increasing alongside the growth of generative AI technology because bots are capable of visiting far more sites to get answers for users’ chatbot queries.

Pompeii’s battle scars linked to an ancient ‘machine gun’

The ancient city of Pompeii is one of those archaeological sites that keeps on giving with one discovery after another. While much of what we know about the Roman settlement comes from the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, another significant event from nearly a century earlier is also yielding fresh insights into its past.

Prototype breath tests spot bacterial infections in minutes

Doctors currently rely on blood tests, imaging, cultures and molecular diagnostics to identify the cause of infections, but these tools are limited because they are slow, non-specific or expensive.

Platypus fur adds another strange feature to an increasingly long list

The combination of a beaver-like body and duck-like bill of the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) is only the first of a long list of strange features on this unique creature. These odd mammals also lay eggs, have venomous spurs, sense electricity, glow under UV light, and harbor five times more sex chromosomes than many other animals.

Children shaped clay 15,000 years ago, long before pottery or farming

The ornaments, 142 beads and pendants, were made some 15,000 years ago by Natufian hunter-gatherers living in what is now Israel. These communities were the first in the world to settle permanently in one place, millennia before the rise of agriculture.

Changes in pace of epigenetic clocks over time may help predict mortality risk

The science of understanding the biological mechanisms of aging presents a rather interesting hypothesisaging itself is the main cause of many long-term diseases and physical problems later in life. If we can slow the rate at which the body ages, we might be able to delay or prevent these diseases and help people stay healthy for longer.

Earth’s toughest microbes could help save the planet and find life on other worlds

As their name suggests, extremophiles are organisms that thrive in extreme environments such as high salinity, high pressure, low pH, and high temperatures. They were first studied in detail in the 1960s in boiling hot springs in Yellowstone National Park.

satellitemap.space

Reat-time satelitte tracking + internet constellations.

Hubble catches rare view of a comet crumbling

Though it had been intact just days before, the comet K1 fragmented into at least four pieces while the Hubble Space Telescope was watching. The odds of that happening while Hubble viewed the comet are extraordinarily miniscule.

== yjc, people amaze me
Barry’s Borderpoints

This site focuses on my visits to international tripoints, borders and areas of geographical interest.

The world’s oldest-known whale song recordings tell a story about the changing ocean

Scientists say it paints a picture of how the massive mammals communicated during an era when the ocean was much quieter than it is now and how the ever-changing underwater soundscape is impacting whales today.

Are we in for a super El Niño this year?

After a year and a half of La Niña conditions, it looks like we could end up with an El Niño later this year. And early models suggest it could be a strong one, which could push global temperatures to record highs.

Archaeologists untangle how Bronze Age textiles were made

Analysis and reconstruction of a warp-weighted loom from the second millennium BC site of Cabezo Redondo, Spain, provides an unprecedented glimpse into the development of textile technology in the Bronze Age western Mediterranean.

Whale song remix

Study shows that humpbacks shift pitch when a neighbor joins in.

Mechanically activated liquid metal powder lets users draw circuits on paper

What if electronic circuits could be created simply by drawing lines with a pencil on paper or leaves—and then immediately applied to soft robots or skin-attached health monitoring devices?

CHEOPS discovery defies planetary formation rules

The late 20th century saw a tidy, if simplified, look at planetary formation, modeled by our own solar system, with rocky terrestrial worlds close to the sun, followed by gas and ice giants farther out.

Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks, bolstering origin-of-life theories

One longstanding theory is that life first began on Earth when asteroids carrying fundamental elements crashed into our planet long ago. The asteroids that hurtle through our solar system give scientists a rare chance to study this possibility.

Models warn Thwaites Glacier could rival entire Antarctic ice loss by 2067

Thwaites Glacier is already one of the fastest changing and most closely watched glaciers on Earth, losing ice more than five times faster than in the 1990s. It drains a huge area of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and outlets into the Amundsen Sea.

Could a recently detected ultra-high-energy neutrino be linked to new physics?

The KM3NeT neutrino telescope, an observatory located at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, recently detected the presence of a neutrino carrying extremely high energy, above 100 PeV (peta-electronvolts). This is one of the most energetic neutrinos observed to date.

Physicists break longstanding high-temperature superconductivity record at ambient pressure

Superconductors allow electricity to flow without resistance, which makes them useful for improving electrical grids, building advanced medical imaging systems, enabling fusion energy technologies, and developing faster electronics. However, most superconductors must be cooled to extremely low temperatures, which makes them expensive and difficult to use.

== yjc, lengthy
Should Banksy Remain Anonymous?

asterline still has the photos. He is keeping them private, save for a tiny crop of the man’s glasses he shared with us. He echoed what many say in Banksy’s protective circle of friends, partners, collectors and critics. “I don’t want to be the guy who exposes Banksy,” he said.

How an unlikely all-female clonal fish species copied and pasted itself free from extinction

The tiny Amazon molly (Poecilia formosa) has always fascinated researchers because, according to the rules of evolution, it shouldn’t have survived as a species, let alone thrive as a species for over 100,000 years.

Seeing global trade through the lens of physics

What determines whether a country can successfully develop new industries or why some economies diversify while others remain dependent on a few exports? For more than a decade, researchers studying global trade have relied on so-called economic complexity algorithms to approach questions like these.

High-altitude survival gene may help reverse nerve damage

In previous studies, researchers have found that animals living on the Tibetan Plateau—which has an average elevation of 14,700 feet—carry a mutation on a gene called Retsat. Scientists suspected that this mutation helps animals like yaks and Tibetan antelopes maintain healthy brain function despite chronically low oxygen levels.

== paywall, if interested, find line “Don’t have a Medium Premium? Just click here (friends link) and read it for free.” and click the link.
== I did find it interesting, have not yet had a look at the github repo
He Wrote 200 Lines of Code and Walked Away (What happened Next will blow your Mind)

No human input. Zero manual commits. Just a script waking up every 8 hours, reading its own source code, and evolving.

== yjc
Father, 99, and son, 80, feast on free oysters after cashing in on decades-old restaurant promise

A sign posted in a local oyster house inspired Jimmy, 80, and Jim, 99, to make a lifelong goal.

Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

The facility went offline on March 2 following drone strikes, removing approximately 30% of global helium supply from the market.

Don’t get used to cheap AI

AI companies are hooking users with low prices that won’t last — straight out of the Amazon and Uber playbook.